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On Facebook, I mentioned my opinion that when MU/TH/URs are teaching the game to new players, part of the teach should be not just the mechanics of taking stress, relieving stress, and rolling panic, but what the number of stress carried actually means in terms of the game. Namely, IMO, players should know that, for most PCs, carrying 2 to 4 stress is optimal, and that a Panic Roll of 10+ means that the PC does not get to do the action the PC wants to do. (There are a couple of exceptions to the generalization.)

One poster apparently strongly disagreed with me. I still don't really understand why, except that he seemed to think that "real people" wouldn't know how stress affects them, so any kind of stress management was metagamey, and it was especially metagamey if MU/TH/UR simply taught players not just how to handle gaining stress/losing stress/rolling panic, but what the actual effects on player and PC agency are. (I obviously strongly disagree, and, to be honest, I don't even really understand the argument.)

As I type this, I'm watching Mystery Quest's Part 5 of their actual play of Chariot of the Gods, and one player is holding 9 stress. He (almost) literally cannot succeed at a skill check; neither MU/TH/UR, nor the other players are telling him this, and I don't understand why. (There's some stuff going on in secret, but that's not really relevant to teaching the game, which is what I'm talking about.)

So that made me curious. How do MU/TH/URs and players feel about whether they should be taught the effects of stress on their PCs' ability to act effectively in the game world? I don't think there's a single good argument against giving new players this information, but maybe I'm missing something?

Players can take on various levels of immersion at the table, on a scale from: the actors' mantra "be here now" and the writers' mantra "show don't tell" through third-person story telling (Hudson says or does this) through players simply saying "I roll X and got Y."

That poster may have meant to describe levels of immersion and used "metagaming" as a shortcut to say "breaking immersion in the moment by discussion mechanics not character actions"

The poster claiming "metagamey" was likely thinking about it like I do:

The character, in world, in the moment, does not know the literal number of stress they are carrying - they only know how they feel in that time and place.

I'd start with "Okay $PlayerName, imagine your stressed character is Hudson and $this is happening..." and work the examples by Stress value from there.

Hudson never said "Man! My Stress Dice is through the roof!" and Ripley never said: "Hudson, watch your Stress Dice!"

The player knows the stress value and should play accordingly.

Whoever is running Hudson in the session should be acting like Hudson on their turns is the core of the idea - in my guess based on your description of the situation so far.

I have no idea what would be going on with the Mystery Quest video you describe, other than to say - their table, their game? Maybe they minimized stress impact for $reasons I just don't know.

And your core question: how to teach new players what stress mechanics are for and mean?

I'd love to hear more examples of this myself - my example is the one I led with: "Okay $player, imagine you're Hudson $in situation"

He's falling apart constantly ... until the Hadley Control Room battle when those high stress dice pay off with tons of kills and he's just zooming on adrenaline until he's dragged under.

Maybe some sort of "Cool as a cucumber scale" of various Alien characters as examples at each level of stress dice?

Maybe the scale is Bishop to Hudson with everyone else in between? *laughing* I am going to be thinking about this all weekend now.

I'm giving the FB reply-poster the benefit of the doubt that he understood that I was talking about "teaching the players the implications of how much stress they have" (mainly because I literally said that, more than once). His response was that it was metagaming to teach the players that, which I still find bizarre. I don't disagree with what ExileInParadise is saying, to be clear; I'm just asking a somewhat different question.

Let me ask it a different way: do MU/TH/URs teach their players how the number of stress dice they carry on their characters interact with their characters' ability to do things in the game? Or is that too metagame-y?

(BTW, while Hudson is the obvious example of a stressed-out PC, unfortunately he has the Overkill talent, so it's more difficult to teach Stress using him. I think Ripley is the perfect exemplar for what stress is, and means, in ALIEN.)

Okay - yeah - I think I am with you on "teaching the players what stress is/means equals metagaming" - that just triggers the "wait, what?" response.

I don't think I have anything on that perspective except maybe its an example of "same planet, different worlds"

It does remind me why I am so glad I dumped Faceboot long ago ... too much weirdness there.

Explaining the rules of the game ... is just part of the game. Gaming. Not "meta" gaming.

But that presupposes the understanding that players are not their characters (even if they play them as themselves in the setting).

I don't think I have anything on that perspective except maybe its an example of "same planet, different worlds"

It does remind me why I am so glad I dumped Faceboot long ago ... too much weirdness there.

I appreciate your response very much. It helped me clarify the "weirdness," as you put it.

As for Facebook, there are definitely drawbacks. I've never used it as one is "supposed to" use it. I keep my Friend-count to people I actually know and like, and I keep my account private. But yeah, venturing out into some spaces is ... interesting.