GM Secrecy and Metagaming

[ArchonShiva]

Originally Posted by Nymdok

My point as I attempted to illustrate with real world examples is that Animals with similar shape and musculature can have a rather broad range of Basic Move

There are creatures which can be described as "deceptively fast", but I don't think a fantasy ranger in a world full of magic should be expected to fail at guessing a deer's speed - the ranger's trained eye can surely do better than "it's roughly the size of a gazelle, so it must be a gazelle", focusing on the shape of muscles and other stuff.

Of course there are non-natural creatures which don't follow the normal rules, but said ranger lives in a world full of non-natiral creatures, and surely these give clues as well, just clues that we cannot fathom.

GMs can always be as secretive as they want, but -- especially with PCs possessing the right skillset -- there is no reason that they need to.

[Skarg]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

So if my anatomy-savvy Ranger character sees a new-to-him monster, he cannot even make an educated guess as to its movement capabilities, based on what he can see of its body shape and musculature?

Of course he can. Anyone can make a guess, and your character even has a relevant skill. The GM rolls and then gives the person an appropriately-accurate estimate. If your character is also really practically familiar with his own speed and trying to outrun animals, I might even express it to you in terms of numbers. Otherwise probably I'd use comparisons such as, "it looks like it's probably faster than a lion but not by much". I wouldn't want either of us talking about it in terms of GURPS Speed numbers in front of the other players though, unless perhaps you were training them offline and you all had good understanding/experience and communication skills. Otherwise, there should be a lot of communication filters between natural language and being able to plot tactical moves on a hex grid where you know the enemy max speed and are picking exactly where to stand based on that.

Even if I did say a Speed number to a player, it'd be an estimate. Knowing the actual Speed score of an animal by looking at it is not realistic, as real animals don't of a species don't all have the same Speed, just as humans don't, nor do they all always run at the same speed all the time, and if you're outdoors, ground varies too and affects Speed, etc. Even if a master anatomist examined me nude when I was a teen, he'd just see that I was almost the tallest kid in my class and had strong legs, but was not very fit - there's no way he could tell I could out-sprint my entire class and the track team by about 20% unless he saw me do it. Even if you've memorized the max speeds of Gazelles and Impalas, that doesn't mean you know the max speed of that gazelle right there, nor how fast it is going to run when spooked this time, and if I tell you the Speed score, then you're liable to think of it in terms of how many hexes it can move in one turn on the game map, and not relating to what your character's actual thoughts and experience would be.