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8 months ago ::
Oct 09, 2012 - 6:42PM
#1
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It seems in the D&D community, the concept of a metagame and what it means & implies is not only generally misunderstood, but also heavily misapplied to the point that many hold completely different views on what exactly it is or, indeed, what the word even means.
Now, let me preface this a bit...my trial period here has expired. In a given forum eco-system, I like to test the water...with that part over, I'm going to revert to my typical nature. If you find it abrasive, challenging or contrary, I offer no apologies.
So, what exactly is a metagame?
Simply put, the concept of a "metagame" is defined as "the use of out-of-game information or resources to affect one's in-game decisions".
The first thing to realize is that metagame is a fairly broad umbrella term. That does not mean it is an imprecise term. The term "sandwich" is a broad term...but when applied to foodstuffs it is easy to tell what is a sandwich and what is a soup. They are distinct things (yes, excepting for perhaps very peculiar out-lier situations).
As it applies to playing in a game (the context we're using) it simply means basing decisions on the knowledge that one is engaged in a game and that that game may have certain rules and/or expectations. To seperate this solely from D&D and give some further context, an example near & dear to my heart would be fighting games. For instance, for those familiar with the Street Fighter series, at the character select screen, if a player A notices their opponent B has chosen Ryu (who's offense strongly revolves around his project fireball game) and that player decides to avoid choosing E. Honda (a character that has a notoriously difficult time against projectil-based characters) and instead chooses a character that has good options against Ryu, that is a meta-game decision known as a counter-pick. Player A has actively used knowledge about his opponents pick to make his own decision.
Another example from a game would be chess and is an example found on wikipedia. If a would-be opponent watches a player complete several games of chess using the same quick-win series of moves when that opponent plays against that person it would be a meta-game decision if their gameplay revolved around countering the strategy they've seen employed.
And finally a third example and the simplest of all (forgive me for inaccuracies, I am no fan of football)...you are the coach of the Patriots. You are about to play the Jets who are known for their strong passing offense. As coach you say "Okay let's start the game with plays that will shut down their passing game"...that is a meta-game decision.
Now, some people will probably grasp how this applies to D&D very quickly...other's won't. That's fine. We all move at our own speed.
Let us get one thing straight immediately: In a competition atmosphere I play to win. If I over-match someone in a fighting game in a tournament setting I have no qualms obliterating them. If someone faces me with a weak Magic deck, I do not give consideration to drawing the match out. I gladly exploit every single facet of a game within the confines of the rules to win. If that means throwing 500 fireballs in a row, I will do it. If that means using a currently-believed-to-be-broken combination of legal cards, whatever.
One might think this would mean I would be all-for metagaming in D&D because, hey, after all, it is a means to an advantage in the game right? Right? Well, no. The "why" of that, however, is going to go unspoken for now. I kind of want to see if anyone else is on the same page with me on this topic. And, well, this OP is already veering long and it will probably make for more interesting initial conversation.
Have at it.
I'm on a journey of enlightenment, learning and self-improvement. A journey towards mastery. A journey that will never end.
If you challenge me, prepare to be challenged. If you have something to offer as a fellow student, I will accept it. If you call yourself a master, prepare to be humbled. If you seek me, look to the path. I will be traveling it. #SuperDungeonMasterIITurbo
My blog and stuff http://dmingtowin.blogspot.com/
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8 months ago ::
Oct 09, 2012 - 6:59PM
#2
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Date Joined:
Jun 12, 2009
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Personally, I've never seen meta-gaming as a very huge deal. I am definitely a narrativist, so the whole "no way Isidra could know in-character that ice dragons don't like fire" has never been my thing, although I can certainly understand it. If something is really big though, like knowing who/where the BBEG OOC but not IC, I can get pretty strict about not using OOC knowledge.
We summoned a devil once. All we used was the D&D books, too. It was pretty kwazy.
God of Arrested Development and Intelligence 
Resident Left Hand of Stalin and Banana Stand Grandstander
Pie-Cooling-On-A-Windowsill of the House of Trolls
In the morning HK'll be sober but you'll still be a meatbag.
I know I misspell "Danke" in my posts. It's an inside joke.
"Ten cents gets you nuts." -George Michael
Spoiler:
Show
''Being president is like running a cemetery: you've got a lot of people under you and nobody's listening.''
—Bill Clinton
You are not a moral man. There are not enough middle fingers in the world for you.
Why do I get a silly PG-13 man giggle
going everytime I see Fist Of The Forest ?
Actually, Santa just didn't like you. However, you weren't on the Naughty List, so he had to give you something "better" than coal.
I'd take coal. Heating your house is expesive, and engery cost arn't going down.
Mabey if i beat enough homeless people, i won't have to be cold this year. 
"Heroes"...I wish I had those. I remember in my first-ever campaign one PC went around shootin all the unconscious baddies in the head to gain Dark Side Points...
Whaaaaaat?!??
Wow...way to waste perfectly good potential slaves.
Er...no wait I mean..uh...something not evil!
(Quotes screwed up on the next one, won't give the poster's name. It's in the Best Lines thread on the D&D forum)
First, an experience from a game I played in a few years back. Our DM didn't like 3.5 as a whole but liked parts of it. So he hands us a big ass rules packet for his modified FR campaign, complete with quotes from important NPC's on the front. I can't remember most of the HRs, just that some how gods like Cyric and Bhaal existed at the same time, despite the obvious problems there. In the end the game became a problem more because of the railroading than the HRs, but it ended with this classic line, after our ranger tried to disarm the strange woman following us WITH HIS BOW: DM: You just killed (insert random noble sounding name here) JP: Was she important? Jack: Dude, she's quoted on the front of the rules packet!
"Why in the wide,wide, world of all things irrational would I help you?
-Daniel Jackson
"Fun will now commence."
-Seven of Nine
"Excellent."
-Mr. Burns.
Whey is a crotch.
Cut the last encounter on your way out after dealing with the Darth. He's the BBEG. Treat him as such. Play up that Darth Revan is THAT much of a badarse. When the shuttle landed, I had no less than 13 JEDI MASTERS step off the shuttle. The PCs were slack-jawed. After the meetup with Bastila (as she's carrying Revan's body), only TWO jedi masters remained with her. Let me tell you, the player whining about not getting to fight Revan himself shut up pretty quickly when he saw that. 
There's so much you can do with insanity, especially when it has alot of resources.
1. Cleric cast protection from fire on Tank.
2. Tank goes in and get surrounded by enemies.
3. Wizard cast fireball and blows them up.
4. ???
5. Profit
I go by the saying," If it ain't friendly fire then it's not working."
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8 months ago ::
Oct 09, 2012 - 9:07PM
#3
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Date Joined:
Mar 22, 2011
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I think the chess example just gave me an epiphany about D&D, but I am too tired right now to fully wrap my mind around the concept...or possibly too tired to realize it's not as insightful as it currently seems. I'll post more when I get the chance to develop it, if it still seems interesting. But it might hold an answer to the question of how to distinguish between metagaming that's okay versus not okay.
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8 months ago ::
Oct 10, 2012 - 12:15AM
#4
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Date Joined:
Jun 25, 2009
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"the use of out-of-game information or resources to affect one's in-game decisions".
^I pretty much just try to stick to this definition.
I dislike metagaming because it either leads to bad roleplaying or no roleplaying. And that's one of the big reasons the game is played, after all...
My username should actually read: Lunar Savage (damn you WotC!)
*Tips top hat, adjusts monocle, and walks away with cane* and yes, that IS Mr. Peanut laying unconscious on the curb.
http://asylumjournals.tumblr.com/
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8 months ago ::
Oct 10, 2012 - 1:06AM
#5
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Date Joined:
Apr 14, 2010
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One might think this would mean I would be all-for metagaming in D&D because, hey, after all, it is a means to an advantage in the game right? Right? Well, no. The "why" of that, however, is going to go unspoken for now.
You don't metagame in D&D because it's not a competitive game. Done. If you metagame, you're doing it wrong.
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8 months ago ::
Oct 10, 2012 - 4:04AM
#6
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One might think this would mean I would be all-for metagaming in D&D because, hey, after all, it is a means to an advantage in the game right? Right? Well, no. The "why" of that, however, is going to go unspoken for now.
You don't metagame in D&D because it's not a competitive game. Done. If you metagame, you're doing it wrong.
That is a fairly broad statement to make that if you look at it in detail is bount to create problems. Sure, at the extremes it is easy to recognize meta-gaming and as a result avoid it. There is though a huge swath of grey in between. Is it meta-gaming to conclude the ice drake is likely immune to cold damage (or at the very least resistant)? How much does the world know about trolls? Even in RL mythology most monsters that are hard to kill are hurt by fire and so even the most clueless TV hero tends to go for fire quickly. So is it really odd that a PC without any serious monster knowledge to jump to the same conclusion?
What is more, there are ample of situations in which it is virtually impossible to realize whether the player's knowledge is meta-gaming or not, especially in case of experienced players. There have been situations were I knew something to be a fact based on out of game knowledge, but than get confronted with a situation where I would react the same regardless of having that knowledge and still get DMs accusing me of meta-game knowledge. Just because I as a player know NPC X is a spy, does not mean my paranoid PC who never believes any NPC on face value now all of sudden have to buy whatever he is saying Or a bit less obvious example, what if we observe fellow PCs getting into trouble in Tavern X were my PC is not yet? Is me appearing at the exact right time meta-gaming? Or is the story reason provided by me logical? Would it not have happened if I had not known of the problem? Again, at the extremes it is easy to answer these questions, but not in the middle.
Finally, it can also be difficult to differentiate meta-gaming from applying logical game mechanical conclusions and their impact on the world. It is a known game mechanic that in 4e the defenses of a monster is usually level +15 for AC and that their attack rolls is level +5 vs AC. We can also assume that PCs are experienced fighters and just as in RL a skilled fighter can estimate the skill of their opponents within a round or two. We also know that in D&D level represents skill. So is it meta-gaming that a player concludes monster X is an elite of around level X based on the fact that the monster spend an action point, hitted when the DM rolled a 9 or they hit when they rolled that 8?
Of course, that is also ignoring the whole idea of whether meta-gaming is wrong per definition. We play the game to have fun. If 2 of my PCs are going to be doing nothing for a whole night because I insist it is metagaming for them to arrive at the tavern just as the brawl starts, then I am not doing the game much justice. Sure, I as a DM could think of something for the other two to do, but is that worth my efford? Wouldn't both scenes suffer because of it?
In short, meta-gaming seems to be clearcut, but in my experience it never is in practice. It is certainly not always a bad thing.
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8 months ago ::
Oct 10, 2012 - 5:02AM
#7
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Date Joined:
Jan 15, 2012
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I agree with Sven's deduction - the goal of DnD isn't (usually) to win, but to have fun & ideally beat up some monsters while you are at it.
That said, we're human. From the OP I assume the general idea is that metagaming as a whole is bad. While I agree with this, I think it is something that has to be qualified a lot.
After a few campaigns you instinctively know that a level 1 cannot defeat a gelantinous cube when stuck in a 10 foot wide corridor. You can try to roleplay your character fighting it as they would any battle, but chances are you will be more reluctant to use your daily, or more willing to run away from the encounter. You are using your personal experience to modify the game, because you don't want to waste your awesome daily on a battle you suspect the DM made purely to force you to flee, or do a special action. Or alternatively you might use your knowledge to use your action points & dailies in the right round of combat. It isn't definately the best RPing out there, but the game is still enjoyable. So you are using your metagame knowledge, but not necessarily for bad gaming. A successful monster check roll might mean that your character knows all about them to justify your OOC knowledge, but there are so many times when either you roll a natural 1, or your character isn't the type to do a monster check roll.
Without talking over long, I think that seeing a zombie & going "sweet, let me use my lvl 7 radiant ability" is bad & breaks the immersion (unless your campaign is more akin to warhammer as a tactical tabletop), but it is hard to not let your knowledge influence your gaming. It can heighten your emotional responses (the tension/fear of seeing an immacutely clean room but before the DM puts the gelatinous cube on the board), and at times it can be boring or tedious to play all of your characters as ignorant as a first time DnD player would.
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8 months ago ::
Oct 10, 2012 - 5:28AM
#8
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Without talking over long, I think that seeing a zombie & going "sweet, let me use my lvl 7 radiant ability" is bad & breaks the immersion (unless your campaign is more akin to warhammer as a tactical tabletop), but it is hard to not let your knowledge influence your gaming. It can heighten your emotional responses (the tension/fear of seeing an immacutely clean room but before the DM puts the gelatinous cube on the board), and at times it can be boring or tedious to play all of your characters as ignorant as a first time DnD player would.
But why is the zombie example meta-gaming? Everybody knows undead are vulnerable for radiant energy. Zombies are easily recognizable as undead. Are you truely meta-gaming here? And that is exactly the problem with most meta-game discussions and why people like Iserith (or at least I think it was Iserith who objected against the word in another topic which triggered this thread) have problems with this word. People seem to think that the definition of the word is narrow applies to what they consider bad gaming, and as such simply use it judge other people's playing style. In reality it is a very broad term that in practice is not nearly as easy to attach to particular behavior than on paper and what you consider a clear example of meta-gaming, I just see as common sense (case in example: the zombies and radiant attack)
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8 months ago ::
Oct 10, 2012 - 6:17AM
#9
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Interesting posts so far. However I feel the need to point out one of the most toxic notions I've seen in d & d - that it is not competitive. While, perhaps, an understandable idea, it is flat wrong. That said, let me add a bit more focus to temper the exchange. Indeed some have given examples of what would be metagaming...but no one has come close to the real reason it can be anathema. As a hint...it has to do with railroading but the first thing that comes to probably 99% of people's minds will be quite incorrect. 1% anyone?
I'm on a journey of enlightenment, learning and self-improvement. A journey towards mastery. A journey that will never end.
If you challenge me, prepare to be challenged. If you have something to offer as a fellow student, I will accept it. If you call yourself a master, prepare to be humbled. If you seek me, look to the path. I will be traveling it. #SuperDungeonMasterIITurbo
My blog and stuff http://dmingtowin.blogspot.com/
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8 months ago ::
Oct 10, 2012 - 6:44AM
#10
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Ah Joshua you expect me to be upset. I am not. Instead I will use you as a useful example of the close minded. You are the zealous. You are the self assured. When asked to think or consider, you shrink away. This is within your right. However I challenge others to shun your example and go to that frightening terrifying place...the place where ideas are challenged and, scariest of all, someone might find out they were wrong about something.
Until then adieu, so long and goodbye. This conversation might be too much for your delicate sensibilities. If so, toodles.
I'm on a journey of enlightenment, learning and self-improvement. A journey towards mastery. A journey that will never end.
If you challenge me, prepare to be challenged. If you have something to offer as a fellow student, I will accept it. If you call yourself a master, prepare to be humbled. If you seek me, look to the path. I will be traveling it. #SuperDungeonMasterIITurbo
My blog and stuff http://dmingtowin.blogspot.com/
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