A discussion of metagame concepts in game design

Emerikol · Jul 9, 2018

Neonchameleon said:
Next time don't call playstyles objectionable if you don't want fire returned.

Did I imply in any way that I was talking about anyone besides myself. If something is not to my taste and I am forced to eat it that is objectionable. Roleplaying mechanics that I don't like are objectionable when I play that game.

Neonchameleon said:
And when I made a suggestion about simple spellcasters you rejected it.

You should go back and read what I wrote. I said I had no issue with having such a class but that none of my group would likely pick it up.

Neonchameleon said:
And as has been pointed out repeatedly athletes pacing themselves is not a metagame mechanic. What you are saying is that there can be no mechanics that disagree with the way you see the world.

You are getting all upset and offended about what goes on in one group.[/quopte]

I am getting particularly upset and offended that you are sneering at people who actually try to get into the head of fighters and you call changing your approach and pacing yourself metagame mechanics despite the fact they are nothing of the sort.

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Please quote my sneer? I am saying I don't like that playstyle and I avoid it. You just can't stand that fact. You are getting all bent out of shape for nothing. Please if you have nothing constructive to add, I will carry on with the people who do seem to understand my question and are offering advice that could prove helpful.

We don't agree on what is and is not metagame. I get that. It does not matter. You can't convince me and I don't even care to try to convince you. I don't care what you think is or is not metagame. I have my opinion and since it's a game that is really all I care about.

Neonchameleon said:

Says the person who is claiming that fighters are metagaming when they think the way real world fighters do.

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just repeat what I said above

Neonchameleon said:

But the problem here is when you say "I can't stand eggs" and then claim that a water chestnut is an egg.

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Okay I am going to respond the way you do. Some guy at the table thinks an egg is a water chesnut and he insists on eating it at the table. Everyone else at the table knows it's an egg. I think you'll agree that player would be bounced fast.

Remember I have a group that thinks like I do. We know what we want. Even if I adopted your playstyle, I'd be finding a new group because they'd bounce me.

Neonchameleon said:

Indeed. It does not matter how enthusiastically or repetitively you argue that athletes do not pace themselves in combat and fighters don't mix up what they are doing to outmaneuver other fighters - they do.

I'm not asking him to change his criteria. I'm asking him to be honest about them - thinking the way real life athletes do and making the same sort of choices they do is not metagaming. Metagaming isn't the problem. Disagreeing with his understanding of the world and the way D&D has historically understood things is. He has clearly internalised D&D design assumptions and they are what he needs for flow. But he has internalised them to the point that it is impossible for him to enjoy games that handle things in a more realistic manner.

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I am being honest. You just happen to be wrong. And you keep belaboring the point. What do you think you will achieve? Make everyone mad? Please just leave the thread. You obviously having nothing constructive to add to this conversation. You want to argue and reopen all the old edition wars because you apparently didn't get it out of your system. I did.

I am trying to solicit advice for my game. Where there is confusion I have explained. I think at least some people on here accept my views (doesn't mean they agree or want to play my playstyle) and are trying to help.

Maxperson · Jul 10, 2018

Saelorn said:
Maybe I missed your specific definition, but when I use the term, it refers to the decisions you make as your character and how those decisions are influenced by things that the character doesn't know. Free-form world creation as-you-go wouldn't be meta-game, as I understand the term, because it has nothing to do with your character; it takes place entirely outside of the character's influence. (But if someone acting in the capacity of world-designer is making decisions based on information that they can't know, like who the PCs are, then that's meta-gaming from the other side; you wouldn't be authentically role-playing the gods, or any of the countless NPCs in the history of that world, if your decisions take the PCs into account.)

That's how I understand the term as well.

It's still out-of-character player agency, of course, which I'm not a fan of. I would never play a game that asked the player to do such things, because the reason I play a role-playing game is so I can role-play, and I don't want to be dragged out of character like that.

Player agency is what the game and/or DM give to the player. It's outside of some kinds of player agency, but not others.

Aldarc · Jul 10, 2018

Emerikol said:
I could probably live with this given the blacksmith background was already in place.

Yeah, it's often just basic minor things like "the character knew a widow exists in this village" or even "Player 2 helped Player 1 defend themselves from being attacked by a ghost." Though if you don't have ghosts in your campaign, I'm sure you could just replace the word 'ghost' with 'rabid badger' or something.

Blending player and character engagement is practically the definition. I understand though there are different types of metagame and they offend people sensibilities differently. For example, a daily martial power might be less acceptable than a fate point because the character has to know about such a thing whereas you might keep the fate point aspect (forgive the pun) of it completely away from the characters view. I don't like either but I do understand there are degrees and some people go so far and no farther.

Blending player and character engagement is practically the definition of all roleplaying games.

You see, what if a map exists and there is no secret entrance. I tend to have that sort of thing worked out ahead of time. I'm old school I guess but my players still map.

Naturally, but Fate does not generally operate from the mindset that there is no objective world apart from what the GM creates. If a map exists but there is no secret entrance, then that says something about the map and not the reality in the game. The map could be wrong.

I will check out black hack.

Cool. I hope you find something you like about it. This thread got me looking into other modernizing OSR games.

There is also Into the Unknown, which is available for free on Google+ for playtesting. It tries to be 5e OSR, but I think it has a few of the metagaming elements you dislike for fighters. But it may provide you with a nice skeleton for building your own OSR. OSRs a dime-a-dozen, with everyone practically building their own.

I wouldn't mind playing a nice OSR game due to their basic, sleek designs, but I personally loathe D&D's Big 6 attributes that almost all of these OSRs obstinately preserve. So if I did, I would have to hack my own, but it definitely would likely not be D&D 0e compatible.

Ratskinner · Jul 10, 2018

Emerikol said:
I'm probably just not clear enough in explaining my view. Choosing to accept something bad now in a metagame way to pave the way for future success has to be player thinking. A character would not think that way. On every action he is trying to do his best.

Even in a fantasy world, doesn't the D&D way seem more realistic given the fantasy assumptions? Getting more powerful as you go is perhaps a tv trope. Meaning the hero seems to face defeat a few times before finally succeeding. It does feel right to me.

No. I'm saying that in my style of play character knowledge and player knowledge is the same. So whatever you choose to do you are already basing it on character knowledge alone because as DM that is all I'm giving you.

Getting a Fate point isn't (necessarily, anyway) about the character doing something suboptimally. It can simply be that some complication happens in the fiction. I've run Fate a lot more than I've played it, so FWIW: As either GM or Player, Fate has always felt more solidly connected with the fiction than D&D does for me. The fiction and "what actually happens" or "what we see on screen" is always upfront and center.

HP are a central mechanic of D&D and they are meta as anything. The fact that Schrodinger's Wounds is even a term should illustrate that. Virtually any system interaction with HP will be an accounting exercise, rather than character-facing experience. D&D's lack of coherence to fiction has always been a source a frustration for me. I suspect it "feeling right" to you has a lot to more do with familiarity. But...

To me it sounds like you are talking about the distinction between "actor mode" and "author/director mode" rather than meta-fictional mechanics. Which is totally legit. That really makes me want to suggest that you check out Dungeon World. Even if that didn't do it for you, its easily hacked to change the moves to avoid "authoring".

I only have one suggestion for the 5e stuff you brought up, regarding hit dice: when you rest, burn hit dice one at a time until a) you are out of hit dice or b) you are at full.

Anyway, I hope that helps.

Lanefan · Jul 10, 2018

Aldarc said:
Naturally, but Fate does not generally operate from the mindset that there is no objective world apart from what the GM creates. If a map exists but there is no secret entrance, then that says something about the map and not the reality in the game. The map could be wrong.

If it's the DM's map then by definition it cannot be wrong; and whatever secret passage is being remembered has long since been collapsed and bricked over.

Cool. I hope you find something you like about it. This thread got me looking into other modernizing OSR games.

There is also Into the Unknown, which is available for free on Google+ for playtesting. It tries to be 5e OSR, but I think it has a few of the metagaming elements you dislike for fighters. But it may provide you with a nice skeleton for building your own OSR. OSRs a dime-a-dozen, with everyone practically building their own.

I wouldn't mind playing a nice OSR game due to their basic, sleek designs, but I personally loathe D&D's Big 6 attributes that almost all of these OSRs obstinately preserve. So if I did, I would have to hack my own, but it definitely would likely not be D&D 0e compatible.

Attributes as in Str-Int-Wis-Dex-Con-Cha?

Curious: what would you replace these with?

Lan-"one of these days I'm going to name a character Strint Wisdex Concha, just for kicks"-efan

The Crimson Binome · Jul 11, 2018

Ratskinner said:
HP are a central mechanic of D&D and they are meta as anything. The fact that Schrodinger's Wounds is even a term should illustrate that.

The term Schrodinger's Wounds is specifically a criticism of how 4E and 5E fail to represent HP in a consistent manner. It has little to do with the historic abstraction of HP in D&D, and everything to do with how that abstraction doesn't hold up in the face of Healing Surges and Hit Dice.

Once you get rid of rapid natural healing, Schrodinger's Wounds would no longer apply as a criticism, since HP could go back to being treated consistently.

Emerikol · Jul 11, 2018

Ratskinner said:
Getting a Fate point isn't (necessarily, anyway) about the character doing something suboptimally. It can simply be that some complication happens in the fiction. I've run Fate a lot more than I've played it, so FWIW: As either GM or Player, Fate has always felt more solidly connected with the fiction than D&D does for me. The fiction and "what actually happens" or "what we see on screen" is always upfront and center.

I get the concept. Don't you agree that you calling it "the fiction" indicates a certain perspective on playstyle? It's not about feeling and thinking as your character. It's about creating a story with your character but the player does not share anything with the character (talking viewpoints here).

Ratskinner said:
HP are a central mechanic of D&D and they are meta as anything. The fact that Schrodinger's Wounds is even a term should illustrate that. Virtually any system interaction with HP will be an accounting exercise, rather than character-facing experience. D&D's lack of coherence to fiction has always been a source a frustration for me. I suspect it "feeling right" to you has a lot to more do with familiarity. But...

They are an abstraction, perhaps a poor one, and not metagame. The player has to interpret information coming from the DM and translate it down to the character. Once he has received the information, the character can then act as the character. It is a conceit of all roleplaying games that information has to be passed verbally from the DM to the player to the character. As long as the information describes the world etc.. then it's not metagame. Hit points are just a way of telling the character how close he is to death. We can have another thread and argue what THAT means but abstractly it means that. In my campaign, that is absolutely character knowledge.

Ratskinner said:
To me it sounds like you are talking about the distinction between "actor mode" and "author/director mode" rather than meta-fictional mechanics. Which is totally legit. That really makes me want to suggest that you check out Dungeon World. Even if that didn't do it for you, its easily hacked to change the moves to avoid "authoring".

It is related to that. So you have character view only, director, and author. I want character view only. A director will make decisions for the character that cannot possibly be character decisions. Like accepting a fate point. An author will go further. An author will as the player be able to actually bring new information into the world that does not come from his character's genuine knowledge. So all three of these approaches are popular. They probably were discovered in the order I listed them.

Ratskinner said:
I only have one suggestion for the 5e stuff you brought up, regarding hit dice: when you rest, burn hit dice one at a time until a) you are out of hit dice or b) you are at full.

Anyway, I hope that helps.

Thanks. That is a good idea. I think I suggested that as one of my options above. It's a hypothetical solution though because simultaneously I'd be changing the healing system anyway for reasons not related to metagame issues.

Emerikol · Jul 11, 2018

Maxperson said:
That's how I understand the term as well.

Player agency is what the game and/or DM give to the player. It's outside of some kinds of player agency, but not others.

I agree that you describe two different cases but both cases bother me in the same way and to me seem metagame.

The players job outside of acting as the character is to interpret what the DM says into equivalent sensory perceptions as handed down by the DM. The player is then to interpret what the character would really do and convey that back to the DM in language that makes sense. This job is the sole job of the player in my style of games. The fun for me anyway is you feel what the character feels. The fear, anticipation, adrenaline, etc.... For a moment, you ARE your character and the rest disappears kind of like when you read a book and suddenly you are so into the story that the mechanics of reading fade away.

Maxperson · Jul 11, 2018

Emerikol said:
I agree that you describe two different cases but both cases bother me in the same way and to me seem metagame.

I see what you are saying. I just think that using metagame for both confuses the term.

The players job outside of acting as the character is to interpret what the DM says into equivalent sensory perceptions as handed down by the DM. The player is then to interpret what the character would really do and convey that back to the DM in language that makes sense. This job is the sole job of the player in my style of games. The fun for me anyway is you feel what the character feels. The fear, anticipation, adrenaline, etc.... For a moment, you ARE your character and the rest disappears kind of like when you read a book and suddenly you are so into the story that the mechanics of reading fade away.

Yep. With traditional DM/player roles, that's the way the game plays. It's also the way I play the game. All I'm saying is that with other methods agency differs.

pemerton · Jul 11, 2018

[MENTION=6698278]Emerikol[/MENTION] - there was a whole generation of fantasy RPGers who, because they disliked metagame mechanics, dropped D&D for metagame-free systems like RQ, RM and the like. (At the time, these were promoted as "realistic" systems.)

Those systems all drop AC. They all drop combat-as-hp-attrition. (Though they may use hp for other purposes - as meat points in RQ, as a measure of bruising, blood loss and (some) exhaustion in RM.) Armour becomes a source of damage reduction (in RQ it affects damage dice; in RM it affects the attack-and-damage chart, and can also mitigate crit results).

They all drop D&D-style classes. (RQ in total. RM uses class as a device for allocating skill costs.)

They all drop D&D-style casting, which promotes metagame thinking (as in, "What spell load-out do I probably need to beat this bit of this GM's dungeon?").

They all drop XP-from-gold, and move towards a more realistic mode of progression (practice and training in RQ; XP through "hard field training" in RM).

There were, at the same time, D&D players who were proposing different approaches to XP, and defending hp and AC as "realistic" or "simulationist" - which often involved adopting different rules for falling damage, and sometimes for fireball damage also (see eg Roger Musson's "How to Lose Hit Points and Survive" in a fairly early number of White Dward).

I am a long-time RM player who has also played plenty of Traveller, RQ and other metagame free systems. I look at, say, AD&D or 3E and cannot see how anyone can see those as metagame free except by dint of familiarity (as [MENTION=87792]Neonchameleon[/MENTION] suggested) - eg the action economy in 3E is obviously metagame, and so is hp as soaking falling damage or dragon's breath in all of them (the parrying rationale only makes sense of a fairly narrow category of melee combat).

If I had your preferences, I would be playing RQ, RM or HARP - or perhaps HERO or GURPS (I don't know those systems as well, though.)