BardStephenFox asks,
Am I understanding this correctly Fusangite?
Yes. Absolutely.
So, if you have the time, would you be kind enough to elaborate on how you go about creating the meta-textual environment?
In a similar vein, Particle_Man says,
How much time does it take to add the metatext details to a regular campaign, or else to do a metatext campaign from scratch, compared to a nonmetatext campaign?
Hmmm. I don't think I've ever tried to express this in writing before. Please bear with me.
I see two main ways of doing metatext in games: story-based and world-based. Story-based metatext can be grafted onto an existing campaign world whereas world-based metatext requires a ground-up approach.
Story-based metatext is pretty easy but somewhat less satisfying and more likely to impinge on the free will of player characters. For story-based metatext, what you need to do is find one or more classic archetypal stories (e.g. Beowulf); optionally, come up with a variation on the story and begin moving your characters along the tradtional narrative but with some kind of twist. Disguising traditional or archetypal narratives is actually pretty easy; usually just situating the story in your campaign takes care of that.
All you need to do is figure out which parts of the story matter to you and proceed from there. If I were to do a Beowulf adaptation, the things I would keep would be:
(a) the three part structure Grendel (Earth), Grendel's Mother (Water) and the Dragon (Fire)
(b) discovering his sword could not damage Grendel's mother and fighting her with his bare hands until he could steal an ancient magic sword from her hoard
(c) the dragon being wakened by someone raiding the hoard of an ancient and forgotten race
(d) Beowulf having to hold his breath a ridiculously long time to fight Grendel's mother
First, I would disguise the setting by moving it ahead into the high medieval period. Then, I'd probably change Grendel so that he was clever and more obviously some type of earth elemental.
Second, I would probably connect Grendel to the evil water elemental creature some other way but maintain their objective: to destroy the human city that sits on the territory that was once theirs. Obviously, I'd also design some kind of special immunities and vulnerabilities for the evil water element creature.
I would probably also add an air element creature at the end because that is suggested by the way physics works in D&D.
World-based metatext is challenging, exciting, requires research but actually doesn't take any more work than traditional world building. What
is different is when you do the work and what kind of work it is. But I'm going to pause here and resume my explanation once I've had dinner.