A discussion of metagame concepts in game design

Maxperson said:

I get all of that. My point is that to the wizard, fireball might happen at level 2, 6, 12 or 18 for all he knows. All he is aware of are those changes as he gradually grows stronger. In fact, to the wizard there probably are no levels at all. He just gradually gets stronger and more knowledgeable. Think of yourself in your career. If you have been in it for any length of time, you are very much better at it than when you started, but you couldn't truly name me a level that you were at.

The levels themselves are metagame.

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In a game where you bump as you go and don't ever need to train, I'd agree.

But in a game like mine that requires training in order to access (nearly all of) the benefits of a new level then for caster-types in particular it would almost be like school: what grade are you here to study? For divine types: what circle are you training for? For Monks, what belt are you aspiring to? For Bards: what college? Etc.

It's only with the non-casters where it gets murky.

Lanefan said:

No, it's more key to me the player. Me the DM doesn't care as much, other than I know my players are as frustrated as I would be were I in that situation.

True. I just took a bigger hammer to the problem: bye-bye pre-mem. And so far it's worked out not too badly - the main thing I need to tweak is how many slots they get at what levels, but nothing major.

(for added info: we took all Clerics off pre-mem 30+ years ago; the new development for us is taking it off all Mages as well)

Of course, sometimes they don't have the required spell available at all (a chasm to cross and the wizard never learned Fly); and then they do have to get creative...or skip that bit of the adventure.

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I dont see the issues here... But thats ok they dont have to.

I see "we need to cross or..." as an opportunity for preppie caster to be able to shine with "if we wait til,morning, i can use fly and we get across" if he doesnt have rhe spell prepped but has a large array of spells.

That greatly contrasts their strength vs the smalker toolbox guy with "sorry, no fly, lets get really creative or skip this part."

So if the latter is seen as just part of the game by a group, i just dont see how the former is a sign of a problem needing bigger hammer level rules revisions.

It looks like a chance to shine for the preppie, their strength showing, not frustration necessitating huge hammers to rulesets.

Back in the days of old, the bulging spellbook and time and prep and planning were to us the hallmark of the wiz.

Course that was before video games and instant gratification permeated the idea of rpgs perhaps as much as they did later.

But again, not necessary for me to reach same conclusions on preferences or expectations.

pemerton said:

And if we stick with Vancian casting, but the GM takes steps to mitigate the costs of bad memorisation decisions, then what is the GM doing to correspondingly power-up fighters? (Who don't get the benefit of this partiular bit of GM mitigation.)

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At first glance, that's a very good question.

All I can say is that over the long run in my own games (1e-ish, both DMed and played) fighters and other martial types have generally hung in there just fine*. Part of that is due, I think, to sheer durability: warrior types tend to have lots of hit points, wizard types not so many, meaning when the enemy blast effects hit the wizard types fall down and die a lot more often. I know this because of all the spindly wizards I play...

It's Thieves I need to power up somehow both in and out of combat; either that or rein everyone else in so the Thieves have a puncher's chance. Project for next campaign's design phase, I suppose...whenever that is; and at the same time I'll look to rein in Nature Clerics (Druids) a bit.

* - a currently-active pure Fighter PC (not mine) in the game I play in has - amongst the thousand or more characters that have passed through these games - of late become, only mildly arguably, our overall GOAT. The more-or-less top 5 all-time among our campaigns, in no real order, are a War Cleric, a Magic-User, a Fighter-Thief, a Cleric, and the Fighter I mention above.

So somehow, without my really having to do anything about it, the warriors are doing fine...even though - as you say - it makes sense that they'd be falling behind.

Lan-"it was all completely intentional - honest!"-efan

Lanefan said:

Though I'm just one example, that's not at all how it worked for my R-C.

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That example is how a mulitclass Cleric/Ranger works in ADnD. You get a fixed planned progression with no choices on which class you level up in.

My original intent with him was that he'd be a Ranger all the way: I was trying to see if 3e would let me have the heavy tank-style Ranger I so loved in 1e. He was about 7 levels into his career before any thought of religion or Clericism came along, and once he got his 8th some things happened in-game that strongly pointed toward his becoming a Cleric. (and to a deity of oceans at that; for some reason random chance just over and over again kept pushing him toward marine stuff - wasn't my idea) But it was a fine example of organic growth of a character in a direction initially unforeseen by its player.

I didn't do, and quite dislike the concept of, the 1-20 plan-out before starting out with him or any of my other 3e PCs.

Lanefan

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Your example is exactly why I believe that multiclassing in 3e is less metagamy then in ADnD. Your Ranger could never do that in ADnD unless he happened to be Human with exceptional Wisdom and even then you would have finished as a Cleric that had no Ranger abilities.

Shasarak said:

That example is how a mulitclass Cleric/Ranger works in ADnD. You get a fixed planned progression with no choices on which class you level up in.

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That it worked out the same as 1e would do it is sheer luck.

Your example is exactly why I believe that multiclassing in 3e is less metagamy then in ADnD.

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When it's organic like this was, perhaps.

When it's done as part of a 1-20 plan-out as adip to gain some bennies without much if any in-character reason attached, then yeah, it's pretty meta.

Your Ranger could never do that in ADnD unless he happened to be Human with exceptional Wisdom and even then you would have finished as a Cleric that had no Ranger abilities.

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In 1e as written, you are correct. In the 1e variant I'm used to, he could have done it but it would have taken him a half-year or more of training to boot up the Cleric side, as it wasn't something he'd planned right from day 1.

Lan-"Bjarnni has never had this much media coverage before"-efan

Maxperson said:

I get all of that. My point is that to the wizard, fireball might happen at level 2, 6, 12 or 18 for all he knows. All he is aware of are those changes as he gradually grows stronger. In fact, to the wizard there probably are no levels at all. He just gradually gets stronger and more knowledgeable. Think of yourself in your career. If you have been in it for any length of time, you are very much better at it than when you started, but you couldn't truly name me a level that you were at.

The levels themselves are metagame.

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If levels are just a metagame then how come you used to gain a new title with each level?

Depending on what career you are in I can bet that you have different titles depending where you are in your career path. I know that Doctors for example go through several ranks as they are leveling up and that they are expected to have certain skills at those ranks. They can also choose to specialise in different schools of magic, I mean medicine.

Maxperson said:

It absolutely is different. On one hand you have a magic system explained in the game world that allows the wizard to know about his spells. On the other hand you don't have that for the fighter. He has the power, but no such in game explanation for how his character could or would possibly know about it.

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The ingame explanation is the same way s/he knows s/he is breathing, or hurting - s/he feels it.

Maxperson said:

You start with 2 first level spells, then gradually increase to 3. Then you gradually increase to 4 and gain 2 second level spells. Then you gradually increase to 4 first and 3 second. And so on. There is nothing in the game world that says that there is even a single level involved, let alone 3 or 5 or however many levels, with that gradual increase in magical power.

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There's no "gradually increaasing".

You start being able to memorise (say) 1 1st level spell. Then you can memorise 2. Then you can memorise 1 second level spell as well. Then 3 1st and 2 2nd. (I'm using the AD&D charts.) Each step up corresponds exactly to a class level - so if you treat Vancian memorisation as an in-fiction thing, then the wizards can rank themselves exactly based on their memorisation ability, and that ranking will correlate exactly to class levels. (At least up until 8th level. At 9th level and above it is complicated because some wizards with INTs that are too low don't get the 5th or higher level slots.)

Maxperson said:

You are assuming that they are picked due to anticipated obstacles. A great many of them are picked because they are generally good, not because of any obstacle the player thinks is coming. Metagaming could happen, but is not in any way an inherent part of vancian casting.

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No, that's not what I'm assuming. Of course some spells are chosen because - given the nature of D&D play, which itself has a high metagame component (eg players know that, everything else being equal, they are more likely to have to successfully fight orcs than to successfully balance a ledger) - they are generally good.

My point, and [MENTION=5142]Aldarc[/MENTION]'s as I understand it, is that (i) the whole categorisation of spells into levels, which are available to players in the form of slots per spell level, is an obvious gameplay device, and that (ii) its function as a gameplay device is to set up the opportunity for skilled players to do their stuff by optimising their load out.

Layering a veneer of in-fiction rationale over the top of it doesn'lt change these features. And it's no coincidence that metagame-repudiating systems like RQ and RM don't use anything like it for their magic systems.

Lanefan said:

When it's organic like this was, perhaps.

When it's done as part of a 1-20 plan-out as adip to gain some bennies without much if any in-character reason attached, then yeah, it's pretty meta.

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That is pretty much the Stormwind Fallacy though. What you think is meta I could explain with a perfectly logical in-game reasoning.

It would be even better if you could work with the DM to explain what was happening and on the other hand you can not rely on the DM supporting your 20 level character plan so sometimes it is just better to just do it without a big fanfare.

In 1e as written, you are correct. In the 1e variant I'm used to, he could have done it but it would have taken him a half-year or more of training to boot up the Cleric side, as it wasn't something he'd planned right from day 1.

Lan-"Bjarnni has never had this much media coverage before"-efan

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I used to follow that train of thought but came to the conclusion that a) if you enforced a half year training montage then effectively the character was gone from the game as the game did not stop to wait for the character and 2) having 1 level of say Cleric is essentially on the job training condensed to the real essence of a class.

For example would you learn the theory of how to turn undead more effectively with six months of training at a Monastery? Yes probably but you also learn the practical ability much more quickly if you are relying on it to save you from a zombie trying to bite your face off too.

5ekyu said:

If a gm is so predictable that the choices, goid choices, made in character using campaign in game info are being bypassed by his players and their assumptions of gm bias are being used instead, i think the problem is not anything to do with definition of metagaming.

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Who said there is a problem? I find it tends to help things that I and my players are on the same page.

5ekyu said:

What does Vancian prep add for a game where sometimes specific abilities are needed? Well, it provides meaningful choices and trade offs and to a large extent rewards advance research and scouting.

It allows, for example, one archtype of large toolbox but prep time vs another with smaller toolbox on the fly.

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If the GM is either going to move quickly through the blocking obstacle, or else there is an overnight rest and encounter opportunity, I'm not really seeing the meaningful choice or trade off. Why does the passage of ingame time, and the passage of time at the table dealing with that extra encounter, matter?

5ekyu said:

The bottleneck is far more likely and problematic in the small toolbox non-prepare sorc than the prep wizard or cleric.

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"The bottleneck" is an artefact of a certain sort of play. It's not a problem I have in my games.

Maxperson said:

I get all of that. My point is that to the wizard, fireball might happen at level 2, 6, 12 or 18 for all he knows. All he is aware of are those changes as he gradually grows stronger. In fact, to the wizard there probably are no levels at all. He just gradually gets stronger and more knowledgeable. Think of yourself in your career. If you have been in it for any length of time, you are very much better at it than when you started, but you couldn't truly name me a level that you were at.

The levels themselves are metagame.

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Spellcasters are a case where they would very definitely recognize individual skill plateaus, because (at least in The Forgotten Realms) spell slots are a real thing. Whether a given person can or cannot cast Fireball is a thing that they talk about. For wizards, in particular, they have to physically perform the action of preparing the spell ahead of time, which is a process that they discuss with each other. "Do you have any third level spell slots?" is an in-character thing that one wizard might ask another wizard.

My career doesn't have such equivalent milestones, but if you want to switch it to a different skill, a good equivalent would be Dance Dance Revolution. Each song is rated on a scale from 1-9 (or so), based on its complexity, and I know that I'm good enough to pass a 4 (generally speaking). When I started out, I could only pass a 2. At my best, I could pass most fives and a handful of sixes.

Wizards are exactly the same. Spells are organized by complexity and energy requirements, and a given wizard knows that they can cast spells of a certain difficulty. Given how it takes a similar skill level to cast any of the spells that the players would know as level 3, it's improbable that they would not also recognize that fact. They probably don't categorize their own levels in any way, since their own skill is increasing continuously over time, but it seems probable that they recognize ten distinct levels of spell.