A discussion of metagame concepts in game design

[Bawylie]

You are right. The game I've heard is too easy which is a criticism I had for 4e as well. I'm not surprised. Again they are likely targeting new and inexperienced players.




To me it's already optional it's so set apart.


This is really interesting. I want to see what drops this August on Pf2e but you've made me rethink 5e.

What are you playing these days yourself? Still using 4e or trying 5e? Or maybe something else entirely?

I’m playing 5E in a 4E style that’s heavily into maps and minis and tactical play. I have some issues with every gosh darned class being a spell-caster and every spell-caster playing like a wizard so I’ve been staring really hard at the cleric and warlock and thinking of how I might overhaul them. But that’s just Brad-silliness. Game plays just fine by default for my kids group and adults group.

 

[Emerikol]

I’m playing 5E in a 4E style that’s heavily into maps and minis and tactical play. I have some issues with every gosh darned class being a spell-caster and every spell-caster playing like a wizard so I’ve been staring really hard at the cleric and warlock and thinking of how I might overhaul them. But that’s just Brad-silliness. Game plays just fine by default for my kids group and adults group.

I don't think maps and minis is even an alternate way of playing 5e. A lot of people I'm sure have been using such things all the way through 1e till now. It's nice for those that do not like them to be able to not use them. But I use maps for sure and minis or counters when anything complicated is at hand.

Well game design is fun to play around with even if just speculatively. My own theory is that I kind of like the idea of channel divinity being the defining feature of a holy class. I'd have a priest which is more like a wizard in style and I'd have a paladin which is more like a fighter. But I'm derailing this thread. Good luck with that.

 

[Bawylie]

I don't think maps and minis is even an alternate way of playing 5e. A lot of people I'm sure have been using such things all the way through 1e till now. It's nice for those that do not like them to be able to not use them. But I use maps for sure and minis or counters when anything complicated is at hand.

Well game design is fun to play around with even if just speculatively. My own theory is that I kind of like the idea of channel divinity being the defining feature of a holy class. I'd have a priest which is more like a wizard in style and I'd have a paladin which is more like a fighter. But I'm derailing this thread. Good luck with that.

I took a quick look at the Rogue and the only thing I can find that might bug you is Stroke of Luck at level 20. Which, I mean, will you get there? Even if you do, you could just remove that one and nobody would miss much.

But if there’s something in the Rogue you have a problem with other than that, let me know and I’d be happy to take a look.

 

[Emerikol]

I took a quick look at the Rogue and the only thing I can find that might bug you is Stroke of Luck at level 20. Which, I mean, will you get there? Even if you do, you could just remove that one and nobody would miss much.

But if there’s something in the Rogue you have a problem with other than that, let me know and I’d be happy to take a look.

I didn't think the Rogue was as problematic as the Fighter. Yeah that one is probably the issue and sure my campaigns rarely get to 20.

 

[Maxperson]

Gygax was a war-gamer, and he never pretended otherwise. Actual role-playing - making decisions as though the character was a real person in a living world, rather than a game piece or a narrative construct - didn't come to the fore-front of the hobby until 2E. That shift in tone is a much greater difference between 1E and 2E than the minor changes in the rules.

From Page 11 of the 1e DMG.

"The purpose of AD&D is to allow participants to create and develop interesting player characters who will adventure and interact with their surroundings. If personality traits are forced upon PCs, then participants will be doing little more than moving automatons around while you, the DM, tell them how their characters react to situations. It is therefore absolutely necessary for you to allow each player the right to develop his or her character as he or she chooses!"

Right there in his own words he says that the purpose of AD&D is roleplaying.

 

[Ted Serious]

Well, regardless of when this happened it would not be while actually playing the character. If one of my players called me and said "I think I may want to multiclass into Sorcerer" then that would definitely be the player and not the character making that call. Right? So how do I deal with that? Well I could have the dragon blood manifest itself unexpectedly to the character and then play it from there. I admit that my groups don't do a lot of multiclassing especially the caster classes and sorcerer is not popular. My groups tend to be the big 4 and paladins.

I don't understand.
The player making a decision the character could not that changes history. How does that not fall in the metagame.

Can you give an example other than HD or the fighter.

 

[Jhaelen]

That doesn't mean he discovered role-playing, though. From what I can tell, his discoveries were much more in line with discovering a new type of board game, to which he applied a storytelling layer. Consider the Tomb of Horrors, which he wrote in order to challenge his players, after they thought themselves to have mastered the game. Consider how he described a fighter chained to a rock, with a dragon breathing fire on him, and a successful save against breath weapon meaning that the fighter must have broken free and hidden behind the rock.

Nothing I've ever read about him has ever given me the impression that he cared about role-playing, as we understand the term. He would never have been caught up in the debate between what a player wants to do, and whether it makes sense for the character to do that. Meta-gaming, in the common usage of the term, was entirely expected at his table.

I believe it was actually Dave Arneson's influence which caused D&D to become an actual role-playing game. Without him, Gary Gygax probably would never have thought of it.

After reading some interviews and posts by Gary I got the impression, though, that he recognized that his game was improved by the addition of role playing concepts.

Still, as you mentioned, he could never quite let go the idea of D&D as a (competitive) tournament game. I'm also fairly sure that meta-gaming was something he expected from his players. Imho, that shows in his designs for traps, monsters, dungeon layouts, etc. He enjoyed to challenge the players, not necessarily the player characters. There was a certain expectancy of system mastery and applying the things an experienced _player_ had learned by playing plenty of different characters, no matter which character a player actually played.

In a way it was an implementation of the 'Eternal Hero' series by 'Michael Moorcock': Even though a player might play lots of different characters over the years, they'd all share some common aspects and - most importantly - knowledge.

 

[pemerton]

Since Inspiration is largely a metagaming mechanic--DMs often use this as a reward for the player, not the character--it's going to feel metagamey. There's no way around it. How about some XP instead?

Classic D&D XP is super metagamey. XP for "good roleplaying" even moreso. I don't know what system for awarding XP [MENTION=6698278]Emerikol[/MENTION] uses.

 

[Morrus]

[MENTION=1]Morrus[/MENTION]

Not to get off track here too far but assuming I wanted to play a sci-fi game some time where does N.E.W. fall on the metagame axis?

The Metagame Axis sounds like an evil organization!

It's about level with 5E on that aspect, I think.

 

[Emerikol]

I don't understand.
The player making a decision the character could not that changes history. How does that not fall in the metagame.

Can you give an example other than HD or the fighter.

Well, in the past like the early editions of the game, anything like that that required something innate to the character was not something I allowed at all but your example is pretty rare. I doubt I'd allow it now. But again, I've never had a single sorcerer character in my games (maybe one in 4e but as you see that was where I became fully enlightened to the issue).

I disliked things in prior editions and probably at heart had the same goals but I figured out "one" of the things it was during my play of 4e. It clicked at that point I guess.

Multiclassing and dual classing are both fraught with peril in my book. Multiclassing if you don't do it right up front doesn't feel right to me. In 1e, 2e, the only multiclassing we did was right at the start you took fighter/magic user. You'd never go to 5th level as a fighter and then take magic user for a few levels. That style didn't come around until 3e. We never did it then.

I'm getting a lot of questions which I honestly have no experience of practically.