Definition of Metagaming

[fusangite]

OK -- I hardly need to stir the pot at this point. Thanks everyone for making this thread as vibrant and fun as I was hoping it would be this morning! Nevertheless, here goes:

"I figure there'll be a lever on the other side of the pit that deactivates the trap," a player says to the others, "because the DM would never create a trap that we couldn't deactivate somehow." That's an example of metagame thinking. This behaviour should always be discouraged, because it detracts from real role-playing and spoils suspension of disbelief.

This is the RAW definition of metagame thinking: totally unhelpful, incoherent and subject to inferences being drawn in all kinds of directions about what might or might not fall into the category of metagaming. Then the DMG offers a solution to the problem that further muddies the waters:

Surprise your players by foiling metagame thinking. Suppose the other side of the put has a lever, for example, but it's rusted and useless. Keep your players on their toes and don't let them second-guess you. Tell them to think in terms of the game world, not in terms of you as the DM. In the game world, someone made the trap in the dungeon for a purpose. You have figured out the reason why the trap exists and the PCs will need to do the same.

In short, when possible you should encourage your players to employ in-game logic. COnfronted with the situation given above, an appropriate response from a clever character is "I figure there'll be a lever on the other side of the pit that deactivates the trap because the gnomes who constructed the trap must have a means to deactivate it." In fact, this is wonderful -- it shows smart thinking as well as respect for the verisimilitude of the game world.

Wayne 62682 managed to sum up the DMG in about hald as many words:

To me, "metagaming" is using out of game concepts in-game. The oft-cited example of the PC confronted with a pit trap who says "There has to be a way around this because the DM has to give us a way across" is metagaming. What I don't get is the people (my own group, included) who would NOT consider it metagaming if the same player said "There has to be a way around this because whoever designed it would have to have a way across." The same exact thing in different words, but one is "roleplaying" and one is "cheating". The fact of the matter is that we're still playing a GAME. Using the terms of said game should not be considered cheating of any sort. That's like saying someone who says "squares" instead of "streets" (or roads, or whatever) in Monopoly is "metagaming".

Anyway, back to my responses to the posts:

Metagaming is using knowledge or basing decisions on something you know as a player, but your character cannot know. This can take the form of game mechanics (I use this spell on that monster, because it has weak defense against it),

This is one of the few things I would categorize as cheating, unless it was reasonable for the character to guess or infer this from second-hand knowledge or from observing the properties of the creature in question.

campaign knowledge (player A has heard what an NPC has said to player B's character, but player A's character was not present at that time),

Again, this is cheating in my books too.

or even real-world knowledge (like advanced chemistry or physics in a fantasy world).

For me, this is just an opportunity to prove a point to my players that I never get tired of proving: a set of physical laws that lets you make giant exploding balls of fire out of words and guano is clearly not the same set we are working with in this world. It is abundantly clear that your game world's physics are going to be quite different from our world's; when my players try to get water to conduct electricity, I calmly inform them that the elements fire and air, which comprise lightning cannot be conducted by water; they naturally rise and water naturally falls towards the centre of the universe.

Metagaming is just gaming. Meta- means above our transceding, so "metagaming" would be something like, "What would you like to play?" Everything that happens at the table is just gaming.

Exactly. There is gaming and there is cheating while gaming. There is no metagaming.

To re-phrase the definition I posted, Metagaming is basically when an IC decision is made for OOC reasons.

Although I disagree with the term being used at all, I think your definition is really helpful here because it exposes, what in my view, are unreasonable definitions of what constitutes an out-of-character reason.

QFT. Metagaming is a subset of the superset Gaming.

Excuse the pedantry but it's a subset of the set gaming. A superset is a set of sets.

Most games don't have an in character and out of character portion to them. D&D has the concept of communication being possible in character. And it can be important. When you're in front of someone in game, in character conversation will be able to be overheard by them. If you talk out of character and assume that all the PCs can share this information you have effectively bypassed that problem. Many people, myself included, would consider this cheating.

Why? Here's an example. PC1 has lots of points in Sense Motive and PC2 has none. PC1 realizes that the NPC is lying to them and PC2 doesn't. If PC1 tells PC2 about this out of character and then PC2 acts on this information he has completely bypassed the effect of not putting points into Sense Motive and the PCs have effectively communicated in front of the NPC without the NPC having any chance to be aware of this.

I agree. This is cheating. But it seems crazy to prohibit inter-player communication because of the possibility that it can be used to cheat. Furthermore, this prohibition isn't even effective at stopping that you want to stop because the PC2 already knows what PC1 discovered because you, the GM, have announced it.

Cheating is bad. But the only way to stop people cheating in RPGs is to shame them to discourage the behaviour. It is not to de-socialize games by prohibiting inter-player communication which, if used for a purpose other than cheating, only serves to enhance the roleplay experience.

Or lets say the PCs are fighting an Outsider with fire, cold, and electricity resistance. Nobody has Knowledge (the planes), so they can't know this. But one Player has the book and knows everything about the monster, so he tells hte wizard not to use fire, cold, or electricity attacks on it.

Once again, prohibiting inter-player dialogue is not an effective way of doing this. What if the wizard is the guy who read the book? How does your rule help then?

When making rules, you need to assess whether they will actually achieve their desired objective and, what costs there might be to their implementation. In my view, your rule against inter-player communication does not achieve its objective and has unreasonable costs.

And, my group, even when faced with this, wouldn't act on the information.

Neither would mine. Why? Because they're not cheaters. You see I don't need strange socially inhibiting rules to prevent this evil. I do just fine without it.

If you start giving other group members advice, though, when your PC is incapable of giving advice, then in my eyes that can only be metagaming.

How does this follow? How do "maybe you should use the hedge for cover," or "remember you can use your spontaneous cures to kill that undead," or "don't you remember Lord Thorfinn from three sessions ago? That's his crest the cavalry are flying," qualify as metagaming. All the player is doing is reminding someone of a fact they have already been told or making tactical suggestions based on information possessed by every character in the group.

Knowledge checks are a bad example. A knowledge check in D&D will take IC information and hand it to the player, who can then OOC make a decision based on it.

While I wouldn't go so far as to call them a bad example, I do think that there are all kinds of knowledge not represented in these skills and it might be worthwhile to consider how and when its employment qualifies as cheating, or, as Wayne says,

Once more on the Knowledge thing.. again, where is the line drawn? Yes, there's a skill for things you haven't encountered before, but who says I haven't seen it before? Ex: I have a character who grew up in a city ruled for most of his life by a necromantic regime; would I not have at least rudimentary knowledge of lesser undead (e.g. skeletons, zombies, maybe a wight) without needing a roll, since I was brought up with this? How about an Elf; would they know immediatly how Orcs are (having hated them for millenia) and drow, being mortal enemies?

To me, this suggests a bit of a hole in the D&D knowledge system, as elegant as it is. But what about types of knowledge we all agree are outside the skills system. Are there any kinds of general/common knowledge, ThirdWizard, that are not covered under the Know (*) mechanic whose employment you would have a problem with?

In our games, it depends on how far the Player of the PC is comfortable in going. We don't actually have any hard and fast rules against individual scenarios in this sense, so its up to the Player to say "My character wouldn't do that" or "My character would do that anyway."

I find this too. It is rare for a GM to enforce "metagaming" rules; when they are enforced, they usually show up in the form of self-censorship. I have had to retrain many a player into letting him know it's okay to speak out of character or base decisions on parts of the RAW not covered by the Know (*) mechanic.

OOC help remembering IC knowledge: No problem. This includes the tatoo problems, tactical choices, and current plot lines.

OOC help replacing IC knowledge: Also no problem. I describe the creatures they face either by name if the PC's would have sufficient knowledge to know thier weaknesses...and as such use any OOC knowledge gleaned from reading MMs.. or with an IC description. This with the caveat that I rarely read the MM, so my descriptions do not nessesarily match the book. This means my players end up on thier toes facing unknown critters and rely on Knowledge checks or experience to learn its abilities.

OOC concepts guiding IC motivations: eg, the "DM won't kill us, so we can go this way even tho it looks hazardous" Big problem, altho self resolving.... doesn't happen again after the players realize that *this* DM does not offer plot immunity to any PC

This is a pretty excellent summary of the approach in my games. Looks like I'm not as far out on the fringe on this issue as I imagined myself to be.

 

[ThirdWizard]

This is cheating. But it seems crazy to prohibit inter-player communication because of the possibility that it can be used to cheat. Furthermore, this prohibition isn't even effective at stopping that you want to stop because the PC2 already knows what PC1 discovered because you, the GM, have announced it.

Notecards are great for this. Pass a notecard to the guy who made the check. It isn't perfect, the other players will then know something is up and might use that OOC knowledge to modify their IC decisions.

In our case, what this does is make it easier to ignore the OOC information presented. Even if I said it out loud, my group wouldn't act on that information unless they were the ones that made the check. That's really because its more fun that way for all of us. But, passed notes are easier to ignore and base your future decisons on what your character would do, IMO.

Cheating is bad. But the only way to stop people cheating in RPGs is to shame them to discourage the behaviour. It is not to de-socialize games by prohibiting inter-player communication which, if used for a purpose other than cheating, only serves to enhance the roleplay experience.

I agree. We have no penalty or anything like that in our games. A simple "Are you sure that your character would be aware of that?" is the best way to try and get new people in the group to meld into our style. And it might take time. And, that's okay.

And, we have lots of OOC banter going on around the table, and jokes, and stuff like that. But, when it comes to using out of character speech to influence in character behavior, that's where our grouop draws the line and gives a gentle nudge to anyone who we think has gone too far.

Once again, prohibiting inter-player dialogue is not an effective way of doing this. What if the wizard is the guy who read the book? How does your rule help then?

He failed the Knowledge check and his character isn't aware of the resistances present on the opponent. It is up to the Player to effectively roleplay his character's lack of knowledge on the subject.

A while back the party came across an undead creature that takes extra damage per strike. The party didn't know that, but the players did. A sorcerer used magic missile against him, doing a lot of extra damage. Was this metagaming? We didn't think so. But, really, that was the Player of the sorcerer to decide, and I trust my group enough to not question their judgement, unless it proves to be repeated behavior or gross metagaming.

Neither would mine. Why? Because they're not cheaters. You see I don't need strange socially inhibiting rules to prevent this evil. I do just fine without it.

Me too. But, this isn't a thread about punishments for meta-gaming or even if we have punishments for them. This is about where we draw the line between what is acceptable and what is not acceptable. I never said I had rules concerning this at all, and I don't. We have a social contract that everyone who sits down agrees with.

How does this follow? How do "maybe you should use the hedge for cover," or "remember you can use your spontaneous cures to kill that undead," or "don't you remember Lord Thorfinn from three sessions ago? That's his crest the cavalry are flying," qualify as metagaming. All the player is doing is reminding someone of a fact they have already been told or making tactical suggestions based on information possessed by every character in the group.

That's for the DM to decide, IMO, not other Players. If the DM thinks the PCs should remember it, he can tell them or call for Int checks or whatever. The other person is influencing in character decisions with out of character actions, so I term it as metagaming.


On the topic of Knowledge checks, I would have to put some more thought into it. I've always just used my gut feeling to determine what a character would be aware of and the Knowledge skill for anything that goes beyond that.

 

[fusangite]

Notecards are great for this. Pass a notecard to the guy who made the check. It isn't perfect, the other players will then know something is up and might use that OOC knowledge to modify their IC decisions.

This seems to indicate a low level of trust in the other players. I don't like doing that.

It seems like a bunch of questions I have asked have been asked in such a way that I didn't get the answers I wanted. So, if you wouldn't mind, could you answer the rephrased versions of what you answered before?

I agree. This is cheating. But it seems crazy for your group to therefore decide that they should limit inter-player interactions to statements in character, inter-player communication because of the possibility that player to player communication can be used to cheat.

Cheating is bad. But the only way to stop people cheating in RPGs is to shame them to discourage the behaviour. It is not to de-socialize games by prohibiting inter-player communication which, if used for a purpose other than cheating, only serves to enhance the roleplay experience.

On to other stuff,

It is up to the Player to effectively roleplay his character's lack of knowledge on the subject.

Exactly. So why does your group choose to limit what is said to and by him if it is his conscience that is the ultimate arbiter?

That's for the DM to decide, IMO, not other Players. If the DM thinks the PCs should remember it, he can tell them or call for Int checks or whatever. The other person is influencing in character decisions with out of character actions, so I term it as metagaming.

How ignorant of their own lives and occupations do you imagine your PCs to be? I just can't conceive of how any of the things I suggested as examples in my post require any DM arbitration at all. They're the bleeding obvious. Why can't you trust your players to self-regulate appropriately without your intervention?

But more fundamentally, isn't this a co-operative game? How is assisting other players cheating simply by virtue of influencing them? How can you even play a cooperative game if you deem players influencing one another to be transgressive?

On the topic of Knowledge checks, I would have to put some more thought into it. I've always just used my gut feeling to determine what a character would be aware of and the Knowledge skill for anything that goes beyond that.

I'm in much the same boat. I too am trolling for ideas on this here.

And, we have lots of OOC banter going on around the table, and jokes, and stuff like that. But, when it comes to using out of character speech to influence in character behavior, that's where our grouop draws the line and gives a gentle nudge to anyone who we think has gone too far.

This seems an alien social contract to me. But if it works for you, more power to yuo.

 

[ThirdWizard]

This seems to indicate a low level of trust in the other players. I don't like doing that.

Not at all. It simply makes it easier to make decisions. Take the example of the mage with the magic missile against the enemy who takes extra damage per strike. If he knows that, he has to decide whether he is being influenced by this ooc knowledge or whether he would do it without said knowledge. It is far easier to decide PC actions when you don't have the ooc knowledge.

In effect, ignorance is bliss. Hiding the information is doing the Player a favor.

I agree. This is cheating. But it seems crazy for your group to therefore decide that they should limit inter-player interactions to statements in character, inter-player communication because of the possibility that player to player communication can be used to cheat.

Does my above statement help answer this? It's all about ease of play. It isn't about withhodling information. I think this is the answer to most of your questions. It's facilitating to the playstyle.

If its obvious, then the DM will tell you. You don't have to worry about not knowing if its obvious, you'll be told. But, what is common sense to one person isn't necessarily to another, and the DM is running the game, I just let them decide.

I also don't see very much different between telling someone "You can just cast cure light wounds over there, then walk in and touch him so you don't get the Attack of Opportunity" and "He seems to have a thing for the barmaid, use your Bluff to try to convince him we can get him a date with her so he'll let us by" when you're standing right in front of the NPC in question.

 

[buzz]

Making value judgements about what we individually think is good and bad for a game isn't something that should be avoided. Without it, how do we observe how other people approach the game?

I'm just saying that there is nothing inherrently good or bad about metagaming. Metagaming simply is. I'm also saying that "That's not how I like to run my games" will lead to more productive discussion than "That's bad gaming," or "I don't consider that roleplaying."

Thankfully, this thread has been wonderfully productive.

 

[buzz]

Excuse the pedantry but it's a subset of the set gaming. A superset is a set of sets.

Thanks. It should come as no surprise that I was an English major.

 

[wayne62682]

Let's keep this one going a bit longer.. I'm curious to hear some more opinions. So far it seems we have two main camps:

1) Those who believe that it should be considered metagaming for another player to remind you of something your character would reasonably remember, and that such things should be the DM's domain (i.e. the DM gets to decide if you would recall it or not)

2) Those who feel that the above constitues a "cooperative game" and shouldn't be considered cheating as long as the information in question is something the character would be privy to.

Not saying that any school of thought is better than the others, just trying to solicit more opinions as to why it's percieved that another player cannot remind you of something you would know. In my own group I've been accused of metagaming for reminding another player OOC that they could move to a certain square and be able to turn some skeletons (the player could clearly see that the square was open, but I guess it slipped her mind).

I do not believe that everything spoken during the game needs to be "In Character" and that there's no room to remind someone of abilities (i.e. "game-speak") as a player and not the PC. In fact, I think such things are detrimental to good tactics. If you're required to say in character "Thorgrim, you can flank the bugbear from that corner!" rather than "Hey Bob, if Thorgrim moves to that square in the corner he can flank the bugbear" you just telegraphed to that bugbear that he's going to be flanked, and he's going to move away (assuming he acts before Thorgrim does), thus ruining your tactic. Assuming that Thorgrim is a competant warrior who has fought in many battles, he should be intelligent enough to realize that if he moves a bit to the northwest he's in a more advantageous position.

My group, however, feels the opposite way, but I have also had a player say to me when I mentioned D&D was a team game that it was a team game "In [my] opinion".

Regards,
Wayne

 

[fusangite]

1) Those who believe that it should be considered metagaming for another player to remind you of something your character would reasonably remember, and that such things should be the DM's domain (i.e. the DM gets to decide if you would recall it or not)

I would extend this to include this to include drawing inferences or making deductions based on information the character would have.

And I have to say that although ThirdWizard has cleared up a bunch of misperceptions I had about the social dynamics of his group, this clarification has only made the group's views more mysterious to me. It seems like these people have come to a consensus that there is something transgressive about people, as players, getting hints from their team mates about how to play better. This is illustrated particularly well in

I also don't see very much different between telling someone "You can just cast cure light wounds over there, then walk in and touch him so you don't get the Attack of Opportunity" and "He seems to have a thing for the barmaid, use your Bluff to try to convince him we can get him a date with her so he'll let us by" when you're standing right in front of the NPC in question.

I'm still a little baffled that either of these things would be problematic. But the Cure Light Wounds thing seems especially peculiar. All the player is doing is reminding her team mate of the physical laws of the world, something the character would clearly know, given how much time they spend being governed by these laws.

In my own group I've been accused of metagaming for reminding another player OOC that they could move to a certain square and be able to turn some skeletons (the player could clearly see that the square was open, but I guess it slipped her mind).

I've had players in the group I GMed who continued to feel that things like this constituted metagaming but I have never been able to get much of a sense from them of what they find wrong with it beyond a question of feel. Nevertheless, I'll offer a couple of ideas:
(a) The players I have who have been most upset about this have tended to be people who enjoyed immersive gaming. I do think that for people who like immersive play, this sort of thing is damaging to their suspension of disbelief whereas it doesn't damage mind. But I don't think Third Wizard is part of that group.
(b) It seems like people who have significant metagaming concerns often think about the rules differently than I do. To me, the rules are like an incomplete physics textbook describing the physical laws of the game world. As such, I find it much harder to imagine that a character would forget about physical laws with which he lives every day. But I do know that a lot of GMs conceptualize the rules differently -- they see the rules as an almanac of exceptions to the physical laws of the game world, laws they conceptualize as essentially identical to our own.

I do not believe that everything spoken during the game needs to be "In Character"

Interestingly, and a little surprising to me (no offense), neither does Third Wizard. That was a big misconception that he cleared up.

My group, however, feels the opposite way, but I have also had a player say to me when I mentioned D&D was a team game that it was a team game "In [my] opinion".

Very curious. It hadn't occurred to me that this might be a factor in whether people are concerned about players giving one another advice but now that you mention it, I wonder how prevalent this concern is amongst those who are "metagaming."

 

[wayne62682]

Very curious. It hadn't occurred to me that this might be a factor in whether people are concerned about players giving one another advice but now that you mention it, I wonder how prevalent this concern is amongst those who are "metagaming."

Well, without starting a rant on it, my group is notorious for this. We have PCs that will wander off on their own (much to my repeated scoldings), PCs that if we were truly our characters and not playing a game would never adventure together, players that will say they want to do something and then get mad and change their mind when others want to do the same thing, etc. It's very frustrating because we routinely have at least two PCs go off on their own or if two people go in a room, they'll check out another room or stand there doing nothing.

The player I am referring to isn't an immersive roleplayer, she just does not feel that D&D has to be a co-operative effort and sees nothing wrong with essentially splitting off from the rest of the party to do her own thing. She also feels that you shouldn't make a group that's cohesive; each player should make whatever they want and let the DM bring them together. Thus we end up with groups that contain heroic characters and bloodthirsty mercenaries adventuring together.

But, I am starting to rant and getting off the topic.

 

[Odhanan]

In most other games, when you ask the guy next to you for advice on your next move, you're still gaming. You haven't stopped gaming and started cheating. Why isn't asking the guy next to you for advice something that falls comfortably into the category of just "gaming"?Is it? Why isn't it just gaming? Is there any prohibition in the rules against asking other players for help?This seems weird to me. When I do these things, I think I'm gaming. It seems to me that, by your definition, only about 20% of D&D is actual gaming and the rest is metagaming.

Wait. When I say something is "metagaming", it doesn't mean it's not part of the game. That's not what I meant. I said that for me, asking for advice to other players while your character is talking to an NPC is metagaming. "Metagaming" here, for me, is "gaming" too, I thought my first intervention on this thread showed it plainly enough.

If not, I'll repeat it with some other words: Metagaming is gaming. It's part of the game, and there should be at least some metagaming involved for the players to feel like a group of people having fun together. There is, however, such a thing as too much metagaming, since there are other ingredients involved in the recipe of optimum enjoyment at the game table. The immersion of the participants in the game world is one of these other ingredients.

Just like when you prepare a good meal, running good games is a mixture of enjoyment, practice/experience and ponderation. Weighing the different ingredients and their combination according to the tastes of your guests is most important. Sometimes, metagaming can parasite the immersive aspects of RPGs, but the exact balance of both aspects of the game will change from player to player.

I hope I've been clearer.