iserith
Magic Wordsmith
It's no fun to keep playing with somebody who repeatedly brings down the mood. That goes for both sides, majority wins. Irreconcilable differences.
Sure, I agree. The questions that remain, for me, are: What is it exactly that is bringing down the mood? Why? What is a good solution for resolving that, given the group's goals?
For my part, I would say judging others' motivations for their otherwise reasonable actions in context is the source of the problem to begin with and that people can take personal responsibility to make sure this is not an issue. (In the business, we call that "Minding your own business.") Then they never have to bother with trying to change someone else's behavior, since they have no control over that anyway. Then the DM can take steps on his or her side of the table to disincentivize "metagaming" (in the sense that some have defined it here) by presenting things a certain way.
There is also the matter of understanding roleplaying and metagame thinking in the way the game actually defines it, rather than what we think it means based on legacy definitions or things we picked up from other games or longstanding group cultures. Once that's internalized, everything falls right into place and by adopting this approach, "metagaming" just goes away entirely. (Another side benefit is that this approach is portable - it doesn't matter whose game I join, I'll never be bothered by "metagaming.")