Let's Talk About Metagaming!

[Celebrim]

Traditionally I've seen it argued that players should only concern themselves with the perspective of their particular characters. I disagree. We are playing games with multiple people who all seek different experiences, and I believe that we should be considerate of what they are trying to accomplish and modify our conception of our characters accordingly. Thoughts?

In short, it's complicated.

So, in general, I've found that it is a good rule that metagame problems shouldn't be addressed through in game behavior and in game problems shouldn't be addressed through in metagame behavior.

So the natural converse is that if it is a metagame problem, a metagame solution is sometimes warranted. This by no means legitimizes all metagame behavior, but it does mean that it is 'ok' for a player to be aware of the metagame and act accordingly... sometimes.

The example you site of 'try not to ruin the fun of everyone else at the table' is a good example. Too often you see players legitimize, "In this situation my character would act like a jerk, and therefore since I'm just playing my character... it's ok to act like a jerk." There is some truth to that, but you shouldn't carry it to the point that it ruins the fun for everyone else at the table. You should try to be conscious of the need for everyone to enjoy themselves, and so not thinking of 'winning' as 'beating the other players (including the DM)'. This means that a mature RPer either chooses to not play characters that would regularly act like jerks and especially with regard to the other players, or the player comes up with sophisticated reasons why the character would back down from his jerk or confrontational stance.

However, it equally means that as much as possible other players roll with the play with the expectation that the problem can be resolved in play, and then, if it isn't only then escalate to gentle, private metagame discussion, and only if that fails take it to the group or the GM to resolve the issue. It means both sides need to follow the other's metagame and in game queues, and sometimes do metagame asides just to make sure everyone is still on board or to find out where everyone is comfortable taking the scene. Much of this just comes with experience and familiarity. Eventually you know you can trust Belkar Bitterleaf's player to come up with a character defining or extending scene just so he isn't forced to be in conflict with a group that from a logical perspective he could be in violent conflict with, and eventually you learn the rest of the group can handle that (or not) and know whether you should even be playing such a character in the first place.

It's an 'all for one and one for all sort of situation'. Everyone is trying to help everyone else have fun.

As the GM one thing that you should be careful of is creating a situation where dysfunctional metagame behavior is the most functional response to your game. If one of your players is cheating, it's probably a problem with that player. But if most of your players are cheating, the problem is with how you are running your table. If one of your players always treats the game as a contest between the DM and the players, it's probably a problem with that player. But if the whole table is playing that way, chances are it's an evolved response to how you are running your game. An example for myself that I learned the hard way is that multiple campaigns were failing early in part because I had become so invested in helping players create and play the character that they wanted to play with full freedom to play anything they wanted to play, that I'd given no thought to group dynamics and so I had parties where the PC's had no real motivation to be together much less work together. I was relying way to heavily on players metagaming to keep groups together, even when one member of the group was a paladin and another an assassin or what have you. Heck, I made the mistake once of approving a character whose backstory was they were a xenophobic hermit, only to find that the player really intended to play a xenophobic hermit and was expecting the rest of the party to cater to that or he'd simply do his own thing. He wasn't going to metagame, but he was expecting everyone else to metagame to accommodate him. So I had to adjust my table metagame to where I was forcing players to come up with motivations for being part of play rather than simply letting them play whatever they first imagined no matter how compelling the character might be as a literary character. This headed off lots of problems before they became problems.

I also started asking the group what they wanted before I planned the campaigns just to make sure we were on the same page in terms of style and themes of play.

 

[Celebrim]

I think this is the crux right here. There is no enemy, there is no impaling, and there is no being mounted - until the GM and player agree on it. In order to be more likely to have any of these things, you have to be playing the game, not gaming the game. When your goal goes from impaling the enemy (an in-game goal) to dealing more damage, in terms of dice, to the enemy (a rules-based goal), you're metagaming.

Yes, you are metagaming to a certain extent. But the fault here is not with the player, but with the GM. It took me probably 15 years to figure that out for myself.

So, you as the GM in this situation want the player to behave in a manner you consider consistent with the established fiction. And the trouble is, the player is refusing to do that and is instead metagaming.

But the problem isn't with the player, but with the GM. The problem is not the desire of the GM to behave in a manner consistent with the established fiction which is a perfectly acceptable goal. The problem is that you've provided the players with a system which does not model the fiction you want it to model, but a completely different fiction. So it's not surprising that the story generated by play doesn't match the story in your head, because the physics of the world you are making the player play in don't match the physics you are imagining for the fiction. You've got an incoherence here and the way to fix it isn't to demand of the player that they stop acting in a way that is perfectly rational for the setting, but change the rules of the setting such that the rational and rewarded behavior is the one you want to see.

You say:

"When your goal goes from impaling the enemy (an in-game goal) to dealing more damage, in terms of dice, to the enemy (a rules-based goal), you're metagaming."

In point of fact, there was not actually a chance to impale the enemy from the fictional position of being on the horse. Your system I dare say offers zero chance of impaling anything because it has no impaling mechanic. And if your impaling mechanic is simply, 'IF his hit points go below zero then as a fictional stance I'll say the character is impaled", then the actual truth of this situation is that for the in game goal of impaling the enemy the higher likelihood of achieving this goal is obtained by getting off the horse. Both the player and the character were here behaving rationally for the situation. And if the character is behaving rationally based on his in world verifiable knowledge that in his world attacking on foot is more effective than attacking on a horse, is the player really metagaming? At most, only a little. For the most part, it's the GM that is metagaming here! The GM is demanding the player behave according to his knowledge of a feature of the game - the tropes of imagined external reality - that isn't actually a part of the experienced game world. That's the GM's fault for not incorporating the tropes into the system so that they show up in play; and not the fault of the optimizing player.

So if you want your fiction to contain the idea that attacking with a lance from horseback is a very effective attack, you have to do something like create a mechanic that says, "If you charge while on horseback while wielding a lance, you do double damage." Now the game reality you as the GM want matches the reality you want to create outside of the game in as much as that player's are now encourage to leap on a horse and impale things with a long piece of wood.

 

[Celebrim]

For example, when a player's character has a dark secret, another player may "accidentally" uncover it. He may ignore the metagame knowledge. Or he may intentionally create situations where the secret becomes important (like, implementing a plan that makes sense from the character's PoV, but invites a catastrophe when taking the secret into account; or talking with the other character and sharing his own secret as a sign of deep trust).

The first approach is bad. The second one is the default for many groups. I prefer the third one. I get much more immersion and fun from emotionally-charged scenes and dramatic story that twists in surprising directions as a result of my (and other players') choices than from pretending to be my PC.

It really depends on the thespian skills of the player. If a player is going to use metagame direction to inform his play, that can be a good thing... provided the player has a good sense for what makes a good story, knows how to frame a scene to make it compelling and believable, and is willing to defer gratification and conflict for the right moment when it will enhance the story and not seem so much like overt metagaming.

Some players I trust to pull this off. Others would be better off with more method acting and less director stance.

And then again, the truth is that 80-90% of players are only capable of playing themselves anyway, so what I find for most groups is that the in character stance and the metagame are virtually identical and difficult to disentangle. Fortunately, I think I have built in resiliency in my approach to GMing, so that metagaming as a means to winning is rarely effective and I'm not really locked into PC's behaving according to my designs. (Though in point of fact, most players are so predictable that you could lead them around by a ring through their nose and they'd think they were getting their own way and being really creative. That however would be metagaming to much on my part. As a side note, I quit Halflife II in the middle of it when I realized the level designers had been doing this to me, and any time I thought I was being creative I was really just punching my ticket.)

 

[The Crimson Binome]

But the problem isn't with the player, but with the GM. The problem is not the desire of the GM to behave in a manner consistent with the established fiction which is a perfectly acceptable goal. The problem is that you've provided the players with a system which does not model the fiction you want it to model, but a completely different fiction.

It goes a bit further than that, even. Aside from the rules of the game (including house rules), the players don't have any way of even knowing what fiction the GM thinks is supposed to be reasonable for any situation.

 

[Celebrim]

It goes a bit further than that, even. Aside from the rules of the game (including house rules), the players don't have any way of even knowing what fiction the GM thinks is supposed to be reasonable for any situation.

This is a very concise way of summarizing the problem.

It also shows why it is the GM that is doing the most metagaming in this case, because it is the GM whose behavior at the table is most being motivated by knowledge of the out of game universe. Even though the game doesn't naturally play in the way he wants it to, he's still insisting that people unnaturally play contrary to their own interests for the sake of preserving a fiction that ultimately won't be compelling in the setting simply because the metagame choices he's demanding of the players won't lead to the same results observed in the fiction he wants.

Even if the player were to observe the GM's metagame restrictions, the fiction still wouldn't line up. You get the behavior that the game rewards. That's not the player's fault. And D&D isn't alone in this. V:tM had this problem in spades.

This particular problem is the reason old school GM's and rules designers fetishized 'realism' in the rules set, even in games that were decidedly not realistic. That was me circa 1995. "If only the game was realistic, it would compel the player to stop metagaming..." Niave, but the people advocating realism weren't completely stupid and had a real underlying point.

 

[pemerton]

I think this is the crux right here. There is no enemy, there is no impaling, and there is no being mounted - until the GM and player agree on it. In order to be more likely to have any of these things, you have to be playing the game, not gaming the game. When your goal goes from impaling the enemy (an in-game goal) to dealing more damage, in terms of dice, to the enemy (a rules-based goal), you're metagaming.

I don't really follow this.

I'm not sure what actual RPG rules system you have in mind, but I'm thinking of a fairly typical FRPG system - say, D&D, or Runequest, or Rolemaster.

In RQ, "impale" is a result that is achieved by rolling a certain level of success with a thrusting weapon. In RM, "impale" is a result that is achieved by rolling a certain result on a crit table. In D&D, there is no "impale" result defined by the rules, but it looks like the sort of informal narration that might be used to describe reducing a monster/NPC to zero hit points.

In each of these systems, a player who wanted his/her PC to impale an enemy, but hadn't transposed that into a system-appropriate mechanical orientation - in RQ, choosing a thrusting weapon with a good skill bonus; in RM, choosing a weapon that can deliver strong Piercing crits; in D&D, choosing a weapon that has good damage dice - would be a player who didn't know how to play the game yet, and didn't understand the relationship between mechanical results and narration of the fiction.

You seem to be saying that any playing of the game is metagaming. But that doesn't make sense.

Maybe you're saying that any engagement with the mechanics is metagaming. But that doesn't really make sense either, because the mechanics are part of the game, and players are expected to engage with them. (There are some exceptions - some OSR approaches where all the mechanics are GM-side, and some free-narration systems - but none of these fit the scenario you described, of a player choosing between complex damage options.)

Maybe you're saying that any decision based on mechanical advantage is metagaming. But how can players of a game not be expected to have regard to mechanical advantage? How is it good play to pretend that my lance is more dangerous than my dagger, when the mechanics are telling everyone at the table the opposite? (Although I have presented this as a rhetorical question, there are "modern" RPG systems that actually answer it; but I don't think you have any of these systems in mind in posing your scenario.)

 

[Umbran]

In short, it's complicated.

So, in general, I've found that it is a good rule that metagame problems shouldn't be addressed through in game behavior and in game problems shouldn't be addressed through in metagame behavior.

So the natural converse is that if it is a metagame problem, a metagame solution is sometimes warranted. This by no means legitimizes all metagame behavior, but it does mean that it is 'ok' for a player to be aware of the metagame and act accordingly... sometimes.

This is an important nugget.

Failing to recognize this nugget leads to behaviors that are variously passive-aggressive, ineffective, and/or have unintended consequences.

 

[GMMichael]

You get the behavior that the game rewards.

This is a good point. The game has built-in rewards. But according to rule zero, the GM is in charge of all rewards not awarded by the game (and even those that are, technically speaking). So while the game might reward you with a mechanically good-looking position on a grid-map, the GM can negate that rules-advantage with any reason he wants (with a reasonable in-game one, hopefully)...or award his own benefits.

In RQ, "impale" is a result that is achieved by rolling a certain level of success with a thrusting weapon. In RM, "impale" is a result that is achieved by rolling a certain result on a crit table. In D&D, there is no "impale" result defined by the rules, but it looks like the sort of informal narration that might be used to describe reducing a monster/NPC to zero hit points.

I was looking more at D&D than RQ or RM. Obviously, a game that includes an "impale" rule makes it easier for impaling to be a metagame event.

Maybe you're saying that any decision based on mechanical advantage is metagaming. But how can players of a game not be expected to have regard to mechanical advantage? How is it good play to pretend that my lance is more dangerous than my dagger, when the mechanics are telling everyone at the table the opposite? (Although I have presented this as a rhetorical question, there are "modern" RPG systems that actually answer it; but I don't think you have any of these systems in mind in posing your scenario.)

This is probably the closest to what I'm saying. If you're roleplaying, you care about the story first. If you're metagaming, you care about the rules first. No, you can't expect players to disregard the benefits afforded by the rules. But that has no bearing on the definition of metagaming.

 

[pemerton]

If you're roleplaying, you care about the story first. If you're metagaming, you care about the rules first. No, you can't expect players to disregard the benefits afforded by the rules. But that has no bearing on the definition of metagaming.

I don't see the sharp contrast between rules and story that your claim relies upon.

If I want my PC to impale someone, and I look at my character sheet and see that my mounted lance does (say) 2d10+2 damage, and my shortsword (due to class abilities, feats, magic items etc) does (say) 4d6+10 damage, then when I choose to have my PC attack with shorsword rather than mounted lance how am I not caring about the story? I want a story of PC impales NPC/monster, and I am adopting the method that the rules tell me is the best way to go about achieving that outcome within the story.

If you don't conceive of the rules as connected to, and shaping, story outcomes in this sort of way, then what do you think they are for?

according to rule zero, the GM is in charge of all rewards not awarded by the game (and even those that are, technically speaking). So while the game might reward you with a mechanically good-looking position on a grid-map, the GM can negate that rules-advantage with any reason he wants (with a reasonable in-game one, hopefully)...or award his own benefits.

I want to try and connect this rather general remark to the particular instance of the impale. Are you saying that the GM should suspend or change the action resolution rules, and so (for instance) award bonus damage to the mounted lance attack to make it mechanically stronger than the shortsword? Or penalise the shortsword attack?

At what point is the GM supposed to tell the player that s/he will do such a thing?

It seems to me that if you want players to choose lances over shortswords when they want their PCs to impale enemies, the best way to achieve that is to give your game mechanics that are more likely to generate stories of impalement when the PCs attack with lances than when they attack with shortswords. If the mechanics will only achieve this result by the GM suspending or changing them on an ad hoc basis, that seems to me simply an indication that the mechanics aren't very good.

 

[Umbran]

I don't see the sharp contrast between rules and story that your claim relies upon.

If I want my PC to impale someone, and I look at my character sheet and see that my mounted lance does (say) 2d10+2 damage, and my shortsword (due to class abilities, feats, magic items etc) does (say) 4d6+10 damage, then when I choose to have my PC attack with shorsword rather than mounted lance how am I not caring about the story? I want a story of PC impales NPC/monster, and I am adopting the method that the rules tell me is the best way to go about achieving that outcome within the story.

That would depend upon the rules, some of which are written, and some of which may not be.

For example, does the game call out the shortsword as a slashing weapon? Then, a written rule is clearly positioned to structure the narration. And, if they've played such a game previously, players may be carrying this around as an unwritten rule in their heads, which brings up cognitive dissonance when you suggest impaling with a shortsword. This dissonance does not necessarily manifest as telling you that shortswords are slashing weapons, but with some other rationalization.