A game about a game? A different kind of metagame

[Ancalagon]

Hello.

So I'm in the intermission for phantom of the opera, a play about a play. And I got thinking. This x about x structure is common to a lot of media. There are poems about poetry, films about films and songs about songs. Very meta.

But could you have an rpg game about an rpg game? A good one I mean. A game where you role play gamers gaming is possible, but not fun...

You certainly could have a fun rpg scenario about a play but...

 

[Fanaelialae]

Hello.

So I'm in the intermission for phantom of the opera, a play about a play. And I got thinking. This x about x structure is common to a lot of media. There are poems about poetry, films about films and songs about songs. Very meta.

But could you have an rpg game about an rpg game? A good one I mean. A game where you role play gamers gaming is possible, but not fun...

You certainly could have a fun rpg scenario about a play but...

You could certainly do an RPG about the old trope of characters who are playing an MMORPG. That sort of campaign could very well be about metagaming challenges that you couldn't otherwise overcome.

 

[Charlaquin]

Hello.

So I'm in the intermission for phantom of the opera, a play about a play. And I got thinking. This x about x structure is common to a lot of media. There are poems about poetry, films about films and songs about songs. Very meta.

But could you have an rpg game about an rpg game? A good one I mean. A game where you role play gamers gaming is possible, but not fun...

You certainly could have a fun rpg scenario about a play but...

I used to do a lot of Vampire: the Requiem LARPing, and I always thought it would be fun to play our characters playing D&D. Never did manage to get anyone else onboard with the idea though.

 

[robus]

Hello.

So I'm in the intermission for phantom of the opera, a play about a play. And I got thinking. This x about x structure is common to a lot of media. There are poems about poetry, films about films and songs about songs. Very meta.

But could you have an rpg game about an rpg game? A good one I mean. A game where you role play gamers gaming is possible, but not fun...

You certainly could have a fun rpg scenario about a play but...

This is basically my idea for a Ready Player One campaign. The players would have human characters in the “real world”, avatars in the virtual world (basically create any fantasy/sci-fi character you want - hand wave/hand wave) and finally a standard D&D character for the game part. The players/avatars are a team competing in the D&D 100th anniversary tournament and they’re playing through the dungeons of TotYP (or whatever collection of dungeons you choose).

To make it fun the players lose a round and are kicked out, but they get a tip that the other team cheated and now there’s an adventure in the virtual world to reclaim their spot in the competition. Assuming they succeed they get through to the final round and a chance to win the prize.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Jacob Lewis]

"So you roll these dice to see how many dice you roll..."

 

[Harzel]

Watching someone else roleplay (like on Critical Role) is more "meta" than your own campaign, in the same way that it is more difficult to have a meta-sport that you are playing than it is to have a commentary about sports. If you follow me.

Funny you should mention CR. The one-shot that Travis Willingham ran ("Grog's One-Shot", 11/2/2017) was Grog (Travis' character) running a D&D session for the other CR PCs. I don't know that it will help the OP much, but it was pretty amusing. As Grog had INT 5, in the in-game game, the rules were somewhat ... irregular - definitely a rulings not rules game.

 

[Ancalagon]

So, a meta-game would not just be a game where you role play roleplaying.* It's a game about gaming.

Which can be subtle; a lot of cinema, for example, is about cinema, without necessarily being about a specific movie being shot. Or, to use a more esoteric example, many would argue that Kubla Khan (by Coleridge) is a metapoem about poetry, about the process of artistic creation. In the same way that Barton Fink (the Coen Brothers movie) is about the creative process.

I was going to name a few examples - Shadow of the Vampire is an tremendous film about filmmaking, and I definitely was going to mention Kubla Khan... but I was in an intermission on my phone during a play, so time was a bit short

Oh, and of course, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lK4cX5xGiQ

So, we already have games about gaming. Games about the rules (munchkin being a take on that). Games that, for the most part, work only to the extent that they are in opposition or dialogue with traditional RPGs (Paranoia). Thinking of Board Games, classic games like Cosmic Encounter is, arguably, a game about breaking rules.

I wanted to be specific to roleplaying games, because that is where the great difficulty lies. There are already games about games - both Munchkin and Talismans are games about gaming, but they aren't RPG games about RPGing. Another good example of games within games would be the various card games withing final fantasy game, or your PC being challenged to a game of chess within an RPG game. This works.

The issue I would see is that most of the examples that come to mind aren't really suitable for long-term campaigning because of the interactive component. Watching someone else roleplay (like on Critical Role) is more "meta" than your own campaign, in the same way that it is more difficult to have a meta-sport that you are playing than it is to have a commentary about sports. If you follow me.

Oh I wasn't thinking about long term play, more like an "episode" (a module, a single adventure etc). You totally could have an adventure about a play -heck phantom of the opera could probably be turned in a very decent module by a suitably clever author/DM. But I just can't fathom how to have an RPG about RPGing that isn't mediocre in the extreme.

 

[jonathonhawke]

You might want to take a look at the Dream Park RPG.

 

[Jer]

Dream Park would be the game about people playing a game that I can think of.

I think you could also come up with a game where you play the role of sterotypical gamers playing a game. Like a Knights of the Dinner Table game where you're trying to figure out how the characters would play their PCs instead of how you would play them. (That would be weird, but possibly kind of fun in a weird way.)

But Phantom of the Opera is more a play about people making a play. "Films about films" that I can think of tend to be films about people making films.

So what about an RPG about making RPGs? The "Phantom of the Game Dev Studio" where you all play game designers trying to put together a new release of a game while simultaneously dealing with weirdness of some kind.

(Now that I type that out I could swear that I've seen that done somewhere. Possibly in a con scenario? I'm thinking it was either a Call of Cthulhu or a Gumshoe scenario but I may be imagining it.)