Playing an RPG is utimately a form of conversation, establishing a shared fiction, although in many cases that conversation may be heavily mediated by rules (and props that support those rules, like dice and maps) for what and how ideas become part of the shared fiction.
Conversation has multiple "orders" of reasoning happening at the same time - there is first order assertion and response, but also second order considerations like whether or not some utterance is being phrased properly, or might be expressed better; and second order considerations of a different sort, too, like whether or not some question or some response is socially appropriate given the context. All this is done in real time, as the conversation takes place.
Just as a conversation is not, for most people, a "run time" implementation of a pre-prepared script or program, so there's no reason to think that RPGing should be like that either. Nor that it would be good if it were - part of the pleasure of conversation (as opposed to, say, a job interview, or taking a class) is the spontaneity and exploration of the moment, and RPGing exhibits similar features.
If I'm playing a FRPG, and the GM tells me "You see an orc not far away and coming towards you - what do you do?", then in thinking about what answer I give I will factor in a range of considerations: how does my PC feel about orcs? what sorts of things is my PC good at? what do other people at the table, whose PCs are also in this situation, want to do? how many hit points do we have left? etc.
Some of those are obviously metagaming - eg wondering what the other players want to do. Some may be metagaming at some tables (eg wondering about hp remaining; knowing what my PC is good at, if some of that capability takes the form of "fate points" or similar) but not at others (some people treat hp as "meat", or as in-fiction knowable "life force remaining"; some tables treat all resources recorded on the PC sheet as known, in-fiction properties of the PC).
None of them is antithetical to playing a RPG.
Conversation has multiple "orders" of reasoning happening at the same time - there is first order assertion and response, but also second order considerations like whether or not some utterance is being phrased properly, or might be expressed better; and second order considerations of a different sort, too, like whether or not some question or some response is socially appropriate given the context. All this is done in real time, as the conversation takes place.
Just as a conversation is not, for most people, a "run time" implementation of a pre-prepared script or program, so there's no reason to think that RPGing should be like that either. Nor that it would be good if it were - part of the pleasure of conversation (as opposed to, say, a job interview, or taking a class) is the spontaneity and exploration of the moment, and RPGing exhibits similar features.
If I'm playing a FRPG, and the GM tells me "You see an orc not far away and coming towards you - what do you do?", then in thinking about what answer I give I will factor in a range of considerations: how does my PC feel about orcs? what sorts of things is my PC good at? what do other people at the table, whose PCs are also in this situation, want to do? how many hit points do we have left? etc.
Some of those are obviously metagaming - eg wondering what the other players want to do. Some may be metagaming at some tables (eg wondering about hp remaining; knowing what my PC is good at, if some of that capability takes the form of "fate points" or similar) but not at others (some people treat hp as "meat", or as in-fiction knowable "life force remaining"; some tables treat all resources recorded on the PC sheet as known, in-fiction properties of the PC).
None of them is antithetical to playing a RPG.