On metagame mechanics in general
RPG is a collective story telling session. People keep saying it is, but its a GAME otherwise the name would be Role Playing Story Telling. I think people get way to caught up in you have to tell a story, and make the events fit a story, etc. than realizing that in the process of playing a game, doing hopefully cool stuff, sharing stories, having highlights and lowlights (yes because of randomness that is built into most of the RPGAME systems), that thats where the story comes from!
The function of metagame mechanics like "doom pools", hit points, etc, is to make it more likely that playing the game will produce something that is recognisably a
story, rather than a mere sequence of events (eg it has rising action and a climax).
RPGs are a game, not a story telling sitaround. GAME. So if you have to fudge things just to make the results tell the story you want, instead of finding the story that comes out of the good and bad.. um, yeah.
That's the whole point of metagame mechanics - to avoid the need to fudge to achieve something that is recogniably a story.
Eg Gygax liked the idea of combats that had a sort of "back-and-forth" flow of momentum towards victory, of the sort he saw in Errol Flynn fencing movies; and didn't like the idea of combats with lots of blood and one-shot kills and the like; so D&D used hit points - a metagame mechanic (as Gygax explains in his DMG) that produces this sort of story.
(You won't get the same thing out of RQ, or RM - both of which are very simulationist in their combat mechanics - without fudging.)
He also didn't like the idea that the hero chained to the rock face being breathed on by the dragon had
no chance of survival - a bad story! So the saving throw rules give the chance - and as Gygax explains in his DMG, these are a metagame mechanic - eg the successful saving throw means that the chains unexpectedly broke, or the fighter found a crevice in the rock to duck into, or something similar.
D&D is simply the last bastion of pure unadulterated simulationism where mechanisms that control story are wholly unwanted.
Huh?
5e still uses hp, which still serve the same metagame function that Gygax described. It drops classic metagame saving throws for 3E-style simulationist ones, but it introduces a new metagame mechanic, namely, Inspiration.
It also still uses non-simulations experience points (tied only to combat, rather than to gold as well), and I think for much the same metagame reason as Gygax gave in his DMG: adventuring is more exciting as a focus of play, and hence as a vehicle for advancement, than is training.
Players in an AD&D game should operate on the knowledge that their characters have--not on the knowledge that the player may get outside of the game.
If a player sees a new monster and decides to have his character run from it, it is considered poor form indeed if the player then changes his mind after having a peek at the GM's notes to see that the HD on the creature is low and easily beaten
But it's poor form not because it's metagaming but because it's
cheating.
But AD&D players were absolutely expected to metagame. They were expected to use their own intelligence to guess what sorts of traps a GM might place, or what sorts of monsters s/he might use; they were expected to be familiar with the Monster Manual (Moldvay Basic tells players, not just GMs, to read the monster chapter); all this was part of being a skilled player. And it's the reason why
new monsters, and
new ideas for traps, were such a constant feature of magazines and modules of that era - this was the way that the GM would out-metagame the players! (Without resorting to cheating.)
No doubt, as [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION] has noted, this all changed in the second half of the 80s and especially the 2nd ed AD&D era. But there were 10 to 15 years of RPGing before then (taking 1974 as a starting date, it's about 10 years if you date it to the Dragonlance modules and about 15 if you date it to 2nd ed AD&D itself).
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On metagame mechanics in Conan RPGing
The DOOM mechanic doesn't make sense. The notion of a character gaining a bonus now but at the price of the rest of the group being penalized later is not a concept that defines Conan's world (or is present in any Howard Conan story).
I think "the rest of the group" is a red herring, given that Conan almost always works solo.
But to the extent that he sometimes has friends - in Tower of the Elephant Conan's "savage instinct" lets him "wheel suddenly" and kill the lion that attacks him; and Taurus later gets poisoned by a giant spider.
In The People of the Black Circle there are multipe similar examples - one I just found involves Conan's Stygian girdle leading the green-robed acolytes to resort to "the whirl of blades", which results in one Irakazai bleeding to death among the rocks.
And looking at solo action - in the Scarlet Citadel Conan has been holding off all comers (mechanicall, perhaps, calling on bonuses and so building up the doom pool), and then is taken down by Tsotha-lanti (perhaps cashing in the doom pool dice eg to make it true, in the fiction, that he has a purple lotus juice ring).
Here's something I worry about, from past experience with game systems that declare story effects.
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When the WD showed a "1*", the GM could totally ignore it as anything special and just count it as a "1" to the total of the roll. The GM could also declare that the WD 1 and the highest other die in the roll be subtracted from the roll, thereby lowering the total. Or, the GM could declare a "complication".
<snip>
I found that the "complication" started more discussions, wasted more time, and ruffled more feathers than what it was worth.
<snip>
We started running out of ideas on what could go wrong with a blaster shot.
<snip>
Then, as GM, I tried to be more story oriented and come up with something more exciting than just a blaster pistol running dry of tibanna gas or having its power cell used up. I decided one time that the "complication" was that the weapon jammed, and the powercell overheated and blew up in the character's hand. Pretty cool, huh? The player didn't think so. He wanted to know why I was picking on him.
<snip>
Finally, I just threw out the possibility of complications all-together. Yeah, on the package is sounded like a neat thing to have in the game. In practice, it didn't work so well.
This sounds like a less-than-optimally designed metagame mechanic, because it doesn't seem to give the GM very good guidance on when to invoke it, and what the result should be.
But it also sounds like an issue of GMing skill and experience.
There is a lot of discussion and advice among RPGers on how to run these sorts of mechanics - mostly under the label "fail forward", although the utility of that discussion and advice can go well beyond "fail forward" in the strict sense.
As far as a Conan-esque game is concerned, complications would include things like the purple lotus juice; having the Argus be sacked by Belit's pirates; having an unexpected rescuer actually want to kill you (I'm thinking of the Scarlet Citadel); etc. One way that all of these differ from what you describe in your Star Wars game is that they are not complications that just mechanically worsen the situation of the player (eg by running out of ammo, or having a gun blow up, or even by shooting out the lights). Rather, they change the situation and its stakes - Conan is captured; Conan is no longer just travelling to Cush fleeing the justice of the city, but is caught up in an intense and dangerous romance with Belit; etc.
If you enjoy (universal "You") the 2d20 system, then, hey, knock yourself out.
I'll still be disappointed in Modiphius that they went with this game system, but I also recognize that some enjoy the hell out of it and are having fun with it.
I think you mean
you're disappointed that they went with it. I assume you're not disappointed
in them - they didn't do anything wrong, that displays moral failing or bad character.
