D&D General Guns, Germs and Metagaming- Is Meta-gaming Meta-bad or Meta-good?

[Wolfpack48]

Yeah. That last bit was meant as a negative. I just wasn't explicit about it.

If we could find a way to allow less socially graceful players to play more socially graceful characters without that same mechanic allowing players to cheese mental and social dump stats, I'd love it.

At the same time players who are capable have to be prevented from cheesing tests just because they don’t like them.

I dislike the cheese to the point where I'd rather not have that regardless of the consequences.

I don’t like to cheese it either but if a socially awkward player wants to play a socially adept character, I’m more than fine with it - i’d actually be pumped. But I’m not going ask them to BE a socially adept person but I would want them to be aware of what a socially adept person can do. There’s not much more you can rely on that the stats and them voicing good ideas. In fact a good idea should outweigh the rolling in most cases.

At the same time it’s necessary to prevent a capable player from cheesing tests simply because they don’t like them.

 

[overgeeked]

Nah. You've got it backwards. I'm telling you that looking at a given gap, wall, or engaging with another fencer and seeing and feeling their speed, I have a better and more immediate sense of my ability to leap the gap, climb the wall, or land a blow than any human being is capable of conveying by verbal description without recourse to math. And so you, if it's any physical task you've practiced with.

This does not match my experience in the slightest. It's not that words are ill suited to the task, it's that we don't have the ability to access ourselves and our skills honestly.

We absolutely disagree that a second party verbally describing can in an RPG context convey the level of physical detail and information you would have if actually present in the scene.

Math is a crude approximation, but it does a superior job to what words can manage.

Exactly the problem. Because in the real world you only ever have the approximation of words. Yet, as a gamer, you want more precise info for the fictional risk than you have for the real risk.

Of course they're more risk averse.

Why would gamers be more risk adverse with their fictional characters than their real bodies?

 

[Wolfpack48]

I have a player who sometimes wants exact distance to things and gets frustrated with anything less than a 3D model of the scene. We always joke that we can’t afford a holodeck. He’s an old war gamer of course and loves battle maps.

 

[Mannahnin]

Exactly the problem. Because in the real world you only ever have the approximation of words. Yet, as a gamer, you want more precise info for the fictional risk than you have for the real risk.

Totally incorrect. In the real world I have my eyes, my proprioception, my whole life's experience of internal data about similar tasks I've performed and about the current performance and capabilities of my body (assuming I'm a physically active person, as our characters generally are). If I'm in the situation I have vastly more data than someone else can verbally convey by description.

You're talking about something closer to making a decision to jump over a (potentially lethal fall distance) pit blindfolded, based on what someone in the next room is giving you for a physical description of the situation.

Why would gamers be more risk adverse with their fictional characters than their real bodies?

They're not. They're quite obviously not.

Why would characters in the fiction risk their lives with MUCH less data about the task they're undertaking than we would use before making such a decision ourselves? I'm still talking about immersion and making decisions in-character here.

 

[overgeeked]

...

I've had disagreements about games, design, preferences, etc on here before. I don't think I've had disagreements about how reality works on such a fundamental level nor of our experiences of reality. Needless to say we're not going to agree on this, so cheers.

 

[overgeeked]

I have a player who sometimes wants exact distance to things and gets frustrated with anything less than a 3D model of the scene. We always joke that we can’t afford a holodeck. He’s an old war gamer of course and loves battle maps.

Yeah, it's a really weird phenomenon. Gamers want far more data and far more precise data than they'd get in reality and yet refuse to make decisions in a game without it. It takes all kinds, but damn is it exhausting.

 

[Gorgon Zee]

This goes back to my comment about chewy. The things I don't like have a common characteristic. Maybe that characteristic should have a better name than metagaming but dissociative mechanics has got even more heat. The D&D boards still look like a low grade nuclear blast zone after all that debate. Saying someone's preferences are arbitrary and don't have some common relationship is what the debate is often about. I believe the mechanics I don't like for the reasons we've been debating all have something in common that the things I don't object to do not. Name it whatever you want.

I will name it “Emrikol’s preferences”. It’s pretty similar to “GorgonZee’s preferences”, but we would definitely not agree on what gaming terms we would apply to those preferences!

For example, we both are quite happy with hit points. I think, based on your posts, you can think about hit points from a character point of view; it makes sense to you for a character to think “I am halfway to unconsciousness”. For me, hit points are a highly dissociative mechanism. In real life, I have never though about my health on a simple scale so whenever hit points are discussed (basically always!) it’s always an out-of-character thought. But I’m happy with that as it’s a degree of abstraction that makes the game more fun. So for me, hit points are one of the many things I consider as a player skill tool. If I’m on 8 hp and the GM rolls 2d8 damage for it, I figure I’m likely to go down, thinking from a player skill perspective. Since I don’t jump between thought process in my mind, that gets translated to a character decision that I am seriously winded, actually injured, bleeding, poisoned, dazed, or whatever I invent to make HP have a mapping into the character’s world at that point.

And I also think you could do a test of people with my thinking and you'd get consistent results for people of that particular mindset. Which means it's not whimsical choice.

Well, that’s actually a tautology. But I do think the size of that group would be high. But again, even if they agree on what they like doesn’t mean they’ll agree on whether they think they are immersive, meta or whatever other label they might apply.

And honestly I don't know why people want to force it to be mere taste based on nothing.

Based on our posts, I think we 95% like the same sort of stuff in our games.
Based on our posts, we maybe 50% agree on systems of categorizing them.
We really don’t agree on what breaks immersion for us.

So I am left with the position that I think we could game together, have fun and enjoy the game but mostly disagree about why we liked it. So it is very hard for me to say that there is any form of basis for our likes other than that we like the same sorts of things.

 

[VashVet]

And honestly I don't know why people want to force it to be mere taste based on nothing.

Maybe because breaking it down to being about differences in taste is less divisive? As soon as a big honking label is put on something, such as metagaming, then the actual differences in the way people play don’t get discussed - it becomes about debating the label.

 

[damiller]

I kinda like metagaming in my gaming, and chocolate too, also peanut butter.

In fact, I like to leverage it as dramatic irony in my games.

FREX: In my Marvel game the players discovered the Celestial Arishem under the facade of a giant tower (see attached pic I drew). Of course Arishem is the judger of worlds. Holds out hand in a cosmic thumbs up or thumbs down (with corresponding consequences). Well. The players knew Arishem's schtick was/is/forever shall be amen, but the characters do not. Then Arishem was reduced to ashes by a blast, and fell down, only to reveal a small child - a baby judge (aren't they all?)

Anyway here's the metagaming/dramatic irony - meta irony?

They have this kid with them, this kid got pissed off after being shot with a shot gun (understandable I think) and held out her hand, clenched her fist, and was going to give a well deserved thumbs down to the shooter.

Now the players know what this means, but the characters don't.

I guess my point is, I like metagaming like this.

I enjoy a dramatic irony sandwich. a dramwich? dramirowich? a sandramony?

Anyway, yum.

 

[overgeeked]

I kinda like metagaming in my gaming, and chocolate too, also peanut butter.

In fact, I like to leverage it as dramatic irony in my games.

FREX: In my Marvel game the players discovered the Celestial Arishem under the facade of a giant tower (see attached pic I drew). Of course Arishem is the judger of worlds. Holds out hand in a cosmic thumbs up or thumbs down (with corresponding consequences). Well. The players knew Arishem's schtick was/is/forever shall be amen, but the characters do not. Then Arishem was reduced to ashes by a blast, and fell down, only to reveal a small child - a baby judge (aren't they all?)

Anyway here's the metagaming/dramatic irony - meta irony?

They have this kid with them, this kid got pissed off after being shot with a shot gun (understandable I think) and held out her hand, clenched her fist, and was going to give a well deserved thumbs down to the shooter.

Now the players know what this means, but the characters don't.

I guess my point is, I like metagaming like this.

I enjoy a dramatic irony sandwich. a dramwich? dramirowich? a sandramony?

Anyway, yum.View attachment 449547

You drew that? Fantastic stuff.