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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6632589" data-attributes="member: 4937">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.</blockquote>

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