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Let's Talk About Metagaming!
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<blockquote data-quote="The Crimson Binome" data-source="post: 6633695" data-attributes="member: 6775031"><p>I disagree. Gaming is using rules to affect other rules, as is done in Monopoly or Risk. You could play D&D as a board game, without making any mention of a story, although it might not be very entertaining.</p><p></p><p>Storytelling is when the story is shaped directly from the story, without any rules interaction. You don't <em>need</em> any rules to tell a story.</p><p></p><p>Roleplaying games are in an interesting place. What a roleplaying game <em>is</em>, in a traditional sense, is a means for converting story into mechanics - for the purpose of resolution - so you can translate that back into story and figure out what happens. You have a story goal, like wanting to stab something until it dies, and the rules tell you how to <em>model</em> stabbing something in order to impartially determine <em>if</em> it dies.</p><p></p><p>Metagaming is when the resolution is directly affected by the story, without going through the rules to get there. Metagaming is widely considered to be a bad thing, (though most will admit that there's a time and place where it's acceptable).</p><p></p><p>To use your example, of someone who wants to kill the bone dragon, the game rules <em>tell us</em> how to model that lance striking the dragon, in order to determine what effect it has. The GM might think that it's not going to be very effective, but since this isn't a storytelling exercise, we can't skip right to the narration. Instead, we use the game rules to model the attack and damage against the monster, calculating whatever resistances it might have, and then translate that damage result back into its meaningful narration.</p><p></p><p>If the GM thinks that the attack should be ineffective, but the game rules say that the dragon is going down, then that's a problem. The GM is meta-gaming here, by trying to apply story-level resolutions directly to the mechanics of the attack. Instead, the proper resolution is to model that the dragon has Damage Reduction against Piercing attacks (or whatever language the system happens to use), so that the mechanical interaction will resolve into the story resolution that makes sense for everyone.</p><p></p><p>If the GM <em>says</em> that impaling attacks should be ineffective against a bone dragon, but then uses the rules to resolve it and there's nothing to mechanically represent that the attack is less effective, then the GM is flat-out lying - the statement, that impaling attacks are ineffective against a bone dragon, is simply not true.</p><p></p><p>And there's no reason why the GM should ever have to lie like that. The GM has control over what the exact stats are for every monster. The GM can go ahead and add in a resistance (or even immunity) against stabbing attacks. Until doing so, though, the player and the character can go ahead and stab that bone dragon, because it is a <em>truth</em> within the game world that stabbing is a fully effective method of attacking this monster.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="The Crimson Binome, post: 6633695, member: 6775031"] I disagree. Gaming is using rules to affect other rules, as is done in Monopoly or Risk. You could play D&D as a board game, without making any mention of a story, although it might not be very entertaining. Storytelling is when the story is shaped directly from the story, without any rules interaction. You don't [I]need[/I] any rules to tell a story. Roleplaying games are in an interesting place. What a roleplaying game [I]is[/I], in a traditional sense, is a means for converting story into mechanics - for the purpose of resolution - so you can translate that back into story and figure out what happens. You have a story goal, like wanting to stab something until it dies, and the rules tell you how to [I]model[/I] stabbing something in order to impartially determine [I]if[/I] it dies. Metagaming is when the resolution is directly affected by the story, without going through the rules to get there. Metagaming is widely considered to be a bad thing, (though most will admit that there's a time and place where it's acceptable). To use your example, of someone who wants to kill the bone dragon, the game rules [I]tell us[/I] how to model that lance striking the dragon, in order to determine what effect it has. The GM might think that it's not going to be very effective, but since this isn't a storytelling exercise, we can't skip right to the narration. Instead, we use the game rules to model the attack and damage against the monster, calculating whatever resistances it might have, and then translate that damage result back into its meaningful narration. If the GM thinks that the attack should be ineffective, but the game rules say that the dragon is going down, then that's a problem. The GM is meta-gaming here, by trying to apply story-level resolutions directly to the mechanics of the attack. Instead, the proper resolution is to model that the dragon has Damage Reduction against Piercing attacks (or whatever language the system happens to use), so that the mechanical interaction will resolve into the story resolution that makes sense for everyone. If the GM [I]says[/I] that impaling attacks should be ineffective against a bone dragon, but then uses the rules to resolve it and there's nothing to mechanically represent that the attack is less effective, then the GM is flat-out lying - the statement, that impaling attacks are ineffective against a bone dragon, is simply not true. And there's no reason why the GM should ever have to lie like that. The GM has control over what the exact stats are for every monster. The GM can go ahead and add in a resistance (or even immunity) against stabbing attacks. Until doing so, though, the player and the character can go ahead and stab that bone dragon, because it is a [I]truth[/I] within the game world that stabbing is a fully effective method of attacking this monster. [/QUOTE]
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