Out-of-character/metagame knowledge

[hawkeyefan]

One non-traditional way is to have the player write the call-to-action for their PC.

The traditional way in Classic Traveller is to have the players roll for a patron encounter (throw 5+ on one die, or 4+ if you have Carousing-1+, checking once per week). The players still have metagame knowledge, but it's a bit narrower than the examples I gave in the OP - in the fiction that patron quickly reveals that they are looking to hire a team of "specialists", and the players' knowledge that there won't be another patron encounter check for a week corresponds at least roughly to the character's knowledge that the number of patrons (ie people with ready cash to pay freelancers to do weird things) is finite.

I tend to share hawkeyefan's preference for some sort of immediacy over the slow drawing in.

The Heart RPG has a pretty great bit of advice for GMs: don't be coy.

I think there's a lot to be said about establishing a clear direction instead of trying to slowly tease out information in an attempt to woo the players into taking action. In Heart, the PCs are all "delvers"; they're all people who go exploring in the tear in reality that is called the Heart. So that's what the game's about. It's a clear premise and it is baked in, and you can just get to it rather than trying to entice players to engage.

But other than the initial premise, the game does something else and it offers "Beats" to each of the players. These are a list of achievements or goals for the players, and every session they'll pick two active ones to try and complete in order to gain an advance. So the players are constantly selecting their goals of play, and the GM is meant to incorporate those choices into the events of play whenever possible.

The GM is responding to the players' prompts rather than the players responding to his.

I think I previously mentioned this and you cited the similarity to the Marvel Heroic RPG; I've since heard Grant Howitt, one of the designers of Heart, confirm that's exactly where he got it from.

So there's some initial constraint at the start of play.... PCs will be delvers who explore the Heart... but then once you get going, the players are going to be choosing their own goals regularly during play. There doesn't need to be the "hook" of having the sage show up and drop his papers or anything like that.

 

[Jer]

I'm less concerned about the people breaking those conventions. I'm more talking about the people observing those conventions. Those conventions are similar to the ones in the lead post.

* This overly conspicuous NPC is dropping papers everywhere > I'm supposed to follow breadcrumbs > I follow breadcrumbs

But is this a problem? It depends on the kind of game the table wants to play. If you're playing an investigative game and you've all bought in on an investigative game then it is yes a type of #4 metagaming, but it's "accepting the premise" metagaming rather than rejecting it. The time to reject the premise is when the game is proposed, not once you've started in on the game. Rejecting the premise once you've agreed to play is just being a jerk.

Personally I'd argue that in fact once you accept that you're doing an investigative game you're following the rules of the game by playing into those tropes rather than fighting them - deciding to not follow up on them because "that would be metagaming" is deciding you don't want to play the game. It's like agreeing to play Clue and then not showing the other players your cards when you have them and never making any accusations - if you don't want to play that game just say no before the game starts.

And if you haven't bought into the investigative game and the GM is running one, then the table has done a lousy job of communicating desires to each other and that's a separate problem.

* I feel like I'm not authentically playing my PC if I acquiesce to this other PC in this moment (which might be about a dramatic need or about keeping the party together) > Someone has to compromise > I'll compromise

Again, while this is metagaming in the sense that it's outside of the rules as laid down by the game, it's not something that should actually be coming up regularly in play if players are accepting the premise of the game they're playing. IMO this is something that needs to be broached when the campaign starts and ground rules set. If you have a game where everyone has their own goals and everyone knows that sometimes those goals will be at odds and folks have bought into that then great - you have no conflict here, act as you want in character (this is in fact how my table of old people sometimes wants to run games, sometimes not - yeah you might get stabbed in the back by a sudden heel turn, but it's fun sometimes to watch the heel turn happen). If you explicitly have rules in place that there's no PvP then it's time for out of character resolutions to this and explaining to Bob why you don't think your character would back down - as my mother would say "it takes two to tango" in an argument like that and Bob is potentially equally needs to consider compromising (this is how I run games for the kids I run for - where I'm wearing a Dad hat in addition to a GM hat and have to make sure siblings aren't clawing each others eyes out). Yes it's absolutely metagaming in the sense that it's outside of the game itself so it's "meta", but this kind of social dynamic is already outside of the rules as written anyway. These are rules that the tables impose on themselves either (preferrably for me ) explicitly or (more dangerously IMO) implicitly.

Unlike the first example (which yeah is metagaming under the category 4 that I listed), this kind of thing just feels of a different piece from the others that I think about when I think of metagaming - these kinds of considerations are far more important and far more fundamental to having a good game experience IMO than any of the other things I list as metagaming. And so to me it almost trivializes the potential problems that can arise to lump these in under the title of metagaming. Also since as I said I think these kinds of rules need to be explicit rather than implicit that also moves them in my eyes away from the "meta" tag - they're rules that the group has agreed to play under, so they're just as much a part of the game and the flavor of the game as what dice mechanic gets used or how the perception skill works.

 

[hawkeyefan]

You seem to me to be talking about type 4 metagaming here - and it's a very narrow group of people who get upset about it. Because for most games it literally is not a problem - in fact it's a benefit if the players play to the tropes of the game because another term for "playing to the tropes" is "accepting the premise" of the game. If I know that I'm in a game of X-Files conspiracy horror I'm going to accept that premise and play the game instead of doing what I'd do in a world simulation which is reject the premise and not go along because I'm a serious FBI agent who doesn't have time to truck with aliens and other nonsense. If I'm playing in a game of dungeon exploration I'm going to follow up on dungeon exploration hooks because I'm accepting the premise of the game we're playing rather than doing what I'd do in a world simulation - which is probably find a safe job somewhere that doesn't involve exploring tunnels full of monsters. Even in an open world sandbox game you're playing adventurers looking for adventure and pretending that the hooks aren't really hooks is basically rejecting the premise of the game.

I think your breakdown of different metagame categories is interesting. And your #4 is perhaps the least direct. But I don't know if it's all that uncommon.

I also don't think it's a problem. For many groups, having a hook like a mage dropping his notes all over which catches their eye and then leads them to the adventure is perfectly fine. It implies at least some level of path to be followed, though, which many folks claim is unwanted, although I don't think that's always the case. Many players will sit down at a game and see the "Wild Beyond the Witchlight" book sitting there, and they'll know they're supposed to engage with that adventure.

I've had a kind of interesting experience with this in my weekly D&D 5e game. We've been rotating GMs every so often, so each of us has taken a turn and kind of run an adventure or a series of scenarios, and then handed it off to the next person to take over. We play online and by theater of the mind. So far, the focus of play has been the home town of the PCs' and their efforts to defend it and their people. The most recent GM has kind of veered away from that by deciding to incorporate the Wild Beyond the Witchlight book.

Many of the players aren't following current releases and so on, so they didn't realize that coming across the Witchlight Carnival was an indication that we were heading into prepped adventure territory. Because we're playing online and theater of the mind, there were no visual cues like a book or handouts or maps that indicated prepped adventure. I recognized it right away, but didn't say anything. It was interesting to see how different players struggled to engage with what was happening. They didn't realize there was a prepared adventure, and the elements were so far removed from what we were doing, that it started to bog down. Essentially, the GM was kind of throwing out hooks and the players weren't realizing they were hooks, and so things weren't really going anywhere.

So I chimed in and said "This is the Wilds Beyond the Witchlight adventure, right?" and the GM confirmed. Once that happened, the players started biting the hooks. It was like they could now see the structure of play, and so they knew how to proceed. It was kind of amazing.

Again, nothing wrong with that kind of play at all. But I don't think that preferring something different, or at least asking if there can be a different method, is about folks who don't want to engage with play. I was a player in this game, and although I'm not crazy about Wilds Beyond the Witchlight, I'm happy to keep going and see it through. A couple sessions after the initial rockiness, and we're now having fun.

But if someone wanted to approach play from a different way, how can they do so?

 

[Manbearcat]

I think your breakdown of different metagame categories is interesting. And your #4 is perhaps the least direct. But I don't know if it's all that uncommon.

I also don't think it's a problem. For many groups, having a hook like a mage dropping his notes all over which catches their eye and then leads them to the adventure is perfectly fine. It implies at least some level of path to be followed, though, which many folks claim is unwanted, although I don't think that's always the case. Many players will sit down at a game and see the "Wild Beyond the Witchlight" book sitting there, and they'll know they're supposed to engage with that adventure.

I've had a kind of interesting experience with this in my weekly D&D 5e game. We've been rotating GMs every so often, so each of us has taken a turn and kind of run an adventure or a series of scenarios, and then handed it off to the next person to take over. We play online and by theater of the mind. So far, the focus of play has been the home town of the PCs' and their efforts to defend it and their people. The most recent GM has kind of veered away from that by deciding to incorporate the Wild Beyond the Witchlight book.

Many of the players aren't following current releases and so on, so they didn't realize that coming across the Witchlight Carnival was an indication that we were heading into prepped adventure territory. Because we're playing online and theater of the mind, there were no visual cues like a book or handouts or maps that indicated prepped adventure. I recognized it right away, but didn't say anything. It was interesting to see how different players struggled to engage with what was happening. They didn't realize there was a prepared adventure, and the elements were so far removed from what we were doing, that it started to bog down. Essentially, the GM was kind of throwing out hooks and the players weren't realizing they were hooks, and so things weren't really going anywhere.

So I chimed in and said "This is the Wilds Beyond the Witchlight adventure, right?" and the GM confirmed. Once that happened, the players started biting the hooks. It was like they could now see the structure of play, and so they knew how to proceed. It was kind of amazing.

Again, nothing wrong with that kind of play at all. But I don't think that preferring something different, or at least asking if there can be a different method, is about folks who don't want to engage with play. I was a player in this game, and although I'm not crazy about Wilds Beyond the Witchlight, I'm happy to keep going and see it through. A couple sessions after the initial rockiness, and we're now having fun.

But if someone wanted to approach play from a different way, how can they do so?

This is a beautiful example of what I'm talking about.

Its almost like this brand of metagaming is offloaded onto automaticity for your fellow players the same way we do with other rote activities like driving to work/school etc everyday (your consciousness doesn't even engage...your unconscious mind just does the thing). You guys are friends so this isn't on the jerk/not jerk axis. Its on the structure/conceit alignment axis. Its like giving someone some paints, a brush, and a canvass and an abstract premise...and then applying a paint-by-number overlay on the canvass after they struggle to put brush to medium.

Wandering aimlessly while ignorant to conceits and structure of play > conceits and structure suddenly made overt > reorient your play now that its reified by structure.

 

[Jer]

But if someone wanted to approach play from a different way, how can they do so?

I'm going to make a controversial statement - I don't think you can. I think players need to know the ground expectations of the game they're playing in order to engage with it appropriately. They need that level of metagame knowledge in order to just know what the expectations are and what they should be trying to do.

Say you're playing what we might think is the opposite of the Wilds Beyond Witchlight in an adventure format - a complete sandbox game where the GM is expecting the players to decide what to do and where to go and is going to improvise from their choices to a large degree. There are no adventure hooks per se, just places like a tavern where the PCs can go to hear rumors, some other areas in town that they can go to try to chat up locals, and some sites on a map that the GM has for their own use that are the "fixed" encounters that the PCs might stumble across. But you as a GM aren't going to be presenting them with opportunities, they need to go find them.

If you don't tell the players that's the kind of game you are running they are probably going to be lost with how to engage with the game (unless that's the type of game they usually play). They have to have some level of meta-game knowledge to know that they should be looking for their own adventures. Even back when I ran the game that way when I was younger, new people picking up the game had to be told what the game was in order to be able to engage with it. That's metagame knowledge sure, but it's something I don't think you can do without in a TTRPG. Or at least if you do you're probably going to be a lot more frustrated with it than if you just had it explained up front.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I'm going to make a controversial statement - I don't think you can. I think players need to know the ground expectations of the game they're playing in order to engage with it appropriately. They need that level of metagame knowledge in order to just know what the expectations are and what they should be trying to do.

Say you're playing what we might think is the opposite of the Wilds Beyond Witchlight in an adventure format - a complete sandbox game where the GM is expecting the players to decide what to do and where to go and is going to improvise from their choices to a large degree. There are no adventure hooks per se, just places like a tavern where the PCs can go to hear rumors, some other areas in town that they can go to try to chat up locals, and some sites on a map that the GM has for their own use that are the "fixed" encounters that the PCs might stumble across. But you as a GM aren't going to be presenting them with opportunities, they need to go find them.

If you don't tell the players that's the kind of game you are running they are probably going to be lost with how to engage with the game (unless that's the type of game they usually play). They have to have some level of meta-game knowledge to know that they should be looking for their own adventures. Even back when I ran the game that way when I was younger, new people picking up the game had to be told what the game was in order to be able to engage with it. That's metagame knowledge sure, but it's something I don't think you can do without in a TTRPG. Or at least if you do you're probably going to be a lot more frustrated with it than if you just had it explained up front.

Well, I think there are degrees involved. Prior to the current GM deciding to bring Witchlight into it, the game had been entirely homebrewed, and the players were largely designating the focus of play based on the accumulating fiction.....we had made friends and rivals and there were possible threats and goals, so we were able to say something like "next week I think we need to take out the Vultures" or "I think we need to speak to the duchess and try and get her support" and that's what play would be about. The GM then had a good idea where to focus his prep or at least had a starting point to work with.

So I think in that sense, the shift was a bit jarring. We went from setting our own agenda based on prior results of play to the GM having a bunch of new NPCs basically dangling hooks. At one point, one of my buddies even said something like "I don't want to get bogged down with these side-quests". But then once he realized the "side-quests" were "THE quest", he was able to get on board. It was an odd phenomenon. Across the group, there was a mix of acceptance and resignation... but I'd say acceptance won out. Out of the whole group, I'm probably the most sensitive to this and as I said above, I was willing to go along with it and I'm having fun. Not what I'd choose if I had free reign, but I'm perfectly fine with it.

I don't know if I agree with you that because the players are aware that there's a structure to play that means that you can't eliminate or at least reduce the meta aspect of the way they engage with that structure. Certainly even the loosest of RPGs has some kind of structure to it.... or else it would just be collective monologuing. There are rules and processes and all of that. I don't think it's that there is a structure that's the issue, but how the players are to engage with that structure... what that structure allows or enables, or restricts, is what's the issue, I'd say.

 

[Malmuria]

I've read a lot of complaints about several of the published 5e adventures that the PCs don't have organic reasons to pursue quests and stay interested in the main action, nor is there a compelling reason that they should be the ones to handle a given threat (which I guess is sort of a FR setting problem). So instead of RPing character choices, the question always comes down to, "do you want to play dnd tonight or not?" It's possible to lean on that buying-into-premise too much.

On the other hand knowing that you are playing an AP and buying into the premise is metagaming of one sort, and secretly reading the entire adventure beforehand is also metagaming, but I would assume most tables would have issues with the latter and not the former.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I've read a lot of complaints about several of the published 5e adventures that the PCs don't have organic reasons to pursue quests and stay interested in the main action, nor is there a compelling reason that they should be the ones to handle a given threat (which I guess is sort of a FR setting problem). So instead of RPing character choices, the question always comes down to, "do you want to play dnd tonight or not?" It's possible to lean on that buying-into-premise too much.

On the other hand knowing that you are playing an AP and buying into the premise is metagaming of one sort, and secretly reading the entire adventure beforehand is also metagaming, but I would assume most tables would have issues with the latter and not the former.

I disagree, although this is trotted out often. Metagaming is, definitionally, thinking of the game as a game and making decisions based on that framework. It's been blurred into the roleplaying aspect as representing in-character thinking in ways not justifiable to the GM (maybe the other players, but primarily the GM) as matching what the GM thinks your character should think. This is somewhat adjacent to metagaming but isn't quite. Still, close enough. However, outright flaunting of expected norms of behavior isn't really metagaming, even though it happens outside the game and has aspects in it's application that could be metagaming. It's just being a jerk. When we put being a jerk on the spectrum of metagaming, then we're effectively saying that there's a little bit of that end of the spectrum the bleeds through the rest -- that metagaming is at least associated with being a jerk and cheating and whathaveyou. I find that this poisons discussion.

 

[Guest 7034872]

Maybe I'm just weird in this respect, but PC metagaming doesn't really bother me much; it never has.

So long as they're all invested in the game and having fun, I don't mind players having player-to-player conversations instead of strictly character-to-character conversations. Anyone who's taken an acting class knows it can be exhausting to make oneself stay in character for hours on end, and D&D is not supposed to be exhausting (or at least not for the players, it isn't): it's supposed to be fun.

It is not my place as DM to decide how they define "fun."

 

[pemerton]

In a friend's long-running setting, "Recruit a party of adventurers" is an accepted way of dealing with problems in the somewhat unstable metaphysics of the world.

This looks a bit like the Traveller approach I described upthread.

In a Pendragon campaign in a mythic style, for example, the PCs expect that they will interact with the magical and religious forces that have created the somewhat-enchanted Kingdom of Logres. They need to do the right things, in terms of their loyalties, ethics and honour, to keep the kingdom from falling. Having meaningful adventures is what knights are for.

I don't play Pendragon but I play and love Prince Valiant, and it is a lot like this too. It is more vignette than adventure based (hopefully that contrast makes sense) but as you say, for a knight entering a clearing and having to joust another knight (or similar) is just the part of the nature of being a knight.