D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

[FrogReaver]

Sure, but that's exactly what I'm arguing.

Almost all of us have one or two metagame things we excuse because they're useful, or helpful, or "aren't that disruptive", etc. Which is why the word "metagaming"--and the enormous stigma associated with it--really isn't very useful. We forgive metagaming that does something we find worthwhile. We tear into metagaming that doesn't do anything we find worthwhile. For some people, there isn't anything worthwhile to be found there. For some, it's thing A, not B/C/D/etc. For others, it's only B, or B&C, or A&C but pointedly not B, or...etc.

When a thing gets pilloried, but only in the forms one dislikes, the label one uses for it is functionally no different from "I dislike this".

So I agree that the GM can metagame similar to what you describe. He is often encouraged to do just that.

I think what most mean is that they are generally against player metagaming. Nor would showing an instance of them allowing a player metagaming mean they like player metagaming rather than they accept it as being expedient in a lesser if 2 evils way in a very specific set of circumstances.

Yes, people aren’t generally precise in their descriptions but that doesn’t mean they don’t actually dislike the first things that come to their mind as metagaming.

Nor is it clear the purpose of this challenge. I mean, you surely dont believe that showing them instances of metagaming they find toleratable will change their mind about instances they do not. And why should it? We know the general principle guiding their likes here is to play the character authentically and it’s easy to see why player metagaming would impact that authenticness and how metagame knowledge restriction can help ensure that.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

So I agree that the GM can metagame similar to what you describe. He is often encouraged to do just that.

I think what most mean is that they are generally against player metagaming. Nor would showing an instance of them allowing a player metagaming mean they like player metagaming rather than they accept it as being expedient in a lesser if 2 evils way in a very specific set of circumstances.

Yes, people aren’t generally precise in their descriptions but that doesn’t mean they don’t actually dislike the first things that come to their mind as metagaming.

Nor is it clear the purpose of this challenge. I mean, you surely dont believe that showing them instances of metagaming they find acceptable will change their mind about instances they do not. And why should it? We know the general principle guiding their likes here is to play the character authentically and it’s easy to see why player metagaming would impact that authenticness.

My point was that this shows that talking about "metagaming"--using that word--is simply unhelpful. Those who use it intend it to be a boogeyman, something nobody would be willing to touch. But then for those places where, as you say, it's useful enough to accept? They'll either reject calling it that (because they see "metagaming" as inherently horrible, and thus, if something isn't horrible, logically it cannot be metagaming), or they'll raise a challenge to the definition or standard used.

It's simply not productive.

It is more useful to talk about the problem itself, rather than assigning a "THIS IS SUPER BAD Y'ALL" label. And you did the former, here, where you spoke about actions which degrade authenticity, specifically in the sense of "being" one's character. Authenticity is about being in character. Players roleplaying by using knowledge they cannot know in character negatively affects the experience of "each of us is the character we play". Hence, a lot of players (and, even more so, a lot of GMs) dislike anything which has even a whiff of out-of-character knowledge. Others, of course, either do not care much about being "in character" (as bloodtide referenced above), or do not view the game as having a character to "be in" in the first place (that whole "pawn stance" thing).

Rather than getting lost in the weeds of bickering about metagaming and whether something even is metagaming and whether that's a horrible thing or a kinda okay thing or a great thing (or whatever else)...just ditch the "metagaming" part entirely and focus on what is actually the problem. Metagaming isn't the problem. Player actions harmful to IC-authenticity are, for you, the problem in this context.

 

[pemerton]

In terms of designers' intent I agree with that. Even if what @AbdulAlhazred laid out, i.e. that

the overwhelming consideration was, say, Moorcockian order vs chaos. Everything the PCs do will relate to that, every goal they set, and every significant part of the fiction will bear on it. Even the traits and backstory of the characters will be in relation to this single question.​

​

Could be said of Stormbringer. Illustratively, from the 4th edition

Everything has a reason for existing. It is either part of the natural history of the world, or a consequence of the great struggle between Law and Chaos. The ideal atmosphere for the GM to create is that great powers (Law and Chaos) are subtly manipulating their characters to set up the final great confrontation. The best means of doing this is to invest your adventures and campaigns with significance.​

This is a description of "simulationist" play, if that term is used in the sense that Edwards and Tuovinen use it: the GM invests their content (prepared for "story hour" and/or "substantial exploration") with significance. It is not talking about law vs chaos as a premise for "narrativist" play.

The designer seems to downplay the possibility that what would be significant would include addressing premises about Law and Chaos, when they write that their "original idea of how the game should be played" was that

The GM will only use Elric and other Moorcockian characters as background material. For example, the players may be adventuring in Dharijor and hear rumors of the sack of Imrryr from a passing sorcerer. A bunch of wildly different characters might get together to explore Eshmir and other unknown lands of the far east. Characters could find a dimensional gate and find themselves at the End of Time.​

This seems to be a description of "substantial exploration".

The text of the Stormbringer RPG overall -- seems open to choice: does a group want to make it all about addressing premises connected with Law vs. Chaos, or do they want to make it about appreciating The Young Kingdoms? What happens if they want to make it about appreciating the conflict of Law and Chaos? What to my reading is not concretely said by @AbdulAlhazred is how rules might recognisably demand (or encourage) addressing premises over appreciating a situation that contains them?

The issue - of how play of a RPG encourages, or demands, addressing premise over appreciating a situation or a setting or a story - is I think fairly well known now. It's been widely discussed for over 20 years, and many RPGs have been written that exemplify it.

I wondered if you would identify any specific rules in Burning Wheel that demanded or encouraged that "poof, you're out of sim"

The scene framing rules, in combination with "intent and task" resolution and with the rules for player authorship of Beliefs and Instincts.

 

[FrogReaver]

My point was that this shows that talking about "metagaming"--using that word--is simply unhelpful. Those who use it intend it to be a boogeyman, something nobody would be willing to touch. But then for those places where, as you say, it's useful enough to accept? They'll either reject calling it that (because they see "metagaming" as inherently horrible, and thus, if something isn't horrible, logically it cannot be metagaming), or they'll raise a challenge to the definition or standard used.

It's simply not productive.

It is more useful to talk about the problem itself, rather than assigning a "THIS IS SUPER BAD Y'ALL" label. And you did the former, here, where you spoke about actions which degrade authenticity, specifically in the sense of "being" one's character. Authenticity is about being in character. Players roleplaying by using knowledge they cannot know in character negatively affects the experience of "each of us is the character we play". Hence, a lot of players (and, even more so, a lot of GMs) dislike anything which has even a whiff of out-of-character knowledge. Others, of course, either do not care much about being "in character" (as bloodtide referenced above), or do not view the game as having a character to "be in" in the first place (that whole "pawn stance" thing).

Rather than getting lost in the weeds of bickering about metagaming and whether something even is metagaming and whether that's a horrible thing or a kinda okay thing or a great thing (or whatever else)...just ditch the "metagaming" part entirely and focus on what is actually the problem. Metagaming isn't the problem. Player actions harmful to IC-authenticity are, for you, the problem in this context.

But then you’ll eventually have an epiphany and find some instance where I tolerate player action harmful to IC- authenticity and we’ll be right back in this same pattern of what boils down to ‘just use better word to describe what you mean.’ Thus the problem doesn’t go away just because we use different words, we just kick the can down the road so to speak until someone smart decides to challenge our new language on a similar basis as well.

IMO there is no perfect language or perfect way to describe these rather complicated concepts that boil down to essentially weighted value judgements and why we each individually make them.

Finally, something to think about - what other ways than metagaming can a player act that is harmful to IC-authenticity?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

But then you’ll eventually have an epiphany and find some instance where I tolerate player action harmful to IC- authenticity and we’ll be right back in this same pattern of what boils down to ‘just use better word to describe what you mean.’ Thus the problem doesn’t go away just because we use different words, we just kick the can down the road so to speak until someone smart decides to challenge our new language on a similar basis as well.

IMO there is no perfect language or perfect way to describe these rather complicated concepts that boil down to essentially weighted value judgements and why we each individually make them.

Sure, perfect language is impossible. I don't think that means it's now pointless to say "hey, that specific word? that one single specific word you keep using? Yeah that one that gets everyone REALLY worked up and emotional and attacking things totally unrelated to what you actually want to talk about? Maybe...don't use that word, and instead just...say what you mean?"

Finally, something to think about - what other ways than metagaming can a player act that is harmful to IC-authenticity?

Oh, all sorts. Making disruptive comments. I have a player who likes puns, for example. He'll make them on the regular. I don't mind this--I love puns--but at a table where everyone has their "SRS FASE" (as a different friend of mine puts it) on all the time? Such a thing would be incredibly harmful to IC-authenticity without being even the least bit metagame-y. Or, to use a non-awful version of a crappy example people tend to throw around a lot: a character specifically made to be antagonistic to the setting, such as someone asking to play a robot-builder in medieval China or a cloistered cleric in early imperial Rome. That isn't metagaming--the player's bad choice isn't related to gameplay in the least--but it is a consciously disruptive decision. Most other examples would boil down to playing in bad faith, that is, negotiating for a particular position or explicitly agreeing to that position, and then not actually upholding that agreement.

Conversely, it is quite possible for excessive IC-authenticity to be disruptive: "It's what my character would do!" as an excuse for obviously craptacular behavior directed at your fellow players. This is nearly as old as the hobby itself, and is one of the reasons many GMs do not permit characters who are particular alignments, usually Chaotic Evil and Chaotic Neutral, since the former is backstabbing central and the latter is either "mY cHaRaCtEr'S jUsT sO fUn AnD qUiRkY, rIgHt????", or an attempt to still be CE but pretending to be something hard to distinguish from CE because of MaDnEsS!!!! Simply put, if the character is a jerk who would choose to be a jerk to the other characters...hiding behind IC-authenticity to justify that choice is a harmful thing to do in most games. There are of course exceptions (just as there are exceptions to pretty much all of these things), but this is definitely a common pattern of bad player behavior.

 

[FrogReaver]

Sure, perfect language is impossible. I don't think that means it's now pointless to say "hey, that specific word? that one single specific word you keep using? Yeah that one that gets everyone REALLY worked up and emotional and attacking things totally unrelated to what you actually want to talk about? Maybe...don't use that word, and instead just...say what you mean?"

My whole point was that it’s not just that one single word…

If I start describing my preference as wanting ic-authentic play and your play as not providing the ic-authentic play I’m looking for, the reaction I’m going to get is someone really worked up and emotional. In fact the reaction in that instance will probably make this one around metagaming look more like neutrality.

Oh, all sorts. Making disruptive comments. I have a player who likes puns, for example. He'll make them on the regular. I don't mind this--I love puns--but at a table where everyone has their "SRS FASE" (as a different friend of mine puts it) on all the time? Such a thing would be incredibly harmful to IC-authenticity without being even the least bit metagame-y.

I don’t see how this isn’t ic-authentic. But now we are arguing about what ic-authentic entails JUST LIKE we were arguing about what metagaming entailed.

Or, to use a non-awful version of a crappy example people tend to throw around a lot: a character specifically made to be antagonistic to the setting, such as someone asking to play a robot-builder in medieval China or a cloistered cleric in early imperial Rome. That isn't metagaming--the player's bad choice isn't related to gameplay in the least--but it is a consciously disruptive decision.

IMO Choosing what character to play is always a metagame decision.

Most other examples would boil down to playing in bad faith, that is, negotiating for a particular position or explicitly agreeing to that position, and then not actually upholding that agreement.

I’m not sure how bad faith impacts ic-authenticity? Maybe you can elaborate.

Conversely, it is quite possible for excessive IC-authenticity to be disruptive: "It's what my character would do!" as an excuse for obviously craptacular behavior directed at your fellow players. This is nearly as old as the hobby itself, and is one of the reasons many GMs do not permit characters who are particular alignments, usually Chaotic Evil and Chaotic Neutral, since the former is backstabbing central and the latter is either "mY cHaRaCtEr'S jUsT sO fUn AnD qUiRkY, rIgHt????", or an attempt to still be CE but pretending to be something hard to distinguish from CE because of MaDnEsS!!!! Simply put, if the character is a jerk who would choose to be a jerk to the other characters...hiding behind IC-authenticity to justify that choice is a harmful thing to do in most games. There are of course exceptions (just as there are exceptions to pretty much all of these things), but this is definitely a common pattern of bad player behavior.

Yes. If you filter out such characters from the game, then everyone can play their character with IC-authenticity without all that bad stuff.

The notion that every conceivable character must be playable is the wrong notion here, not the ic-authenticity of the actual characters allowed.

 

[clearstream]

This is a description of "simulationist" play, if that term is used in the sense that Edwards and Tuovinen use it: the GM invests their content (prepared for "story hour" and/or "substantial exploration") with significance. It is not talking about law vs chaos as a premise for "narrativist" play.

This seems to be a description of "substantial exploration".

The issue - of how play of a RPG encourages, or demands, addressing premise over appreciating a situation or a setting or a story - is I think fairly well known now. It's been widely discussed for over 20 years, and many RPGs have been written that exemplify it.

The scene framing rules, in combination with "intent and task" resolution and with the rules for player authorship of Beliefs and Instincts.

What feels like less travelled ground in the conversation to hand is

the way in which these games mechanics (rough as they were) helped to achieve a heightened understanding of characters' internal states​

a legacy of embedding character mentality into the mechanics of the game to help us immerse into our characters those games brought to the table that inspired Narrativist designs [Campbell]​

​

I look at how I play Aedhros and Thurgon, and the pleasure that I get from that inhabitation, and think about where it fits in this "simulationist"/"narrativist" contrast. I think I'm mostly on the "out of Sim" side of things, because of a degree of proactivity about emotional thematic issues, but I don't think it's a huge distance that we're talking about here. When it comes to Aedhros, I can almost pin it down to one moment of play [your good self]​

​

To say "poof, you're out of Sim" of course implies that you were in Sim. So while suggesting that

One job of the game mechanics is to provoke and frame proactivity about an emotional issue​

One job of the game mechanics is to represent and demand engagement faithful to the subject [me]​

​

Narrativism seems to choose (or often choose) as its proper subjects problems of the human condition. The orientation looks like dramatic resolution of connected premises.​

Simulationism can focus on human condition... but typically seems interested in something beyond that. Or perhaps is interested in the human condition only in the context of or how it plays out given something beyond it (Planescape could fall into that.) [also me]​

I asked

Does narrativism wind up being a subset of simulationism? Simulationism in the dramatic mode, so to speak?​

[and later, rhetorically] is there no way to recognise a set of rules that would support some set of interests above others? [ditto]​

Other posters wrote

what is discussed on EnWorld generally as 'simulation(ism)' is at best unrelated to Narrativist play goals. Like in our 1KA game we use elements of historical Sengoku politics and whatnot as inputs, but they simply exist like any other fiction to structure play, to create constraints and obstacles, etc. And while our depiction of characters, RP, has authenticity as a constraint as well, we're not really interested in simulating people that might have actually existed in 16th Century Japan. [AbdulAlhazred]​

​

If this (Tuovinen's] blog post is correctly describing the situation system doesn't matter.​

That would explain why the system matters focus of forge failed to grasp the creative agenda, and the current difficulties with "classifying" existing systems.​

The key issue - if this is right curiosity about the system is a valid creative agenda. As such any system is supporting the creative agenda of examining itself as the subject matter.​

I realised that me being very into competative games, narative games and simulations isn't an expression of a split agenda. All of them are fueled by my completely dominating simulationist agenda. [Enrahim]​

​

Using the terms for convenience, the notion that narrativist approaches to play might have been inspired by simulationist approaches, and that a group may segue from one to the other without changing ruleset or campaign, all seems to stand in confirmation of Baker's view that

every RPG, like every other kind of game, is its own. You can taxonomize them if you want, but then you're constructing artificial categories and cramming games into them, not learning or finding out something true about the games themselves.​

you can, if you want, assign a given instance of gameplay to G, N or S more or less consistently, you do so by asserting false similarities and ignoring some true similarities between other instances of gameplay [Baker]​

 

[AlViking]

I think the problem is, who can say what would have happened in a situation, a REAL WORLD situation, that didn't happen. Lets imagine that @pemerton rolled success. What would the GM in that game have said? He would have had a WIDE variety of options. All they would have had in common would be that they involved his character getting what he wanted. Pemerton may or may not think he has some pretty good ideas as to what would have happened, but nobody can say for certain. I guess the GM in that game, maybe?

The guard showing up may have made sense in the fiction of the world. That's not my point. It's that they only showed up because of a failure.

It's not like they failed so The Joker showed up in a van and threw an acidic pie in the face of the character (unless of course the setting is Gotham), it was something that in theory could have happened. Except it only happened because due to a failed roll the GM chose that complication. There is nothing wrong with that. It's not a bad system. I am not doing some "gotcha". It's just that I've been accused of not understanding and rather than just freakin' responding with a simple yes or no, perhaps a clarification. I'm told yet again that I just don't understand. I don't understand because on the rare occasion we get an answer, it's in terms of a game I do not play.

This kind of thing doesn't work in my D&D game for several reasons because it's a different game and I happen to take a different approach. I am not commenting on other games or other people's approaches. I was accused of misrepresenting something and I was trying to understand what my mistake was, if anything. As far as I can tell my only mistake was not liking the approach taken in other games or by other GMs.

 

[The Firebird]

Using the terms for convenience, the notion that narrativist approaches to play might have been inspired by simulationist approaches, and that a group may segue from one to the other without changing ruleset or campaign, all seems to stand in confirmation of Baker's view that

every RPG, like every other kind of game, is its own. You can taxonomize them if you want, but then you're constructing artificial categories and cramming games into them, not learning or finding out something true about the games themselves.​

you can, if you want, assign a given instance of gameplay to G, N or S more or less consistently, you do so by asserting false similarities and ignoring some true similarities between other instances of gameplay [Baker]​

Hey, this Baker fellow has some stuff I agree with

 

[AlViking]

Which is why you ask questions to get the GM to clarify the situatiuon, as and when needed.

Where I'd rather game design - and, more importantly, GM advice - do what it can to fight against this.

You're there to roleplay and-or inhabit a character, right? So isn't it in the better interests of said roleplaying that you-as-player don't have knowledge or information that your character doesn't and can't know, so you can think as your character without the mental overhead of also having to worry about whether or not you're potentially (ab)using said knowledge?

I regularly modify monsters to make them more or less challenging. Every once in a while I tweak monsters just to shake things up a bit, if the sign says beware the dog and you see a Chihuahua with spiked collar don't assume it's just a 1 HP ankle biter for example.

I remember a game once where the trolls gained HP from fire that had been created by an enemy they hadn't met yet. One of the players became upset when fire seemed to be helping the creature and that when they burned it when it dropped to zero it just flared up and reformed. I did make it clear that after the trolls took damage and especially after taking fire damage I made it obvious what was going on. The fire troll still had weaknesses, once they dropped it to 0 anything you would normally do to put out a fire worked as did cold and shocking.

Not something I would do very often, but it does remind players that relying on metagame knowledge can be dangerous. Meanwhile I frequently tell them things I think their character should know so they don't have to worry about whether or not they can act on it. I don't expect perfection of course, I also don't want someone whipping out their copy of their MM and rattling off information.