Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 6114222" data-attributes="member: 6696971">Metagame literally means "beyond the game (world)".  It is not a binary concept.  It is a continuum.  Something may be "all metagame" or (virtually) "0 metagame", but that doesn't mean that there is not a sliding scale between the two.Accessing, referencing or leveraging the metagame as a verb means to eschew in-setting (game world), causal logic to one degree or another in order to handle or legitimize some aspect of play; effect/outcome primacy over the primacy of granular process simulation from 1st person perspective in the game world.  This is why abstractions are bound into the determination of something "accesses or references" the metagame.  Hit Points are the original metagame tool.  They are, at their most basic, "plot armor" and this conceptually has no place in the game world.  They are first and foremost a means to propagate protagonism in the gameworld in a fun, simple, mechanical way.  The simple is the abstraction; it minimizes table handling time thus speeding up play.  However, as a result, if you push them too hard, you will find all sorts of in-world wonkiness that makes absolutely no sense because the 2nd and 3rd order interactions of HPs with the game-world are unintended consequences of the gross abstraction for the sake of ease of use in standard, 1st order play; eg, orc hits me with a sword and I "take" 8 HP damage and die at full HPs versus I achieve terminal velocity and smack the ground and survive with 100 % efficacy at full HPs.We had a conversation about "slide" above.  The word "slide" is purely metagame; the word itself only has meaning to the people at the table such that they may have shared language to facilitate play.  However, conceptually, it can have as much process simulation primacy as you allow it; as I attempted to relay its in-game world application.  In real life, when "sliding" takes place, we use language such as "wrong-footing", "juked", "faked out", "pulled the string", "broke your ankles", "you lost your jockstrap", "played you like a fiddle", "ring control" etc to describe the interaction between martial actors that "sliding" facilitates.  Vernacular like that would take place in the game world between the same actors to describe the phenomenon they are witnessing or involved with.In a pure Gamist Agenda where your primary concern is accepting and defeating challenges, accessing the metagame comes in the way of strategic and tactical decision-making that may be partially or fully unrelated to what could legitimately be interpreted as a decision that stemmed from the Character in the Situation in the Setting.  For instance:  Bob the Fighter has 121 HPs.  Bob personally has no concept of his HPs; when he loses them there may be something internal to Bob (fatigue, a scratch or bruise, "just-missed" due to Bob's skill) Bob happening that he can reference or nothing (manifest destiny/plot armor, luck, divine intervention).  Bob is at the top of a mountain, facing down 5 giants after attaining the McGuffin.  He estimates a 50 % chance of death here.  Not so good.  Bob knows that he can jump off the side of the mountain and survive at 100 % clip due to the 20d6 threshold for terminal velocity.  Better odds.  Bob jumps from the precipice, falling 10000 feet to the ground, suffering 67 damage, gets up, brushes himself off and whistles Dixie as he casually walks away, McGuffin in hand."Marking" much like "Sliding" requires matching of the game language to what is actually happening in the fiction.  Marking is a Hockey Defenseman sitting in the hip pocket of the Forward or Center who is just outside the crease looking for a pass or an opportunity for a deflection or a putback on a rebound.  That Defenseman is "marking" that offensive player, protecting his goalie (and his goal) from the threat of a clean, free, weak-side defender.  He physically jousts for position to keep him away from the opportunity of getting his stick on a puck for a deflection.  He ties up his stick to keep him from getting a wrist shot off on a pass or a clean swipe at a rebound off the goalie.  And if a pass makes it through or a rebound is available, such that the offensive player now has legitimate "control of the puck" (such that there will be no penalty) and decides to "attack the goalie/goal", the Defenseman plants him on the ice.  That is "marking" in action in the world...the same way Fighters do it in world.  There are multiple analogs in American Football and Basketball with Defenders and Offenders.I have spent my entire life playing sports at every level of play (except for professional).  "Marking" and "Sliding" (forced movement) requires considerably less metagame leveraging to make sense of than HPs, saving throws versus Rod/Staff/Wand and XP as gold ever will.  Martial Encounter Powers are much more overtly metagame mechanics.  Martial Dailies more overtly metagame still.  These are mechanics that let mundane/martial players move from actor stance to author stance (and sometimes director stance) and impose their will upon the fiction by amping up the cool.  Post-hoc narrative justification will be contrived to make sense of the fictional positioning but at their core, these abilities are effects/outcome primacy over process simulation primacy.  And this is a beloved feature of 4th edition for martial players and GMs who want martial players to have the same narrative authority/fiat as spellcasters have historically had "because magic".</blockquote>

Verification