Why do you hate meta-gaming? (And what does it mean to you?)

[Maxperson]

Bonus points if you can avoid conflating meta-gaming with cheating or implausible narration, which I already realize are genuinely undesirable things for most (if not all) role-players.

Bonus points if you avoid calling metagaming what it is? Meh, not interested in playing that game.

 

[delericho]

And this I'd call sheer nonsense.

I was actually agreeing with you. But by all means rant away.

 

[cmad1977]

'Meta-gaming' is what people say when they want to feel superior to another player who is 'doing it wrong'.

 

[kalil]

Meta-gaming is a form of cheating, typically accomplished by means of improbable character narration. I fail to see the point of the OP.

 

[Bedrockgames]

In my experience most claims about metagaming come from DMs being precious about their worlds, their cliche'd surprises and cheap knockoff plots. It's the petulance of the naked emperor. .

I actually encounter concerns about meta gaming from my players. For them, they like to enforce it among themselves and it seems important to them. I don't usually do much about it as a GM. Your statement feels like a straw man and a tad angry. I am sure there are GMs out there who use meta gaming concerns as a cudgel. But I don't doubt that it is a thing and for some it decreases enjoyment of play if it goes unchecked.

 

[Gorgon Zee]

Metagaming examples that seem too mild to call cheating, yet make the game less fun:

"We're playing a Living Module and the XP budget only allows so much, so that dragon cannot be real. I ignore it and attack the other guy"

"Although my character has no knowledge of aboleths, I do, so I stay at the back and let the other players charge it"

"I read about Tomb of Horrors online, so I'll let the others climb into that mouth and not die myself"

"The Gm knows that the young kid playing the druid will get super-upset when their animal companion gets hurt, so we'll use it to scout ahead"

etc., etc.

In all cases, these are often unvoiced thoughts. I've seen them ALL as a player and as a DM (an equivalent for the ToH example) and although not worth hate, per se, extreme dislike is warranted.

 

[Nagol]

There are a variety of types/purposes of meta-gaming.

1. Monitoring the status of the group and adjusting behaviour/actions according to the group mood. This is typically beneficial unless the player is a Richard at which point it becomes very annoying to others at the table as any lapse of attention leads to theft attempts, shared camaraderie is broken, etc..
   
2. Using "real world knowledge" inside the game (for example trying to make gunpowder, nitric acid, or setting up a man-trap). The scare quotes are because I've often found the truth value in such "knowledge" is limited. Some riddles, tricks, and traps rely of this form of meta-gaming to find their solution. Other than those examples though, this form of meta-gaming annoys me as DM. If X was so easy to invest a random layman could do so, I'd have included it in the setting.
   
3. Using knowledge of the game world not gained legitimately through play. See Lanefan's example of going through the same adventure, above. Another example is the player who memorised the Monster Manual and his first level character instantly identifies and rhymes off the expected hp, AC, and weaknesses of all encountered creatures. Since at its base D&D is a game of exploration -- both for the PC and the player, this can become problematic and frustrating for others at the table. A light version of this becomes somewhat expected as experienced tables. The 5-year player is not going to be surprised to see a troll start to heal in the middle of the fight, for example and while it may be a bit of a stretch to immediately to applying fire to the creature, but it is reasonably plausible conclusion that most experienced tables accept to move the game along.

 

[Nytmare]

I think that it's silly to claim that it's a myth. But I also think that it has several definitions that have grown to span a range of different behaviors and meanings.

The first time I heard the term used, it was in a series of different wargame tournaments at Gencon. There was a big to do because people found out that a circle of players playing in several different tournaments were participating in win trading to ensure that specific people would make it to the final rounds of the different tournies.

Everybody disagreed over whether or not it was wrong. Some people thought that it was wrong because it was going against the spirit of the tournament. It wasn't about finding out who was the best at playing the game. You could be the best player and not make it anywhere near the finals because somebody else rigged it so that the only people in the final rounds were people who hadn't even played a single game. It wasn't fair, and ruined the experience for the people who had shown up wanting to play things the "right" way.

Some people thought it was great. Someone was smart enough to find a hole in the system and exploit it. They were clever and it served the people who were running the tournaments right for not being smart enough to come up with a better set of rules.

I think that in the broadest sense, metagaming is the difference between playing the rules of the game vs playing by the rules of the game. On top of that, I think that metagaming only becomes a problem when the metagamer starts treading on the toes of the people who thought that everyone had agreed to play the same game. Sometimes that takes the form a of player knowing that a troll is susceptible to fire, sometimes it's someone knowing that there's a secret panel in room 4 that has a magic flute that you can use to lull the Grubreaper to sleep at location 17 because they bought the adventure so that they could look smarter than everyone else.

As to whether or not it's right or wrong is up to the group and the situation and too many other variables to bother arguing about. That being said however, I think that a lot of people use the term (much like "railroad") as a knee jerk insult to try to prove that their side of an argument is right.

 

[Lord Twig]

Metagaming is certainly a real thing, but it is not a horrible crime that requires severe punishment. It is just something that needs to be agreed upon by the group that is playing the game.

How much out of character is acceptable to the group? I would say that most groups frown on reading the adventure in advance, but knowledge of monsters from the Monster Manual is fairly well accepted. But there are shades of grey for both. For example, do you allow someone to play if they have already played the adventure and they promise not to give away spoilers? Or are they not allowed at all? Is all monster knowledge allowed? Or is some knowledge of common monsters allowed, but you need to roll for knowledge on rarer monsters even though the player knows the monster's stats by heart?

None of that is absolutely right or wrong. It is up to the group to decide how they want to play.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

And not metagaming interferes with my immersion. A lot of the fun of RPGs for me comes from trying to experience the game from the viewpoint and mental state of the state of my characters. My characters who actually live in the world and will therefore have at the very least legends of most monsters in the gameworld that will be at least as accurate as my memories from the Monster Manual, and will have a clearer understanding of the physical situation than a few sentences of description and possibly placement on the battlemat can give you on their own. Therefore a hard anti-metagaming stance forces me to play someone who doesn't know a thing about the universe they supposedly grew up in.

If it's something your character should know about, and especially if the players on the table have a consensus that this is the case, then what you're talking about is not metagaming. You are acting on the knowledge that your character has, which is the opposite of metagaming.