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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Nytmare" data-source="post: 6809146" data-attributes="member: 55178">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.</blockquote>

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