So, laying down some ground rules again for clarity, I think metagaming is definitionally outside of the game. Any in-game application of out-of-game considerations is outside the bounds of the game. It's not a moral imperative, simply the box we've drawn. Using out of character knowledge in a D&D session is like using your hands to hit a soccer ball. It doesn't make you a bad person, but it is outside of the rules of the game.
If you want to do that, play another sport, say handball. Likewise, if a player wants to do something other than inhabit his character, play something else, like Cortex+. To me a strict in-character stance is part of the social contract of D&D, something that is both explicit in the rules, and implicit in the understanding of anyone I've ever met in the community. One thing I've noticed is that I use the term "playing D&D" to refer to any game that has an all-powerful DM and players who are purely responsible for the psychology of their characters, including non-fantasy, non-d20 games. Conversely, if I sit down for a game of the BSG rpg, that's BSG, because the same distinction is not postulated.
You may think of this as somehow "implicit" in D&D, but I suspect that it is far from assumed by "anyone (you)'ve ever met in the community". I can provide on dissenter immediately - me! Immersive "waking dream" play (which is what you describe in this post) is certainly
one way to play D&D, but [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] has already pointed out that it has not always been assumed as such by the rules writers and it certainly has never been assumed by the main groups that I play with.
Actor-stance, "waking dream" style play, where the aim is to see (in your mind's eye) through the character's eyes, feel what the character feels (in shadow form, since real excruciating pain seldom counts as "fun"), hear what the character hears and taste and smell what the character does (again, in shadow form) is a perfectly fine way to play many roleplaying games - including D&D. I have done it myself almost exclusively (when playing this way with D&D) with heavily houseruled versions of AD&D 2e - and I think that both the base rules and the heavy houseruling were not coincidental in that correlation. Compared with, for example, HârnMaster, where I have played in this style with rules as written, I think D&D is actually fundamentally poorly suited to the style, but others may be able to suspend disbelief sufficiently with D&D to manage it, so that is a fuzzy line, not a crisp one.
But this is emphatically NOT the only way to play D&D. I can roleplay without immersion, and the vast majority of my D&D play has been non-immersive. "Roleplaying" is a slippery thing to pin down, but I associate it primarily with identifying with one specific character. When I read a book, I can perfectly well identify with a protagonist character even when (as they often are) they are written about in the third person. Just as this identification is possible when reading a book, I find it perfectly possible when playing an RPG; I can think of the character as a third person entity while still very much identifying with them in the situation in which they find themselves.
I would further note that, in very early D&D, it was quite normal for one player to play 2 or 3 characters in a party at the same time. Simpler systems and characters enabled this practically, but the ability of humans to switch focus allowed them to do so, often, while still identifying with each character as they acted - that is to say, while still "roleplaying". Again, we see this in books. G.R.R. Martin uses a clever technique in his "Song of Ice and Fire" books, whereby the name of a character is used for each chapter heading. This acts as a prompt as to which character you might identify with in the following pages - a prompt that is easy and entertaining to follow.
In summary, I think it is perfectly possible to pursue a number of aims when "roleplaying", and waking dream/immersion is just one of them.
The thing is, I've internalized some of these norms myself, the type of norms that lead one to think that balance matters. I try to involve all the players equally, and make all the character types good at combat, and make their choices matter, et cetera, et cetera. And the more I'm DMing, the more I find that this is my mistake. Whenever I violate those implicit rights, the game goes to new and unexpected territory, and it's usually good. And I realize that I was honoring some abstract principle that was never established mutually, that no one cares about in my group but me, and which has forced my thinking inside of a box of "fair play" that serves no purpose.
Example: in the current game I'm running (CoC, which is not D&D but does fall under that broad envelope I described above of carrying the same social contract), I've got three characters, one budding schoolteacher, one disabled soldier trying to make a new career in psychology, and one doctor loaded to the teeth with spells. Balanced? Not remotely. One character gets a terminal diagnosis, one gets a mysterious voice in his head that no one else can hear, and the third is ostensibly supposed to come in and fix one or both of these things. Fair? Not remotely. Equal opportunity for all players to contribute? No. One spends her time doped up in a hospital, the other is the protagonist, and the other character doesn't exist until they call on him as a last resort after almost two full sessions. Characters' choices determining the outcome of their actions? Nope. Not remotely. But are we experiencing what it's like to get cancer? Are we playing out the emotional horrors? Are we intrigued by the supernatural elements? Are we eagerly awaiting the final outcome? Yes, absolutely. This game can't happen with the player entitlement crowd (AFAICT).
What you describe here is absolute poster child "simulationist" play. You play to explore an imaginary situation and to "experience" the full impact of that situation through the proxy of a character you identify with. Call of Cthulhu, along with most horror games, is a very strong (and typical) choice for this sort of play - after all, there is really no mileage in "stepping on up" to a challenge by Dread Azathoth or mighty Cthulhu - the result is essentially a given! Such creatures are also not known for their delicacy of feeling or sparkling repartee... Exploring the (pseudo)
reality of slowly uncovering the cosmic horror of what lies underneath the shallow veneer that we call "civilisation", on the other hand - endless fun!
Again - it's a perfectly functional and good way to play RPGs. But not the only one.
But that's not D&D you say. And yet, I'm taken back to a D&D game I ran a couple of years ago. Characters: one largely non-combatant druid, one evoker trying to open a magic shop, and one ranger working as a courier. Balanced? I doubt it. (The ranger pretty much dominated mechanically). And before the game, I decided that at the climax of the campaign, one character would be a McGuffin, another character would have to sacrifice his life for all eternity to save said McGuffin, and the third would fulfill an ancient prophecy and transcend to fairy land. Fair? Nope. Players in control of their characters' outcomes? Nope. But nonetheless, it all worked, they all enjoyed it, and every session was full of new and unexpected things. Again, I seem to have violated some of those rights billed above.
Of course, you can play immersively using (some variant of) D&D. But it's not mandatory or even, in my experience, usual.
To me, the notion of player entitlement places a stranglehold on the DM, asking him to both run an entire world but also to cater to the player characters because they are special snowflakes. Balance, not just between classes, but balanced encounters, balanced character abilities, balanced spotlight time, etc. is a symptom of a disease that prevents the DM from exploring a full range of story possibilities, many of which will stomp all over the rights implicit above. I'm not a fan.
This is only true if you insist on playing waking dream/immersion style, since it mandates the GM taking all the concerns that are not compatible with immersion off of the players and handling them him- or herself.
Immersion is a very specific and limited agenda in roleplaying for a few reasons. Firstly, it requires the engagement and cooperation of all present; players who do not "play the game" are "disruptive" and GMs that don't take all the extraneous stuff off the players are "poor GMs". The style necessarily requires a good deal of GM control and empathy in equal measure - and the GM also has to handle all or most of the "system stuff", too, often leading to headaches or similar after long sessions of play.
Ways around these limitations include being explicit about the lack of firm system and preparatory material that clearly lays out the expectations for the participants; the old Theatrix system actually does this rather well (despite being billed as a "story" system, in common with many "story" systems it's actually better for immersive play with a GM driven plot than actual dramatic play with an emergent plot). The World of Darkness systems can also work OK for this sort of play, although they can be mistaken for competitive structures by "gamist" oriented players, which can spoil things somewhat. For some time I ran WoD background with Theatrix systems, which worked pretty well (though not as well as the "archaeologists and nazis" game I ran with Theatrix - probably due to the genre preferences of my players!).
Not only do I think that a black and white distinction between DM and player is the norm, I also think it always will be, because empowering the players creates gray areas over who is responsible for what. The only way to avoid these gray areas is to give one person ultimate authority over everything, and then let him decide how he wants to exercise or delegate that authority.
I don't agree with your conclusion, here, at all. Take a look at Primetime Adventures - scene framing and resolution authority is shared, but how it is shared is specified by the rules. No grey areas over authority, no single person responsible for everything. Simples.
The way it's done is that conflicts are resolved using (normal) playing cards - the parties to the conflict get a number of cards depending on their skills, episode importance and so on. The "side" with the most red cards wins, but the player with the highest value card (suits count in their normal precedence) gets to describe the details of the outcome. This might, or might not, be the GM. No ambiguity - one player gets to narrate what happens, based on who got what they wanted.
This isn't to say that another game that doesn't have that assumption is bad. Just fundamentally different. If the DM isn't responsible for everything, than players being empowered doesn't detract from his efforts. I like the idea of experimenting in those realms on occasion. I'd do it more often if I could sell the players on it. To me, pure in-character roleplaying is always going to be soccer, the sport of the world, and metagame/storygaming/indie gaming/etc. is always going to be handball, an alternative, niche option. I don't think taking D&D into the storygaming realm makes any more sense than association football letting the field players use their hands now and then. If you're going to do player entitlement, build a new game for it. If you want to say 4e is that game, go ahead, though I suspect there's better out there (looking forward to the metagame-laced Firefly rpg coming out myself).
There are, indeed, better games for a number of varieties of such play. But then, there are also better games for waking dream/immersive play, too. I wouldn't characterise either of these "types" of play as monolithic, however. There are varieties and also different nuances in both "player engaged on metagame level" and "player engaged purely on gameworld level" types of play.
Oh, and you should look up how the game of Rugby Football came into existence.
One thing I've noticed about DMing is that it's really hard. Being responsible for every aspect of the game is quite a load. I'm usually quite exhausted after a session of D&D, and there's a distinctive "D&D headache" that I only get after sessions. To people who aren't improvisers like me, preparation can be a significant load as well.
As I mentioned above, I think this is because you are using a mechanically heavy system to run a waking dream/immersive experience for the players. If you are unhappy with the state of affairs (and I understand you may not be) I suggest using a lighter system or moving away from a strong emphasis on immersion to some other flavour of character identification.
So on some level, sharing the load makes perfect sense. If the game imposes a set of metagame strictures that match your goals, then you don't have to impose them, which is easier for you, and anyone else who shares your goals. If players assume a larger narrative responsibility during play, you have more time to stop and get a drink.
I would say it actually goes further than this. If you adopt a mechanism that will lead to a dramatic conflict - which will require the connivance of the players - then the story will happen without anyone having to "impose" anything.
The aim of "producing a good emergent story" is actually at odds with immersionism. Trying to hit both targets at once is making a rod for your own back. In a sense, story generating games are a bit like particle physics experiments; you smash some character needs together and see what interesting particles emerge from the collision. Nobody controls or dictates what will result from the collision, as such - they just set the parameters for the colliding characters, drive them up to high velocity and see what happens!
But beyond that, I also think that there's a lot of satisfaction to being a player, and as a DM I miss out on some of that. By having control of everything, I have no sense of stakes. Nothing happens without my approval. If I let the game run very passively, play will absolutely have an emergent nature, but I always have a sense of control. The DM isn't roleplaying. I also lose the satisfaction of achievement that comes from accomplishing some goal in a scenario external to myself. As a player, overcoming a challenge is fun. As a DM, I don't get that.
Here I think you are a little inconsistent. If the player is truly challenged by the in game encounters, they will necessarily be metagaming somewhat. They have only their own brain to think with, so they will have to solve the conundrum themselves - thus breaking that "fourth wall". In terms of aims of play, this is a different "style" on the players' part - the competitive will to win by
player cleverness/luck as an agenda for play.
But if the DM cedes some of his responsibility, his role becomes more like that of a player. For example, if I establish that I will never "cheat" a dice outcome and will instead leave that to the player's rolls and perhaps some form of action points, then when I chuck a death effect at a PC, I am discovering at the same time they do whether the character lives or dies, and if it's not the outcome I personally want, I have to live with it. This creates a somewhat unhinged, but intriguing experience.
I wouldn't call it "unhinged", but yeah. "Intriguing" and "exciting" - absolutely! That's the idea!
It does, though, bring up the necessity that results that you really DON'T want should be made impossible by the rules. In other words, rules quality(1) and balance become important.
(1): Edit to be clear: I don't mean "quality" in the sense of "good/bad", here - I mean that the structure and the detail of the rules - what qualities the rules have - matters, simply because you are not intending to depart from them for any reason.
So don't get me wrong, I see considerable advantages to some forms of "player entitlement" along with the disadvantages I talked about above. What I don't see is why any form of it should be legislated into my campaign.
I don't see how it
can be "legislated into (your) campaign". Just strip out the bits that you dislike. Run 4E with several fighter powers disallowed. Make oozes immune to being thrown prone, undead and constructs immune to striker bonus damage (or just Sneak Attack). If the balance doesn't exist in the system to begin with, however, putting it in takes far more work than it will ever be worth.
Having said this, the easiest route for either way is to pick a system better suited to what you want to do. You can even port D&D worlds and monsters into it, as I did with DragonQuest, way back when.
I actually think that "player entitlement" is, somewhat counterintuitively, bad for the players more so than the DM, as they lose some of their in-character perspective and have to work more and think more about things that are not that. And that's very much what I've found when experimenting with plot points and class balance and experience points and other metagame things. I, the DM, am always the one pushing these boundaries, and the players are the ones who are pushing back.
If waking dream/immersion happens to be the way the players want to play - of course! But if they want something else then "DM totalitarianism" can be at least as dysfunctional*.
In a similar vein, I think that "balance" can be oddly beneficial for a simulative, immerion-focussed game. The "real" world has a certain "balance". If it was as easy to become a CEO as it is to become a janitor, there would be very many more CEOs in the world, I would wager! It would actually make sense to demand, for instance, that Wizards and Clerics have much higher attribute requirements than Fighters or Rogues. Early D&D actually made an attempt to be balanced in this way; attribute rolls were random, and only those with very good rolls could get the "powerful" classes (such as paladin or monk).
In the real world, everything has its own value and the "system" of reality finds its own balance where cost and benefit come together (on the whole). That a game world might represent such a "dynamic equilibrium" is to be expected, not some sort of oddity.
*: Cross thread point, but this is one reason why "One True System" is a myth.
