Is it a player who makes a character not based on the character concept but on mechanical advantages based on the system?

What about when a player does something, in character (ie. not out of character for his PC) but that is clearly based on making a decision that is influenced by the player's knowledge of things his PC couldn't possibly know?

What about when two Players who trust each other and play well with each other in various games have their Characters instantly trusting each other and co-operating likewise? What if said players also reveal sensitive information to each other, possibly about other PCs, before they would reasonably do so in character, or before they would do so with another player's PC whose player they trusted less?

In short, where's the limit? If nothing said player does is technically blatant metagaming, what if anything would you do about it?

RPGPundit

Your first example isn't, to my mind.  The second two are.  Your litmus may, of course, vary.

But I don't see metagaming as an inherent indictment of a player's behavior.  Like most any method, (yes, including fudging, y'damn weirdos!) it can be used for evil or it can be used for awesome.

All three examples are certainly cases where the players are doing stuff based on knowledge that isn't "internal" to the game world. Except that many people deal with the first case by the philosophy of "the rules of the game are the physics of the game world". And also, when people don't like the first case, they might refer to it as powergaming intead of metagaming.

Ultimately there's no need to classify things as metagaming or not, unless we care strongly to avoid "metagaming". I think in practice many of those things are best dealt with case-by-case.

E.g. I prefer as far as possible to avoid having to worry about whether optimization is "powergaming" or not. I'd rather make optimization impossible, irrelevant, or so trivially easy that everyone does it automatically.

As for doing stuff based on what you know, which your character doesn't, that's annoying if you want to approach the game as analog virtual reality as it both kills the illusion and (often) circumvents the challenge of working with limited information. But it can be okay if you're more about improvising a story, or if the challenge is provided by other means.

And when it comes to automatically allying and sharing info, that also depends on what you and everyone else wants to get out of the game. I mean, if players don't self-regulate on that, then I think it's pretty clear they don't want to bother with the whole issue of establishing trust; they're interested in working together to focus on other stuff. So let them. Or better, discuss it at the outset and figure out if the players want their characters to be suspicious of each other. I do find it annoying when assumptions like that go unsaid.

E.g., at a recent con I played a game of Cold City, which has a mechanic for trust, which in turn implies that we should be forming alliances and scheming against one another. But as it turned out, we all played the scenario as a straightforward mystery that we all needed to collaborate on solving. It's hard to say if that was due to the GM's prep & overall approach, or because (as strangers to each other in real life) it was less stressful to work together. In any case, to make good use of that mechanic and overall theme, more reinforcement was needed.

A different con game, Ars Magica, actually worked out better in this regard, because the scenario design did a good job of making the characters suspicious of one another. (It was a locked-room murder mystery.) Although we didn't end up fighting each other, I think we came close.

I think metagaming is generally ok.

In a recent game, the group had to fight a clay golem. One of the players said something like "whatever you do, don't use acid attacks.. and don't even bother with spells that have spell resistance"

Now, that guy was metagaming, because if you read the Monster Manual, you know acid attacks heal clay golems. And this guy had read the MM.

And that kinda sucked the wind out of a fairly tough encounter. But was I upset? Nah. It's all good. And in the end, the spellcaster forgot the other guys advice anyway- hurled his last lesser orb of acid, and accidentally healed the golem just as it was about to fall. It was actually a very funny moment, because he said "ok, this is my last orb spell.. Lesser Orb of Acid!"  and as he rolled the to-hit, everyone went "nooo!!!"

He wanted to take it back, but we had to keep it in there, mostly because it was funny.

So that's metagaming. My campaign metagames like crazy. We also do something that I bet a lot of people would be horrified with: I allow players to spend a certain amount of gold pieces on magic equipment that they don't have to define until they need it.

So if the ranger says "I spend 8000 gold on equipment. I'll figure out what it is later.."

And then later, they fight like.. a dragon. The ranger can totally say "I spent that gold (two sessions ago) on dragon bane arrows. Good thing I brought these!".

Because why not?

I guess there's probably a more abusive form for metagaming. But I'm generally ok with it. I think it's fun.

I'd really only do something about the second example in the OP.

"I don't think your guy would know that" is usually about all I'd have to say, and unless the player could counter somehow ("We saw something similar happen before in the game" or come up with some plausible reason for the knowledge in question) they can't act on that knowledge.

As far as the character generation issue, I'd take it as a sign that the players are actually into the game, but I've never met the uber-munchkin type player who would make that a problem.

The characters as allies thing is acceptable.  Unless I tell the players up-front that they're not getting along for whatever reason, they can do it.  Like Roper and Li in Enter the Dragon.

A typical example I've been victim of is when the GM is speaking to another player, describing what their character sees/knows that the others cant, and then the other players have their characters react to what they heard the GM say, even though their characters shouldn't know.
If I'm GM I make it a rule that if one character knows something, they automatically relate that to the others unless theres a damn good reason the others shouldn't know or unless the player specifically chooses not to pass it on - it saves a lot of confusion.

My least favourite example of metagaming occured in an online forum game. I'd stated my characters intent to go do something, another player stated they intended to stop me doing it. The timeframe got out of synch with other party events so the GM rewound back to where I was about to take my action.
At this point a third player, who's character had been asleep in another room, bursts in with gun drawn and winds up shooting my character, based on events that hadnt actually happened and he would have been completely unaware of anyway, because he was asleep. A fourth player joined in the gunplay too, even though his character was supposed to be four rooms away and just as oblivious to events.

In other words, Players 3&4 used knowledge of in-game events their character couldnt possibly know about to determine their characters actions. That to me, is metagaming.

Postscript to this event - the GM let it all happen and my character died. I didnt bother rejoining with another, but held my tongue until Player 3 related it in a "Stupid Character Deaths" thread a couple of weeks later. Then I exploded. Three players from that game are on my permanent ignore list and so is the GM. I don't play games on that forum anymore either - No Gaming is better than Bad Gaming

I think if players are determined to do that kind of stuff, O'Borg, it might be best to just go with the flow and metagame yourself. I mean, you could have said "Okay, if you guys are going to do those things, then I'm not even going to do that first thing in the first place."

Of course that means the players will end up playing in a very collaborative, cooperative style, but there's nothing inherently wrong with that. If you don't like it personally, I'm not saying you shouldn't leave the group. But I'm curious about whether you tried to explain to the others why you didn't want that kind of metagaming.

Of course all that is easier when you're gaming FTF, even moreso with people you know outside of just gaming.

Quote from: RPGPunditIs it a player who makes a character not based on the character concept but on mechanical advantages based on the system?

What about when a player does something, in character (ie. not out of character for his PC) but that is clearly based on making a decision that is influenced by the player's knowledge of things his PC couldn't possibly know?

What about when two Players who trust each other and play well with each other in various games have their Characters instantly trusting each other and co-operating likewise? What if said players also reveal sensitive information to each other, possibly about other PCs, before they would reasonably do so in character, or before they would do so with another player's PC whose player they trusted less?

In short, where's the limit? If nothing said player does is technically blatant metagaming, what if anything would you do about it?

RPGPundit

Ah, Immortal Rome, how I miss thee. January can't come soon enough.

To answer the questions:

1) This might or might not be a problem, though it's usually more of a "powergaming" issue.


2) This is metagaming, and it's common enough to make me think that, on certain level, it's unavoidable. The real issue is what does a PC do when confronted with significant decisions. If there's no harm in any option, well, it's not a big deal if the PC chooses something influenced by what the player knows. If the fallout can influence the game in a significant way, that's the real problem.

Example: I joined a plot to overthrow a Roman emperor, even though I knew, as a gamer, that he wasn't "supposed" to die until many years later. My character had enough reasons to attempt the coup d'etat, though, so...

IMHO, this isn't metagaming. It would have been so, had I chosen to avoid the conspiracy when I clearly had more reasons to join it than to avoid it.  

Obviously, the line gets vaguer when both options are equally good on themselves. I expect a pretty good explanation, though, no matter what decision is taken.


3) Yes, this is metagaming and annoys me to no end. Am I supposed to automatically trust my RL friends in any game? Can you imagine an Amber game where this happens frequently?

Quote from: JongWK3) Yes, this is metagaming and annoys me to no end. Am I supposed to automatically trust my RL friends in any game? Can you imagine an Amber game where this happens frequently?

Yeah, well, there's a certain pair of guys that I don't think I could ever invite to play Amber. At least not both at the same time.

RPGpundit

Another example, specific to one-offs or convention games (I've seen this one more times than I can count):

"Hmmmmm... we only have ten minutes left to go until we lose the table.  Might as well unload all spells, charged magic items, retributive strike-capable items, etc."

Lord Hobie

Quote from: Lord Hobie"Hmmmmm... we only have ten minutes left to go until we lose the table.  Might as well unload all spells, charged magic items, retributive strike-capable items, etc."

"Abracapocalypse"...heh, I'll have to remember that one.

RPGPundit