Wikipedia defines metagaming as: a broad term usually used to define any strategy, action or method used in a game which transcends a prescribed ruleset, uses external factors to affect the game, or goes beyond the supposed limits or environment set by the game. Another definition refers to the game universe outside of the game itself.
In simple terms, it is the use of out-of-game information or resources to affect one’s in-game decisions.
While in other games metagaming is generally more accepted or even “required” (think of famous chess openings, or current stronger deck types in card games, or strategies adopted by professionals in video games), it is a completely different story in RPGs.
Let’s have an example:
Both the GM (DM) and the rest of the players had the out-of-game (OOG) knowledge of the in-game (IG) character being truly a bear. When (role)playing though they acted only according to the things their IG character knew. As far as they were concerned IG they saw someone that looked, human, communicated as a human, acted as a human and others saw as human.
The point of a tabletop RPG is having fun by contributing to create an awesome story. Sure there will be times where everyone will just want to roll that max damage hit to kill the boss and get the sword loot drop but what stays in the end of a campaign, is the development of the story, the character’s choices and epic moments such as Mister Bearington’s accusation above. In such a simple setting where just 1 GM and 3-6 players are participating, pulling off even a single act of metagaming is just not going to happen. It’s not because of fear of being ostracized by the rest that keeps players away from metagaming, but knowing that the effort put in the story is not just by the GM, but the players too. Only then can a story be fulfilling and everyone will have a great time. Now lets return to the reality of TGTSNBN.
The game’s structure itself allowed far more metagaming opportunities than usual. The game’s scenario and structure had 6 different guilds fighting against each other for resources, scenario benefits, character strength rewards and even weekly benefits, while A. took every opportunity to declare a winner in anything, even going as far as provokingly declaring a certain guild as “winners of the first year (book I)” in order to build hype for the 5 “losing” guilds while preparing for year 2 (book II). Combine a game that forces players to compete in order to progress with an impartial administrator and a community of people that are not playing with a couple of friends to have fun through storytelling but have fun through winning and you will most likely end up with a player-base that will try to abuse every detail under their influence in order to prevail and be crowned “winners”.
I keep typing “winners” in quotes only because what the game promoted as a winning condition was and still is light-years away from the winning condition of a non-mass tabletop RPG.
The first attempt of gaining an advantage over the game that anyone used was metagaming. Especially during the first half of the first year at least half of the players did it. The fact that people were playing themselves as IG characters of the same year as setting made it even harder to separate IG stuff from OOG stuff. It was as difficult for new players to draw the line between the game and reality as it was tempting for experienced players that were suddenly presented with the forbidden fruit and no god that seemed to care enough to punish them. Even if he wanted to, he could not possibly know the ones responsible! There is absolutely no way of knowing everyone’s chats, mobile messages, calls, secret facebook groups (oh yea, that awesome community had those too), etc etc. It’s a wild-goose chase. Even the NSA might not be able to prove any player of TGTSNBN guilty of metagaming!!
Having established that delivering true justice to such incidents is nearly impossible, we are left with 2 obvious options to work around the problem:
- broaden the punishment spectrum to that of the whole group and the GM that the info leaked from.
- doubt everyone instead of trusting them with valuable info
While solution 1 seems unfair and less proper than the second one, it is the one that addresses the problem in the forceful way that a player who doesn’t respect or understand the concept of the RPG needs to be dealt with: fear of being excommunicated by the rest. By marking him as a person that is destroying the very game setting and IG consistency of all the players and not having an advantage by being smarter or better than the rest not only is an example set but an owner who cares is shown, a person that is trying to protect probably the most important part of a RPG! Heck even the second option would give positive points to a creator that put in the extra effort of trusting only the people that could be trusted in order to keep the quality of the game to high standards. And what did mister A. do in the end? Exactly the opposite! “How?” you ask? Well, with nothing less than one of the greatest ideas ever conceived during game design:
LEGALIZE METAGAMING!
Yes, I’m not kidding. After the first 2 books were over, the problem – defective community, unclear gameplay goals – was so hard to deal with that the designers adopted a “we don’t care” policy. With this move they wanted to try and make the players realize that they were the source of the problem. And you know what? It worked! Now neither the admins nor the players cared at all about the setting or the world. The game had finally turned to a grinding farm-fest which – in the creator’s defense – was his goal all along: People just playing and getting stuck on game mechanics so that they would then pay for IG-benefits that would unstuck them. It’s one of – if not the only – the designing goals that was reached! The game was finally sustaining itself through players that bought game boosters.
What was lost in the way though was the story element. The very heart of a RPG. Nobody cared for NPC motives anymore. Nobody cared for whether they are alive or not (note to self: don’t ever start a piece on the scenario). Nobody cared for the actions and motives of other players. They all just “played”. Group up, get the mission info, play a skype session instead of a tabletop one if possible, so they can afk or do other things simultaneously (video games, cooking, cleaning, sex) and just show up to talk for 5-10 minutes so they get a portion of the experience points that help them level up and farm more imaginary stuff solo on the web application that are irrelevant to their IG character.
So the question remains: How do you manage the community of such a project? How do you make people realize that by metagaming they ruin the very game they are playing? That they intentionally opt-out of an awesome experience, while ruining it for other player too? Should it just be quality over quantity? Is it just a failure to draw the line or is it just another bad side of human nature? How can one from a designer point of view manage an expanded player-base while not cutting down on the quality of the setting? From the innocent meta-spoiler to the game-breaking incomplete NPC motives info that were given to GMs in fear of the GMs ruining a year’s worth of scenario. Is it maybe all just amateur work that needs more employees that will be paid for their trust?
Only one thing is for sure, said by a former player, current designer of TGTSNBN to some of his favorite players during a session:
Don’t metagame. Metagaming is bad.
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