M is for Metagame

[over the course of the month of April, my plan was to post a topic for each letter of the alphabet, sequentially, every day of the week except Sunday. While I was unable to complete the project on time, I find I still have things to say. Our topic in question is Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: how to approach it, how to run it, how to enjoy a system that deserves to be played NOW, nearly 50 years after its inception. Consider this a 'crash course' in the subject]

M is for Metagame...a subject of which I've spoken (at length) in the past. However, if I'm going to do a series on how to approach and run AD&D, it's something worth addressing again.

First off, let's start directly with some quotes from the wikipedia entry for "Metagame:"

In tabletop role-playing games, metagaming has been used to describe players discussing the game, sometimes simply rules discussions and other times causing the characters they control to act in ways they normally would not within the story...

In tabletop role-playing games, metagaming can refer to aspects of play that occur outside of a given game's fictional universe. In particular, metagaming often refers to having an in-game character act on knowledge that the player has access to, but the character should not. For example, having a character bring a mirror to defeat Medusa when they are unaware her gaze can petrify them, or being more cautious when the game is run by a merciless gamemaster.

Some consider metagaming to benefit oneself to be bad sportsmanship. It is frowned upon in many role-playing communities, as it upsets suspension of disbelief, and affects game balance. However, some narrativist indie role-playing games deliberately support metagaming and encourage shared storytelling among players.

Okay, first understand that this entirely starts with the faulty premise that tabletop role-playing games are about "creating stories." While this may be true for some RPGs (not most in my experience), it is certainly not true of AD&D. 

However, setting that aside...a lot of this is simply bullshit.

AD&D, like many RPGs, counts part of its "fun" as being a form of escapist entertainment...a break from the humdrum of daily life. AD&D does this by providing an imaginary world fraught with challenges that players must confront in order to reach their objectives. That is the core system of play, the thing that focuses players attention, allowing them to "tune out" the real world.  When players can do this, their perception rests solely on the action of game play, rather than the events and situations happening away from the table (i.e. the real world). This is the essence of escapism, what is sometimes referred to as immersion or "immersive roleplaying" (the latter because it is immersion during the act of roleplaying).

Most people trying to sell you the bit about crafting stories think immersion is something different. They think "immersion" is something akin to being inside a story. The players become their character, thinking as they do, feeling as they do, reacting "instinctively" as if they were the character, rather than as a person playing a game. 

For these people the idea of metagaming...of considering the game as a game during gameplay...would break this psychotic dissociative identity disorder that they seek to cultivate. In practical reality, however, the majority of players are perfectly sane and, thus, wholly incapable of identifying in such a way with the imaginary character that is their vehicle for exploring the situations of the fantasy game world. It is a fool's errand to even attempt such an exercise.

As such, the proper way to pursue immersion...the state of being in which time slips away from the player's perspective as they completely engage with their pastime...is to lean HARD into the rules and actual play of the game. The Dungeon Master facilitates this by challenging the players with situations ad obstacles that provide real threat to their characters and objectives, with potentially painful (mentally, emotionally) consequences.

Thus challenged, the player(s) must be allowed to use every device at their disposal to survive, INCLUDING (but not limited to) 'outside game knowledge..,that very thing referred to as "metagaming." 

In play, we are already modeling the "lived experience" of a fantasy world  imperfectly. Mortal combat is not a matter of one side moving in organized fashion, followed by the other. Secret doors are not always found exactly 16% of the time. Poison is rarely, if ever, a binary exercise in life or death. These things are conventions of play, necessary precisely because we ARE playing a game. What sucks players into the moment such that they forget their outside cares and worries and instead zoom in on the roll of a single die is the fact that the stakes of the game...winning and losing, success and failure, death or survival...are ruled by these simple game mechanics. The dice matter, as do the rules and procedures that lead to that all-consuming, attention grabbing dice roll.

Trying to pretend that the game is NOT a game...forbidding "metagaming" in an effort to create some sort of 'lived (fantasy) experience'...is not only missing the point of what makes AD&D an exciting game, but is actually detrimental to the very play that makes the game an exciting, challenging pastime. Best for players to metagame the hell out of it...players should be plotting and planning together, picking the equipment and spells and tactics they think will net them the best chance of success. Players should be rightly frightened at the potential TPK situation when they lose an integral part of their team's resources/capabilities.  Players should be doing their best to pool whatever game knowledge they have in order to best "win" at the adventure that faces them.

As a Dungeon Master you WANT players who are doing this, because such players are ENGAGED ENTHUSIASTS...the kind that will put YOU through the paces, forcing a DM to up their own game. This makes game play just as exciting for you as it is for them.

I'd much rather have THAT at my table then a bunch of folks pretending to be ignorant in the name of "good sportsmanship."