Other why Metagaming isn't entirely bad

[Umbrie]

i know a lot of people complain about the concept of metagaming, but metagaming isn't purely evil and isn't always cheating.

when you coordinate a group of characters designed to work together with each other in a campaign or adventure, you are using metagaming to identify each others character builds to minimize overlap between player characters

even when you look up a specific monster you are currently dealing with in the bestiary, you need not look up exact weaknesses, numbers or difficulty ranges. but looking up certain special abilities or even the lore of the monster can better help you understand the role of that specific monster in that specific setting, better informing you of what folktales would be told and what precautions would be taken. a lot of people tell you that using acid on a troll is bad if you have never fought a troll, but it isn't all bad, using acid on a troll is most likely common knowledge ingrained in folklore and the wisdom of elders. maybe not exactly trolls but similar creatures. if you know that something regenerates in your cultures mythology, you probably heard rumors of a hero or few who defeated said creature by cauterizing the wounds.

even if you look up exactly what a mummy rot does and how it is inflicted. the motivation need not be to better understand the strengths and weaknesses of a mummy, but to better help you understand how your character would logically react to encountering a mummy. if you know a mummy can cause a slow and gradual but excruciatingly painful decay on anything it touches, or heard of mummy's curses, you probably would have the common sense to keep your distance and not engage it up close, unless it was the only thing your character knew how to do or was overly confident in their odds of survival.

by looking up that wraiths have a frightful presence, you know that around a wraith, you should usually react with fear and caution.

and by looking up a certain powerful unique opponents character profile, even if you use the information, would probably tell you the story of how that character climbed to power and what made them famous, is a character is extremely powerful, they likely have a rich backstory detailing the deeds they have performed and likely detailing the abilities they used to perform those deeds. powerful characters are usually never incognito, because they usually cannot be.

if a little girl has earned a reputation as a powerful warlock who channels the archfey powers of order to wreak havoc on many powerful evil foes, and that little girl survived multiple encounters with the things. you can probably tell she is a powerful warlock, likely learn her patron and learn what spells she uses based on her reputation. her youth would only make her seem nonthreatening for a brief while, before everybody eventually recognizes her.

powerful monsters also usually have powerful reputations alongside extreme rarity,

in fact, other positive uses of metagaming include

not screwing over your companions because screwing them over would screw you over even worse

coordinating how to regulate such things as PVP or the preservation of another player's character image (i mean how they percieve or view their own character, not image as in their picture), or even regulating character power levels to keep things fair amongst the group.

 

[Idea]

...Except that isn´t metagaming. At least, by what I encounter and claim it to be. Metagaming is when a character´s behavior is changed in accordance to OOC information, going against their IC information and personality.

What makes this implicitly bad is that you are breaking the flow of the story and the immersion of the writing, as well as opening the door for other narrative devices that may make even more harm.

Metagaming sometimes has to be used, typically very thinly veiled, yet that doesn´t mean it becomes a bad thing. In that coordenating characters example or even one in which your whole plot could be smashed without a bit of metagaming, it becomes a necessary action, yet it´s the lesser of two evils, not something good.

 

[Umbrie]

i consider some uses of metagaming to be a good thing, like using out of character knowledge to create a character that would actually partake in the adventure in question, creating a character that will play nice with their companions during the adventure, and so on. when you assign your character decent values in attributes that suit their skillset, you are using metagaming to make your character believable. not that real people are minmaxed, but real people are specialized in a series of related tasks while being bad at a few others.

 

[Sludge]

Just a friendly reminder that meta and metagaming are different things, and you are talking about meta.

In storytelling we say meta to describe everything that happens outside the story but is still related to how it is understood. A roleplaying example of that would happen when a player changes their character's behaviour based on their relationship with other players. That would be the meta. It is not inherently bad.

In gaming, we say metagaming when a player uses information that he is not supposed to know. The information comes from within the game i.e. wallhack in Counterstrike. Roleplaying example of that is when a character displays knowledge that they are not supposed to know but it comes from within the story. Metagaming is always bad.

OOC, planning, retconning - meta.
Timmy stabs a knife precisely into Azazel's weak spot in their first meeting - metagaming. Hidashi meets Asuna for the first time and starts talking about her dead parents - metagaming.