Defining Metagaming as a Pejorative

[Nifft]

Reading through a recent thread on what situations constitute metagaming (here), it seems like there is a commonly understood but unstated definition, and I wanted to take a crack at stating that implicit definition explicitly.

Here goes.

Metagaming when used as a pejorative or accusation means that the action in question:

1. Takes other players out of the game's fiction / out of immersion in the game; and

2. Does so for some in-fiction / in-character benefit.

There are other non-pejorative definitions for "metagaming", but when we talk about bad players "metagaming", this pejorative definition seems to be what we mean.

As an illustration of using this definition: if Alice says, "Let's wrap this fight up, I promised I'd be home by 10," that takes other players out of the game, but it's for an out-of-game reason. It's a metagame concern -- it's an attempt to influence the in-game reality from outside -- but it's not the pejorative kind of metagaming because it seeks no in-fiction benefit.

Thoughts?

[Duff]

Seems fair to me.
Maybe also add "Is not needed to allow the game to function"
Looking at you here "Oh, you seem trustworthy and competent, person we just met who is our level and will fill the hole in our party that the recent PC death created" and similar choices

[Mordar]

Reading through a recent thread on what situations constitute metagaming (here), it seems like there is a commonly understood but unstated definition, and I wanted to take a crack at stating that implicit definition explicitly.

Here goes.

Metagaming when used as a pejorative or accusation means that the action in question:

1. Takes other players out of the game's fiction / out of immersion in the game; and

2. Does so for some in-fiction / in-character benefit.

There are other non-pejorative definitions for "metagaming", but when we talk about bad players "metagaming", this pejorative definition seems to be what we mean.

As an illustration of using this definition: if Alice says, "Let's wrap this fight up, I promised I'd be home by 10," that takes other players out of the game, but it's for an out-of-game reason. It's a metagame concern -- it's an attempt to influence the in-game reality from outside -- but it's not the pejorative kind of metagaming because it seeks no in-fiction benefit.

Thoughts?

I'd be inclined to argue that this doesn't quite get exclusively to the perjorative state. Player A saying "Be sure to set up the flanking because it provides +2 to hit/double damage/combat advantage" would seem to fit the definition you have, but I think would be considered to be normal gaming, not meta gaming.

Player B saying "I know this dungeon because I played it with my other group last week. Skip the first door on the left and go to the second. That'll get us the Wand of Wuzzles which will make the fight against the Fluffytaur in the first room way easier!" is a (granted egregious) example of what I think you're going for...so I'd recommend adding some sort of clause requiring "knowledge beyond the reasonable bounds of what the character espousing the tactic/knowledge/action/whatever could be expected to have."

- M

[Saint-Just]

I'd be inclined to argue that this doesn't quite get exclusively to the perjorative state. Player A saying "Be sure to set up the flanking because it provides +2 to hit/double damage/combat advantage" would seem to fit the definition you have, but I think would be considered to be normal gaming, not meta gaming.

Player B saying "I know this dungeon because I played it with my other group last week. Skip the first door on the left and go to the second. That'll get us the Wand of Wuzzles which will make the fight against the Fluffytaur in the first room way easier!" is a (granted egregious) example of what I think you're going for...so I'd recommend adding some sort of clause requiring "knowledge beyond the reasonable bounds of what the character espousing the tactic/knowledge/action/whatever could be expected to have."

- M

Hm, flanking in itself, and even necessary flanking to help the character whose abilities are about damaging flanked foes is not metagaming; flanking is not something that works only in-game. On the other hand talking in-character about +2 needed to overcome high AR is widely considered metagaming; it's not a huge deal so it's rarely prohibited but it's often discouraged.

[erikun]

Sorry, I haven't read the previous thread, but I would roughly define metagaming (in general) to be:
"Using facts and knowledge outside the game, which the character would not know, to influence the character's behavior."

Now, I wouldn't say all metagaming is bad. Heck, a lot of metagaming is good. Just why one particular PC happens to stick with, or even start following around, this random group of other PCs is a sort of metagaming. Unless the GM and plot really force the characters together for some reason, just sticking around is fairly metagamey. Making build choices when improving a character is frequently metagamey, since the player might be working towards something the character isn't intending. Making decisions which move the game forward or work with other characters can frequently be metagamey. None of these are bad.

Metagaming as a pejorative typically refers to using outside knowledge for the benefit of the player, against the benefit of the players or the game. Buying a Wand of Open Lock because a thief/mage is concerned about their skill success and wants a guaranteed backup would not be a problem. Buying a Wand of Open Lock because the GM mentioned breaking into a treasure vault this session would be. Happening to go directly to the final quest objective because the player is familiar with the campaign scenario would be a problem for the game. Stealing some family heirloom that the party Fighter has secretly been searching for (without telling the Fighter) is just being a *bleep* towards the Fighter player. Also, note that I said for the benefit of the player, not necessarily for the character, so having the PC just "accidentally" set of the dozen Exploding Runes traps the PCs set up earlier because the player enjoys the chaos would certainly be a game disruption.

There's also the problem with overpowered 3rd party builds, and with misinterpretations/poor interpretations of the rules towards the player's benefit, but that's somewhere of a cross between metagaming and just being deceptive. And stuff like "forgetting" to mark off lost or broken equipment so that it's always on-hand is more cheating than it is metagaming, in my opinion.

[quinron]

Here's a fuzzy example: the rogue has climbed into the evil king's bedroom, and the evil king is asleep. The rogue should logically be able to kill him easily, but he refuses to do so because he knows that one Sneak Attack isn't going to kill most things of the party's level, and he doesn't want to get into a fight with this "boss monster" while the rest of the party is still climbing the rope to get up here. Is that metagaming? And if it is, who's at fault for it - the player for thinking like this, the GM for running a game that convinced the player that this is the way to think, or the designers for failing to tell the GM that sometimes it's okay if stabbing a character in the throat just straight-up kills them instead of allowing an attack that deals 8d6 extra damage on a hit?

I think that for this definition to work any more concretely than other definitions, you're going to have to get a more concrete definition for "takes other players out of the game's fiction." I, for one, feel a lot less taken out of the game's fiction when my players pull out clubs and maces to fight skeletons than when one player pulls out a spear and says, "my character wouldn't know that skeletons are vulnerable to bludgeoning damage."

[Tanarii]

Is that metagaming? And if it is, who's at fault for it - the player for thinking like this, the GM for running a game that convinced the player that this is the way to think, or the designers for failing to tell the GM that sometimes it's okay if stabbing a character in the throat just straight-up kills them instead of allowing an attack that deals 8d6 extra damage on a hit?

Depends. Is the king Conan? Or a pampered noble that's never had to fight?

Did the player/character take the time to research if they could reasonable expect to sneak up on this enemy and kill them in their sleep? Or are they just making assumptions that the king is an NPC is Conan, that might reasonably wake up just in time to save their life by turning a murderous blow into a less than lethal one, meaning they have enough hit points to survive a critical sneak attack?

Yeah, the DM might train players to think that way through experience, that even normal-men enemies in any adventure they go on are always about their power level, capable of surviving an initial critical sneak attack. But that's experience the character has had as well.

I think that for this definition to work any more concretely than other definitions, you're going to have to get a more concrete definition for "takes other players out of the game's fiction." I, for one, feel a lot less taken out of the game's fiction when my players pull out clubs and maces to fight skeletons than when one player pulls out a spear and says, "my character wouldn't know that skeletons are vulnerable to bludgeoning damage."

Which is why I feel the most harmful form of negative metagaming is when a player (or DM) decides another character can't reasonably know something their player knows, and throws around accusations of metagaming.

It's not possible to know for sure that deciding to take a different action "because your/my character wouldn't know that" is anything like what would happen if you didn't know that. Pretending to not know and doing the opposite of the best action isn't automatically the same as not knowing and doing something. Sometimes it's the opposite of what you would have done anyway, or banana (a third option). But you'll never know. It's better to not second guess yourself that particular way, and make a reasonable decision.

DMs and Players do what's commonly referred to as "harmless metagaming", understanding that player/character separation can't be a real thing, and making reasonable decisions anyway, all the time. It's folks that insist that they can really do full player/character separation, that it is a real thing, that most commonly fall into the harmful metagaming trap.

[quinron]

Which is why I feel the most harmful form of negative metagaming is when a player (or DM) decides another character can't reasonably know something their player knows, and throws around accusations of metagaming.

It's not possible to know for sure that deciding to take a different action "because your/my character wouldn't know that" is anything like what would happen if you didn't know that. Pretending to not know and doing the opposite of the best action isn't automatically the same as not knowing and doing something. Sometimes it's the opposite of what you would have done anyway, or banana (a third option). But you'll never know. It's better to not second guess yourself that particular way, and make a reasonable decision.

DMs and Players do what's commonly referred to as "harmless metagaming", understanding that player/character separation can't be a real thing, and making reasonable decisions anyway, all the time. It's folks that insist that they can really do full player/character separation, that it is a real thing, that most commonly fall into the harmful metagaming trap.

This is why I find all the talk about metagaming kind of misses the point. I think there's probably a situation where you can credibly consider metagaming to be a sort of "cheating," but most of the time, it's just GMs getting upset that the fight they planned is boring once the players learn the trick; that's not "metagaming = cheating," that's just bad design. To use erikun's example: if the players buying a Wand of Open Lock totally invalidates the challenges of the heist you told them about out-of-game, they aren't doing anything wrong - you've just planned an uninteresting heist.

[Yora]

Metagaming is when people try gaming the metagame.

The metagame is an intrinsic part of playing the game. It's what really makes it a game in the first game and not randomly generated fiction.

All the complains come from people trying to exploit this element. And I would say not even to get an in-game benefit, but to do something that displeases the other players.
Metagaming is considered bad not because it breaks the mechanics of the game, but because it's disruptive to the metagame.

Doing something as a group for everyone to have fun is not something that a single player should manipulate for selfish reasons. You're supposed to beat the enemies in the game, not outsmart the other players.

[Martin Greywolf]

1. Takes other players out of the game's fiction / out of immersion in the game; and

This is where the problem with this definition lies - any time you roll the dice, at the very least, you're taken out of the world's fiction.

The thing that makes TTRPGs work is that they are, at the very basic level, simplified simulations of a wolrd that is a little, but not that much, different from ours. That means all the systems you use to resolve things will have blind spots.

With many TTRPGs (e.g. FATE), you should just adjust it as you go, because in-universe reality trumps all rules.

But with many other TTRPGs (e.g. DnD), playing with these systems is the main draw. DnD combat, with its map grid, action economy, turns and so forth isn't terribly realistic, but it is fun to play - it's at its best when an encounter is effectively a tactical puzzle you get to play, kinda like modern XCOM games. Albeit a little less inclined to squad wipe you if you don't manage to hit that 99% shot on the ethereal.

What it comes down to is that there is such a thing as deliberately assumed metagame knowledge that we all sort of agree on. While the characters themselves don't have knowledge of turns and grids, they have knowledge of how fighting works, so players calculating bonuses and actions is a sort of a translation of their characters making snap decisions and having good footwork.

The problem comes when the players try to utilize metagame knowledge that lacks this sort of translation chain, like having read the adventure beforehand or remembering what a particular critter does from the previous game. That is what is usually meant as the bad metagaming.

Also, as an aside, it's possible to be taken out of the fiction of a game by decisions that aren't metagame-y at all, instead being just plain stupid. Or psychopathic.

So, to conclude on a constructive note, I think this first point should be more along the lines of "Uses knowledge that the characters either don't have, or that they don't have an in-universe counterpart to".

[Quertus]

Well, I'm potentially opposed to the concept of the thread. "Metagaming" means a lot of things, and focusing on one entry in the definition sounds rife with bad - and, dare I say, metagaming - potential.

Metagaming is a tool. Words are a tool. What does it take for either to be bad?

Some might say that they have to cause harm. But different people are different with regards to what offends and harms them.

Some might cite intent. But unintentional harm is possible with both.

Saying "you're metagaming" might be possible, but defining "you're doing the *bad* kind of metagaming" means that you're being disruptive to *this* game - which can't be defined in a global fashion.

[Max_Killjoy]

Depends. Is the king Conan? Or a pampered noble that's never had to fight?

Did the player/character take the time to research if they could reasonable expect to sneak up on this enemy and kill them in their sleep? Or are they just making assumptions that the king is an NPC is Conan, that might reasonably wake up just in time to save their life by turning a murderous blow into a less than lethal one, meaning they have enough hit points to survive a critical sneak attack?

Neither, in the example.

The player isn't thinking about what's going on "in fiction" at all, they're just looking at the numbers on the potential range of mechanical results of an NPC around their own level, and deciding they don't like the odds.

[Tanarii]

Neither, in the example.

The player isn't thinking about what's going on "in fiction" at all, they're just looking at the numbers on the potential range of mechanical results of an NPC around their own level, and deciding they don't like the odds.

Then they, the player, is assuming a king NPC is a Conan, a leveled character or equivalent. There's no reason that doesn't translate to the character doing exactly the same thing in universe.

Either that or the character is blithely unaware that there are others in the world (ie not just PCs) that are so heroic or villainous or skilled they can't just be generally stabbed in their sleep and die. Quite possibly in the face of evidence of eons of assassination attempts in-universe, including specifically known previous assassination attempts within their own generation, possibly even against the same NPC.

[quinron]

Then they, the player, is assuming a king NPC is a Conan, a leveled character or equivalent. There's no reason that doesn't translate to the character doing exactly the same thing in universe.

Either that or the character is blithely unaware that there are others in the world (ie not just PCs) that are so heroic or villainous or skilled they can't just be generally stabbed in their sleep and die. Quite possibly in the face of evidence of eons of assassination attempts in-universe, including specifically known previous assassination attempts within their own generation, possibly even against the same NPC.

Eh, I don't know. I get where you're coming from. But I just don't see how "exceptionally villanous" translates to "harder to kill with physical trauma." To use Conan tropes, a fragile old sorcerer isn't going to survive being skewered by a Cimmerian hulk - so he's going to use a lot of magic to avoid letting Conan into the room with him in the first place.

In this scenario, I think there's bad metagaming going on on both sides of the screen: the player isn't being malicious, he's just assuming that assassination attempts are going to use the same ruleset as knock-down, drag-out fights; the GM is too aware of the existing rules- i.e., the metagame - to stop and consider that an assassination attempt should have different rules.

[Nifft]

I'd be inclined to argue that this doesn't quite get exclusively to the perjorative state. Player A saying "Be sure to set up the flanking because it provides +2 to hit/double damage/combat advantage" would seem to fit the definition you have, but I think would be considered to be normal gaming, not meta gaming.

I feel like you're reminding a player of something the character would know -- Flanking is a basic tactic IRL and in-game -- and reminding someone of a thing that the character knows seems like it's not taking them out of character, but rather helping them choose an in-character action.

The +2 is meta, but to me it's not particularly bad because it's in service of choosing an appropriate in-character action.

Sorry, I haven't read the previous thread, but I would roughly define metagaming (in general) to be:
"Using facts and knowledge outside the game, which the character would not know, to influence the character's behavior."

That's the non-pejorative meaning, and that (separate) meaning is unavoidable in RPGs.

Here's a fuzzy example: the rogue has climbed into the evil king's bedroom, and the evil king is asleep. The rogue should logically be able to kill him easily, but he refuses to do so because he knows that one Sneak Attack isn't going to kill most things of the party's level, and he doesn't want to get into a fight with this "boss monster" while the rest of the party is still climbing the rope to get up here. Is that metagaming? And if it is, who's at fault for it - the player for thinking like this, the GM for running a game that convinced the player that this is the way to think, or the designers for failing to tell the GM that sometimes it's okay if stabbing a character in the throat just straight-up kills them instead of allowing an attack that deals 8d6 extra damage on a hit?

Really depends on the framing if it's bad metagaming or not.

"The GM wouldn't let me in here if I could solve our problems with one auto-hit attack." -- probably bad, since it's centered on out-of-fiction justification

"This king has survived up until now, so he's probably not easily killed. I should assume he's got better protection than an easily-dispatched guard or bandit." -- probably not bad, since it's a reasonable chain of in-character thinking

[Cluedrew]

That's the non-pejorative meaning, and that (separate) meaning is unavoidable in RPGs.

But isn't the pejorative / disparaging / negative meaning just that but with "done in a way or for reasons that hurt the game more than help it"?

[quinron]

Here's a question, Nifft (or others): does the word "players" in point 1 of the definition include GMs? Because that could work for me.

Because with the oft-repeated troll example, the GM is doing something that takes the players out of the game - telling them they can't use fire because they "don't know they should" - for an in-game benefit - the GM's cool troll fight is (ostensibly) more challenging.

[Nifft]

Here's a question, Nifft (or others): does the word "players" in point 1 of the definition include GMs? Because that could work for me.

Because with the oft-repeated troll example, the GM is doing something that takes the players out of the game - telling them they can't use fire because they "don't know they should" - for an in-game benefit - the GM's cool troll fight is (ostensibly) more challenging.

Yes, the DM is one of the players.

And yeah, if the DM presents something which looks like an iconic D&D troll, then it's quite justifiable that the other players would assume their PCs know in-character how to deal with it (fire or acid), assuming that the PCs are supposed to be professional adventurers with even a smidgen of competence.

[Tanarii]

Eh, I don't know. I get where you're coming from. But I just don't see how "exceptionally villanous" translates to "harder to kill with physical trauma." To use Conan tropes, a fragile old sorcerer isn't going to survive being skewered by a Cimmerian hulk - so he's going to use a lot of magic to avoid letting Conan into the room with him in the first place.

Sure. In a literral Conan rpg, only high level warriors, or even a sub set of them, should get plot armor defense in the form of HP equivalents. Or maybe only heroic characters.

D&D and many other RPGs give plot armor defenses against sleeping being an automatic kill to anyone with level-equivilents. Which may or may not include nobles and kings.

[Nifft]

But isn't the pejorative / disparaging / negative meaning just that but with "done in a way or for reasons that hurt the game more than help it"?

Refine what in specific that means and I hope you'll land somewhere near what I'm proposing in the first post.

[Tanarii]

But isn't the pejorative / disparaging / negative meaning just that but with "done in a way or for reasons that hurt the game more than help it"?

Here's a question, Nifft (or others): does the word "players" in point 1 of the definition include GMs? Because that could work for me.

Because with the oft-repeated troll example, the GM is doing something that takes the players out of the game - telling them they can't use fire because they "don't know they should" - for an in-game benefit - the GM's cool troll fight is (ostensibly) more challenging.

Which is why I consider the "standard" definitions of metagaming to be amongst the worst kind of metagaming ... by those by those making the accusation.

[Composer99]

Reading through a recent thread on what situations constitute metagaming (here), it seems like there is a commonly understood but unstated definition, and I wanted to take a crack at stating that implicit definition explicitly.

Here goes.

Metagaming when used as a pejorative or accusation means that the action in question:

1. Takes other players out of the game's fiction / out of immersion in the game; and

2. Does so for some in-fiction / in-character benefit.

There are other non-pejorative definitions for "metagaming", but when we talk about bad players "metagaming", this pejorative definition seems to be what we mean.

As an illustration of using this definition: if Alice says, "Let's wrap this fight up, I promised I'd be home by 10," that takes other players out of the game, but it's for an out-of-game reason. It's a metagame concern -- it's an attempt to influence the in-game reality from outside -- but it's not the pejorative kind of metagaming because it seeks no in-fiction benefit.

Thoughts?

I am not so sure about this definition.

First, while playing a TTRPG all the players (including the GM) are continuously mixing in-game and out-of-game perspectives, especially in mechanics-heavy games such as D&D. (ETA: Also, different players will value immersion to a different extent.) So I do not reckon that losing immersion in the fiction of the game is the most suitable criterion.

Second, isn't it kind of the point for players to use their game-mechanic capabilities and knowledge for in-fiction/in-character benefits?

Edit to add: On further reflection, I think you really need to use participants' fun and gameplay experience as the central criterion in defining metagaming in a negative sense. That is, in order for one participant's metagaming to be negative, it has to impinge on the rest of the table's fun, taking into account that each participant may have varying ideas of what is fun, and the way in which different participants' roles - the GM/player divide, in particular - shape how they affect the gameplay experience.

On the one hand, that is a very subjective criterion, which may make it seem unsatisfactory. On the other hand, I would assert it is actually as close as we can get to an objective criterion, precisely because now we can apply the same definition consistently across tables and game systems.

[Nifft]

I am not so sure about this definition.

First, while playing a TTRPG all the players (including the GM) are continuously mixing in-game and out-of-game perspectives, especially in mechanics-heavy games such as D&D. So I do not reckon that losing immersion in the fiction of the game is the most suitable criterion.

Better suggestions are welcome.

If you want to provide one it must meet or exceed the current definition's function.

Second, isn't it kind of the point for players to use their game-mechanic capabilities and knowledge for in-fiction/in-character benefits?

Using out-of-character knowledge to inform your character's actions would not necessarily mean the pejorative form of metagaming.

That's a good part of why I'm making this thread -- to disambiguate normal gaming behavior from the sorts of behavior which can make reasonable people unhappy.

[Quertus]

I feel like you're reminding a player of something the character would know -- Flanking is a basic tactic IRL and in-game -- and reminding someone of a thing that the character knows seems like it's not taking them out of character, but rather helping them choose an in-character action.

The +2 is meta, but to me it's not particularly bad because it's in service of choosing an appropriate in-character action.

The "+2" not only is not bad, it's actively good: it's translating the IC action into actionable game mechanics. Without this, we get drawn-out turns, which *are* bad for the game.

Really depends on the framing if it's bad metagaming or not.

"The GM wouldn't let me in here if I could solve our problems with one auto-hit attack." -- probably bad, since it's centered on out-of-fiction justification

"This king has survived up until now, so he's probably not easily killed. I should assume he's got better protection than an easily-dispatched guard or bandit." -- probably not bad, since it's a reasonable chain of in-character thinking

"My Guy" is a name for bad "lack of metagaming".

"The GM wouldn't let me in here if I could solve our problems with one auto-hit attack… or, if he *would*, it would help anticlimactic, and be bad for the game" is the player casting "Protection for My Guy".

Then again, I'd take it to the next layer of 5d chess, and metagame reason that it would be even *worse* for the versimilitude of the game to unrealistically *not* take the killing blow, and would therefore stab him in the neck hole anyway, hoping that the fort save from the coup de grace kills him.

[Composer99]

Better suggestions are welcome.

If you want to provide one it must meet or exceed the current definition's function.


Using out-of-character knowledge to inform your character's actions would not necessarily mean the pejorative form of metagaming.

That's a good part of why I'm making this thread -- to disambiguate normal gaming behavior from the sorts of behavior which can make reasonable people unhappy.

I edited that post to add some remarks to that effect.

TL,DR: Making fun/gameplay experience the primary criterion for sorting out "good" from "bad" metagaming - precisely because reasonable people won't all agree on what is "good" or "bad" metagaming, but chances are they'll all be able to say whether something someone else did made them have less fun in a game.

[quinron]

Using out-of-character knowledge to inform your character's actions would not necessarily mean the pejorative form of metagaming.

That's a good part of why I'm making this thread -- to disambiguate normal gaming behavior from the sorts of behavior which can make reasonable people unhappy.

I guess I'm curious, since you started this thread, as to whether your use of the word "pejorative" implies an actual value judgment, as you seem to suggest here. "Pejorative" just means it's being used to cast aspersions, but as Tanarii and I have been tossing around, a lot of pejorative accusations of metagaming can be credibly accused of being metagaming (in the pejorative sense) in their own right, moreso even than the actions they're accusing in the first place. Trying to define "the pejorative use of the word 'metagaming'" is a lot different from defining "what criteria does an action need to meet to constitute negative metagaming."

[KineticDiplomat]

As others have noted, I think the perjorative part of it is what makes the definition here.

I would go so far as to say that given it’s the intent of the action that matters and garners condemnation, something like this:

“Deliberate exploitation and manipulation of the game system to gain advantage at the expense of the verisimilitude, internal consistency, and intended use of the system and/or the story”.

No one is calling out the rogue for it stabbing Conan in D&D, because D&D doesn’t let Conan die from being stabbed while sleeping. Arguments about realism aside (and honestly, D&D and realism are not really supporting concepts), everyone knows how this works within the internal truth and system consistency of D&D.

The guy who maximizes the inevitable arbitrage to be found in the rules to create an OP and never intended build, the guy who confidently detours to kill two more orcs because “then we’ll level” even though there is supposed to be time pressure to fight the BBEG right now (and yes, the GM could go all GM militant and destroy the world for this diversion, but outside angry forum suggestions this is unlikely to happen). The guy who finds the one racial/class/deity/whatever combination that is exactly and perfectly optimized for what he wants even if there is no reason why this combination makes sense or reflects who he is playing. That sort of thing.

[Cluedrew]

Refine what in specific that means and I hope you'll land somewhere near what I'm proposing in the first post.

But I think "Using out of game information to inform in game decisions in a way that hurts the game." is really as specific as we can get without getting into a case studies. Which will always get into subjectivity.

I can think of one that is probably universal (all the cases I could think where it is good are either merely similar or don't happen in role-playing) is metagaming to try to get an advantage over another player (not player character, player including the GM). And honestly I think the metagaming is less the problem as compared to just how adversarial it is.

Which actually makes me think rather than trying to add a definition to metagaming, you might just be better off saying "metagaming to [bad thing]". You are welcome to try but even if you get a good definition everyone else has to know it and not confuse it with the general one. And how many people here know what the Playgrounder's Fallacy is? I'm one and there might not be two people in this thread because it never spread very far.

[Lord Raziere]

And how many people here know what the Playgrounder's Fallacy is? I'm one and there might not be two people in this thread because it never spread very far.

I do! Its not really a fallacy, but that system agnostic discussions are system agnostic and not just Dnd 3.5, which this being a very DnD 3.5 based forum, tend to forget. a lot. Playgrounder's Fallacy is thus assuming that the discussion is about DnD 3.5 when its about things regardless of system.

for this discussion, metagaming might take different forms depending on the system. some may even require it to function. see: any "narrative" game.

[Max_Killjoy]

But I think "Using out of game information to inform in game decisions in a way that hurts the game." is really as specific as we can get without getting into a case studies. Which will always get into subjectivity.

I can think of one that is probably universal (all the cases I could think where it is good are either merely similar or don't happen in role-playing) is metagaming to try to get an advantage over another player (not player character, player including the GM). And honestly I think the metagaming is less the problem as compared to just how adversarial it is.

Which actually makes me think rather than trying to add a definition to metagaming, you might just be better off saying "metagaming to [bad thing]". You are welcome to try but even if you get a good definition everyone else has to know it and not confuse it with the general one. And how many people here know what the Playgrounder's Fallacy is? I'm one and there might not be two people in this thread because it never spread very far.

I know what it is, but that's in part because I'm not a huge D&D fan so I notice every time someone just assumes we're talking specifically about D&D.