Matreya
Well-Known Member
Welcome to the handy-dandy guide to metagaming! I'm your host, Qae Shena, and this is the show in which you learn something useful.
What Is Metagaming?
Metagaming is defined by wiki as, in simple terms, the use of out-of-game information or resources to affect one's in-game decisions. This is actually a bad thing, and let me explain why. Now, let's keep in mind that we have out of character and in-character, referred to above as out-of-game and in-game. If you talk to someone over messenger or even out of character forums, that's OOC. If you roleplay it out, that's IC. Got it? Good. Let's get on with it.
Meet Porky the Hutt. He's our new guide through the not-so-wonderful world of metagaming. He's small and fat and adorable and you will love him.
Porky decides to join the Republic as a Senator for his homeworld of Nal Hutta. He's very confident that he and his policies of feeding people to rancors will go over very well in the Senate and he will fight for Rancor justice and not letting them get stabbed in the face by whiny emo kid Jedi. Welcome to the Republic, Porky! We have faith in you!
So, Porky sets off on his grand quest to find out all he can about his new mortal enemy, the Sith, who are invading everything and killing babies, blah blah blah. But oh no, you may say! Porky finds out that Darth Beef, the sworn mortal enemy of rancors everywhere and Dark Lord of the Sith, is about to stage an attack on the Tatooine Rancor Breeding Pens! Can't have that! Porky tells the Republic and they set out on their grand quest to stop Darth Beef. Darth Beef springs his trap - a Death Star - but the Republic had secret intelligence and bring their X-wings and blow up the thermal exhaust port which is only one metre wide and weak only to Rib Missiles that they already had. Darth Beef dies in the explosion and the Republic is victorious! Porky's a hero!
But Porky found this intelligence out from General Chicken, the great strategic mind of the Sith, because General Chicken doesn't like the cut of Beef's jib. They had a chat on Skype because Beef's a bit of a bully to all his faction members and they're sick of Beef's crap, the giant overgrown cow that he is. So they put something in motion to end him. Darth Beef finds this out from Private Drumstick, General Chicken's cousin, and there's a big argument and everyone feels sad.
THIS IS BAD. Nobody likes the sads.
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Why Is Metagaming Bad?
Porky found out the super secret out-of-character and used that out-of-character knowledge in-character to his benefit. It basically equates to cheating, and nobody likes a dirty dirty cheater. Porky used something he had no way of knowing in-character, and then went ahead and used it to his advantage. He had no reason to know about the secret Death Star. Darth Beef probably shouldn't have died, unfortunately, and the argument could have been avoided. Porky ends up saying sorry and things get better, though.
Now, on some level, you have to talk out-of-character about stuff with people. Communicating about roleplaying is great and you should all do it all the time. It's when you use what you learned on an out-of-character basis as in-character stuff to get your way that things get bad.
You suddenly know your enemy's secret weakness is the colour pink without viably finding out? Metagaming.
You know exactly which orphanage is going to get burned next all of a sudden and stop them with a huge army because reasons? Metagaming.
You find out who's coming for you over Skype and their secret plan to trap you and you escape because you found out from your friend what's going on? Metagaming.
None of these look good and are very accidentally done. The best way to look at it is 'should my character know this?' If the answer is no, don't do it. Simple as that. It's a form of godmoding, because god knows everything, and you aren't god. It's probably one of the lesser ones, but it's still a thing you should avoid.
Think of it as poor form, less a massive problem. We all like to see good writing, right? So make sure you write things out, reasonably, and everything should be fine.
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How's this different from powergaming, o tentacle face?
Powergaming is when you just power through something, hence the name. It's like GMing, kind of, but you're stacking on power like I can do this and this and that and ooh that's gonna be so good at murdering babies and I'LL TAKE THE KITCHEN SINK TOO. That's powergaming. Not taking hits because you feel like writing God is also powergaming - and that is against the rules, kiddies.
Metagaming is abuse of knowledge. Powergaming is abuse of power. Big difference, right? Right.
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So hopefully this has explained to you what metagaming is and why you should avoid it. And maybe Porky the Hutt won't metagame next time and ruin someone else's day and he can go back to being rolled down hills and laughed at by the Senate. Silly Porky. Nal Hutta isn't even in the Republic.
What Is Metagaming?
Metagaming is defined by wiki as, in simple terms, the use of out-of-game information or resources to affect one's in-game decisions. This is actually a bad thing, and let me explain why. Now, let's keep in mind that we have out of character and in-character, referred to above as out-of-game and in-game. If you talk to someone over messenger or even out of character forums, that's OOC. If you roleplay it out, that's IC. Got it? Good. Let's get on with it.
Meet Porky the Hutt. He's our new guide through the not-so-wonderful world of metagaming. He's small and fat and adorable and you will love him.
Porky decides to join the Republic as a Senator for his homeworld of Nal Hutta. He's very confident that he and his policies of feeding people to rancors will go over very well in the Senate and he will fight for Rancor justice and not letting them get stabbed in the face by whiny emo kid Jedi. Welcome to the Republic, Porky! We have faith in you!
So, Porky sets off on his grand quest to find out all he can about his new mortal enemy, the Sith, who are invading everything and killing babies, blah blah blah. But oh no, you may say! Porky finds out that Darth Beef, the sworn mortal enemy of rancors everywhere and Dark Lord of the Sith, is about to stage an attack on the Tatooine Rancor Breeding Pens! Can't have that! Porky tells the Republic and they set out on their grand quest to stop Darth Beef. Darth Beef springs his trap - a Death Star - but the Republic had secret intelligence and bring their X-wings and blow up the thermal exhaust port which is only one metre wide and weak only to Rib Missiles that they already had. Darth Beef dies in the explosion and the Republic is victorious! Porky's a hero!
But Porky found this intelligence out from General Chicken, the great strategic mind of the Sith, because General Chicken doesn't like the cut of Beef's jib. They had a chat on Skype because Beef's a bit of a bully to all his faction members and they're sick of Beef's crap, the giant overgrown cow that he is. So they put something in motion to end him. Darth Beef finds this out from Private Drumstick, General Chicken's cousin, and there's a big argument and everyone feels sad.
THIS IS BAD. Nobody likes the sads.
-----
Why Is Metagaming Bad?
Porky found out the super secret out-of-character and used that out-of-character knowledge in-character to his benefit. It basically equates to cheating, and nobody likes a dirty dirty cheater. Porky used something he had no way of knowing in-character, and then went ahead and used it to his advantage. He had no reason to know about the secret Death Star. Darth Beef probably shouldn't have died, unfortunately, and the argument could have been avoided. Porky ends up saying sorry and things get better, though.
Now, on some level, you have to talk out-of-character about stuff with people. Communicating about roleplaying is great and you should all do it all the time. It's when you use what you learned on an out-of-character basis as in-character stuff to get your way that things get bad.
You suddenly know your enemy's secret weakness is the colour pink without viably finding out? Metagaming.
You know exactly which orphanage is going to get burned next all of a sudden and stop them with a huge army because reasons? Metagaming.
You find out who's coming for you over Skype and their secret plan to trap you and you escape because you found out from your friend what's going on? Metagaming.
None of these look good and are very accidentally done. The best way to look at it is 'should my character know this?' If the answer is no, don't do it. Simple as that. It's a form of godmoding, because god knows everything, and you aren't god. It's probably one of the lesser ones, but it's still a thing you should avoid.
Think of it as poor form, less a massive problem. We all like to see good writing, right? So make sure you write things out, reasonably, and everything should be fine.
-----
How's this different from powergaming, o tentacle face?
Powergaming is when you just power through something, hence the name. It's like GMing, kind of, but you're stacking on power like I can do this and this and that and ooh that's gonna be so good at murdering babies and I'LL TAKE THE KITCHEN SINK TOO. That's powergaming. Not taking hits because you feel like writing God is also powergaming - and that is against the rules, kiddies.
Metagaming is abuse of knowledge. Powergaming is abuse of power. Big difference, right? Right.
-----
So hopefully this has explained to you what metagaming is and why you should avoid it. And maybe Porky the Hutt won't metagame next time and ruin someone else's day and he can go back to being rolled down hills and laughed at by the Senate. Silly Porky. Nal Hutta isn't even in the Republic.
