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Preventing the Metagame

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Surgoshan:
In small groups, meta-gaming can be bad.  I remember last time I DMed a 2nd edition D&D game.  This was back in my frat days and most of the guys just wanted to play for fun.  One guy was a metagamer and took advantage of my laxity to pull out every rule book available and create a first level fighter capable of churning through 20 gobs like he was the proverbial hot knife.  It ruined the game for everyone else.

Metagamers can ruin the game in several ways.  The first is the above-mentioned example, wherein they can just suck all the fun out by being the uber-power house.  Combat is a significant portion of most game systems and totally dominating combat ruins the significant potion for the other players.

To select another obvious example, there's the rules-lawyer aspect.  The metagamer knows all the rules and thus is willing to argue with the DM into infinity in every situation.  Where's the fun in watching some asshole attempt to browbeat another asshole into submission?  It's worse if your DM is cool and wants to give the group the benefit of the dice; the metagamer becomes a god.  Worse yet, the DM shuts down and rule as precisely by the book as possible.



If you play for fun (and I usually do), the meta-gamer just plain ruins it.  He criticizes your choices for being suboptimal (by the by, the metagamer's usually a dude).  He pulls the focus of every encounter, combat or non.  He whines.  He agitates.  He's a stereotype.

The metagamer isn't a problem because he's a stereotype (most of us are stereotypes of one kind or another).  He's a stereotype because he's a problem.

Dimmukane:
It's not quite the same as just equipping better armor, it's learning and exploiting the system in your favor in a way that skewers everyone else's experience.  Like in Oblivion, you were undetectable if you had high enough sneak/invisibility, and could walk all over any enemy because you were doing nothing but sneak attacks.  Take that and put it in a group setting, and the asshole that's doing it and taking all the fun is a metagamer.

At least, that's my understanding.

actreal:
Metagamers (or any other annoying player stereotypes) can be trained like puppies. It's all about reinforcement.

If they do something bad, like be a rules-lawyer or build a stupid character, punch them in the arm or spray them with a water pistol. Or if you're not as violent as my friends, punish them in game by killing their character in a way that they could have avoided if they'd been roleplaying properly. Preferably in a way that is amusing for all the other players.

For example, for clerics, tell them that they lost all their memorised spells because their god thought they were being a dick. For warriors, get one of those nice monsters with acid attacks to melt off their armour and/or weapon so they have to survive without for the rest of the adventure. Etc etc.

Alex C:
I think we need to define our terms a bit before going forward with this discussion.

Here's the terms as I understand them from my years of experience in tabletop and MUX enviroments:

Metagaming & OOC crossover: Basically, when you use Out-Of-Character (OOC) information to your advantage in the game world. It's inevitable to a certain extent because your understanding of your character's capabilities affects the way you percieve the world and how you gauge threats. If you're playing a powerful warrior, it's probably acceptable for you to realize whether or not you have a decent chance of killing those kobolds. However, if you're playing a naive, level 1 peasant-turned-reluctant-hero Fighter, but keep trouncing everything because you've memorized the entire Monster Manual and bought the module the GM is running, then well, obviously, things aren't going to be as fun as they could have been for everyone else.

Power Gaming: Full on min-maxing and treating the game as a challenge to be defeated. Power gamers tend to value games as an exercise in collaborative problem solving rather than cooperative storytelling. Personally, I don't have much problem with this kind of gaming, but it's not everyone's cup of tea and is the kind of thing often best done only in single player CRPGs (in my case, preferably after I've already experienced the story line in "normal" play once or twice). Power gaming is a seperate (but related) concept from metagaming primarily because it is possible to work efficiently within the game system without really taking advantage of any information they shouldn't be privy to.

Munchkining/Munchkins: People who do more than dabble in the previous two activities and adds in a healthy dose of plain ol' douche baggery. Most players will make decisions that benefit them in the game world. The Munchkin takes things to ridiculous extremes and uses metagaming and number crunching to hog the spotlight at every turn. I am often a bit of a "stealth" power gamer at my tables; I'd keep a few powerful tactics in my back pocket for a rainy day but would for the most part let the other party members run the show and rp as much as possible. A munchkin would take the same aces in the hole and use them at every single opportunity, patting himself on the back every step of the way. They also tend to be arrogant enough to think that people who find them annoying are just jealous, stupid, or both.

est:
Yeah ok, by those definitions I am a powergamer, not a metagamer.  Carry on.

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