My potentially controversial take is that metagaming is neither good nor bad. A metagaming problem is really just some other problem that rears its head through metagaming.
You can metagame and be a good player. It’s like doing improv with dramatic irony. If you’re prioritizing the gameplay and everyone’s enjoyment, it’s a useful tool.
If you’re using it for the personal advantage of your character, though… that can also be fine. Some old-school games, especially dungeon crawls, are like strategy games testing the players as well as their characters.
It’s when there’s a disconnect between how people are playing the game that you get problems. If someone wants to play a strategy game while others want to play improv, and they’re not thinking about what kind of approach is appropriate and when, that you get issues.
This is a good take* and I agree 100%. It’s more complex than it seems at first, as you detail.
All RPG player archetypes are valid when they fit with the overall play style of the group.
Whole group is meta gaming together? Positive collective experience. Whole group is hardcore RP? Awesomesauce.
One jackass is meta gaming in an RP group and pissing them off? Trade off that player ASAP.
I don’t get it.
Metagaming Bob is implied to be a player who metagames, so they intentionally use game knowledge to improve their odds of winning. If for instance they were to fail an insight check, they would choose to break character and act suspicious of the person who they failed insight on, even if their character should have no reason to suspect them.
So they’ll end up with a inconsistent mess of a character whose illogical scrapheap of descisions had “win the thing I wanna do” as their sole background?
Ooohhhh, so not seeing their own roll they just get into that doesn’t indicate if they failed?
I think this is a totally fine method tbh.
This is one of those things I love about PF2. There is the Secret trait on quite a few different checks, which means the GM rolls in secret.
We play virtually so players initiate the roll but the result is blindly sent to the GM. Great example of this is stealth checks - there’s no “oh, I rolled poorly so just kidding I actually only barely move”.
Isn’t the secret trait on most skill checks for knowledge? I love that critical fails on those have the GM give plausible but wrong information.
It is! Though I’ve ignored that in my games because I feel like recall knowledge is a little limited. I allow one attempt out of combat to recall knowledge, allow repeated checks in combat to identify creatures, and don’t don’t give incorrect information on a crit fail. The last bit is why I don’t bother making the rolls secret.
I think this is a totally fine method tbh.
As long as the DM isn’t also fudging rolls.
My first experience with Pen&Papers was on a summer camp, where a bunch of older guys were mastering RPGs for us. They didn’t use any kind of rules system, and just told us to describe what we’re trying to do and they would roll a D10 and just kind of improvise from there.
I’m really glad they did that, because it made us, teens having their first experience with Pen&Paper, focus much more on roleplaying rather than rules and numbers. And even when I later switched to rule-based systems, this experience has stuck with me, and all of my friends who played there too, and even though we did have rules and numbers now, we still kept focusing on the RP side and never really paid them much attention.
I’ve once played with a new group of people at my new job, who were obviously used to playing with rules, and it was such a massive difference in how they approached the game. They usually thought and talked about numbers first, and then figured out some kind of RP to go with it, but it should be the other way around! The game felt so bland, most of the talk was OOC, and it just felt more like a board game than a Pen&Paper.
So, in my opinion, as much rolls as possible should just be done by the GM without the knowledge of the player. It just makes the experience a lot better. Even though I’m actively trying to pay no mind to the dice rolls when playing, and have no problem with separating IC and OOC knowledge, playing to entertain and not to win, just seeing that failed perception/WP roll will nag you and influence you, no matter how you try to avoid it. It’s better to just not know. If it would be feasible, I’d preffer for the DM to do all rolls in secret, and handle each players rules, just asking them for reaction if it’s appropriate. But that would be almost impossible and put a lot of strain on the already busy GM.
But, if you’ve never tried it, try running a session with no rules, and GM just rolling D10 and improvising of the number he gets, based on the action you’re describing. It’s a lot more fun, and especially for new players, it teaches them an important aspect of the Pen & Paper RPGs - the rules and numbers are there as an afterthought, you are not supposed to think or talk about them. You are supposed to live and roleplay the character, describe his actions, and cooperate with others to build a nice and immersive story. And if it turns out that what you just described is something your character is bad at? Who cares, it’s going to be fun.
This is basically the idea behind lasers&feelings and all of its hacks. The setting is a well known TV (or book) universe, and the rules are stripped down to the bone (the whole game fits in one page).
It really puts the role playingback into role playing games.
Its such a different experience compared to rules-heavy RPGs. Everyone should try it at least once, just to get a glimpse of what RPGs should be about, especially when starting. Its really sad when i play with players who spent most of the game talking about numbers and action names, and almost never RP.
Im not saying that its not possible to RP with a rules heavy game, and ive met a lot of amazing players who still put RP first, but for a lot of new players it can be hard to get used to it, and the rules and numbers take away the focus from it, to the point where they tend to play it as a regular board game, not realizing thats not what it is about.
This requires a lot more trust than I usually have for the other players. I especially don’t trust that the average GM is going to be consistent and agreeable.
The rules feel like they came out of resolving “you hit me” “no you didn’t” playground games.
There are rules light games like Fate Accelerated, or lighter ones I don’t know, that can be fun without it being entirely the DM says stuff.
It is difficult for the GM, that’s for sure. I was never competitive, so I didn’t mind just loosing for the sake of story or wasn’t invested in my character performing well - quite the contrary, I’ve always enjoyed underpowered RP characters more than all-powerful warriors, and just having one D10 to worry about introduced just enough randomness for it to still be interressting with critical misses, while also letting the GM to give us an experience that would be fun and enjoyable, because there are no rules that would say “you can’t do this”. And from my experience GMing one such game (on the same summer camp, once I was older), it’s surprisingly intuitive experience - I never really had to think about “Ok, how much for this skill check?”, but always just let them describe the action, roll, and then have a pretty clear gut feeling on whether it was enough or not. I was pretty nervous during that game, since it was one of my first time GMing and for people I didn’t know, and without a rule system to hide my decisions behind, but it just worked well and everyone enjoyed it.
But you are right, I now much more prefer some rules-light systems that give you and the GM at least some base to go on. Or Dread. Dread is the best system I’ve ever used, and to this day is one of my most favorite examples of unique and really clever game design.
I more or less do this for stealth or deception checks. I get the players to tell me their modifier, and then roll behind the screen. And then I’ll give them a description like “try as you might, you can’t seem to make your armor stop squeaking” or “to the best of your knowledge, you are quiet and unseen” or whatever. But I don’t actually tell them what they rolled, and let the scenario play out.
My players seem to actually prefer this, since it allows them to blissfully ignore the metagaming elements.
My favorite response is a consistent “you believe you are hidden” for every stealth check.
Gotta work on your poker face with that one, as DM. Sometimes I can’t help but laugh, so I deliver…
(They roll a 2) you believe you are hidden but are in fact betraying your position – you’re the equivalent of clown shoes sticking out from under the barrel. How would you describe this?
A good roleplayer leans into this and hijinx abound.
I honestly love when our DM makes a roll and just says “… okay”. Especially when it happens in response to a seemingly innocuous action.
I know critical failures aren’t a thing outside attack rolls, but when someone rolls a 1 I just can’t help but adding flavor.
Player rolls 1 perception looking into an empty room with a cat in it:
You see a dragon
Actually funnier when they DO see their roll. Gotta put in the work roleplaying 🤣
