Friday, May 10, 2013

Storygames and Metagaming

So, this semi-rant can safely be filed under pedantry.  I've read a few people recently mention they don't like RPGs with lots of metagame decisions, then they mention games like Fiasco.  I've seen this enough that it seems common, but it doesn't really jive with my understanding of the term.

A metagame decision, as I understand it, are the concerns outside the structure of the rules.  An example consisting of something like watching the clock during your D&D game, knowing that the GM has to wrap up the scenario soon, so it's a good idea to blow all your cool spells now.  Or taking it easy on whoever brought the beer that night.

However, talking about scene currency in Fiasco isn't a metagame decision, since it's part of the rules structure.  I guess a metagame decision might be avoiding certain types of scenes based on the comfort level of the players, or something to that effect.

Anyway, this falls back to probably a larger issue in that communication about RPGs is a messy thing.  I guess communication is itself messy, so it's not surprise we can't talk about RPGs very well.  But I think gamers have a variety of terms we love to use, but rarely agree on: crunchy, fluffy, gamist, story game, indie game, simulationist, metagame, simple, complex, railroad, sandbox, old school, new school, munchkin, power gamer, etc.  If nothing else, it provides for conversation.

No comments:

Post a Comment