Metagaming Guide
Metagaming and You: A Guide to What is Acceptable and What is Not.
This is part guide, part rules post, and has been along time coming. Please read this carefully and do your best to follow what's laid out herein. Following the rules laid out here is not optional, and ignorance is not an excuse for failing to do so. If anyone in Pinscher - including Staff - breaks these rules, please report it to the Storyteller so that the issue can be dealt with.
ACCEPTABLE: OOC arrangement of scene timing/location
Jerry: Hey Rebecca, can we meet up in Pinscher Basin?
Rebecca: Sorry, my character wouldn't hang out there. How about Florence instead?
Alexander: Jason, got time for a scene?
Jason: Think it'll be quick? I've gotta go in an hour.
UNACCEPTABLE: fishing for information about what a scene might be about; accepting or declining a scene based on what might happen
Jerry: Hey Thomas, can we meet up in Jackson Gardens?
Lucius: I can come too, if you're not doing Ordo stuff.
Jerry: Yeah, sorry, we're doing Covenant stuff…maybe you can join us later?
Thomas and Jerry have no right to exclude Lucius from joining a publicly accessible location unless the Staff says so. If they're in a public location, Lucius should just join the scene if he feels like playing. If Thomas and Jerry have something private to discuss, they can go somewhere private IC. More importantly, Lucius' player has no right to know what Jerry and Thomas are planning to talk about ahead of time. He should not ask, and Jerry's player should not answer.
Alexander: Jason, got time for a scene?
Jason: Not if you're gonna kill me, lol
OOC lack of time is a perfectly valid reason to decline a scene. Fear of IC consequences is not. Note that if Jason were to continually tell Alexander he is busy in order to avoid what he knows Alexander is planning, the Staff will eventually intervene and ensure that Alexander has the opportunity to follow through on his plans – whether Jason's player is willing and available or not. The same goes for regular consequences of storylines. Real life demands that the game not actually flow totally in real time, but if a reasonable length of time passes or if it becomes clear you're avoiding IC responsibility, the game world will move on without you.
ACCEPTABLE: OOC arrangement to waive resistance rolls or to drive a storyline in a mutually desired direction
Bastian: I think it'd be cool if my PC blood-bonded yours. You okay with that?
Bastian does not NEED to ask permission here, but if his victim also wants this, the two players can move forward without requiring the Staff to mediate. If OOC permission is not given, Bastian can still try it - it just requires Staff supervision to ensure the victim has a fair chance to resist.
Devon: I'd like to use Dominate here. Are you all right with the contested roll, or should we wait for the ST?
Four possibilities here:
1) the victim can choose to forgo the roll and submit willingly to Dominate;
2) the two players can make a mutually agreed-upon contested roll;
3) Devon's player can decide not to use Dominate;
or 4) the scene can be paused until a Staff member becomes available. Devon's player must respect that the victim is well within his rights to insist on #4 for any reason.
UNACCEPTABLE: Any OOC attempt to influence the IC actions of another player
Dominique: Damn, I didn't expect that reaction
I was hoping our characters could be friends…
Dominique's player might not mean any harm, but what she's doing is actually really toxic. This kind of passive-aggressive OOC guilt trip, clearly designed to change someone's IC behavior, is not just metagaming - it's actually a form of harassment. It is highly likely she is making the other player uncomfortable. Just because another player is friendly with you OOC does not mean that person is obligated to do what you want IC. Pressuring someone in this way is totally uncool.
ACCEPTABLE: OOC commentary on publicly available information
Public information consists of:
- anything visible to everyone on assigned forums and similar pages and journals
- anything explicitly stated in a news post
- anything a player has willingly revealed about their own character in the ooc chat
Public information does NOT consist of:
- information on forums that is only visible to some players
- knowledge given to you in PMs
- information about characters or storylines beyond what is specifically listed on forums or journals
- information about characters or storylines beyond what the player of that character has willingly shared
- the context, subtext, or "real story" behind a news post if it hasn't been revealed publicly in some other way
- knowledge shared in violation of any rule in this guide
It is against the rules to provide this information, and it is against the rules to solicit it.
It should go without saying that IC journals should not explicitly reveal details of other players' stories without their permission.
ACCEPTABLE: Wild and hilarious OOC speculation about IC events - so long as it's actually blind guessing.
If you actually think you know what's going on, you should probably err on the side of keeping your mouth shut unless it's your own character's storyline.
UNACCEPTABLE: Any attempt to cause your character to "discover" knowledge by post-hoc rationalization which you possess OOC, or to otherwise act on that knowledge.
This is the main reason why there are so many restrictions about what you should say OOC about IC events. When OOC info is freely shared, there is a natural urge to act on that info. The most common way in which that info is acted upon is for players to work to get their characters to "find out" what they themselves already know. It's understandable why people do this, because maintaining the IC/OOC dissonance can be difficult sometimes - but again, that's the reason why sharing OOC information has to be regulated.
This is by far the most common type of metagaming that I see. Usually people don't do it on purpose (which is partly why it's such a problem). Usually, on the face of it, it seems harmless, or like an expedient path to pushing the story forward. But this is the kind of thing that ruins characters and poisons storylines. It causes people to behave illogically and in ways that are wildly different from how they would realistically behave if the player didn't possess the information they do. It ruins the integrity of the game world, ruins the potential for stories to go in interesting new directions.
Hopefully this already makes sense to you, and you already know that it's bad. But in case it doesn't, allow me to elaborate with a giant wall of text:
As a general rule, it is always better for the sanctity of characters, storylines, and the game world to err on the side of ignorance. It's actually better for you, your character, and your storylines, too. Let me give you an example.
Suppose you're playing a vampire, and during the course of play you encounter an NPC whom you somehow know OOC is a vampire hunter. Your character has no clue. How should you play it? Many players would - deliberately or not - treat this NPCdifferently than they would treat NPCs they know nothing about. They're automatically looking for reasons to be suspicious; reasons to justify bringing their IC knowledge in line with their OOC knowledge so they can respond to the threat appropriately. This tends to take the form of scrutinizing every little thing with an eye for rationalizing firing up their Auspex or whatever.
Ultimately this amounts to something like, "He looked at me! He must be up to something!"
It's understandable why people do this. But it's also ridiculous. Not only is it toxic to the game overall, it actually endangers YOUR character MORE.
Stop for a minute and think about how it would look from the Hunter NPC's perspective if your character jumps to conclusions or becomes suddenly paranoid or suspicious. Congratulations: your metagaming just put you on a vampire hunter's radar when you probably weren't before!
Much better, for your PC's sake, to throw yourself headlong into ignorance. Go the opposite way. Be oblivious. Hell, argue AGAINST the idea of this NPC being a Hunter - or anything out of the ordinary at all. Deny it until someone shoves incontrovertible evidence right into your PC's face. This reaction is far less likely to arouse the Hunter's suspicions, far more likely to result in your character behaving in a manner which is reasonable and logical given their level of knowledge- and, incidentally, way more likely to spare your vampire character some unwanted attention. Who knows - suppressing your OOC misgivings might actually let you make an unlikely friend. Isn't that a lot more interesting than fleeing the scene in abject terror because some random stranger you just met happened to mention he likes garlic?
As a general rule, ask yourself: "if I knew nothing about this character, would I still be reacting this way?" Be honest with yourself. In situations like this, the answer is typically "no."
Another example: suppose that, through Dominate, a vampire has caused your character to forget her relationship with her lover. The default posture most players will take in this situation will be one of trying to find a way to get those memories back - or, if that's not possible, to have the relationship play out very similarly to how it did before, in order to catch things up to how they were. But not only is that metagaming, it's actually the LEAST interesting possibility. Best case scenario, your character gets her memories back, and the situation returns to just how it was before. In other words, the best case scenario for the metagamer in this situation is that NOTHING HAPPENS.
Far more interesting is the question that such a circumstance is asking: would these two characters still be in love, if they were to meet for the first time today? The characters might react totally differently to one another the second time around; they might even become enemies. Then, if the memories resurface, there's a really genuine and interesting conflict that arises. But it is impossible for such an interesting development to occur without the player's willingness to suppress her OOC knowledge of past events, to look at the situation with the brand new pair of eyes that her character has.
Metagaming is bad. It is destructive and boring. Stop metagaming.
Also, seriously, if you've never been an ST, you probably have very little appreciation for how badly this type of meta damages the game. It makes it extremely difficult for a Storyteller to make interesting things happen when players freak out over the slightest whiff of OOC knowledge of a threat. It leads to phony and contrived situations, to mental gymnastics, to PCs behaving very weirdly and having to be punished for it, to storylines being aborted before they can even get off the ground.
Realistically there are only a handful of ways for the ST to combat this type of metagaming:
1) To inundate the player with a constant flow of red herrings, IC and OOC (this is a ton of extra busywork);
2) To change things behind the scenes retroactively so as to make the player's ridiculous leaps of logic factually wrong (really hard, sometimes impossible);
3) To punish the player's decision-making with brute force (not pleasant for anyone involved);
4) To completely cut off the flow of all OOC information to the player (creates a harsh/uncool OOC environment).
All of these methods suck. Please don't make me use them on you.
