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Lowell Kempf
United States
Chicago
Illinois
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Metagaming is ridiculously broad term used to refer to any time a player goes outside the strict rules of the game. It doesn’t refer to cheating, per se (although I suppose all forms of cheating would be considered metagaming) since it doesn’t necessarily mean you are breaking the rules. It means that there are aspects of your play that go beyond or outside the rules.
Like emergent gameplay (or emergent narrative), metagaming is one of those topics I’ll never be able to cover in one entry. Instead, I have a feeling that it’s a topic that I’ll revisit a number of times.
Some people view metagaming as a bad, even detrimental thing. Other people view it as an absolutely essential element of gaming. However, the truth of the matter is that we can never completely divorce our own feelings and experiences from a game. One some level, there is always going to be some level of metagaming.
Fortunately, like I said before, the term is so broad-based that we’re not comparing apples to apples but apples to bricks to uranium.
I first came across the idea in role playing games, where metagaming is used to describe your characters acting on knowledge that they have no way of knowing but you, the player do. My fourth-level fighter has no reason to know that you need silver to fight devils or even how to tell devils from demons. As the guy who’s read all the monsters books, I do know that and can have him act accordingly.
Generally speaking, that kind of metagaming tends to make the RPG experience a little weaker, at best. At worst, it can derail of the narrative that your group is developing. So, my first exposure to metagaming was as a bad thing.
On the other hand, as had been pointed out to me, poker is a game where the metagame is more important than the actual rules itself. Any game where real money is on the line is a game where there’s a lot more going on than what’s in the rule book. And, in the case of poker, that’s what makes it a tense and exciting experience.
In collectable card games like Magic, the metagame is all about understanding the environment. Certain cards or styles of play may be prevalent and knowing how to use them well or how to counter them well is important in playing the game. Indeed, the metagame can sometimes be more interesting than the actual game itself 
What does this mean? It means that either metagaming doesn’t have to be a bad thing or the term is so contextual that it doesn’t have anything close to a specific meaning. 
So, let’s narrow the focus a bit. What do I think about metagaming when it comes to my usual board gaming experience?
First of all, I think that every regular gaming group develops its own groupthink. Certain play styles tend to become prevalent. Just like Magic players either learn how to excel at a particular play style or learn how to counter it, I think that regular gaming groups tend to do that.
As an obvious example, I have played Dominion face-to-face with two different groups on a semi-regular basis. (One is in another state so I haven’t played as much with them) One group tends to focus on trashing and creating speed decks. The other group prefers to focus on attack decks, leading to longer but much more aggressive games. Neither group is married to their own play style to the point that they can’t adapt but I know what cards folks with gravitate towards.
A valuable lesson that the second group taught the first group is that Mint isn’t such a tasty card when Pirate Ship or Thief is in the mix
So one element of metagaming that I find myself experiencing a lot is just how the people I regularly play with think.
Another aspect of metagaming, one that I have not seen as much of lately, is people who intentionally play or act in a way to make other people play badly.
I used to play with a guy who would intentionally whine during games, particularly Settlers. He explicitly described it as an intentional strategy. If he was really lucky, people would feel sorry for him and give him favorable trades. At the very least, it would irritate and annoy people to the point where it might throw off their game. After all, it was nothing in the rules that said he couldn’t whine. There was at least one game where I got so fed up with it that I hit him with the robber every chance I could get, regardless of who was winning.
Needless to say, that is one form of metagaming I really don’t like.
In the end, a game is defined by its rules. The limitations of your actions and the options that are open to you are set in place by the rules. However, the experience of playing a game will go beyond the rules.
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