On a base level, RPGs have two types of mechanics. The first is character-centric. The player's character is broken down into traits, a set of numbers. The play environment, including other characters, is likewise broken down. Through these numbers and how the compare and interact is how the player is able to interact with the play environment through the agent of his character.

If the player, Bart, wishes to lift a rock; his character, Sam, is the one who'll do the lifting. This could boil down to a simple numerical comparison. If Sam's strength trait is higher than the rock's weight trait he may lift it. A random factor may be applied to reflect uncertainty. Perhaps the rock really isn't as heavy as it looks. Sam's fingers may slip. The end result is if Bart wishes to have any effect in the play environment, it will be through Sam. The tools Sam provides Bart with are based on what a person in the real world is able to do; magic and super powers aside. Sam can lift rock, jump trees, talk to people and so on. If Sam has a magical power, he may be able to make a rock materialize out of thin air but he cannot make a rock suddenly appear that has always been there in the first place.

This is the domain of the second set of mechanics, which gives the player tools that may have nothing to do with their character at all. These rules may include pure mechanical effects applied to the player-centric mechanics (Marvel Super Heroes's Karma Points, Hero Wars's Hero Points) or effect the play environment directly (director stance) or various other tools for interacting with the play environment.

If Sam is bleeding to death in an alley, he may wish someone would help him, but he really has no effect on the situation. It's up to Bart to spend the fate point or whatever to see to it that Sam doesn't die.

These are sometimes referred to as metagame, but I have a problem with that term. I first encountered the term in Sean Patrick Fannon's Fantasy Role-Playing Gamer's Bible:

Metagaming- This is a term frequently used to describe when someone is using "out-of-game" information to assist "in-game" characters or situations.

Metagame includes all positioning and behavioral statements about the character, as well as player rights to over-ride the existing Effectiveness rules.

If it helps you to be more comfortable with the term, I'll point out that "meta" doesn't always mean "change," as it does in metamorphosis and metastasize. Fannon's and the GNS usage are also correct, in that "meta" really does also mean "above," "beyond," "transcending," or "of a higher logical type," as in metaphysics, metalanguage, and metalogic. The modern usage (especially among those who have read Hofstadter's Godel, Escher, Bach in their impressionable youth) centers on the latter meaning, with the additional implication of reflexivity or self-reference. Thus, metalogic is logic applied to the practice of logic; a metalanguage is a language designed to be used to describe or discuss language. But in this sense it no longer means truly "beyond" or "outside." Metalogic is still logic; a metalanguage is still a language; metagame mechanisms are still game mechanisms.

The conceptual problem with the all-metagame idea is that for a game mechanism to be "meta" there has to be something for it to be "meta" to. "All meta" is a contradiction, like trying to build a house that's "all second storey, no first storey." Shouldn't you then just call that second storey the first storey? For example, from a role playing point of view, one could argue that the card game Once Upon a Time is all-metagame. But it's also all just a game on its own level. I don't think anything particularly new or special happens when you remove the character-centric mechanics.

But I'd be thrilled if someone proved me wrong.

- Walt

wfreitag wrote: The conceptual problem with the all-metagame idea is that for a game mechanism to be "meta" there has to be something for it to be "meta" to.

I don't think anything particularly new or special happens when you remove the character-centric mechanics.

But I'd be thrilled if someone proved me wrong.

[Shortened for brevity.]

Jack Spencer Jr wrote: On a base level, RPGs have two types of mechanics. The first is character-centric.

This is the domain of the second set of mechanics, which gives the player tools that may have nothing to do with their character at all.

A big problem I have with the term metagame is the word itself. Meta means change.

I would propose a better term than "metagame" but none comes to mind so to heck with that.

Adventures of Baron Munchausen? Primeval? Universalis? I think a lot of games are being creatted with the non-character-centric as primary rules concept these days.

If you don't like Metagame, you could use the term Extragame. As opposed to Intragame.

Mike

I've edittied my original post because this was starting to turn into a semantics debate and I thought it best to leave my crumby dictionaries definition of "meta" and my own stupidity out of it. This does make the first couple replies confusing. Oh, well. Pop goes the weasel. Now we can focus on the topic at hand, which is not a new word for the term metagame.

Mike Holmes wrote: Adventures of Baron Munchausen? Primeval? Universalis? I think a lot of games are being creatted with the non-character-centric as primary rules concept these days.

If you don't like Metagame, you could use the term Extragame. As opposed to Intragame.

Hey.

I think that all game mechanics are best understood as metagame mechanics. There is no rock, no Sam, no game world or its physics to model; there's just Bart and his friends sitting around a table. Game mechanics are about whose assertions get adopted into the group's consensus, about who gets to say what. They apportion credibility.

What you're calling character-centric mechanics, for the most part, exist to limit the creative input of the players. If Bart asserts that Sam lifts the rock, we don't just take his word for it; we do this odd verification thing where Bart has to roll under 85 with percentile dice. In effect, the mechanics say that 85% of the time, Bart is a reliable judge of Sam's strength, and the rest of the time he's not, his assertions are false. Worse, they say that Bart can't know or choose which 15% of the time he's mistaken. And worse still, character-centric mechanics usually pass power off to the GM. Bart doesn't get to interpret his own rolls, for the most part. He says "Sam lifts the rock," he rolls his dice, and we all turn to the GM to find out if Bart's telling the truth.

'Metagame mechanics' return some credibility to the players. Bart can spend a power point and say "Sam lifts the rock, and I'm not fooling around this time."

I'm not knocking it. Having more credibility when you mean it is a really important idea.

So but my assertion is that when you're designing a game, you should never say "this is the in-game mechanic, and this is the metagame mechanic." What you should say is "under these circumstances we can take the player's word for it, and under these circumstances we'll limit the player's input. This is how assertions get accepted into the group's consensus."

-Vincent

But,Vincent, nobody uses the term Metagame when actually writing their RPG. I don't say Karmajiggy Points are metagame, I say, KP can be used to prevent yourself from being killed, and then explain how it works mechanically. We only use the term here to discuss the concept for which we all undserstand that your reverse definition is correct.

Mountains of molehils here, people.

Mike

Excellent point, Vincent. Actually, I meant to include something along these lines in my original post.
Oh well. Pop goes the weasel.

What I was going to say, and it is slightly different from what Vincent had said, was that part of it seems to be that some believe that there are two sets of mechanics, one for the character and one for the player. Fact is, both sets of mechanics are for the player because without the player, the character does not exist. So in reality, all the rules are for the player and the character-specific rules are, pretty much as Vincent said, a method of filtering what the player can do.

More or less, anyway.

Mike Holmes wrote: I don't say Karmajiggy Points are metagame, I say, KP can be used to prevent yourself from being killed, and then explain how it works mechanically.

To clarify, Karmajigy Points are hypothetical (take the name if you really like it), made to make a point. But I could easily point to Hero Points in Hero Wars for exactly the sort of think I'm talking about, if you want a real example. I bet if we were to read the rules, that nowhere does it speak to how these rules are "metagame" but in fact how the player uses them to influence the game. That's my only point. As such the term Metagame reains useful in discussions such as these, IMO.

Such metagame mechanics have been aroung forever, and unusually, TSR (Rassmusen?) probably gets credit for inventing them. Fame and Fortune points from the original Top Secret game, allowed a player to save his character from certian death. But even here, we can see that such "metagame" is not extant to fix a broken system. It is there to evoke a result. Top Secret is meant to emulate James Bond and other such spy stuff. In such stories, the protagonist often survives all sorts of brushes with death, not only by his own ingenuity or abilities, but also by sheer random happenstance. The F&F points were meant to simulate that. In the same way as a writer protects his character with his meta-story power, the player is able to protect his character with meta-game. Not broken, not a fix. Just one way to approach an idea.

Again, to be clear, Universalis is a game that I'm writing with Ralph Mazza. And as such I can reassure you that it is exactly what you are describing (a fact that hopefully you'll be able to determine for yourself soon). Anyhow, other similar "non-character centric rules" games that I've seen include stuff from Bankuei, WFD from Paul Czege, WYRD from Scott Knipe, Mike Gentry's Framework, and others including your The Wheel. And I think Primeval beat us all to it, and is still one of the most hardcore in that vein to date. I think that you are simply describing a wave of games that is already emerging.

Mike

Mike Holmes wrote: As such the term Metagame reains useful in discussions such as these, IMO.

Such metagame mechanics have been aroung forever, and unusually, TSR (Rassmusen?) probably gets credit for inventing them.

Fame and Fortune points from the original Top Secret game, allowed a player to save his character from certian death. But even here, we can see that such "metagame" is not extant to fix a broken system. It is there to evoke a result. Top Secret is meant to emulate James Bond and other such spy stuff. In such stories, the protagonist often survives all sorts of brushes with death, not only by his own ingenuity or abilities, but also by sheer random happenstance. The F&F points were meant to simulate that. In the same way as a writer protects his character with his meta-story power, the player is able to protect his character with meta-game. Not broken, not a fix. Just one way to approach an idea.