A wise man once said, “The game continues even through TPKs, and player knowledge beats character knowledge, and meta-gaming is still real gaming,” and he’s not only handsome and completely correct, he’s also me.
I said that.
Somewhere along the lines somebody stupid got it into their pea-brain that there’s a separation between what a character knows and what a player knows and it’s one of the most pernicious and fun-killing unspoken rules of the modern day table.
It makes sense if you’re sitting down to a table to swap interactive stories. It’s easy for the Everybody Gets a Trophy and XP crowd – they are used to believing things they know aren’t true, and they are well accustomed to behaving as though they don’t know something that they really do know. That’s they only way they can get through life without suffering the indignity of being ostracized from the groupthink herd. Ever known a hot chick who pretends to be dumb to attract more thirsty betas? I’ve dated dozens of them, married two, and recognize the signs of Girl D&D when I see them, and this is one of those flashing red signs.
For Manly Men who play D&D in accordance with the sacred texts handed down from on high by Saint Gygax, it’s the height of cowardice and stupidity. You literally have to pretend to be stupider than you really are to play this way.
Dungeons and Dragons, like all intellectual pursuits, is in part a mental challenge. The game is built around statistics, problem solving, and player challenges. It’s lethal, and it’s designed to require you to take high risks for high rewards. When those risks don’t pan out, you roll your dice to build some new mice and you go right back at it again. The character dies and your life continues, and now you as the player know now to flip a coin when picking a door, but which of the two doors hides a tiger and which a pretty lady. Use that hard won knowledge.
This goes all the way back to the beginning. Gygax tells of a deep level in Castle Grayhawk where he placed seven vaults. Five of the vaults contained fabulous wealth, and two terrible monsters. A lone player decided, after the party had opened a couple of them, to send a first level thief down to grab one of the vaults and score that easy loot. He chose poorly and escaped with his life and two black dragons roaming that level for the party to blunder into later. Note that Gygax didn’t tell the player, “Your new thief doesn’t know about those vaults,” he just rolled with it.
He has also shared stories of players who, upon a TPK, simply erased the damage to their dead character and wrote the number “2” after the character name. “Bob the Fighter Junior shall avenge the death of his father who died in a dank hole with no witnesses.” Umm, how? Player knowledge – duh!
Some old school games, I’m looking at you here Call of Cthulhu, suggest a quick excuse. “You must have sent some letters to a friend just before you swam into that lake that swallowed your soul. We just forgot to mention it.” But this isn’t really necessary any more than cesspits in the dungeon plans. They’re there, we know they’re there, and we all know they’re not important, unless they are, in which case we can mention it when it becomes important, like say during character creation, and not before.
It’s not just an easier way to play, it’s the smart way to play.
I look forward to watching the RPG Pundit’s hot takes on this issue when he does an episode of Cooking In A Dirty Kitchen While I Talk About My Cat and Pipe and Rant About D&D on The Youse Tubeses where he talks about what I blogged about a week ago without ever once mentioning my name or this blog.
The Alt-Right DM 
They also believe that being retarded makes them better PoC allies; there was a study made that found out that Liberals are likely to dumb down their way of speaking and avoid using complex or uncommon words when talking to Blacks.
The problem of metagaming is just one of “don’t be a dick”; use your social skills and determine if your metagaming (or anti-metagaming) is going to spoil the other players’ enjoyment of the session.
The RPG community spends so much time talking about metagaming while, honestly, it never seemed to be a problem in any group I played with that wasn’t constituted of retards. Yes, some metagaming happens, it never goes too far and nobody cares.
Fundamentally, the real metagaming problem in D&D is when people play a “social game” on top of D&D to raise themselves in the pecking order. Since the activity they are partaking in is roleplaying, they want to establish themselves as either 1) the best roleplayer or 2) the best (as in strongest) character.
In the first case, they’ll do anti-metagaming to prove their roleplaying talent and call out vocally anyone who is doing even the slightest metagaming. This is very common with the SJW types who are obsessed with power and hierarchy (and always want to be on top of it). Their Boomer parents were to busy gazing at their own navel to give them the attention they needed so, now, they need to be recognised as the special boys they think they are.
In the second case, we have the people who will basically cheat (they might go so far as get the module and read ahead) so their character will always be the MVP of the party. This is more common with 12-year-old raised by single-mother who just discovered the hobby and did not yet turn into SJWs; it’s not a good sign for the future and they’ll probably switch to category 1 if no intervention takes place. Their friends will stop playing with them based on the fact that they cheat and ruin the fun for others, they’ll find a new group of friends and re-invent themselves as anti-metagaming champion.
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