Metagaming

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It was my freshman year of high school and my buddy had gotten very excited about a new module. He wouldn’t tell me what it was, but for months all I heard about was how awesome it was going to be. He was reading it over and over again, making lists of items, writing down enemies and NPCs. It was going to be his first game as a GM. 

I was getting stoked for it.

We gathered at his house; I had brought the Mt. Dew. Pizza was in the oven.

That is when he revealed our new campaign with a flourish.

Tomb of the Lizard King!

I had read it last year.

At that point I could have made a big deal about already reading the module, but it would have crushed him. So, I kept my mouth shut and just played. It did not take long before I came to my first problem. The PCs needed to go a certain way, but the party was leaning towards an entirely different path. I could see my buddy was struggling to get everyone headed in the right direction for the encounter. So that is when I used my knowledge of the module to get the game back on track. A brief impassioned speech later and the rest of the PCs were back in the game.

My buddy was so happy after the first session and everyone had a ball. The game went perfectly.

That was Metagaming and to hear people talk about it, I was a monster for doing it.

But all metagaming is not considered equal and in this episode Christina and I are going to talk about metagaming. What it is, why it is bad, why it is good, and why it is just another tool to make your games Epic.

Christina, what is metagaming?