“Metatalk”- a term coined by my D&D group describing a concept that almost ruined our group completely. I will define what it is (according to us) and offer some tips on how to deal with it.
If you haven’t noticed by now, Dungeons & Dragons is no ordinary table top game.
Let me ask you this: when someone asks you to “define what an RPG is”, what would you say?
RPG stands for Role Playing Game, a type of genre that persists today in a wide variety of video games, the most famous titles being the Final Fantasy and Fire Emblem franchises, among others which I cannot think of at the moment.
Every one of these games has a basic formula: some form of leveling system, an array of monsters, magical items, and, most importantly and most neglected, a storyline.
A role-playing game, at its core, places the player directly in the main character or party’s shoes. The game should make the player feel immersed in its world. Players make decisions based on what the game characters would do; in this way, a player is “playing the role of the character”.
Where did this all come from?
According to Slate magazine’s Michael Witwer, “First distributed in 1974, D&D effectively created the role-playing-game industry…”.
Although this claim appears to be arguable, there is no doubt that D&D embodies “immersion” and “storyline” at its very core, classifying it as a role-playing game. I myself don’t doubt that D&D was influential in the development of the RPG genre we know today.
(Read the rest of that article here.)
I believe that the most important part of any role-playing game is immersion. Without it, the games immediately lose their appeal. This is what makes games like the Suikoden series classics. Doesn’t it annoy you when a friend is watching you play Final Fantasy X and, in the middle of an emotional cutscene, mocks the fact that Tidus has only one pantleg?
Believe it or not, this annoying friend is “metaspeaking”, a term my D&D group has coined over the past few sessions. An easy example of when metaspeak is employed in media today is “breaking the fourth wall”.
Ah, you may realize, so that’s why he’s been using Deadpool comics as images on this post.
By the way, see what I did there?
Our group defines “metaspeak” as any form of talk or thought during the session that our characters would not say or know but that we, the players, would in real life.
What does this mean, exactly?
Examples of Metaspeaking in D&D
Imagine that during a D&D session your party is situated in a goblin camp. Your characters have been tasked with clearing out the camp, and you eagerly step in, swords drawn and prepared to fight.
The DM rolls for an encounter. Getting the number he needs, he says, “Out of the shadows, three bugbears approach you.”
Immediately, one player goes, “Bugbears again?” and groans. Another goes, “Don’t worry guys, bugbears only have 27 HP. We can do this.” Yet another player wonders if it was worth it at all to even come to the dungeon. All of the players fight methodically, eliminating bugbears with the lowest HP first and focusing on the beefier bugbears later.
There are several things wrong with this:
- “Bugbears again?” may be a character choice or trait; the player’s character is afraid of (or annoyed by) bugbears. However, what if the character was a hunter of some sort, or a deranged mass murderer who delights in killing? In this case, the question is asked from the player’s point of view (the player hates facing bugbears), and this ruins the immersion of the encounter.
- The questioning of whether the “dungeon was worth it”, when phrased this way, is metaspeak at its finest. Unless if the character is against fighting or values missions based off of rewards (in which case this would make for a mundane player), this is metaspeak. Even then, the fact that the player has referred to the goblin camp as a “dungeon” rather than a camp breaks the fourth wall!
- “Bugbears only have 27 HP” ruins the immersion of the encounter completely. While video games allow a player to see the health of enemies, Dungeons & Dragons is not just another video game. An adventurer wouldn’t know the health of an opponent in a numerical scale! Knowing technical information of an enemy ruins the immersion and should be something exclusive to the DM. If you were confronted by an alligator in real life, would you know to kill it, given that it has “low HP?” I would run, honestly- I have no experience dealing with alligators.
- The methodical form of fighting based on HP knowledge is an extension of the previous problem. In an actual battle, a hero wouldn’t know that their enemy was “low on HP”. Sure, a physical indicator of an enemy nearing death would be sluggish movement, deep wounds, etc., but thinking back to stories of knights slaying dragons, the knights had no way of “seeing the dragon’s health bar”. What if the hero’s fatal flaw was to challenge only the fittest of creatures, ignoring all the weaklings?
It is important to note that this is a problem that all D&D players face. Whether a new player or veteran, you will soon see that metaspeak rules your actions. This is purely out of an instinctive need for survival. While not bad, metaspeak is bad for D&D in that it ruins the immersion and role-playing aspect of the game. You should expect this problem any time you play.
My own group was almost torn apart by this. After a misplay by our paladin, the entire group was thrown into chaos, with players blaming each other left and right for downfalls and misplays. This slowed down the game and took the joy out of the session, especially when several members continued to have little on-the-side arguments throughout the session’s end.
As a person who plays D&D to release stress and flex my creative muscle, this session did not help me one bit.
A Solution to the Problem
I have stated before that metaspeak is an inevitable occurrence in any D&D session. Given this, is there any way to “limit” metaspeak?
There is no simple solution to this problem. Every group is different in its members’ eagerness to role play. Simply forcing role-playing onto players who don’t want to role-play takes the joy out of D&D for them.
After the disastrous session described above, my group did not want to repeat our actions again. We laid down some loose ground rules that encouraged role-play and discouraged metaspeaking. These rules included the agreement to not interrupt the DM, think before speaking, and more. On the DM’s part, he agreed to focus more on the storyline, make encounters less technical, give characters time to discuss and answer NPCs, and make use of “Inspiration”, a simple feature that is often overlooked.
According to the Dungeon Master’s Guide, “Inspiration is a rule the Dungeon Master can use to reward you for playing your character in a way that’s true to his or her personality traits, ideal, bond, and flaw (pp. 35-36).” Any time a player acts in character rather than take the most tactically advantageous solution, he is reward with Inspiration. Inspiration has its own place on the character sheet; however, the way that it is used is not specifically defined. According to common practice, Inspiration is often used when a character has made a suboptimal choice in the course of the adventure; a player can spend their Inspiration to sway the outcome in the group’s favor. Furthermore, when players with Inspiration feel as if another player did something worthy of inspiration but the DM did not reward them for it, players can give up their own Inspiration to grant that player Inspiration.
These are some of the things my group have proposed to implement when playing. While these things may not be the best advice for all groups, I wanted to share what seems to work for mine.
Metaspeaking isn’t bad, but it does ruin the immersion in an immersion-based game…
How do you deal with metaspeak? Any good solutions or remedies to share? Comment below.
Nat 20 