In-gaming, Out-gaming, Meta-Gaming explained

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The Teacher-Gamer Revolution

9 min readMay 11, 2020

A clear explanation of this is long over-due and you might even pick up a point in Wisdom or at least get a couple ranks in “knowledge: gaming”. I certainly did trying to wrap my head around it for the Teacher-Gamer Handbook.

The Game Master (GM) is the referee of any role-playing game (RPG) and runs the flow of the three stages of the game: in-gaming, out-gaming and meta-gaming. In Dungeons & Dragons they call this person the Dungeon Master or DM.

In a role-playing game, different from your regular board game, players are venturing into a whole created ‘game world’ as actual characters in the story that is simulated through a game system.

Photo by Gary Turner ©2020 Teacher-Gamer

It is the GM who clarifies when everyone is ready to go into the game world (aka in-game). Until such time, the players are out-gaming — which usually means they are preparing their characters and backstories. Players also build terrain, paint figures and research life-path elements for their characters during the out-game stage. During meta-gaming there is generally a discussion about the rules, the psychology of the players and sorting out the in-game reality of their characters.

So who exactly is a GM or DM and what do they do?

Game Mastering (GMing) or Dungeon Mastering (DMing)

As the referee of RPGs, a Game Master is responsible for establishing the context, describing the setting, rolling out the plot and role-playing all the creatures, monster, robots, aliens and non-player characters (NPCs) in the game. As the master story-teller, the GM models how to bridge one’s creative thoughts with the on-going narrative the group is developing. He/She/They (the GM) also oversees the rules and tries to establish a common agreement with the players about the mechanics of the rules and how the game world’s reality works and feels. This ‘ergonomics’ of the game world, requires a great handle on the game rules and an as-objective-as-possible approach to the arbitration of the relativity of the game world so players find it efficient, fair and fun. Don’t forget this is a game we are talking about — it can get pretty technical here behind the scenes, but it is supposed to run seamlessly while you are playing. If you are teaching RPGs, then it is about employing implicit learning and teaching to intrinsic motivation.

Behind the back of the GM — or tauntingly in the face of this ‘ref of RPGs’, players joke and make memes to describe the various attitudes and personalities of a DM. Some of these memes can be fair assessments and some are derived from the attitude of the player(s) as victims of the O.P. DM. Regardless, it is usually the GM that hosts the game and it is his/her/their job to provide a fun, exciting, engaging and uplifting experience while keeping a firm grip on the rules, sorting out disputes and being the advocate of everyone at the same time.

Welcome emotions — be the mask (dramatic in-gaming) and express yourself (passionate out-gaming)

Emotion is welcomed into the game in at least these two ways:

1. Players are asked to be dramatic as they take emotional responsibility for their characters. The idea is to play a role and the more emotion and acting a player puts in the more everyone gets out. You can also award players for unique and spontaneous expressions — usually with experience points.

2. Players are asked to respond emotionally to what is going on in the game. It is normal for players to experience feeling excited, calm, angry, happy and sad in game sessions. This is a whole other conversation, but suffice it to say that these range of emotions and the dynamics of social emotional opportunities are what keep players coming back to play.

Meta-Gaming

This refers to players using knowledge they have that their characters wouldn’t. Such as characters taking strategic steps to thwart a vampire and werewolf in the game when the players know (in common Earth mythology) that vampires have no reflection in a mirror and werewolves can be killed by silver. A game master can try to prevent players from metagaming by altering the behavior or rules regarding these and any other creatures, by either giving them other traits, weaknesses and strengths or by creating a similar creature with a different name.

Metagaming also refers to knowing how a game master or other player may act in a certain in-game situation due to prior out-game or in-game conversations and actions.

The prevention of this kind of metagaming is done by having an explicit out-game conversation about it getting players to agree they are guiding their characters unfairly: “yeah, but your character wouldn’t know that, right? Well then how do you expect your character to fairly gain experience from this encounter? Your character only gains experience when they learn something. If you are giving them some kind of divine knowledge and they are acting on it to solve the problem, then they aren’t really learning or taking a risk. You have to role-play your character’s naiveté — and the more convincingly you do it the more experience points I can reward you/your character.”

There are many definitions of metagaming for different games and gaming situations. If a player uses knowledge from outside the game to affect game play, the player is metagaming. Metagaming refers to an observer level “game-theatre” or sense of subjective use of outside knowledge. It affects game play where players try to optimize in-gaming success. This is also a critical psychological moment for educators, because they can address cheating by addressing the fraud of players using their own knowledge in place of their characters’ naiveté.

To take this one point further… Imagine playing a game (or doing anything you come to like) for the very first time and it reminds you of nothing you have ever done before. It has a magical feel, because of the bewilderment you have from it being completely new and unrelated to anything you have every experienced. This is often the effect of playing role-playing games for the first time. It is also like when you meet someone new that you feel drawn to and you connect with. This experience of figuring a person out for the first time is often called being “enchanted”, “charmed” or “enamored” by them — all words depicting magic, like they put a spell on you. Meta-gaming completely robs you of getting lost in the mystery and wonder of the game.

Although there are times to enjoy getting totally lost in the game zone, there are also moments where it is important to get another kind of meta: to talk about the “mechanisms behind the mechanics of the mechanics’.

In many gaming, gambling and test taking situations the objective of winning or beating other players, the dealer or the test is high-stakes for bragging rights, money or certification. Like taking a “how to take tests” class for a standardized test or a course on strategies for casino games, one learns insight into how a test or game is designed and therefore provides clues to cues given in the game or test arena. The mere fact that RPG objectives are completely different, allows for a further conversation about metagaming, gaming, gambling and test taking that can be valuable in the RPG context, but also in the lives of the players.

Sadistic versus Toulouse Lautrec

Game Masters can be everything from inflexible to too loose (in my half-French home we call this Toulouse Lautrec — after the famous post-impressionist/art nouveau artist) with their players.

On the more sadistic side, they can seem to delight in setting the challenge bar too high and watching players struggle to get their characters to succeed at the price of all their resources or even death. Game Masters, especially young ones using the opportunity of power to curry social favor or popularity with players, can fall into being so overly generous with magic or money, that, like a genie making all the players’ dreams come true, whisk characters all over the universe showering characters with power, gold and experience to the point that the game feels boring, because the challenge has been sucked out of the game.

I am not suggesting limiting the creative power of the players, I am merely pointing out how important for the fantasy world to still feel like it has some roots in reality. In order to pull off a creative and inspired game, the narrative requires grit, obstacles and mystery, so the players have to puzzle their way out of a scene or episode. Ultimately, if the GM is not fair, objective or responsible enough to hold the space and engage the players in a socially democratic way, the players will leave or rebel.

Photo by Z.A.Reznichek ©2015 Teacher-Gamer

Leadership and Trust are not givens

Game Masters are not “all powerful”. They only have as much power as players agree to. If players feel they are being treated unfairly, they can voice it and the GM will have to address the players’ meta-inquests. If players are unsatisfied, they will not play with said GM and will abandon him/her/them for fairer treatment and or to start their own game. Out-gaming and meta-gaming can be highly political experiences for everyone, because everyone wants to play; but if the game is not fair, players will remain upset until balance is restored to the galaxy!

Opportunities to learn about leadership appear authentically and motivate players to establish “house rules”, “player roles” and admit their faults. When something in an RPG is categorically misrepresented, unfair or repeatedly misinterpreted it requires immediate attention as everyone is motivated to solve it and get back to the game. Creating one’s own game in a group will require more tenacity and endurance to sort out rules, while playing a pre-existing RPG is easier in that the rules are generally taken as the main guidelines.

Trust is a big factor between the players and the GM. When things turn badly for players, it is important that the GM was and remains impartial, as some players can become quite upset by circumstances arriving from their choices and not beating probability. Although she/he/they are the bearer of bad tidings, the GM is as much the herald of good news.

Something you should bear in mind when teaching players how to run their own campaigns as Game Master, is maturity. Be sure to provide a lot of support to new GMs, because when young people take control as referees, we come to realize that most of them have not developed skills of being impartial, arbitrating rules and keeping cool when charged with being unfair. This can be a hot button, so the better you model this, the more fairly they will arbitrate and keep the fun alive.

Not only are there great opportunities to lead, follow, support and co-lead as players in the game world, there are also more reflective opportunities out of game and out of class to develop a sense of narrative in one’s life.

This is what in-gaming, out-gaming and meta-gaming look like at a glance in education.