Meta

[Oh. daesu]

Ok, it's a bit of a emperor's new clothes thing...

But, why is it called meta? I work in IT, so what's meta has another meaning.

Whereas whether it's tanky, alpha bridge or hexo is more what's op'ed,  the fad, or in the vogue.

For me meta is describing the underlying basis. What's in vogue isn't the describing the underlying vasis. In fact, the collective can understate what's optimal and stick with the popular sediment, emperor's new clothes.

 

[DeadSockPuppet]

Saw this posted on Reddit and thought it kind of makes sense:

The reason the term gets used to refer to the best strategies in gaming is that the process by which the community discovers and refines them is a sort of 'metagame' - a second, larger game that surrounds the regular game. For example, the 'game' of Dark Souls is exploring locations, fighting enemies and finding loots. The 'metagame' is the process of specific builds becoming popular in PVP, specific strategies becoming more common and either embraced or reviled by different parts of the community. That sort of thing. It's a larger game surrounding and encompassing the regular game, hence a 'metagame'.

When I used to play D&D regularly we used to talk about metagaming and metathinking where the players tried to apply outside knowledge to the characters, which they shouldn't know or have access to learn.  

Applying this to the Division, you could say something is meta because it's the best stats and configuration based on outside info that our characters wouldn't know.  Players know the info because we see it in the UI as we tinker with our builds.  Our characters, however, wouldn't know what's the best, just what works best for them.  

I could be completely off base, but this makes sense to me.  

 

[Oh. daesu]

Thanks for thay. Sounds like it makes sense.

 

[quinch1199]

All hail the ancients of D&D ... y'know, like me.

 

[DeadSockPuppet]

Played consistently for probably like 15ish years, just haven't been able to find the time or a regular group recently.  I'm also not the biggest fan of some of the newer rule systems, AD&D 2nd Ed & 3rd Ed were really my sweet spot. 

 

[genedjr]

@quinch1199 All hail the ancients of D&D ... y'know, like me.
@DeadSockPuppet Played consistently for probably like 15ish years

<snicker>  I played with the original books as 'guides' and made regular sets to keep the rules consistent.  When 2nd addition came out I was like wow - when GM cards came out I was like wow - when boxed encounters came out - I was like wow.  Ran into my original dungeon maps a few years ago - graph paper plus notes on traps.........

Master DM Several at your service  :15_yum:

But like many I have not had the time or a good group to play with for eons.  My son runs a regular group weekly with 4 to 6 players.  Alas we are several state removed from each other.

...gene