Metagaming

In games, every decision that a player makes is based on a value judgement as to whether or not it helps him win the game, this is sometimes called gaming the system. There are two definitions for Metagaming:

• The first is making decisions based on events of earlier games as well as the current one. This is quite common in mafia, where much of the pertinent game information must be discovered by the players during play. If someone does something in a given situation, it's likely that they'll do it again in the same situation. Because of this a player can say "He says that he's a Cop and that that's why he's acting the way he is, but the last time he was a Cop he did something totally different." This would lead us to believe that the player in question was not a Cop.
• The other kind of Metagaming is a little more complicated. It involves making value judgements inside a game based on their impact on future games. Think about it this way. A player could decide, when he plays as Scum, to make klutzy mistakes on purpose and completely lose the game. This would be regarded as bad play. On the other hand it would make it easier to confirm his innocence in future games by acting differently than he did when he was Scum, even in games where he really was Scum. Very few players are known to do this, as its generally considered a corruption of the ideal of playing toward your Win Condition.

This is also sometimes corrupted into pseudometagaming, also very common in Mafia games.