The Meta-Game

This is the most amorphous of the three layers at the time of writing (8/24/26). At some level all this amounts to is my changing whims about what game I am obsessing about at the current moment. But I feel like somehow I would like make a game out of that process. I have had various ideas such as creating a map and having the different games represent factions on the map. In this concept, the amount of time, energy, and money that I invest in the game, the more powerful it will become. And when I neglect a game it will lose power. In some ways this is closest to the idea of "making a game" but somehow it doesn't quite fit the vague notions that I have.

I have also thought of making it more along the line of points I could earn for my various gaming activities that could then provide justification for further purchases. In some ways this is the most meta of the meta-game ideas because it really is a game about how I play games.

Another one that is very appealing and that I have kind of felt the most connection with is to use GURPS as the Meta-Game because it is a universal framework and it can easily be adapted to managing a kind of multi-verse of games. However this does come with some baggage that it is very geared toward creating characters and narratives rather than resembling a board game like the first option. At times that seems appealing and I really like this idea and at times I sour on it a bit. It is also a bit disconnected from the meta nature of the second option in terms of being very geared to my life and how I am playing games and affecting that process. It also doesn't seems to capture the actual obsessiveness I feel about specific games because it maintains that kind of narrative detachment level. Another major advantage to the narrative idea game is that it can easily incorporate my other interests outside of games into it. It also seems to be the most genuinely productive in the sense that creating narratives could be something that would genuinely be of interest to other people if I spun them in the right way.

In some ways this whole meta-game concept traces all the way back to the idea I had as a kid, of playing a "wargame of wargames" where the main map would be a continental map (like Fortress Europa or Case Blue or something) with large scale armies on them. When the armies met, you would zoom in to play one of the other war games that was focused on that specific battle or at least have a generic squad level game like Advanced Squad Leader to play for the more zoomed in level. Perhaps there would be just two levels but probably there would be room for thee.