OD&D and "Meta-gaming"

I don't normally use a word like “meta-gaming” because to me it is a word devoid of useful meaning. For some of you, I have already outraged you with that first statement, but I ask you to hear me out. First of all I am talking about OD&D, this is not a story game like some later games, this is the original adventure game of exploration and many, if not all, of the more egregious things that powergamers and/or munchkins/min-maxers do are not applicable in OD&D.  Such as:

Another form of metagaming occurs as a form of powergaming during character creation, when a player takes flaws or liabilities that they know the gamemaster is unlikely to fully exploit, thereby acquiring extra creation options without paying a corresponding penalty.

That is not part of OD&D so it cannot happen, we play 3d6 in order straight up no adjustments and you create the character by playing the character not by creating a novel for a backstory.  There is no list of proficiencies, skills, flaws or perks to choose from. You develop the character by playing the character.

Assuming that if an item (often a chest, desk or book-case) is mentioned by the gamemaster during the initial description of an area, it must have some relevance to the storyline, and immediately searching or examining it. (while ignoring other furnishings or objects that are most likely there as well).

This is OD&D, there is no predetermined storyline, in OD&D after the game session is over and the players talk about the game - there is the story - it is what happened during the game.

The whole meta-gaming concept starts with saying things such as:

Gaining knowledge from Out-Of Character or using knowledge from a previously played or dead character. Using certain types of attack or defense based on the strengths and weaknesses of an opponent that the player's character is unaware of or any action that is based upon the knowledge that one is playing a game.

The thing that bothers me most about these assumptions that these players are "metagaming" and, therefore, cheating is the unspoken assumption that PCs know absolutely nothing about the world they live in and grew up in. In a pre-radio, pre-TV, pre-Cell-phone and pre-Internet world everyone told stories about everything and the amount of knowledge we assume an energetic person who wants to be an adventurer has is miniscule compared to what  a real person in such a world would know.  There would be stories about most monsters passed down from generation to generation and there would be storytellers in public places with new stories all the time. The problem is modern people not understanding what a society with an oral tradition is like. Two of my grandparents were born in 1892 and my parents were children in the mid 1920’s and 1930’s, and they were adults before radio made it into their homes in a very rural area. I myself remember having no running water and outdoor toilets and no TV in the home.  In that environment stories of all kinds are told and repeated constantly. 

What other people call meta-gaming or cheating, I call good smart play. Cheating is rolling a one and claiming to roll a twenty and I have never played with anyone like that in 39 years. But again I am reffing OD&D so I don't have any of the handicaps that some DMs/GMs may have. I never use modules and even if I did I would tweak them out of recognition, I don't have any pre-determined storyline and the players cannot break my world no matter what they do, it is not possible and I want them to try. The players all know that one: I create a lot of my own monsters and two:  the ones I use from the rules are all tweaked. For instance an ogre could have 80 HPs and an ancient troll (very rare) could be 10’s of thousands of years old and smart instead of young and a non-intelligent eating machine or somewhere in between.

My take on “meta-gaming” is this, if your campaign is less challenging because of “meta-gaming”, I would submit that it is not a player problem, not a cheating problem and not a sportsmanship problem, it is a DM problem and the DM needs to step up their game. As a DM or Ref you need to give your players a unique environment different from anything any other Ref can give them and the little bit of “meta-gaming” that helps them stay alive is part of the game when you are playing OD&D.