A widely-used term for an overarching plot which appears over many published books in a series. The iconic metaplots appeared in several game series from White Wolf. The value of metaplots in games is the subject of considerable debate, in part because there is no clear line between metaplot and "ordinary" setting description.

Detractors of metaplot often believe that the "present history" of a game world, especially published over a period of time, tends to reduce the feeling of participation in the world's storyline by attributing major changes in the world to characters that are properties of the games' creators, rather than the players' own characters. In order to incorporate changes found in a metaplot, the player's characters' actions must either be discounted, or the metaplot heavily edited to fit with the world as changed by the P Cs so far. Or, the players become like the world as stated by the initial book in the series and dislike the changes that metaplot introduces.

Those who enjoy metaplot usually cite the same things that they enjoy about detailed game worlds and background in general, namely that it helps inspire a feeling of participating in a rich, living world, full of inspiration to base their own play upon. They are either unconcerned about whether their characters change the world on a big scale, or don't mind the work involved in weaving in their own continuity, or may selectively ignore parts of metaplot as "not canon" for their game.