Recent events have gotten me thinking...

I've voiced this before, and it's perhaps more relevant to "traditional" RPG publishers who are overly-reliant on the three-tier system, but I think it has relevance to indie publishers who might be tempted to emulate "the big guys".

If you are considering having a metaplot in your game, reconsider.

First, a definition: A metaplot, for the purposes of this rant, is an onging "story" that is played out in a game world over the course of several supplements, which makes serious changes to the game world in question.

Frankly, metaplots appeal more to people who aren't going to play the game, but either through a collector's urge or due to a novel-reader's desire to "see how the story ends" will (in theory) buy the supplements.

I say "in theory" because while this has worked quite well for some people, and worked okay for others, chances are it won't work at all, and you could have spent your time on something better. (More on that in a minute.)

You have to ask yourself: Do I want my game to be played, or collected?

Because, if you're going to have supplements at all, why have metaplot supplements when you could be doing something else?

And that's an important consideration: Do you need supplements at all? Consider that the need for supplements is usually more driven by the three-tier system and it's constant, hungry demand for "new product" than by any need of the fans of the game. Consider that you can do quite well by having a complete game, in one book, that is sold direct to consumers over the Internet.

Given, however, that you are going to have supplements at all, why metaplot supplements? There are any number of things you could produce instead:

* Rules expansions
* Lists of NPCs
* Further exploration of the setting as it currently exists, rather than "as it changes"
* "Adventures"/Plot Seeds
* More detailed advice on running the game

The advantage of all these sorts of supplements is that anyone can use these supplements. Metaplot supplements, on the other hand, benefit only those who wish to follow the metaplot. On top of this, when integrating new players into a game, or when starting a new game, the existance of an officially-published metaplot means that extra time is going to have to be spent saying what the GM does and doesn't use. This is true of any supplement, but it's more egregiously true for metaplot supplements -- it's not just a matter of house rules or what happened in the campaign, but now it's a matter of outlining what didn't happen in the campaign, regarding the metaplot. Why create that sort of hassle for your customers?

If, despite all this, you still want to do a metaplot supplement, be sure to do it right.

First, make sure that the PCs can have an effect on the metaplot, and on the game world. If they can't -- if the metaplot rolls over them, no matter what -- this is frustrating and deprotagonizing. Unless utter helplessness is a major theme of your game, don't do it.

Second, go the In Nomine route. Create "Canon Areas of Doubt and Uncertainty". That is, create areas that you explicitly tell everyone (in print) that are not going to be affected by supplements -- and the metaplot. This way, GMs that are interested in the metaplot can run a game, mucking around in those areas, and know that what they're doing isn't going to be invalidated by a subsequent supplement. "Though this is a game about angels, we will never have a supplement that explains the true Nature of God in our universe." "There will never be a supplement on the Inconnu." "The metaplot will never affect the Duchy of Fnord, except insomuch as it affects the whole world. But rest assured that the Duke will always stay in power, even in the roughest times."

This also prevents people who want to be "in line" with the metaplot from waiting for a particular supplement before doing a particular thing with their game. The fault for this annoying form of game paralysis is mainly in the fanboy in question, but for crissakes, let's not encourage it, eh?

Third, provide support for those who don't want to follow the metaplot. It takes a little more effort, but it's be greatly appreciated it. If a customer doesn't like the idea of the World of Kool being invaded by hot pink cockroaches from outer space, at least put in a footnote about what direction the world heads if the hot pink cockroaches DON'T show up.

Hell, consider having several alternative metaplots, which can be switched between depending on what the PCs do -- this links into my first point about doing metaplots right.

Fourth, connected to the second part: If you say you're not going to do something, don't do it. No one likes someone without integrity. If you say you're not going to do a Gehenna supplement, don't do one. Luckily, assuming you stick to the creator-owned ethic, this is easier than if you sold your work to a company, which can then renege on any promises you made once the work is assigned to the "new team", or else your plans can be mis-interpreted by others.

And, since this is a rant, let me leave you with a final comment, though it's been said a thousand times before: "If I wanted to read a novel, I'd buy one." The advantage to an RPG is the story is NOT set in stone. Even in an Illusionist game the PCs can have an effect on Color.

I'd like to add something to this (yay for the rant). In general, I agree with what is being said. However:

Part of "Doing the Meta-Plot Right" is, in my opinion, NOT stuffing important rules clarifications/expansions or interesting non-plot-related setting exploration into ONLY a metaplot supplement. To use the example above, I don't want to have to buy "Invasion of the Hot Pink Cockroaches from Outer Space" to get those spacecraft rules for the World of Kool.

On the other hand I'm someone who LIKES non-narrative fiction (i.e. the kind of stuff you'd get by reading setting/metaplot information), so if you want to do some metaplot, I don't have any objections, as long as you do it right. Go right ahead! Multiple metaplots would be fun too! And if you don't do the "PCs can have an effect on the metaplot" route, make sure that there's enough interesting stuff happening that ISN'T metaplot related.

Just please, please, keep the metaplot out of the rules supplements, and keep important/useful rules out of the metaplot.

You know, it may be a little unfair to blame the three-tier system or corporate greed for supplement production. I had more than a few dissapointed fans this year at GenCon and Origins because all I had was the finalized version of the book. Supplements do generate money for the publisher, but they also satisfy some consumers' desires - a win-win situation for both. And the people who don't want supplements don't have to buy them.

Which isn't to say that I totally disagree with you, but I wouldn't make any of those rules absolutes. Every player/GM has different tastes. Some really like reacting to a changing world and don't give a rip whether they can stop or affect that change. Additionally, it seems fairly obvious to me that people who don't like to do that can either ignore metaplot supplements or change them.

So... why have metaplot supplements when you could be doing something else?

Because at least some people like metaplot supplements, and dislike the something else (or at least like it less). You can't make everyone happy.

Me for example - I dislike metaplot supplements, and I also avoid adventure supplements and lists of NPCs (two of the items you listed as being better uses of time). I do like supplements that explore the existing world instead of changing it. This probably explains why I liked Palladium's Robotech supplements better than their Rifts ones, and why I'll regularly play Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play but not Vampire.

jdagna wrote: Me for example - I dislike metaplot supplements, and I also avoid adventure supplements and lists of NPCs (two of the items you listed as being better uses of time). I do like supplements that explore the existing world instead of changing it. This probably explains why I liked Palladium's Robotech supplements better than their Rifts ones, and why I'll regularly play Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play but not Vampire.

Lxndr wrote: Just please, please, keep the metaplot out of the rules supplements, and keep important/useful rules out of the metaplot.

jdagna wrote: Supplements do generate money for the publisher, but they also satisfy some consumers' desires - a win-win situation for both. And the people who don't want supplements don't have to buy them.

Me for example - I dislike metaplot supplements, and I also avoid adventure supplements and lists of NPCs (two of the items you listed as being better uses of time). I do like supplements that explore the existing world instead of changing it. This probably explains why I liked Palladium's Robotech supplements better than their Rifts ones, and why I'll regularly play Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play but not Vampire.

I'm kind of on both sides of the fence here. While I like the metaplot from a reader standpoint, as sometimes the metaplot stuff is interesting storytelling. There is also the danger that said storytelling locks players into a certain thinking and way of doing things.

This was especially true when we tried to play Dragonlance, the GM and many of the players were so locked to the books that no one was able to free themselves enough to see what kind of different story we could do, thus it died quickly.

L5R's metaplot worked well for the card game, at least at first, as it gave a sense of an end (of sorts) to a traditionally endless stream of crap to buy (being the CCG market staple). WOD ending only means a re-imagining of the WoD. THere will be another one, only different, with a new metaplot.

With the game I'm doing, Realms of Wonder, I plan to do supplements, but only because I want to see other people's take on expanding my world and to really delve into some of the minutae that has come up in the campaigns I have run during the many years of playtesting I've done. While not as rigid a metaplot as say WoD, I do have one, which is that the campaigns I run are the "canon" for the world. However, I have no grandiose plan which will culminate in a psuedo world ending. I don't run often enough to do anything like, plus I agree, it's cheesy marketing BS. The supplements I plan to release are expansions of the various regions of the world, but is just that, expanded material from the main rulebook, which includes a fair amount of information on the world as it is. The sourcebooks are designed to flesh out the various lands and peoples a little deeper. This is the type of supplements I've always appreciated as a GM and my group as well.

As far as rules expansions I plan to keep those to a minimum, adding them where they are appropriate and always having them be optional, as they should be. The intention is to create a game that only needs the core book, but having the additional supplemental material is nice to have. Any "future" expansions, as in where the world is going, will be far enough in the fictional future as to create an entirely new setting using the same basis.

I'm from the win-win standpoint on supplements, but I also don't much care for adventures, preferring adventure hooks included in the various supplements simply intended to trigger your own brain's deliciously devious GMing prowess. The idea is to empower you, not hold your hand. Only reason I see to do prebuilt adventures is to provide a controlled environment with which to experience a taste of the rules, which is how we are doing our freebie version of the game. We will be providing 4 adventures that include pregenerated characters in somewhat rules-lite editions of the character sheet with pleasant layout and art and an adventure designed around those Heroes. The idea is to show what the game is about, but not to give away so much that you don't need to ever buy the full game.

And there's no way you could say that I'm not doing my game as a labor of love. I know there's no money in RPG publishing, not buy a house kind a money anyway. I only want to produce a game that people can enjoy and is one I will run for the remainder of my gaming days, as it is truly the game I enjoy running the most of any I've played in my 20 years of gaming. If I sold only copies to my playtesters and family, I'd be happy as a clam just to hold that book in my hands and be able to say, "I wrote that". This is why I bust my ass on all levels of production to see it done right.

Greg Stafford wrote pretty much the whole metaplot for Hero Wars in King Of Sartar...

...but characterised it as the attempts of a scholar several centuries later (after a period of universal illiteracy) to determine what happened during the Hero Wars from a diverse collection of historical, mythic and folkloric sources.

So Gloranthans can very easily find out kind of what happens... but "through a glass, darkly."

And Greg has explicitly stated that large chunks of KoS are just plain wrong... but he's not sure which bits yet...

And, as ever, Your Glorantha Will Vary.

The point that's always bugged me about metaplots is that it's "Let me tell you about my character", except from the game developer.

Thus my little diatribe, Why I Hate Your Metaplot

But White Wolf isn't going to stop making WoD books, or even change them much. They're just making another PR push on their metaplot so they can print new editions of the rules which incorporate the metaplot so far.

The WW business model is based on selling new core rulebooks every few years, as well as the endless train of supplements, which then become obsolete and have to be replaced. This is just more of the same.

For my upcoming, soon to go into open playtest, Robot's & Rapiers game, Mike Holmes hit upon a interesting approach to metaplot that I intend to use.

Basically this game has several local regions only one of which is detailed in the core book with a couple of others touched upon. Other areas will be detailed in supplements. Each supplement will have its own "metaplot" type of thing going on relative to itself, but the game assumes that the clock does not start ticking on those events until the GM buys the supplement and decides to begin to incorporate the new region into his own campaign.

Whew! Good stuff, people, I'll reply to this all at once:

Pete and Ralph give two additional ways, in my opinion, to "do metaplot right". Bravo to that --if we see more metaplot work in RPGs, I hope we see more metaplot work like Hero Wars or Robots and Rapiers.

Mark, your mini-rant makes an excellent addition to my own, in the "how to do metaplots right" section. The way I'd phrase it is thus: "When doing a metaplot, don't use it to showcase your favorite important NPCs. This is just like when an obnoxious stranger insists on telling you about his cool character from a previous campaign, only ten times worse. Don't do it. By all means, have important NPCs if you need them, but don't make them the utter focus -- the utter focus should be the PCs."

In other works, I completely agree. ;-D

Hardpoint, I think you accidentally hit the nail on the head when you said:

While I like the metaplot from a reader standpoint...

Hello,

Regarding the Glorantha issue, I want to point out that the changes and history of the setting were disclosed as public knowledge, for purposes of informed play by everyone at the table. They were also not released in sequential, step-by-step publication, but rather as a single overview.

This is rather different from the more common approach, in which a new publication "hits" the GM, who then "hits" the players with the revelations and changes and so forth, in a time-linear fashion.

I tend to refer to the former as "changing setting" as distinct from "metaplot."

Best,
Ron

Ron Edwards wrote: I tend to refer to the former as "changing setting" as distinct from "metaplot."

xiombarg wrote: The point of the rant is not to say "all metaplots are bad" but to say "if you're doing a metaplot, consider why, and if you do it at all, do it right". The idea of empowering the players and the GMs is the thing I want to drive home: Too many metaplots seem hellbent on disempowering the people who play the game.

Metaplot is only a problem if:

A) you believe that all officially published material on a game world is canon...and

B) having your actual game play be canonical is a priority (or at least preferred).


My personal preference is "Wind up the setting to a critical juncture where crazy interesting intense and powerful things are on the verge of happening...then press go and let the players take it from there without another written word on the matter".

Valamir wrote: My personal preference is "Wind up the setting to a critical juncture where crazy interesting intense and powerful things are on the verge of happening...then press go and let the players take it from there without another written word on the matter".

John Kim wrote: Maybe it is mainly a matter of attitude. i.e. Some thoughtful advice on how to adapt or vary from the metaplot would be good.

Valamir wrote: "Wind up the setting to a critical juncture where crazy interesting intense and powerful things are on the verge of happening...then press go and let the players take it from there without another written word on the matter".

I can understand what you are saying about metaplot, as it has been a problem in a lot of games I have played before. Everything is going along well, and then *bam*, a player comes over with this great new supplement he picked up and wants you to change your world.

The worst cases, though, are what you described as "paralysis" I seem to see a lot in a game with both a big metaplot and a well established setting. Usually a couple of the players will be intimitely familiar with the setting and one won't. The guy that doesn't know all the metaplot and history of the world can't ever seem to make the character he wants to make because the other guys are all saying things like, "Well, an elf would never do that in this world, you need to read page X of book Y before you can play an elf!"

So is just metaplot the problem, or is it setting as well? Or am I mixing up terms?

Well, that is another danger of metaplot, but it's also a danger of any setting detail, and not limited to metaplot. Further, good players will share knowledge, and help make the game accessible. So I'd not call this a strike against metaplot. But it doesn't hurt to remember to make your setting as accessible as possible in general terms.

Mike

Mike Holmes wrote: But it doesn't hurt to remember to make your setting as accessible as possible in general terms.

Mike

Valamir wrote:
I suspect this idea is largely responsible for the ocean of "setting by analogy" games out there.

"These guys are like vikings, and those guys are like Comanche". While often boring and annoying, they do help everyone immediately click to the major imagery and tropes.

Mike Holmes wrote: But to get back on topic, Metaplot is like this as well in that you have to allow players to either know the Metaplot so they can plan with it, or they have to have the ability to change it (barring extrememly Participationist players who would, should they exist, would demand Metaplot I'd think).

Mike Holmes wrote:

Valamir wrote:
I suspect this idea is largely responsible for the ocean of "setting by analogy" games out there.

"These guys are like vikings, and those guys are like Comanche". While often boring and annoying, they do help everyone immediately click to the major imagery and tropes.

Exactly. What's really boring is not having any reference points at all, and not feeling able then to make any decisions.

I disagree that a player can make an alien species more interestring than a developed one at the table. In fact I think thais is badly wrong; by taking the prep time to design something I can introduce complexity and subtleties that would likely not be drawn in a broad brush sketch done as one of many things at the table.

But I do agreet that there is a tension between pre-design and play. If stuff thats built is not used, there was no point in building it, and so that mandates direction.

I think that the point was that Metaplots such as the one WOD was/is using are such that there is a restrictive quality to them. The point of the rant was to bring to our attention, the indie gamemakers, the notion that such a metaplot device can be annoying to some GMs.

The point of the rant is to hopefully get us to create games that have more of the players' needs in mind. I agree on this front, but I think that a balance of setting, metaplot, and openness is needed. In the game I'm making, there is a little metaplot (very little the more I think of it), a lot of "backstory" to set up the world and setting, but leaving a tremendous amount of "where do you want to go from here" mentality. This empowers the players to create their own tales, yet giving them a wealth of history to draw those ideas and tales from.

Marcus, amen.

As for the sub-discussion about setting detail, I can only agree with Mike and others: This isn't a problem with metaplot per se so much as a problem with a very setting-rich game, requiring prep time to deal with.

(On that tangent, I think this not only leads to the "setting by analogy" thing, but also is why we have so many of what I call "modern plus" settings, the most successful of which is the World of Darkness -- settings that are "just like" the modern day, but with something else added behind the scenes, usually something supernatural, a sort of "secret history" game. "It's like the modern day, plus vampires." Perhaps we should split this into a thread about extensive setting detail?)

What IS a more metaplot-specific issue is when a new metaplot supplement changes everything you thought you knew about a particular setting detail, even as it stood before the supplement came out or before that "moment" in the metaplot. This links into Alexander's ideas about not including important info only in a metaplot supplement: If the secret of why the Pink Men can see in the dark is because they interbred with the Hot Pink Cockroaches From Outer Space, this shouldn't only show up in the "Hot Pink Invasion" supplement. This becomes particularly problematic when a new player shows up wanting to play a Pink Man -- if the game uses a different explaination about the Pink Men than is in the metaplot, this has to be explained before the newcomer can play, and might just dampen his enthusiasm for a bit. At the very least, some planning needs to go on here -- the core rulebook should mention there's probably going to be a supplement on the secret of the Pink Men so those who care won't go there.

(Of course, the latter approach, used too much, can get annoying as well. Pinnacle did this with the Deadlands games -- they would often put things like "don't kill this NPC off, we have plans for him." They were so annoying about this that one poster on the Hell on Earth mailing list used to call it the "Always Drink Your Ovaltine" factor, as it was repeated so often, like that tag line for Ovaltine was back in the day. "Don't touch this part of this setting... and always drink your Ovaltine!" This is particularly annoying when you're told not to mess with something and the published story later turns out to be lame.)

A parallel discussion to this one was instigated by me on LJ, and one of the posters there brought up an excellent point, which I tend to agree with:

The inherent problem in a metaplot change as opposed to a poor or unpopular GM decision is that at least the GM is operating from a position where he can (theoretically) see what the players want. If he does something that his players don't like, he's either not paying attention or he's more interested in what he wants from the game than what they want. About such a GM, we are likely to say at best that he should find a different group, at worst that he just sucks. Well. Except for the "GMs word is law" fools who don't realize that a GM has nothing to run with no players.

However, an RPG writer has no knowledge of any group of players but his own, and the unspoken assumption is that he is under no obligation to cater to any such group. In truth, I'm somewhat inclined to agree with this. After all, you can only cater to so many people before your work is just pandering to the least common denominator. But why, then, should we allow someone who has no interest in how our games run, no knowledge of why we play or what we want to play, decide what happens to our characters?

The degree to which players need to be able to change it depends on how central the metaplot is to the plot of the campaign.

Mike Holmes wrote: My favorite example of such a metaplot is the one in Shadow World. It's compelling, interesting, and damnit if I don't want to embroil my characters in it directly. Each time I've done it, however, new material has come out, and it's never even remotely compatible with what's occured in my game world (in the latest a huge magical accident has dramatically shifted the balance of power towards an armageddon, which wouldn't work with where my characters were at).

Now, if I'd had it all to start, I could have played around or under it, whatever, appropriately.

The ironic thing is that what's really annoying about most metaplots is that they're good. Like any supplement we want to use that material. But the presentation makes it such that, unless you wait for the last supplement (is it safe to play WOD now?), then you risk making later supplements less usable.

In the world of Metaplot nonsense there are several contenders for the crown of most annoying, obnoxious, intrusive, ruined my campaign game line. Deadlands is near the top of any ballot for the title.

Shane's latest article, however, has me excited. VERY excited. Excited enough to think I might want to revisit the Wierd West.

Deadlands Rebooted

The whole metaplot...complete, beginning to end, in one core book (using Savage Worlds rules) so you can play anywhere in the time line you like. With similiar treatment for Hell on Earth and Lost Colonies planned.

I like it. ALOT.

Wow! That's really cool, Ralph.

See, that's a lot closer to the "setting change" supplement Ron talks about. And, yes, Pinnacle's metaplot inspired my rant as much as White Wolf's did. It's good to see Pinnacle can, perhaps, learn from its mistakes.

Good points as always John. I have no answer, unfortunately, as to a simple fix. I think that's Kirt's point; it's not easy, and "done right" is rare.

OTOH, I can completely get into the action, like Pinnacle is taking, of presenting the entire metaplot at once. This may have it's own problems for the designers, but it's of great benefit to the GM, IMO, and FWIW.

Mike

O.K., any game I've ever played that had a metaplot, I didn't use it or recognize it, so I've mostly stayed out of this discussion. But I just had a thought.

Herein lies the problem.

1) The gradual release of metaplot in volume after volume over time means that the referee can't foresee what is going to happen in the world well enough to prepare for it, and can't know how to handle situations when the player start becoming involved with characters and issues at that level.

I can really relate to this. I was a very frustrated referee when Unearthed Arcana came out, and I realized I had to redo massive segments of the populations of entire cosmopolitan cities, because they didn't have any cavaliers in them. Having the world change when the change is unanticipated is frustrating, usually because it means there were thing happening of which someone should have been aware before this moment.

2) Companies need to sell books to stay in business.

Obviously I understand this one, too. (Has anyone here grabbed a copy of the novel, Verse Three, Chapter One, yet? There's an example.) So being able to publish metaplot updates periodically means having something new for your core market; not being able to do so means you have to find something else to sell.

O.K., this was my thought.

Could a company create the full metaplot all at once, in advance, and expand and expound it into a series of volumes, all of which were published simultaneously? Make it clear that M1 is the start of the backstory of the game world, and that people should start with that and move to M2 when they're ready. It's the same number of books to sell, players can get them when they need them and far enough in advance that they can be prepared for surprises, and no one feels as much as if they're being controlled.

I know it's not a perfect solution for everyone; but it answers a lot of the problems on both sides.

--M. J. Young

M. J. Young wrote: Could a company create the full metaplot all at once, in advance, and expand and expound it into a series of volumes, all of which were published simultaneously? Make it clear that M1 is the start of the backstory of the game world, and that people should start with that and move to M2 when they're ready. It's the same number of books to sell, players can get them when they need them and far enough in advance that they can be prepared for surprises, and no one feels as much as if they're being controlled.

hi folks... just got back from a trip to Boston/Providence, so I've missed a lot. I hope it's not too late to contribute to these discussions.

I've thought a little about the metaplot problem. I, too, don't like them, although I think there's an approach or two to metaplot that isn't too bad. as pretty much everyone else has made clear, the problem with a metaplot is that they essentially add one or more unseen players -- the metaplot designers -- who never interact with the players and have the power to trump the GM.

or, at least, that is the way it is perceived, by those who wish to take the "official products" as canon. whcih, unfortunately, is precisely the customer attitude that game publishers need in order to sell the most suppliments.

there are a couple odd little assumptions I've noticed in the "mainstream" rpg world, assumptions which existed long before the first metaplots appeared, but upon which metaplots depend:

-- everyone who plays a given game/setting (not just the players sitting at a given table) shares a single setting;
-- everyone sharing a setting should play the same way with the same rules and all the same background details;
-- if changes need to be made, everuone needs to make the same changes at the same times, which means any changes should be official changes only.

the underlying rationale for these assumptions seems to be that a player who moves to a different area should be able to join an entirely new group, use the same character, and never have to learn any new setting details or house rules. there are even sections in old D&D books that describe how GMs should incorporate experienced players from another playgroup into an existing campaign.

now, obviously, no one has ever played in complete accordance with these assumptions, aside from narrow exceptions like sanctioned tournaments. almost everyone plays with one or more house rules. most GMs, if they are using published settings, de-emphasize or eliminate setting details they are not interested in. and even when GMs try to remain true to a published setting, they sometimes interpret geographic and cultural details differently. (everyone seems to agree that fantasy dwarves are somewhat teutonic, culturally, but are they dour and mostly humorless miners, or rowdy, boisterous craftsmen?)

still, a large number of people seem to think these assumptions are important to the game, which is why we see things like officially-off-limits areas for individual GM development or the infinite outer planes of AD&D 1e's Manual of the Planes -- inifinite so that there would be room enough for each individual GM's interpretation to co-exist in the "same" plane. why should this even matter? why not a finite plane of indefinite size with general information about the plane, which each GM could customize? why did The Fantasy Trip: In The Labyrinth describe Cidri as a planet many hundreds of times larger than Earth? (the book specifically states that again, this is so there is room enough for each GM's campaign area.)

I think metaplot was a development of this idea. by getting everyone to agree that the official metaplot trumps individual player's concepts of the shared world, the publishers not only guarantee the sale of more setting books, but also act as a control mechanism to keep the many local copies of the game world from becoming too unique and "clashing" with other interpretations of the world, so the theoretical travelling players will not have to create new characters or learn a new setting/batch of house rules.

of course, you can tell from my tone that I don't think very highly of these assumptions. still, as I said, I can see a use for metaplot outside of this set of assumptions...

M. J. Young wrote: Could a company create the full metaplot all at once, in advance, and expand and expound it into a series of volumes, all of which were published simultaneously? Make it clear that M1 is the start of the backstory of the game world, and that people should start with that and move to M2 when they're ready. It's the same number of books to sell, players can get them when they need them and far enough in advance that they can be prepared for surprises, and no one feels as much as if they're being controlled.

That's some excellent data on the historical reasons for metaplots there...

Regardless, some of you might want to check out the parallel discussion on Livejournal.

Most notable are the comments by "eyebeams", who claims to be a White Wolf freelancer. They're as dismissive of everyone's concerns -- and, Hell, the whole indie movement -- as one might expect, but he adds one element to the problem with metaplots that we haven't considered: A problem for writers. That is, even if a single campaign can disregard metaplot, writers for a setting cannot -- contraining their creativity.

Of course, this only happens in situations like the "big companies" have where you have freelance writers writing for a line, which explains why we didn't think of it -- but it's certainly something a designer should consider if he wants other people to ever write for his or her game.

The fundamental problem I personally have with metaplots is that they are adventures masquerading as setting details.

Adventures that are happening to characters that don't belong to my players.

D&D in all it's incarnations vaguely defines certain setting details (ie, spell names, allowed classes, races), but generally doesn't provide anything else in it's core rules. Traveller is similar, although over time the Imperium grew into a game-destroying metaplot. But the Imperium that has outlasted this metaplot is purely setting.

This divorce of rules and setting was common in early RPGs, and is far less so nowadays, aside from excplicitly universal systems a la GURPS or HERO. Of course, back then games were mostly based around a Genre, whereas now they seem to be more based around an explicit Setting (although there are definite exceptions, such as All Flesh Must be Eaten and Terra Primate).

The trick, to me, seems to be balance. The elements to balance are setting detail, metaplot, rules-reflected details, and adventures.

Setting detail constrains players by limiting what they can do with certain types of characters because there is written background that they need to be consistent with. All settings have this problem to some degree. Many get around it as a problem by using licensed properties, or otherwise familiar tropes (a la 'Space Patrol', 'These Guys are like Vikings', 'Everybody knows how Vampires behave').

Rules-reflected details are like D&D Classes, Call of Cthulhu's Sanity rules, and Classic Traveller's career paths & ship design systems. If you use the rules, you get these elements to hang whatever other creativity you want off of them.

Metaplot and Adventure are the things that the industry has the most trouble with.

Metaplot is Adventure that happens to non-characters, but affects the setting in some fashion. Adventure is just adventure happening to the PCs.

If you make up your setting entirely, well, you don't have a problem, unless the rules-reflected details interfere with what you want to do. If you make your own adventures out of whole cloth, then you don't have to worry too much, either. If your setting is your own, well, then you again don't have to worry about backstory & metaplot, except insofar as you end up doing the same thing to your players as an external designer might.

But the Metaplot problem is more invasive. In the Old Days, published Adventures involved a map and things to kill. Then you took their Stuff. It may have existed in Greyhawk somewhere, but it was entirely feasable to take the whole thing and plop it into Glarko Prime or wherever you were gaming. Orcs on Glarko Prime and Greyhawk were pretty much the same, so no real damage was done to the adventure.

If the Adventure isn't self contained enough, or doesn't happen in someplace well defined externally, like Chicago, well, you start to have problems. And these only get worse when the Adventure depends on lots of characters that have nothing to do with your players, or setting details that don't work with your take on your own setting, or are under the external control of a developer Elsewhere.

To me, the best balance of this I've seen is
The Traveller Adventure. Several of the extended Call of Cthulhu campaigns have been equally good in this regard, however. The adventure, it's metaplot, and the setting are self contained. It contains sections that need to happen in order, at specific locations, but provides reasonable rationales for doing so. It has plenty of room for individual travel and speculation, beyond what the scripted metaplot has. The actions of the characters are integral to the overall storyline.

And if you don't buy it, it has NO EFFECT ON YOUR GAME EVER. And if you do, well, you can plop it in whenever you want.

Anyway, that's my two cents.

So how would you suggest a game designer were to progress? Say you want a game to be based in a setting, but the idea is to say "here's how we got here" and the rest is open ended.

This is the approach many recent games have taken, Cyberpunk 2020 did this originally (but then created a metaplot book which doesnt necessarily have to be used if you don't really want to); games like Babylon Project and Star Wars are locked into their metaplots by nature of being a license (unless you take the Knights of the Old Republic/Tales of the Jedi approach and set your game outside the license timeline).

My feeling is that is a good way to (note I don't claim it to be the best) to balance both the setting richness and GM friendliness that makes for a successful gaming recipe. I honestly don't know another way to do it, unless you completely go without a setting, a la GURPS or HERO.

Just remembered the worst example of Metaplot...

A game from Pacesetter (makers of Chill) called Sandman wherein you didn't know your real identity. The point of the game was basically one big campaign to find out who you were and what happened to you. The problem was, EVEN THE GM DIDN'T KNOW THE TRUTH in the core rules. Even worse, there was some sort of contest to figure it all out and they went belly up without ever having divulged the answer (far as I know anyway).

If anyone knows the deal with this game, I'd love to find out as I played it once (the first adventure on the train). A cool idea for a game, but failed because of the adherence to the metaplot (and the company's finances).

Hardpoint wrote: So how would you suggest a game designer were to progress? Say you want a game to be based in a setting, but the idea is to say "here's how we got here" and the rest is open ended.

This is the approach many recent games have taken, Cyberpunk 2020 did this originally (but then created a metaplot book which doesnt necessarily have to be used if you don't really want to); games like Babylon Project and Star Wars are locked into their metaplots by nature of being a license (unless you take the Knights of the Old Republic/Tales of the Jedi approach and set your game outside the license timeline).

My feeling is that is a good way to (note I don't claim it to be the best) to balance both the setting richness and GM friendliness that makes for a successful gaming recipe. I honestly don't know another way to do it, unless you completely go without a setting, a la GURPS or HERO.

Hardpoint wrote: So how would you suggest a game designer were to progress? Say you want a game to be based in a setting...

Most notable are the comments by "eyebeams", who claims to be a White Wolf freelancer. They're as dismissive of everyone's concerns -- and, Hell, the whole indie movement -- as one might expect,

I'm something of a fan of TRoS, actually.

Come now. If you're going to slag me somewhere else, at the very least cite what I actually said for those who aren't up to poring through the whole thing.

Am I (and are current professionals in my circle) dismissive of the Indie thing? No, but the fact is that games that pay for people's livelihoods need to be planned differently than games that just need to recoup their costs. People who put food on the table with games can't take the advice you're giving, X. Serial product sales aren't there to support hookers n' coke, folks -- they provide ramen and rent (which really should be the name of a game, eh?:-). To get that means that there has to be a steady stream of products. Metaplot provides on source for this. Otherwise, you have the system mastery approach (as used in D20), where we see variations on a system whose complications are such that most players find buying books much more in their comfort zone than developing their own mechanics.

(You might say that adventures are a third option, but the fact is that adventures are really only consistent sellers for D20 games; they're calculated to underperform for the sake of stimulating play for everybody else.)

As for metaplots, they usually have three main functions:

1) Community building.
2) Examples of stories.

(Remember what I said about adventures? Metaplot lets us present story seeds in a way that doesn't risk the book's success, either by presenting them as continuity or by attached an adventure to continuity.)

3) They introduce new elements within the context of the established setting.

For a a large number of gamers, they accomplish all of these things, to a greater or lesser degree. What is lacking, really, is a solid set of guidelines for applying metaplots -- something due to be rectified in two upcoming products I'm aware of, but a concern nonetheless.

Metaplots cannot tell you how to run your game or how your game's history unfolds, and it has never been the intent of anybody I've worked for to set things up that way. They do assume a style of play where the GM takes ownership of their game's setting and makes necessary changes.

I have to admit that I have limited sympathy for people who won't take change of the setting and make it their own. The exception is for games where the "canon" is the whole reason for play: Games like LotR and Star Wars, where players have universal expectations about what's happening.

but he adds one element to the problem with metaplots that we haven't considered: A problem for writers. That is, even if a single campaign can disregard metaplot, writers for a setting cannot -- contraining their creativity.

Not exactly. Sometimes it's a constraint and sometimes it isn't. Sometimes such constraints are useful. Some of the writing I'm most proud of came from interpreting the available body of work.

The problem isn't something as ethereal as the gossamer creative spirit being crushed under an oppressive metaplot. The problem is much more prosaic: You need to have a fuckload of books and study them constantly. Having to stay consistent is a concern, but it would be a concern with any game's setting. This is just as true of setting breadth (you wouldn't rewrite hunks of Glorantha for print, unless you were Greg Stafford) as it is of continuity. All games will get this "bigness" problem over time, unless they just sell the core -- and that's not an option for any commercially viable line.

Of course, this only happens in situations like the "big companies" have where you have freelance writers writing for a line, which explains why we didn't think of it -- but it's certainly something a designer should consider if he wants other people to ever write for his or her game.

Uh, no. It's a matter of how it affects the logistics of actually writing books. As such, it applies to individuals as well, assuming that they accrue enough material.

The fundamental problem I personally have with metaplots is that they are adventures masquerading as setting details.

Adventures that are happening to characters that don't belong to my players.

Why don't you have them happen to your players instead, then? I really am interested: What's the psychological barrier here that keeps some people from just using the story arc as the adventure model it's designed to be?

eyebeams> A quick answer to your question regarding why individual groups don't alter the metaplots to the PCs. I think it's because there is nothing in the "official" product that says how PC-level characters can get in on the action. It'd be getting on the Titanic after it hit the iceburg.

On that thought, I think it'd be interesting if metaplots were designed with PC level characters in mind. Instead of tying everything up neatly, just put out some situations and then give ideas to GMs and players on how to become involved. Give a basic set-up, but leave the specifics to indiv idual games. Let's consider Vampire, for instance. Instead of saying "The Prince of Charlotte, NC was diablerized by his trusted Sheriff," have things set up like this:

1. The Prince is dead.
2. Recently Anarchs have been encroaching on the city
3. The Toreador and Brujah elders were not too fond of the Prince, but supported her anyway because they thought she could be made into their puppet.
4. Rumor has it that one of the city's Kindred is an infiltrator for the Sabbat, who wish to take over as well.


Everyone has their own take on the matter, and everyone has a stake (no pun intended) in what happens, which should be made clear. Instead of a string of events, have a basic set-up and many paths that could be taken. In the Charlotte murder mystery example, the PCs themselves could be the culprits, and the story could focus on their attempts to get away with it. Describe in general the ramification of one turn of events. For the above example, let players and GMs understand how things would change if the Toreador Primogen is blamed for the murder. Make it clear what the NPCs want, why they want it, what keeps them from getting it, and how they plan on going about achieving their goals.

Doesn't the Tribe 8 metaplot (as an example) specifically imvolve player characters? Isn't the majority of its metaplot a set of adventures that take the players from the opening days of Vimary to fifteen years later at Capal, after Vimary burns?

Or am I misinterpreting what little I've seen of the game?

No, you're not mis-interpereting. But it's one of the worst offenders in the bad metaplot arena (which is too bad as the rest is pretty neat). Specifically because the PCs are involved directly in the metaplot. The problem is that they are involved in a way that doesn't allow them to choose to do anything.

Basically, the way the action of the game is described, the players are meant to come along with the metaplot, and simply be there to observe it unfold. There are, in fact, points at which the material describes the plot, and mentions that the players should be nearby and involved in something (though often it does not say what), so that they can have the evolving plot described to them as it happens.

The particular example I'm thinking of involves the players being along on the attack on a Z'bri fortress in which we find out the answer to the big metaplot secret about Joshua (?), IIRC. Of course, it's not the players that confront the Z'bri, it's one of the Fatimas that does this and finds out. IIRC, the PCs are supposed to be simply involved in the raging battle of smaller powers outside or something.

Just reading these materials made me wonder how I'd present it. I mean it looks like you're supposed to say, "You charge with the Fatima to the gates, and engage the troops. She goes inside. You hold them off for a while, until the Fatima emerges yet again. Then the bad guys flee. Then she spills the beans on the secret."

I can't see where I'm supposed to ask the players for their actions. This isn't even Participationism, because the playersa aren't even allowed to Participate. It's out and out storytelling. So how it qualifies as an RPG, I don't know. Certainly I can make up some "underbelly" for the players to be playing in, but then the supplement isn't helping me much, is it?

Mike

Welcome back to the Forge, Malcolm. I say "back" because I notice the old Mage thread back in '02 that you responded to.

eyebeams wrote: Come now. If you're going to slag me somewhere else, at the very least cite what I actually said for those who aren't up to poring through the whole thing.

As for metaplots, they usually have three main functions:

1) Community building.
2) Examples of stories.

(Remember what I said about adventures? Metaplot lets us present story seeds in a way that doesn't risk the book's success, either by presenting them as continuity or by attached an adventure to continuity.)

3) They introduce new elements within the context of the established setting.

For a a large number of gamers, they accomplish all of these things, to a greater or lesser degree. What is lacking, really, is a solid set of guidelines for applying metaplots -- something due to be rectified in two upcoming products I'm aware of, but a concern nonetheless.

Metaplots cannot tell you how to run your game or how your game's history unfolds, and it has never been the intent of anybody I've worked for to set things up that way. They do assume a style of play where the GM takes ownership of their game's setting and makes necessary changes.

I have to admit that I have limited sympathy for people who won't take change of the setting and make it their own. The exception is for games where the "canon" is the whole reason for play: Games like LotR and Star Wars, where players have universal expectations about what's happening.

The problem isn't something as ethereal as the gossamer creative spirit being crushed under an oppressive metaplot. The problem is much more prosaic: You need to have a fuckload of books and study them constantly. Having to stay consistent is a concern, but it would be a concern with any game's setting. This is just as true of setting breadth (you wouldn't rewrite hunks of Glorantha for print, unless you were Greg Stafford) as it is of continuity. All games will get this "bigness" problem over time, unless they just sell the core -- and that's not an option for any commercially viable line.

I'm not going to go into the rest of the stuff regarding your feelings on Indie games because it's off-topic for this thread. If you want to create a thread regarding "pro vs. indie relations", feel free, tho you already know my opinion from LJ -- I think the distinction you make between "pro" and "amateur/indie" is so thin as to be meaningless.

Then you shouldn;t have gone into it in the fisrt place.

In essence, it comes down to your assertion that metaplots must be good because they sell.

No, that wasn't it. My assertion is that people find metaplots valuable and attractive and that sales show that they do so on a consistent basis.

* Sales have nothing to do with quality.

Quality per se has nothing to do with my argument. It's utility. Metaplots have utility for lots of players.

* Even if I believed that sales indicated quality, I dispute the fact that they sell because you have no hard numbers to back this up.

You can find Ken Hite's annual bredown of industry sales in his Out of the Box column, as I mentioned before. White Wolf has about 20% to a quarter of the market. This is common knowledge.

Hell, I can give two examples of heavily-metaplotted games that aren't going quite so well nowadays: Deadlands and, as others mentioned in this thread, Tribe 8.

Tribe8 was never going to be a mainstream success. Deadlands *was* a mainstream success; it catapulted PEG to the top 5 until the Cybergames fiasco a few years back.

* And even if I concede all the points above, and believe that sales matter and indicate quality, it still proves nothing, because we have no way of knowing why the "metaplot" supplements in question were purchased -- they could have been bought for reasons other than the metaplot, such as art or extra rules.

I'm pretty sure lots of folks buy books for the metaplot. If metaplots were so problematic, they would break a purchasing decision and not be ignorable (which is what you originally claimed by citing another thread here), but they don't. They seem to either do no harm or enhance value for most gamers.

Sales of White Wolf metaplot-oriented books at GenCon arguably have more to do with marketing than actual content.

As I said before, one book that sold out rapidly (Manifesto) had no promotion at Gen Con, was 9 months old and was pure metaplot. There were probably others, but I kept my eyes on that one because that's a book where a few folks trotted out the complaints you're on about now. Apparently, around a hundred or so people begged to differ.

That is, I agree that guidelines for applying metaplots are lacking in most metaplots, which is why I keep saying -- over and over again -- that I am not against metaplots per se, but that I am against BAD metaplots. Not including guidelines for how a metaplot should work is an example of something a "bad" metaplot would do.

I think metaplots could be improved with guidelines, but even without them people seem to have no problem applying common sense and the needs of their game -- a given in all RPG play. This given doesn;t mafail to apply to metaplots.

The only thing I disagree with above is the "community building" thing. In my experience, metaplots don't build community -- they fracture it.

Then I would say that your experience isn't representative.

At its most basic level, there's those who want to remain within "canon" and those who don't, and then there several sub-groups within each of those categories, depending on how one feels about certain elements of the metaplot, such as, to use Vampire as an example, the difference between those who ignore the death of Ravnos and those who don't allow Camarilla Malkavians to have Dementation -- different levels of respect for "canon".

But these people still talk to each other. That's what communities do.

I have experienced this in Traveller, in several White Wolf games, and with regard to Deadlands -- and that's just off the top of my head. Now, IIRC, you response to this on LiveJournal was "some people are jerks", to which I say: It's a problem even when people are polite about it. I've never dealt with a rude Deadlands player, but the factions and the friction happen nonetheless.

I've never seen the friction fail to happen when it comes to any RPG fanbase of any size whatsoever. GURPS people just argue about different things.

And what's that old saying about what happens when you assume things? See, once again, this is the difference between good and bad metaplot. Don't assume too much.

I think it's reasonable to assume that people will play take wonership of what heppens in play and adjust things accordingly.

The fact of the matter is, White Wolf aside, there are bad metaplots out there that DO tell you how to run your game. Seriously. Ever read any Deadlands stuff? I own Deadlands supplements (Hell on Earth supplements, specifically) that explicitly say things like "don't kill this NPC, we have plans for him later."

They're letting you know ahead of time that the NPC is a part of the storyline. What real, play-impacting concern is keeping you from killing him and slotting a different NPC or PC into the role?

See, you seem to make the implicit assumption that all my points are about the White Wolf metaplot, and that all metaplots resemble the ones you've worked on. They aren't and they don't. In some ways,White Wolf got things right. In other ways, they didn't.

You defined what you want instea of what you see right now, and that basically includes most published metaplots. WW's is illustrative of why metaplots are written the way they are, but this stuff can apply to most others.

(This speaks to the other problem I was having with you on LiveJournal -- you seem to think your experience holds for all games and gamers, and this simply isn't the case.)

I believe my statements are more representative of how gamers use metaplots than yours, because of both broad and anecdotal information.

Well, I think all I can say is I have more sympathy, and that disregarding canon isn't as easy as you claim, because it becomes a big social issue.

Why? Have you really lost friends and games over this, and if so, do you really think such extreme reactions are braodly representative of anything. If you do, why?

This I can agree with -- that is, that "bigness" becomes a problem. So we can add this to the list of the problems with metaplot.

"Bigness" is a function of the number of things that comprise one element of a game, and as my statement obviously intends, does not apply to metaplots alone.

That said, I disgaree about the non-viability of selling just a core rulebook, or selling supplements that aren't metaplot. However, this is off-topic for this thread. If you want to argue about the commercial viability of only selling a core rulebook and/or a metaplotless game, feel free to start another thread -- I'll happily participate.

You've made it clea that you don't think that feeding and housing the creator is a valid yardstick for success, so we just aren't going to see eye to eye, because I write stuff that feeds and houses me.

Hello,

Everyone please refrain from line-by-line replies in this thread. See the Forge Etiquette sticky in Site Discussion if necessary.

Disagreement is OK; getting mad and snippy at one another is not. That's a warning, not an accusation.

Best,
Ron

eyebeams wrote: The fundamental problem I personally have with metaplots is that they are adventures masquerading as setting details.

Adventures that are happening to characters that don't belong to my players.

Why don't you have them happen to your players instead, then? I really am interested: What's the psychological barrier here that keeps some people from just using the story arc as the adventure model it's designed to be?

Malcolm, I gotta say that I think your idea about inserting the PCs into the metaplot instead of the stock NPCs is a great fix for the metaplot problem.

But to suggest as you have that that's the way its SUPPOSED to be. That the meta plots were DESIGNED for that is rather disingenuous. There is no possible way that I'll ever believe that dozens of prolonged lengthy metaplots have been carefully spooled out over the last decade and all of the writers just happen to forget to mention that the NPCs are meant only as place holders. Such a scenario is so highly improbable that it doesn't hold any credibility with me.

Most of the NPCs in these metaplots are not designed to be place holders. This is obvious because they are so specific that virtually no group would have a combination of characters capable of trading places with the NPCs in either abilities or background. If the metaplot was truly meant as adventure ideas for PCs it would not be written as a meta plot.

See Pendragon for book after book on how to design an extended story arc AROUND PCs right. Lots of background on what the NPCs are doing. Lots of plot hooks that can be mixed and matched as appropriate to the party. Lots of suggestions on how to substitute a PC for Lancelot, or to insert them into canonical adventure in a way that matters. Pendragon is a great example of what you're talking about. WOD style metaplots...not so much.


I also find the idea that meta plot leads to community to be highly questionable. All of my experience points to metaplot building walls. Walls between "we're pure canon and you're not" players and "canon? this is roleplaying, we're making our own story here" players. Not to mention the "the metaplot is broken so we're fixing it in our version of the world...but you didn't fix it in yours, so I'm never playing in your world, cuz it sucks if you don't fix this".

I've witnessed this first hand in L5R, 7th Sea, and Deadlands both in online groups and in "rival" groups at game stores. I witnessed one group of L5R players nearly come to blows...literally...with another group because the 2nd group had killed off some fan favorite canonical NPC and was therefor playing "wrong".

Now granted this represents some fundamental disfunction at the group level. But there are at least as many examples of meta plots causing community conflict as there are of metaplots building community.

I myself have found the metaplot of 7th to be so egregiously stupid and vapid that after suffering through the first several splatbooks I said no more...these guys are hack wannabe novelists. They suck as writers and could never get a real publishing house to publish one of their books, so they suckered an RPG company with low standards to print their drek instead.

A good metaplot can be a great asset to a game line, well done and well executed.

Problem is, most metaplots are not good. They are not well done and they are not well executed. Most metaplots are nothing but the bastard love children of horrible fan fic and vanity press. This truth tends to tarnish the whole concept of metaplots for RPGs.

I don't think the *concept* of a metaplot is a horrible thing. Just the execution of most of them.

Two things I'd toss out there as problematic for metaplots - one, what would help a set of metaplot books to be useful to play groups is NOT always the same as what helps the metaplot books be profitable for the company. E.g., holding secrets for later books will, to a certain point, boost sales, but can often make the material harder for a play group to use (depending on the nature of the secrets and the style/manner in which they are concealed/revealed). This conflict can be managed well, or not, but my experience (which is NOT particularly broad, mostly 7th Sea, Tribe 8, and a little Deadlands and Werewolf) is that mostly it's "not."

The second thing: I've seen several RPG writters acknowledge publically, and several more admit privately, that one reason unexpected stuff shows up in metaplot books is because that part of things just hadn't been invented yet. Now, I won't pretend it's EASY to outline a metaplot in appropriate detail, but frankly - if they haven't even made a serious effort at that level of organization, I think they are doing themselves and their customers a disservice. Not because what they end up producing is dreck - it might be, or not, and folks can and do obviously finds uses for it in either case. No, I think they are doing a disservice because the impact of doing that (difficult, perhaps, and certainly not insignificant) up-front work would, IMO, be HUGE.

Then again, I'm not likely to become a big metaplot book customer, and I never was a huge one in the past, so I'm not sure what my opinion here is worth . . .

Gordon

[Off-topic aside: Malcolm, if you have any problem with the way I've handled myself here or elsewhere -- that is, if you have any sort of personal issue with me -- please feel free to take it up with me via Private Message or email. It's not on-topic for this thread. I'm hoping to keep this politer than LiveJournal because I actually have an interest in what you have to say.]

Malcolm, I think Ralph and Anya covered most of what I was going to say, and I'm interested in what you have to say in response to them.

As for your supposed hard numbers -- you're basing this all on the idea that White Wolf has 20% of the market? Um, I own TONS of White Wolf material that has little or no metaplot content, and so it returns to my original point that White Wolf's sales don't prove that those books are being purchased because of the metaplot. (And, as for your GenCon examples, two datapoints don't indicate a trend.) Your only response to that idea is this:

I'm pretty sure lots of folks buy books for the metaplot. If metaplots were so problematic, they would break a purchasing decision and not be ignorable (which is what you originally claimed by citing another thread here), but they don't. They seem to either do no harm or enhance value for most gamers.

Hi Kirt,

In support of your point, I'd like to add the following concepts.

1. A "sale" is not always a sale. The three-tier system permits a publisher to move many more books to distributors' warehouses than actually touch the fingers or are actually bought by end-users. Unsurprisely, reported sales figures

2. No role-playing publisher has demonstrably profited from the sustained "periodical" model of supplement publishing, whether for splatbooks or metaplot chapters. Ryan Dancey accurately calls it the "treadmill," and I specifically cite White Wolf and TSR (several times) for suffering badly from employing this strategy. Why these two companies are held up as flagships of success in the so-called industry has to do with brief subcultural fads, not with their publication models.

In other words, I think the commonly perceived notion that "metaplot sells" is inaccurate: an illusion sustained simultaneously among consumers and among retailers in an extremely negative relationship, to the detriment of both as well as to the publishers.

Walls of books on the retailer's shelf do not necessarily indicate profit for anyone. In most cases, they indicate debt.

Best,
Ron

To respond to Ron:

1. Consumer sales may have a delayed impact, but they do always have an impact. Before the late 90s, some games were artificially bouyed, but that was by the sales of games from the same company. Once that ends, there's really no avoiding the impact of consumer slaes. case in point: Wraith.

Some companies do, on the other hand, still do this, if only for nostalgic reasons. Case in point: Caosium's RPGs and their relationship to its fiction.

In any event, it's stretching it a bit to claim that end sales and distribution are so different as to be inapplicable to the discussion at hand.

2. Publishers benefit from the so-called treadmill all the time -- so much so that WotC is eagerly climbing back on it. Monte Cook (who's the molst informed person who'd talk about it to the public) seems reasonably confident that 3.5 exists to spark another product cycle, and WotC's reexamining of class books and stated intent to wholly revise some books is indicative of this.

The difference between this and the serial publishing habits of the mid-90s is the repositioning of books as "sub-core" material to stave off the drop in sales. Because RPG consumers are a relatively static group now (they don't replace their numbers the way they used to), eventually the number of people who own a book is going to reach criitical mass. The sub-core appraoch broadens the number of people in this group that will buy these books.

If Ryan Dancey is right about something, it's the fact that RPG purchasers and players are two different things. Traditional serial supplements are, crassly, an attempt to keep the active buyer in a group buying books -- and it works. It may not work for companies that have printruns of under 2000 or so a supplement (such companies are much more vulnerable to fluctuations in the consumker base; 5 guys not buy out of 200 is a bigger deal than 5 guys not buying out of 10,000), but it does apply to more successful companies.

I don't think you can ascribe WotC and WW's positions at this point to brief fads, given that the DnD brand is creeping up on 30 and the WoD is over a decade old.

Xiombarg, to condense my replies somewhat:

1) I think slaes are a rough measure of whether people have found metaplots to be useful. People do in fact buy books with metaplot. They are useful.

2) Your rant defines "bad metaplot" broadly. Off the top of my head, the only one I can see would meet your criteria is the old Heavy Gear metaplot, which was in the format you stated you liked (updates unconnected to the basic setting or other expansions). DP9 apppears to have killed that, which tells you how viable it was.

But people are buying and using what you hate *all the time* -- more people, I wager, than the entire community+lurkers here (or at RPG.net, for that mattter).

3) Do you really, honestly believe that people are buying these books for the art, despite your assertion that the actual content is destructive? People may buy them for added systems, but in many cases, these systems only exist to support the metaplot (Time of Thin Blood).

If metaplots have an obvious bad effect you state, people wouldn't buy books with them. They do speak to usability. I don;t claim that you go out and say that they hurt sales. I claim that for your argument to make any sense, they *must* hurt sales. This is the oytcome that fits with the substance of your argument.

If you need further evidence of their community building and utility as a story element, then you can peruse the communities that talk about it. These communities are often argumentative, but not much more so than for other games. Y'see, people don't have to get along to constitute a community.

By "Pretty sure," I mean "really, really sure." I can only repeat that the raw data and specific examples are ther for public consumption, some of them overwhelmingly so.

4) I've already talked about how metaplots could be improved. These points are not compatible with yours, unless you wish to alter your initial statement. Your suggested alternatives have been tried and failed to work well (like DP9's HG metaplot, or TSR's split between several settings).

5) How exactly can metaplots be problematic in spite of people liking them? This seems nonsensical to me.

Despite some people's personal preferences, it turns out that there is rhyme and reason to why metaplots work the way they do. If you objection is on personal aesthetic ground, that's valid -- but it does not necessarily have merit as a general statement.

You can definitely overdo that aspect of things. I think the benchmark for this is when it omits fundamntals of the setting. Brave New World apparently had this issue, as did earlier editions of Trinity.

On the other hand, it does at times work as a legitimate device, usually when it involves the outcome of surrent game history rather than a setting basic.

Gordon C. Landis wrote: Two things I'd toss out there as problematic for metaplots - one, what would help a set of metaplot books to be useful to play groups is NOT always the same as what helps the metaplot books be profitable for the company. E.g., holding secrets for later books will, to a certain point, boost sales, but can often make the material harder for a play group to use (depending on the nature of the secrets and the style/manner in which they are concealed/revealed). This conflict can be managed well, or not, but my experience (which is NOT particularly broad, mostly 7th Sea, Tribe 8, and a little Deadlands and Werewolf) is that mostly it's "not."

The second thing: I've seen several RPG writters acknowledge publically, and several more admit privately, that one reason unexpected stuff shows up in metaplot books is because that part of things just hadn't been invented yet. Now, I won't pretend it's EASY to outline a metaplot in appropriate detail, but frankly - if they haven't even made a serious effort at that level of organization, I think they are doing themselves and their customers a disservice. Not because what they end up producing is dreck - it might be, or not, and folks can and do obviously finds uses for it in either case. No, I think they are doing a disservice because the impact of doing that (difficult, perhaps, and certainly not insignificant) up-front work would, IMO, be HUGE.

Then again, I'm not likely to become a big metaplot book customer, and I never was a huge one in the past, so I'm not sure what my opinion here is worth . . .

Gordon

Valamir and Anya:

As far as my experience as someone who actually works with metaplot, I can only think of two incidences where metaplot was designed with no thought for playability or the concept of the NPC as an exemplar for the PC. One of these hasn't been a going concern for roughly 5-6 years. The other one was actual fiction that was only adopted as metaplot after fans were fairly excited about it.

Since most metaplot material is written by freelancers, it sure as hell isn't vanity publishing or "frustrated novelists." That's really an ad hominem broadside, not a valid poiint.

When a signature character is fulfilling a PC role in a way a PC never could (and thus, you couldn't use an an example to spark play) then it isn't necessarily well written. But that's a mattter of technique, not form. When I write up cabals and Mage NPCs, they're there to demonstrate the breadth of concept you can get out of something, and provide an example that allows folks to plug in their own tools. Plus, of course, you can shoot at them. It they come up again, just toss in somebody new.

It really is that simple.

At times, this is ambiguous. I'm going to make a risky statement here, and one that will no doubt offend certain sensibilities:

It's supposed to be that way.

Remember how I've said that we assume that players take ownership of their games? This means that we don't dictate the precise function of a plotline or character for them either. We have lots of ways it can be interpreted, though, and a specific sequence of events. Experience has shown that for many, many players, it's much easier to provide a specific story arc for folks to adjust than vague story suggestions with a hardwired set of interpretations.

eyebeams wrote: To respond to Ron:
2. Publishers benefit from the so-called treadmill all the time -- so much so that WotC is eagerly climbing back on it. Monte Cook (who's the molst informed person who'd talk about it to the public) seems reasonably confident that 3.5 exists to spark another product cycle, and WotC's reexamining of class books and stated intent to wholly revise some books is indicative of this.
[snip]
Traditional serial supplements are, crassly, an attempt to keep the active buyer in a group buying books -- and it works.
[snip]
I don't think you can ascribe WotC and WW's positions at this point to brief fads, given that the DnD brand is creeping up on 30 and the WoD is over a decade old.

eyebeams wrote: Valamir and Anya:

As far as my experience as someone who actually works with metaplot, I can only think of two incidences where metaplot was designed with no thought for playability or the concept of the NPC as an exemplar for the PC.
[snip]

Remember how I've said that we assume that players take ownership of their games? This means that we don't dictate the precise function of a plotline or character for them either. We have lots of ways it can be interpreted, though, and a specific sequence of events. Experience has shown that for many, many players, it's much easier to provide a specific story arc for folks to adjust than vague story suggestions with a hardwired set of interpretations.

I agree that sales cannot be used to draw the conclusion that a book's content has approval in any *particular* way. Consumers are not clones who all make the same purchasing decision; you cannot assert that consumers made a particular decision that supports your point, becuase you do NOT know.

There are many potential motivations for the purchase: collectors completeness, defending yourself against rules citations in material you don't own, expanded locations and history, expanded mechanics. The proerty is a brand and consumer identification with a brand is quite complex.

It simply is not the case that you can easily and comfortably claim that metaplot works have sufficient approval *as metaplot works* to be viable. I think the fact that the pool of players is not refreshing indicates a severe pathology and should provoke much questioning of the extant model.And the consistency of peoples reports negative experiences cannot be disregarded either: I know people who have not contact with internet gaming culture and yet produced a carbon copy of the charge against WOD that the metaplot made them feel like tourists. It's not just some internet meme floating about or sour grapes.

(Double post- moderator please remove, since it won't seem to let me do it)

Anya:

1) If you feel oppressed by Divis Mal you should likewise feel oppressed by Doctor Doom, since all supers settings are basically defined by signature characters.

That said, it's actually pretty damn easy to replace him with another NPC. The degree of his involvement in the history of the setting is obscure enough to allow this, and it isn't as if Teragen isn't inspired by stuff like Magneto's ubermutant ideology and such. You could put your favorite NPC at the head of Teragen any time you want and have Mal do something else, of exclude him completely.

Actual comics books have demonstrated this principle in action quite well.

2) Serial releases are like Churchill's quip about Western democracy: It's the worst system except for all the others. Most counterexamples are either not tenable as actual businesses or, frnakly, people just have a false impression of how successful they are. Fpr instance, CoC is often touted as a one book success, when Chaosium supports it through fiction releases, has still drifted in and out of bankruptcy and has had the dubious honour of being on the HWA's shitlist for not paying writers. I don't know if alleged bad business practices are somehow an indicator of superior artistic purity -- and frankly, I don't want to find out.

3) Vampire and DnD have had continuous releases throughout their histories ad have survived downturns that affected the entire industry without their parent companies collapsing. This is not true for any counterexample you mention except for CoC, and we've already covered that. In Gamma World's case, it's been a dead line for more than 10 years, and is only coming back because an arm of a cynical metaplot-whoring company bothered to license it. Funny, that. Age does imply robustness is the properties involved have actually been making money all that time -- and Vampire and DnD have.

I do believe it's stretching it to sat that decade+ and nearly 30 year old lines are "faddishness." At the very least, it doesn't match any commonly accepted definition of fad.

4) People with your tastes don't drive 75% of marketshare. Let's say 50% of game consumers just play some form of DnD; a large hunk of them play in a canned setting like Greyhawk or the Realms, both of which were developed with big hunks of metaplot. Making that an even quarter of gamers, that's 12.5% right there.

White Wolf gets most of it's money from Vampire and Exalted. Let'sroughly estimate it makes abot half of it's money from the WoD (it probably really makes more than half from the WoD, but there you go). That's another 12.5%

So that's 25% deliberately slinging the numbers low. Let's add Rifts sales to that (just over half of Palladium's share -- 5%, because it has a metaplot too. Now it's 30%. Deadlands and In Nomine maybe bump us up to 33% -- a full third of the RPG industry now has to do with dreaded metaplot.

And this is leaving 37.5% to just DnD core and sub-core sales. Added together metaplot and straight DnD make up nearly 70% of the market. DnD doesn't follow the same rules as the rest of the industry, and no game can really emulate the tactics it uses.

If I just wanted to make mad dough, I'd produce metaplot-driven D20 supplements. In all honesty, I probably wouldn't produce games you appaer to be interested in playing -- or if I did, I wouldn't turn around and claim that I'm appealing to the silent masses. It just isn't true. Now I *do* like games that don't fit the above categories, but that's because I'm not in it for just the money -- like most people who work in the industry.

Contracycle:

1) If consistent sales that make up the second largest concentration of products aside from straight DnD is not somehow persuasive (and to be honest, I think it's very, very silly to say that it isn't when the numbers are so large), then there is no way any position about metaplot can be proved in any fashion whatsoever.

This means Xiombarg's rant is equally meaningless -- actually wait -- moreso, since it advocates things that we know don't correlate with good sales and thus, can't be practiced anyway.

Yeah, my crass commercialism is no doubt insulting to the principles to which many people here ascribe. It's also the only coherent, non-anecdotal data about what large numbers of gamers are doing that exists -- period. That's the hand you've been dealt.

The fact is that people have bought many different products with metaplots conistently, including those which have had little in common besides possession of a metaplot. It seems to be a common element in successful games that aren't DnD.

2) The lack of new gamers is a problem for all games, not just metaplot oriented ones. It strikes me as odd that you refuse to consider about a decade's worth of consistent sales as indicating anything about what gamers want, but are quick to ascribe this problem with the industry to particular factors.

The only exception I can think of is actually MET LARP, which is probably among the most metaplot and setting adherent from of gaming -- and also disproves an assertion that metaplot is generally destructive. I didn't bring it up however, because my information there is second and third hand.

3) I never claimed that everybody liked metaplot. This is neither plausible nor desireable. I can't stand HERO; Steve Long has no obligation to change his game for me, nor can my preference be universalized into something about what gamers really want.

That's a hint worth taking, really.

Malcom,

I think we probably agree -- metaplot isn't for everyone. I also don't think that I represent 75% of the gaming market -- not by a long shot. I'm a niche, and I know it. But my experience with metaplot driven products does not bear out your defense of them.

I think some of your assertions about how a good metaplot makes for a good supplement are in fact wrong, and I think the numbers and evidence you are using aren't really supportable.

There was a recent thread on RPG.net about Deadlands "The Boise Horror". I don't own any Deadlands stuff, but I read it anyway. Everybody in the thread owned the supplements in which the metaplot was laid out, and most people played through it. And they all didn't like the metaplot and complained about it.

These are your 25-30% market share. They all bought the metaplot supplements, yet all of them complained about how lame it was, and wished it either had been different, or not there at all.

Sales can reflect that people like something about your product. They can't reflect that they like something as specific as 'metaplot' or 'art'.

If you read through my post carefully, you would notice that I referred to all of gaming as a fad. I think it's going to be a historical fad, much as wargaming was. I think it is a problem of the industry as a whole, and I really don't think that metaplot is the solution. I see it as one of many problems, actually. An explication of them should probably go in another thread.

The Divis Mal/Dr. Doom/Magneto parallels are good, but not accurate.

What if I want to play Aberrant without the Terragen at all? I can of course do this, but now the utility of most of the Aberrant supplements drops to (or near) zero.

The Chaosium example was a counter-example. Simple age does not give you a mandate or indication of great success. Chaosium has been in continuous publication for longer than WoD, but doesn't have as much commercial success as White Wolf has.

I'm not pretending I'm most gamers. But I am a gamer. These metaplot issues are real, and they are real for a significant part of the gaming market. You are free to ignore them or find them inconsequential. But that doesn't mean they aren't there.

I personally think that Metaplot is best when:

1) Everybody knows what it is

2) It's self-contained, either in a series of supplements (ie, the Giants/Drow/Queen of the Demonweb pits cycle), or a single supplement (Most Chaosium campaigns, The Traveller Adventure, etc.).

3) It doesn't dictate specific world-changing events or, if it does, it involves the characters, and is something that's easy to ignore if you don't play through the events.

Examples of this are Star Wars, Star Trek, LotR, etc., The Traveller Adventure, any of a number of Call of Cthulhu supplements, and the like.

I think most of the metaplots that are attached to hot games, currently, are not examples of good metaplot design. Obviously, those who wrote and published them, and many who bought them, disagree with me.

I think we (as a hobby/industry) can do better, but only if we acknowledge that the current approach isn't perfect, and we try and figure out how to improve it.

Malcolm, the problem here is you don't actually have the numbers to support your claims. We don't know, without some sort of study, why people are buying things.

I'll ask you up front: Do you honestly believe that you know what RPG consumers are thinking? Have you developed some sort of mind-reading device? I apologize for the sarcasm, but I can't understand how you can be so sure. Hell, I'm not sure your employers are that sure of themselves. Have you asked them?

And that brings up another point: Even if everything you say is 100% accurate, it only holds for current RPG consumers -- as Anya points out, not a growing demographic. So, while you may consider my ideas as "commercially unviable", I'm not so sure -- I don't think they've all been tried at once, and with the level of care I advocate.

You're fond of Ken Hite -- so am I. Check out his GenCon "Out of the Box" where he says he doesn't see a "next big thing" for RPGs at the moment. This should tell you something.

Fact of the matter is, even if you're right, why stick with the "tried and true" methods when it just leaves you squabbling over scraps of an already-dwindling market?

No, I don't genuinely believe people are buying stuff just for art. My point is we don't know because we have no data on the subject, so your dogmatic belief that you know what the gaming public wants doesn't hold water. Are you sure people aren't bying Vampire because they think vampires are cool and not for the metaplot? And I think Ron's points about how the three-tier system generates "sales" that don't exist are meaningful as well, in terms of throwing doubt on your claims.

Plus, the RPG market is highly volitile. Relying on the precious little data we have of past sales isn't likely to help you in the future. CCG glut, anyone?

Also, you seem to want to reduce all of the ideas people are putting forth to their most absurd levels. If you look back in this thread, you'll see that I don't oppose supplements in general, which can certainly supply the "treadmill" with grist if that what you want to do. More on that in a minute.

eyebeams wrote: 2) Serial releases are like Churchill's quip about Western democracy: It's the worst system except for all the others. Most counterexamples are either not tenable as actual businesses or, frnakly, people just have a false impression of how successful they are. Fpr instance, CoC is often touted as a one book success, when Chaosium supports it through fiction releases, has still drifted in and out of bankruptcy and has had the dubious honour of being on the HWA's shitlist for not paying writers. I don't know if alleged bad business practices are somehow an indicator of superior artistic purity -- and frankly, I don't want to find out.

eyebeams wrote:
Yeah, my crass commercialism is no doubt insulting to the principles to which many people here ascribe. It's also the only coherent, non-anecdotal data about what large numbers of gamers are doing that exists -- period. That's the hand you've been dealt.

2) The lack of new gamers is a problem for all games, not just metaplot oriented ones. It strikes me as odd that you refuse to consider about a decade's worth of consistent sales as indicating anything about what gamers want, but are quick to ascribe this problem with the industry to particular factors.

contracycle wrote: If you had a customer survey or something to that effect indicating how this ranked as a priority for WOD customers, I'd be more sympathetic to the case.

White Wolf made their big announcement, the Time of Judgement, at GenCon. What are your thoughts?

M.J., I don't deny that Malcolm may be right about WoD players. The problem is he seems to think that the preferences of WoD players hold for all roleplayers, accross the industry, and this simply isn't the case -- hence my D&D example, which, even at the height of White Wolf's popularity during the early 90s, was still a better-selling game (again, assuming you think sales are the only important thing).

And I think Anya's point about potential new roleplayers is very salient here -- why pander to a minority (albiet, perhaps a majority of your current fanbase, but a minority of roleplayers overall) when you could be going elsewhere?

xiombarg wrote: -- why pander to a minority (albiet, perhaps a majority of your current fanbase, but a minority of roleplayers overall) when you could be going elsewhere?

James, I think we're starting to veer off-topic here, but I'm not so sure that taking the advice of my rant -- i.e. writing metaplot better -- would hurt White Wolf's sales. In fact, I'm not convinced metaplot aids White Wolf's sales.

That said, it's immaterial. The rant isn't about White Wolf, it's about metaplots in general, and the advice stands as good general advice. Perhaps White Wolf has captured the market for people who like metaplot whether or not it's good or bad, but if that's true, there's even less reason for others to write metaplot material. And I'm not sure White Wolf is going to lose money writing non-metaplot stuff -- their non-metaplot D20 stuff sells quite well.

Your talk about being turned off my White Wolf's metapot only underlines my point: There are good metaplots and bad metaplots. While White Wolf has done some things right, they've done a lot wrong -- but this thread isn't about White Wolf. (If somone wants to persue this subject further, email me or start a thread elsewhere...)

xiombarg wrote: James, I think we're starting to veer off-topic here, but I'm not so sure that taking the advice of my rant -- i.e. writing metaplot better -- would hurt White Wolf's sales.

James, amen to that. It was a genuine surprise to me when I found out that, say, White Wolf consider signature characters "placeholders for PCs".

You make an excellent point. A lot of metaplots look like an instance of play, and so it seems to imply your game should be about that thing -- and what happens when it isn't?

You might be interested in one of the daughter threads to this one, if you haven't looked already.

xiombarg wrote: M.J.,....hence my D&D example, which, even at the height of White Wolf's popularity during the early 90s, was still a better-selling game (again, assuming you think sales are the only important thing).

xiombarg wrote: It was a genuine surprise to me when I found out that, say, White Wolf consider signature characters "placeholders for PCs".

You make an excellent point. A lot of metaplots look like an instance of play, and so it seems to imply your game should be about that thing -- and what happens when it isn't?

I believe I know why I disagree with Malcolm's point, as interpreted here:

'Because of the sales of games containing metaplot, metaplot is therefore an element of games that attracts players, rather than being something that they purchase the game in spite of.'

It took a good friend of mine to point this out, but Malcolm's argument hinges on a fallacy. Cum hoc, ergo propter hoc. Sales and metaplot occuring together do not automatically indicate that because of metaplot, therefore sales. Rather, there is likely a different causal factor that follow this pattern:

'Because of unknown element X, therefore sales, in spite of or encouraged by metaplot.'

I applaud MJ Young for posting the information about the polls. I'm of the mind that it will most likely be only in feedback circuits like that of the polls that we'll really find out how most gamers feel about metaplot.

In other news, I'm a first time (I believe, could be wrong) poster, long time reader. Hello all.

Alexander
- "The Henchman"

eyebeams wrote: 1) If you feel oppressed by Divis Mal you should likewise feel oppressed by Doctor Doom, since all supers settings are basically defined by signature characters.

That said, it's actually pretty damn easy to replace him with another NPC. The degree of his involvement in the history of the setting is obscure enough to allow this, and it isn't as if Teragen isn't inspired by stuff like Magneto's ubermutant ideology and such. You could put your favorite NPC at the head of Teragen any time you want and have Mal do something else, of exclude him completely.

Actual comics books have demonstrated this principle in action quite well.

kamikaze wrote:

eyebeams wrote: 1) If you feel oppressed by Divis Mal you should likewise feel oppressed by Doctor Doom, since all supers settings are basically defined by signature characters.

That's an obvious fallacy. Comic books are not role-playing games. Comic books are static, written fiction; they come out in monthly issues, but the individual reader can have no effect on the storyline (just like a metaplot!). RPGs are all about the individual player.

kamikaze wrote: Metaplots step way over that line. What they do is create an uber-NPC "villain", and an uber-NPC "hero", have them fight, and tell the players what happened to the writer's characters. This is BORING. Nobody cares what happens to the writer's characters.
...
I have met people who liked metaplots, though. Every single one was either a frustrated novelist turned metaplot writer for a game company, or someone who didn't get the chance to play anymore, but just bought the books "because someday I'll have time for it again". It's non-gaming for non-gamers.

John Kim wrote:
I'm not sure how the original statement was intended, but consider the case of playing in the Marvel universe -- whether using any of the three official systems or some other system. Given this, I think the parallel is pretty much spot-on. Divis Mal is to the Aberrant setting exactly as Dr. Doom is to the Marvel setting.

John Kim wrote:
Hmmm. Well, OK, I plead guilty to not having actually run Aberrant. Still, it seemed interesting to me to run exactly because there was lots of stuff going on. I like a world where there is a lot of conflict besides just what the PCs are doing. I like having NPC heroes who fight NPC villians. I haven't run a campaign with an RPG-specific metaplot, but I have run Star Trek, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and some other games which have their own signature characters and conflicts.

I mean, if you were to read the metaplot aloud during the session instead of playing, then sure, it would be silly. But my take on it is that it is intended to be consumed outside of session time. Thus, it is background for the in-play story of the PCs. The difference is that rather than being just maps and encyclopedia entries, the background is full of conflict and character, and changes over time. OK, maybe you don't like that style of background, but I don't see that it is invalid.

kamikaze wrote:

John Kim wrote: Consider the case of playing in the Marvel universe -- whether using any of the three official systems or some other system. Given this, I think the parallel is pretty much spot-on. Divis Mal is to the Aberrant setting exactly as Dr. Doom is to the Marvel setting.

The Marvel RPGs aren't comic books, either. The licensed property doesn't change the situation.

In a Marvel setting, the NPC Dr. Doom having weekly fights with the NPC Fantasic Four which are essential to the background would be a massive distraction, and deeply frustrating to the players.

John Kim wrote:

kamikaze wrote: The Marvel RPGs aren't comic books, either. The licensed property doesn't change the situation.
In a Marvel setting, the NPC Dr. Doom having weekly fights with the NPC Fantasic Four which are essential to the background would be a massive
distraction, and deeply frustrating to the players.

But the Marvel universe does have weekly fights of all sorts of heroes and villians with each other, published in a huge series of comics titles. So your assertion is that the players of a campaign set in the Marvel universe would find it deeply frustrating to read Marvel comics. I don't really know about this, but I am pretty skeptical of your claim.

John Kim wrote:
I can speak directly to the case of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I have been a player in a BtVS campaign (currently on hold) which was going on while the 7th season was playing. I experienced no frustration at seeing BtVS episodes, despite the fact that it was NPC Buffy saving the world. Now, I am sure that there are people who would feel frustration at this situation. But I don't agree that it is universal.

kamikaze wrote:

John Kim wrote: I have been a player in a BtVS campaign (currently on hold) which was going on while the 7th season was playing. I experienced no frustration at seeing BtVS episodes, despite the fact that it was NPC Buffy saving the world. Now, I am sure that there are people who would feel frustration at this situation. But I don't agree that it is universal.

Did the Judge in your game force-feed you episode summaries in the game? Did the events you saw that week affect your game at all? If not, then of course it's not frustrating to watch the TV show, because it's a totally separate medium, a totally separate universe, a totally separate set of events. I really doubt you're playing mundanes in Poughkeepsie while Buffy kicks ass and saves the world in your game world.

kamikaze wrote: Consider a comic book where the protagonists are normal schlubs going to work, to the dentist, whatever, but every other page is a newspaper section reporting about the real heroes, offstage, doing cool stuff. Just summarizing the events of other, cooler comic books where stuff really happens. That's what playing in the Aberrant metaplot by the book is like. Except the writing and characterization of the Aberrant NPCs are not as good (Marvel's writing was pretty good back when I played MSH, but it's the bottom of the barrel these days, with rare exceptions in their MAX line).

The difference seems to be that you think that if the Buffy series is in the same universe, then it must be the primary subject of our sessions (i.e. the GM force-feeding us summaries)