How do you like your published settings? Static or evolving? And through what medium?

[Umbran]

And since Star Wars has a meta plot

Just to be picky - Star Wars has a plot. It is a story (or collection of stories). Stories have plots.

"Metaplot" is an RPG-specific term, to differentiate between the events in the PC's lives from the large scale events in the setting beyond the PCs (or, to differentiate the events at your table from the events the publisher says takes place).

If you play a Star Wars game, then the events of the Star Wars fiction may become the metaplot for your game. But, if you are watching the movies, those events are the plot of the movie, not the metaplot of the movie.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Well, there are two ways into this.

If TSR/WotC think they can make money from selling fiction (in the form of setting metaplot), good luck to them!

But from the point of view of quality RPGing - as opposed to commercial success for a publisher - I think metaplot is the pits:

Metaplot . . . whether generated by a GM or a game publisher . . . [a]lmost inevitably . . . creates a series of game products that pretend to be supplements for play but are really a series of short stories and novels starring the authors' beloved and central NPCs. The role of the individual play group in those stories is much like that of karaoke singers, rather than creative musicians.​

(Ron Edwards)

I'm not against setting, but for good RPGing I want it to be player decisions that resolve whatever it is that the setting has put at stake. (Eg in 4e, which is the last game I GMed with a heavy setting emphasis, it has to be the players who decide what it means for order and chaos to be confronting one another with a looming Dusk War.)

My surprise was more about the amount of “setting police” players that seem to be out there, according to many posts in this and similar threads.

But as for your points, I would agree that metaplot does tend to be the result of the publisher attempting to make money. Or at the very least, is a byproduct of such attempts. But isn’t that always the case with nearly any publication?

But I definitely disagree with Edwards’s point that setting supplements are not useful for play. Not that there can never be such an example...certainly the DL series is infamous for this, and there are plenty of others. But to dismiss all products that contain some level of metaplot? That seems unnecessary.

There’s also the question of what is or is not metaplot. I quite liked the 3E Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting. This book contains many changes to the setting as it existed prior. But what if that was my introduction to the setting? Then for me, there’s no metaplot; there’s just a couple hundred pages of material that I can use in a game, or that can inspire ideas of my own.

If a setting book inspires or can possibly inspire a GM and group of players, then I feel it’s of value to them.

 

[Xaelvaen]

Static, even if for the lone reason of hating non-RPG material influencing a campaign setting (novels, movies, etc). Going even beyond that, however, I prefer for a setting to only hint at dynamic changes.

The King -could- be assassinated by this organization over here. It -might- have these ramifications.

If the Gods were to break a secret pact they made with one another at the dawn of time, this event -could- happen.

Those are great tools to use to affect the timeline of a world, but not something I want others dictating did actually happen, and now I need a new supplement (or new edition) to tell me about how they interpreted happening. If it is organically part of a world's past, that's one thing, but if it is occurring to a living group you already have going, in a world that is already 'alive and breathing' to the people you have playing in it, no one else could possibly deliver that correctly for your table. A good DM could though, which is why hints and directions are great, but a changing published campaign is terrible.

All that being said, a company can choose any method they want to make money, and it's quite easy as DMs and players to ignore what we don't like, use what we want, and ignore the rest. I do think it's up to us as a community though, to be far more accepting of everyone's choices. Those of us who ignore the changes deserve the same respect as those who enjoy them; no different than the editions arguments, in many aspects. Afterall, we are just talking about preferences.

 

[LordEntrails]

Those are great tools to use to affect the timeline of a world, but not something I want others dictating did actually happen, and now I need a new supplement (or new edition) to tell me about how they interpreted happening. If it is organically part of a world's past, that's one thing, but if it is occurring to a living group you already have going, in a world that is already 'alive and breathing' to the people you have playing in it, no one else could possibly deliver that correctly for your table. A good DM could though, which is why hints and directions are great, but a changing published campaign is terrible.

See to me a timeline is something that shouldn't always "be in the past". Because, who to say when a given campaign is set? A GM should be able to pick any era in a timeline and use that for their campaign. It also means a timeline shouldn't be too detailed. And as you say, once a DM picks a time, nothing "in the future" actually happens the way it's written unless the GM says it does.

All that being said, a company can choose any method they want to make money, and it's quite easy as DMs and players to ignore what we don't like, use what we want, and ignore the rest. I do think it's up to us as a community though, to be far more accepting of everyone's choices. Those of us who ignore the changes deserve the same respect as those who enjoy them; no different than the editions arguments, in many aspects. Afterall, we are just talking about preferences.

Well said

 

[Derren]

I expected people to prefer static settings, but not by this margin to be honest.

What surprises me is how many people seems to feel pressured to use the metaplot that is published instead if simply ignoring it when they don't like it.

 

[Lanefan]

Well, there are two ways into this.

If TSR/WotC think they can make money from selling fiction (in the form of setting metaplot), good luck to them!

But from the point of view of quality RPGing - as opposed to commercial success for a publisher - I think metaplot is the pits:

Metaplot . . . whether generated by a GM or a game publisher . . . [a]lmost inevitably . . . creates a series of game products that pretend to be supplements for play but are really a series of short stories and novels starring the authors' beloved and central NPCs. The role of the individual play group in those stories is much like that of karaoke singers, rather than creative musicians.​

(Ron Edwards)

I'm not against setting, but for good RPGing I want it to be player decisions that resolve whatever it is that the setting has put at stake. (Eg in 4e, which is the last game I GMed with a heavy setting emphasis, it has to be the players who decide what it means for order and chaos to be confronting one another with a looming Dusk War.)

Wow.

For once I almost - allll-most - completely agree with you!

Change the Edwards quote to read "Metaplot . . . generated by a game publisher . . . [etc.]" and we'd be bang on! But metaplot from the GM can be very beneficial to a campaign, in that it both personalizes that particular version of <pick your favourite published setting> for that table and gives the GM - abnd players, for all that - a backstory to work with if needed.

And even with a GM metaplot lurking in the background, this...

I want it to be player decisions that resolve whatever it is that the setting has put at stake.

...still applies. If the players end up taking the GM's metaplot and standing it on its head, then so be it.

But, if you are watching the movies, those events are the plot of the movie, not the metaplot of the movie.

Star Wars is an interesting example. Yes, what's going on within any one movie is not metaplot, and one could argue that the overarching story connecting the various movies and trilogies together still isn't metaplot, though I'd posit it kind of is. But the Extended Universe (or whatever it's called now)? That's metaplot all the way.

Lanefan

 

[Lanefan]

I expected people to prefer static settings, but not by this margin to be honest.

What surprises me is how many people seems to feel pressured to use the metaplot that is published instead if simply ignoring it when they don't like it.

That pressure can come from at least two directions:

1. Sometimes it's more work than it's worth to strip the metaplot out of a setting; or to strip out parts of it you don't want to keep while keeping the rest. Hell, in many cases it's bad enough trying to strip metaplot and backstory out of a single adventure module in order to run the module without it; to do this for an entire setting would be a hopeless venture.

2. Unless one is gaming with friends who know what to expect from each other there's inevitably going to be player expectations regarding a published setting that diverge from yours and-or from those of other players, leading to arguments and headaches all round.

Even if you advertise your game as, say, modified 3e-era Forgotten Realms you're bound to get players saying "but what about everything that's happened in FR since then?" and-or "why did you make these changes, I liked it the way it was!" - which raises the question of whether it's worth the hassle. Even worse is when players own different versions of the setting and expect to be able to use what they own...and by extension expect you-as-DM to accommodate that.

 

[pemerton]

My surprise was more about the amount of “setting police” players that seem to be out there, according to many posts in this and similar threads.

I'm not too surprised by there (apparently) being players who care about setting - that's come up before in threads I've started or participated in; but I am surprised that people who aren't into setting care about them, or see them as a reason why they want less setting published.

But as for your points, I would agree that metaplot does tend to be the result of the publisher attempting to make money. Or at the very least, is a byproduct of such attempts. But isn’t that always the case with nearly any publication?

Sure. I thought the 4e version of this was the most interesting: rather than selling a whole lot of metaplot, WotC sold a whole lot of lists for a list-based game - unlike the 3E version of that strategy, the list elements had strong connections to setting but not to any metaplot.

The change of approach with 5e suggests something about market demand.

I definitely disagree with Edwards’s point that setting supplements are not useful for play. Not that there can never be such an example...certainly the DL series is infamous for this, and there are plenty of others. But to dismiss all products that contain some level of metaplot? That seems unnecessary.

Edwards isn't against setting per se, though he does have a "handle with care" approach. A bit more from the same essay:

However, neither Setting-based Premise nor a complex Setting history necessarily entails metaplot, as I'm using the term anyway. The best example is afforded by Glorantha: an extremely rich setting with history in place not only for the past, but for the future of play. The magical world of Glorantha will be destroyed and reborn into a relatively mundane new existence, because of the Hero Wars. Many key events during the process are fixed, such as the Dragonrise of 1625. Why isn't this metaplot?

Because none of the above represent decisions made by player-characters; they only provide context for them. The players know all about the upcoming events prior to play. The key issue is this: in playing in (say) a Werewolf game following the published metaplot, the players are intended to be ignorant of the changes in the setting, and to encounter them only through play. The more they participate in these changes (e.g. ferrying a crucial message from one NPC to another), the less they provide theme-based resolution to Premise, not more. Whereas in playing HeroQuest, there's no secret: the Hero Wars are here, and the more everyone enjoys and knows the canonical future events, the more they can provide theme through their characters' decisions during those events.

In designing a Setting-heavy Narrativist rules-set, I strongly suggest following the full-disclosure lead of HeroQuest and abandoning the metaplot "revelation" approach immediately.​

He elaborates on this sort of approach to setting here.

I think this is another interesting feature of 4e: the core ideas of the setting are revealed in player-side rather than GM-side material. (Some later books moved away from this, as part of the general drift of 4e back towards a less radical approach to D&D design and publishing.)

 

[Shiroiken]

A setting, to me, describes both a place and time. Shadowrun takes place in Seattle, in the early 2050s, for example. Seattle in the 2070s (or whatever they're up to) doesn't even feel like the same world.

When a setting changes over time, it just ends up invalidating the earlier stuff, or it forces people to ignore the later stuff. In the interest of avoiding both of those options, I would prefer if they fleshed out a setting through further details, rather than by changing what's already established. If any given table wants to move the timeline forward, let them handle that on their own.

This.

I like the original idea for the Greyhawk setting: everyone starts from the same point (same year, same setup), but each campaign evolves based on the plots of the DM and the actions of the players. Campaign supplements either start a new area, or detail out an existing area (from the same starting point).

I used to like story based settings like Rokugan and the Realms. Then I realized that most stories that people think are "kewl" are actually really stupid. Then I have to explain to players what is canon and what is not.

 

[Shasarak]

Edwards isn't against setting per se, though he does have a "handle with care" approach. A bit more from the same essay:

However, neither Setting-based Premise nor a complex Setting history necessarily entails metaplot, as I'm using the term anyway. The best example is afforded by Glorantha: an extremely rich setting with history in place not only for the past, but for the future of play. The magical world of Glorantha will be destroyed and reborn into a relatively mundane new existence, because of the Hero Wars. Many key events during the process are fixed, such as the Dragonrise of 1625. Why isn't this metaplot?

Because none of the above represent decisions made by player-characters; they only provide context for them. The players know all about the upcoming events prior to play. The key issue is this: in playing in (say) a Werewolf game following the published metaplot, the players are intended to be ignorant of the changes in the setting, and to encounter them only through play. The more they participate in these changes (e.g. ferrying a crucial message from one NPC to another), the less they provide theme-based resolution to Premise, not more. Whereas in playing HeroQuest, there's no secret: the Hero Wars are here, and the more everyone enjoys and knows the canonical future events, the more they can provide theme through their characters' decisions during those events.

In designing a Setting-heavy Narrativist rules-set, I strongly suggest following the full-disclosure lead of HeroQuest and abandoning the metaplot "revelation" approach immediately.​

That does not make a little bit of sense, meta-plot is good when the players know about it before hand?

That is just Railroading in the worst way possible. It would be like playing Rise of Tiamat and telling the players before they start that Tiamat is actually going to rise and good news you get to deliver a message from one NPC to another about it.