What makes setting lore "actually matter" to the players?

[soviet]

New editions and reboots are mostly trash. IP vultures are mostly trash. The original works by the original creators are always the best.

 

[MGibster]

And how do you play in such a metaplot heavy game? You are either part of the story or you go the 'what if' route. Think of it as Star Wars the RPG in the pre Disney days. If you wanted to play in the rebellion era, chances are that you would play in a campaign where the players steal the plans for the Death Star... Then Disney plugged that hole with Rogue One.

I never really understood this sentiment. One of the things I've always loved about Star Wars is there were a million scenarios I could run that were tied into the setting, i.e. the metaplot, but weren't covered by any movie. (Though you're right that stealing the plans for the Death Star is off the table now.) Even though we know the history of World War II (the metaplot), there are lots of movies that tell interesting stories set during the war. Is Saving Private Ryan less compelling because we know Matt Damon isn't going to punch Hitler? There are so many possibilities with a rebellion era Star Wars game that it's entirely unnecessary to tie any scenario directly into one of the movies or television shows.

 

[pemerton]

When something new comes out it does not cancel or ruin what has come before. I like a lot of games (and editions of games) that are no longer having stuff produced for them. Legend of the Five Rings Fifth Edition, Conan 2d20, D&D 4e, Sorcerer, Witchcraft and Chronicles of Darkness. Thing is I still have them, and I do not need anyone's approval to enjoy them.

If someone produces a new thing that doesn't match up with what I enjoyed about the previous versions I can still play/run the previous versions or find suitable substitutes.

I remember, in the mid-90s when the internet was still a new thing for grad students in Arts faculties, discovering and enjoying a "Pissed of X-Fan FAQ", which was an extensively documented lament about the state of X-Men comics post-Claremont. My enjoyment came from the fact that I was largely in agreement with the FAQ's author.

I think one aspect of this is that, once something has been made salient to you, it can be hard to get it out of your mind even if you want to: eg, suppose you're read a terrible retcon of something-or-other, then when you read the original that you really liked you might (in spite of yourself) be reminded of the terrible retcon. (Eg rereading the Dark Phoenix saga, but knowing how the death of Jean Grey was later rewritten for the original X-Factor.)

I think it takes a bit of practice, and effort, to be able to enjoy the original thing without having the reminders of the bad subsequent thing intrude and have a spoiling effect. And I actually think RPGing is relevant to this practice and effort.

I'm not going to spend energy lamenting that the lore from 4E has been abandoned because I can still run and play games in the Nentir Vale using the World Axis cosmology.

I'm certainly not perturbed by WotC no longer publishing books of 4e lore. I have nearly all the 4e material, and that's ample!

The main D&D lore that I use is Greyhawk, to varying degrees of fidelity to the published material. I've run lots of GH games, each drawing on the published material in different ways and each establishing its own "continuity". This is one way in which RPGing has given me the opportunity to practice "separating" different but similar fictions in my mind.

The other way that RPGing has helped with this is by conscientious GMing. This often requires thinking about possible ways the fiction of the game might "go on" - eg what consequence to impose, or what scene to frame next. So the idea of contradictory versions of a given fiction is really inherent in any non-railroading GMing, and becoming good at GMing involves learning how to work through these possibilities, and bring some to the fore while setting others aside. As I said above, I think this helps do the same in non-RPG contexts, like serial fiction franchises where one doesn't like how the line has been developed.

At the end of the day, I'm not entitled to anyone's creative labor.

This is true, independently of any of the above!

Doesn't stop being anxious over this new edition of Apocalypse World. But if it's not for it's not for me.

My main anxiety about this is that it may make it harder to talk about AW as an uncompromising example of narrativist RPG design. But in any event, I think the prospect of me buying the new version is pretty low. Not out of any sort of "hate", but just because of my available time and inclination.

 

[pemerton]

People are under no obligation to keep quiet about their criticisms in a public forum, to always be constructive, or to simply accept whatever IP holders shovel at them.

New editions and reboots are mostly trash. IP vultures are mostly trash. The original works by the original creators are always the best.

I don't think anyone is under an obligation to accept whatever IP holders shovel at them. But I think that endless whinging about new versions of things can get tiring.

I think 4e D&D is a better RPG than any other version of the game since the early 1980s, both in mechanics/game play and in lore. During the period when it was current, and hence the subject of online discussion, it did get wearing to have nearly every attempt to talk about 4e play turn into an argument with posters who hated it.

I don't play 5e D&D, but I don't go into 5e threads and complain about it. And even though I don't have any particular fondness for it, I do find endless complaints about it in the threads I do read a bit wearying. They crowd out what could be productive discussion about mechanical systems, game play etc, which can be interesting and useful even for non-5e players.

You probably know that one of my favourite FRPGs is Burning Wheel. When I play BW I use the Fight! system (for action and positioning) from Revised rather than Gold; all I take from Gold is a bit of cleaning up of certain interactions between declared actions and skills. (Likewise for Duel of Wits and Range and Cover.) I'm sure Luke had a good reason for rewriting it as he did, but I don't know what the reason is, and have not discovered it on my own! But it would never occur to me to go to BWHQ or wherever else and post complaints about the departure from the Revised positioning mechanics.

I generally just try to play and use what I like, and set aside what I don't.

 

[zakael19]

Man, I'm just glad I'm not that into any fairly immutable 1st party setting lore! I'm glad that I'm not wedded to anything where new versions come out that aren't a good enough* step forward that I can't see the value in them and excitedly move on. I'm glad that most of the new products in areas of TTRPG design I'm passionate about just seem to align more and more fully with what I want from them and what gives me joy to see play out at the table, and given the experiences I have with excitedly telling players about new games suggests that's true for a lot of us. And I'm glad that I have players who give a crap about the worlds we build together and dig into their lore with me.


*(ok so my one big exception here is what they did to Rasputin in Destiny 2)

 

[zarionofarabel]

I never really understood this sentiment. One of the things I've always loved about Star Wars is there were a million scenarios I could run that were tied into the setting, i.e. the metaplot, but weren't covered by any movie. (Though you're right that stealing the plans for the Death Star is off the table now.) Even though we know the history of World War II (the metaplot), there are lots of movies that tell interesting stories set during the war. Is Saving Private Ryan less compelling because we know Matt Damon isn't going to punch Hitler? There are so many possibilities with a rebellion era Star Wars game that it's entirely unnecessary to tie any scenario directly into one of the movies or television shows.

My friends and I played a heck ton of Star Wars back in the 90s, and not once did they steal plans for the Death Star. In fact they never interacted with any of the events from the movies. They were too busy doing the important stuff!

 

[Neonchameleon]

For me game lore gives context to the world you play in. Making it more then the nicely painted facade of an old Hollywood film set, it looks nice from a distance, until you one a door you weren't meant to.

Something like D&D Forgotten Realms has so much lore, making an imho kinda boring world, still the default setting at our table. No matter where the players go, there's something written about the locale, while still having enough room between those nuggets to do your own thing.

RPGs/settings like (old) World of Darkness and Shadowrun have a BIG metaplot, and that's part of the attraction for many. I remember discussing the 'fluff', folks finding out stuff, speculating, etc. It made to us feel as if that world was 'alive'. It was neat, but in limited doses, I suspect.

Interesting because to me BIG metaplot does arguably more to freeze a setting and thereby make it boring than merely having a lot of detail about the current present but less knowledge about the future. (That said I find the Realms not terribly dynamic compared to the actually snapshotted in time with various dominoes threatening to fall Eberron)

Other games/settings are very self contained and honestly do not give the players anything beyond that VERY nicely painted facade. When they walk through a door, the GM better think quick on their feet.

But this is literally always the case. A static book or set of books can only ever create a painted facade. When the PC opens a door what happens is a matter for the GM. And what different approaches, whether static lore, big metaplot, or (my favourite) letting the players write much of the lore so telling you what to focus on is inspire and support various GMs to detail the world. And different people respond better to different rules.

Honestly, the example of x amount of new pled species that someone thought up on a bad schroom trip are far, FAR, less appealing then a well thought out concept. If that requires the use of a couple of strange species, fine. But certain types of creators want to overwhelm you with choice, often VERY exotic choices. As an example, for Shadowrun I really liked the original Human, Orc, Troll, Dwarf, and Human. Today there are more SR species then you can shake a stick at.

As a Daggerheart fan I don't have a problem with a ludicrous number of species. The PCs all get species they feel are cool and the practical number of species in the setting is normally about equal to the number of players plus three or four. The rest are either not there or are background.

 

[AnotherGuy]

One of our recent storylines saw the PCs travel to Candlekeep, FR bastion of stored lore. The players seem to enjoyed participating in acquiring lore on several topics of interest related directly and indirectly to the storyline. One of the appeals I imagine was the use of the mechanical system implemented to acquire said lore.
I used the AP, FR wiki and my own ideas to fill out the necessary detail acquired by the party.
Time of course being the primary constraint.

I guess a player's own procilivities assists in them actually caring about the setting lore.
The player in our group who would have found Candlekeep uninteresting, I imagine, fortunately does not have their character participating in this storyline arc as the party is split.

 

[Cergorach]

What are you talking about? It was a top 5 best seller in the ICv2 for five years straight before CCP arbitrarily killed it.

That's WoD in general, not oWoD or nWoD specifically. As someone else pointed out these ICv2 numbers are VERY unreliable (specifically pathfinder vs D&D4e), these are just generic gut feelings of niche US retailers. No actual numbers, no online sales, nothing outside of the US.

New oWoD books were made well into 2004, they were sold for years after. I remember folks who finally realized oWoD not coming back, trying to complete their collections well after 2004. And I'll point out that WoD dropped off the charts completely starting Q1 2010, while there were still new products being published in 2010 and 2011... Onyx Path only took over in the later part of 2012.

I never really understood this sentiment. One of the things I've always loved about Star Wars is there were a million scenarios I could run that were tied into the setting, i.e. the metaplot, but weren't covered by any movie. (Though you're right that stealing the plans for the Death Star is off the table now.) Even though we know the history of World War II (the metaplot), there are lots of movies that tell interesting stories set during the war. Is Saving Private Ryan less compelling because we know Matt Damon isn't going to punch Hitler? There are so many possibilities with a rebellion era Star Wars game that it's entirely unnecessary to tie any scenario directly into one of the movies or television shows.

The biggest issue with SW was for a LONG time that everyone wanted to play with a light Saber, but there was only one Last Jedi... And folks coming from things like HeroQuest and D&D tend to be used to being THE heros of the story. Sure they can be heroes (or scoundrels) in many ways, but too many it feels like playing a background character...

For me the use of 'real' history stories is a difficult one, as I actively dislike those. History fiction I sometimes do like, but would prefer alternate history or even fantastic history over that. I would prefer to play a pnp RPG of Eat the Reich over a pnp RPG of Saving Private Ryan.

Going back to the Star Wars stuff, people want to play the pnp RPG of Star Wars BECAUSE they watched the movies, read the books, paged through the comics, and played with the toys.

But this is literally always the case. A static book or set of books can only ever create a painted facade. When the PC opens a door what happens is a matter for the GM. And what different approaches, whether static lore, big metaplot, or (my favourite) letting the players write much of the lore so telling you what to focus on is inspire and support various GMs to detail the world. And different people respond better to different rules.

Yes, but too what level, and that's what I'm driving at. Quite a few 'facade' pnp RPGs sketch the setting and that's pretty much it. Something like FR goes far farther, it fleshes out most of the nations, a LOT of the cities, even some locales and people that live there. Now compare that to the other extreme of Bastionland. In one people who've read FR know what to expect (mostly), someone who has read Bastionland does not, not at all beyond 'knight stuff'! Both of those approaches have their own appeal, but what I've noticed is that our group prefers knowing stuff (it being relatable) and does not always do well with the complete unknown or the not easily understandable (Empyreal).

As an example, one of the folks that would probably do best in our group with the complete unknown or the not easily understandable recently heard someone describe Dark Sun as "Conan meets Mad Max" and that suddenly clicked with them, and went "Ohhh!!! Now I understand it!" and that was after we played a bit of Dark Sun 30+ years ago... Many people that get into pnp RPGs have this issue with unclear or 'alien' settings, and what people find unclear or 'alien' changes drastically from person to person. This often has nothing to do with like or dislike (although people often dislike what they don't understand).

When we started D&D I made my own worlds, settings, maps, cities, etc. Filled them in, sometimes prepared, often unprepared (because players being players, they go off the beaten path by a mile). But at the time we had oodles of free time we spend on D&D. These days, besides a dayjob, we have TONs of other responsibilities and activities that in that time filled past your parents did for you. So now (post 2e era, really) I tend to find that having a ready made world that I can plug into and fill in parts or even resculpt parts saves a TON of time.

 

[Grendel_Khan]

So I’m pretty much just giving up on ttrpgs in favor of writing original fiction about what I wish ttrpgs would do for me. If they don’t owe me anything, then I don’t owe them zilch either. They betrayed me.

I'm confused. If you're done with RPGs, and feel personally attacked by them, why are you posting in an RPG thread in an RPG forum?