Micah Sweet
Level Up & OSR Enthusiast
No. What I call explaining my opinion you call "ranting". What if I do hate change X? Am I supposed to keep my mouth shut in case you read it and decide I'm "ranting"?
What makes setting lore "actually matter" to the players?
- Thread starter innerdude
- Start date
My experience is the opposite of this. I've had no trouble GMing Marvel Heroic RP, and I don't find settings without FR/WoD-style metaplot to be "nicely painted facades".
RenleyRenfield
Adventurer
I dunno. That's a good question, and I have no good answer for you.
I guess.. I am picturing it kinda this way... "If i walk into a star wars convention and go around telling everyone how much i hate that they added double light sabers. I don't think many people would appreciate that, and i think it would turn away most people. I dont think a lot of folks would say 'let's bring over that person who is vocal about hating some part of the thing we like."
Where as... maybe "If I walk into a star wars convention and say all the things I like about single lightsabers and how they are may fav thing. Then I think i would get a lot of positive interaction, and people who also like that would invite me to come talk more about single lightsabers. Sure, i would have to endure others liking double light sabers, but I am not detracting, and i am getting included."
Then when i go home and run star wars rpg, i can request my group leave out double lightsabers for lore or whatever reasons I have. At home, its our game and our lore and our choice. And it isn't hard to do that. And by doing option B, i get a lot more positivity in something I like.
This can help creators too, like. Its easier to engage with folks who find things they like about the new edition and its changes. So its easier to take in consideration of maybe not changing that lore thing you like. maybe they do, maybe they don't.
no amount of hate ever got rid of midichlorians in star wars. and despite any given film or show being 100% loved or not, the franchise keeps going because for the most part, the fans can enjoy the things they like, and just overlook or suffer through what they don't.
I think this comes home when i meet folks who love love Jar Jar. Like, i dont feel right when someone just tells them how much they hate jar jar... it kinda kills all the fun anyone is having. So in that case, how can I say what I hate is even valid? more valid than what the creator chose? if its not really any more valid that what others hate, and it pushes people away - so...maybe i just choose to not share that hate... ?
Thomas Shey
Legend
That's not much help if you don't actually like any of the lore changes in a new edition of something. There's no requiring someone does. Maybe there's some progression of timeline you're okay with, but you don't find them anything you specially like, and some you actively dislike. So in practice, if you're talking the new lore at all, its either neutral or negative.
Micah Sweet
Level Up & OSR Enthusiast
So...yes? No one should discuss or mention things they dislike in public?
RenleyRenfield
Adventurer
Again, that's tough. I don't really have an answer for that either.
I have never had a new edition of Forgotten Realms, Vampire, Werewolf, Star Wars, etc etc... that was like I don't like any of this.
A few times i didn't like a lot of things.
The main thing i see is that my dislike never changed what the publisher / director / owner did. So ... the more I ranted about my hates, the less I was able to engage in the community at all. If there is a new edition I like very little lore changes to... i might engage less. but i am not sure I would just be on permanent rant mode - as this point I don't see the value. what do i get from being vocal about lore I hate?
Well, myself. I try not to. I am not sure i see a benefit in it. And i see a lot of risk in making others angry. I am not sure I can think of enough times where someone came up to me, told me all they hated about star wars, and it made things better. But i can think of a lot of times it made everything worse...
Thomas Shey
Legend
Oh, it probably won't except in very special cases. But that's not the only purpose people have in talking about those. Sometimes its just frustration.
You can certainly make an argument that repeated venting is actively counterproductive. But you just do need to recognize that sometimes is saying "If you don't have anything positive to say about it all, and talking about the negatives is not in some fashion helpful to more than just you, just not talking about it is probably better".
RenleyRenfield
Adventurer
To be fair, I would not be opposed to a /rant thread.
like, I have no idea how to keep that from spiraling out of control. (dont most forums ban 'edition wars' posts for this very reason?) But i totally get the catharsis from venting! Is this bad? "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all." feels like a decent thing folks have said?
And you are spot on when the crux of my entire many posts here are in fact considering "...make an argument for repeated venting is counterproductive" < that is really all I am saying here. Seems reasonable.
I think that kinda thing happens too often. One frustration rant turns into months of lambasting and what feels like a personal campaign to put-down a product. So I just avoid the first and stick to the little positive interactions i can get. seems to make a lot of folks happy and i get lots of games that way
VelvetViolet
Adventurer
No. I was mistaken. The D&D lore certainly doesn't satisfy everyone. However, fans can publish their own campaign settings under OGL. They can build curated communities that way. Other games generally don't allow that and they usually fall prey to this dogmatism that alienates me.
If you enjoy lore, then more power to you. I, the other hand, hate lore because I was mercilessly cyberbullied by lore-obsessed crybullies. I have trauma that stubbornly refuses to go away. I apologize if my angry ranting offends you, it is not my intent to induce such an impression. Sorry about that.
I myself have decided to leave the hobby, for the most part, in favor of writing fiction because I'm just disappointed with ttrpg output nowadays. The only person who understands my taste is me and I cannot rely on others. Other people will only ever disappoint me.
What are you talking about? It was a top 5 best seller in the ICv2 for five years straight before CCP arbitrarily killed it. It was the bestselling game after D&D and Pathfinder. It was as universally popular as a non-D&D game could get. It probably could've done even better if CCP didn't buy and dissolve White Wolf.
For clarification, I liked nWoD, past tense. I don't really like it anymore because my tastes have changed over time. Among other things, I think the morality meters are flaming garbage and I think the stilted word salad jargon is pretentious nonsense. That's what led to me liking WitchCraft instead.
Also, taste? Twilight was more popular than oWoD ever was. Is it more universal in taste? No, that's a ridiculous argument to make. Truth is, most customers seem to be conformists who just attach themselves to whatever is available. I think oWoD's "universality" is skewed by it having a monopoly over a niche market. I don't think it's universal at all, in fact I think it is hugely arbitrary, idiosyncratic, stuck in the 90s, and full of no shortage of things I consider just plain stupid and aggravating, but since it's the only game in its market then it wins by default. Now that Paradox has written off $37 mil and Bloodlines clones are popping out of the woodwork, I think that's gonna change. Does that mean a more popular competitor will be more universal in taste? No, I think that's ridiculous. Taste is arbitrary, transient, and curated by trend setters.
In any case, I do think nWoD is genuinely more universal in taste than oWoD is. Insofar as universal taste can even be said to exist, since art is subjective and all. My evidence for this comes from the Bloodlines clones. You know what they keep doing? They keep replicating innovations from Vampire: The Requiem, like ditching generation in favor of age and experience or having multiple ideologically driven factions (not bloodlines) that coexist. I would go further and state that C.J. Carella's WitchCraft is more universal in taste than nWoD is and subsequent generations of games (including nWoD itself) are ultimately copying its innovations. In other words, I think WitchCraft is basically the urban fantasy game equivalent of that joke about unrelated crustaceans independently evolving crab-like body plans multiple times. Urban fantasy games keep evolving into WitchCraft clones, or at least try to. I don't think they get remotely close enough to satisfy my desire for a new WitchCraft.
Tom and Mica beat me to the punch. My opinion is the same as what they said.
Yes, exactly. I agree on this. I hate complaining. It makes me feel bad and doesn't accomplish anything.
But what am I supposed to do? I can't conform. I'm not a conformist and trying to force myself to like stuff I hate just makes me more unhappy.
If I cry out into the dark, then there's a non-zero change I might find somebody else who feels the same way and has a solution.
I wish publishers would just give up their darn copyrights. Put these IPs into public domain and let the fans do as they please. It works for the OSR and Cthulhu mythos, doesn't it? Just give up on the idea of canon. Canon is cancer that only foments toxicity and flame wars. Let the fans self-segregate into their own walled gardens, with their own canons.
Like, the only reason I even care about Nephilim canon so strongly is because, unlike the WoDs, it never got enough attention and detail for me to lose interest and realize all the limitations. The first edition had only a few books, so the setting is so poorly detailed that it still feels huge and mysterious and just waiting to be explored by PCs. It never lasted long enough to get written into annoying corners like other long running game settings that are crushed under the weight of their own lore (like, well, the French version. It has so much lore that it literally cannot fit it into its own books). The first edition of Nephilim setting is a brainstorm more than it is a functional setting. The books are full of details asking to be explained but never did. Very few rules are established about the setting's internal logic, and there's plenty of exceptions thrown in for variety. The Major Arcana supplement is full of 60 different plot hooks, many of which introduce new magical phenomena never seen previously. The writers made stuff up on the spot because it sounded cool. The various past lives are relegated to two page spreads and essentially isolated from each other, when many of them could feasibly fuel their own campaign supplements and you could easily have intrigues spanning multiple periods. Very little is explained or consistent. It is, well, weak lore. It is a mess. I don't think it really needs many changes to what little lore it has that is explained and is consistent. I think trying to shoehorn it into a WitchCraft clone like the leaks suggest strips away what little identity it has, while still not being enough like WitchCraft to satisfy my itch for WitchCraft.
If game designers want to make generic urban fantasy games and don't want any more specific identity than that, then my advice to them would be to get the rights to WitchCraft and revive it instead of making their own game. It is the generic urban fantasy setting. It is broad, flexible, unexplored... it should be the first priority for the urban fantasy tabletop market, not WoD.
I think the original creative vision, such as it was, should be explored and exhausted first before we start doing more reboots with completely new creative teams. Maybe that's too much to ask after 30 years, but I'm not the one who canceled it and let it rot for 30 years before arbitrarily deciding to dig up that grave. Furthermore, what about the third edition? What changes will that make? Why bother caring about the second edition if the third edition will just invalidate the whole thing? What about fourth edition?
Maybe, I don't know, stop making franchises? These brand names are not coherent games. Each edition is basically a different game because it was made by a different creative team. I think these creators do themselves and customers a disservice by trying to pretend to have continuity with previous editions. Ditch franchises, ditch continuities. Make new games, from scratch, according to your own creative vision, unclouded by studio mandates.
That's precisely the reason I have more interest in the Bloodlines clones than any tabletop game being published. Those creators are making new things according to their creative vision without pretending continuity to anybody else's work. Are they sometimes derivative? Yeah, but nobody creates in a vacuum.
Gosh, I have spent several hours on this post and my neck aches like hell. Excuse me if anything I wrote doesn't make sense. I started rambling after a while.
I GMed my first session of Mythic Bastionland yesterday: Mythic Bastionland actual play
The players knew nothing about the game or the setting except what I explained to them in introducing the game, working through PC build, etc.
But they started caring about the setting information straight away:
One possible conclusion from this is: if a game is about obtaining and using information to advance the interests of your character, and hence your "position" as a player, then players will care about obtaining and using that information.
The players knew nothing about the game or the setting except what I explained to them in introducing the game, working through PC build, etc.
But they started caring about the setting information straight away:
*I suggested that we start with the PCs in the castle that is the seat of power of the ruler of the realm; but they wanted to start in the island town that is a lesser holding - they didn't explain why expressly, but it seemed pretty clear that they thought the stakes there might be slightly lower.
*They straight away wanted to find a Seer, in order to learn lore that would help them on their quest for Glory by seeking the Myths.
*They started forming conjectures about why certain events were happening, how different NPCs might be related to those events, etc, as part of working out how to engage with the Omens of Myths that they were experiencing.
*They straight away wanted to find a Seer, in order to learn lore that would help them on their quest for Glory by seeking the Myths.
*They started forming conjectures about why certain events were happening, how different NPCs might be related to those events, etc, as part of working out how to engage with the Omens of Myths that they were experiencing.
One possible conclusion from this is: if a game is about obtaining and using information to advance the interests of your character, and hence your "position" as a player, then players will care about obtaining and using that information.
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