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Post by daeglan on Dec 14, 2012 20:43:06 GMT -8
I feel gaming companies including meta plot and advancing it is bad. It tends to paint the company and Gms into a corner.
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Post by Forresst on Dec 14, 2012 22:18:05 GMT -8
Once upon a time this really smart guy named Rodrigo on a podcast called Critical Hit (www.majorspoilers.com) said this little gem: "Every gaming group is a microcosm. What happens in this group here isn't related to what happens in this other group over there. Every GM, when he or she makes a campaign, creates the entirety of that groups reality, or at least the foundations of it. So the stories and settings that, let's say, Wizard of the Coast, puts out, mean nothing. UNLESS the gm of YOUR group decides it means something."
I don't mind companies offering up a meta plot for their product. If a GM is new (or very young), or not really that creative, or just stuck for an idea, it provides at least a story the GM can follow along with. At best, it provides some interesting concepts that a GM can take from it, and then apply to something else that might look similar but play into a completely different end from what the published material provides.
I would take issue with a company offering up a meta plot for their setting and then trying to claim that this is the only possible history any game group who wants to play in their system can use. But I also think most people involved in the production end of this hobby realize that even trying to micromanage the actions and experiences of every possible gaming group that might take up their material is an idiotic business decision.
I realize that I'm very heavily biased in this concept. I am a relentless skinner: I find interesting things everywhere, take bits and pieces of it, cram it into whatever system I think I want to use, and even then I will take things and change what they look like to suit my needs. And, silly me, I've thought this was the way every GM works until I started widening my experience as a player and seeing the styles of several fine people. I know now I'm not the absolute norm, but I also know it's very rare that a group of people who share an incredibly creative, collaborationist, and free-wheeling hobby are probably not going to ever feel compelled to follow a published meta-plot to the point that they're choked into a corner. The people who do end up doing that to themselves learn quickly from it, and don't do it a second time.
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Post by daeglan on Dec 15, 2012 13:42:50 GMT -8
The problem comes when the gm wants to go in a different direction than metaplot. but the system only supports the metaplot.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 15, 2012 15:50:24 GMT -8
The system will support any plot you put on it. Plot is fluff, its story, it has nothing to do with mechanics or dice rolls. Unless you are running noting but prewritten modules the metaplot is meaningless. You have the choice of using it or not, taking parts or characters or simply ditching the whole thing.
When the 4e version of Darksun came out the fluff and metaplot was set up after the death of Kalak, in ran a two year campaign that instead took place before his death and ended with my party taking him out. I used the world, some characters, but the overall metaplot contained in the source book I didn't care about and things worked fine. A books give you some rules and toolkit, what you make with it is up to you.
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Post by daeglan on Dec 16, 2012 1:51:21 GMT -8
Often times the material is set up with Metaplot in mind. Like the details for a region is implemented to fit the meta plot and makes it difficult to use the material in another fashion. IE the description of a city is given for its damaged state. Making it difficult to devine what the place was like undamaged.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 16, 2012 7:33:47 GMT -8
I think we are already at an impasse because you obviously have a completely different definition of system from me or forresst up there. That being said I’m going to give my definition so we have a starting point to continue this conversation. In the context of gaming I see the system as the combination of all the rules and mechanics that create the underlying framework upon which everything else rests. This is the crunch, the math that makes everything work and keeps things balanced and functional. It is by its very nature completely neutral, having no genre or plot. D&D is a system, Savage Worlds is a system, Hero and GURPS are systems.
On top of the system you have the story, a skin that is wrapped around the system, and given shape by it. The story has no effect on the system, but the system can have a great effect on the story. Forgotten Realms is a skin for D&D, but so is Dark Sun. Deadlands is a skin for Savage Worlds, but so is Slipstream. These games feel different because of the fluff, but the underlying systems don’t chance. On the other hand if I laid Dark Sun on top of Savage Worlds I would have a much different game, same for swapping around any of the rest. The story, the meta plot, as you keep calling it is by nature very malleable and one can make changes to it without having any effect what so ever on the system. The inflexibility you describe only exists in the prewritten modules, and even then the GM has carte blanc to change anything they like any time they like. That is one of the best things about table top RPGs, you are not locked into a scripted scenario, you are free to do whatever you want, to try new ideas, to go places the designers hadn’t even imagined.
However it is the GM’s responsibility to make that happen, to build the world out around their party, especially when the party steps outside the box the GM started them in. If you want to use a region from a source book it is the GM’s responsibility to modify things to allow it to work in there game. If the city in the source material is damaged and the GM wants it undamaged it is their responsibility to come up with those undamaged areas.
Going back to my example of the Dark Sun game I ran. I set it a few years before the source material started. Because of that I had to create stats for the Sorcerer King Kalak because he was already dead in the meta-plot. I had to redesign the city of Tyr to match the much darker state it was in prior to Kalak’s death, as well as remove elements that didn’t exist before his death. I created new characters to fill gaps in the story and altered preexisting characters. Over the course of the game several important NPCs from the meta plot died, making the meta plot null and void. At no point did the meta plot restrict me or stop me from making these changes. What the meta plot did was inspire me, it gave me tons of ideas of how I wanted my game world to be and where I wanted my story to go.
The system will support whatever story you want to throw on, be it the meta plot or your own. The story as told in source books is there merely to get you started and can be altered at will. If you don’t like it don’t use, or only use part of it, or mix and match parts of different editions of it. Going back to the Forgotten Realms for instance there are decades of source books and meta plot you can grab parts from. Want the spell plague use it, want to play a game from before the War of the Gods, go ahead. The moment you and your party start playing a game you have already stepped away from the meta plot because your characters didn’t exist when it was written and their actions change the world.
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Post by daeglan on Dec 16, 2012 9:52:56 GMT -8
I am not talking about pre written modules. i am talking about Books about a setting that include cities NPCs etc. Often times game companies put these books out with a pre determined outcome in mind. Which limits the usefulness of the material. White wolf used to be really bad about it. Now they are much better about it. They put out material that does not have a baked in Plan. In fact in their VII book (an enemy faction) They don't tell you what the VII are. instead they present several options for how to handle them and who they are. I like this because players won't actually be able to say the VII are bla bla bla and you are ding it wrong.
Many game companies will be writing a story for you. when they should be providing more general ideas and no dictating what the world story is.
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Post by Stu Venable on Dec 17, 2012 9:17:31 GMT -8
I get what he's saying. There are some games that blur the line between system and setting -- especially in character generation.
L5R has clans, families and schools that define your character. You can reskin this by renaming them, sure, but still the overall metaplot of the setting determines what clans/families are included and not included.
I never seen anything where game mechanics other than chargen are affected by metaplot, though.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 18, 2012 8:01:43 GMT -8
I get what he's saying. There are some games that blur the line between system and setting -- especially in character generation. L5R has clans, families and schools that define your character. You can reskin this by renaming them, sure, but still the overall metaplot of the setting determines what clans/families are included and not included. I never seen anything where game mechanics other than chargen are affected by metaplot, though. Yes indeed, that was intentional in 4e L5R since there was a move towards "timeline neutrality"; it makes since since the main story of L5R is written for the card game rather than the RPG, and tends to range from "Lord Of The Ring"-ish to outright "Supernatural World Ending Disaster of the Month". The previous editions though were very much focused on a single time period, when it came to game mechanics.
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Post by daeglan on Dec 18, 2012 18:00:22 GMT -8
I get what he's saying. There are some games that blur the line between system and setting -- especially in character generation. L5R has clans, families and schools that define your character. You can reskin this by renaming them, sure, but still the overall metaplot of the setting determines what clans/families are included and not included. I never seen anything where game mechanics other than chargen are affected by metaplot, though. I don't mind a game giving you setting. What I mind is when as they publish material they start picking winners and losers in the setting and advancing the timeline in a way that if your games story went in a different direction new material is less useful or helpful.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 18, 2012 18:51:27 GMT -8
I don't mind a game giving you setting. What I mind is when as they publish material they start picking winners and losers in the setting and advancing the timeline in a way that if your games story went in a different direction new material is less useful or helpful. I guess I still don't understand how it ends up less useful or helpful. The mechanics are story neutral for the most part so any new rules, powers, feats, edges, hindrances, etc. are still usable. New monsters and NPCs can be integrated into your game regardless of the meta plot that spawned them, either as they are or with new skins you create for them. Can you give an example of how the metaplot of a system hurt a game you were in?
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Post by daeglan on Dec 18, 2012 21:49:44 GMT -8
For example in one game world they destroyed a city That was always given a very vague description that made the city sound like a great place to take a game. when they finally added a book that included more solid info it was a book where they laid siege to it and the only description of what the city was like is one where they describe it in ruins. So if you want to use the city. That material is useless. Unless you want to use the siege storyline and have the city fall that material is pretty much useless. And since they do not give you descriptions of it intact the book does not really have much use. Perhaps NPC villains. But that is not much of the book. All the story hooks in the boo are only useful if you want to run the fall of the city. And there is pretty much no hope anyone will create a source book for a destroyed city in the future.
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Post by ericfromnj on Dec 19, 2012 12:35:18 GMT -8
Every game should have a metaplot. It should be called "your antagonist's plans."
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Post by daeglan on Dec 19, 2012 17:07:18 GMT -8
Meta Plot is made by the game company and i think that limits gms or makes the material they produce of limited value. unless you happen to follow their plans.
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