Is metaplot for wargames & RPGs inherently a terrible idea or can it be done well?IMHO it basically goes right the first 5 - 10 years before it starts to break the product and pisses everyone off.
>>98762665It's inherently bad
>>98762665If you don't have metaplot you don't have a setting or an RPG worth playing or investing hundreds of bucks buying their books. You just have a shitty barebones system with bloat like Pathfinder selling you dozen of prestige classes and useless feats.The secret to good metaplot is that you need good writers. Guys like Ed Greenwood or the original WW writers. But corporations are allergic to good writing because they hate art.
>>98764147>corporations are allergic to good writing because they hate art.nah, rather allergic to pay well for good art
>>98762665meta plot is shit, its only relevant when a game has multiple timelines.It pretty much ruined World of Darkness. The got to into specifics and details and trying to make everything make sense and conform to the rules. It just became a meta grind with a system that wasn't really designed for it, WoD wasn't heavy on crunch and was really easy to break.
>>98762665I seriously fucking hate the metaplot sometimes. I remember writing a supplement to pitch to Catalyst for Shadowrun, until half way through I found out / remembered Chigago already had a supplement for their ridiculous bug shaman toxic spirit BS.Shadowrun pisses me off cause It killed the two major cities I wanted to make my campaign about, they sunk LA and dropped a tactical nuke on chicago. The meta plot is fun when its dead on, like the 'euro' wars. (who could have predicted there would be a war in eastern europe? Thanks Nostradumbass) Or when its fun or interesting, like NAN, but some shit is just so fucking over the top, like the Japanese Imperial Shogunate taking control of Japan and invading California. Its like, come guys, take your job a little more seriously.
>>98764654I guess thats kinna rich coming from someone whos favorite corp is aztechnology. but whatever, the whole setting is ridiculous, trying to keep the game grounded sometimes feels like a chore.
>>98762665Its probably always bad but I will forgive all metaplot if the 3rd and final part of Fading Suns War In The Heavens ever gets leaked.
>>98762665I think that the customer base for both rpgs and wargames is split at least 3 ways that probably roughly form a spectrum from "it was perfect the moment it got my attention change nothing" to the people who were buying WoD books every month just to follow the setting. I don't think there's a perfect solution since businesses have to make money.Personally I would prefer wargame companies to not discontinue my armies. Fuck's sake Corvus Belli. But also they have employees to pay. I wish they'd trust that I'd stay invested and buy new armies even instead of fucking with the one I have to sell me new shit.
>>98764654>>98764662My man, you're supposed to lean into the ridiculousness. Even if you're running a serious game you should lean into the ridiculousness, it's practically the only thing keeping Shadowrun alive. The fact that you could be running a heist seriously in-game while your players are laughing at the ridiculousness of it all in real life.
>>98762665It depends™I know for certain that exclusively letting clan fanboys dictate the battletech metaplot for the past decade has been a huge misstep
>>98765452i've noticed most people are insanely bad at shadowrun. They get bogged down in the planning phase and argue endlessly until someone does something stupid and all their plans go to shit.
>>98765544Here is the thing: My philosphy is that the game is done. It ended with 4th. 4th was damn near perfect, you really couldn't do better. D&D peaked at 3.5 and 4, etc. etc.The games have just gone on too long, we need new products and new ideas from different companies with different settings and new mechanics. No amount of retreading the same old ground is going to work.
>>98765807dnd has a metaplot?
>>98765807If you wanted to remake shadowrun, you'd have to do something completely different. Its just been done to death, you know? It was weird and wonderful when it came out, but now its kind of like, we're already there. we are already living in the future.
>>98765810sorry, i meant shadowrun.i'm sorry but you just can't fake innovation. i try to tell people this for years but they are convinced they can somehow operate without creatives input and they just can't.
>>98764147You've kind of hit the nail on the head, though I think you're wrong about the outcome. You shouldn't ever *need* to commit hundreds of dollars to a game line. Metaplots are inherently commerce over art, it just so happens that there were a few who kind of accidentally managed to be art there for awhile. And your milage may very greatly with that, too. There are people who will say the WW metaplot went off the rails with dirty secrets of the black hand, which was a pretty fucking early book in the line.
>>98762665metaplot removes the focus from your characters and puts it on the NPC's.
>>98765828I honestly feel like WW lost money on most of its splats. Not enough people bought them and they made way too many of them.
Metaplot can be done right when the devs know in advance they want it so they have adventure books that can be played in order. Bad metaplot design is when they change the world with tie-ins like novels, comics or worst of all: convention games. The most annoying thing is when a supplement with really useful info in it advances the metaplot thanks to some adventure so now your game depends on you playing said adventure or the changes won't make sense. Think of Chicago by Night 2e that expects you to play Under a Blood Red Moon as a Garou first or Dark Sun 2e taking plot points from the shitty novels you won't read.If me and my players can't recreate the metaplot-shifting events, it's a bad metaplot.If we must recreate them, it's even worse.
The problem is when your metaplot gets too bloated, which it will, what's your plan? >fuck you, read all our 30 year books from old editions to understand what's going on now.>time to cash in on nostalgia and reprint Old Profitable again for no reason.
>>98766220Could be worse, the metaplot could happen entirely offscreen, like what happened in Unknown Armies betwen 2e and 3e.Sorry, did you like the Sleepers of the New Inquisition? They got destroyed in a shadow war against... someone. Invent what ever you want. You want anything about the whisper war? What, you think your Sleeper or TNI character matters?To Go, the big adventure that seems like should influence the metaplot? Didn't do anything.
>>98766374It's obvious that 333 avatars ascended to the statosphere and the universe reset. Duh.
>>98765835oWoD lasted for, what, like 12 years, 6 some odd game lines, and shitload books. They were making money somehow. Probably, what it comes down to is thst the books that sold well, sold well enough to offset the books that maybe didn't.
>>98764147Your definition of meta plot is really loose and basically just means "setting that moves at all".
>>98765294>. I don't think there's a perfect solution since businesses have to make money.Not having metaplot is the perfect solution because it means next release you won't suddenly lose hundreds of people while gambling you'll get thousands.
>>98765817NTA but if I'm allowed to be on the soapbox for a second: Cyberpunk is not (ir) relevant because it depicts the future, it's relevant because it depicts a future much more independent and DIY than what we got.
>>98765544>I know for certain that exclusively letting clan fanboys dictate the battletech metaplot for the past decade has been a huge misstepThis touches on another issue that's common with long-running series and their metaplots: when someone who grew up as a fanboy of X or Y faction manages to get hired on as an official writer, they proceed to tank the setting by turning their favorite faction into writer's pet mary sues. There is a direct correlation between GW hiring on more and more chaos fanboys and all their settings going to shit.
>>98764115fpbp
>>98765794It's a bunch of nerds trying to act like professional criminals. There's a reason why most games fizzle out between people who people who treat the game like a theme park or a playground, and people who believe taking the Enemy quality means the corporation has helicopter gunships hunting your ass all over the seattle metroplex 24/7.
>>98764654Over the top isn't a problem
>>98762665the problem is that metaplot is an avenue for devs to ruin the setting gradually over time, especially since writers are getting worse and worse because they're being inspired by worse and worse media.
>>98774856Nerd media writing has a nerd writer problem, basically.They're less and less erudite/educated/studious/knowledgeable and more just nerdy.I.eThey don't have enough real world knowledge to synthesize into fiction.Recorded history & mythology as well as the sciences are an amazing source of inspiration but people read too much of what they're writing for rather than going back to first principles.
>>98765257Patrician taste right here. Same for Degenesis.However, I think it depends. A lot of metaplots can be very miss because they essentially progress regardless of player input and, to an extent, have to be designed that way. They also require strong writing to make up for it and I'm not sure most RPG lines are capable of that.
>>98762665I don't think it's inherently terrible and it can be done well.I don't think most games need it, though. A game like Shadowrun sort of needs it in a secondary way - moving the timeline along is useful to help introduce technologies that weren't integrated when it was first released, and obviously in-world stuff's going to happen. >>98764654Is the Shogunate taking control of Japan inherently more ridiculous than the woo-woos getting super special magical powers to take down the USA that can't be replicated anymore in game? And that they aren't getting part 2 of the guns, steel, and germs now that their special woo-woo magic's gone and they're no better off magically or technologically than anyone else?>>98765835Anecdotally, I remember reading one WW writer bitching that they always had to include news rules and powers in little metaplot books to make sure they would sell - they knew more people would buy a book if it came with a new bloodline or something like that than if it was just fluff on its own.>>98766492They should let the SM fanboys take the reins - the SMs are the bread and butter keeping the game alive, so they might as well get the wank people bitch about. Double down and double-Ward.
>>98779237>Is the Shogunate taking control of Japan inherently more ridiculous than the woo-woos getting super special magical powers to take down the USA that can't be replicated anymore in game? And that they aren't getting part 2 of the guns, steel, and germs now that their special woo-woo magic's gone and they're no better off magically or technologically than anyone else?magic is a conceit of the setting. the ghost dance was a one time deal. A corporation regressing to fuedal japan and launching a land invasion of California is a bit much.Also i made a character called the Crimson Samurai and forgot that was the name of Renruku's elite forces.It funny how much we borrow from sources without realizing it.
>>98779237haha! we fool you gaijin! we play dead for ovah a century!
>>98779285shit, thats pretty racist isn't it?what is it about this place that turns me into an asshole?
>>98779237people could suspend their disbelief to a certain point about injin magik. Its a superstition that was pretty common up until the 2000's among the south west, ingrained in our cultural consciousness.
>>98778845Degenesis wrapped up before it could turn into slop.
>>98779302>>98779277I guess just draw the lines in different places at what strains our suspension of disbelief.
>>98762665I think you have to sort of distinguish between historical chronicles and stuff like the oWoD where present day heroes and npc's are basically shaping the world instead of you.I feel like oWoD is like a coloring book where someone has filled everything in with crayon already, and pretty poorly. The chronicals lacked consistency and were pretty much all over the damn place, it started out grounded with Vampire but quickly just kind of rocketed out of the realm of possibility the more core books they released. Everything just became increasingly more absurd, until when you mashed them all together all you got was madness.
>>98779326the great ghost dance was an actual thing, i don't know if it was an Indian legend or what, but its on record somewhere.
>>98779330If sarcasm is the lowest form of wit them crossovers must be the lowest form of fiction writing.The soiboi meme has been abused for nearly 15 years to criminalize any kind of excitement but baiting sales through crossovers should always be shamed.
>>98779330In essence, it was like having a bunch of DMPC's for the setting, where the storyteller makes a character and has them steal the show and carry them through every encounter and won't share a second of the spotlight with anyone else.
>>98779351you know how to filter out bad actors?ask them to play a pre generated character.
>>98765828I mean, I had to pay for A Tale of Two Cities, too, but I would still call it art. I don't think needing to buy something to enjoy it changes it. Art can still be art and cost money. In fact, most art costs money.
>>98765828>You've kind of hit the nail on the head, though I think you're wrong about the outcome.Someone has been talking to LLMs.
>>98779673You're missing the point. All art, arguably, is in tension with commerce. But the splat book treadmill of the 90s/2000s was a commercial concern, not an artistic concern.
>>98779330I like the idea of it, but have never played vampire so maybe wouldn't in practice. To me it creates an unreliable worldview which imitates reality in a scale model sort of way. Splat books being like propaganda, something real and functional is there but it is up to the storyteller and players to gauge how mucj of it is true and how much is just bullshit meant to obscure the truth or induce fear/control. To me this perfectly fits the WoD setting. But again, perhaps only the idea of it.
>>98779322Sadly, they were clearly setting something up at the end and there was more to go. But then Clan Wars was a shitshow.
>>98779359that's too mean
are there any games with good metaplots that have improved over the years?
>>98788134>are there any games with good metaplotsno
I just came here to say I fucking hate Shadow Run.
>>98762665It's bad in 40kIt's good in BattletechIt depends on what the company is trying to do I guess.
>>98790614it's bad in battletech too. the clans were a mistake.
>>98766492GW isn't hiring chaos fanboys though? It's the marinewank that dragged 40k into the toilet. Guilliman and the primarchs returning, numarines, horus heresy. All marine stuff. You can tell the xenos books are basically written at gunpoint by corporate - just read the paths series. 3 eldar books, literally the same plot 0 changes, and nothing but marinewank in an eldar book of all places.Chaos daemons are dead as a faction in the Old World and half the time people in 40k don't think they should be a real army either. It's all marinewank.The rules even reflect this. Marines are what, S5/T5 W2 with S6 ap2 bolters now. Shuriken catapults used to be objectively better weapons and are now a measly 12" S4 smg. It's absurd.
>>98790621Clans are fine but the plot past the invasion era is dumb since the writers won't have the clans kill off any main character house (read all of them) and the clans are the writers' favorite.So they're stuck with slowly killing off their inept incompetent writer's pet factions making them look dumber with each passing decade. Same issue on tabletop where zellbrigen is a death sentence for any clan player as the clans are already underpowered due to scenario and system design and they just eat nerfs anyway because the retarded grogs that play it hate anything new.
>>98788658Based
>>98790721>ADB self-inserts onto Abaddon and calls him an antihero >Mike Brooks is a slannytranny>13 Black Crusades retconned into JUST AS PLANNED>Vashtorr can corrupt necrons because "they use technology">they even tried to have Angron killsteal Yarrick to wank off his new model before fan backlash>Ynnari plotline axed in the most humiliating way possible because we can't ever show Chaos being vulnerable Numarines are corporate mandate, but Chaos are the obvious Writer's Pet. Feel free to keep your head in the sand because you like Chaos, tho.
>>98764147Midwit
It's bad when it's done bad. It's good when it's done good. Basically, you have to know you are selling instruction manuals first, and novels second. Look at the WoD, for example. Their metaplot sucks because it's spread every edition. If you want to understand Modern Nights, you have to read up all the outdated info, and then the corrections, and then the new lore. At least D&D reprints the classics when they put out a new edition so everyone's on the same page of what's canon and important. Warhammer is sort of the opposite of D&D. They are a plastic toy company, who sometimes sells books on the side. The Horus Heresy books will never be needed for you to sit down and play the game like knowing the lore of Chicago of Darkness before playing VtM. In fact, I don't have a doubt in my mind they would burn every single one of those novels if it meant they could get 5% more sales on the plastic.Good Metaplot>No Metaplot>Bad Metaplot
>>98764147>But corporations are allergic to good writing because they hate art.also, there are no good writers left who are willing to write ttrpgs
>>98762665I think back when Findlay was alive, Shadowrun's metaplot was a metaplot done 'right'.If you weren't paying attention to the harlequinn shit, you'd never know there was even a metaplot going on.Yes there were references to the metaplot here and there, but they were subtle enough to easily go unnoticed.
>>98762665>Is metaplot for wargames & RPGs inherently a terrible ideaYes, for exactly the reason you listed. It's like when a puzzle video game includes an ARG in it. It's fantastic for the community for the first year or so as people make dents on it and impact it, but then after a year or so, it loses all value. In the case of the /tg/, it enters into a state where it has a dense entry to barrier because you're not just asking new players to play in your setting, you're asking them to learn the base setting, learn years of history, years of in-jokes, names of all the big-part players, etc, and then when you finally learn all that shit, you also have to carefully integrate yourself into that clique that is now worshipping all the big name players for providing all the in-jokes and lore for their community so that they'll even accept you, etc.Or instead you just pick up D&D clone #9,000 and play generic slop like everyone else does.
>>98807364There's always good writers left. I have no doubt that /tg/ itself has its share of good anon writers. But will they even bother working for corpo RPGs? Doubtful. They will have to make their own thing.
>>98762665I don't like it. It's a complete mess most of the time. Think WOD where all these crazy events have happened since the 90's in a setting that's supposed to span centuries as they need to up the ante or have something cool to sell books. Or wargames where factions or characters you bought models for get axed or killed off completely and the overpriced figurines you spent money on are worthless or can't really be used anymore because of lore reasons. I definitely like CoD being more of a toolkit setting.
>>98779237>Is the Shogunate taking control of Japan inherently more ridiculous than the woo-woos getting super special magical powers to take down the USA that can't be replicated anymore in game?Most people forget that there was a point in the late 80s early 90s where normal people around the world genuinely believed that japan was gonna take over the world economy in the future, at some point real estate in Tokyo was more valuable that real estate in new york city, there's a reason why a lot of cyberpunk settings use the yen as a currency (including Shadowrun in the form of Nuyen = New Yen)And what happened after that was that the Yen and the japanese economy fizzled out into what they now call "The Lost Decade" (And should quickly be heading into The Lost Century considering they've been on the decline for 3 decades now) and instead another country stepped in to be the economic powerhouse of the east in the form of China.What does this have to do with anything regarding the shogunate? well if the promise of economically Godlike Japan happened, they've would've certainly gone on the warpath about some... things. Even now as they are, the Japanese deny their warcrimes from WWII, there's been a few incidents here and there over the years, like one scandal where a japanese minister was accused of kicking a monument for comfort women, so you could see economically Godlike Japan being like "Yeah, if you keep spreading this evil propaganda about "war crimes" we will not do business with you" type of economic pressure. And while the return of the Shogunate would not have happened either way, I could see someone in the japanese government pulling a Xi and making it so that he's president/ prime minister for life.In short, Shadowrun is just an overexageration of what might have happened in real life had japan actually become a powerhouse instead of an incubator for hikkis. They're not the first ones to go "Japan returns to IMPERIAL NIHHON!!!!" either.
>>98812674I admit that I forgot about the fear of Japan becoming #1 economically.
>>98812674>Most people forget that there was a point in the late 80s early 90s where normal people around the world genuinely believed that japan was gonna take over the world economy in the futureSo old people were just retarded?
>>98812740Not anymore than the people of today, placing all of their bets on AI companies when that's the most economical bubble thing to have bubbled since the millenium and the Dot Com Bubble burst.
>>98812674But of all the fucking places to invade / take over why California?
>>98813943You not liking them doesn't make them irrelevant.
>>98813943Jesus Christ, the american education system everyone.That's like asking why the invasion of Normandy didn't happen in Greece, it happened there because it's the closest territory where they could invade. Same deal with The people's republic of California being invaded by Japan, because it's a hell of a lot easier to invade there than it is to cross the entire continent down by Chile and Argentina only to come up and invade by texas.
>>98779237>I don't think it's inherently terribleIt's inherently terrible.
>>98815082Assuming that Japan could overcome America at sea to make a land invasion, what about conquering part of Canada and go down through British Columbia?
>>98790721>GW isn't hiring chaos fanboys though?Are you fucking crazy? The amount of shit that was forced through in WFB because Chaos kept losing in the events held to decide where the metaplot went but the designers didn't want Chaos to lose is insane.
>>98812674>the return of the Shogunate would not have happened either wayI mean... what do you think the WWII-era order of things was? A government run by the military using the Emperor as a figurehead, that's a fucking bakufu. The fact that they have guns, planes and missiles doesn't change anything. "Shōgun" (or more precisely the full title, "sei-i taishōgun") literally means "great barbarian-subduing general", that's General Tōjō right there. They just didn't survive the war to cement all that.100%, as soon as the Japanese got economically powerful enough they'd go back to having a military and then it would only be a matter of time. Again.
>>98813943Because this guy >>98815082 is autistic and didn't quite explain the core of it very well: California and New York are major ports, not just for immigration, but for trade. Big players in the market and trade industry just naturally gather near their ports for convenience. If America's ports were Washington and Florida instead, it would have happened there.Also, it wasn't necessarily a proper invasion, people were just calling it a soft-invasion because all of a sudden ALL of the big-name corps that were producing the best technology and dominating the entire economy went from American/German to Japanese exclusively. You can even see this joked about in Back to the Future where Marty goes back into the past and Doc makes an off-handed comment that the Japanese-made electronic was going to fall apart like garbage and that Japan would never be good or something along those lines, and Marty just looks at the camera.
>>98815962ADB's been fucking 40K up the ass with a Chaos shaped daddy issues dildo for a long time now too.
>>98816003>You can even see this joked about in Back to the Future where Marty goes back into the past and Doc makes an off-handed comment that the Japanese-made electronic was going to fall apart like garbage and that Japan would never be good or something along those lines, and Marty just looks at the camera.And in Back to the Future part 2 they show Future Marty being employed by a Japanese company and having a Japanese boss. It's both carrying forward the joke from the first movie and a real prediction.
>>98816035No joke, but as seen above, in 40k people can deflect with (the very real) marinewank. In WFB there are absolutely no excuses, the shit they got up to to prop up Chaos in the Storm of Chaos event for example simply can't be argued away with "muh helfwank" or something.
>>98816561There's a very easy solution to Marinewank. If some other faction had as many sales behind it, that faction would get wanked.
>>98816647but everyone has to agree on which faction to buy then, like a union of fig buyers
>>98823171Not really. If all the factions got sales exceeding Marines, then they'd get the wank.
isn't coas wank and marrine wank one in the same with how coas is treated in the setting.I don't play the game but coas might as well be a imperium faction with how I see it online. I am the best most unique anon in this thread.
>>98766254You forgot >Crash the whole thing and reboot it into something that 10 - 30 years later still hasn't recovered its former glory
>>98764654>they sunk LAi live in the part they sunk and ran a "El Infierno" game where they had to use airboats to get around and diving was useful for stuff. Also fun city is literally less than an hour away.
>>98824772>coasNGL, you should probably shoot yourself in the head before whatever you've got spreads to the first world.
>>98823303but nobody is going to buy all that crap
>>98829745Exactly. So faggots who don't play Marines can shut up, know their place, and be humble.
