Concise Locket wrote:Unless we're talking about the Jungian aspect, metaplot's not a term used by most fiction writers and I've never heard it used outside of TTRPG systems.
Well, yeah, because only a handful of mediums really have this capability, but it's absolutely the case that whenever multiple lines of stories share the same universe, you have a metaplot, whether it's called an Expanded Universe, a crossover event, or a shared cinematic universe.
Unless a group of gamers are running a campaign that's purposely concurrent to the events of the films (or a series of novels or a run of comics), are playing as the film's protagonists, or are somehow influenced by Luke/Chewie/Leia being on Yavin 4 on date X and then on Hoth on date Y, it's not applicable or relevant.
Every licensed Star Wars RPG I've read assumes the party will be playing in the shadows of the canon films, at least initially, that they'll be playing
Shadows of the Empire and filling in the details between or behind the events in the movies. Most of them do branch out from there, and your third or fourth game set in Star Wars probably does depart dramatically to explore new territory untethered to any greater plot point, but the default assumption is that you play with a connection to the metaplot.
Gamers play Star Wars because they want to play a Wookiee Jedi or whatever, not because of the plots of the parent media products. Or if they are, it's only a very loose springboard.
But there's a lot of conceptual overlap between the Star Wars setting and the Star Wars metaplot. The setting is a galaxy with a certain frozen-in-time tech level, certain political and racial groups, and magic that can be used by space samurai. The metaplot includes all of the actual plot points; every detail of the rebellion against the Empire is plot, and any plot that transcends a single storyline is a metaplot.
Gamers play Star Wars because they want to jump into the fight between the Rebel Alliance and the Galactic Empire, or they want to jump into the criminal underbelly on the Outer Rim and play as dashing smugglers and wicked awesome bounty hunters pulling off jobs while avoiding the ire of the fleet of Star Destroyers one system over. The former is absolutely metaplot-based, the latter less so, but it's a difference in degree, not in kind. Even though the Rebel Alliance and the Galactic Empire are
almost just generic stand-ins, they're not
actually generic; they have their own look and feel and history to them, and players hate or love them based on the metaplot, not on what they archetypically represent. Those impressions inform the play in the individual games. They want to play
that fight, not just one substantially like it that addresses the same themes. That's metaplot.
I also reject the idea that shared game narratives are lessened because they aren't influenced by or don't influence a greater narrative created by a third party.
Tell that to the Star Wars EU that's about to be erased from canon when the new films drop. I suppose each novel is enjoyable on its own merits, but the strength of that brand had a lot to do with its connection to the canon films and to each other. An alternate universe is never going to be as important as the official universe; the chance to set a story in the official universe is just more appealing than to set one in an alternate universe, both for authors and for gamers. That's why people do what it takes to play within the lines of the Star Wars metaplot. This is even more true of those playing Lord of the Rings games set in the War of the Ring. You can reject the idea all you want, and it's certainly not true for
everyone, but by and large people value official stories more than they value AU stories.
