Interesting interview with new White Wolf's brand architect

[Ice9]

Maybe he's pro-trenchcoat, anti-katana.

"The PCs shouldn't be doing anything that could change the setting, they should just be trying to live with how fucked up things are." is certainly a playstyle I've seen, though not one I have much interest in usually.

[Judging__Eagle]

"The PCs shouldn't be doing anything that could change the setting, they should just be trying to live with how fucked up things are."

The PCs trying to change the setting; so that they can accept it, is the closest to "trying to live with how fucked things are" that there could ever be. It's quite literally, the only other option to any problem that is not choosing to "ignoring until its worse."

What they should say is:

"The world is super messed up; but the PCs don't care. They're trying to further their own goals. Which is why the world is messed up like this in the first place."



Telling people about something being a "problem"; then saying "Uh-uh-uh! Don't fix!" when they try to resolve the issue is stupid. If you don't want people to fix it, you have to make sure that they don't want to fix it. This is like the "White Bear" paradox (i.e. tell someone "Don't think about a white bear"); where presenting something that isn't allowed to be fixed is paradoxically going to seem like an issue for a human to try and resolve.*

The only reasonable way to "maintain" a settings dystopic mood; is for the players themselves to want to further the mood within the setting. Werewolves gain bennies when they howl to the moon and all canines in a set radius join in; creeping out the mortals. A vampire wants to taunt people with their otherworldyness (like Dracula & his fangs, hairy palms, etc.), or simply torment from the shadows. If the players don't see direct benefits from furthering, or maintaining, a local level of creepy and horror things going on; then any NPC who is will be viewed as tipping apple-carts.

I could even see "dismissable mundane creepyness" being something actual monsters would want to create; because it would be an effective smokescreen for an actual horror society living behind the scenes of day to day life. A "monster" sighting becomes less notable if there are humans in India being brainwashed into thinking they're cannibal monkeys or that some American undergoes plastic surgery and prosthetics to become a tiger. Encouraging mortal "recreational vampires" to meet up at fetish or geek Cons, and have them be video documented drinking mili-ampules of drops of blood gets attention away from "less plausible" supernatural vampires.

*:If you think that's totally bullshit; I'll have you remember that there are web forums with continually updated: content, erratas and fixes for various mainstream RPG franchises which had poorly written commercial products. That is to say, these forums.

[Ice9]

What they should say is:

"The world is super messed up; but the PCs don't care. They're trying to further their own goals. Which is why the world is messed up like this in the first place."

That's a different style, I'd say. One that I'd be fine with playing, assuming the group had goals compatible enough that they didn't fragment apart from the beginning.

But I've heard people advocating a style where the PCs are supposed to hate how fucked up things are but not be able to do anything about it, just mope or try plans that are (OOC) known to be impossible. Which is what I'm wondering if Ericsson is going for with his "not escapism" thing. But admittedly, that statement's light enough on anything concrete that it could mean almost anything.

[hyzmarca]

What they should say is:

"The world is super messed up; but the PCs don't care. They're trying to further their own goals. Which is why the world is messed up like this in the first place."

That's a different style, I'd say. One that I'd be fine with playing, assuming the group had goals compatible enough that they didn't fragment apart from the beginning.

But I've heard people advocating a style where the PCs are supposed to hate how fucked up things are but not be able to do anything about it, just mope or try plans that are (OOC) known to be impossible. Which is what I'm wondering if Ericsson is going for with his "not escapism" thing. But admittedly, that statement's light enough on anything concrete that it could mean almost anything.

No, because he explicitly says that the PCs are going to be the ones doing important shit in the metaplot, rather than writer penis NPCs.

I believe that when he talks about escapism he's referring to the separation between the supernatural and real worlds that a lot of urban fantasy has, where the protagonist might kill the goblin king that lives in the sewers, or whatver, but it has exactly zero impact on the human world because the two are so divorced from each other. They might as well be fighting in Narnia.

Vampire doesn't have that because vampire society is much more tightly plugged into the human world and human politics. Elder vampires are corporate CEOs more often than they are crazy people who live in the sewer abducting random women who remind them of their first girlfriend.
The contribute money to Super-PACs. The Camarilla isn't a secret society that exists parallel to the human world. It's very much embedded in the human society. The same is true of the Sabbat to a lesser extent.

[OgreBattle]

The contribute money to Super-PACs. The Camarilla isn't a secret society that exists parallel to the human world. It's very much embedded in the human society. The same is true of the Sabbat to a lesser extent.

So which current American Presidential candidates would be backed by which clans

[Prak]

why do I have the feeling that Trump would be backed by the Settites?

[Mechalich]

So which current American Presidential candidates would be backed by which clans

The unfortunate thing is that, they way Vampire was set up, all the different presidential candidates in pretty much every election of the past century (Trump is the biggest potential exception) would be backed by various groups of Ventrue.

Also, because Mage trumped (heh) Vampire is effectively every important way, the influence of the Camarilla or the Sabat paled in comparison to the influence the Celestial Chorus or the Technocracy would deploy regarding a presidential election. In the current election the Chorus is backing Ted Cruz, the Syndicate is backing Rubio, the NWO is backing Hillary, the Sons of Ether are backing Bernie, and the Nephandi are backing Trump.

The real problem of explicitly tying characters to real world events via the metaplot is that the only way to preserve said metaplot is through the actions of big dick NPCs. Your characters have super-powers, and so do garden variety NPCs. If a crazy vampire, werewolf, or mage wants to say, assassinate a major political figure, garden-variety guards aren't stopping them. Mage needed both the screw-you power of Paradox and massive Technocratic oversight to stop a party of Mages from unleashing world destabilizing horror. This new WoD will quickly be forced to rely on something similar.

[Occluded Sun]

In the current election the Chorus is backing Ted Cruz, the Syndicate is backing Rubio, the NWO is backing Hillary, the Sons of Ether are backing Bernie, and the Nephandi are backing Trump.

Nonsense, sir. The Nephandi sell voting booths. They don't care who wins - either way, our reality is doomed.

DOOMED.

[hyzmarca]

The real problem of explicitly tying characters to real world events via the metaplot is that the only way to preserve said metaplot is through the actions of big dick NPCs. Your characters have super-powers, and so do garden variety NPCs. If a crazy vampire, werewolf, or mage wants to say, assassinate a major political figure, garden-variety guards aren't stopping them. Mage needed both the screw-you power of Paradox and massive Technocratic oversight to stop a party of Mages from unleashing world destabilizing horror. This new WoD will quickly be forced to rely on something similar.

You preserved the metaplot by publishing structured canon adventures in which the metaplot isn't disrupted. What people want to do at their own tables is their business. It's impossible to keep everyone on the same page. The best you can do is provide a canon to serve as a skeleton.

[souran]

You preserved the metaplot by publishing structured canon adventures in which the metaplot isn't disrupted. What people want to do at their own tables is their business. It's impossible to keep everyone on the same page. The best you can do is provide a canon to serve as a skeleton.

This never made any fucking sense to me. The way you OUGHT to do a metaplot is to build adventures that ARE the metaplot. You stick character sheets for with characters that share names with the characters of the novelization of the metaplot adventure in the fucking module.

When something important happens in Chicago there should be a module that lets the tables play through that event as the focus. Players should absolutely not be sidelined for DM penis NPCs/Writer favorites.

[Dogbert]

But I've heard people advocating a style where the PCs are supposed to hate how fucked up things are but not be able to do anything about it, just mope or try plans that are (OOC) known to be impossible.

You're thinking of Justin Achilli.

While Punk-punk is still a valid genre, you don't give your PCs superpowers and then expect them to use them to "be super pathetic." People got vampires, and used them accordingly.

[Omegonthesane]

You preserved the metaplot by publishing structured canon adventures in which the metaplot isn't disrupted. What people want to do at their own tables is their business. It's impossible to keep everyone on the same page. The best you can do is provide a canon to serve as a skeleton.

This never made any fucking sense to me. The way you OUGHT to do a metaplot is to build adventures that ARE the metaplot. You stick character sheets for with characters that share names with the characters of the novelization of the metaplot adventure in the fucking module.

When something important happens in Chicago there should be a module that lets the tables play through that event as the focus. Players should absolutely not be sidelined for DM penis NPCs/Writer favorites.

I thought this was how Shadowrun did things - various metaplot events had been done by groups of shadowrunners who weren't known to the public, who were blatantly meant to have been "the player party in Module X/Y/Z".

Were there any real drawbacks to that approach? (Assuming that "removes the ability to claim a big penis NPC did all the work" is a feature not a drawback.)

[Korwin]

various metaplot events had been done by groups of shadowrunners who weren't known to the public, who were blatantly meant to have been "the player party in Module X/Y/Z".

Were there any real drawbacks to that approach? (Assuming that "removes the ability to claim a big penis NPC did all the work" is a feature not a drawback.)

Well at leadt Harlequin had still the big penis NPC.

[Username17]

When you have a metaplot, you ultimately end up making declarations that are contrary to the events that happen in actual campaigns. As time goes on, the dissonance between any ongoing game and what is written in the metaplot increases. When you provide a world changing adventure, you ultimately have to declare that one result is the thing that happened. You can make those adventures be very railroady (see: DSA), but individual games are still going produce results that differ from the official narrative by zero or more. The divergence can only increase, it can't decrease. The players can kill an important NPC or refuse to complete a task or conquer a kingdom or something, but they aren't going to do anything to unfuck the differences between home campaign continuity and the official contuity.

Metaplot events are generally least obtrusive when they happen in places that are far away from where campaigns take place. Having the ambassador from the Malkavian Justicar be a different vampire in different adventures because of ongoing plot events is a metaplot detail that probably won't shit on the events of any home game. While having Chicago burn down or something is going to shit all over campaigns that involve Chicago in any way.

-Username17

[Mechalich]

The thing I see as a problem is that if you tie your metaplot to real-world events, then the inevitable dissonance is created not simply between the campaign and arbitrary aspects of supernatural history that are more or less orthogonal to real world history, but you've created dissonance between ongoing campaigns and actual real-world historical events that impact that backdrop of your game. And that quickly causes individual campaigns to cascade into weird alternate history scenarios that split them away from any ongoing published material.

For example, there really wasn't anything you were likely to do in an oWoD game to stop September 11th from happening - because it wasn't related to anything any of the major in game factions in any way, and even if you did it didn't really matter because nothing was written that explicitly embraced the fallout from that event - as weird as it was pretending that the Technocracy wouldn't be involved in the Iraq War in a big way.

By contrast if you wrote a metaplot event centered around say, the recent Paris attacks, and then your players I don't know, invaded Syria and killed the leader of IS, not only would you likely circumvent the whole campaign, but you've just changed the world in a major way. They say they want the community to be involved, which seems to me implies that they're going to have to decide on one canon metaplot outcome to every major scenario they produce and if you did it differently, well, you're probably screwed.

This sort of thing happens in FR and similar settings from time to time - hey did you have a drow necromancer worshiping Kiriansalee? Lady Penitent trilogy says sucks to be you. And that's a setting that (prior to 4e) was pretty much explicitly designed to prevent large changes from happening or affecting large portions of the map when they did happen. The real world is way more complex and likely to involve far greater levels of damage.

[Whipstitch]

What Frank said. Advancing the metaplot and playing around with different conceits can actually be pretty sweet if you routinely retire characters or are part of a new group who can just treat legacy material as a pile of fluff to be leafed through on a rainy day. It's part of why Bull and I have such vastly different conceptions of what SR should look like--he still wants to play the same damn character in the same damn love letter to the '80s whereas I decided that the advancement system is shit and things would be a lot easier if I insisted on one shots whenever it was my turn to GM.

[Username17]

I believe that when he talks about escapism he's referring to the separation between the supernatural and real worlds that a lot of urban fantasy has, where the protagonist might kill the goblin king that lives in the sewers, or whatver, but it has exactly zero impact on the human world because the two are so divorced from each other.

It is impossible to know what the fuck he meant by "no escapism" because he clearly doesn't know what the word means. There are no context clues as to what he believes it means because he obviously doesn't know what any of the other relevant jargon means either. Attempting to extract meaning from that guy's rant is basically like playing the Chinese Room. All of Mr. Ericsson's sentences are syntactically complete and contain relevant words, but none of them relate to any concepts because the producer of the sentences doesn't know what any of the words mean.



Attempting to interact with Martin Ericsson's statements in any way is a huge philosophical question waiting to happen. Or you could just face palm and realize that he is a poseur with no fucking clue using technical terminology that he does not understand to attempt to sound smart.

-Username17

[Dogbert]

Or you could just face palm and realize that he is a poseur with no fucking clue using technical terminology that he does not understand to attempt to sound smart.

Sooo we have the next Justin Achilli in our hands.

That's both nifty and apalling.