you won't be happy with me, but give me one more chance -- you won't be happy anyway

[dragonladyflame]

Gamers are funny. More specifically, the way they react to the "canon universe" of their favourite game is funny, and though I always took it for granted, it's starting to hit me way more now that I actually write game material for a popular (i.e. ferociously defended) game line. (Now, I know I said I wouldn't be reading review-type things, but I

Comments

[foxfour]

Another problem is that the further your game drifts from canon, the more explaining you have to do to anyone who plays, and that's a 'barrier to entry' that steers people away from you and your game - which effectively cuts you off from the extended community of roleplayers who use the same world. And I think, for people whose hobbies marginalise them anyway, being thought of as 'the freak among the freaks' holds a certain existential terror. Or I could be wrong.
that would explain some of my games - i really don't care about canon. if i have an idea i like more, i change things. and i end up playing with the same group of friends. doesn't actually bother me much, but ah well.

[dragonladyflame]

Yeah, Dustin usually just plays with our friends too, so his super-houseruled universe doesn't matter as much (except when we have to write for the main one, of course ...).

[dragonladyflame]

Wow! When I went through the White Wolf slush pile as an intern I also found threats! I can't believe more than one person would do that. What freaks.

But I'm more talking about stuff that happens in canon that didn't change anything. For instance, why do people get pissed when we write brand new stuff they don't like? Why did people have giant arguments about stuff in First Edition and then refuse to change what they hated?

[foxfour]

you know what might be really interesting, re: the amount that you can change shataina? reading some literature on translation, such as umberto eco's experiences in translation.

[dragonladyflame]

Oooh! Good idea. I shall see if the library has it.

[jadasc]

So I'm left with this weird question of why, exactly, "canon" information matters so much to people.

Oh, I've got an entire essay on this topic somewhere in my journal - about three years back. It dates back to the old World of Darkness, so many of the references are obsolete, but I think the core of it holds. I'll see if I can hunt it down -- I wasn't smart enough to make it a memory, I think.

And you should drop me a line privately about that other post. We should scheme.

Aha. Found it. From January 2004.

[jadasc]

http://jadasc.livejournal.com/113442.html

Re: Aha. Found it. From January 2004.

[jadasc]

Basically, even though I now understand where canon fans are coming from, I still don't think they're saying anything worth listening to.

And, of course, that's a fair call to make on your part. At the time, I was just tired of the disingenuousness -- although I think that comes out more in the comment thread.

Re: Aha. Found it. From January 2004.

[dragonladyflame]

:deletes previous comment:

I realized that you post was perfectly cogent but did little more than agree with me. My real question is, why does canon matter? Why? I see that people want consistency, but why? It's not like sports, because it's not like inconsistency/changes (or whatever) makes the game line win or lose.

[charlequin]

I tend to be fairly charitable about the "unwanted canon change" issue. I think most people who get invested in a White Wolf-model game (one with an ongoing supplemental flow of optional setting and mechanics material) tend to form a broad mental model of what the world of the game is like, and play multiple individual games or chronicles that explore different parts of this.

A lot of the annoyance stems from the way that an unwanted change to canon affects this model over the long run. If you're a Storyteller, you can easily ignore any canon changes you dislike in your game; if you're a player, you can petition your ST to ignore them for you. But if you're invested in playing Exalted (or whatever) many times, with many different groups and STs, it becomes a bigger challenge: now you need to find a way to "change" the thing that bugs you every time(Arcane Fate is a great example because it was something that, at the time, bugged me a lot too. In my own long-running chronicle there isn't even a trace of it (which was enough that I

[charlequin]

p.s. hi, I read your blog

[dragonladyflame]

Except that, as I pointed out below, people get mad about random stuff, even when we don't change anything, and then they get pissed when I'm like, "Well, if you don't like our new spell / the brand new sorcerous school stuff / whatever, don't play with it". Trust me, if we WERE allowed to change anything significant we would, but since we aren't, why are people still assholes about tiny additions they could just say never happened?

In other words, I know it matters, I just don't get why we care so much. I see that it's a lot of effort, but wouldn't it be less effort to just change it than to yell at the writers? Hmm ... actually maybe I do get it. People feel like they pay for a game that should agree with them, I guess, not "force" them to learn it and then change things.

[charlequin]

Well, lots of people are assholes too. Fans have a lot of feeling of "ownership" over game materials (or fictional shows, or sports teams) because the hobbies are so important to their time and their identity. Because you have a situation where large stretches of the fandom is equally "invested" in the material (compared to the writers), but have dramatically less control over it