All right. I have to explain this. I'll try to keep it relatively short.Most of you are probably aware of the existence of role-playing games, if only through ABC's numerous 'Dungeons and Dragons will drive your children to Satanism' public awareness pieces, oddly timed during sweeps months every few years. What you may not be aware of is that RPGs cover virtually every genre. Some of them even go literary. One company in particular is infamous for getting authors to work on their own licenses: Terry Prachett, Jack Vance, Andre Norton, David Brin, and Alan Dean Foster have all given over worlds to one company. Of course, that company also has the Prisoner rights...
One of those genres is horror.
There's a long-standing tradition there, of course, and it's decidedly literary. Lovecraft's works were the most frequently adapted, and they're still pursued today. But in RPG format, the Cthulhu cycle changes a little. Yes, the Elder Gods are coming, yes, all humanity will be driven insane and it's basically going to be a contest to see who gets eaten first. But you can stall. An early Cthulhu gamebook pointed out that if the humans seal a gateway for eighty years, it means nothing to the big, bad cosmic forces. They can wait. But for the human race, it's a major gain: four generations to plan, research, investigate, and find a way to stall again -- or perhaps even win in the end.
Horror requires hope. That's almost automatic. Horror without hope is called 'being doomed', and if you're that doomed, you might as well curl up on the floor and wait. It isn't horror if you don't have the chance to fight back -- even if that chance fails -- it's literary sadism.
So: along comes a gaming company with an idea for a horror setting, which they term the World of Darkness. And the core idea here is that several groups of supernatural beings exist in the shadows, outside the knowledge of normal people -- and, amazingly, each other. (This is the part that's generally hardest to swallow after a while.) And all of these supernaturals have one thing in common: their tales, legends, and prophecies say the earth is in its last days.
Well, two things in common. Whether you were working with vampires, werewolves, mages, wraiths, fae, hunters, or (at the end) literal demons/fallen angels, the system each group followed was designed to cascade things towards the end. There was no plan too workable to spoil with petty politics, there was no way to keep the system from spending all its time fighting itself, and no one would ever, ever listen to you. Basically like real life, only with dice.
But -- as this game grew (and to be fair, it could be a wonderfully conceived setting, with occasional sightings of great writing), the inevitable occured. The players took over. In a very real sense, RPG companies don't really own their settings: they rent them out. The players will put their own spin on them. And since this was a horror setting, the players did the 'no hope, no horror' math and made the environment their own. The game was designed to keep characters down? To make sure they never succeeded at anything without a horrible penalty all out of proportion to the actual victory? The fictional world was cascading towards an end? Fine. That was the setting. But they'd change it within their game. They'd find a way to stall. And perhaps stalling long enough would equal victory -- or give them time to find a real one.
Well, last year, the publisher reminded everyone of just who really owned the game by saying 'We've been threatening the end of the world for twelve years. The bill just came due.' And then they crashed the system. A series of four books ended the environment, piling on the indignities, unfairness, depression, and enough 'You've had your 'fun': goodbye' to make a large segment of the community throw up their hands and walk away permanently.
Y'see, the players thought the publisher had been thinking along their lines. It was basically going to be a magic trick, the ultimate cliffhanger. 'We've made sure there's no way out -- wanna see how we get out of it?' That at the end of all the horror, there would be -- hope.
And, by and large, they were very, very wrong.
Then, insult to injury: having crashed this setting, the publisher announced a brand-new World of Darkness to be released in August. And many players said 'Why should I commit to you when you'll just destroy this eventually, too?'
The original WoD will still be used as a setting for games: a lot of groups simply divorced the company when the announcement was made and went on their merry way. But there's a level of trust that's been broken -- and there's a question as to whether it should have existed in the first place. The artist and the person viewing the painting are not equal partners in the work. But when the artist provides a partially-filled canvas to the viewer along with a set of paints, and then tries to pull the result into the fire...?
In the end, it was a conflict of vision. The players mostly saw hope, and the publisher mostly saw destruction. But when your continued existence depends on the support of those who buy your products, shouldn't a little time be spent in finding out what those people think about the work?
Then again, I'm asking that question on a site dedicated in part to figuring out why reality show producers can never realize what the viewers want to see.
And that was, believe it or not, the short version.
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