Why metaplot matters in the World of Darkness

    Recently, I had a conversation with a friend who was talking about how he thought the World of Darkness should have had a complete reboot for Fifth Edition versus reviving the Old World of Darkness. He argued that too much continuity was something that caused people to move away from the setting and was a barrier to new players. This got under my skin for some reason and made me less than pleased for reasons I couldn't quite put into words. 

    I am a huge and long time World of Darkness fan that probably is the closest you could come to say is a "Grognard" of the setting. I was fourteen years old when I first started playing the game in 1994, only three years after the release of Vampire: The Masquerade 1st Edition. I played it in my best friends' basement and we were absolutely terrible at coming up with concepts. I think my 1st character wa a Humanity 10 Ventrue Prince who fed only on animals but wanted to be the Prince of Chicago.

    I was overjoyed when the Old World of Darkness was announced to be the basis for Fifth Edition. While I'd enjoyed 4th Edition/20th Anniversary from Onyx Path Publishing, it had always been something that had left me a bit "ehh" for reasons that I couldn't quite put into words. I never really jumped onto it until the very end with the release of Beckett's Jyhad Diary. My reasons for this would be because, for most of its existence, 20th Anniversary was metaplot agnostic. The games disregarded metaplot and thus I could never really enjoy it as much as I wanted to.

    Metaplot, for those unfamiliar with the term, is basically big story events going on in a game world that don't necessarily have anything to do with the player characters. A good example would be the endless series of disasters that befall the kingdom of Rokugan in Legend of the Five Rings that are determined by the card game's latest events. Another would be The Time of Troubles or other edition changing events that regularly befall the Forgotten Realms.

    Metaplot is controversial and for good reason. Changes to one's home game can be made that render the player character's own efforts and activities utterly irrelevant are common. The destruction of the Tremere Antitribu rather nastily impedes any players who happened to have one of those at their games. So might the Sabbat conquering Washington DC if you happen to have your Camarilla game set there. Other metaplot provides campaign bases  that many players have enjoyed such as Under a Blood Red Moon, The Giovanni Chronicles, and Transylvania Chronicles.

    For me, metaplot is about establishing the nature of a setting as a living world. It's also why I believe the Signature Characters and continuity is equally important for making the World of Darkness actually worth paying books for. A major part of what makes a world worth caring about is the idea that it is continuing to change and develop around your PCs. But really, I think it's also because metaplot only matters if you care about the characters involved.

    "Do you give a shit about the characters in your favorite media?" This is the most fundamental question you can ask about any property you have any investment in. Do you care about Spider-Man? Do you care about Mary Jane? Do you have any investment in Iron Man or Captain America or Wolverine or so on? What about Harry Potter or Katniss Everdeen. They are fictional characters and nothing that happens to them matters. HOWEVER, it is a story that you must fundamentally have BUY IN for if you want to buy anything. I CARE about the characters of Vampire: The Masquerade, Werewolf: The Apocalypse, and other settings.

    I care about Lucita, I care about Theo Bell, I care about Victoria Ash, and I care about Lodin and Modius. Same for Albrecht, Mari, and Evan Heals the Past. So much so that I wrote an adventure to wrap up the characters in Gary for Storyteller's Vault and have played HUNDREDS of stories involving them with my player characters. They are not as real to me as real people but they are toys that I have played with and I want to see/read/hear more about them. I don't need books about Blood Sorcery rituals, I don't need Disciplines, and i certainly don't need books about new Clans.

    I am here because the game world as established in Legacy/OWOD has enough characters that I want to know more about what they've been up to for the past 20 years. I *LIKE* The Old World of Darkness because I like the characters that live in it. I don't play it because of the system, I play it for the world that has been created and the chance to play around in it.

    It's why I fundamentally enjoy Beckett's Jyhad Diary more than any other book ever written because it is the book of, "Hey, remember these guys?" Without metaplot, the characters are frozen and static and the supplements don't provide you anything other than empty rules. It's why I've never really cared about Eberron versus, say, Dragonlance or Forgotten Realms. "What is Raistlin up to?" is a question far more press than King Boranal. Because King Boranal is the same place he was a decade ago. Because Eberron's timeline doesn't advance. 

    It's why I feel like the important thing for the World of Darkness to remember with future supplements is to understand that fans aren't here for the rules. They're here for the characters and the elaborate interconnecting webs of relationships established in each of the books. New fans aren't going to know about the past characters but presenting them for new audiences is better than trying to make new ones each time. Basically, every new generation deserves a chance to get to know Spider-Man and Batman's Rogues Galleries but the trick is reintroducing them.

    This is why I believe the most successful products for Fifth Edition are the ones that are relying on the proven foundation and material established in Legacy World of Darkness. Chicago by Night 5th Edition, Let the Streets Run Red, Cults of the Blood Gods, and even Fall of London to an extent. Coteries of New York and Shadows of New York rely heavily on New York by Night. So does the LA By Night livestream that combines Bloodlines with Los Angeles by Night.

    In conclusion, I hope that the good people at Paradox Interactive continue to insert metaplot into their books as well as rely on past lore. There's a reason that audiences fell in love with the World of Darkness in the first place. It's because the characters and their stories are things we were interested in following. We may not always like the Second Inquisition or Beckoning but seeing how people like Helena or Isaac Abrams react to them is always fun.