or, I Don't Get Why You Don't Get It

This one's been kicking around my head for a little over three years now. I posted about it a little bit on Pyramid Online around then, when </a>Bruce Baugh was a more frequent poster, but never took the time to write it out fully. Now, as Gehenna is bringing out the World of Darkness fans in force, it becomes relevant again, as I read RPG.Net and watch lots and lots of authors express their incredulity. (eyebeams, I'm thinking of you, but you aren't alone.)

I can understand not liking the fans' position, or not wanting to support it. But not getting it?

Let me try this.

This Sunday, in America, millions of people are going to sit down and watch the Super Bowl, wherein the New England Patriots will face the Carolina Panthers to determine which team is the best. A couple thousand people will actually go to Houston to see them do so. People have been following the sport all season. They know the statistics of their favorite teams, and may have a favorite player or two. You'll find them wearing their team's colors, cheering at the action on the field, booing the coaching staff and the team management, and waiting with anticipation to see who wins in the end -- who makes good plays, who makes poor ones, the whole nine yards.

None of this has jack to do with any game of football that they may actually play. Most of them haven't played the game since school, and those who do play will play a much more casual game than what's being displayed on the plasma-screen TV. The players on the various teams (more often than not) don't actually hail from the cities they play for, and can get traded back and forth fairly easily. The fandom, aside from the element of showing support, is separate from the game in play.

So why do they do it? Because it's satisfying to choose sides, and show support, and follow the narrative of My Team Goes To The Championship, even if it's no more "your" team than the other one is. It is interesting to watch as the game plays out. And, the next day, people will talk about the decisions made, and the plays completed, and how they'd do it differently, and what'll happen next year, and who won the big game.

If you write a roleplaying game, and you establish a setting, and you populate it with interesting characters, and set those characters into motion with goals and desires of their own... you will create the equivalent of the "professional league" for your game. The NPCs are the ones "who play the game for real," just like professional ballplayers do. And once you do that, you'll attract fans who will follow the narrative of "my x goes to the championship." They'll take sides, and wear the colors, and cheer for their favorites, and boo you when things don't go their way in the same way they boo'd Grady Little and George Steinbrenner when the Sox and the Yankees don't deliver. And they'll want to know what happens next, and they want to know who'll win the big game.

If, at this point, you tell them, "It doesn't matter who wins the big game -- what matters is what happens in your game,"... well, that's a player point of view. It won't satisfy the fans you've attracted. Now, it may not be your desire to please the fans... but they're there. And they're vocal. And they've bought your books, and your t-shirts, and your mugs, and a hundred other things that have nothing at all to do with playing the game. You've courted them for their money; now they want you to deliver the goods.

What are the goods? Fans, from what I can tell, want the perception of a coherent, consistent experience. They don't necessarily want their side to win -- though that'd be nice, on occasion -- but they want to feel like things happen for a reason, rather than editorial fiat, and that the story of the Big Game played by the same rules as the game they might play.

(This is why the game fiction doesn't satisfy; it feels like... well, the difference between watching "The Natural" or "Field of Dreams" as opposed to watching an actual baseball game. It's not the same.)

(Edit: The other thing that fans crave is identification. They want to choose sides. You can see it in every Quizilla test, in every licensed t-shirt. Let people pick favorites and they'll do so.)

It may be "kayfabe," but it's what they want. And, again, you can decide whether or not you want to give it to them, but it's disingenuous after all this time to not understand what they're looking for.