The Business: This Hobby Is About Selling And Using Hammers, Not The Brand Name Painted On Them

Settings in Fantastic Adventure Wargames are something that, by default, should be left to the campaign to decide- not the publisher or the designer.

The reason is not merely one of principle, but rather grounded in the reality of what has become of Official Settings over the last 40+ years.

Every publisher, starting with TSR Inc., has tried to turn their in-house Official Setting(s) into an entire brand unto itself. The first step is always tie-in novels or comics, as those (compared to alternatives) are cheap to do and could even be done in-house. The end result is exactly as Magic-Users did recently with that movie.

The consequence is that the setting brand begins to exert pressure upon the game's development until the business sees the game as an unwanted vestige of a past era and desires to cut it off and throw it away entirely in favor of the setting brand- again, one need only look no further than Magic-Users to see this play out. It was not the first time either, as some variation of this dynamic has afflicted the dominant publisher (first TSR, then Magic-Users) for decades.

Other publishers have also felt this in action, or even attempted to leverage it specifically to build a setting brand. Palladium's felt this with RIFTS to a minor degree, Dream Pod 9 with Heavy Gear, White Wolf with the World of Darkness (and a lesser extent with the Age of Sorrows), and both BattleTech and Shadowrun felt this a lot over the decades.

This has to stop. Therefore I say that it is time to talk openly about divorcing game and setting, not merely as product lines, but as businesses.

The Hobby Game Business

This is not a product-driven business, and by that I mean the Product Treadmill business model that Cargo Cultists cling to as if they were drowning. Selling a Fantastic Adventure Wargame is no different than selling a hammer; you sell a complete product, and then you are done. Those seeking recurring revenue from selling Fantastic Adventure Wargames need to look elsewhere.

That elsewhere is in teaching skills, developing acumen, and faciliating user connection- the functions of a clubhouse as a business. You only need to buy the Scout manual once; you pay your membership dues regularly to stay in the Scout Troop, participate in its activities, and benefit from the connections fostered therein. That's the business model to follow.

The Setting Bible Business

This is a Brand Development business, and it is one wholly independent of any one game. Your setting is not defined by a specific ruleset to a game. It is defined by the Setting Bible you create that defines the rules of your setting's Brand Identity.

Using that Setting Bible as your blueprint, you then produce Brand products in whatever medium your customers--as revealed by their behaviors--are willing to spend money on. You will make toys, videogames, novels, comics, various merchandise, live entertainment (like VTubers), musical releases (albums, singles, or both), film/television productions, etc. so long as the cult-like following you deliberately foster for your Brand are willing and able to give you money for it.

Yes, that's right, this is the Hello Kitty model, and if you think I'm joking then you missed this recent announcement:

That, reader, is a Hello Kitty branding of Animal Crossing. That is what Official Settings do to Fantastic Adventure Wargames, and why they are not required for a game to take off. Dungeons & Dragons did just fine pre-Greyhawk and definitely pre-Forgotten Realms, and so do most such games. These two things are not the same business.

The Role of the Hobbyist

The setting is to be defined by the players that use the game. Let them figure out their own adaptation for Popular Brand if that is what they want. They will do it to their satisfaction, which means you don't have to and thus avoid years of stupid arguments and swiftly diminishing returns on the investment spent producing that stuff.

The hobbyist, in turn, gets to exercise not only practical problem-solving within a campaign scenario, but to decide upon what sort of fantastic adventure wargaming he wants to play- and he does so by directly engaging primary sources instead of tolerating the mediation of one or more middlemen stamping their takes on to said material, something that we know now opens the door to bad faith "reimagining" Because Reasons.

We do not need a Hello Kitty game. We need hobbyists to take the game that they prefer and make their own Hello Kitty campaign with it.

Will this gut the commercial activity of Cargo Cult businesses?

This is not a consumerist hobby, and insisting upon Seperation of Setting And Game works toward that end. Those seeking a Narrative experience should seek out a Narrative medium, because this hobby is not it.

We do not need Brand. Setting is Brand. We need good games, and making those is a problem worth solving- and a suitable side-hustle, but never a main business.