The Culture: Against Official Settings, Summarized

If you missed my post two days ago, hit that up now. I'm going to follow up on a thread the video therein presented.

Our presenter made an admission of a fact that Wizards' C-Suite knows is true, like its predecessors and TSR found out the hard way: Most people have no idea that the game has Official Settings at all. It is, as we say, a formless Pink Slime of Generic Fantasy.

This is why Wizards abandoned all but the most popular setting in terms of product support, and even that is half-assed at best. Tie-in media likewise got the same treatment, including half-assing it.

Why?

Because Normies, Tourists, and Casuals can't tell the difference unless you showed them The Brand. "It's all D&D" is how they see it, and they are not wrong.

So why waste the money? They don't care about Muh Official Setting, which also means that they don't care about Muh Lore either. They are only about their mans, where their mans are, and what is there for their mans to either conquer or destroy.

If this is the case for The Only Game That Matters, it sure as Hell applies to every last also-ran in the hobby. The only Official Settings that matter are those from outside the hobby, licensed for use therein and those outside settings are Normie-Tier popular, such as Uncle George's Space Opera and Uncle Carl's Mecha Opera Mashup (Robotech).

Everything else? Waste of time.

That is, if you're publishing a fantastic adventure wargame and not trying to blunder your way to creating a Setting Bible for a Brand Identity property so you can get out of Tabletop and move on to more popular (and profitable) media instead like the failed novelists, comic writers, and would-be film/TV showrunners that do this bullshit. If you are, making a game is the waste of time and you should be focusing on that more desired medium instead.

This also argues against not-D&Ds, from near-alikes (Palladium Fantasy & Earthdawn being the obvious example) to those very far afield (Legend of the Five Rings, Exalted, etc.) because those same three categories of people have shown by their behavior, across decades treat all games as D&D if they are at all similar- and their success depends on being as similar as possible. Revealed Preferences are Revealed.

Why fight against the tide when you can only lose?

It's easiest to (a) play The Only Game That Matters, and (b) play The Only Edition That Is A Proper Game. Learn how to #winatrpgs, and you'll be happy again. It's literally this meme in action.

Instead, you should just use the rules of the (real) game to make your own as you go like you're supposed to.

Go ahead, roll your own and leave Muh Officialdom behind. You'll soon find that you and the other players create something far more interesting than anything the publisher could put out for you.