No Goobcon Allowed
As I write this, a small sort-of-Irish folk band is playing nearby, as part of a general effort by the local library to host small lectures and performances. They’re a little late for Saint Patrick’s Day, if that was the intent.
I say “sort-of-Irish” because they don’t always play actual Irish folk songs; sometimes it’s their own compositions, employing some of the same musical vocabulary as traditional Irish music. The lyrics occasionally slip into a sort of new age-y celebration of nature; instead of complaining about how the British came over and ruined everyone’s lives in the colonial era, it’s about those nasty Christians coming over and spoiling the beatific wicca lifestyle, when everyone loved everyone and communed with the mother goddess and lived in harmony with nature.
Well, okay, if that’s what you’re into. Pure fabrication, of course, but hey, what myth isn’t? The Irish folk version of history isn’t above bending the historical truth to indulge in self-pity and blame The Man, either—but I’m not sure how it got dragged into a piece with the wicca myth. This observation, coupled with the fact that I’ve just been rereading a few old essays about RPGs, and some advice for writers this morning, has me thinking about White Wolf’s submission guidelines.
They’re great—or rather, they were once; I just looked them up again to quote them, and the glorious rant has been removed. That rant didn’t mince words about passable grammar and spelling: if you can’t handle both at a professional level, you’re out; White Wolf has neither time nor budget to micro-edit submissions. They didn’t want to hear yet another iteration of Vampire Prince blah-blah rise to power blah-blah Ventrue behind the scenes blah-blah-blah. They didn’t want a thinly-veiled writeup of your own game, with your own PCs overshadowing the PCs which another GM/customer will take through the adventure. They didn’t want what they called something like "goobcon ‘94," in which the latest geek culture fad gets the spotlight just because the author is into it and can’t recognize that other gamers are decidedly NOT. The guidelines are delivered in a shamelessly snarky tone, savaging some of their most dedicated (if not talented) supporters—probably as a form of self-defense for an office flooded by just these travesties of unsolicited game design.
I can’t help but notice, however, that White Wolf doesn’t exactly take its own advice. Their grammar and spelling may be adequate, but their editing still produces those dreaded “see page XX” comments that made it to print. Their adventures read like self-caricatures: one of every faction maneuver over some McGuffin, living up to every stereotype of that faction while simultaneously sniping about one another’s shortcomings. (And yes, the Ventrue do blah-blah in WW adventures.) Relying as heavily as they do on pigeon-holing characters into stereotypes—some would prefer “archetypes,” but I’m talking attitudes, not narrative function—causes these adventures to write themselves; deviations from the stereotype would feel jarring. White Wolf also regularly employs metaplots: world designs in which huge events over which the PCs have little control shape the world they operate in, and continue to shape it as new products come out. Unsurprisingly, the major hitters in the metaplot are the writers’ own characters or former characters. Several of their central rulebooks employ goobfest descriptions. Mage includes a magical tradition that consists of nothing but being goth-y, since goths were rather “in” when the rulebook came out. Other traditions must draw their powers from a vengeful god, or elaborate ritual, or self-destructive excesses; for the goths, just being goth is enough, and they aren’t restricted in their choice of magical schools, either—think the author was playing favorites? Werewolf has an entire clan whose purpose is to be Celtic. Other clans are spiritualists, or technocrats, or work with the lowest rungs of human society; but since Celtic was the hot thing in geek culture when the rules came out, there’s a whole clan built around drinking, whoring, singing, and brawling (with one another, not the bad guys)—it not only serves an ill-defined purpose, it’s a racist sterotype.
I don’t suppose my little rant will have any impact; WW adventures are full of arrogant control freaks because the WW staff, judging by its editorials, can really relate to arrogant control freaks, and they aren’t going to change just because somebody calls them on failing to meet their own standards. But the page still galls me, and it feels good to gripe about it publicly.