Setting and Story

One thing that gets brought up a lot in discussions about gaming is the setting, and more often then not people tend to be very particular about liking a game based on the setting and fluff presented. I’m the same way; I’m not going to play a game with a boring setting and bland fluff. As a writer and avid reader I generally expect that a little more than 5 minutes thought gets put into the setting for a game, and I expect the story behind everything to be gripping and compelling(or at the very least exciting).

During the course of conversations, though, an interesting discussion tends to come up; setting vs. story. In most discussions about fluff and setting it’s nearly inevitable that someone(usually me if I get the chance) will bring up Warhammer 40k’s unmoving plot and how nothing really interesting has happened since the Horus Heresy. The rebuttal I usually see is “it’s a setting, not a story.” This seems like a kind of lazy response to me because a setting is just a setting, where there are no characters or anything like that. The story revolves around the characters, and 40k does love it’s characters.

Perhaps the 40k universe is just too large to facilitate actual plot progression, or maybe GW just lacks competent writers(hello Matt Ward), or maybe it’s some other silly reason I can’t think of. Either way I feel that a setting alone is boring and that there has to be some sort of plot to drive the setting along to keep events happening and to keep things fresh. If things just stay the same the entire time and the setting never changes or evolves then it gets stagnant and bland real fast. Other games tend to keep things in a much smaller scale, and thinking about it now the game with the largest scale, in terms of setting, that I play is Firestorm Armada. Other games I play tend to keep things a little more compact and tight. Heavy Gear is basically just on Terra Nova(but the plot progresses), Infinity is set to the Human Sphere which is about 6 planets(but the plot progresses), and even Warmachine is set on a single continent of it’s world. Even looking back at my old favorite Warzone the setting was condensed to just our solar system, and even then to a handful of planets(Mars, Venus, Mercury and Luna if you want to get real specific).

Maybe GW just won’t advance what little plot there is because it’s already at the very tail end of the 41st millennium, and advancing it at all would take it to the 42nd and mess up the name. AT-43 was in a similar predicament, and so will any historical game that wishes to stick to historical accuracy. Any game which uses a date or some sort of time-stamp in the title will always be doomed to not being able to really do much with it’s setting.

But does a game need a story? In my opinion it does, and not just because I’m a writer who loves to watch a story evolve. I think if you just have a setting that never changes, that’s always the same, that has nothing to show growth then it’ll get really boring really fast. Now plot progression doesn’t have to really mean a massive shift of events with each new book or what-have-you, but at least something to show that things aren’t just exactly the same as they were last edition. I think the best way to do this is through the expansion book. Infinity, Warmachine, Heavy Gear, AT-43; they all have expansions which outline progression of the setting and plot advancement. And this works because you can outline events, advance the setting a bit and do things like allow to you introduce new units or even entire armies. Infinity’s first expansion, Human Sphere, advanced the plot a bit(but not so much it was ground breaking), gave each army new units, and made Aleph a playable army in the game. This is a great way to do things if you ask me. Story, to me, is just as important as the general basic setting, if not more so. A setting can be great, but if it’s always the exact same thing then it’s not going to keep my interest for very long.

Now miniatures games and RPGs work differently in this sense because in a RPG you don’t really need a book to advance the plot because that’s the role of the players. RPGs are more of an interactive experience within the world, and on a much more personal level, so the players actions can shape the world around them. There’s also the ability to easily create your own world and go from there, which is something that miniatures game tend to lack. This makes them different, so when someone argues a miniatures game plot never changing please don’t respond with “I never hear anyone bitching that Forgotten Realms never changes” because you just look like a dope.

Next week; Why are people so terrified of breaking cliches?