I have been musing for a while about the relationship with the dead objects that are the Wikification of Lore, franchises in the TTRPG space and who knows what, and I have not had enough for a proper article, so gonna pour it out my thoughts on this on one of these informal brain-noise ones.
It clicked on me eventually that the reason why I was having such a problem is that I was trying to rotate these cubes by themselves, and was failing because they are all part of the same massive hyperobject, something that cannot be easily perceived the real dimensions of1.
The franchise/brand as consumer identity, the conflating of the art with the franchise/brand, the Funko Pop/treatfication of former art objects, the conversion of art objects into dead Lore to be immortalized in Wiki-form, copyright law and enclosure of intellectual property: they all are part of the same hyperobject:
Database as narrative.
That is what Lore is. That is what Funko Pops are. That is what Brand is. That is what Franchise mindset seeks.
Art, all art, is ultimately made of components coming together in new arrangements, when there is hardly anything “original” about that. This is why ownership is so alien to art and any artistic endeavours struggles: you never really own any art you make, you are the steward of things that came before and good art is able to pass onwards. This general intellect of universal personhood can be crudely interpreted as free data; data roaming free.
The same all-consuming, all-incorporating logic of capitalism cannot allow such a thing to be. Free-roaming data is considered a wasteland rip to productive endeavours; this wasteland is called noise. Capital sees the act of sorting though that noise and making useable data, productive data, as a claim to ownership: enclosure as the database.
Franchises are the database; they are one and the same. Copyright is the right to neglect, rent and use the content of a database; Lore is the individual data pieces that are the interface between you and the database, and the most recognizable of those become the Brand.
Interacting with the database, at all, is an antagonistic process. Even the most “friendly” Franchise is still a database, operating as a database, and thus antagonistic to the stewardship, social production and freedom required for the artistic process. But because a database sorts things in the process of enclosing and owning them, it also does not create new things; so it makes some concessions to allow more noise to be created, but in a manner of production that facilitates its later enclosure2. This is often restricting work with the database to some kind of “artist” class, keeping this essential part of social personhood as something only a few selected by the database-owners can engage with and seek fulfilment from.
This concession comes, for the most part, because of the impossibility of being impossible to have database as narrative; there is an extra step required to make more data you can use to expand the database. Which is a good thing it is impossible, since it happening would exclude already that small slice of artists and make this entirely the domain of owners.
So let’s talk about how we live in the impossible world where the database is narrative.
At the stage of capitalism we are, the enclosure of general intellect has reached the point where more and more stuff can be taken from noise and into database-sorted data; you can make entire Franchises without abandoning the database. Finally, you are able to entire “art objects” just my sorting data back and forth across databases; this, of course, favors interaction between other databases, so Franchise between Franchise communication. So Franchise Logic can make a movie. Anything new, anything that does not communicate through this dataspeech, has two options: either captured from noise or ironed out.
Any of the Disney things with the MCU, that is narrative that is database and database that is narrative. The Franchise Logic is the only thing allowed to produce art objects, because only those that can be incorporated into Franchise/Database are of “value”.
Franchise Logic has the world in such tight grip that it is hard to escape it. So many people have Brands as part of their identities, which means their identities are broken into Lore across different Databases; an alienating experience and subjecting themselves to, to capture. In this all-encompassing Franchise Logic of the hegemonic culture imaginary, it is all very easy to think there are “good” Franchises, that one can “fix” a Franchise, or trick yourself into believing that at some point a Franchise had to “be good” — if at some point it was not good art, it would never have taken off and people keep giving it a chance, would it?
No. The Franchise/Database is an instrument of enclosure, of capture. Art is just art and succeeds by the parameters of art3; quality of art (be it noise or be it moved data) is independent of the quality of the database4. The Franchise is the database, no the noise chopped into data: this is why it is a fallacy to assume a Franchise needed to have at some point art objects of such remarkable features that it demanded a Franchise.
Furthermore, if one accepts that, it becomes self evident by a Franchise cannot ever be Good. The Database captures noise/moves data; it is what it does. As a tool, it is what it does. A magnificent machine of capitalist consumption of all into itself: the erosion of collective personhood of humanity and the trimming of general intellect is where it extracts its value. It goes without saying that applying this drill to such soft social tissue is harmful to all art forms, and disastrous to those right under its diamond tip.
I can concede the claims that a Franchise contains, or contained at some point, remarkable art objects. There are many reasons to believe that is possible, as well as why Franchises turn to shit:
As risk averse as capital is, it invests and takes more risks when opening new markets: this means Franchises relax their pressure on art at their inception or expansion.
Older Franchises emerge in a noise/data ratio in the artistic safe that heavily favors noise. As such, in the process to establish themselves they must capture remarkable art objects.
As a Franchise ages, it contaminates its artistic and creative environment: these is more noise that has been captured and integrated in the datasets of the Franchise, and there is less and less noise as fewer art objects are created outside of the Franchise Logic.
The most successful a Franchise is depends on their initial capture of remarkable art objects and how it carries more and more of surrounding noise within itself, balancing growth with reducing remarkable art objects out of itself.
Which is ultimately to point and just like there are no Good Franchises, you can never Fix a Franchise: any Database/Franchise that is successful, that is a machine working for its purpose productively, contains within its operations its own degradation. It will always deteriorate while it remains a Franchise; "successful” “fixes” are just fresh batches of noise being poured into the machine.
TTRPGs are, for the many ways they are required to work, resistant to Franchise Logic. Which, for the most part, resulted in them being disregarded for Database/Franchise capture, but the efforts keep showing up and one should do well to remain vigilante. This is why it was adamant for me to clarify:
All Franchises Are Bastards. There are no good franchises. Franchises do not make good art nor they fail or succeed based on making good art; they succeed based on how well they implement Franchise Logic and successfully convert noise/manage database-captured data. The very fact a Franchise exists is a eroding presence in every art and every person who interacts with.
Now, what if one looks at Franchises from this framework, what one can take form their interactions with TTRPGs? Dunno, took everything to pull this out of my head, now we can start thinking about that.
TTRPGs, as the post-modern form of collaborative storytelling arts, requires many things to work that are hostile to Franchise Logic; however, this is not the first time we talk here about things in tension with the art of roleplaying that nevertheless have been calcified as a feature of it56. Doing the art and using them as tool requires us to abandon the Franchise Logic that assaults us in every day of our lives; but that is not going to leave us unscathed.
For the most part of its history, Franchise Logic flowed from the outside into the inside of the art form; for over three decades attempts at developing Franchises involving roleplaying have failed. Franchise Logic was the domain of Licensed TTRPGs, carrying them into the space; however, due to the requirement of stewardship as a tool used to make art, concessions demanded for it to work as collaborative storytelling games. Even strong-identity, long spawning game series like RIFTS and Traveller refused the database and embraced noise; World of Darkness attempt at Franchise Logic into video games, card games, tv series and wrestling proved things did not flow into database form easily from tabletop roleplaying games. Just ask anyone who ever played games like Legend of the Fire Rings or Android: the collective card game could be easily databased and used Franchise Logic to create narrative and art, and anyone playing the related TTRPGs could integrate them with their eyes closed; however, the opposite direction never happened - not once art form related to their companion TTRPGs successfully was integrated into the database and the card game.
It is a confident claim to say that this all changed with the OGL. TSR had tried their hand at Franchise Logic before, failing to capture other databases and noise such as Star Trek and Mad Max; they failed7. The OGL pushed by WotC created a lingua franca of TTRPG database; the entire industry and larger scene went effectively overnight from artistic noise following in and out in conversation with each other methods of stewardship to being databases in conversation with other databases and sharing/fighting over data; even FATE and other games that had little in common with the monopolistic forces used their language in building their own databases.
I wish this was the part where I turned the light to the indie scene that has been fighting this Franchise Logic; unfortunately, the damage was done and the Database/Franchise thinking kept creeping on even counter-OGL schools of design8. It has spread enough that it is now in contact with the other databases like never before.
This is why TTRPG Funko Pops thrive so much. Why Modiphius and Free League operate in Franchise Logic with great profits, having created their own database through which they break everything down and are also happily in conversation with other media franchises. This is why WotC is doing what it has been doing. And so on. But this works, this only works, because things have been either captured in database, or art is being made to be captured, even around the noise — and there is less and less noise.
This is also down to how we make art that is down to Franchise logic. People learn of other games by having them captured and formatted to fit the database of One Shot; one’s own noise is disregarded in favor of data from a dataset of a designfluencer. Novel design is given space as jams, which by design are databases and thus can be used for capture for Franchise Logic. TTRPGs been financing themselves with merch more and more, to the point they become now IP for movies and series, achieving now what did not work in the 90s when that Logic was not so ubiquitous.
Even things like SRDs are database/Franchise logic. Is a game that is creative commons worse for developing than a game with a license? Some may say yes, but most people would say there is no practical difference. And for the most, except say, much lauded licenses that give you absolutely nothing that they can claim ownership and constrain you legally, in terms of “actual” design, it is exactly the same art. However, we discussed this before.
Making something from a SRD or a fully communalized game from similar games makes similar art; just look at FitD vs PbtA. However, FitD has the logic of the database: it converses with you and your art like a database, breaks down data, and makes concessions while protecting the data they use for IP and TV series deals by limiting any conversation you may have with them do the database — in the process, reproducing a little bit of Blades in the Dark in every FitD that just cannot be shaken off without great cost. PbtA, on the other hand, is a noisy conversation between so many schools of stewardship, with their own spin-off stewards, in conversation with each other without fitting the database.
Nobody needed a PbtA SRD to make PbtA.
But you need a SRD to make a database and you need a database to make a Franchise. Magpie perfected their home style into a database of PbtA and it got them Avatar Legends as they were able to talk database to database with Viacom.
Franchise Logic is here.
Now, this would be a grim point to end. Instead, I’m gonna bang my tiny drum again: TTRPGs embrace autheur theory and/or franchise logic to become more like publishers and measure themselves against publishers; I argue that the unique artistic features of TTRPGs are enhanced from looking more to fanfiction and how they do things. And this is where we may find an antidote for Franchise Logic.
The stewardship that is needed to play a roleplaying game and make art makes it a great vector to crack open databases and liberate data; take it apart, and through the stewardship make it impossible to communicate with the database even if it was shoved back again.
DeFranchise. Crack open the database. Take the data. Take it all back. Refuse to shape yourself to fit Franchise Logic. Converse with other artists and let your art chirp without these interfaces.