To Influence Creators, You Have To Actually Support Them

Given that we just had a bunch of elections, I want to describe a political situation that happens in the U.S. among more left-leaning people, and their reaction to power.

So, the Democratic Party puts out its representative. This person is usually pretty unacceptable to those who want meaningful, structural change, and they typically have a bunch of status quo policies. They might be good on one or two issues, and neutral on others, but a lot of folks see them (and not incorrectly so) as a lesser evil. So these voters fold their arms, and refuse to participate until they are given a candidate who is more in-line with what they actually want. When this happens, though, the democrats don't push further and further left to court their votes; instead, they track further toward the American center (the global right) or the American right (the global far right).

The reason for this is that folks who are center-to-right vote reliably, they engage with the process, and they are going to make a more reliable base for that candidate to actually get into office. Yet over and over again folks seem confused why their attempts to punish these candidates drive them toward conservatives, rather than making them more leftist.

In general, this is because if you aren't supporting someone (you aren't voting for them, donating money to them, giving them volunteer hours, etc.) then you have nothing you can take away from them. So your opinion on their platform, what they're doing, etc., is irrelevant because they lose nothing by ignoring you, and it's uncertain that your support would be worth the investment it would take to get you on their side.

This post isn't about politics, though. It's about people who make art, and understanding why your criticism may not be getting the reaction you want from the creators whose work you're trying to shape.

Why aren't they listening to me!?

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You Have To Have Leverage If You Want To Use It

I've been in this game for a while now, and I've got over 200 titles with my name on them. I've worked for a dozen or more publishers as a freelancer, and I am (knock wood) still managing to survive. However, this week I wanted to address the connection between consumer behavior (that is to say all of you, out in the audience) and creator behavior (folks like me who are making things for all of you to use, enjoy, and consume).

Generally speaking, your feedback is extremely important to us. And while some of that will be comments on social media, or the reviews of the things we've made, feedback also comes in terms of sales numbers and general audience attitude.

For a specific, let's take the whole OGL situation that Wizards of The Coast stepped in a few years back. They were going to tear down the Open Game License agreements that allowed everyone to use the Dungeons and Dragons ruleset, turn the screws on creators by demanding big shares of their sales, put up walls around D&D, add in AI, force it to go digital, and a whole bunch of other stuff I can't even recall now. And they backed off of basically all of that because people started cancelling their subscriptions, and no longer buying DND 5E materials. The company was bleeding profits, and it was that action from the audience that forced their hand and made them change direction.

If Wizards had been bombarded by messages from people who weren't actually buying their books, or who weren't people with accounts on their digital platform who were telling the company, "Well, I'm not going to give you any of my money now!" they would have utterly ignored it. Because you're threatening not to give them phantom sales that they don't have. But people who were paying the companies' bills closing their accounts and leaving en masse? That got the suits' attention really fast because they were losing actual, measurable profits and the brand was taking a nosedive.

Oh... those numbers aren't good...

And this is a point that I want to drive home to people out there. Creators will absolutely listen to you... but if you're not part of their fan base, if you're not actually buying their books, playing their games, watching their channels, and so on, then they aren't going to change what they're doing just to please you. Creators (and companies) change to keep the support they have, not to roll the dice and take a gamble on support they might maybe possibly get according to unverified accounts online.

Two strong examples of this come to mind for me, personally.

Somewhere between 3 and 5 years ago there was a person on Reddit who raised a big stink about the way I posted in a particular sub. They were very mad about my behavior, accused me of just being in it to make money, and said that he and his entire table who supported me on Patreon were going to delete their pledges immediately. I found that somewhat alarming, worried that I'd pissed off a not-insignificant part of my own fanbase (since I've never had more than 35 paying patrons at a time)... but one day after another went by, and there was no change in my numbers. I even reached back out to the person, wanting to make sure he hadn't deleted a pledge to someone else he'd mistaken for me. At the end of the day, it was just an empty threat made by someone who just wanted me to stop posting in his group.

Another incident came with the recent project I was part of, Night Horrors: Primoridal Peerage. This supplement was met with a lot of flak because one of the major names on the original Beast: The Primordial turned out to be a predator, and it sort of tainted the game in the eyes of a lot of players. To be clear, that person was not involved with this supplement, and the folks I worked with on it appear to be a pretty solid team of people as far as I know. However, there were a lot of comments saying how we shouldn't make anything for Beast, how they didn't play that game and weren't going to buy this. There were event a few folks who said they'd moved on from the Chronicles of Darkness entirely because there were too many problematic designers who'd contributed to the games. At the end of the day, though, the supplement hit Silver status (minimum 101 sales), and there were some folks who liked it despite its pedigree. And the folks who left those comments... well, all they were telling us was that this wasn't a game they were going to play. It apparently never occurred to them they weren't the target audience, so their criticism didn't exactly move the needle all that much.

In Summary... Don't Go All In When You've Got No Hand

It's true that creators and businesses will listen to their fans when they make themselves heard. But you need to have something you can take away from them if you expect them to change their behavior. If you're a member of their crowdfunding audience, people cutting off that support and telling the creator why might get them to change their behavior. If people start unsubscribing from their YouTube, unfollowing them on social media, and telling them why on the way out the door, that might get their attention.

But if you aren't subscribed, you don't buy their books, and you don't support them, then what are you threatening to take away? Because in that situation you're the angry woman loudly proclaiming, "You just lost yourself a customer!" to a store you've never actually bought anything from as you storm out the front doors. If you didn't actually establish a pattern of supporting them, then they lost absolutely nothing when you left.

All right... have a nice day, or something...

Please, if you've read this far, understand what I'm saying. You are absolutely free to support or not support any writers, game designers, or companies you want to. No matter what kinds of products they make, it's your money, and you can do whatever you want with it.

With that said, if you want to actually use your buying power to shape the kinds of products that creators put together, then you have to actually have support you can take away from them. Because you can't give people less attention or fewer sales than zero, so you don't really have anything you can threaten them with if you don't have any skin in the game.

Like, Follow, and Stay in Touch!

That's all for this week's Moon Pope Monday. To stay on top of all my content and releases, make sure you subscribe to my newsletter at the bottom of the page!

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Soft Power, And Winning in The World of Darkness

One of the major advantages of the World of Darkness (and its successor the Chronicles of Darkness) is that there is no way to "win" these settings in any definitive sense. No matter what threats you manage to deal with, or how many enemies you put in the ground, there are forces out there that are too big for you to handle individually. Things that are too powerful, too decentralized, or too all-encompassing to be slain with fang and claw, bullet and blade.

You can have victories, and you should. But the struggle will always continue on.

Because there's always one more hand to play.

However, something that both the World and Chronicles of Darkness settings emphasize that is often downplayed in other RPGs is the idea of victory through soft power. And since my 100 Mourning Cant Dialects, Phrases, and Meanings recently dropped for Changeling: The Lost, I thought I'd tell a story about a Winter Courtier of mine, and how his strategies went almost totally unopposed because no one saw the kind of game he was playing.

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The Game of Whispers

Simon Blackridge was born into privilege, and raised by the cool professionalism of the servant class in the ivory towers of Chicago, Illinois. Maids and butlers, instructors and tutors left him a well-spoken but distant young man, who had more of a cordial than loving relationship with his parents. When his father died he tried to look mournful and introspective, because that was what was required of him. But he wandered off into the snow of the cemetery, and found himself in the Hedge.

It was through his wanderings, and his unfailing politeness, that he found himself in the court of the Snow Queen. The True Fae saw how this odd, distant boy had been formed, and took him beneath her wing. Under her tutelage his mind grew sharp, and his tongue grew cruel. Lights blossomed on his skin and in his eyes, and he took on the rainbow hues of the northern lights; beautiful, but cold, distant, and uncaring.

The last thing his Queen did was bid him to return to the world of mortals, and to find a place within the Winter Court. And to ensure he would be welcomed, she allowed him to think she was dead, breaking his heart as she took away the one connection he truly had. This left him in a state of sorrow, and frozen determination to do the last thing she asked of him.

Long live the Prince.

Simon returned, with the aid of his Lady's servants getting him back where he belonged, and he quickly used his skills and Contracts to establish a power base for himself. His fetch had inherited his family's real estate firm and holdings in his absence, and Simon arranged a bargain with the creature that he would help grow the firm even larger in exchange for cooperation. He was accepted to the Winter Court, telling them the truths they wanted to hear while lying only by omission. At that point, he began to build his influence.

While never one to sully his hands with blood, Simon was a strategist, and a master of manipulation. He rapidly amassed a huge fortune using the ability to see into the future, and to adjust his stock portfolios accordingly while avoiding the gaze of investigators. Using those funds he purchased housing and resources for the freehold, making sure other changelings had safe houses they could go to, smoothing the way toward acquiring false identities, and taking care of the costs of living when one has dropped out of the world. Though never fully trusted thanks to his easy smile, arrogant demeanor, and too-smooth answers, he was valued for the services he provided.

Simon's plan was to continue his acquisitions, and to make himself indispensable. To become what he had been under his Lady... a Prince. Alliances were forged with organized crime figures, money laundering operations were opened, and shell companies started in order to set other wheels in motion. Charity clinics were created to be used as fronts for body disposal, and to help changelings get medical care. Legal offices and representatives were acquired to provide cover from nosy investigators. Influence was purchased at political galas and fundraisers, ensuring that if Simon needed something to happen all it took was the right word in the right ear and it would get done.

He was not one of the Monarchs of the freehold, and in truth he had little enough desire to be one. Because he had learned a truth that few still truly understood; that the authority of the clenched fist was often far less persuasive than the debt of the open hand when it came to ensuring loyalty, and power.

Soft Power Gets Results

When most people think of power in a game, they tend to think of hard power. The character who kicks in a door, waves a gun in someone's face, or makes an explicit threat of violence is using hard power, coercing others to do what they want. Soft power, by contrast, is the use of cultural or economic influence to persuade someone else to do what you want. Soft power is using one's social position, greasing a palm with a bribe, or giving someone what they need in order to endear yourself to them so that, later on, they're more likely to side with you in a conflict.

This is usually discussed on the scale of nations, but you can break it down to smaller interactions as well. And it really helps in understanding how to achieve results in a setting like the Chronicles of Darkness.

Given that both World and Chronicles of Darkness are games of modern, dark fantasy, they deal with struggles in the huge, interconnected world we live in. And while there are always going to be small battles that will be fought in the small-scale, many of the chronicle plots involve looking at bigger problems that you simply cannot defeat solely through the barrel of a gun in a meaningful way.

However, through exerting soft power, you can often smooth out challenges, or overcome them entirely.

For example, if a Pentex subsidiary is causing problems in the local area, sure, you can blow up the refinery, or kill the mad scientists who are experimenting in there. It often means you'll just have a new facility with fresh faces moving back in, along with a bigger security team. But if you start up the rumor mill to create negative impressions in the media about the company's corruption, you tarnish their reputation, and create problems for them. If you get people who owe you favors on the planning commission, or in the permits department to review those cases in order to maintain their relationship with you, there might be further problems for the company. And even if you do need to eventually go in and kill the monsters being grown in the lab, that's easier to do when the tide of public opinion is already turned against the research facility, so if something bad does happen no one is going to leap to their defense.

The issue with soft power, though, is much the same as the issue with playing a support character; you don't spend a lot of time in the spotlight.

Soft power takes a lot of time to cultivate and grow in a game. It also tends to be done in downtime actions (whether you're at a tabletop or a LARP), and it can take a lot of XP to buy the dots you need in Resources, Allies, Contacts, etc. to back up your play. And then, when it does come time to wield that power, you do it by making a phone call, sending an email, or talking to a representative. It isn't as dramatic as a knock-down, drag-out brawl, or a contest of wills between potent magical beings, but more often than not it is this subtle ability to influence that solves problems neatly, and cleanly in a game known for being quite messy both literally and metaphorically.

There will always be a place for the blade, the gun, and the assassination. Spies, saboteurs, and enforcers are just as much a part of these settings as the monsters whose skins the players slip into. However, for those who want to try on the role of the velvet glove instead of the iron fist, it can be quite a rewarding experience.

What's Next on Table Talk?

That's it for this installment of Table Talk! What would you like to see next? Or do you have your own story you'd like to share with folks?

For more of my work, check out my Vocal archives, as well as the YouTube channel Dungeon Keeper Radio where I help out from time to time. Or, to check out books like my hard-boiled cat noir novel Marked Territory, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife or my recent short story collection The Rejects, head over to My Amazon Author Page!

To stay on top of all my latest releases, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter, as well as on Pinterest where I'm building all sorts of boards dedicated to my books, RPG supplements, and greatest hits. Lastly, to help support me and my work, consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page to become a regular, monthly patron! Even a little donation can have a big impact.