Touchstones and comp titles
(originally posted December 31st, 2023)
As I attempt to scrabble and claw my way out of only playing D&D 5e by looking at a bunch of other TTRPGs out there, I've noticed a lot of them have a small section for "Touchstones": a list of inspirational works. It seems to be a sort of vibe check for a given RPG's theming, both aesthetically and mechanically; what it aspires to evoke.
There's nothing wrong with this, and in fact can be useful to establish the kind of lens you're supposed to be using to evaluate something. TTRPGs, occupying a shared mindspace among the table, benefit from having a shared... well, touchstone. If we're playing a mech game, maybe we should all know if we're playing Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam or The King of Braves: GaoGaiGar.
What I'm sort of puzzling out is why this doesn't bother me, while certain other forms of this do bother me.
I once attended a writing workshop that included a lecture about Pitching, that most devious and terrifying of steps for any writer aspiring to break into the traditional publishing industry.
(Aside: for those not in the know, traditional publishing gatekeeps primarily through literary agents, who take a 10-15% cut of anything you make in exchange for handling the schmoozing and dealing. Most big publishers simply don't accept any submissions that aren't from an agent, so there's a whole cottage industry around finding and convincing an agent to represent you and your book. The idea behind Pitching is that you're trying to convince an agent to read your manuscript and decide this is worth spending their time attempting to sell to publishing houses in the hopes of making a decent payday like 12-18 months down the line.)
The lecturer (an agent themselves) repeatedly hammered home that the most important thing your pitch needed was comp titles, the ol' "X-meets-Y". (The comp is "comparison".)
From what I recall from that many years ago lecture, you wanted to follow these guidelines:
- Comp titles should be popular recent releases; within the past 1-2 years.
- Comp titles should be in the same genre as your book, both in content and demographic.
- Comp titles should contain an element that stands out that makes it clear what specific part of the comp title you're referencing.
- Comp titles should not be big, known properties. (Their phrasing was along the lines of, "If you're listing Harry Potter as a comp, you might as well say you're targeting literally everyone who reads books.")
- If you are targeting a specific enough element or have a compelling enough pitch, this might be okay.
To this day people in the workshop's alumni discord server ask for help coming up with appropriate comp titles like their lives depend on it. To them, it probably feels like it does.
Now, if you're anything like me, having someone describe anything to as "X-meets-Y" is a surefire way to make me uninterested. My brain shuts down because I feel like it doesn't actually tell me anything about the work. I want to know what a story is about, not what it's like. I'm sure there are people out there (and more power to 'em!) who do pick up series because they see a tweet what says "It's like Legend of Korra, but with dragons!!". but I ain't one.
Remember that one tweet about how God of War was "If X also had Y" over and over? Does it make you involuntarily groan because of how little it actually communicates about the game, because it's just evoking stuff you know is scare-quotes "good" in hopes of creating some kind of mental bridge between the two? If so, we're on the same page.
(That said, video games probably are a broad exception to this feeling. Games have a clear mechanical element; telling me something has "the format of Persona" or "is a Souls-clone" gives me a usable frame of reference for understanding what I'm looking at. A book is a book, but FPS-battle-royale might as well be a different medium entirely from citybuilder. The tweet is just a convenient example because of how hyperbolic it is.)
What is the fundamental difference between a touchstone and a comp title in the context of this random post from a guy on the internet who is flapping his mouth hole open and closed repeatedly while pushing buttons on a plastic apparatus? Well, allow me to explain my reasoning behind writing about this dichotomy I kind of made up on the spot.
The thing about comp titles is that they are foremost a marketing tool. The purpose of comp titles is not to convince another human being they might enjoy something or find it fulfilling in any way; their purpose is to convince an agent that you might have an appealing product. Whether it's actually good or not is secondary, what matters is that it sells. You're trying to - in the lecturer's words - reduce the cognitive load of your pitch and make it instantly clear what your audience is. They want recent comps because they want stuff that's hot and trending.
At that same conference, I was sitting at a dinner table with various attendees and all the agents were talking about how they wished they were the ones who signed a particular book, titled "Mage Against the Machine", a "Harry Potter meets Terminator" situation. I never heard a single one say it was good (maybe it is, maybe it isn't, I wouldn't know), what was more important to them was that you immediately understood the premise based on the comps and it had a snappy title that might be appealing to some suit at a publishing house.
When I see a list of touchstones, I don't feel like I'm being advertised to. Usually there's some kind of bizarre entry that only a weird enthusiast would appreciate. Armour Astir shouts out fuckin Armour Hunter Mellowlink and SD Gundam Gaiden and I don't think I personally know anyone who's seen one of those, let alone both. I've seen several TTRPGs specifically mention Valkyria Chronicles, aka "the only fake anime WW2 setting that actually addresses the Holocaust". I saw a cohost post that included Binding of Isaac and Kamen Rider on the same list of touchstones and I can't help but be curious what they were trying to achieve that somehow includes both of those.
And, perhaps more importantly, the touchstones aren't meant to serve as some kind of "boiling down" of the concept. Like I said earlier, they're meant to be thematic inspirations, street signs for the giants upon whose shoulders we stand rather than shrouds for us to pretend we are the giants (wow what the fuck is this metaphor, I immediately wanted to delete this because it barely makes sense but I'm leaving it in because it is so unhinged).
Anyway, thanks for reading. I don't have a thesis or anything other than "wow, capitalism and the market trends created and enforced by it kind of suck and are creatively unfulfilling" but I think you knew that already and I've already written about a thousand words more than I intended to on New Year's Eve about something that has nothing to do with the kind of year wrap-up posts that I probably ought be writing. Take care out there and here's hoping 2024 runs a bit smoother for us all.
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