Let's Talk Metaplot
-
@Autumn said:
Have the metaplot be like the elevator pitch for a continuing TV series, maybe. You're not a writer or a director or even the producer for a particular season (although you'll probably wear all those hats at one point or another); you're more like the studio head who says, "I want to do a show about ordinary people getting superhuman powers, and how they deal with the way the world and their lives change as a result of that."
It's not a bad idea to borrow a few pages from TV show writing - obviously there are vast differences but there are also similarities in the creation of a persistent world (rather than generating just enough for a single story with a very specific beginning and end, which is more in the domain of movies).
I can't find it at the moment but I think it was Whedon who came up with a formula for an eerie similar issue they were faced on TV. See, a show needs to retain its loyal audience and providing them with metaplot is a good way of doing that since they retain their curiosity and invest in watching to see what happens, but they also want new viewers to not be alienated when they happen to catch just one episode and they can't tell what the hell's happening since everyone's referring to events and people they don't know about. Evidently a good formula is 1-for-2 (again if I remember correctly) - one episode dealing with the metaplot followed by two self-contained ones, leading up to a season finale.
Maybe we can use a similar framework and much for the same reason. We, too, have casual players who can't be there for everything being ran and we have people who have been engaged in storylines they'd like to follow to their pay off. So there should be a mix between such long-term engagements and one-shot things so everyone is satisfied to some degree - not necessarily in the same ratio used on TV of course, but the general principle can probably hold up to a bit of scrutiny.
-
@Cobaltasaurus said:
And there is no way that the Changeling Metaplot on HM continued to exist without documentation from folks. (@Ganymede were you guys good about documentation?)
We tried to be. We had a Forum, I think, where we put up a lot of details during my tenure. My tenure was admittedly short, so I don't know how long things persisted thereafter.
-
From the POV of a runner of metaplot:
- Documentation is a huge downside. There was constant need to fight misinformation -- not through IC desire for misinformation, but OOC misunderstandings. There were several times I just flat out said "what you think is happening is not correct, this is the correct interpretation" because I didn't want OOC misinformation at that point in the process. I wanted people to know what they knew.
- You have to constantly work to involve as many as possible, then go do some more involvement because your initial efforts aren't going to work. Then maybe another time because see above.
- I felt strongly at the time (and still do) that the metaplot on TR should have had more varied ending. That is to say, whether or not the PCs met goals should have affected what happened after in pretty large, broad-brush ways. It is my forever disappointment that I was too burnt afterwards to push harder for staff buy-in on the big changes I wanted to see done.
Things I've Learned and How I'll Handle It Moving Forward:
- The Metaplot on SW will be less of a single story with a long arc, and more a situation (war!) with developments that will be met by PCs or not-met, as the case may be. This will let me break it into discrete chunks (chapter as mentioned in someone's suggestion above), and allow for more changes along the way as needed to the plot itself. If something just isn't clicking with the playerbase or with me, I'll be able to adjust more 'on the fly'.
- The same key phrases that I'm asking plot runners to work into their stories somehow, will be worked into the metaplot. The goal is cohesion and a feeling of everything carrying similar threads, even if the final product looks different for each player.
- How the players are 'doing', that is to say, some sort of display or prose or something that explains whether they're ahead of the bad guys, falling behind, etc., will be visible and obvious. It shouldn't be a secret, though this may be a side-effect of playing Mages who can tell how well they're faring.
- Above all else, what the players do needs to matter. It needs to. If they don't feel invested, then it's not really a cooperative collaborative effort. I can go play at NaNoWriMo if I want something I write on my own.
It's been years now, I think 2? Since TR. I vaguely recall writing up a post about it after the fact, but it was on WORA. If folks have questions about the behind-the-scenes doing of it all, both good and bad (I know not everyone felt it was a success at all points along the way) feel free to ask. I don't mind yammering, obv.
ES
-
Mystery Science Lemuria 3000!
@EmmahSue said:
From the POV of a runner of metaplot:
- Documentation is a huge downside.
Over-documentation is a huge downside. I bet that somewhere it was written down what part the old Winter Queen had to do with the Night of a Thousand Knives on Haunted Memories. (I'm prodding Troy to see if she remembers.)
- You have to constantly work to involve as many as possible
The Reach metaplot was complex. Too complex. It would probably have been fine if it was just about the families, but it wasn't. It probably would have been fine if each sphere had their own tell-tale plot, but they didn't.
- I felt strongly at the time (and still do) that the metaplot on TR should have had more varied ending.
The metaplot had an ending, which is where I feel it failed as a metaplot. And then it tried to be everything to all people, which is where I feel it failed as a metaplot. And then we gave its ending over to the players, which is where I feel it failed as a metaplot. And then we kind of ignored that and couldn't decide how to end it, which is where I feel it failed as a metaplot.
I agree with you that all of this was our fault, but because we agreed to take responsibility by being headstaff. But that not to blame yourself.
Things I've Learned and How I'll Handle It Moving Forward:
I agree with all of these.
“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos -
@Thenomain said:
The metaplot had an ending, which is where I feel it failed as a metaplot.
I'm not sure it's possible for me to disagree with something more strongly than I disagree with this.
If your metaplot has no ending it is wankery. It's never-ending meta-"plots" in particular that I ignore and/or get driven off by when playing games. A plot almost by definition (and maybe actually by definition) is the resolution of a conflict. No resolution? It's just an unfortunate series of events.
-
@WTFE said:
@Thenomain said:
The metaplot had an ending, which is where I feel it failed as a metaplot.
I'm not sure it's possible for me to disagree with something more strongly than I disagree with this.
Sorry, I was talking in context but using generalized terms. Anyone paying attention to me (why?!) would note that I earlier praise the Haunted Memories' Changeling plot for the fact that it could end.
The Reach's metaplot never should have ended. It should have evolved. Or its ending should have been a new beginning. I think this because it was so big and all-encompassing. Troy, Emmah and I talked from time to time about "what should happen next". In my mind, in this thread, that was us discussing what new metaplot would rise from the consequences of ending the former one.
But yeah, you're right. Metaplots should have the right to end. In the same way that "traveling to the horizon" should be a destination. Maybe my philosophy, if I continue to refine it, is: Never leave the game without something that drives it. Not "drives the players", not necessarily "drives the plots", but drives the game.
-
There's absolutely nothing wrong with a plot ending by beginning something new. But there must be an end in sight or it's just background noise.
-
That to me is like saying theme is just background noise. If you don't have theme, you really do have a sea of bland made of bland-atoms made of bland-quarks. Even a non-compelling theme is better than no theme at all.
“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos -
Just noting that the HM Changeling plot did end/was concluded, it was just after most everyone had already bailed. Like a TV show which knows it's failing and wraps up everything in one cheesy grand finale. It could have been epic, and was instead ok, but it did in fact get wrapped up.
-
@Thenomain said:
That to me is like saying theme is just background noise. If you don't have theme, you really do have a sea of bland made of bland-atoms made of bland-quarks. Even a non-compelling theme is better than no theme at all.
Theme ≠ plot. If a plot doesn't resolve, nor move visibly toward resolution, it isn't a plot. It's an unfortunate series of events. The whole point of a plot is that it resolves. If all you have is background events that illustrate a point of the game or that set the tone of it, you have a theme, not a plot.
-
-
I see Metaplot as large scale events, that may or may not be clearly defined by anything in RP.
The War, The Depression, Out of the Ashes, The Rise of the Underclass -- these are mertaplots you could apply (WW2, The Great Depression, any post catastrophe, the Civil Rights Movement or the Sepoy Rebellion).
Themes can be developed from that Metaplot, and probably should. But no one thing is the beginning or end of it exactly.
-
While plot does not equal metaplot, just like a plot the metaplot should not remain static. to use the TV show analogy very few shows are at the same point in metaplot after five seasons then they were at the beginning. the only ones I can think of off the bat that were are sitcoms and even some of those have movement.
though my definition of plot vs meta plot differs, I see plot as what drive an episode or individual story where meta plot is what drives the game.
In some cases a static meta plot could be used to make a point but that should be a conscious decision. -
As a mostly casual player my largest exposure I can think of to metaplot on a major scale was in the Changeling sphere on the Reach. I felt very strongly that it was easy for me to get involved in the metaplot and that all kinds of staff were eager and happy to help me do so. I also felt like my potential role in building the metaplot was and could only be moving these giant blocks of sandstone along this track of wooden rollers and that if I tried to do anything else or push in any other direction I would be summarily executed and dumped in a ditch.
I wouldn't have minded that there were awesome and more intricate plots available for people who were able and willing to commit to that sort of thing, but I did kind of mind the existence of this giant plot which I felt guilt-induced and expected to participate in as basically one of the slaves building the pyramids as a giant eternal monument to someone else's awesome ideas.
(*Historian note: the pyramids were not actually built with slave labor.)
Or, if I wasn't participating, that I was constantly expected to know what was going on and respond IC and sidetrack my character's own personal plotlines and interactions with people appropriately.
So I guess the tl;dr is that my feeling is that what the casual player actually wants out of metaplot is just the ability to ignore it without repercussion. Feel free to argue that that is reasonable or not.
(*They were built by aliens.)
-
Sometimes plots that feel like they are on rails aren't.
I'm not saying this because I think people unjustly accuse some storytellers of this "too much". It happens all the time. But I have run things sometimes where people have said "this is on rails, I don't have choices!" when largely, it was because the choice they felt kept the story on "rails" was essentially the easiest choice for them (and their characters) to make.
For example, on The Reach's Changeling sphere I ran a plot linked to the metaplot of The Reach in general. It was about an ancient True Fae being released. This True Fae had power over Time (and I had to really consider all my options if I wanted to play with that).
Previously, I had run another plot in which someone actually acquired something that could (theoretically) kill a True Fae. I didn't know if they were going to use it, but the possibility was there. I provided it.
And then I introduced this time-futzing Gentry.
The players--of which there were many, which is a problem with running stories on MUs that I will gladly get into some other time--could have done a whole bunch of different things:
- They could have shot the Gentry to death with their Gentry-killin' bullets (mentioned above);
- They could have attempted to talk to him;
- They could have ran away really, really fast;
- They could have stood there in shock and seen what he did;
- They could have done any number of other things.
But the person with the bullets spent a turn staring--and no one said moo. So the person emptied the clip into a very confused True Fae's face and that was that.
This was the easiest solution to a very obvious problem: The Gentry are the worst thing to ever be bad, as far as Changelings are concerned, and being able to kill one who managed to show up in the Hedge near their Freehold was a no-brainer... right?
Sure. But it wasn't their only choice. It was the "best" choice. But not the only choice. (And it wasn't even the best choice, because they all also knew that the True Fae was one of the Seals keeping Scout at bay, which meant that killing the Gentry (best choice, typically) was a bad idea (choice).
Did that one person with the bullets have more power of decision over this than everyone else? Sure. Was that the best option? Eh. Maybe not. But that's how the plot turned out. I gave them those things long before--some people keep those things to themselves; other people share them. IIRC, she shared the knowledge that she had those with lots of the people present and no one actually objected to her having filled the Gentry full of magic lead.
What I remember is a lot of people feeling disappointed because killing the Gentry was "just as bad" as letting it live, because they had broken a Seal. So no matter what, they'd lost, and because so many other plots had gone wrong, they were tired of "losing".
But I don't really plan plots based on whether or not other people's plots are going well or not. If I did, I would literally never run a single fucking thing because fuck that.
TL;DR sometimes there are rails, yes, but sometimes people just aren't willing to make choices (or have their characters make choices) that would move the plot off the obvious, beaten path.
This has been your tangent of the day.
-
I pre-emptively acknowledge that it's not really a fair comparison per se, but that reply makes me think of this comic and Sartre's promise to expand freedom.
Sure, I can do all kinds of things in a game and in a relation to staff, but in any real and meaningful sense, that does not mean that I feel free to do them. Nor even that I should. If the storyteller says, your party stands before the troll cave dungeon, the stench of mildew emanating from the walls, I am free to say I betray and murder the rest of the PCs present, but I do not feel free to do so. Gaming is a social activity and social activities have rules, explicit or otherwise, that we tend to want to follow as social creatures.
My feelings don't necessarily reflect what the storytellers and leads in question were willing and even desiring to encourage, it just reflects what I felt. It may not even be that typical; maybe I'm unusually paranoid due to some bad past experiences. I don't think that is actually so unusual though. And I was aware of several players that were either ran off or had a PC killed etc. for doing something or other to irk various staff.
Also like everything about the fucking native lodges.
So, I don't actually think feeling like that sphere was a fairly coercive metaplot environment was particularly unreasonable based on evidence. And like, if you shove a fae-killing gun in my hand and say "whoops here's a fae's face" I would have not doubted for an instant that I was expected to empty said gun into said face. For me the calculation of risk of crossing staff on such an obvious plot setup versus any remotely plausible reward of potentially crossing your plans would have been trivially easy. I would have just shot face and moved on and tried to ignore, "But woe, your character's foolish actions have advanced the EotW plotline further" which you were going to advance anyway so why the fuck bother to fight it, like you're not going to wake up the sleeping giant evil or something.
In fairness some of that is also probably on WW because the whole "True Fae are always and everywhere 100% pure alien evil" is like the kind of boring and useless setting element they mostly abandoned after 2nd ed oWoD and for good reason.
But yeah tl;dr you can shout "Radical freedom, radical freedom" all you want, but it takes very little to make players feel like this thing you're setting up as the obvious path is what they're supposed to do, and they're not wrong to feel that way based on common experiences and social conventions.
Like ffs that's actually such a perfect example of what not to do, if you want a plot not to feel rails don't say "Here's a gazebo-slaying knife, there's a wild rampaging gazebo, you make your own life choices" and act like that's freedom of plot development or something.
-
To make a point a bit clearer that's maybe a bit buried there:
To actually feel free to take different actions in a metaplot, I have to both feel a) That these actions will be okay with staff and will not run the risk of OOC conflict or basically vindictive IC punishment of some kind. b ) That these actions will not muck up the plot for everyone else in some way or ruin existing plans etc..
And it's very, very easy to not feel that way, especially if some staff are going around being abusive coercive dicks about other things.
-
I wasn't staff at the time. I was just given some creative freedom as to what plot to run and tied it to the larger plot of the game.
And you can scream "social convention, my feelings my feelings," but I can retaliate with the same, and we'll never get anywhere. My point is that yes, sometimes doing things that aren't the obvious easy choice get your character killed; sometimes the point of fighting something inevitable is being able to say "Yeah, it happened, but I did everything I could to stop it,"; and sometimes, just sometimes, it's good to remember that not everyone is "that one person who totally ruined your fun" and that many people are just trying to provide fun in whatever way they can, and the constant bitching and whining about "I'm not going to take a chance with you because so and so fucked me over five years ago" is fucking old.
And while yes, the seals would probably have been broken, etc., etc., not killing this particular Gentry would have allowed me to have a much longer arc (which was a definite possibility) and I would have pushed for it to matter in the grander scheme. But that wasn't really my call, was never gonna be my call, and even the people who had more authority (Lemuria, for instance) were unable (or too burned out to try) to make the repercussions of the apocalypse actually matter.
A decision to "shoot the Gentry and not care about the consequences because who cares" is entirely on the player. People rave on and on about how they love the personal stories and how their own character development is important. But suddenly, if they don't feel like they're affecting the larger narrative enough, it's "not worth it, because who cares?"
And to be clear: I'm not saying that the issues you bring up aren't true and things to work on. But there needs to be a compromise. We're never going to fix them if the attitude is "why bother" even when people are trying.
P.S. Sometimes storytellers like to be subtle, and players are dense as fuck. And even storytellers who are super subtle as storytellers are dense as fuck as players. So instead of assuming that a storyteller is boxing you in, it's sometimes a good idea to raise your hand and go, "uhm, is there something I'm not seeing? An option I'm not exploring? A danger I'm supposed to be aware of but haven't figured out?"
-
@Trundlebot said:
To actually feel free to take different actions in a metaplot, I have to both feel a) That these actions will be okay with staff and will not run the risk of OOC conflict or basically vindictive IC punishment of some kind. b ) That these actions will not muck up the plot for everyone else in some way or ruin existing plans etc..
You're overthinking it. For starters (and this is a usual disclaimer) if you don't trust staff to be mature enough to handle players who make different choices than they had in mind for them and would retaliate in some way - rather than making things more interesting for your PC because of the fallout of such actions - then that's the least of your worries while on their game.
But more specifically no, no. I don't think of whether playing my character will 'much up the plot'. Or if they actions will cause some sort of OOC conflict because someone else wanted a different outcome. I mean communication is really important and I wouldn't be that asshole who comes in and just plays the Fishmalk who ruins immersion by trying to get a deathgrip on the spotlight, but otherwise if there are organic choices within the plot I'm offered, I'll make the one which makes sense.
The flip-side of that is accepting consequences. When my guy kills the revered old wolf or flips a finger at the ancient Gangrel Elder who came to warn the PCs or... whatever then I can't complain if such actions carry stigma or controversy - or rather I'd welcome either.
It all, always and forever, comes down to both the ST and players having faith in each other that they're all working toward telling an interesting tale and having fun. If that trust is there things will eventually work out (the ST will give a chance for outcast characters to come back from this, the players won't be whiny bitches when something doesn't happen their way because they want to win dammit, etc), and if it's not... well, then that is what has to be fixed first. Because nothing else will really work until it's there.
-
Making PC actions matter is a huuuuge-mongous deal. I certainly plan on saying over and over again (until folks are sick of it) that I'll run with anything done in-game. If you want to take a knife to the local faction leader and stand over his body shouting about how you're the king of the mountain, let's play that out! If you want to create a kraken mid-air and drop it on a nephandi's head in broad daylight, we'll play that out too!
We're playing make believe together. I want to get back to that feeling.
ES
