What even is 'Metaplot'?

[Ganymede]

@Gingerlily said in What even is 'Metaplot'?:

Definitions are always exciting but specific examples are too. Tell me the metaplot of any game that you all remember from the golden age or a recent one or whichever.

"Metaplot" requires a story arc. If you haven't got one, there's really no metaplot, and you shouldn't worry about it.

"Metaplot" suggests that the game operators have a point to which they wish to see happen go. This was pretty clear with The Reach, but less clear on other games.

"Metaplot" relates to the idea that things which occur in the game have some material bearing on the world in which the game is set.

For me, a game with no "metaplot" is a sandbox, where people play because it's fun. On a game with a "metaplot," the people are playing within the confines of some story, and while the conclusion or the events therein aren't fully written it is known that the plots and events are leading somewhere that the players will hopefully be interested in.

In the World of Darkness, games like Werewolf and Mage need a metaplot. Vampire does not, as it can devolve into a political battle (which, like Facebook debates, may lead absolutely nowhere, and is often engaged in to pass the time rather than to make any cogent argument), but it helps.

Other games, like BSG:U have a known metaplot, and the enjoyment of playing is being able to immerse oneself in the setting and create your own story therein.

[faraday]

@Ganymede said in What even is 'Metaplot'?:

"Metaplot" suggests that the game operators have a point to which they wish to see happen go

I agree this is often the case, but it isn't a required feature of a metaplot. You can allow players to shape the direction of the metaplot, within reason.

Funny story: In the first use of +combat on Babylon 5 MUSH, the bad guy NPC overpowered two of the FCs due to a couple fluke rolls. This had the potential completely derail the metaplot by exposing the Army of Light and bringing down about half of the FCs. All parties involved agreed to just ignore the code results and RP it out for the good of the game.

So in my mind it's a balance. Metaplot requires enough of a boundary to keep people from breaking the game, but not so much that you put your players/stories on rails.

[NightAngel12]

I've used Metaplot as a spine for the stories on one of my previous games. I used to say: "If only there'd been more players, we could have really driven the metaplot and gotten a lot out of it."

Then, after chatting with the friend with whom I started Neverwinter, we came to the conclusion that metaplots as massive world-setting story arcs or the spines of the entire game really drive players into a corner.

On other games, what seems to happen is that staff start out with great intentions for their metaplot. They run several very awesome scenes that drive the plot forward and get plenty of people hooked. To do this, they make amazing things happen (that differs from almost all other scenes) and then after they've played out these few awesome stories they leave players to 'respond' to what just happened. And players tend to fall into one crack or another - Idle, Bored, ElseMU, confused, NEWBIE, Dead Horse Hammer.

So, I decided to make metaplot something else. It's a story I'm telling to players, without players needing to be involved. It's the backdrop to the game, where players can get involved if they want to (and it can be fantastical if they are involved) but the story proceeds along without them no matter what. Every week or so, there's an update to what's happening in the world at large. There's a direction the game is traveling in and tickets cost RP.

[Apos]

My feeling about the metaplot is it doesn't have to be immutable. There's a balance between allowing dynamic change that makes players feel that they are active agents for change versus providing an environment that's stable enough where they feel they have thematic elements they can depend upon and play off of. Like I feel superhero games focused on feature characters are the furthest extreme in the latter category since their primary draw is wanting to play recognizable characters, so changing them significantly undermines their appeal. On the other hand, original theme games benefit the most from dynamic change since it gives people a personal ownership over part of the world that they can point to and say they did that.

I think it should be extremely -hard- to change core aspects of theme, but I think for the stakes to feel real then they have to be changeable. For example, would I allow the big bads to destroy the main grid and central city of Arx and wipe out half the current PCs? Sure. Would I let that happen trivially and the result of a few mistakes? Of course not, and no one player is probably ever going to be able to bring that about something that would irrevocably shatter the stories of everyone else.

[Lotherio]

Real quick my two cents. As a US daytime player I have never interacted directly with ba metaplot as most play happens in US evenings.

That said there is precedence for background metaplot that isn't affected by players but influences there day to day personal plots. For your consideration I offer the TV serirs MASH. The main characters never affected the outcome of the conflict though affected many personal lives of characters that came and went on the show. A similar example is Casablanca. WW II and all its politics is the meta, they had a more direct meta plot in the transfer of info between the politics, but really we're watching an interesting love story that is just heightened do to meta and meta plot.

No one in those examples affects the broader outcomes yet experience a lot of personal change.

[Apos]

@Lotherio The end of Inglorious Basterds was a historical WW2 MU where staff totally did not care about keeping the metaplot immutable.