Metaplot: What and How
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I always appreciate it when staff don’t schedule all metaplot or staff plot scenes in the middle of the weekday my time, but I guess by now I’m used to having to alternate my availability/sometimes get up super early/stay up super late to be able to participate. But unless there’s STs from different timezones or work times there’s just a limit to what can be done, that’s not really anyone’s fault.
Flexibility doesn’t yield the results it should, a lot of the time, in my observation. Just getting people to respond promptly to WIG or other stuff like that to try to schedule things, and the amount of chronic no shows, I’m not sure if I would recommend to a staff that they put themselves out in a very stressful or inconvenient way to maybe get somebody to possibly show up at a off time. It’s different if the person is proactive in suggesting times and reliable though, so I guess it’s fine to give it a try–but I’ve seen an awful lot of staff and STs really try to do everything “right” and then get pretty bummed out when people don’t show up and are back to complaining about how there’s never anything available to them the whole time.
I do like it when staff use requests/jobs as a way to get involved/get info that can be used to RP vs. just via scenes. Some genres are easier than others when it comes to this, but getting to have an impact even on advantages/setup/cleanup from live scenes is pretty nice, especially when one can get RP outside of ST scenes.
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Here is me, trying to summon @Apos to dive in on this subject, for reasons that should be obvious to many of us who were on Arx. (inb4thisisnotanArxthreadreee)
For myself, I consider metaplot to be “a story that’s going on that directly affects (or will affect) the state of the world and the players.” Metaplot should not only be fluid, because of player involvement/actions, but multithreaded, because there’s no one story that meets the definition I gave, let alone the outcome(s) of that story which could spawn other metaplot(s).
I’m keeping it generalized, because I have not been a game runner, and I sure don’t make any claims to being a plotter/storyteller outside of my own head (i.e., my personal fiction that lives in there for non-MU* writing). But, that is how I see it as a player, and Arx had a great deal to do with arriving at that definition.
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@L-B-Heuschkel YAY NAMES AND EXAMPLES
I’m really wanting concrete examples, tbh. I think a lot of what we’ve talked about so far in this thread is the meta of what you consider a metaplot. That is, talking about it in big picture way. I’m more curious about the actual direct implementation of how people do it.
Like if your metaplot is a never-ending conflict between order and chaos, how does this manifest as something players can engage in? It obviously works well for you guys.
@Raistlin That’s a great example, and how I’ve often run things on games in the past. Totally understand what you are doing there.
@Roadspike TSS, I get. With Fifth World, can you talk more about your metaplot and how the politics and stuff were in relation to it?
she/they
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@Tez Asking for specific examples really hits me in the warm-fuzzies.
On GH, the metaplot was “small town supernatural sandbox causes psychic trauma to residents.”
We attempted to reinforce it it by running weirdo stories and scenes, usually with the goal of being simultaneously hilarious and horrifying, and by establishing as part of the core concept a way that people could play with the supernatural elements without needing staff intervention (Dreams).
Specific examples included a long-term story about the proper disposal of the bones of a serial killer, our primary plot-dispensing NPCs being a blob fish (occasionally in costume a la a bridal veil or monocle) and Juno from Beetlejuice, and one-off scenes like a Christmas party that gets trapped inside a snow globe.
On ODW, the metaplot is “playing in a version of Anne McCaffrey’s world of Pern where the book canons left things in a sad state and the PCs are rebuilding a better future (and also we ignore the stupid parts of Pern canon).”
I’m implementing it by recreating the iconic Pern moments as on-camera moments while flat-out ignoring parts of canon that are stupid, and by highlighting story moments that lean toward positive momentum.
Specific examples include on-camera Threadfall scenes where PCs get to flame Thread and take injuries, running a Hatching where nobody has to fill out an application first (with future plans to hold a colorless Hatching; IYKYK), and telling stories that mix typical Pern themes like a Lord’s son standing for Impression with stuff that just sounds fun like the possibility that his family has been cursed for centuries.
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@Tez said in Metaplot: What and How:
That is, talking about it in big picture way. I’m more curious about the actual direct implementation of how people do it.
I’m not really sure what sort of implementation details you’re looking for.
A metaplot is fundamentally the same as any other plot. It has an overall story arc / direction, and then the individual events that happen along the way. Some events may happen off-screen and some may be more passive (PCs get to react but not necessarily change things). But to keep PCs the most engaged, you’ll need to provide them opportunities to feel like they’re able to influence the metaplot in some way. Otherwise they feel railroaded. It’s a tricky balance to have engagement without running the whole metaplot off the rails.
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@KarmaBum your examples give me warm-fuzzies. I saw your Pern game and got HARDCORE nostalgic.
@Faraday I think broadly most of us agree about what metaplot is, and largely we all agree that in the ideal world it would be nice if all players can contribute.
But I’m not really curious about the ideal. I want to know where it gets messy, and where it gets real. That’s why I’m mostly curious to know examples about how people are dealing with it. What their metaplot is and how it is enacted.
Maybe I should have just said HOW for the thread.
I’m always trying to solve for the issue that there seem to be more people who want to be in stories than people who want to run stories. Picking over the how of other people helps me refine my thoughts.
she/they
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@Tez Fair. I don’t think there is some magic “how” that will work for all games, because I don’t think all games share the same goal.
For example, on B5 MUSH, the whole goal of the game was to play out the events of the show (with variations). That carried implicit limitations on who even could be involved in the metaplot and what they could accomplish. It was a heavily-FC-driven game. You could still be involved in the metaplot as an OC (mine was) but it was a lot harder, and there were never any promises made to the contrary.
On the other end of the spectrum are TGG and BSGU. Pretty much every big metaplot event was open to everyone, and varied schedules included off-hours folks too. But this only worked because of the design of the games. The metaplot was war, the PCs were all soldiers, and the events were all battles. It was super easy to involve everyone.
Neither is good or bad - in B5 it was fewer PCs / more influence and in TGG/BSGU it was more PCs / less influence. But if you want PCs to be involved, you’ve got to design a metaplot that they’re going to have reason and ability to be involved in.
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@Tez said in Metaplot: What and How:
I’m always trying to solve for the issue that there seem to be more people who want to be in stories than people who want to run stories.
Hey, if you solve this, can you post it all over the internet? TTRPG groups the world over have been trying to solve this since the 60s, and the best we have is cool ranch Doritos.
On a serious note, I’ve not done it on MU-scale, but I have designed plots (both meta and non-meta) for MU groups, tabletop, published works, etc. @Faraday is correct in that there’s no one size fits all: What works for you and your group won’t work for me and mine. But I can offer some design-related advice:
Start with themes rather than story beats. It’ll feel a little mad-libby at first, but write out something like Tez’s Super Awesome Game is about <genre> with <mood> and <tone>. For myself I’d say “Pavel’s Super Awesome Victorian Vampire Game is about personal horror with dread-filled tension and sardonic nihilism in the face of bleak futility.” Then you take that and expand upon it here and there, while throwing your ideas at trusted people. Not players, but cheerfully underpaid co-authors like Roz. Because:
Don’t write it by yourself. You need editors, critics, and people to tell you that they love you but your idea sucks because… If you keep it inside, (a word document only you ever read counts as inside) it’ll be shit, and you’ll stew in it, and you’ll come to resent it, and then you’ll throw it away only to discover it ten years later in a Dropbox folder…
And always remember that your metaplot isn’t important. A metaplot may be, depending on the game, but the metaplot you have now and the metaplot you end up with when the game closes are not going to be the same. It’s going to break, twist, bend, flip, translate itself into Greek and then Portuguese before finally settling on an Anglo-Sindarin creole. And nobody is going to remember the handful of events that ran long because you had to think things up on the fly, but they will remember slaying the dragon and meeting up at the tavern after for a pint.
ETA: tl;dr: Stop. Collaborate. And Listen.
He/Him. Opinions and views are solely my own unless specifically stated otherwise.
BE AN ADULT -
@Tez said in Metaplot: What and How:
@Roadspike TSS, I get. With Fifth World, can you talk more about your metaplot and how the politics and stuff were in relation to it?
Certainly! I’m (almost) always happy to talk about The Fifth World.
So the overarching metaplot there was a regularly-occurring and long-anticipated invasion from mysterious-ish forces on an outer-system planet with an elliptical orbit around an inner system with several inhabited and connected planets ruled by knights-in-space.
There were invasions in particular areas, and updates on the state of the conflict, but with that as a backdrop and a shaping force, there were also politics between the noble houses for power and influence within and over the war effort. Some houses thought that the war should be handled one way, others thought it should be handled another. Some people just wanted power. There were also Citizen-based (non-noble “commoners” but with many, many, many more rights) Senate elections that had an impact on how the war would be prosecuted. There were efforts to raise morale from the home front. There were alliances that were built and fell apart. There were efforts to advance the science and technology for fighting against the invaders.
But all of these were caused by and had effects on the invasion. That’s how I divide between metaplot and ways to access and effect the metaplot.
@Pavel said in Metaplot: What and How:
Start with themes rather than story beats. It’ll feel a little mad-libby at first, but write out something like Tez’s Super Awesome Game is about <genre> with <mood> and <tone>. For myself I’d say “Pavel’s Super Awesome Victorian Vampire Game is about personal horror with dread-filled tension and sardonic nihilism in the face of bleak futility.”
Yes! I’m always a fan of starting every game with a Mission Statement. This tells you and your fellow staff what the game is going to be about, and is something to refer back to throughout the process of building the game (“Should we add flying motorcycles to the bad guys?” “I don’t know, does it support or take away from the Mission Statement?”). And then when you’ve refined the Mission Statement and readied your game and you open the game to players, it’s their first introduction to the game, what helps them decide if they want to play there.
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@Pavel said in Metaplot: What and How:
@Tez said in Metaplot: What and How:
I’m always trying to solve for the issue that there seem to be more people who want to be in stories than people who want to run stories.
Hey, if you solve this, can you post it all over the internet? TTRPG groups the world over have been trying to solve this since the 60s, and the best we have is cool ranch Doritos.
lmfao yeah, I’ll make sure to let the world know when I solve it. I almost made a crack about it being the fermat’s last theorem of RP.
@Roadspike said in Metaplot: What and How:
@Tez said in Metaplot: What and How:
@Roadspike TSS, I get. With Fifth World, can you talk more about your metaplot and how the politics and stuff were in relation to it?
Certainly! I’m (almost) always happy to talk about The Fifth World.
So the overarching metaplot there was a regularly-occurring and long-anticipated invasion from mysterious-ish forces on an outer-system planet with an elliptical orbit around an inner system with several inhabited and connected planets ruled by knights-in-space.
There were invasions in particular areas, and updates on the state of the conflict, but with that as a backdrop and a shaping force, there were also politics between the noble houses for power and influence within and over the war effort. Some houses thought that the war should be handled one way, others thought it should be handled another. Some people just wanted power. There were also Citizen-based (non-noble “commoners” but with many, many, many more rights) Senate elections that had an impact on how the war would be prosecuted. There were efforts to raise morale from the home front. There were alliances that were built and fell apart. There were efforts to advance the science and technology for fighting against the invaders.
Welcome to me intensely digging for more details. Were the invasions handled as GMed scenes? How did you make the politicking real for people? Was it jobs and rolls? Was it all staff run?
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@Tez The conflict between order and chaos works as a metaplot / backdrop because it’s a backdrop – and because anyone who wants to GM can do so.
That means players designing stories within the framework that they want to pursue. And because they design the realities they want those stories to happen in they
- get to decide which rules apply there
- what the theme/setting is
- whether this is a oneshot or a brick of a novel size plot
and nothing they do there can affect the main setting (besides the characters themselves). This way, we have a buffet of stories and a diverse cast of stories. But most importantly, we don’t have anyone sitting around waiting for storyteller-type GMs to make shit happen when they’re around and remember to include them.
Is this the solution to everything? Nah. But it does help with the ancient quandary of not enough GMs. Obviously, not everyone wants to GM. But a lot of people feel comfortable running a scene or three for a few people at a time, without taking on an official mantle and having to run everything past staff.
Any pronouns. Come to Chincoteague. We have ponies. http://keys.aresmush.com
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@L-B-Heuschkel That’s a great set up for that kind of play. I’ve mentally filed that kind of thing under ‘Stargate games’, and I think it can work VERY well for games set up for it.
I’ve tried similar things on games I’ve run, although less as a literal portal to other universes structure and more as in there is a homebase and people can go out and run missions on other planets. (Because my bias was scifi rather than fantasy. You could call them portal games too!) The idea being that the distance should empower people to freely do what they like. I think Spirit Lake played with the portal thing too.
The problem I’ve run into is that players don’t necessarily feel that it connects back to the metaplot if there aren’t changes to the homebase region or overall story. Is that just out of the scope for your game?
she/they
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@Tez said in Metaplot: What and How:
The problem I’ve run into is that players don’t necessarily feel that it connects back to the metaplot if there aren’t changes to the homebase region or overall story. Is that just out of the scope for your game?
Can’t speak to LB’s game, but that’s how it was on BSGU. Folks could run missions of their own whenever they wanted. (Also other plots connected to the war, though folks rarely did so.) But they couldn’t affect the overall trajectory of the war without staff approval and coordination. This was spelled out in the game policies, so if that was a deal-breaker for someone, they could decide that before playing.
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@Tez said in Metaplot: What and How:
Welcome to me intensely digging for more details. Were the invasions handled as GMed scenes? How did you make the politicking real for people? Was it jobs and rolls? Was it all staff run?
The broad strokes of the invasion was handled by Staff, based on scenes we ran and our reading of scenes that player GMs ran as well. Players were welcome to run general combat scenes, and if they wanted to try out something particular, we asked that they check in with us first. When they did, we sometimes gave them additional details that they could drop into their scenes to feed into the players’ understanding of what was going on. We determined what happened with the course of the war through how things went in the various scenes (Staff-run and player-run alike), some jobs/rolls, and some narrative license.
The “narrative license” might be called railroading by some, but the idea was that we wanted to see the Good Guys on the back foot for a while before they turned things around, so while the actions of the PCs could win local victories, or lessen the cost of local losses, they weren’t going to turn back the tide yet. The events of GMed scenes (Staff- and player-run alike) changed where the Good Guys would be pushed back or hold back the tide, but not that the Good Guys were going to be pushed back.
The politicking came in two real waves: first a choice of which child would succeed the faltering King, and then who would make up the Crown Council around the new ruler. To be perfectly honest, we didn’t leave things open to too much player input on the first wave, as I recall. For both waves, the questions were presented in GMed public scenes, and then there were House meetings for most of the Great Houses, where PCs associated with that House were able to weigh in on their preferences and make plans to support them while the House Head was NPCed by a Staffer.
The Crown Council politicking we put into play through posts and public scenes, as a couple of the members of the new King’s Council were unexpected, and seemed to tilt things pretty distinctly in one direction of the philosophical differences between Great Houses. After seeding the idea of the imbalance, we held more House meetings to answer some questions, and then people went off on their own to RP about the situation, put in requests, get more information, and make attempts to figure out what was going on. We closed down before we could get to fruition on that story thread, but we had a dozen or so players chasing it and looking to impact which NPCs had power and influence on the Crown Council. That in turn would have impact on how the war was prosecuted, as well as how efficient the Crown was at prosecuting it.
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This is hyper tangential, so I’ll keep it to a single post:
I have an idea that concealing metaplot could in and of itself be a metaplot. An example from one of my notebooks I spitball RPG ideas in:
PCs are living in a community in what looks to be a post apocalyptic setting. They work to build up their community, scavenge the wasteland for helpful lost tech, and fight bandits and mutant creatures to protect themselves. The elders of the community are benevolent, but seem to be concealing something from the player characters, as they seem to suddenly produce vital equipment or knowledge when the community’s collapse is at risk.
Curious PCs would eventually discover that this is not actually a post apocalypse, but instead, an enclosed environment. In reality, the PCs are the latest generation in a project to terraform and restore a region of a world that was part of a planetary invasion from horrible monsters from the stars. The area the game takes place in was rendered a wasteland by biological contamination during the war to drive off the invasion, and the player characters are descendants of a group of people found by the planetary government to be immune to the contaminants. These people were forced into this by the government, and now, the “community elders” are actually officers of the government. They are flighty in nature because they regularly have to leave the zone via hidden tunnel to be decontaminated to prevent their eventual death.
Some of the drama comes from keeping the community going and working on terraforming the landscape, while the other half of the drama comes from the PCs eventually gaining this secret knowledge and needing to decide what to do about it. Do they continue their ancestors forced labor, or try and find an escape to rejoin society?
Proud Member of the Pro-Mummy Alliance
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@Tez said in Metaplot: What and How:
@L-B-Heuschkel That’s a great set up for that kind of play. I’ve mentally filed that kind of thing under ‘Stargate games’, and I think it can work VERY well for games set up for it.
I’ve tried similar things on games I’ve run, although less as a literal portal to other universes structure and more as in there is a homebase and people can go out and run missions on other planets. (Because my bias was scifi rather than fantasy. You could call them portal games too!) The idea being that the distance should empower people to freely do what they like. I think Spirit Lake played with the portal thing too.
The problem I’ve run into is that players don’t necessarily feel that it connects back to the metaplot if there aren’t changes to the homebase region or overall story. Is that just out of the scope for your game?
Respectfully, IMHO, that’s because that example doesn’t really sound like a metaplot. That just sounds like a setting. Stargate’s setting was that there were portals to other universes and the team could go through them and do stuff. You can run a bunch of scenes off of that setting and have a bunch of fun with it, but that’s not a metaplot. Plots in general usually have a conflict (a problem that drives the story forward) and causality (where one thing affects another). Stargate’s metaplot was some action being done by individuals (or forces) over a larger span of time (usually over a season, or multiple seasons which makes it “meta”) that affected things in the universe (causality): like a rebellion forming across multiple worlds to take down Apophis and be free (I’m actually not a Stargate fan, so don’t quote me on accuracy here). The main characters would sometimes be involved with that or sometimes not, same as on a game, sometimes players can have stories involved in the metaplot, sometimes not.
If the metaplot can’t be affected by the players in any meaningful way (or at least work towards being able to affect it), that’s not a metaplot (usually). Its just a setting.
@Roadspike has a great example with The Fifth World. That’s a metaplot. A thing is happening in the game over a long(er) period of time. Characters can be involved in it or do things not involved with it directly. But the thing is happening and the characters can touch that story, but not enough to shut it down right away or overtake it until they’ve built up a good amount of momentum. Some players want to be involved, others not. But a metaplot tells a larger story that’s happening besides the day to day.
A metaplot can sometimes change the setting. I personally think a good metaplot WILL change the setting, even if it is in minor ways.
Players can ignore the metaplot, but not the setting. If the setting changes because of the metaplot, that’s just the game.
Aside from that, players grumbling about the metaplot and setting and changes are a different beast, though. People are unhappy for a variety of reasons on staff and player side that just have to do with people being people and the limitations of MU*s.
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@Tez Keys did not invent the wheel re: portal, stargate, fanfiction, whatever term you prefer games. It’s a trope because it works: It gives you a lot of creative freedom.
I wouldn’t say that changes to the homebase region or overall story are entirely out of the question. As staff, we do quietly nudge things here and there. But on the whole, players seem very happy with having the peace and quiet (read: not being looked over the shoulder) to create their own storylines, some of which have consequences that can be felt back home too, through how the characters are affected.
There will likely come a time when the status quo begins to feel well tested and tried and maybe a little old. When that happens, we’ll shake the dice bag and pull some rugs out under people. Change is good, at the pace that works.
@Faraday said in Metaplot: What and How:
Can’t speak to LB’s game, but that’s how it was on BSGU. Folks could run missions of their own whenever they wanted. (Also other plots connected to the war, though folks rarely did so.) But they couldn’t affect the overall trajectory of the war without staff approval and coordination. This was spelled out in the game policies, so if that was a deal-breaker for someone, they could decide that before playing.
This. It’s on the landing page of Keys’ website. If not being able to ‘solve’ the metaplot is a deal-breaker, there’s no point in wasting your time with the rest.
@Warma-Sheen said in Metaplot: What and How:
If the metaplot can’t be affected by the players in any meaningful way (or at least work towards being able to affect it), that’s not a metaplot (usually). Its just a setting.
I think that part of this discussion is what exactly constitutes a setting and a metaplot respectively. For us, in the design phase, setting was the where and metaplot was the what. Those are obviously not the only options in design so I’m not going to tell you that you’re wrong.
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@MisterBoring said in Metaplot: What and How:
Curious PCs
This is where your metaplot will either never gain traction, because people tend to investigate really weird things instead of really big things, or where you will get a handful of players that will look into this and decide that they can’t tell ANYONE ELSE and then resentment will grow with the rest of your playerbase.
But more importantly with a big arc like that you’d have to decide if you were ready to change your game on a dime when that group of players decide they do want to break out and rejoin society right now and now your grid doesn’t work.
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@Warma-Sheen said in Metaplot: What and How:
Respectfully, IMHO, that’s because that example doesn’t really sound like a metaplot. That just sounds like a setting.
I think that this is an important point: setting and metaplot are different. I can’t comment on the difference on Keys because I was only there for a hot minute, but for myself, I would say that the difference is thus:
Setting is a backdrop, it’s where the game is happening and what is going on around them. On The Savage Skies, the release of The Hobbit was part of the setting (and even showed up in a setting update post), but it wasn’t part of the metaplot; likewise, the combat between Japanese and Soviets was part of the setting, but it wasn’t part of the metaplot, because it didn’t have impact on the PCs besides giving them something to talk about, and it wasn’t (directly) part of the rise of the Drachenordnung and the PCs’ fight against them.
Metaplot is the things that are actually happening to PCs and people who matter to them, and it’s something to tie plotlines to. On The Savage Skies, when the Drachenordnung gave people ID cards that listed their magical potential and restricted the actions of those with low magical potential, that was part of the metaplot because it caused problems for the PCs operating in D.O. territory and gave them a new group of people to help escape from the D.O. – it drove storylines and was part of a larger storyline itself.
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@Roadspike said in Metaplot: What and How:
Players were welcome to run general combat scenes, and if they wanted to try out something particular, we asked that they check in with us first.
How often did you get players running things? If you made it a percent, how much was staff-run vs. player-run? I like the idea of seeding things with player-plots by giving them tidbits to include, but I wouldn’t say I’ve been very successful at it yet.
We closed down before we could get to fruition on that story thread, but we had a dozen or so players chasing it and looking to impact which NPCs had power and influence on the Crown Council. That in turn would have impact on how the war was prosecuted, as well as how efficient the Crown was at prosecuting it.
Respect. It sounds like you had a lot going and I’m curious how it would have played out if you were able to continue. Did you get a feel from players or any feedback as to how the political side worked for them?
@Warma-Sheen said in Metaplot: What and How:
Respectfully, IMHO, that’s because that example doesn’t really sound like a metaplot. That just sounds like a setting.
LBH’s definition of a metaplot may be different, but it clearly works for them. I’m interested in the whys and hows of different approaches. Keys has found a formula that works well for them. I tend to think of metaplot as a season or series arc and individual plots as being episodes, but I’m interested in how others do it.
Clarity of scope / meaning / etc. is obviously important. @L-B-Heuschkel and @Faraday have noted it, among others.
ETA so I don’t double post:
@Roadspike said in Metaplot: What and How:
I think that this is an important point: setting and metaplot are different.
Not everyone agrees on this point. If you look at how Wikipedia defines it, they talk more about what you would call setting. I think metaplot as you are using it more of a TWOP definition. That also tends to be how I think of it.
