Overarching Plots Vs. Self-Contained Plots

I'm getting ready to run an Eberron game on Fantasy Grounds for some friends, so I started working on some plot ideas. However, I wanted to do something different this time - I wanted to make an overarching plot instead of a self-contained one. The latter are my forte and how I've always run my games.

Somewhere along the line of my visiting here and playing D&D in general I had the notion ingrained into my head that overarching plots are better. For instance, when I read Sagiro's very good and very popular story hour, it had an overarching plot in which everything was connected. Looking at Age of Worms or Shackled City, both have an overarching plot, and both are popular and considered well-crafted. A lot of times when people discuss D&D on here, they mention the main villian or arch-nemesis. My games don't have that.

I would compare it to a movie versus some television shows. A movie you start, the protagonists and villians are established, and the entire plot revolves around them and their conflicts, direct or indirect. Then there are shows like Star Trek or Firefly where every week the protagonists find themselves up against a wacky new threat, or explore a new world, or whatever. If there happens to be an overarching plotline it's in the background filling a secondary role.

So I racked my brain for an evening trying to come up with a superior, overarching plot and I finally did. It involved fighting The Dreaming Dark, and I had a timeline figured out, and they would eventually make their way to Sarlona; I was satisfied with myself. And yet, a day later, after I had it all established... I realized I didn't like it. I realized I don't enjoy overarching plots in general, or at least not as much as the fresh new adventures every week. This confused me, because while I don't like them as much, they are considered the superior method... aren't they? After all, it requires more foresight and more planning to make a plotline that follows from level 1 to 20 than it does to just throw a new encounter every week.

How do you run your campaign, or how is the campaign you play in run? Is there an obviously superior method and if so, why? I have this perception - perhaps incorrect - that 95% of the people playing D&D generally have an overall plotline weaving its way through the campaign. Is that the better, more difficult way?

Rule Zero is, and always was, "have fun." So if you have fun with episodes instead of arcs, you're doing better than some of us. (as I look at the gaming group I was running that shut down because I tried to do arcs....and got writer's block... LOL)

Overreaching arcs take time. They take subtlety. They take discipline. They're not easy. Episodes are quick, easy (or, at least, easier), and can be scattershot. But they lack an element of "cohesion" that an arc provides. There are pros and cons to both.

Basically, I'm encouraging you to run what comes natural to you and what you have fun with.

While I've only ever DMed self-contained plots (mostly because I only did published adventures, so they weren't remotely connected), I have played in both types of games.

The games with overarching plots still contained enough different types of adventures that there were fresh new adventures every week. Some of them didn't even directly tie in with the main plot (at least not that I could tell). Others didn't seem like they dealt with the plot until much later (usually one or two adventures later).

It was a very enjoyable campaign, we felt a real sense of accomplishment when we finished.

The other is fun too, 'cause you get to play different characters without sacrificing party cohesion.

Really I have no point other than to agree with Wraith Form and say play what you like.

Two words: Adventure Paths.

I'm almost the opposite of you then!
When I write a campaign I have to have an over-arching plot. I need a story line to give me direction and focus. I can then write the episodes; some will not contain anything of the overarching plot, some will be of major importance, and some will be unrelated to the plot.

The good thing about DMing your own stories is you can be far more active then from a pulbished one. If the PC's really mess things up for the villian he can take some remedial action. When they find a new tangent a character wants to explore I can craft some episodes where he's the centre, even tying it back to a faction in the main plot.

Feedback from my players has been good; they enjoy the level of involvement they have as well as the sense there are bigger things out there than them, so they have to think.

Of course once an involved plot ends, its always nice to have a more simple session or 2.

If you can craft good episodes that you all enjoy, you should continue to do so. You could try out a couple of longer plotlines from the fallout of these adventures and see 1) how naturally this flows and 2) how the players react.

I think the nice thing about D&D games is that you can set it up as you want.

There doesn't need to be just one plot (in a session) -- you could have two plots going on at the same time, one self-contained plot to end the session with a bang, and an overaching plot to end the campaign with a bang.

Alternatively, you could alternate. If you have say, twelve sessions, the odd-sessions could be furthering the overaching plot while the even sessions are the "breather room" sessions which has an unrelated, self-contained plot (and helps the characters level up for the overaching plot). Of course the self-contained sessions don't need to be as much as the overarching ones...

Alternatively, you could also have several shorter overaching plots, such as what happens in TV where a stand-alone show ends with a "to be continued" and it finishes in the next episode (or two).

You could also watch the anime Cowboy Bebop in terms of pacing and overarching/self-contained plots. It manages to mix the both well. Avatar: The Last Airbender from Nickolodeon works too.

Metus said:

How do you run your campaign, or how is the campaign you play in run? Is there an obviously superior method and if so, why? I have this perception - perhaps incorrect - that 95% of the people playing D&D generally have an overall plotline weaving its way through the campaign. Is that the better, more difficult way?

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I think it also depends on the players. I mean an overaching plot only matters if the characters are there to begin and end it. It's also a delayed gratification thing... hold off now for a greater reward later. Unfortunately, overarching plots need to be good. You could be stuck in a campaign for a year only for it to resolve without much satisfaction. At least with self-contained plots, if it sucks now, there's always the next session.

There's also the fact that players tastes differ. Your sig shows the various types of gamers. Plots matter the most to storytellers. A butt kicker doesn't really care whether it resolves today or next year, as long as he gets to kick butt now. A power game might only be at it until he reaches his "optimum" wealth and character level before growing bored with the character. Tacticians might want realism and strategy, irregardless if it's a self-contained session or an overaching one (although it is nice to play on the "accomplish this mission so you score victory points for the overarching campaign"). Overaching plots aren't automatically "superior". It has the possibility of giving a better pay-off but that's a possibility, not a certainty. Talented storytellers might give the same satisfaction to players in one session that might take other GMs an entire campaign to pull off.

I've heard the terms "A plot" and "B plot" thrown around a lot when talking about TV shows. If you pay attention to a lot of TV episodes you'll see that there are usually two plots in the episode. For example, the last new episode of House I saw was about a mentally challenged musician who started having random seizures, but there was another plot in the background where the rest of the doctors thought House might have cancer. The musician was the A plot and cancer was the B plot.

A good "formula" for an adventure might be to have an A plot and a B plot. The A plot is a self-contained adventure that starts when you sit down to play and ends when you leave for the night, but there's also a B plot in the background that furthers the over-arching storyline. Eventually as you keep going you can bring the background plot more and more into the foreground until the over-arching plot is the only thing driving the story.

It's a good way to combine both an over-arching plot and get fresh new adventures each game. You can even take a published adventure off the shelf, use it as your A-plot, and weave your over-arching B-plot in between the lines.

Other posters have alluded it to it, but let me lay it out, since I have the similar strengths and weaknesses as a GM...

Play to your strengths. Don't give up the episodic adventures. If they're good and they work for you, keep them. Just link them together with an over-arching plot.

Merkuri said:

You can even take a published adventure off the shelf, use it as your A-plot, and weave your over-arching B-plot in between the lines.

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Exactly. And so, during each episodic A-plot adventure, you drop a few more side hints about the B-plot, which never quite goes away. Every couple of adventures, you swap the A-plot with the B-plot, to bring the long term plot to the fore for a moment, and then let it fade back.

The big pay off is when you have that last big, climactic adventure that's nothing but fully-fledged B-plot, and you see the realization of the players that all those clues along the way are coming together and that the main reason for any of the A-plots happening in the first place is that B-plot, what they thought were just side plots or red herrings, made them happen all along.

You get to add in that over-atching plot you want, while still running what you're used to and guaranteeing your players the fun of what they're used to.

Overplots almost drove me from gaming. It was pretty much the way I DM'd for years. The problem is that after a year or so I just get sick of the storyline. Sick of having to find a way to keep the players on track, to remind them for the 12th time what their ultimate goal is. And I often find that my overplot is so vague that I can paint myself into a corner if I'm not careful. Running stand-alone advenures strung together as a campaign, or mini-campaigns (2-4 adventures tied together with a plot) is the only thing I'm capable of anymore. I just can't run the big long one-plot campaigns these days. Guess I lost my touch...