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General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
Overarching Plots Vs. Self-Contained Plots
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<blockquote data-quote="Merkuri" data-source="post: 3410063" data-attributes="member: 41321"><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Merkuri, post: 3410063, member: 41321"] 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. [/QUOTE]
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