Share your favorite Metaplot

[Inconsequenti-AL]

My favorite published metaplot was the Shadowrun Universal Brotherhood stuff. Still gives me the creeps a little when I think about it. Actually managed to scare a few of the players... I used the sacking of Chicago as a game event the PCs were not connected with -got them panicking... fantastic stuff.

I loved the Universal Brotherhood - like a big onion: An outer skin of not quite right, progressing through creepy and finally taking a nosedive towards alien evil. Great bad guys.

Unfortunately, it ended badly IMC. Underprepared assault on a bug master hive. Ooops.


In terms of plots run by DMs, it was an Ars Magica game centering around the mongol invasion of europe... We unwittingly helped them and felt we ought to fix our mistakes. The big reveal was finding out the Catholic Church wasn't lying about them being in league with the Devil. Very cool campaign, but it finished early due to DM moving country. Bah!

 

[Gez]

My campaign's current metaplot(s) is as such:

► The world is made of matter/energy that is created by the sun, known as Prime. Prime's fire creates this matter and disperses it around itself, allowing for the existence of the various planets in the cosmology, including the one the campaign takes place on.
► Matter and energy are one and the same, albeit in different aspect. The biggest part of the matter/energy created by Prime is known as leï, and it is what souls, life, death, magic, the planes, and the gods themselves are made of.
► But every fire needs a fuel. What Prime burns out to create existence is the utter nothingness of the Nihil (the Far Realm).
► The non-existing-yet-existing creatures from the Far Realm are not non-unhappy with the not-nonconsuming of their realm into dreadful existence. They wish to extinguish Prime so that the Nihil can reclaim all its non-matter that was twisted into being by Prime's fire.
► On the darkest world, Lerebre, the one the furthest away from Prime and thus the closest to the boundary of the reality pocket that makes up the setting's cosmology, an alien race of dreadful tyrants and savants (the Silians, aka cranial vampires or encephalon gorgers, from Tome of Horrors 2) explored the Nihil, and came back... Twisted (even more so). Those that came back where the foul pawns of Annihilation, and are intempt on extinguishing the Sun. They are known as Illithids. (Ceremorphosis on a Silian always result in an Ulitharid.)
► While Illithids may not succeed in extinguishing the sun any time soon, their mere existence is already a threat to the whole universe, as with every brain they devour, they "digest" the soul energy into a form more compatible with the Nihil. This process is further continued once the illithid joins the Elder Brain, which properly annihilate the contained "predigested" leï to return it to the Far Realm.
► Since then, the Silians and Illithids have waged war.
► But Illithids are not the only one who knows the connection between souls, leï, and the planes. The Fiends know of this, too, and each soul they corrupt is one more building brick in the creation of their home plane. In the center of the PC's homeworld, lies a hollow earth that's slowly crumbling, an inverted world inhabited by daemons, where everything hangs down from the ceiling and overlooks an unending pit bathed in sickening vapors. Every once in a short while, rocks and buildings detaches themselves and fall in the Cataract. These everfalling meteors are claimed be demons, who wages continual wars on them, "driving" them into colliding other blocks (cf. Acheron). Eventually, even eternity ends, and the meteors collide into the devils' eggworld, whose mass increases with each strike. The demons are always trying to damage Hellish structures, but in the end, it doesn't change anything.
So daemons are slowly corroding the world to destroy it because that's in their nature, demons just revel in the mindless chaos that results, and devils are building a Hell from the ruins. The physical aspect of the process is just the reflection of the metaphysical process. And in the end, the Fiends' new world will hatch from the hollowed husk of the old world, destroying everything on the surface in the process.

So there I have two similar metaplots. 1: Fiends trying to destroy the world to create their own, and 2: Far Realm pawns trying to destroy the whole universe because they see is as a pebble in their shoes. Both using murder, corruption, possession, sacrifice, and insane cults to further their own ends.

PCs are already discovering 1. Hopefully, this should let them recognize 2 later on.

Then you have submetaplots, or metasubplots, etc. that graft themselves on the main metaplots. For example, the kaorti invasion. The Kaorti's story is exactly the same as the Illithids, creatures who wanted to explore what's beyong the universe, and got turned into pawns of the Nihil, with the mission to reclaim all that matter for unbeing. The Ethergaunts have decided to protect the universe by slaughtering everyone and everything because they, alone, are immune to the Far Realm's corruption (or so they think), while the existence of any other creature is a threat to the cosmology. Feuds between the three category of fiends happen, as well as many other unrelated plots.

 

[Emperor Valerian]

- My first campaign had the metaplot that an evil sorceress was summoning demons to take over the world. It started with the PCs inadvertantly giving her the tool she needed (a staff) to do this... then finding out what they did, and then fighting like cats and dogs to fix it. Underneath this overarching plot, there was another plot dealing with the local and regional nobility; namely that one of the PCs was a borderline noble, and quite a few people had issues/problems with her.


- Most recent campaign had several overarching plots...
--- The Emperor of the Celestial Empire (based on China) is a incestuous bastard. This alone displeases the gods, who have cursed the nation with famine and floods.
--- The higher nobility have discovered this, and civil war is brewing
--- Assassins are after a dagger that is the ultimate killing weapon, that can break through any spell of protection known to man.
--- One of the PCs has an ancient royal ancestry, that he can decide whether to take up or not.
--- The other PC has problems in that she has been disowned by her family, and needs to do something honorable to get back in their graces.

Stir... mix... and you have fun chaos!

 

[Hand of Evil]

I think you should have a couple going at a time, the first for me is the exchange of power and is performed on a different levels but at the meta-plot it is the movement and changes in governments, a bit higher is the changing of gods, movement of the planes.

 

[sircaren]

Torg

 

[Goddess FallenAngel]

My favorite metaplot was actually DM-created.... we were playing in the FR.

The party was doing a lot of time-jumping to try to prevent an evil chronomancer from destroying the world. In order to do so, we picked up a fledging chronomancer NPC in order to get from here to there (or should I say from now to then?).

The big showdown happened 1000 years in the past. During the battle, the fledging chronomancer was injured, and ended up having to stay behind in the past along with one of the PCs (the rogue, who volunteered), because he only had enough power left to transport part of the party back to the modern day. We promised to find a chronomancer who would be able to go back and pick them up.

We never found another chronomancer who would help us (them being pretty rare).

Oh, did I mention that the BBEG seemed rather familiar to us everytime we fought him, and seemed to have some sort of personal grudge, but no one could place him? And that he was accompanied by a very powerful rogue, who we never got a good look at?

Yeah. Funny thing was, the players didn't even connect the two until after that game session was over.

 

[DonTadow]

One of my favorite metaplots I played in was when six of us warriors had went into the hell to confront the archdevil father of one of the pcs. We battled for a few sessions through a lot of baddies only to find out tha satan himself was the pcs father. He gives us a choice, join him or die.

We were all 5th level at this point. We huddled up and weighed our options and chose the first. The DM was highly taken off guard. He had planned for a big bad showdown and was setting up for a long term campaign. However, we went off the map, decided to join the evil force and we each received a wish. The campaign turned evil and only continued for two more sessions. By the second session we had successfully went back in time and wiped out human existance, then our own existance.

In another campaign I was in Vecna, from greyhawk, had found a way into Faerun. For us PCs it began as a chase through the alley trying to track someoen whom had stolen an artifact from the church of Lathander. We find out this guy is a cleric of Vecna, whom we never heard of.

Over time we relize that Vecna found this loophole into Faerun through a set of demon armor. We went through the campaign chasing these pieces of armor before his clerics find them. Neither the evil nor the good gods would interfere because neither wanted to tip the scales of the Gods. In the end, we had 4 pieces and Vecna had 2. We then traveled to the moon where Vecna had set up a temple, by then we were 20th level. We fought and repelled Vecna back to greyhawk causing the dark hole over Tilverton "his exit point". This disturbance is where I picked up my campaign. The defeat of such a powerful god caused black holes and vortexes all over the world, opening up a portal to the birthplace of the universe, a place sealed off purposely to protect it, a world called Chrystaria.

 

[Desdichado]

For example, your group is busy going into dungeons, killing monsters, and taking their treasure. But you find that there are clues in dungeon 1 that lead to dungeon 2 and the guy who designed both of these dungeons are in dungeon 3. When you get to dungeon 3, he says the big bad guy's secret location can be found in dungeon 4, where you find out the location and then raid it in a climactic battle.

Published metaplots are a little different. The various suppliments tend to move various parts of the story forward. The most infamous case was Dark Sunwhich released a book and a module that advanced the metaplot within one month of the original core product. Ooops.

Those two definitions are completely unrelated though. And I've never heard the first used as a definition of metaplot, that's just plain plot.

I don't have a lot of personal experience with metaplots (of the second variety BG noted; the only kind I consider metaplot, by the way) having never been playing in a world as metaplot unfolded by new publications. There are a few that I think are interesting, however, including the whole Planescape Modron March/Tenebrous/Orcus thing (which was also interesting in seeing how the developers were gradually trying to return some of the less sanitized classic D&D elements back into the game). I also like the Arcana Unearthed to Arcana Evolved metaplot of the return of the dragons.

In fact, I like the strategy of AU quite a bit. It's much more toolkit rather than proscribed campaign setting, and even when it has metaplot elements, it still feels that way.

As for good experiences of folks playing games and impacted by unexpected metaplot twists, I doubt you'll find too many. There's a reason why metaplots are fairly universally decried. It's not because they're bad per se, it's because they're so difficult to pull off well without mucking up ongoing games and pissing off players as a result.

 

[werk]

When I said that I don't like meta-plots, I should have added 'in retail products'. I have a largish meta-plot that I have put in place in the forgotten realms involving the high forest, the stronghold of the nine, several underdark cities, hellgate keep, and the nine hells. I always called it my campaign. If there is a metaplot in ravenloft and planescape, I probably use it too.

 

[BiggusGeekus]

Those two definitions are completely unrelated though. And I've never heard the first used as a definition of metaplot, that's just plain plot.

You're right. That's a bad example.

But a lot of DMs do use metaplot in their homebrews. An over arcing story that hosts campaigns.