Please describe your experience (players) or management (GMs) of a perfectly executed metaplot...

Baldurs_Underdark · May 3, 2019

I don't trust my players to have a memory better than a goldfish, so I kinda rub it in. The campaign is built on 2 themes:

Many mini-stories where every time the same bad-guys-organisation is involved. By now they seem to get the hint and may even soon actively start attacking the main bad guys.
Players get rich and build themselves a fancy stronghold on a prime location which gets more and more impressive.

Of course, in my notebook the political landscape of the world is far more complicated but I really don't expect my players/characters to grasp that with the limited and fragmented information they have had (characters) and the lack of preparation before each session and long intervals in between sessions (players). It just helps me to write material for new sessions, and it ensures that I avoid plot holes.

Imaculata · May 3, 2019

I've been running the same campaign for many years now, so I think I have quite some experience with setting up plots and plot twists that have to withstand many months before they are actually revealed. In fact, some twists have laid in wait for years now to this very day.

It is not always possible to keep your players from second guessing your story. The longer they play, the more likely they catch on. I try to take lessons from writer George RR Martin in this respect, by not changing the story just because people guessed it correctly. That would make the plot nonsensical, since all the clues pointed one way, and all of a sudden you make it into something else entirely. I also feel that it can sometimes be quite satisfying for the players to discover they were right all along.

But the easiest way to set up metaplot reveals, is to simply not flesh them out in their entirety, until the players get closed to it. This leaves you some freedom to refine the plot later, and make it all click. With a bit of trickery, the players will not even catch on that you didn't have this all figured out from session 1.

I run a sandbox game, so for a large part the plot is dictated by where the players go next. I have a lot of smaller plots tied to the current location of the players, which makes it easy for them to remember what is going on. They only ever need to worry about where they are now. But I then tie that into the main plot in some way, so that it feels like a cohesive whole. This helps the players understand the larger overarching plot, because there are callbacks to it from time to time. I also make sure to link the plot of side quests together, so one quest leads into the next, or into finding a clue regarding the metaplot.

For example, if one side quest has the players dealing with an obnoxious nobleman, I of course try my best to weave that nobleman into the metaplot and several other side quests as well. This means I have to introduce less new characters, plus it makes the players hate that character even more.

Coroc · May 3, 2019

We got 2 campaigns atm. One in which I play Oota, it is very hard to miss the metaplot there.
The other I dm, it is the "ragpicker" campaign, we pref to play that when some players do not have time. In this one (Ghk) I got the main theme pcs vs iuz and his orcs and demons. I use adventure snippets which are quite independent from each other but I got some metaplot elements. So they got to find all three parts of the ashen staff (major artefact) and I got recurring mysterious R on various notes (Rary) who will intermingle later on in a drastic way. Also I got a succubus lieutenant of iuz who met the group a few times and caused them a lot of trouble.
My advice: Connect metaplot elements to items and npcs. That makes them more memorable

Desdichado · May 3, 2019

Sometimes the best way to do this is not to have a plot at all, but the illusion of one because you tie up things that happen organically in such a way that it looks like you planned it all along. Usually stuff that grows organically, and stuff that the players suggest in their wildest flights of speculation are way cooler than whatever you thought you were going to do anyway.

Legatus Legionis · May 4, 2019

Unwise · May 4, 2019

[MENTION=6779196]Charlaquin[/MENTION] , wow it sounds like we are running the same game

I'd like to think my earlier mentions of that helped inspire yours. It sounds like yours has progressed better than mine though. My group stopped playing due to RL concerns before I could reveal the death curse having an effect on them.

I planned on swapping from flashback mode to real-time once the members sitting around the pub talking noticed that they were getting sicker and sicker. They were well over-leveled, which would have meant they breeze through Chuult and have a final showdown with the BBEG, which was the final moment in which we see if these old timers live or die. I'm sad we did not see that through to the conclusion.

Charlaquin · May 4, 2019

Unwise said:
[MENTION=6779196]Charlaquin[/MENTION] , wow it sounds like we are running the same game I'd like to think my earlier mentions of that helped inspire yours. It sounds like yours has progressed better than mine though. My group stopped playing due to RL concerns before I could reveal the death curse having an effect on them.

I planned on swapping from flashback mode to real-time once the members sitting around the pub talking noticed that they were getting sicker and sicker. They were well over-leveled, which would have meant they breeze through Chuult and have a final showdown with the BBEG, which was the final moment in which we see if these old timers live or die. I'm sad we did not see that through to the conclusion.

We’re still fairly early on, about midway through Forge of Fury right now. Keeping groups together all the way through a long campaign like that can be tough. For me it helps that two of my five players live in the same house as me, two of the others also live together, and one of those two is a coworker of mine. And the fifth happens to have the same days off work as me, so it all works out pretty well, knock on wood.

How did you tie Hidden Shrine into the overarching story (or plan to do so)? I’m thinking putting it in Chult will help make it feel a little more cohesive once we get to ToA, but the segue into it from Forge seems awkward and unmotivated to me right now.

Unwise · May 7, 2019

Charlaquin said:
How did you tie Hidden Shrine into the overarching story (or plan to do so)? I’m thinking putting it in Chult will help make it feel a little more cohesive once we get to ToA, but the segue into it from Forge seems awkward and unmotivated to me right now.

Hidden Shrine was still a flashback in Chuult for me. That worked well, as the idea is that they have already know the lay of the land and are friends with an airship captain in Chuult by the time we swap to real-time and they need to go destroy the soul-eating-thingy. The plan was that this would aid them in getting to the end boss quickly. They already know kickass rangers and guides, an airship captain and have maps of the place.

MNblockhead · May 7, 2019

In my experience, the best instances of this have grown organically with the campaign.

I've planned out intricate storyline, only to have them burnt to the ground by the PCs.

Instead, I've had more luck just focusing on a rich campaign setting to be the sandbox they play in and come up with the sessions adventure one session at a time, which allows me to think about what the results and reactions to the characters action make sense in my world and customize the adventures around that brain storming.

The most impactful instances of this have actually occurred in one-shots of narrative-heavy, improv-focused games like InSPECTREs (zany, slapstick) or Dialect (perhaps the most moving TTRPG experiences I've had).

Sometimes the most powerful plot twists are those that take the DM by surprise.

Imaculata · May 7, 2019

I try to keep a few loose ends on purpose, that can then later be filled in when I have a good idea. This allows me to adapt the main plot to what the players are doing.

For example, I have a mystical pirate treasure hidden away somewhere in my campaign. But I've never stated what the treasure contains. It could be gold and jewels, but it could also be something far more important. By keeping it vague, I can change it to something a little bit more interesting later on. I don't actually have to think about what the treasure is, until the players decide to go after it.