A Campaign Without a Metaplot?

[Imperialus]

We are running a TSOY game with no metaplot.

It is a retroactive game sort of.

The game started with the characters meeting at a tavern. The characters are at the end of their adventuring career and are telling stories about the "old days."

An interesting spin on this might be to have the 'tavern' actually be like the feast hall at Valhalla or some such. The PC's are all dead, either through violence (during the adventures) or old age. They're literally swapping stories in the afterlife. This would overcome the problem of PC death since if they're all sitting in a tavern it might be tough to explain why the fighter who just told the story got eaten by a dragon in it. If everyone's already dead then you don't need to worry about that.

 

[Mephistopheles]

I've run games without an uberplot before (I consider "metaplot" to be a slightly different beast). The thing is, as humans are apt to see patterns that are not there, the players will tend to interpret events into a metaplot. Even though, in my design, A and B are in now way linked, they find the two to be related, and start reacting accordingly.

Once, when I told them there was no such plot, they didn't believe me - thinking I was trying to be sneaky or something.

Sometimes I just go with the flow when the players are doing this. It's free material and the players feel good thinking they figured it out.

 

[Gears]

An interesting spin on this might be to have the 'tavern' actually be like the feast hall at Valhalla or some such. The PC's are all dead, either through violence (during the adventures) or old age. They're literally swapping stories in the afterlife. This would overcome the problem of PC death since if they're all sitting in a tavern it might be tough to explain why the fighter who just told the story got eaten by a dragon in it. If everyone's already dead then you don't need to worry about that.

This is very clever.

 

[Verdande]

All of my campaigns are seat-of-our-pants hackfests. Usually, I'll have wind that D&D time is coming, and I'll start considering a setting that I haven't managed to do yet.

Then we'll all gather around, characters get made, and we're off doing whatever it is that players want to do. Generally, it's a dungeon crawl, because that's what my players like to do. I make up everything on the spot, and write it down when the session is over. Then, the next time we play, I keep the notes and continue wherever we left off.

Matter of fact, I don't think I've ever been able to run an actual, continuing campaign with an actual for any length of time, so I've never really bothered coming up with a world-spanning conspiracy.

 

[Ydars]

This idea for telling stories in a tavern is like "The Adventures of Baron Munchhausen"; an RPG published in the UK by Hogshead (who also published WHFRP for a while). I never played it but always thought the concepts were interesting.

I LOVE the idea of shoving Valhalla on top though; brilliant. Now THIS is innovation!!!

A related thing I have used is a game where the characters are all reincarnated but cannot clearly remember their past lives. As the game progresses, they can sometimes end up journeying into their shared memories. I did this because of players coming and going all the time and this method allows you to GM whatever you want without breaking continuity; you can have whole game sessions that take no "time" in the sense that the past memory is instantaneous. If they explore this past life, they get experience for "remembering" and if they die they can gain impediments or insanities that affect them after the end of the memory.

In the end, my players were actively seeking their pasts out, rather than just playing the plot from the real world. We even had one plot where the characters were effectively time travelling; seeing some ruins both now and as they were a thousand years before.

 

[Fenes]

I usually have some "broad metaplot", but not in the sense that whatever the PCs do, X happens unless they prevent it, but that there's some faction/group with those goals, and a number of events are tied to it.

Usually, the metaplot gets a backseat to individual "plot arcs" (often trips to far away places, or dealing with a specific event), but I aim to have the metaplot shine through in thopse arcs as well.

Of course the thing is flexible though - the current campaign started with the goal of liberating the conquerred Unther, but after the first "chapter", one PC who wanted to rule the country instead left, and the rest of the PCs switched sides and are not part of the Mulhorandi empire that rules Unther.

 

[sinecure]

My own campaign world just has lots of plots going on at the lower levels and then more political oriented stuff going on at the higher levels. There is no real uberplot as has been mentioned. The world is just too big a place.

If we ever wanted to play at something akin to Epic level I could make up something about the whole world being in jeopardy. That could qualify as a metaplot, right? But it does seem a little cliche.

 

[apoptosis]

An interesting spin on this might be to have the 'tavern' actually be like the feast hall at Valhalla or some such. The PC's are all dead, either through violence (during the adventures) or old age. They're literally swapping stories in the afterlife. This would overcome the problem of PC death since if they're all sitting in a tavern it might be tough to explain why the fighter who just told the story got eaten by a dragon in it. If everyone's already dead then you don't need to worry about that.

That is a really cool idea. I honestly hadn't of that.

One nice thing with TSOY is that while combat can be deadly it is really in the player's hands to choose what stakes to fight for, so I am not really expecting death to occur very readily.

In D&D of course resurrection/raise dead being somewhat easy to obtain can also deal with this issue.

 

[Gothmog]

I've never run a campaign with an overarching metaplot. I do story arcs (5-7 connected adventures, perhaps with other adventures thrown in between them) to explore themes or locales in my homebrew world that players show an interest in, but I don't have any overarching BBEG's in my world. Megalomaniacs and dangerous madmen to be sure, but there are dozens of them- not one overriding forces in the world.

The only metaplot game I've considered running would be for experienced gamers, in order to shake things up a bit. Basically, the PCs wake up in an abandoned monastery dressed in simple robes, with no memories of their previous lives. After exploring for a bit, they realize they were in a contained and magically shielded area, and when they get out, they find the remains of a violent battle in the monastery, with bodies littering the halls and surrounding land. A few clues remain as to who those involved in the conflict were, but its obvious from their garb and iconography, one group (the attackers) were from some holy order of a good-aligned church, while the defenders were mostly mercenaries. Since the PCs are all in the same situation to begin with (isolated and in a confusing situation), party unity should be easier to establish too.

As the PCs gain experience and try to piece together their missing identities, they would have occasional flashes or dreams of horrific events with them at the center of the trouble. They would also notice that so people react to them strangely (not trusting them, fearful, or with hatred), though most people treat them normally, and some "evil" people are inexplicably nice to them. Only late in the campaign (say 14th level in 4e), would the PCs realize they are actually resurrected major villians from the campaign world's past, brought back for some inexplicable reason. Apparently something went wrong with the resurrection ritual though, and they came back without their memories or skills. Now the PCs have to decide what to do- keep on with their current beliefs and behavior, try to run away from the problem, or try to reclaim their "birthright" of being villians. Of course, there is the issue of who brought them back to life in the first place, and why....

 

[wedgeski]

I'm doing this right now, running a nine run 4e campaign that boosts the characters 2-3 levels every time we play. It's designed to take us from 1-30, putting the new game through its paces, before we start our regular campaign.

Stellar idea. Is the material all of your own creation?