Artificial Plot Control

[Moff_Tarkin]

I have played a lot of video games and some of them have really good storylines, better then any D&D games I have seen run. I always wondered why the story in most D&D games was lacking compared to some of the better video games out there and I realized the problem lied not in the DM’s imagination but in the way that video games make their complex plotlines works.

Anyone who has played a lot of video games knows that video games use artificial means to keep you from screwing up the plot. Lets say you have your first encounter with the main villain. The plot calls for him to makes his opening villain speech, do something mean like kill your friend or throw a bomb at you, and then escape. Now all of that goes to crap if you just run up and start trying to smash his skull with a wrench before he can do whatever it is the plot calls for him to do. For this reason video games always use some artificial means to keep you from doing that. Perhaps you first meet the villain from behind some unbreakable glass, maybe he cast some sort of paralyze spell, or maybe you just lose control of your character and watch things happen in a cut scene.

The problem is this. I can’t see how to make a perfect story without using some of these artificial means for plot control, but on the other hand, I don’t know if I can force these types of artificial plot control on the players. They are easily recognizable for what they are. I spot them easily in every game I play, and I don’t know if the players in my group, who are rules obsessed, would enjoy that style of DMing.

One perfect example of a need for plot control comes with the villain dilemma. To build up a long time villain with personality it sometime helps to have the party encounter him a few times before the final confrontation. But how does the villain give his little speech and perform his villainous deeds without being pre-empted by the players yelling “We attack” No matter what escape route your villain has planed, the players can ruin it. What if someone rolls a really good initiative and deals a great amount of damage so the villain cant make the concentration check for his teleport spell? Or, what if the mage has the foresight to have a dimension anchor ready? Or what if the fighter decides to grapple him instead of attacking, keeping the villain from running? Dispelling his magical items would stop things like boots of teleportation.

All these problems arise when you try to run a story without artificial plot control like you see in the video games, but introducing that artificial plot control may make the players angry when they realize the DM is “cheating.” Ill admit there have been times I was angry at a video game for cheating me with artificial plot control.

So what is the answer to this conundrum? Should a DM use artificial plot control or not? What have some of you seen or tried in your own games?

One more thing. I know people are going to say it helps to be creative, and it does, but the guys who write the plots for video games are payed writers, and even they cant make the story work without using easily recognizable plot control tactics.

 

[Fenes]

Use indirect means to show the villain's evil - NPC witnesses who tell of such deeds, visions and divinations, maybe scry spells.

 

[DrunkonDuty]

Reasons to let the BBEG get away vary as much as BBEGs. Ask yourself: why is the BBEG here at this time? Do they need to be here at all? OK, to add drama but in what way? Slaughter a village to show their evilness/power? Steal something that the PCs need/want/must protect? Wind up the PCs? (I like this one.)

If you work out why they're there ways in which they can avoid capture at the same time as not killing the PCs may occur to you. Frinstance:

The classic over-confident BBEG. Too arrogant (or busy) to kill the annoying little PCs and just tells the mooks to finish them off. This is why a BBEG has mooks after all. Mooks fight, BBEG wanders off. Make sure you have enough mooks.

A retroengineering fix if the BBEG is killed/caught could be that it turns out it wasn't the BBEG. Just a minion who talks big. Or maybe a Doombot. OK this would suck if the players knew you'd fudged, but if they don't know then they won't feel gypped.

Wizardly BBEGs can have clones and simulacrums. Simulacrums can be used as heralds in place of the BBEG but make a good taster. Clones can come into effect after the BBEG is killed. Contingency used cleverly can cover a lot of possibilities.

Live with it. A while back IMC the PC's were fighting a Duergar cleric and his troops. Now this guy wasn't the BBEG of the campaign but I did want him to recur. Poor bugger got royally stuffed when a weakness spell dropped his strength to 3. Too low to stand up-right in his own plate armour. A silence spell prevented him from casting a dispel. Poor bugger had to crawl away, very slowly, while his troops died up at the front line against the PC's. Thing is I decided just to let the guy die if he couldn't get away. It wasn't what I had wanted at the start of the encounter but hey-ho, the PCs earned it.

Hostages. If the PC's attack the hostages may die. The BBEG may not be bothered to take the hostage with him when he goes.

The BBEG may be too tough to be taken out but isn't interested in killing the PCs. (Can't be bothered, may want them to take news of the BBEG's evilness to the world at large.) This works best with the the megalomaniac type. A more efficient BBEG, the sort who ties up lose ends as they go along, would be a risky proposition for this. But see the one about letting the mooks do it above.

The BBEG may be in a defensive position that the PCs can't successfully storm. Other side of a ravine/river. Behind castle walls.

IMC my actual BBEG was recently caught by the PCs. I didn't want this to happen but they came up with such a good lure and trap that I couldn't in any fairness resist letting them beat her. But what I did do was let her survive (fudged the hp damage by a couple of points.) Fortunately the heroes are law abiding types and wouldn't kill her out of hand, that was for the courts to decide. Captured yes, but alive. And she'll escape and come back bigger and meaner than ever. And the players are not only expecting this, they're looking forward to it.

hope this provides some inspiration.
cheers,

 

[Peni Griffin]

Artificial plot control is called railroading. Don't do it.

Grow your plots organically and don't plan more than an adventure or two ahead. Have several antagonists in place working out their little plots in the background and advancing in parallel with the PCs. The ones that survive contact with the PCs continue to build on what went before. They all have henchmen who can use the available campaign resources either to take over the goal or bring back the boss. By a natural process, you eventually winnow out the weaker contenders and the result is a BBEG who has earned his position and whom the PCs really hate.

 

[Grand_Director]

One way I highlight a villain from the beginning is to showcase his actions behind the screen in a "cut scene". As long as the the mystery of the game is not figuring out who a bad guy is this is a great way for your player (as opposed to the characters) to get to know the bad guys. And these cut scenes need not give everything away; they can be used to show the bad guy gathering forces for "something" and when the "something" hits it resonates with the players. I also use the cut scene to show the effects of a player victory over the bad guy. The cut scene was also a way for me to let the players know that a particular bad guy was not the be all and end all when he answered to a shadowy master the audience could not see.

I came up with idea because I was running some modules with great bad guys who were interesting not only mechanically, but thematically as well. They had rich backgrounds that intertwined with each other and drove their actions. They were fascinating and beautiful and the players would know none of it because the bad guys would live for five rounds of combat and be done. I tried to think of a way to communicate the intricate backgrounds and personalities of these NPCs and first thought about journal entries found after the fighting was done. But that would not work because by that point the adventure would be over and the players are already moving on. In the end I decided that what I lost by revealing who the bad guys were out of game was off set by what the players would gain from the story telling and it worked. +

I also used this story telling device on a lesser bad guy would happened to flee from the last fight. It was still early in the campaign (level five) and I wanted to use him again. Of course it would have been neat to sit on this guy for a while and spring him on the players ten or eleven levels later "remember me?" What I risked was a group of players who didn't care. So I kept the players in the loop every few game sessions; the bad guy recruiting other bad guys the players let escape, the bad guy taking actions to fund his organization, the bad guy forcefully taking out a rival. These asides took the form of short stories that I would use to either start a game "letting the players sit there and get into the mood" or to cap a game right before going home. By the time the bad guy launched his surprise revenge plot (and the players had no idea what is was going to be, just that it was going to be bad for them) they were inspired to finally be able to deal with this loose thread. It was a great fight and the players still talk about it.

Of course, this advice does not help "in game" interactions and there I am stuck. I try to have the BBEG deal with the characters and make his get away and if he doesn't make it, I move on and create a new BBEG. But I found the best way to have a BBEG that is a constant in game thorn to the characters is to have the character that the players can not touch. The respected lordling loved by all and the characters can not prove he is the master of a vast thieves guild. This BBEG loves to taunt the characters in public knowing they can not strike him down. But that's all I have.

 

[Graybeard]

In my game the PCs haven't met the BBEG yet. They have heard of him from underlings and assorted street thugs. Also, the BBEG has sent letters to the PCs and their families. Nothing threatening, just friendly notes and gifts. Once the PCs found a scrying device in a ruined wizard tower. They used it to scry on the BBEG and some of his henchmen. Now they know what he looks like but still have not encountered him.

 

[bytor4232]

Artificial plot control is called railroading. Don't do it.

Grow your plots organically and don't plan more than an adventure or two ahead. Have several antagonists in place working out their little plots in the background and advancing in parallel with the PCs. The ones that survive contact with the PCs continue to build on what went before. They all have henchmen who can use the available campaign resources either to take over the goal or bring back the boss. By a natural process, you eventually winnow out the weaker contenders and the result is a BBEG who has earned his position and whom the PCs really hate.

I have to admit, this works best. I have rough ideas, but never plan too far ahead. The only time I railroad players is when I wind up a campaign thats dead, thankfully that doesn't happen too much.

 

[shilsen]

As a few people have already suggested, I recommend not planning your storylines beforehand. Let them arise out of the characters' decisions and choices (and, of course, failures too). It's not that difficult. I posted about my particular approach to doing it here.

 

[Phlebas]

safest way is always to keep BBEG away from PC's until your willing to risk them. use minions, scrying devices, or old fashioned rumour to build them up until the players think they know them as well as each other - (it also helps when BBEG make their big entrance if the PC's recognise the description and don't have the brief group huddle, followed by dm prompting and then decide to attack / run away and ruin the speech....)

 

[Ry]

The idea of artificial plot control is so far off of what I do now it's hard to remember that I used to do it.
RPGs greatest strength is how interactive they are; the GM's plan for the story is just one part of a process whereby players and GM tell a story. If there's a way to strap players into a non-interactive story without running up against that basic problem, I'm interested in it, but ultimately I think it goes against the strength of what RPGs are.