Confession: I like Plot

[Ariosto]

If we know right off the bat that we're on a trip from A to B, then the really interesting question is probably:

How much does it cost?

If Napoleon is not victorious at Austerlitz, then we've pretty much entered the realm of "fantasy" war-gaming. That need not keep it from being an engaging scenario, though.

It's a neat aspect of RPGs that, in a sense, "there are no winners and losers". In another sense, though, players can attain more or less desired outcomes in the process. Those distinctions, and the decisions that lead to one or another, give the process meaning as a game.

They are also, I think, central to stories.

 

[Hussar]

Man, Ariosto, you can't get through a post without trying to pick an edition fight, can you? Not even one? We get it, you think the old way is vastly superior to the new way, even though you constantly misrepresent the new way. We get it, really. Just let your ideas stand on their own merit.

The ignore button is your friend.

I think the point about buy in is absolutely on the head. If I want to run a campaign based on an epic quest, by the nature of that campaign, because it is more restrictive than other types of campaigns, I absolutely have to get the players on board at the beginning.

And there are any number of ways to do that. To somewhat answer Pawsplay's concerns with motivation, you could do any or all of the following:

• Talk to the group beforehand. As Rel said, you lay it on the table to the players and if they don't want to do it, then don't. It would likely be a VERY good idea to do this before you spend too much time developing the campaign. Spending dozens of hours crafting your campaign only to have it get shot down in flames before it starts is perhaps not a great idea.
  
• Character backgrounds. Place a few limitations on the character backgrounds. If you have character backgrounds that tie into the overarching plot, then motivation becomes pretty much built in. If you want the PC's to take the ring to Mt. Doom, then tie those characters to areas that will be destroyed if the PC's fail. And make sure the players actually care about their backgrounds.
  
• Rewards. There's nothing wrong with saying, "Do this and you get half the kingdom". Dangle the banana in front of the mon... err... I mean properly motivate your players and they'll dance to your tune all on their own. Obviously, this could go very, very bad. Use with care.
  

 

[pawsplay]

The advantage of a linear-type, programmatic game is that you are more likely to get the players to the volcano because that is what you have planned for. The advantage of the open-ended, sandbox type is that you are more prepared if things do not go as expected. Aimless randomness and railroading are both bad; they both represent degenerations of the aims of a RPG. I always come back to this: at the heart, RPGs are about meaningful choices. To be meaningful it has to be a real choice, and it also has to have real consequences. In the case of "stuff happens," the problem is that all the outcomes are pretty arbitrary, whereas in a railroad, the problem is that the presented options are all arbitrary.

Navigating between too much freedom and too little is an important task of the GM. Generally, in my view, this is best accomplished by offering the right amount and kind of information to let the players make informed decisions (or relatively informed decisions, if they are to be surprised in some way down the line), and by understanding what motivates the players and their characters. Where exactly you fall on continuum between mostly linear games and mostly freeform games is ultimately a stylistic choice, provided you are able to navigate between the Scylla and Charybdis of game design, railroading and futility.

 

[Ariosto]

On a smaller scale than the Great Pendragon Campaign, I enjoyed "The Enemy Within" for Warhammer. It was not necessarily a question of preserving PCs (who died with some frequency), so long as new characters got tangled up in the web of intrigues.

If your overarching plot is big and wide ranging enough, that sort of integration is not too hard. It also helps if there's not such an element of time pressure or special qualities as to make "the A team" the only ones who can see the affair through to the end.

In contrast, another poorly contrived example would be Rogue Mistress for Eternal Champion (Stormbringer and/or Hawkmoon).

I seem to recall "Yellow Clearance Black Box Blues" (for Paranoia) as decent, but memory sometimes plays tricks.

Sometimes scenarios end up playing a lot better when warped almost beyond recognition than in accordance with the designer's plan. I think H4 Throne of Bloodstone was one of those; in the intended Bloodstone Campaign context, I suspect it would have been just too absurd for my group. It still ended up pretty silly.

 

[Ariosto]

D1-3 as an "adventure path" can court disappointment because there are plenty of opportunities for inexperienced players to get their characters killed while far in the Depths of the Earth. If on top of that one expects them to brave the Demonweb Pits, a compelling motive for doing so might be helpful.

(If PCs somehow manage to get into a vendetta with Lolth, then bringing her to bay long enough to get her before she -- or even just the Reaper that comes to all mortals -- gets them might be tricky. Demons can be even more slippery than high-level PCs, but pride goeth, as 'tis said! Interesting times, I'm sure, although I have not seen such a case at first hand.)

The narrower the requirements of a campaign, the more tightly bound to a set program of who, what, where and when, the more vulnerable a plot line is to disruption by player choices and fickle chance.

If you open up the larger scheme to allow for more than one descent into the depths, then you increase the chances of a visit to Erelhei-Cinlu figuring without fudging.

Another possibility (and certainly not the last) if things go "wrong" is to have players take on the roles of Drow and play out the intrigue among factions from that insiders' perspective.

 

[Bluenose]

Pendragon comes to mind as a great example of a game with plot as a premise. Beyond the many published scenarios (which I find mostly pretty spiffy), there is the grand campaign structure.

It has the advantage of drawing upon an incredibly rich myth cycle laden with multiple variations and interpretations. There is a similar resource in classical mythology, as suggested for instance in the work of Robert Graves. (ICE's Mythic Greece supplement for Rolemaster and Hero System is a nifty RPG resource.) Starting with the same familiar framework, two campaigns can produce very memorably different epic sagas.

That Providence or the Fates so often foretell tragedy in those milieus may be significant. With the prominent examples of doomed heroes, it may be easier to accept failure as a non-deterministic possibility. Gravitas and game may be in greater harmony than game and "happily ever after" story-telling expectations.

The thing I find problematic about Pendragon, and it applies to other campaigns as well, is that the PCs really don't make much difference in the end to how the campaign ends. They are peripheral to the story. The Fates have a very specific role of making sure things turn out the way things are supposed to. If you don't follow through with the story because of PC actions, it seems to rather miss the point of the story-line in not finishing it.

Not that alternatives are necessarily better. A purely "sandbox" campaign without an overarching plot often degenerates into players sitting around doing nothing until the GM puts a plot hook in front of them out of sheer frustration, or players who simply take the first plot hook every time without ever considering alternatives. Again in the end the world hardly notices the PCs existence, although in this case it's because they never do anything of real significance without the GMs intervention.

A third option is the campaign with a plot, where the GM has already assumed the players won't be peripheral to the main story, and has assigned them specific roles. This runs into problems as soon as the players start to deviate from the role the GM has assigneed them. You can either shift them back into the storyline, or ignore it, or let it go on without them interacting with it.

So that's three ways things can and do go wrong. A plot which the PCs are peripheral to is one they might resent if they start to feel they can't afffect the world. A plot which the PCs are an integral part of starts to go wrong when they decide to do something else. A lack of plot can lead to PCs who don't do anything until the GM tells them what to do. All these campaign styles can go wrong in other ways, but these are the ones that I've seen the most.

As for solutions, ultimately I think it's down to player expectations of what the campaign is about. Any of the three ways I've described can lead to awesome campaigns if that's what the players are looking for and if they and the GM deliver on those expectations. If the GM has made it plain what sort of campaign they''re running and the players go along with it, that should keep things going well.

 

[AverageCitizen]

A third option is the campaign with a plot, where the GM has already assumed the players won't be peripheral to the main story, and has assigned them specific roles. This runs into problems as soon as the players start to deviate from the role the GM has assigneed them. You can either shift them back into the storyline, or ignore it, or let it go on without them interacting with it.

I've never had that happen, but I don't think its because the players aren't independent, but because my 'assigned roles' are pretty flexible. So unless the player goes absolutely nuts then its all within the scope of the story. I mean, for me, the point is to see where they go with it, not tell them where to go.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

The challenge might not be getting the players to the Volcano. The challenge lies in making that path interesting. With whom do they ally to get there? Who do they confront and make their enemies? Who turns against them? Who joins their side?

You can have a lot of flexibility here. You can also "trick" - if the party doesn't really care for the Evil Archwizard and his ring, but they do care about the thief that stole their lunch money, the thief might be part of another organization interested in the ring and the Volcano. The story will unfold differently, but the party still will get to the volcano. Not to throw the ring in it and defeat the Archwizard, but to execute their revenge against that annoying bastard of a thief.

 

[CharlesRyan]

I hate the assumed connection between plot and railroading. Bad GMing is bad GMing; any campaign model can be screwed up by an incompetent GM.

We can talk about giving the players treasure without an assumed connection to Monty Haul style gaming. Everyone accepts that if a GM gives out ridiculously extravagant amounts of treasure, that's a problem with the GM, not the fundamental concept of treasure.

I move that we adopt the same stance toward plot.

 

[Ariosto]

The thing I find problematic about Pendragon, and it applies to other campaigns as well, is that the PCs really don't make much difference in the end to how the campaign ends.

Yes indeed. It is, at least by default, the very model of a foreordained A --> B path in the big picture (a scope of generations in this case). The interesting questions, as I suggested earlier, are of the "what does the journey cost" or "what do we glean or salvage along the way" sort. The fortunes of a family by the end cannot be predicted at the beginning. (One could go further and allow even the fate of Camelot to change in this new tale of the Once and Future King. Internal logic might even necessitate that in some circumstances, for it need not be that PCs are powerless to "change history".)

The single resource from which I find I get the most mileage in any campaign is character relationships.

I tend to favor more open-ended (and longer) undertakings, with plenty of room for those to get planted and nurtured in play. That seems to maximize "buy in".

For a shorter run that launches right away into some epic quest, more working up of background beforehand may be called for. Way back when, a lot of biography prior to play was something I rarely encountered outside of C&S. I think it's become a fairly common practice nowadays, though. For my tastes, it's usually at least as rewarding an investment of time and energy as constructing an optimized "build".