Does Metaplot ever work? Forked Thread: Greyhawk 4e

[Calico_Jack73]

IMO, I think that a metaplot can work well as a good foundation for a game/setting, but can be a right awful pain as a script for future progression of that setting. The foundation is something a DM can work with & build on; a script is something a DM either needs to keep track of or compete with.

I couldn't agree more! Though I love the setting I believe that Midnight suffers from it's own Metaplot. It is almost too heavy handed... it is hard for the PCs to believe that they can make a difference in the setting when the intent of the setting is that the PC will never be able to defeat the BBEG but must be content with small victories that make the best of an aweful situation.

 

[Fenes]

Another problem is that some metaplots can change the whole setting's theme into something compeltely different - like post-acopalypse, Horror, etc.

 

[S'mon]

I couldn't agree more! Though I love the setting I believe that Midnight suffers from it's own Metaplot. It is almost too heavy handed... it is hard for the PCs to believe that they can make a difference in the setting when the intent of the setting is that the PC will never be able to defeat the BBEG but must be content with small victories that make the best of an aweful situation.

I played in a Midnight campaign and that was certainly my experience, though I think the GM did her best to inject some hope.
Getting massacred by orcs got old after a while.

Edit: Just took the Magic: TG test - I'm White too!! Interesting that raising my son Bill to "Rule the Empire with Me at His Side" was apparently compatible with that...

 

[AFGNCAAP]

LOL I know exactly what you mean. I've just been dealing with a classic "trenchcoat and katana" player straight out of 1997 - "I've spent the last 10 years playing World of Darkness", was his comment - and politely encouraging him to decide that my D&D campaign based on the works of CS Lewis & Tolkien was perhaps not the best place for him...

Edit: Although I don't think Spelljammer is a trenchcoat & katana setting as such. I think it's a bit older - late '80s?

IMO, Spelljammer fits in there: it's D&D ala space opera, much as Dark Sun is D&D ala post-apocalyptic or Ravenloft is D&D ala WoD (not that the PCs can necessarily be monsters as in WoD, but there's the aura/aroma of a "world of grim mystery, horror, & terror" permeating the setting much as in [old] WoD).

IMO, Planescape falls in the same category, though I'd compare it to being a Much More Serious take of the multidimensional worlds ala Robert Asprin's Myth Adventures—Sigil might as well just be the Bazaar on Deva, with Skeeve's homeworld of Klah as the Prime Material plane. It's just been made using the classic Great Wheel instead of a bunch of random dimensions with an individual theme. (If you will, it's a dimensional variant of the Sci-Fi style trope of single theme/environment planets, like the all-desert Tatooine, all-forest Endor, or frozen world Hoth; in the case of Myth Adventures, it's terrifying-aggressive-dangerous natives Perv, the sports-obsessed Jakh, the horror-themed Limbo, the hellish Deva, the tech-oriented Kobol, and the species-homeworld-related locales of Zoorik, Trollia, etc.).

However, IMO, it's all got that late 80's/all 90's flavor of "Something familiar, but with a twist!" to it. Shadowrun is cyberpunk with a liberal dash of magic & fantasy; Rifts is post-apocalyptic with everything including the kitchen sink thrown in; World of Darkness is horror, but with the PCs as the (sorta-humanized) monsters instead of the monster hunters/victims; TORG is an invaded Earth, but invaded by realities/concepts/genres instead of aliens.

All of that (for me at least) brings back memories of trenchcoat & katana stylings, clove cigarettes, boy bands, grunge rock, and the music getting scrubbed out of Music Television; just stepping out of the world of Jams, high tops, hair bands, fade haircuts, and mosaic stylings involving cut-out photos, irregular polygonal shapes, polka dots, stripes, and some combination/use of the colors black, white, pink, and day-glo colors.

But that's just my opinion.

 

[EATherrian]

Forked from: Greyhawk 4e: Back to the Beginning...



I'm wondering what other people think about Metaplot/Timeline Advance by Publisher in RPG settings. Do you think any or most work well? Are there examples you've liked and enjoyed in-play? All the examples I can think of range IMO from marginal fail to Epic Fail, when it comes to actually using them in an RPG campaign. They seem designed more to appeal to readers who don't actually play.

Here are some I'm thinking of:

Greyhawk: From the Ashes

I agree here. If I were to do a Greyhawk campaign today, I would use the '83 box as my basis.

Forgotten Realms: 4e?

Ugh. I really don't like 4E Forgotten Realms. Most of the regions I liked are gone. Not moved to Abeir but just gone. Again I'd go back to the 1e stuff as a basis if I were to run a campaign here.

Mystara: Wrath of the Immortals/sinking of Alphatia.

I did not like this either, but Mystara does have the one positive example of forwarding the timeline: Karameikos. In the boxed set they showed a Karameikos that had grown a few decades and how it was settling. I think it's the only forwarding that I like.

Cyberpunk: Cybergeneration, anything after 2020

Wholeheartedly agree here.

Dark Sun: 'ruined' right after publication, by release of the 1st novel!

Novels are the death of game worlds. They destroyed FR and they destroyed DS. The only thing they didn't destroy was Ravenloft because it was so open and fluid anyway, but I'd still have to ignore many of the novels.

Traveller: The New Era, sunk GDW.

Ugh. Don't remind me of that. Interesting idea, very bad implementation.

Vampire: ? - I'm not familiar with Vampire: TM, but I hear it's the grand-daddy of metaplot.

I've never played Vampire et. al. but I read a lot of them and if anything is an example of drowning in metaplot this is it.

Overall I agree with you. The question is how to keep a world fresh for newcomers but retain the charm that old-timers enjoy. I haven't figured that out yet, and don't think anyone else has either.

 

[Fenes]

Overall I agree with you. The question is how to keep a world fresh for newcomers but retain the charm that old-timers enjoy. I haven't figured that out yet, and don't think anyone else has either.

I'd say by making small changes in established parts, and introducing new elements/themes by introducing new regions, not by massively changing old, established regions.

 

[S'mon]

I
I did not like this either, but Mystara does have the one positive example of forwarding the timeline: Karameikos. In the boxed set they showed a Karameikos that had grown a few decades and how it was settling. I think it's the only forwarding that I like.

Karameikos - being a politics/history buff, I have a hang-up over the politics. I can accept all kinds of Mystaran weirdness, but I can't accept the premise that Karameikos is (a) ruled by Thyatian settlers and (b) independent of Thyatis. In the absence of a war of independence, it just goes against human nature and makes no sense to me that Emperor Thincol, head of an expansionist empire, would grant complete independence to a territory on his doorstep. Making Stefan a Grand Duke within the Empire, fine. Freedom from taxation, fine. Ejecting the Grand Duchy from the Empire, not fine. I can't think of any historical parrallel for what's described as having occurred. "Who lost Karameikos?" would be the cry - Thincol's prestige would be massively damaged in the Senate and with the Mob.
And anyway, Thyatis is vastly more powerful than Karameikos; the first thing it would do to a weak, independent, neutral state on its doorstep, is invade.

 

[Umbran]

The basic problem I have seen with metaplot is simple - if our group works in a setting, and the metaplot advances, that advancement can have very little relation to what we actually want to do with our game.

If I have players invested in interacting with some setting elements, and those elements change in the wrong way, I end up with some very unhappy players, and I'm stuck with either displeasing my players, or having much of the new setting material be rather less useful to me.

I suspect that metaplot is good for the life of a setting, similar to how rules-revisions are necessary for the business-life of a game. However I think in practice for any given campaign, metaplot advancement is more likely to be negative than positive.

 

[Cadfan]

My opinion probably doesn't count for much because I exclusively homebrew (or use modules when I'm lazy).

But I don't think metaplot is good for RPGs.

Metaplot is essentially storyline. RPGs don't work well with official storyline because anything in your character that is big enough to truly matter won't be reflected in the official storyline even though it should be, and anything in the official storyline big enough to matter is likely to conflict with your game.

Metaplot also tends to ensure lousy books, as the poor authors simultaneously balance the need to keep the setting clean for players while also not killing any sacred cows.

Its why some of my favorite D&D style fantasy comes from D&D authors after they've put down the pen they used to write D&D books, and headed off to freelance. Suddenly they can author books that remain true to the look and feel of a D&D setting, but without all the baggage.

 

[Krensky]

Well, DP9 used to do a lot of meta-plot with Heavy Gear and, to a lesser degree, Jovian Chronicles. The main difference though, is they wrote the core and splat books in such a way as to tell you who the important (to the plot) NPCs were so a GM could make an informed decision and that the meta-plot was generally advanced in specific meta-plot source books which were done up in the style of an intelligence briefing, filled with news clippings, analysis, journal entries, etc.