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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Staffan" data-source="post: 9521312" data-attributes="member: 907">I think a big problem with metaplot is something you mention in passing: metaplot reveals. Traditional metaplot relies on treating the GM as a reader who gets to retell a story that you are creating rather than a person who gets to tell their own story based on the elements and plot seeds that you have planted throughout the work. And to keep the reader interested, you need to keep them in the dark and string them along with periodic reveals. Look! The sorcerer-monarchs are actually proto-dragons! And they sacrifice 1000 people every year to keep something trapped! It's their old boss who set them up to commit genocide, whom they turned on when they realized he was going to kill all humans too and turn the world over to the halflings.Some people enjoy this method of setting building, where they get to make sense of hints here and there and try to figure out where the designers are going with things. I don't. A game setting is not a novel series, and should not be treated the same.Compare this to Eberron, where the major players and their plans are all set out in the core book, presented as a menu from which the DM can select the threats they want to use in this particular campaign. Later books certainly add nuance to many of these and go into greater detail, and sometimes present more local instances of the big threats (e.g. the plot by the Dreaming Dark to infiltrate house Deneith mentioned in the Sharn sourcebook – having the Dreaming Dark infiltrate things is a core threat, and this is just a local example of it), but they generally don't go "Oh, and here's a new continent with a big army that's about to invade".</blockquote>

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