Metaplots: the good, the bad, and the ugly.

[reelo]

This is my ideal: a fantasy setting totally frozen in time, where it's up to the gaming groups to write the story.

Check out Hârn. It's a pseudohistorical medieval setting that has been around since the 80s and one of its premises is that they NEVER advance the setting.

All the official material (and there is A LOT) has a cutoff date, midnight of a certain day, new year's day iirc, and that's when campaigns are supposed to start. They set the stage, but don't dictate the play.
As a sidenote, orcs (called Gargûn) in that setting are very unique: they have sort of hives, like bees.

 

[Azuresun]

White Wolf was particularly bad about that. I have no idea how their internal editorial process worked, but I quickly realized that either there was nobody trying to coordinate plotlines and canons and various authors were just trying to do it informally on their own, or that the efforts that were being made had a lot of stuff slipping through.

I think it was the X-Files / Lost / Battlestar Galactica principle. You could plan out the big secrets and the revelations in advance.....but it's a lot easier to throw out some vague allusions to something big in the background that you never intend to follow up on, and just let the fans work themselves into a frenzy trying to figure it out to earn Internet cred. By the time the house of cards collapses and they realise you were just making stuff up as you went along, eh, who cares? You've already sold the advertising or books.

It's one of the reasons the Fading Suns sourcebook Dark Between The Stars is one of my all-time favourites. Since it covers demon cults, psychic covens and the ancient Sathra religion, it could have been a prime chance to have big Everything You Know Is Wrong revelations. But it's very intentionally presented as "this is what these people believe happened" rather than objective truth--in particular, the demon section got a laugh from me when they explained how every demon or cult in existence will tell you how THEY and they alone were the secret mastermind behind every major event in the setting's history, even those they couldn't possibly have been there for.

Dirty Secrets of the Black Hand was one big example.

I think the story there was that the writer was leaving WW on....not the best of terms....and decided "Eh, screw it."

 

[Ulfgeir]

I liked the metaplot that Shadowrun had earlier. For example the presidential election where the great Dragon Dunkelzahn won, and all the adventures that lead up to that, or the blowup from that in the form of his will, and so on. Also loved the connections they had to Earthdawn, as you had things from the past returning much earlier than expected. Or for example how they detonated a 1 kiloton tactical nuke right where their on headquarters were, in order to stop an invasion of insect spirits.

That metaplot, and all the in-character talk between people they had in their books as people in the game debated things made it seem like living world.

Kind of gave up on following the metaplot after 3rd edition though, for various reasons (mostly financial).
FASA were good at writing interesting settings, but they sucked at writing rules.

 

[wingsandsword]

I think it was the X-Files / Lost / Battlestar Galactica principle. You could plan out the big secrets and the revelations in advance.....but it's a lot easier to throw out some vague allusions to something big in the background that you never intend to follow up on, and just let the fans work themselves into a frenzy trying to figure it out to earn Internet cred. By the time the house of cards collapses and they realise you were just making stuff up as you went along, eh, who cares? You've already sold the advertising or books.

It's one of the reasons the Fading Suns sourcebook Dark Between The Stars is one of my all-time favourites. Since it covers demon cults, psychic covens and the ancient Sathra religion, it could have been a prime chance to have big Everything You Know Is Wrong revelations. But it's very intentionally presented as "this is what these people believe happened" rather than objective truth--in particular, the demon section got a laugh from me when they explained how every demon or cult in existence will tell you how THEY and they alone were the secret mastermind behind every major event in the setting's history, even those they couldn't possibly have been there for.

I always thought the reason that shows like X-Files or Battlestar Galactica did that was that so many shows are cancelled early, that statistically it means a show is likely to get cancelled before it becomes obvious that they really don't have an answer. You will probably look awesome and never have your bluff called. How many sci-fi shows, conspiracy-themed or mystery-themed shows that promised some grand mystery or great truth. . .and were cancelled LONG before they paid off or it was obvious they didn't have an answer.

The game that was the worst offender I think with the "This is really what's going on" aspect to a metaplot was Brave New World, a mostly-forgotten late 1990's superhero RPG about a dystopian alternate-timeline America. Every single book had a final chapter for GM's explaining what was "really" going on with the events from the rest of the book, and usually most of what was in the book was a complete lie. Major events depicted as being recent happenings in the new books were staged or faked, major NPC's were impostors for originals that died decades before, and most of the backstory to the alternate timeline was radically different than everyone thinks they did.

 

[Ringtail]

I don't hate Meta-plots and they certainly won't stop me from using a setting, like the Forgotten Realms. Actually for the Realms I tend to make my own "Alternate Universe" at a start date of my choosing, so I can mix old and new material without having to worry about the dates of material. Some nations were only detailed pre-spellplague, for example.

But I vastly prefer settings that don't have a meta-plot. In my opinion, the meta-plot should come from your gaming group. For example, my Saturday Group that has unfortunately entered indefinite hiatus due to COVID-19 successfully completed Lost Mine, Tomb of Annihilation, Storm King's Thunder, Princes of the Apocalypse and Dragon Heist. All being set in the forgotten Realms, we made our own meta-plot, with certain characters making Cameo appearances. (My friend's 2nd ever character becoming Lord of Phandalin, my all-time favorite character joining the harpers and resurrecting the dead characters from that campaign, another character of mine becoming King of Resurrected Besilmer, a friend playing the adopted child of a previous character - we saved a Kobold Egg.) You have a new group? You start fresh at Year 0 or whenever the setting starts.

One meta-plot I don't mind is that of Golarion/Age of Lost Omens in Pathfinder. In that setting, the changes to the world are really just the "successful" endings of their Adventure Paths (with the exception of the Whispering Tyrant and Oprak). Considering this is the kind of material my group and I tend to play, it makes it easy for us. Even so not that much high level stuff changes so the world is remarkably similar. Additionally, each region is pretty self contained, so its not hard to ignore what happened in Taldor when you're adventuring in Varisia.

 

[John Dallman]

I think metaplot is something for people who enjoy talking about a setting and figuring out "the truth" about it, vs actually running / playing RPG's there.

There's one type of GM that metaplot is very useful for. The one who wants to present a world that has moving parts behind the scenes, and larger forces than just the locals, but doesn't want to do all the work to create that themselves. They aren't terribly worried about the metaplot derailing their campaign, because they don't expect to be playing it for long enough for that to be a problem.

That kind of GM and their players buy RPGs, and their money's just as good as those who'll spend years on one game and hit serious problems with metaplot. If your objective is to sell lots of books to short-term gamers, metaplot may be a commercially sound approach.

 

[hawkeyefan]

So Imm curious for those who don’t like meta-plot....I mean, I understand the general idea that for a game setting it’s best if the major events and changes come as a result of actual play. I wouldn’t argue against that.

What I don’t get is how any of the meta-plot actually makes its way into your personal game. Don’t you pick and choose what you want included? Can’t you pick any single point in a fictional timeline and say “this is our starting point”? Hell, can’t you mix and match different elements from different times to all be present at your desired starting point?

I suppose that player knowledge of the meta-plot or expectations about what’s considered “canon” could potentially cause some issues....but isn’t all that easily addressed in session zero by saying “this may not be exactly like the setting you’re familiar with” or something similar?

I just struggle to understand having more information which may inspire you is a bad thing.

 

[wingsandsword]

So Imm curious for those who don’t like meta-plot....I mean, I understand the general idea that for a game setting it’s best if the major events and changes come as a result of actual play. I wouldn’t argue against that.

What I don’t get is how any of the meta-plot actually makes its way into your personal game. Don’t you pick and choose what you want included? Can’t you pick any single point in a fictional timeline and say “this is our starting point”? Hell, can’t you mix and match different elements from different times to all be present at your desired starting point?

I suppose that player knowledge of the meta-plot or expectations about what’s considered “canon” could potentially cause some issues....but isn’t all that easily addressed in session zero by saying “this may not be exactly like the setting you’re familiar with” or something similar?

I just struggle to understand having more information which may inspire you is a bad thing.

Well, let's take some of the more controversial metaplot changes as examples.

The Spellplague, the big event for Forgotten Realms going from 3e to 4e. . .they advanced the timeline over a century, killed off most of the gods, completely re-drew the map (to the point of adding a new continent, and wiping some countries and some of the most popular cities literally right off the map), completely re-wrote the whole planar cosmology, changed how magic works, and changed the tone from a fairly typical Tolkieneseque traditional fantasy world into a grimdark 4e "points of light" setting. . .

That's not "having more information which may inspire you". . .that's a whole different setting, with a totally different flavor and style, shoehorned into the old setting.

Or take the 5th Age in Dragonlance, a similar event that took Dragonlance from AD&D to a newly created "Saga System" of a card-based roleplaying game. . .that again advanced the timeline decades, caused every god in the whole pantheon to disappear, completely rewrote the rules of magic, changed the lore around dragons entirely, and again took a heroic, traditional fantasy setting and completely changed the tone to grimdark.

From a longtime fans perspective, they essentially ended the setting by changing it so much that any new material would be completely incompatible with anything that came before.

Also, it's NOT as easy as telling players you're doing things differently. . .for a fair amount of players, a game that substantially and intentionally violates canon is abhorrent. They have their mental picture of what the setting is like, of what they want to imagine when they play the game, and something that is like it enough to remind them of that setting. . .while at the same time being different enough to stand out, is mentally uncomfortable enough to make them not want to play.

(You're also assuming the 5e-ism of "session zero" is universal throughout gaming, this isn't just about 5e, it's about RPG's as a whole)

 

[the Jester]

What are your thoughts on the practice? Are there some metaplots you think were handled better than others? Are there some you really like, that you really dislike?

The real problem with metaplot, in my opinion, is the risk that it invalidates what happened in some home games, leaving those groups with the choice of trying to shoehorn it into their continuity, ignoring the metaplot and trying to make sense of new material that ties into said metaplot/not buying that material, or rebooting their campaigns entirely.

Metaplot is, in my opinion, pretty much universally awful in how it impacts real campaigns that real groups are running. I strongly dislike it, and on reflection, the impact of metaplot on published settings is probably why I generally don't (and won't) buy published settings and run only my own homebrew world.

From a business perspective, the goal of metaplot seems to be "here's new stuff detailing what has happened in the world, buy it to keep up with the official line", but from a player/DM perspective, the actual effect seems to be more along the lines of "screw you and what has happened in your world, this is what has REALLY happened". Not that that is the actual intention behind metaplot- it's just the effect.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Well, let's take some of the more controversial metaplot changes as examples.

The Spellplague, the big event for Forgotten Realms going from 3e to 4e. . .they advanced the timeline over a century, killed off most of the gods, completely re-drew the map (to the point of adding a new continent, and wiping some countries and some of the most popular cities literally right off the map), completely re-wrote the whole planar cosmology, changed how magic works, and changed the tone from a fairly typical Tolkieneseque traditional fantasy world into a grimdark 4e "points of light" setting. . .

That's not "having more information which may inspire you". . .that's a whole different setting, with a totally different flavor and style, shoehorned into the old setting.

Or take the 5th Age in Dragonlance, a similar event that took Dragonlance from AD&D to a newly created "Saga System" of a card-based roleplaying game. . .that again advanced the timeline decades, caused every god in the whole pantheon to disappear, completely rewrote the rules of magic, changed the lore around dragons entirely, and again took a heroic, traditional fantasy setting and completely changed the tone to grimdark.

From a longtime fans perspective, they essentially ended the setting by changing it so much that any new material would be completely incompatible with anything that came before.

Also, it's NOT as easy as telling players you're doing things differently. . .for a fair amount of players, a game that substantially and intentionally violates canon is abhorrent. They have their mental picture of what the setting is like, of what they want to imagine when they play the game, and something that is like it enough to remind them of that setting. . .while at the same time being different enough to stand out, is mentally uncomfortable enough to make them not want to play.

(You're also assuming the 5e-ism of "session zero" is universal throughout gaming, this isn't just about 5e, it's about RPG's as a whole)

I assume some form of session zero regardless of the game being played. Doesn’t have to be an entire session or a formal event; it can simply be the GM and players discussing things beforehand and getting everyone on the same page.

I would think such a discussion would solve most problems, no?

As for all the meta-plot for the Realms....my 5e game is played and I pretty much use the 3e FR Campaign Setting book as my reference. I ignore pretty much anything that’s “happened” since that book, with perhaps a few exceptions, most of which would be differences due to what’s established in play.

Don’t get me wrong....I’m not defending the contents of the meta-plot. I think a lot of it is unnecessary and poorly thought out and trying to fix problems that don’t really exist.

But I think that individual groups also create problems that don’t really exist by clinging to alternate versions of meta-plot or “canon”.