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

[wingsandsword]

Metaplots, that game setting design convention of the setting timeline moving forward and the setting changing over time in future books.

It was quite the rage in game design in the 1990's, but seems to be a little less popular now.

We've seen a pretty broad spectrum of how games act with regard to metaplot.

At one end, we have Eberron. . .absolutely no metaplot, the published game setting is intentionally fixed at one specific point in time and even 16 years (and 2 D&D editions) later it hasn't budged. New World of Darkness seemed to go far out of its way to avoid any kind of metaplot as well.

On the other end, we have the Old World of Darkness or Forgotten Realms, where the world changes every few years in some huge sweeping way. If your local gaming groups keep up with the metaplot, if you're away for a few years, it could be a whole new setting by the time you get back (or if you try to buy new books, only to find that now the whole world has irrevocably changed). Old WoD was particularly bad about introducing sweeping setting changes in seemingly innocuous books, and the only way to know what was happening would be to buy literally every book they made (I'm sure WW was making money hand-over-fist with this strategy for a while in the 90's). I remember trying to create a Mage character in an Old WoD game circa 2002 and being told that Mages just plain couldn't be from a certain city, because that city is ruled by Mummies now and that any Mage that awakened in that city would all be captured and turned into a Mummy "Yeah, that's in the new Mummy book that just came out." as I was told.

The problem with metaplot, to me, seems to be when the changes are big enough that they "break" the setting, that they change things so much that it invalidates too much of what fans know and love about the setting, and that the "feel" of things changes so much. Instead of small, incremental changes to a setting, it seemed like a desire to have huge, world-shattering changes every few years (as a gimmick to sell books, or a way to change the setting to fit a new edition or game system). Small changes over time, with a slowly advancing timeline, help a world seem more "real", that it's less a fictional construct. . .but when vast world-changing, cosmology-altering, cataclysms seem to happen repeatedly within a decade or two, that seems to stretch plausibility to say the least.

For me, I just plain stopped paying attention to new FR materials after the Spellplague. . .it was just TOO big of a world change and seemed to fly right in the face of existing rules of how the world was supposed to work, and the more I learned about it, the LESS I liked it. When I run FR, it's always before the Spellplague, the official timeline just plain ends in 1383 DR (the breaking of the Triad in 1384 was another bizarre metaplot event I just couldn't accept either). Back in college I had a lot of friends that were huge Dragonlance fans. . .that all basically gave up on Dragonlance with Dragons of Summer Flame and the similar total breaking of the setting that came with the 5th Age (I think the whole "Saga era" of DL was one of TSR's bigger blunders, all my DL friends seemed to act like DoSF was literally the last DL book ever made). My college gaming group loved Planescape. . .but we universally rejected Faction War.

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?

 

[Kaodi]

I like the Lost Omens metaplot to an extent: the timeline advancing at the same rate as the real world can be a way to put everything in perspective. Though I am not familiar enough with the writing of the APs to understand how much these huge changes have affected the people in the world. I would think everyone should be on edge in the same way we are right now - what is going to happen next ? And sleepy hamlets minding their own business might not make sense in that context even though they are a staple of D&D.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I do not like metaplots, at all.

Arguably, 5e has moved away from metaplots completely by providing self-contained APs and/or campaign books that present a moment in time.

I prefer this, because (IMO) it provides both DMs and players the agency to create their own plots instead of serving in some "metaplot."

 

[Ath-kethin]

I don't care about metaplots, but I think there's something often overlooked in the big metaplot changes: they are most often the result of edition changes, and an in-game means of explaining the resulting changes. Forgotten Realms had a big RSE going from 1e to 2e. Dragonlance didn't but shifted (or attempted to shift) focus from one continent to a new one. Then Dragonlance had a big "2nd Cataclysm" to justify the shift from 2e to the SAGA system.

Dark Sun didn't bother with the metaplot-explains-the-edition-change approach but is the exception to the rule here as far as supported settings with metaplots are concerned.

The Realms had another RSE going from 2e to 3e, and this time so did Dragonlance. And I never followed the FR novels, but Dragonlance always conveniently had a new book or series by Weis & Hickman to legitimize the edition and in-world changes.

The Realms had another RSE going form 3e to 4e IIRC.

The last couple modules for 2e at large included massive, campaign ending events that were explicitly called out as a means of "ending the world" as a clean break going from 2e to 3e.

 

[macd21]

It’s not just the big changes that make metaplots a problem. All the little changes add up, becoming a barrier to new players (or even existing players who haven’t been keeping up). While I fondly recall conversations with friends about the deep lore of the OWoD, piecing together obscure bits of metaplot into a cohesive whole, how was a new player/storyteller meant to pick all of it up? Answer: they didn’t, they went and ran DnD instead.

 

[Voadam]

I was very annoyed by Dark Sun's 2e metaplot. I liked the cool oppressive Sorcerer-King city state set up from the original boxed set and literally the first novel series kills them off as the protagonists' big quest that you are not a part of.

The revised edition boxed set took the effects of the novels as the new baseline, and threw in a new psionics system revision as well.

In contrast Greyhawk's metaplot setting resets did not bother me. I was a fan of each of the different tones provided in the 1e boxed set, the dark 2e From the Ashes reset after the Grehawk Wars, and the 2e WotC Greyhawk reset.

 

[dragoner]

Mostly the one I have seen is Traveller's, and it was neat at first, then it grew to being annoying, then jumped the shark with big rules changes, so that I ignored the whole thing, stopped buying Traveller material in that time.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Metaplot is too much work for the DM, either from the get go or eventually. Especially if there are novels driving it. Even if the pace of the metaplot is ok real live will interfere and the metaplot then becomes a barrier to entry unless ignored.
If one is ignoring it then why have it.

 

[aco175]

I do not mind it that much. I find it lends to a 'living, breathing' world. I am still free to use only what I want and my players do not follow on that much. I'm about to start my 4th campaign around Phandalin and found that I needed to update the region some to make for the metaplot of my last 3 games and the Essentials box set. I like that Wizards did not force a time gap on the 2 box sets, but found that I would have liked to see some update on the town from LMoP to the new box. I found the town description and just recycling the old map was poor on their part, but was fine at the price point they are selling for.

I find that FR did some things to explain the differences in editions. Instead of saying, "surprise", dragonborn always existed, they found a way to shoehorn them in. Same with most things over the editions. I'm not sure the problem is the 3e to 4e break and then back with 5e that leaves a poor taste with that world. Maybe if they made a new world book rather than just Sword Coast.

 

[Bawylie]

It’s far too late now, but these meta-plots should occur in distinct eras or epochs.

I’ve always been a fan of the X-men, but man, some of that stuff doesn’t age properly. Magneto as a survivor of WWII has a shelf life. But instead of moving on, they de-age him or some crap. The result is that these characters are effectively immortal! It would’ve been better to just cover a decade’s worth of stories and have a clean end than an undead lingering. Like have the original X-men in the 60s up against Magneto, they age into X-factor in the 70s, and they teach the new X-men in the 80s. So on and so on.

The settings should work the same way. Have your realm-shattering narratives. Make your changes. But silo that stuff in its own epoch such that you can complete a solid story and then be able to move on from it.

Some settings get around this issue by using geographical silos. Ravenloft’s various domains, for example, permit self-contained narratives. And arguably a post-Strahd Barovia isn’t (yet) interesting. So instead you move over to Darkon or wherever and have a new thing to do that doesn’t muck up your original experience.

Anyway. Clear divisions between meta-plots. Either by region or epoch.