Should Campaign Settings include a metaplot?

[kigmatzomat]

I went with "other" because I think metaplots need a correct approach. IMO, I'd rather metaplots wait until a setting is fully fleshed out so that I can run a game that is at least based on canon. If I have to start making up large percentages of the world why am I buying source material? My classic example is Rifts, which left huge swaths of the continental US as vaguely described regions while bebopping around the planet. The players wanted to go to the Wild West(tm) which was always "...Coming Soon!(tm)."

Metaplots can be advanced early but they have to do just that; be there in the beginning. No surprises, no shock, it's in your face when you pick up the book. AU did this with the dragons' return. The metaplot isn't detailed but its existence is right freakin' there. Same with Eberron, you know there are metaplots from the get-go.

It is very hard to have a metaplot without the metaplot being the value of the source material. For people who like it, it rocks. For others, it's a negative. That is why I think Shadowrun has one of the best metaplots, IMO, simply because it is so easily woven into a game or completely ignored. If I don't want to run the Crash 2, I don't and just call it an upgrade. If my players are unconcerned by the Dunkelzhan murder I don't buy the supplement and the world rolls on. If my game was set in Chicago I could have ignored Bug City or placed it in Detroit.

 

[Keldryn]

I completely agreee with Klaus. I voted "other" in the poll. I think that the a published campaign setting should include several metaplots either ready-to-go or already in progress. It can add a lot to a campaign, and gives time-pressed DMs some long-term campaign ideas.

I don't even mind if a select few adventure modules are released for the setting which are eventually included as "canon" in a future release of the core campaign setting. But only if they are done well (which is obviously difficult if not impossible to quantify) -- preferably without world-shattering events (ie The Time of Troubles). Keep the effects a little more localized, and don't have more than 2 or 3 such influences on the setting between "editions."

What I really object to are "canonized" changes to the setting imposed by the events that occur in the licensed novels. First of all, it undermines the PCs' role in the campaign. On top of that, the majority of the novels (as with basically all licensed novels, in my opinion) are poorly-written and often elevate that author's pet characters to ridiculous levels of importance. Authors start to one-up each other, introducing more powerful heroes and villains, and it just starts to escalate. What, the Death Star can blow up an entire planet? Well, now we have the SUN CRUSHER, which can make a star go supernova and destroy an entire solar system! Try to top that one! Oh, what's the matter little Jedi, does my lizard's Force-resistant bubble make your abilities entirely worthless? How about an entire race of monsters that exist outside the Force and also have convenient lightsaber-proof weapons! Oh yeah, well the heroes of my novels -- a skinny sorceress, a warrior who also happens to be a werebeast, and the snivelly thief-who-surprisingly-turns-out-to-be-a-bad-guy all become GODS at the end!! I can absorb all of the magic you cast at me and then blow you up with it! Hey, aren't you the reknowned Sage of Shadowdale who is also the most powerful wizard/cleric/fighter/archmage in the world who also happened to be a woman for a short period of time? Well, let's kill off a beloved sidekick by having him crushed by... a huge boulder... no... a crashing spaceship... no, I've got it! A MOON! We'll drop a MOON on him!!!!

Seriously, it's only a matter of time before we see a series of novels about the half-dragon, half-drow ranger who can fight with FOUR scimitars in a whirling dance of death (two with his hands, and two with his feet, all at the same time!). And how many cataclysms can Krynn have in a relatively short period of time before it gets even more implausible? 300ish years after the first Cataclysm, when the gods turned their backs upon the world, they were rediscovered. Then Raistlin tries to become a god himself. Within 30 years, we have a Chaos War and the gods all leave again. Within roughly the same timespan again, the gods come back again, in another game of cosmic peek-a-boo. For crying out loud, enough already. Quit screwing with the cosmology of a setting every few years. I'm looking at you too, Forgotten Realms.

I like the way Eberron is set up right now. There are some pretty obvious metaplots set up in the CS, and WoTC has said that the events in the novels will not impact the game setting. I hope they stick to this. It's easy to ignore the enforced metaplot at first if you're sticking to the World of Greyhawk boxed set, the "grey box" Forgotten Realms set, the Dragonlance Adventures hardcover, or the Gazetteer series. But as the years go by, it gets to be more and more work to ignore the "assumed canon" in future releases. Yes, an individual DM can take the 3e FRCS and eliminate any references to the Time of Troubles, restore the dead gods to the pantheon, remove the new cosmology and bring back the "Great Wheel," and gloss over any other pieces of "history" that don't fit with the campaign, but at a certain point it just becomes far too much work to be worthwhile -- I might as well spend that time developing a homebrew setting. (And if I ever run a Star Wars RPG again, it will use my own version of events after ROTJ, without planets full of rancor-riding Force Witches, Sun Crushers, Galaxy Guns, Force-resistant-bubble-generating lizards, Force-immune biotech aliens, dead Chewbaccas, unkillable Boba Fetts and masses of poorly-written super-jedi that routinely make Luke look like a wuss.)

 

[ruleslawyer]

As long as it's a metaplot I conceived, and not the one made up by the marketing/novels department, sure. But that's not the case with current settings.

Oh, and the PS metaplot sucked big part. I am saying this as a great fan of the setting.

QFT on both counts.

I find it ironic that the FR setting's creator did his level best to generate a play- and story-friendly setting by throwing in a mountain of adventure hooks, (often contradictory) rumors, and background detail while dropping a minimal amount of actual metaplot on the entire thing, while subsequent add-ons seem to have done nothing BUT throw metaplot on the setting. I started my FR IH game in 1357 DR for this precise reason, and it will be MY metaplot(s) that drive the setting, rather than any novel-based or revision-based events. I think it'll probably be more fun for me and my players that way...

 

[Psion]

What I like most about PS are the various bits and pieces seeded in and expounded in, for example, the Factol's Manifesto or Modron March/Dead Gods. Those were perfect, AFAIC.

And I have no objection to those. Quite the contrary. Those don't create a volatile baseline for the setting. Those create opportunities for adventure.

It's possible to have one without the other.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

No, no, no, a million times no. Never in a published setting. The FR novels are among the worst aspects of the game setting, not to mention other foolish metaplot fiascos in previous TSR worlds (eg. Planescape and Dark Sun being notable offenders).

I say a BILLION times no!! But this post sums my views up. The need for world shaking metaplots ruins settings for me, especially as a result of game novels that rarely rise above the quality of the text on a box of cornflakes.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

.

This is very true in that Comics do not have PC's. But what is a role playing game? It is a story written by a main author and several supporting authors.

No it isn't.

 

[Voadam]

I despised the first novel of Dark Sun killing off a sorcerer king. Nothing like changing a setting immediately after making it.

 

[Faraer]

The most effective way to make money with an ongoing timeline is to publish it as novels. Events designed to appeal as novels are often not those that work best for campaigns. In broad terms, you have pandering to the neophile consumerist lust for the newest and biggest; playing to what's popular or cool (the 'Menzoberranzan drow in the Dales' thing cited above); depletion of the setting by using up hooks that are properly the domain of the GM; 'exciting' changes to the setting that make sourcebooks harder to use if you don't apply them; hasty, ill-thought-out happenings that sourcebook writers then waste effort and pages rationalizing and patching up; overexposure and demystification; possible subjective deprotagonization of PCs.

And there are pros. For me, the cons are bigger.

Metaplot that doesn't advance the timeline in sourcebooks is a somewhat different case.

But just logically, unless you as GM aren't capable of thinking up things to happen in the world -- aided by published suggestions -- published metaplot can't be necessary to make settings live in play.

 

[Klaus]

Too often a metaplot feels like a DM's DM. And the DM *has* to be the final arbiter of what events transpire in his campaign world.

 

[pogre]

I like metaplots, but by the end of a campaign the PCs should be able to affect the plot in a significant fashion, not be mere witnesses.

So I voted 'Other'.

The Auld Grump

I voted "no", but I think Auld Grump has hit on the head for me.

Settings based on fiction can have a real appeal, but some settings have a metaplot so dominate the PCs can feel unimportant.

WOTC/TSR used to have a series of ads where they had a picture/still from a Star Wars movie and an arrow to some extra in the picture with a caption that read, "What's this guy's story?" My reaction was always one of ambivalence because we know the real movers and shakers are doing other things - that guy's story was really unimjportant in the scheme of the campaign story.