The Meta-Plot can be a curse and a blessing. As discussed, it gives direction to the game – it also restricts. It justifies the rules, but at times the rules clashed with the Meta-Plot. Here are some of my ideas on Meta Plots and making them work in your game.
Introduce the Meta-Plot Slowly
There are some games which are 100% crunch and 0% fluff – then we have the opposite where fluff takes up so much room that it becomes as much as a required reading as rules. Nobilis suffers from this – what with Mythic Earth, Prosaic Earth, Lord Entropy, Ash Tree, the Bright and Shadowed Realms and more besides, fluff takes up about 70% of the book while the rules could be summarised on two sheets of A4 paper (with really small fonts).
What I have experimented for my first Nobilis game is to dish out the Meta Plot in small servings. Sure, I give an overview of the Vlade Bellum, what’s an Imperator and estates, but I save the rest for further espiodes. Sometimes in a setting-rich game there is a temptation to throw everything at the players – it may be wiser to focus on a particular aspect and as the players get their bearings, introduce more and more elements of the settings. For the first game I introduce the group to a “dead chancel” – which press in the point of what happened to estates that are erased out from creation and bring home the Vlade Bellum. They don’t have to deal with Lord Entropy or his bunch of Cammore for a while.
Get the Group to Create the Meta Plot
Spirit of the Century has a fantastic idea which I will be using for all my other games – getting the player to plot the backstory of their characters and having them star in each other’s story. For my fantasy homebrew of SoTC, I called each story a “novel” and have each character stars in them with another one as the “co-protangonist”. First, the player will offer ideas for how they will fit in the Meta Plot. The game was set in Titan (the Fighting Fantasy setting) and I briefly describe, on a map, the important places, their culture and what significiant events have happened there. As the players plan their character’s origins, what they did during those significant events, how they end up meeting each other, who are their nemesis and so on, the players are describing how they fit into the setting’s Meta Plot. You, as the GM, could take chances to explain what’s relevant to their character instead of doing an information overload on all of them.
Second, the players come to owe that part of the Meta Plot – they created it and described how they would fit into it, anyway! That in SoTC yo would get Aspects for Meta Plot is a nice touch too.
Fast Forward Time
Sure, the status quo is this and that now, but what will happen in a hundred years time? Turning the clock ahead of the cannonical “present time” of the setting allow you, as a GM, to customise the material to your taste. Going backwards could be problematic as you need to make sure the latter events still happen, which call for research – unless you are ready to “reboot the setting” as in new Star Trek movie. In a hundred years time, a strong kingdom could become a weak one, the Great Old Ones are just a step away from being freed, a great war is on the verge of happening and a new weapon technology has shifted the balance of power.
You can also try to find an epoch in the settings where not much material was given – such as what Bioware did with Knights of the Old Republic – and fill in the gap yourself. There is also a geographic shifting – such as in Lord of the Rings Online, the attention is paid to all the lands mentioned in the novels but never visited by the Fellowship, such as Angmar, the Forsaken Inn, Oatbarton and so on.
History Lies
In the Chinese manhua “The Ravages of Time”, which gives a radical re-interperation of the events found in Romance of the Three Kingdoms, the author basically says that “History lies” . That is one way to treat the Meta Plot if you need to loosen it up. They are, after all, just one version of the world according to the author of book. Add in new details, behind-the-scene facts and now-you-know-it truths.
Don’t Let Meta-Plot Stands in the Way of Fun
Nit-picking, canon walling and meta-debating are just waste of time when one rather be gaming. A game ought to be fun. Consistency can be resolved when the game is over, through email or forum – facts can be added, motivations could be altered. Saying “Drizzit would never do this!” while in a game (and while encountering the famous drow ranger) is akin to reducing the NPC and the Meta-Plot to just a black and white straitjacket. If we think of Meta-Plot as just the point of view of one person, not the entire record of a world or a person, the GM would have more fun planning and the players would be kept on the toes more often.
One way to have the right balance of Meta-Plot, to me, is to understand its purpose. To sum up the next article I have in mind, the Meta-Plot is to:
- Gives direction
- Influences design
- Influences the artefacts used in the game
- Provide plot hooks for adventures
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