Why does the Meta Plot exists? It is a question asked by all sort of games – computer and pen and paper role-playing games. The strange thing though, from my understanding, board games always have a Meta Plot. So let’s start by looking at that.
Meta Plots of Antiquity
It comes from a very old book which I read so I couldn’t really remember the title, but a lot of board games out there have meta-plots built into them. Chess has one – and a reading on the meanings of the pieces in both proto-chess, International Chess and Chinese Chess (and more besides) show that. There games where you are trying to get sheep together in one place, ascend to heaven and so on (here’s an interesting book on the subject).
Why a meta-plot for a board game? Maybe it gives a sense of purpose; it also gives some guidelines for design. Consider the rules for Chinese Chess:
- A cannon can only attack a piece if there is a piece between its target and itself
- The minister piece can not cross the river (as it has to take care of its country)
- The marshal (the ‘king’) cannot leave the palace
Where would one think of such rules if there isn’t a meta-plot? This has been discussed before for Don’t Rest your Head, Spirit of the Century, War of the Ring and Nobilis. So the firs purpose of the Meta Plot is to guide the game design.
How do play a game according to the Meta Plot
The Meta Plot does not just help the game designer; it also gives a frame of reference for the game player. Monopoly can be reduced to moving around a board where each location is marked from A to Z, and you have to give wooden cubes to the player owning the location. If he got triangles on that location, you have to give more cubes. If you run out of cubes, you lose.
But once you put in the Meta Plot of “you are a real estate developer who can owe plot of lands, buy buildings on them and you have to pay others if your piece land on their lands” – it does not only give the game some colour – it also set a context for them, giving them something to be fmailiar with. According to human-computer-interaction theory, when we come across something new, we usually try to understand it from our past references and experiences. If the game has a meta-plot that has some links to the player’s pre-conceptions, it would be easier for him to learn and enjoy it.
Back when the computer game designers are debating the issue of “plot and story” for games, many dismiss plots are just fluff, an excuse for violence, looting and blowing raspberries at the social norms of the days. Yet looking at what the meta-plot does for board games, I would say that we have a computer game industry because games have meta-plots inherently. And because of that meta-plot, we understand the game and put up with it.
What am I talking about? Let return to the day of the 1970s and 1980s, where computer graphics are mostly ASCII base and blockly sprites which doesn’t look like anything it is supposed to represent. Why do people put up with Space Invaders then? Because they know that they are shooting aliens. Who told them they are shooting aliens? The Meta Plot. In NetHack or Rogue, who on earth would be interested in find ! and $ scattered about what seems to be just nonsensical arrangement of | and _ and +? They are, because the Meta Plot tells them that they are an adventurer exploring a dungeon; the Meta Plot helps the player to stay put with all the unbearable madness of PC games back then (complicated keypresses, lack of GUI, using the keyboard for everything, graphics which does not look like anything it is supposed to be).
I do not know how accurate my opinions are for PC games, though. Feel free to discuss on this!
As for pen and paper roe-playing games, the meta-plot guides the player’s style of play and interaction. A game of Ars Magica and Dungeons and Dragons run differently and have different feel because of the Meta Plot. Both have powerful magic users. Both have the idea of a celestial, divine power. In Ars Magica, though, mages try to steer clear of the Divine because the angelic forces could crush any magus – in Dungeons and Dragons, that is not the case.
Ars Magica tells the magus players to steer clear of angering the Church. Dungeons and Dragons say mages and clerics are on the same playing field. Woe betide the player who thought he could march into a Church in Ars Magica because he can throw fireballs!
Hence the Meta Plot, as discussed before and in prior articles, gives the players what the setting expects of him, what can he do in the game and why he is someone noteworthy.
So the second purpose of the Meta Plot is to guide player’s decisions making.
Meta Plot and the Artefacts of the Game
By artefacts, I do not mean “Ring of Protection +1″ or “Gauntlets of Giant Strength”. I am borrowing this term from management studies where artefacts is used to represent the physical manifestation of a group’s culture and norms (like how Google has gyms, rec rooms and swimming pools for its employees. Those are the artefacts of the company). Meta Plots also manifest itself in the tangible stuff of the game -for board games, it is the board design. For RPGs, the fonts and artwork used in the rule-books. For computer games, the themes of the artwork, its box cover and the poster used for the advertising campaign.
Needless to say, the Meta Plot provides the theme, the motifs and other clues for designers to pick up and incorporate it into their final product. A science-fiction game using gothic fonts in its rulebook may be problematic (not if the game is Warhammer 40K though -again, it fits because of the Meta Plot)
So the third purpose of the Meta Plot is to set design guidelines for the ‘tangible’ parts of the game.
Meta Plots should inspire more Plots
This is particulary for role-playing games and computer games with sandbox style of play (or which like to have lots of expansion packs). The Meta Plot, for it to be use to the GM, must provide ideas for his own adventures. There are some Meta Plots which are choked full of details that the GM cannot even place a fictional city somewhere. Meta Plots which define everything and anything leave no room for mystery and no way to keep the players on their toes instead of throwing more and more powerful and over-the-top challenges. Some people do like that; but for me as a GM, I always prefer something that is loosely defined than something that has the weight of a thousand novels, splat books and spin-offs.
Not all meta plot restricts. Some just rumbles on…and on….and on. They are histories, deeds of heroes 10,000 years ago which has no bearing on the world now. They are not as bad as restrictive meta plots, though.
Some games’ meta-plot provides no hooks at all, or it relies on the genre to do so. This is fine, but things could get really derivative after a while. Games that meta-plots with lot of hooks include Unknown Armies. Its ‘plot-hook-in-a-sentence’ is wonderful and it gives some much inspiration. In just one sentence! Other worth looking at includes Dragon Warriors, Spirit of the Century and Call of Cthulhu. The D20 edition of Call of Cthulhu has a short timeline of modern history and how the Great Old Ones fit in.
If you are doing a game, and your Meta Plot rambles on about the founding of this dynasty, that dynasty and a latter dynasty, with wars in heavens and all that, but offers no suggestions on how the GM can create a plot hook from it, then maybe it is good to introduce some mysteries into it or to find ways in which those events, even if they take place a dozen centuries ago, relevant now. Nobilis has tried very hard and true to the author’s credit, she has done a good job at giving GMs how to come up with adventures for an abstract, mindblowing game.
So the fourth purpose of the meta plot is to provide adventure hooks.
In Conclusion
These are just my opinions of course, but that I take an hour to write it down means that I sense that I am right 
This comes not just as a want-to-be designer, but also as a consumer. Of course, there are always exceptions, and as a standard disclaimer, not all games without a meta-plot sucks. If but your game does have one, it’s good to have a helpful one. If you are writing one, see if the meta-plot meets any of the purposes listed and if not perhaps you want to revisit it a little.
I hesitate to list out games which I think has bad meta-plot, just because I don’t want to raise up my flame shield. At any rate, I think this series is at an end (till I think of something about the meta-plot).
This work, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Singapore License.
June 5th, 2009 at 2:16 am
For PC games using meta-plots, I wish to recommend Deus Ex I by Ionstorm, an FPS cum adventure game. It is set in a dystopic future where, terrorism, disease and illegal genetic manipulation is rife.
The game introduced a number of firsts, including the hacker’s GUI screen we see in Doom 3. What is most interesting is that it became a hit even if had cheesy animations and dialogue and also a modest poly-count.
In its universe, your character may perform interesting stuff, like hacking security, modify his physical abilities with gene canisters and withdrawing cash from an atm, all of which affects your action in the game. All this is relevant as JC Denton is a genetically bred, cyborg spy, who relies on his wits and stealth to stay alive. All his weapons are under-powered and frontal assaults yield the least results.
The player is engaged mainly because of the options that remind them, they’re more than a low-poly JC Denton. There will be a hacker’s panel, an atm machine screen, small floating labels that tells him the npc’s name or your weapon type and a gene manipulation panel where you can assign ‘Ambrosia’ canisters to strengthen body parts. All these build up the back story and gaming experience, when the graphics could not. The game was released in 2000.
This is an informative article, well done : )
June 7th, 2009 at 10:17 pm
Thanks Zi Seng, and hey, long time no see!