We have look at setting the scope of the Meta Plot, and explore how we can fill it in. The question remains though – how do we fill in the Meta Plot? I try to offer some suggestions, along with examples. Before beginning on that, there’s one thing to keep in mind. What is the goal of this particular meta-plot you are writing?
Tags: Game Design, game-mastering
It’s one thing to say “This Meta Plot…has issues”, it is another to sit down and write your own. I have done nothing really right for the past few years (heh heh) but I did spend some time on custom home-brew settings, so here are my thoughts of crafting your own meta-plot. Feel free to discuss with me as I am not a great author of any renown.
So to go on from where I have stopped on the meta-plot series, I am going to write down my thoughts on writing a meta-plot. Whether the result is good depends on the writer 
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.
Tags: Game Design, game-mastering, opinion
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
Tags: Game Design, game-mastering, random musings
On RPG.NET, I come across some posts which show hatred for the meta-plot; I also come across sentiments which goes “Ahh, this is just like every-other-game-out-there, I’m not buying it unless the setting is absolutely awe-inspiring or something”. Settings, background materials and even something like a sequence of events is the Meta Plot. It’s a bit like brainwashing, really; if you subscribe to a game’s meta-plot, I realise, sometimes you just follow along with it with your behaviours influenced by it.
Tags: adventure idea, Game Design, game-mastering, opinion, random musings
Last time on my blog while touching on the subject of Meta Plot, I described how the Meta Plot and game mechanics should mesh. Yet it does not end here. After all, human beings are the one who play the game – the Meta Plot also has a hand in influencing player’s behaviour, and some like it, some hate it.
Some role-playing games (the paper form with a human CPU – aka. the GM) allow sandbox style play – Dungeons and Dragons, for instance. Then there are games with heavy meta-plot elements that impose limits on your freedom – even if you are kickass vampire or an avatar-god.
Nobilis is one of those – yes, you can change creation with a snap of the finger, cut a mountain into half and perform other miraculous deeds. That will, however, bring the wrath of the law-keepers (the most powerful avatars ever lived) and earn the ire of other supernatural avatars as well as causing hell lot of trouble when mortal folks see those things (basically, you send them crazy, and you have pissed of 1/3 of all god-like beings in Creation). The most famous Meta Plot limit of Nobilis must be “you cannot love”.
Some have complained “Yes, you give me god-like powers, but the settings has 101 rules preventing me from doing what I want. What’s the deal?” The Meta Plot limits.
Or to put it in a nicer way, the Meta Plot also make sure that the player’s actions are in line with it. Given the Eru-Melkor conflict for Lord of the Rings – it’s impossible to bargain with a Balrog as if he is a traditional demon (that’s impossible according to the Meta Plot ), or as another example, in Star Wars, the many restrictions that a Light side user of the Force must obey is also a Meta Plot.
There are some who see limits as inherently bad. Me? Limits are bad in sandbox style of play, but are important for games which has a strong theme, such as Nobilis, Lord of the Rings and games with historical basis. Weapons of the God has an intricate set of Meta Plot which enforces the wuxia feel of the game. Different genres of game would have different Meta Plot – take Call of Cthulhu, for example. Its Meta Plot that eventually mankind will be wiped out, the Great Old Ones would rise and all we are doing is to postpone the inevitable prevents the players from going off track like “Hey, let sell those Mythos curious for a big sum of money and retire elsewhere!”
As an example of a sandbox style play where things could derail, I ran a homebrew game where Earth was partially destroyed and the PCs are send on a mission to infiltrate an enemy’s stronghold. Along the way, they receive credit payment for their first mission (and a sum of credits to let them outfit their ship and to make preparations for the infiltration campaign) and they manage to hijack a trading vessel packed with goods. At this point, one of the player said, “Hey, we are rather rich! Let’s screw this mission and go for a holiday”. Fortunately, this is made in jest, but a good Meta Plot would strike that thinking off the list (as noted in the Call of Cthulhu example up there).
It is understandable why some people hate Meta Plots, but I see it more of a “style of play” than “bad or good” (as usual, right?). Without a Meta Plot, a game may end up being “pointless” (Yes, we kill monsters…grab their loot….so that…?) while a bad Meta Plot is like a stranglehold. By “bad”, it could be something incoherent or put down funny restrictions tha tmay offend other people’s taste (google F.A.T.A.L the RPG if you dare).
Do board games needs a Meta Plot? After all, board games are closed system where a sandbox style play is not available. Chess is Chess, and I have yet to see a role-playing chess (that’s an idea. “The Knight bows before the Queen” – and I try to seduce her, and I can’t fail because I would be eaten by her!!) Looking at lot of board games though, the good games are those which mechanics fit their themes (aka the Meta Plot)
Do Abstract Games, like Blockus, need meta plot? No. As mentioned, a Meta Plot can drive the design, the design can produce the Meta Plot, but it would be better if they both mesh. Dominion, for example, is a card game in which you try to get the best combos possible, but some reviewers point out that the theme of the game (medieval city building) doesn’t seem to gel well with the theme. Saint Petersburg has one theme-breaking moment which is usually used as a joke – upgrading an author to a…chambermaid.
The War of the Ring boardgame shows how the Meta Plot influences game mechanic, presentation and finally, its’ “feel”. Without the Lord of the Rings element, the boardgame would become just another RISK with orcs and elves. Due to the necessity of the Meta Plot, the Fellowship’s journey to Mount Doom has to be represented (in the form of “moving the fellowship”). There is a need to consider in the novels, the good guys’ coffers and manpower are drying up and the bad guys seem to have unlimited supply of cannon folders. What is done in the game is that good guys’ losses are never replenished while the bad guys will always get reinforcement.
In Senji, a Japanese-inspired wargame (which take hours to play, yes), you roll dice on which face is a symbol of all the players. If you are allied with a player, and you managed to roll his symbols while in a battle, it is counted as well. And you can send hostages to other players for alliance, including your grandfather (!?)
The question is – without the theme, without the Meta Plot, who could have think of sending your grandfather or daughter as a hostage? (They do that during the Japanese’s Warring States period). Without the Lord of the Rings Meta-Plot, would there be the idea of “hey, the bad guys can always replace their loses, while the good guys can’t”?
To me, the Meta Plot is important for board games – board games usually rely on theme and different mechanics to sell themselves, unlike computer games which can always get away with better 3D graphics, shaders, bloom and what-not. Unless your mechanics is something out of this world, I always feel that a theme which meshes well with the mechanics is a better game (see Pillars of the Earth, Kingsburg, Small World, Ilaid, just for examples).
We see how board games and role-playing games can be inspired and limited by the Meta Plot; the next thing I feel like blogging about is how the Meta Plot can influence decisions a player can make. One question I will ponder over is – what is the difference between Lord of the Rings Online and World of Warcraft? Dragon Warriors and Dungeons and Dragons? Chess and A Game of Throne? Then maybe further down I will try to give some ideas on co-existing with the Meta Plot.
Tags: fluff/inspiration, Game Design
I sometimes think there is this approach to the game design. It goes basically as “right, we have this technology, and I have a genre in mind. Let push a product out!”. The “technology” here could be a cutting-edge game engine, a universal role-playing system like D20, a particular form of genre (say MMO or RTS) or a sparkling brand new next-gen console.
Then there is this other approach. “We have this inspiration, let see what is the best way to present it as a game”, or sometimes “With this genre, and with this inspiration, let see what is the best approach for this game”.
I come to see the “inspiration” as the Meta Plot. In “plain speech”, the Meta Plot is the Plot of the Plot for the game. It’s like the horror of the Warp for Warhammer 40K, the Melkor-Eru conflict in Lord of the Rings, or something as down to earth as World War II. Sometimes, a technique to skin your game and to come up with game mechanics is to use a Meta Plot as an inspiration.
Before going on, I have to emphasis one thing – games without a Meta Plot as inspiration driving their design are not automatically badly designed. For instance, Super Mario Brothers lack a Meta Plot in a grand sense of thing, nor is there one for Tetris, or I suspect for Final Fantasy I (the Final Fantasy games franchise is an interesting case study of “We have these cool mechanics; the plot and story is a seperate deal!”
The point is that a Meta Plot can be the inspiration for game mechanics and game design. Its influence can trinke all the way up to User Interface Design, quest designs, music, gameplay elements and even marketing/packaging. Could it? Let’s see.
Let begin with the pen and paper RPG world first. I have been gearing up to run Nobilis, in which each player represents an “avatar” of a concept on Earth, be it horses, communication, reading, katanas or even just blankets. The game is thick with Meta Plot – and the Plot is basically that Destroyers from Beyond Creation have come to erase out all Creation, and that includes the foundational concepts such as nature, animals, war and everything else. This Meta Plot supports the diceless game mechanics. Characters are assured of their success in any task unless opposed. This is a different take from most pen and paper RPGs which require you to make a roll to see if you succeed or fail at a challenging task.
The Meta Plot may inspire the game mechanic or the other way round, but I personally think that one thing is for sure – the Meta Plot and the game mechanics (and other design elements) must be in harmony. A big complaint of Exalted is that you never feel like the supernatural heroes which all the “fluff” (or backstory Meta Plot) makes you out to be. Or that Call of Cthlhu D20 is not as grim as its Basic Roleplaying incarnation because D20 (a generic “RPG engine” spined off from D&D 3.5) tend to gears toward heroic role-playing and characters created with the system starts out as better combatants.
Spirit of the Century, emulating pulp fiction, use the Fate 3.0 rules to allow players to create larger-than-life characters for their first adventure. We are talking stuff like Nobel prize winning scientist, ace pilot who has flew countless sorties or even a trained and skilled deadly martial artist who can floor a dozen. In fact, there is a complaint that characters in Spirit of the Century are virtually invincible, but hey, it fits the tone of the pulp fiction.
Don’t Rest your Head seems to follow “Meta Plot influences Game Design” pattern. You play as an insomniac who has been “Awakend”, granting you special abilities. However, you are also sucked into the City Awaken, a dimenison removed from normal world and is something out from a nightmare. There are rules for being exhausted – when you get more and more exhausted, you perform better and kick more ass, but there’s also a chance that you can get even more exhausted. That sounds like a good deal, except that when you are exhausted beyond a limit, you sleep and become a normal human being again, and you attract the attention of monsters who can’t wait to feast upon your helpeless body.
If we instead try to shoehorn this idea into, say D20 and GURPs, it will still work, but the mechanics presented in Don’t Rest your Head has the elements of exhaustion built right into its mechanics – you roll a number of D6 equal to your Exhaustion each time, with a 5 or 6 counting as a success. But if the higher dice roll is an Exhaustion dice, you gain 1 more point of Exhaustion (basically, there are other type of dice rolled at the same time, such as Discipline and Madness). Using another system to emulate this would be contrived.
Right, I think this article is kind of getting lengthy, and there is still a real life Flu I have to fight off. So I will just end with a “To be Continued…” here. Next up, I will pen (type?) down my thoughts on the Meta Plot and its drwbacks and how it fits into computer and board games.
Tags: fluff/inspiration, Game Design, opinion, random musings
Eve Online has it. Erepublik revolves around it. Darkfall gives freeform PVP and leaves enforcement largely to the players, instead of implementing it in game. Or you include other forms of conflict, such as heists, pick-pocketing, assassinations, as suggested by this Massively Online article “You don’t need PvP to be Successsful, Honest”
Having the power to vote your own party members, such as the virtual democracies in Eve Online, sounds very enticing. Allowing players to take the law into their hand in a free-form games sound fun. Instead of “you cannot be a bad guy”, it becomes “you can be a bad guy until other players stop you”.
Yet, including social mechanics like these introduce changes to the game’s challenge.
Tags: Game Design, opinion, random musings
Casual games are in the rage nowadays. Diner Dash, Bejewelled and those mini-games shunned by ‘hardcore’ gamers but embraced by a majority of the demographics. They cost half, or perhaps one-quarter (or even less) of the normal development time of mainstream games but have so much return.
I think there is a certain confusion about casual games and the people who play them. Intuitively, by the word ‘casual’, it means ‘no committement’, something you do ‘as an aside’. But what happens when there are people who are addicted to casual games? Are they hardcore casual gamers, and is that something of an oxymoron?
Tags: Game Design, Indie Games
The Flagship has sunk – the ship in question here refers to Flagship Studios and how even ex-Blizzard greats could make mistakes. At GDC 2009, there a session which goes through at great length what independent game developers could learn from the mistakes of this sinking of a titanic proportion.
Tags: Game Design, Indie Games
