Any tales of GOOD experiences with meta-plot?

[Andrew J. Luther]

I ran two Vampire: The Masquerade campaigns in the 90’s. The first was a narrow campaign set in Chicago using the Chicago By Night book and ignored every plot-related element published after that. It was about the vampires in Chicago being trapped in the city due a ritual (that the PCs inadvertently helped enable) at the beginning of the campaign, and the paranoia and politicking that ensued.

My second campaign was on a much larger scale and used about 90% of the metaplot (basically everything that I could fit well into the game), including books like Dirty Secrets of the Black Hand. It was a crazy, over the top game and my group embraced it wholeheartedly.

The metaplot worked fine in that game, but it required two things to really work:
1) Player buy in from the beginning,
2) When some book said “NPC X” was responsible for something happening, that was only the case if the PCs chose not to get involved with that plot line. If the PCs did get involved, then the plot line turned out however they made it turn out.

Surprisingly, my campaign still hewed pretty closely to the published metaplot, except that the PCs often took the place of an NPC from the books, though they usually ended up doing the same thing or very similar to what the NPC was supposed to do. That was mostly due to the specific characters they chose to play, though.

 

[TristramEvans]

I just consider my games, as a GM, to be their own canon, unbeholden to anyone else. Hence my earlier statement that metaplot is optional, and I only really find obnoxious when the game author is deliberately hiding important info from the GM

 

[CT_Phipps]

Honestly, I think it boils down to a matter of preference. A lot of people are very proprietary toward their campaigns and I think metaplot is one of those things where some DMs and STs actually consider them insulting on a personal level to them.

The idea of, "How DARE this company try to influence my games! Bane is the main villain of my campaign and they KILL HIM with some random adventurers! Not at my table!"

And there's merit to this because the guy who was most pissed off about Bane, Myrkul, and Bhaal's deaths in 1993?

Ed Greenwood.

Because a lot of the changes were completely stupid in his opinion and would have derrailed his decades-old homegame.

 

[TristramEvans]

A lot of people are very proprietary toward their campaigns and I think metaplot is one of those things where some DMs and STs actually consider them insulting on a personal level to them.

The idea of, "How DARE this company try to influence my games! Bane is the main villain of my campaign and they KILL HIM with some random adventurers! Not at my table!"

I've never seen anyone express that opinion.

 

[CT_Phipps]

I've never seen anyone express that opinion.

In this very thread, someone said they were pissed off about the Gangrel leaving the Camarilla. I love metaplot and can rattle off nine different examples of things I wouldn't incorporate at my table.

 

[TristramEvans]

In this very thread, someone said they were pissed off about the Gangrel leaving the Camarilla.

...and?

 

[Sloth_in_a_bowl]

That's why I set my Middle Earth games in the time of Tolkien's unfinished sequel, The Return of the Shadow

Avoiding meta plot is also why my Star Wars games have been set in the Republic Dark Age.

 

[TristramEvans]

Avoiding meta plot is also why my Star Wars games have been set in the Republic Dark Age.

I don't know what that is, but it seems like the Mandalorian is set about the same time as my old WEG Star Wars games: a few years after RotJ. If I ran one now, it'd likewise be a few years after Revenge of the Sith.

 

[AsenRG]

...and?

Bane dying due to T$R deciding so isn't any different from the Scorpion Clan making a power play for the Rokugani throne which is functionally the same as the events in Shadowrun/Tribe8 that you and CRK referenced which is the same as the Whatever The Name Was changes which brought 4th Edition.
So if you refuse to incorporate those, you're basically saying "not at my table".
And I'm completely fine with that, and have said so multiple times.

 

[TristramEvans]

Bane dying due to T$R deciding so isn't any different from the Scorpion Clan making a power play for the Rokugani throne which is functionally the same as the events in Shadowrun/Tribe8 that you and CRK referenced which is the same as the Whatever The Name Was changes which brought 4th Edition.
So if you refuse to incorporate those, you're basically saying "not at my table".
And I'm completely fine with that, and have said so multiple times.

k, I dont know what any of those things are, but the relevant question is therefore "do you consider them insulting to you on a personal level" ?

 

[Sloth_in_a_bowl]

I don't know what that is, but it seems like the Mandalorian is set about the same time as my old WEG Star Wars games: a few years after RotJ. If I ran one now, it'd likewise be a few years after Revenge of the Sith.

The Republic Dark Age is about 1300 years before the SW films and there is very little media about it. Imagine a galactic level collapse of the Roman empire leaving behind many petty kingdoms influenced by a common culture as well as untold numbers of barbarians (Sith) at the gates.

Lots of space for any space opera stories based on galaxy level chaos but localised points of light and dark. Abandoned Republic legions acting as the knights of king Arthur for example.

 

[AsenRG]

k, I dont know what any of those things are, but the relevant question is therefore "do you consider them insulting to you on a personal level" ?

How does "not gonna happen at my table" translate to "this is insulting on a personal level"?

I mean, if the publishers are trying to insult my intelligence, and/or to sneak by me some terms that I would neither support nor accept - see WOTC'S OGL FAIL - I might take it personally...or more likely, I wouldn't.
But if they're trying to push me a stupid metaplot to get me on the supplement threadmill? No.
Well, only if they do it in a way that seems like they're insulting my intelligence, I guess?

What prompted such a question?

Edited: Oh, wait, you're taking at face value CT_Phipps 's statement that "A lot of people are very proprietary toward their campaigns and I think metaplot is one of those things where some DMs and STs actually consider them insulting on a personal level to them"? I think that's hyperbole. Though maybe it's not, I don't know.
I guess maybe, if it seems like insulting the intelligence of said Referees?

 

[AsenRG]

your response to my response to that exact assertion

See the edit that I just posted. Probably while you were typing as well.

 

[TristramEvans]

Edited: Oh, wait, you're taking at face value CT_Phipps 's statement that "A lot of people are very proprietary toward their campaigns and I think metaplot is one of those things where some DMs and STs actually consider them insulting on a personal level to them"? I think that's hyperbole. Though maybe it's not, I don't know.
I guess maybe, if it seems like insulting the intelligence of said Referees?

I dunno, it didnt read as hyperbole to me, hence my reply that I've never seen anyone express that opinion.

 

[VisionStorm]

I'm confused. I'm not seeing anything in your answer that disagrees with me?

I suppose my point of contention is that I consider the overarching narrative itself to be defining feature of metaplot , rather than the GM not knowing about it. If the GM is informed about it ahead of time (or provided some cliff notes at least), but there still is an overarching plot, then the metaplot is still there, it's just that they at least revealed (some) details of it to the GM. The issue being that it still forces a predetermined outcome on the setting's circumstances.

 

[CT_Phipps]

...and?

That is an example of what was being complained about?

Fans being upset at things happening at their games they don't like.

What do you think I was talking about?

 

[FreeGamer]

(maybe...unless the line gets discontinued before that)

This is why I'll always be thankful that in the tribe8 2e book - the final book ever produced for the line to my knowledge - they took the space to lay out where they had been intending to go with the metaplot. The fact that they even did that . . . I have the feeling that they would have released that information even if that book had never gone to print. I think it was important for them to bring thing to a close that way.

Oh! While I'm thinking of tribe8, I have an interesting tidbit that I got from asking questions on forums a while back. I'm pretty sure one of the people who worked on the line answered me, but it was a long time ago and my memory isn't perfect, so grain of salt. I'll use spoiler tags for anyone who hasn't read the tribe8 metaplot stuff yet:

Spoiler

One time I asked about other groups of humans around the world, and if they would have their own fatimas. I found it odd that every single fatima would appear in Canada and only in one specific part of Canada at that, so I asked about it. The answer I got was that yes, there were other fatimas, but that they(and their humans, assumedly) were so far away that they were never going to become relevant for the entire duration of the planned metaplot. It was something they had no need or intention of addressing in an official product, but they weren't playing coy. "Yes, but they aren't relevant and so we're never going to develop it beyond that one-word answer" basically. I do recall at one point they said that I can't assume that the other groups would have fared as well as the Canadians did, but I don't think it was meant as any sort of revelation. I think it was just food for thought, and it's neat(although a bit sad) to think that the Canadians might have been the most successful(possibly the only successful) group out of multiple.

Please note that I'm saying Canadians not as any kind of dig, but because my memory is bad but I remember that most of the campaign took place in parts of Canada(and also down into the US to Manhattan for a bit - for some reason I can remember the Hattani, but can't remember what the default PCs were called).

 

[TristramEvans]

That is an example of what was being complained about?

Fans being upset at things happening at their games they don't like.

I dunno, you assigned a motivation to it that I've never seen expressed, and I've seen a lot of different reasons to dislike Metaplot from it creating false player expectations, to withholding vital setting info that interferes with GMs ability to run a game in the setting, to it simply being bad fanfic written by bad game writers who wished they were authors.

So yeah, what you quoted is an example of someone expressing dislike for one detail of a metaplot in an example. But lacking in psychic powers I can't see how you can ascribe it as supporting you're expressed theory.

 

[Dr Jack]

I suppose my point of contention is that I consider the overarching narrative itself to be defining feature of metaplot , rather than the GM not knowing about it. If the GM is informed about it ahead of time (or provided some cliff notes at least), but there still is an overarching plot, then the metaplot is still there, it's just that they at least revealed (some) details of it to the GM. The issue being that it still forces a predetermined outcome on the setting's circumstances.

Fair enough. I wouldn't consider that metaplot.

 

[AppleJax]

I think there are two big problems.

One, the constant premise changing that means every release is a new game. There’s no consistency.

Two, it strangles creativity by imposing a religious canon on it. That defeats the entire point of creating an RPG.

Together, these contradictory hypocritical goals create a massive cognitive dissonance for me. It’s made me come to utterly despise canon, brand names, long-running franchises and intellectual property itself on a conceptual level.

 

[Andrew J. Luther]

I don’t really mind metaplot when it’s confined to GM facing book only. I could be wrong, but I vaguely remember that being the case with the original WoD. After the Player’s Guide, my players didn’t read any other supplements, and I believe the metaplot was consigned to only the books that I as the GM would buy.

I mean, I get it when a book comes out and changes stuff about the campaign setting that you can’t use because your game has gone in a different direction. Back in the day, it was a lot harder to know what you were getting before you spent your money on it. These days, however, you can pretty much find out everything about a book before you buy it.

And some stuff just doesn’t matter unless you want it to. For example, when Cloak & Dagger came out for the Forgotten Realms and explained that Khelben Blackstaff had left the Harpers, it made no difference to my game as the players were in the Vilhon Reach at the time. And if they had decided to head for Waterdeep, then I could decide if I wanted to use the new plot line or just leave Blackstaff as he was in the earlier books.

I’ve been DM/GMing for 41 years and I’ve yet to see a metaplot have any impact on my games beyond what impact I chose to give it.

Then again, as I’ve gotten older my capacity to get all agitated/angry about stuff that’s not important has atrophied quite a bit.

 

[Sharrow]

I don't know what that is, but it seems like the Mandalorian is set about the same time as my old WEG Star Wars games: a few years after RotJ. If I ran one now, it'd likewise be a few years after Revenge of the Sith.

If I ever were to run a SW game, it'd be set late in the period between the Clone Wars and A New Hope - i.e. in that time that Daley's three Han Solo novels were set. And that's the reason - I'd be running a game a lot more like those than like any of the movies or shows. So, personal stakes generic space opera with a vaguely SW skin.

 

[Sable Wyvern]

I consider the defining feature of metaplot to be that it is not revealed to DMs beforehand. It's when the game company releases an overarching plot for their setting that you don't know about when you start running your campaign in the setting, it just comes out bit-by-bit in supplements or whatever.

Otherwise it's just "plot".

So, for me, historical events are just plot. I guess if you started your campaign in the present day then current events could become metaplot. I can see many campaigns being derailed by the Covid Metaplot of 2020.

This matches my feelings. I've never really had to deal with true metaplot; The only system I can think that I've played a reasonable amount of, and which has metaplot, is Heavy Gear, but my Heavy Gear games were all just sporadic one-offs, where any overarching plot was irrelevant.

Cubicle 7's The Enemy Within probably doesn't count as metaplot, because it's a campaign and some kind of developing plot is expected, but itddid have the issue of hidden information, because early NPCs and events had potential implications in later installments, which weren't explained up front. I managed to avoid the problems this could cause by coming into it late, and being in a position to read the entire campaign well before I begin running it. For someone running the game as it was released, or not reading the entire thing before starting the campaign, I could see a fair bit of frustration when the material you've paid for becomes harder to use because you haven't accounted for future events you weren't privy to at the time.

 

[Dr Jack]

Cubicle 7's The Enemy Within probably doesn't count as metaplot, because it's a campaign and some kind of developing plot is expected, but itddid have the issue of hidden information, because early NPCs and events had potential implications in later installments, which weren't explained up front.

Uggh. Flashbacks to The Great Pendragon Campaign - great concept, horribly delivered product. Obviously there's some degree of reading through that is needed to run a campaign but if I'm going to pay for you to deliver a campaign for me rather than making it up myself it's because I want to not have to put as much effort into it. Campaigns need to be designed and present in a way that makes them easy to run. So, especially if the campaign has sandboxy elements, it needs to flag up which NPCs are important before time rather than relying on your remembering details after reading it through.

On another note, I always feel like I'm missing something when I look at The Enemy Within, it's got this reputation as a fantastic campaign but when I look at it, it seems contrived, railroady, and poorly fitted to the WFRP system. Maybe I'd get it if I actually played through the campaign but I can't see myself running it.

 

[Sable Wyvern]

On another note, I always feel like I'm missing something when I look at The Enemy Within, it's got this reputation as a fantastic campaign but when I look at it, it seems contrived, railroady, and poorly fitted to the WFRP system. Maybe I'd get it if I actually played through the campaign but I can't see myself running it.

My reaction was the opposite ... reading through it, quite early on, suddenly WFPR clicked for me and I finally "got it". I now feel the WFRP = TEW and TEW = WFRP, and I wish I'd known that 30 years ago when all I had was the WFRP 1e core book and I was trying to run the same style of game I did with Rolemaster.

I found TEW incredibly evocative and it's a really solid, impressive framework, despite the fact I feel the final chapter (Enemy in Ruins) is extremely weak. On the one hand, it's fair to say that the money I dropped on the entire five part campaign plus supporting material should mean I don't have to do any work at all. But that's never really going to be the case.

I've given myself about two years to do prep for the campaign, rewrite the ending, add in the necessary foreshadowing and tie-in pieces, and that is a lot of work from me. But, I wouldn't even have known where to start with a campaign of this type without the stuff I paid for a starting point.

 

[Kommissarg]

Reading the thread, i struggeled a bit with the definition of meta plot etc. but for what it is worth, I think I had some good experiences with meta-plots.
The Dark Eye has a considerable amout of it, the world is evolving around the PCs constantly, campaigns and interweaving campaigns let the players take part in these events and sometimes I would sprinkle in some references to other events not related (or directly) related to the current campaign and its plot.

I also think that the aforementioned Shadowrun and its "lore" offer a decent meta plot which is fun and given the modern setting, is easily integrated and refernced during play sessions. Makes players curious.

 

[CT_Phipps]

I think part of the issue we're running into is that, in fact, a lot of metaplot is actually later incorporated into adventures.

* The Transylvania Chronicles
* The Ravenloft Prophecy of Hyskosa
* DIE, VECNA, DIE
* The Avatar Trilogy
* Faction War

And so on.

 

[Dr Jack]

My reaction was the opposite ... reading through it, quite early on, suddenly WFPR clicked for me and I finally "got it". I now feel the WFRP = TEW and TEW = WFRP, and I wish I'd known that 30 years ago when all I had was the WFRP 1e core book and I was trying to run the same style of game I did with Rolemaster.

I think the thing that has always grabbed me about WFRP is the career system. The way characters are people who have jobs and, usually, a randomly concocted mixture of jobs rather than being a collection of adventuring archetypes. Enemy Within casts the PCs as "Bold Adventurers" and gives them no time to develop their careers outside of the adventure. Maybe I just take a weird view of what WFRP is, but I'm much enjoying that part of the game with my current group of a Student, a Halfling Physician's Apprentice, a Boathand, and a Brigand.

I found TEW incredibly evocative and it's a really solid, impressive framework, despite the fact I feel the final chapter (Enemy in Ruins) is extremely weak.

To be fair to it, I'm really only talking about the first book; I haven't seen the later stuff.

 

[Sable Wyvern]

I think the thing that has always grabbed me about WFRP is the career system. The way characters are people who have jobs and, usually, a randomly concocted mixture of jobs rather than being a collection of adventuring archetypes. Enemy Within casts the PCs as "Bold Adventurers" and gives them no time to develop their careers outside of the adventure. Maybe I just take a weird view of what WFRP is, but I'm much enjoying that part of the game with my current group of a Student, a Halfling Physician's Apprentice, a Boathand, and a Brigand.



To be fair to it, I'm really only talking about the first book; I haven't seen the later stuff.

I agree it's not terribly well suited for shuffling around between careers, as there isn't a heap of down-time to make career switching easier to justify in-game. However, one of the reasons I do like it is because it plays to the strengths of having PCs start as an eclectic mix of commoners. Testing the system out, I used completely random generation to end up with an investigator, huffer, coachman, outlaw, thief, villager and guard -- which combine to make an almost perfect mix of characters for TEW.

 

[Lofgeornost]

That's why I set my Middle Earth games in the time of Tolkien's unfinished sequel, The Return of the Shadow

I'm partial to the less-well-sketched-out parts of the Third Age, which is most of it. I actually liked the ICE approach of setting a lot of modules in c. 1640 TA, IIRC.

 

[Panzerkraken]

I felt the same about Living Steel. Loved the setting but felt there was a heap of info missing about Spectrals, Dragoncrests, who the hell the Seven Sword Worlds were.

I always felt like there was plenty of information, but the problem was that it was still being doled out when LEG went extinct. The deep dive on Dragoncrests in the LEGionnaire was pretty good, and while it didn't go into much historical information or give stats on the former empire, that was also pretty irrelevant at the point Living Steel took place. As for Spectrals, there was enough information and dropped tidbits in the main set of text and KVISR Rocks! that I was able to pretty simply build up an image of what a "typical" Spectral invasion would look like and build out a relatively complete picture of them, including the tossed-off reference to Spectral Thrones. That also led to a little armchair entomology, since I decided Spectral lairs looked a lot like slave-accessible ant nests. From the perspective of my players, the meta-plot became surviving the Apocalypse, Rebuilding Societies, Defeating the Starguild Rump, Defeating the Spectrals, Defeating S4 (my own thing; S4 had a whole subversive mole aspect they'd built through their GOLEM-enabled agents in my games only), with the big reveal at the end being the truth behind the whole Apocalypse vis a vis OSS and exactly why they became the wrong people at the right time.

Overall, I like their metaplot, but the nature of the game means that I've never made it further than the beginning of the combination of Phase 2 and 3; for some reason my players keep burning out on the hard-lethal difficulty.

 

[Degeneration roller]

I got into roleplaying with vampire revised and while I did initialy like the metaplot (although not to the fanatical level that most WoD fan do), I progressively got away from it until dropping it entirely (together with WoD) when requiem 2e came out, the signature characters, world events and whatnot are nice to read (although it depends, in between great books here and there, Whitewolf publications were mostly mediocre) but they are only a cage when it comes to making your game, too much will depend on external circumstance that could make the players choices irrelevant.

 

[SmallbutVicious]

...you've had plots where you yourself didn't know what was in the making?

Well that happens with most campaigns doesn't it? Even when the setting is entirely your own creation.

Sometimes when you're 6 months in and prepping for a session it suddenly just clicks. "Hey! Wouldn't if make sense if the Higgly-Gogs had been secretly funding this all along so that the NPC with the big nose would supply them with McGuffin juice? And that means they'd be really angry about the weasel-baiting shenanigans. Looks like Pigglesport's gonna be burnt to the ground when the players return!""

 

[thebigh]

That happens a little bit too as recurring NPCs develop personalities. You soon find it'd make more sense for them to be behind certain things because that would be just the kind of thing they'd do.

 

[Teotwawki]

A rare example of well-used meta-plot for our group came a few years ago when we ran through the entire Masks of Nyarly. Although there was a nice coincidental meta-plot when one of our game afternoons was on the day of the July 2018 eclipse, the thing that really hit home meta-wise was at the conclusion of the campaign. The characters were in Kenya before returning to their homes in Europe and the States, when they heard on the radio (VQ7LO, Nairobi) about a mysterious and horrific viral outbreak in the valley below the Mountain of the Black Wind.

It was a subtle tidbit of knowledge, but when the characters checked their maps for the location came the meta-WoW-experience of us-as-players knowing the Mountain was just inside the modern border of Uganda... about the same location as Mount Elgon--wherein lies Kitum Cave...

That viral outbreak coda still gives me gaming chills. Hemorrhagic virus would, of course, be one of Nyarly's Thousand Forms.

 

[chuckdee]

I liked the Battletech metaplot, SLA Industries was good up until the Truth was actually revealed and didn't live up to what we'd seen, and I liked Adventure/Aberrant/Trinity, though I did hack the hell out of it.

 

[CRKrueger]

Maybe I just take a weird view of what WFRP is, but I'm much enjoying that part of the game with my current group of a Student, a Halfling Physician's Apprentice, a Boathand, and a Brigand.

I think that’s really the attraction of WFRP, no matter what edition, the various characters (some of whom can start out with zero “adventuring” use) juggling careers, adventures, the society of the Reik, etc.