Metaplot sucks, except when it’s totally awesome. Nobody likes it and they miss it when it’s gone. It’s a pain in the ass godsend for game developers and an alienating useful tool for groups.

What What?

These reactions are nigh-incoherent yet feel genuine, mirroring the good and bad in metaplots. The bad things about metaplots — that they make the setting less accessible and harder to work with — might be unavoidable in some respects but I think they also stem from some bad design habits in RPGs:

1. The idea that RPGs can be improved like a technology.
2. The notion that one tool, insight or design movement can take care of #1.

Developers use (or used) metaplots to drive fan loyalty, reboot game systems, tweak settings and justify adventures. I don’t think any development tool can do it all. Metaplot’s no exception. The more you expand a tool to do more, the less you focus on its best qualities. If it does everything, it doesn’t mean anything. When metaplots lose sight of a core mission in favour of lots of discrete, ad hoc tasks it gets difficult to provide practical advice about how to use them. If one book adds a development to introduce a new bad guy and another justifies a shift in the magic system, what can I say to gamers to help them own the whole thing from start to finish? It just looks like a bunch of crappy patches — and sometimes, that’s all it is.

It’s Okay, Everything Sucks

What can I do to fix it? One answer is “Nothing!” Then you throw your hands up and make a great show of contrition that you ever sought to oppress gamers or something.

I don’t think that’s the best answer. It’s a big mistake to give up on metaplot. It’s not a tool for everything but it is an effective tool. It remains one of the best ways to create a convincingly detailed setting, build a community and develop enduring parts of your IP. Metaplot even seems to be better at inspiring details about the back story of the “Year Zero” setting than the alternatives. When you reach back and add something to justify a new development the game’s history expands organically. Vampire: The Masquerade looks like it got all kinds of nifty things (and a few duds) out of the process.

One alternative is to make a toolkit out of your setting. These are often great resources, but might damage the community’s ability to develop common interests in the game, or the developer’s ability to build expand the setting in interesting ways.

I’m skeptical of toolkits. Like metaplots, they’ve bloated what they’re good at — but if you disagree with me fear not, because most people do! I remember when we got down to Seers of the Throne and I told Ethan and the other freelancers that I thought the toolkit, make your own bad guy approach was a bad idea. I used Vampire: The Requiem’s VII book as an example. VII is a great book, full of compelling, well-executed ideas. You get to pick from multiple versions of VII. That can only be a good thing, right?

Think again. Any VII you want means:

• No future material about VII without breaking the implied promise of the VII book.
• No basis of unity for fans to develop VII on their own, because there’s an immediate division based on the version you want to use. It seems counterintuitive for more choice to hinder gamer creativity, but think of it this way: If you have 10 people split among three versions of VII (3/3/4) the chance of each sub-project dying from lack of interest goes up, since so many of these things have over 50% attrition, leaving 1/1/2 people who think nobody cares.

It may sound like I’m harshing on the book. I’m not! I own it and used parts of it in my Vampire/Mage game. This book didn’t fail but its tools have a price. Metaplot adds its own difficulties, but it’s not alone.

(At this point, people who love structure may accuse me of conflating metaplot and setting — and that’s true. Fact is, the boundary between the two is pretty vague in practice.)

Whatever we do, there’s a trade off — RPG Design Culture Tendency #1 blinds us to it, but it’s there. If metaplot is a particular pain in the ass it’s probably because it did more than should have (Cultural Problem #2) and we were so busy applying it that it was hard to get to the intellectual space where we can look at it from afar, appreciate it as a general thing and see how we can give it a proper place.

Metaplot 2.0

Let’s get it right.

First, we’ll ban ourselves from using metaplot as a game design multitool. That means:

1. We won’t use metaplot to justify rules changes. We won’t kill every assassin in the Forgotten Realms to support an edition change. We might add and change systems to support an event, but it’s for the sake of the event (and it had better be a good one).
2. We won’t use metaplot to invalidate any fundamental character or setting structure (choice of character types, factions, etc.) unless we’re going to a new edition or some equally momentous release. We won’t kick your splat out of the Splat Social Club in a supplement.
3. We’ll never make book B require book A unless book A is a core book to limit declining accessibility. This is the tough one.

These are the rules. We’ll only break them in a dire emergency or to support a eucatastrophically awesome idea.

Next, we’ll set some objectives:

1. We want to build a community around the setting, where gamers can talk about basically the same people, places and things.
2. Related to #1, we want to build loyalty to the game setting. We want good fans, and we want to reward them for being fans — without alienating newcomers.
3. We want to open up lots of new possibilities for stories.
4. We want a sense of verisimilitude and living history.

Frankenplot Lives!

You can find bits of Metaplot 2.0 strewn across dozens of game books. If I wanted to elevator pitch it I’d go with, Scion + Requiem for a God + Mekton Empire. You might come up with different examples, but let me explain myself here:

• Scion features playable signature characters and a default campaign structure that has a powerful effect on the setting.
• Requiem for a God is a complex resource for a single event that doesn’t lay out a firm source of events beyond Odin kicking the bucket (or whatever).
• Mekton Empire features one of the best implementations of setting secrets, bar none, where there are multiple choice answers and space for GMs to add their own (a toolkit idea! I’m a hypocrite! But let me explain . . .)

Damn, this article’s running long, so it’ll be a two parter. See you!