Writing Plot for “Big” Games

Keeping one’s players entertained seems easy enough when there’s only five of them and they’re walking a linear path through a set of predetermined encounters. First they meet some lost villagers, then some bandits, etc, the classics. They are always interacting with non player characters who can all report back on what is happening.

But what if there are more players[1]?

The methods of implementing plot which are effective for small numbers of players become increasingly less as the playerbase grows. Resources and effort put into creating the same density of plot don’t scale linearly with the playerbase.

As such, what is needed isn’t simply more plot but a change in the way Plot is run and thought of.

What is Plot? And what is not Plot?

There are many ways to look at Plot but I’m fond of thinking of it as opportunities and prompts for player action. They are what follows the Call to Adventure in the Hero’s Journey. They are the newspaper clippings that tell the players of a distant treasure and the villagers complaining about bandit attacks. These are the obvious examples, but what is important to me is that Plot prompts action on the part of the players and that the gameworld at large will respond to these actions accordingly.

As a game designer, my duty is to ensure everyone is having some semblance of fun (differing definitions of fun apply) and I see the best way to do that as making sure players are engaged with the game itself. That they are doing things. Hence my definition of Plot as this doing of consequential things.

The easiest mistake to make (and it is one I have many times) is to think that encounters and NPCs that provide enforcement of the world setting constitute Plot. Due to the fact that they don’t prompt further action outside of the experience of the encounter itself, they aren’t really Plot in my definition.

As such, a wandering bard who likes to tell stories is not Plot even as they provide flavour and depth to the world. These Colour Encounters can allow a player a glimpse of the gameworld beyond the play area and they can showcase elements of the world setting that may be neglected. But this value does not make them Plot.

The second mistake that I have made is to prompt unmeasured and inconsequential action. To inspire the players to start a choir can be a fun diversion, but for it to become Plot in my mind, there must be a measurable gameworld consequence for this choir. The actions may be pleasurable in and of themselves to undertake, but it is the reaction the world and validation from the referees and NPCs that makes it Plot.

Lastly, sometimes players will make their mark upon the gameworld of their own accord, inspired by either a forgotten line in the brief or out of elaborate injoke their friends. This is the best sort of Plot and a player is almost always more committed to seeing their own vision come to fruition than that of the referees’. It is not always good nor appropriate to indulge a player, but I regret almost every time I’ve scoffed at player’s ambitions[2]. The hardest part of any Plot is often the hook, how to attract and retain a player’s interest.

Extending the Reach of Plot

I used to write Plots as a series of encounters, putting the emphasis on the interaction between player and NPC: this is when they will meet Morgan le Fay; this is when they will be given a sword by the Lady of the Lake, this is when the Queen of Wessex will negotiate with them, etc.

But this paradigm of Plot is limiting as I only have so many members of crew any given time. More than that, only a small number of players will be able to speak with the Queen of Wessex (or any other given NPC) at any given time. There will always be more players on the outside looking in. They are part of the game.

As such, Plot needs to be written for the moments when the NPCs aren’t there.

It’s isn’t simply that the Plot Encounter has a great ripple effect, causing gossip across the field, it is that when writing it all, I place an emphasis of thinking about the sorts of interactions in the run up to and in the aftermath of the encounter.

Allowing Preparation

One of the easy ways to prompt greater engagement is to give clear indication of when an NPC is going to show up or when an attack might be expected. Reliable information allows the playerbase to prepare for the encounter.

As such, if the players are told that a fallen order of knights would charge into tavern with poisonous weapons at around nine o’clock, they will be able to spend the many hours before that mixing antidotes. They will debate the efficiency of their brewing and how to distribute the antidotes in time.

The same applies to the Queen of Wessex’s penchant for cheese and crackers, her desire to hear gossip or recruit the the most devout warriors of the realm. This information extends the amount engagement the players can get out of a single encounter.

It is important to note that the information must thus be consistently reliable for this effect to stick. If the intelligence indicates there will be poison, there must then be poison. It is inadvisable to pull a last minute plot twist because the players seem too well prepared. As if their spies prove untrustworthy too many times, the players are unlikely to keep bothering and the reach of those encounters will shrink.

Aftermaths of Encounters

As said above the Plot isn’t in the Encounter itself, no matter how much fun plying the Queen of Wessex with gossip, cheese and cracker is. Thus what I need to think about is what actions the Queen with prompt the players to undertake.

The easiest is a series of demands that she can make of the players, to prompt them into action. She can inspire alliances or feuds between player factions, pushing them to fight each other. She can offer favours of her own in exchange and thus she can become a method of affecting the inner politics of Wessex[3] and the wider gameworld.

Titles and gifts, however, are again more background flavour than Plot. To be recuited into her order of valiant and devout knights can be excellent for a character’s personal arc and be very meaningful for them[4]. But for it to be more than colour, it needs to be pushing them to action as well as offering opportunities for action.

Information Flow: Papers and Players

Something written down can be read by a great many players which is why a letter or a poster can have far greater reach than a single NPC. Notes or letters that can be looted off a dead messenger provide plenty to for a player to interact with.

It is not always possible to guarantee a piece of information given to a player will disseminate to the rest of the playerbase, especially if they realise they are the sole keepers of that secret. Knowledge that only one person (or group) is privy to makes that individual powerful.

However, this changes dramatically when more than one person knows the secret. The power then comes from the telling of the secret rather than in the retention of it. One is no longer Merlin looking inscrutably smug, enjoying the sensation of seeming omniscience. When multiple people have knowledge, then they are each vying to be seen as the most knowledgeable and it is only in the telling of the secrets that they can prove this. But more than that, it is now a race to be the first to disclose.

Taking advantage of your players as vectors for information can save a lot of NPC time and can also increase the engagement of the players with the gameworld. Instead of an NPC order of knights seeing a Viking ship and reporting that to the players, it can be a player who is told that they saw such themselves. This gives them further reason to care and ground their experiences within the gameworld. Of course it is possible for them to claim to have been the one sighting the ship after the NPC has given them the information, but the illusion is incomplete. The heroes of our stories are those who get things done, not those who supervise them.

Rethinking Gameplay when there is too Little Plot

In games where there is too little Plot, the result is often an unequal distribution and a desire to hoard whatever Plot crosses one’s path. The problem then becomes that more time is spent by the players fighting to gain access to the Plot than the engaging in the Plot itself. That is to say if the Wielder of Excalibur goes on a quest alone and that thirty players are all vying to become said wielder, then the bulk of the “gameplay” is no longer the quest itself.

This is not necessarily a problem as long as I recognise this. What I would then do is to reallocate my resources not to the quest, but to the making the selection process of the wielder as engaging and rewarding as possible. Because that is now the game.

And as such, the quest itself has become a reward. This may seem strange but in the light of the long trials of the selection process, there is little that can be done with the quest to make it harder than defeating thirty players. The wielder has already proven themselves.

Visibility of Plot vs Impact

It is easy to imagine that a big, important Plot needs to be not only as visible as possible, but also having a huge impact on the playerbase. The problem with this is that the bigger the plot, and the more players it impacts, all those players should ideally have the opportunity to affect the plot in return.

But if the Plot is invasion by the Queen of Wessex, for example, it would be tempting to have this impact every single player. After all, why should it not? It is an Important Plot Event.

However, I’ve come to distrust such instincts for realism and the question is more to me about how the Plot is to be resolved. If it is to be resolved in single combat against the Queen herself, perhaps then it should not be quite so wide reaching as most would find the inability to influence this outcome frustrating. It functionally renders what should be an opportunity for interaction into a video game cut scene for everyone but the one fight the Queen.

Hence the rule of thumb being that a Plot’s ability to negatively impact a player should be proportional to the player’s ability to impact it in return.

I find large Plots of complex branching plotlines can be abstracted into more simple track of a single number (such as a War Score) that tick up or down. This can allow every single linear and minor encounter affect the War Score without an overly complex causal web. The important thing there is the concrete knowledge of meaningful consequence[5].

When trying to open up a large Plot so that many players can interact with it, it is important to pay attention to the immediate shape of that interaction. I remember in the old day of our weekly system there was a need for guilds to pay upkeep on their buildings. The player guild leaders were thus often collecting money or tasking their followers to collect money. This was in and of itself deeply unsatisfying gameplay. A Plot can demand money or mana from the players but ultimately how engaging that is to undertake depends on how that money and mana flows into the system. Does interacting with this seemingly elaborate plot actually boil down to a small number players begging their peers for resources? Where is the challenge in this Plot and how might it inspire conflict in the playerbase? Is there any way that Plot’s core unit of gameplay can be more inherently pleasurable?

[1] One year, we saw fifteen freshers at the first linear of the year and the encounters ran very differently with triple the number of normal players. We worried about players at the back not engaging the NPCs and not following the plot of what was happening. We were worried they weren’t having a good time.

[2] Allowing small groups to (sometimes) punch above their weight is an important part of encouraging conflict and ambition within the playerbase. The sense that a larger group will always be able to crush you with their numbers does not inspire action. Large groups already have the advantage of being large thus it is often unnecessary to to give them further benefits.

[3] See upcoming blogpost, Mooks vs Macrocosms on how NPCs can simulate the wider gameworld.
But in short: an NPC can either be treated as an individual and thus changing the mind of a single Merry Man is but a drop in the sea of his numerous gang. However, I could decide that because it is impossible to ever represent all fifty thousand of his Merry Men that simply talking town three is enough to turn the tide as they each act as a macrocosm of the whole gang. There is also the intermediary approach that sees certain important npcs as pivotal and others as largely mooks.

[4] This blogpost keeps hammering at this distinction not to undermine people’s enjoyment of “personal plot” but to emphacise that there is a difference. It is a mistake I have made too often to the boredom of my players and my own bewilderment. I mean, I was sending in encounter after encounter, why were they not entertained? Why could they not find anything they wish to do?

[5] In smaller games it is possible to outsource a lot of the underpinnings of persistence to your NPC crew. So, for example, a character may make friends with a bandit on a linear. In a small game, it is possible for the crew member who plays that bandit to reprise their role and further cement that illusion of a persisent world. However, in a larger game, not only will one lack the resources to do that, it also becomes less likely that the character would ever run into their bandit friend again, even if they are remembered. It is still possible, of course, to foster longer term relationships between player characters and NPCs, but that cannot be a primary unit of gameplay as it is too finite in supply.