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The problem with metaplots is actually very simple:
I did not buy your game to hear about *YOUR* lame characters.
I bought it so me and my players could tell stories about *OUR* heroic and cool
characters. Even if your characters weren't objectively lame, we still
wouldn't care about them, because they're *not our characters*.
Designer's characters = LAME
Player's characters = COOL
Game designers with a tendency to write metaplots should write
that on the wall above their computers.
Metaplots are also a vain and lazy conceit.
Vain, because they're based on the idea that you, the game
designer, are so incredibly cool that you can make other people want to hear
stories about your characters. You cannot. We do not. "Tell me about your
character and DIE!", as the cartoon in White Wolf's Subsidiaries book says,
and yet they don't take their own advice, and don't understand when people get
irritated with them.
Lazy, because they allow you to avoid having to do any of the
hard work of thinking about consequences in module design, or how to
incorporate diverse PCs into the game. It's so much easier to have a
super-powerful NPC cause all the problems and another super-powerful NPC clean
them all up, with the PCs as mere tourists. Once you put in a metaplot, the
players *cannot* be allowed off the metaplot railroad, because if they do
derail, no further modules are of any use to them.
So when I get a metaplot-tainted game, I have to throw a good
chunk of it out, because it's full of lame stuff about your characters. I
basically never touch metaplot-infested modules, because they're useless to me.
White Wolf has more or less guaranteed
that they'll sell me the core book and maybe a player's book for each line, and
nothing else. Ever. Because every line is based on a metaplot.
The way I, and most gamers, really like to get a game is with
the setting and some very static NPCs described in a perfect moment frozen in
time. The key point there is "static NPCs". Your NPCs do not normally get to
change the world. Only the GM's NPCs and the PCs get to change the world.
If you want to put that stuff in a module, fine. Describe the
potential consequences for various PC responses. That's good stuff.
If you want to have a series of modules, you have to tread
carefully, and make sure your links work even if the PCs did something very
different. But as long as the fact that it's a sequel is clearly labelled,
that's okay.
You should *not* be having the events of one module series
affect any other modules, because the GM and players may not have run that
module, or may have resolved it completely differently.
Whether or not game designers have a lot of "frustrated
novelist" in them doesn't really matter. But if you're perpetrating a metaplot,
stick to writing novels. Detailed, author-created characters and rigid plots
work great in novels, because there's no players interfering. Be happy with
your novel-writing career. Don't inflict it on games.
Not all metaplots are huge "change the world" events. If
you're in a lower-powered game, then the metaplot is also lower-powered.
Instead of changing the world, the metaplot changes the city. Or your
apartment building.
If you can't do anything about it, then there's no point in
wasting very much space on it.
For example, suppose you have an RPG about rat catchers in
medieval Paris. The political changes going on at the top of society are
completely irrelevant to the PCs, so they can be summarized in a few lines,
saying "King Louis the Nth ascends the throne in XXX A.D." (if it's a WW
product, it probably really does say "XXX A.D.") But the characters *can*
influence the Rat-Catchers Guild and the Beggars Guild, and so the guild
politics need to be laid out.
A non-metaplot game will just describe the guild politics and
let the players get involved however they want.
A metaplot-infested game will have a specific political arc,
with Little Timmy the Beggar being kicked out of the B.G., rescued by the PCs,
diverse alarums ensue, and Little Timmy becomes the new Guildmaster of the
Rat-Catchers Guild after the old Guildmaster chokes on a fried rat. Then all
the future supplements will depend explicitly on Little Timmy's benevolent but
naive hand guiding the R.C.G.. Good luck using any of that if the players
drowned Little Timmy for his tin begging cup and the 2cp inside, burned the
B.G. to the ground, and seized control of the R.C.G. with help from the
Seamstresses Guild.
On the gripping hand, most people don't play in that low-level
a game... Almost every published RPG is primarily about the PCs playing heroes
(or rarely villains) who may start at lower-middle range, but are capable of
becoming more powerful, reaching the top of society, and really changing the
entire world.
Last modified: 2003Jan29
Created
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