It's Monday, it must be the Apocalypse!

[Neanderthal]

So you're rolling out your new game world, introducing the player to all its intricacies and peculiarities, or just the different renaissance fayre permutations we're all familiar with.

What do you do with regards to plot? A number of points, characters and places that reinforce the themes and uniqueness of the setting? That allow your character to explore the setting, learn and become a part of it through a story that becomes very personal? Or do you just introduce a big bad, the crisis he's instigating and make a looming apocalypse the reason for the characters involvement before he's even grown to care about the world?

I'd go for the first approach, because it's usually better implemented and bad game worlds are invariably places that lurch from apocalypse to apocalypse, thus robbing them of any impact, and never settle down enough to explore the setting created or the nuances of it.

And just because a plot isn't save the world doesn't make it less impactful. BG has you stopping a war and discovering your heritage, Arcanum despite "Arronax's" threat is about exploring the world and its history, the great Ultimas explore a religious/philosophical awakening and the changes and challenges affecting Britannia due to that, Torment is about knowing/defining yourself etc. These are great stories, and are no less so for not having a save the world moment.

Though it would be nice to see a crpg dealing with saving the world from Elves i'll admit.

Thoughts?

 

[Cael]

Just plain exploration. Give the players a world that is unexplored for any reason. An apocalypse x years ago changed the world (aka, Fallout style) and now you and your party are commissioned by the leader of your village/town/kingdom to go forth and explore the world, find new lands and meet new civilisations. To go where no kobold has gone before.

Spoiler

Deekin?

 

[Neanderthal]

To go where no kobold has gone before.

Spoiler

Deekin?

Please no.

 

[Tweed]

Needs to be more than just exploration. I mean Bethesda likes to make em nice an' big, but that's where they stop and pass the savings onto you. It helps to give the player a good reason to go out and explore, like a water chip.

 

[Mr. Magniloquent]

Epic plots are lazy and ultimately cheapen their world by making the extraordinary mundane. I like to focus my modules on classical myths that by today's standards would be...quaint. For example, a village has a rash of bad luck. Poor crops, missing children, and wide spread nightmares. Solve the problems. Some of these are concrete, others are more abstract. All involve investigation. Players should learn about your world through quests; either because it's necessary or merely part of the journey.

If a plot involves anything greater than saving a kingdom, I generally don't bother with developing it. I have written one truly epic tale, but it has far more in common with PS:T than say, LotR. Even when something is sweeping, grandiose, and exotic, it needs to occur on a purely personal level. That's why Mask of the Betrayer was such an excellent module. Lore dumps are not merely inferior, but antithetical to getting players familiar with their world. Even in books, the user needs to be invested. Ego stroking of epic plots or early presentations of the big bad are poor mechanisms for developing this.

 

[Neanderthal]

Well for me exploration doesn't mean vast amounts of hiking around empty vistas, it means having a few super detailed locations, that are reactive, interesting and layered. Like Mulsantir, Sigil or Vizima say.

Its a novice GMs mistake to make stonking great worlds with masses of background that is utterly irrelevant, when a few small areas of massive detail, that affect the players, will serve just as well and allow for a gradual escalation of scope.

 

[Black Angel]

What do you do with regards to plot? A number of points, characters and places that reinforce the themes and uniqueness of the setting? That allow your character to explore the setting, learn and become a part of it through a story that becomes very personal? Or do you just introduce a big bad, the crisis he's instigating and make a looming apocalypse the reason for the characters involvement before he's even grown to care about the world?

I'd go for the first approach, because it's usually better implemented and bad game worlds are invariably places that lurch from apocalypse to apocalypse, thus robbing them of any impact, and never settle down enough to explore the setting created or the nuances of it.

And just because a plot isn't save the world doesn't make it less impactful. BG has you stopping a war and discovering your heritage, Arcanum despite "Arronax's" threat is about exploring the world and its history, the great Ultimas explore a religious/philosophical awakening and the changes and challenges affecting Britannia due to that, Torment is about knowing/defining yourself etc. These are great stories, and are no less so for not having a save the world moment.

Fallout 1&2 did this, too, but by combining the first approach and second approach. At first, you're only thrown out into a whole new world to look out for the Water Chip/GECK because your kith and kin are dying, and then the big bad are introduced and you must stop them. While the need for Water Chip/GECK implies that a 'looming apocalypse' upon your people, turns out the rest of the world doesn't really affected by such situation and can go merrily about their own life. And their life is what you're exploring, become part of, and may even become very personal.

 

[Cael]

To go where no kobold has gone before.

Spoiler

Deekin?

Please no.

*opens up a box full of baby kobolds and let them loose on Neanderthal*

 

[Neanderthal]

Ah breakfast.

 

[Cael]

Well for me exploration doesn't mean vast amounts of hiking around empty vistas, it means having a few super detailed locations, that are reactive, interesting and layered. Like Mulsantir, Sigil or Vizima say.

Its a novice GMs mistake to make stonking great worlds with masses of background that is utterly irrelevant, when a few small areas of massive detail, that affect the players, will serve just as well and allow for a gradual escalation of scope.

The easiest is to build by installment.

For example, a village survived an apocalypse that turned the world into eternal winter with short periods of spring/autumn because it is located in a sheltered valley. It has been 400 years. In that time, contact was made with surrounding pockets of civilisation that survived the apocalypse also. A dwarven clan, a kobold warren and a gnome village in the surrounding mountains. Nomadic hunter-gatherer orcs outside the village who trade with the village and seek shelter with them when the winter turn harsher than normal.

That is your initial point, your entire map of the world, so to speak. Then, you start exploring and world building.

To make it simpler for yourself, there is no history prior to say 50 years after the apocalypse. Everything was destroyed and people were too busy trying to survive to even bother writing things down. Beyond that line, all you have are myths and legends which may or may not be true. Outright ban wizards, clerics, paladins, monks and anything that has anything to do with education, organisation or the like. The reason is bloody obvious.

Simple, easy to manage, blank cheque to build upon.

 

[Cael]

Ah breakfast.

The cuteness factor will quickly turn you into a Christmas tree stand in :D

Roll Will save vs cute!

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

Neverwinter Nights: Hordes of the Underdark did a fantastic job of gradual plot-progression without having any overarching plot to your adventures.

1) Your location is attacked, you go down the dungeon to try and stop the attacks.
2) Upon completing this task, the owner of the dungeon teleports you away to do a job for him.
3) Upon completing this task, a demon kills you & then the Grim Reaper suggests you go fight for your life back.

It's a very similar structure to IWD

1) You're mercenaries who sign up for a job defending a town.
2) That town's leader hires you to find the Heartstone Gem.
3) You then go hunt down the big bad villain.

In neither game are you presented with a bad guy from the outset who represents a game-long nemesis. In neither game are you performing your tasks from a save the world motivation, the first quickly becomes a trial of self-preservation & the second is a case of self interest. What plot there is is just a framework within which you function, it could have been anyone going on these adventures, it just happens to be you because you survived out of the many who were also on the path but died, the only thing that makes you special is that your character is controlled by a human player.

And yet both games have a much greater sense of epic than other games which approach the question of plot from a position of intending them to be epic via more traditional stereotypes like saving the world or super-villain rivalry or being The Chosen One.

 

[Tweed]

I like how Fallout 2 took the piss with that, by the time you find the GECK it's not that important.

Compare to something like PoE which insists that you just gotta find this guy or else you'll go mad, yet the worst thing that ever happens are some flashbacks. You can just mosey all over the place taking your sweet time, no worries. The "excuse to get the player out of the house" needs to be a good one, something that applies some kind of pressure to find whatever it is they need to find. All that extra lore and text didn't do much for me.

 

[Cael]

Neverwinter Nights: Hordes of the Underdark did a fantastic job of gradual plot-progression without having any overarching plot to your adventures.

1) Your location is attacked, you go down the dungeon to try and stop the attacks.
2) Upon completing this task, the owner of the dungeon teleports you away to do a job for him.
3) Upon completing this task, a demon kills you & then the Grim Reaper suggests you go fight for your life back.

It's a very similar structure to IWD

1) You're mercenaries who sign up for a job defending a town.
2) That town's leader hires you to find the Heartstone Gem.
3) You then go hunt down the big bad villain.

In neither game are you presented with a bad guy from the outset who represents a game-long nemesis. In neither game are you performing your tasks from a save the world motivation, the first quickly becomes a trial of self-preservation & the second is a case of self interest. What plot there is is just a framework within which you function, it could have been anyone going on these adventures, it just happens to be you because you survived out of the many who were also on the path but died, the only thing that makes you special is that your character is controlled by a human player.

And yet both games have a much greater sense of epic than other games which approach the question of plot from a position of intending them to be epic via more traditional stereotypes like saving the world or super-villain rivalry or being The Chosen One.

This is very similar to what Joe Dever did with Lone Wolf back in the gamebook days. THe first book had you running to the capital to alert the king. The second introduced a whole different country for you to run to to ask for aid and get the McGuffin.

 

[laclongquan]

The point of an Apocalypse setting is to figure out parts of the world is changed HOW. Bonus point if it's memorable locations.

 

[Neanderthal]

The point of an Apocalypse setting is to figure out parts of the world is changed HOW. Bonus point if it's memorable locations.

I agree and Fallout for instance did this beautifully throughout the game, via Harold, the Glow etc. However when there's a cataclysm every second Sunday it becomes an overused Deus Ex Machina kinda thing, a cheap, nasty and all too obvious desperation move by the GM to wipe clean the slate. Look at Dragonlance and Krynn, it went from an interesting setting exploring the past and gradually awakening to that inheritance, to a world beset by almost constant world altering crises. Honestly how the series nosedived after the Twins books was bloody amazing to behold, and all because of apocalypse addiction.

 

[V_K]

Well, a world living from one apocalypse to another could be a fun setting if this was part of the setting.
Also, you forgot the most visceral plot motivation: escape this fucking world.

 

[laclongquan]

Though it would be nice to see a crpg dealing with saving the world from Elves i'll admit.

Thoughts?

Witcher