Photo credit: Freeimages.com / Andrzej Pobiedzi?ski

I spent most of the weekend working on the next adventure in the Zenith-3 campaign. While this adventure mines territory that will be familiar to my players, it should not feel at all repetitive to them except in the very broad conceptual strokes, and that’s because I make an effort to make each plot different and original in its execution and presentation (you’ll understand that since several of my players read Campaign Mastery, I can’t get too specific about this particular example). In fact, most of what I was working on was in service to this principle, and that prompted me to explore the subject of “how to make it different” in today’s article.

I presume that there is no need to actually justify making each variation different. The advantages and necessity should be obvious.

So, what makes a plot different?

There are all sorts of ways in which one manifestation of a broad overarching plotline can differ from the next. The problem is that it’s all too easy to assume that these differences will do the work for the GM. They won’t; in fact, in most of the ways that count, the players won’t even notice unless you ensure that your point or points of distinction have some palpable impact. There are a number of different categories of distinction, and it’s worth taking a look at them. To guide you in this exploration, I’m going to use a classic plotline (that has absolutely nothing to do with the plotline in question for Zenith-3), ‘the bank heist’.

I’m not sure that my list is comprehensive, but it’s enough to be getting on with.

1. Different antagonist(s)

A gang of four attempt to rob a bank, but run up against the PCs. The last time this happened, it was Dusky Springhoarder and two sidekicks, this time it’s Lurker Marony and three flunkies. Is that a big enough point of distinction?

Treated superficially, no. So you use a different voice and say different things – but these are cosmetic changes only, making no difference to the overall plot.

With a little more effort, however, these differences in personality can manifest in a different group dynamic, which in turn manifests in different development of the plot from a superficially-similar starting point. Dusky liked live hostages, Lurker dislikes live witnesses – those differences alone would manifest in a completely different modus operandi, with a completely different approach to handling customers and personnel who happen to be present at the time. The different group dynamic means that the other NPCs will have different relationships within the group, and different ways of doing the same things. One blacks out all the security cameras, the other leaves one camera running and showing the hostages to the outside world – and communicates with that world as necessary via texta-written notes held up to camera. Perhaps one is clever and the other bullish and violent, solving problems with intimidation.

Sure, a lot of this stuff can be applied off-the-cuff – but it’s always more effective if you take some prep time to explore and codify the differences, so that the plotline will develop in very different ways from the common theme.

The differences in personality should manifest not only in doing things in different ways, but in doing different things in the first place.

2. Different motivations

This doesn’t make as much difference in terms of a bank robbery as it does on other forms of plot, like power grabs or oppressive local regimes, except insofar as a difference in motivation should manifest from differences in personality, discussed above. In reality, of course, this cause-and-effect relationship is back to front – it’s the implied differences in personality that lead to different motivations – but you can reason your way from the cart back to the horse.

Once again, though, having a different motivation is the kind of thing that doesn’t show, doesn’t make any tangible difference unless you find ways to manifest the difference in more concrete ways.

3. Different objectives

Ah, now we’re getting into more interesting manifestations. Group one are robbing the bank for the money (although that’s not a motivation in and of itself – the motivation is the need/desire for whatever they want to spend the money on, not the money itself), while group two are using the robbery as a means to gain access to the banks computers in search of evidence of a global conspiracy. Or perhaps the bank vault doesn’t interest you half as much as the evidence of another criminal activity that is being kept in one of the safety-deposit boxes?

The simplest approach is again to backtrack from the difference in objective to the differences in personality that could lead to them, and then expand outward. But even without that, the objective and the plan need to be in sync; it’s no good focusing on the bank vault if it’s the bank servers that are your objective, except as necessary for purposes of camouflaging that objective, or paying off the muscle that have been recruited to make the operation possible.

The differences in objective need to make a fundamental difference to what happens or it is just a paper tiger to which you are paying lip service.

4. Different circumstances

If the PCs used to be “unofficial” but are now Deputized, or vice-versa, a great way to bring home to the players the difference is to deliberately re-run a plotline that they had encountered in the “old days” simply to showcase how differently things would have worked out because of the authorization. Where they were blocked and forced to circumvent authority, acting covertly, now they have the power to demand assistance from authority and can act overtly. Or vice-versa, as appropriate.

Or perhaps the circumstances are environmental. In the elemental plane of fire, combustible materials might be the legal tender – the more flammable, the more valuable. Changing the nature of what a “bank” is fundamentally alters the plotline – well, it should, anyway; sometimes, the more things change, the more they seem to stay the same, and that might be exactly the overall theme of the plotline!

Of course, it’s not necessary for the difference to be so radical. An “ordinary” bank robbery occurring in the domain of a repressive and violent regime would proceed very differently from one set against a far more just background. The reactions of the authorities to the crime-in-progress would be different, and would be expected to be different, and the plans would evolve accordingly.

5. Different resources

In the plotline that is about to wrap up in the Adventurer’s Club campaign, a criminal mastermind got his hands on a super-solvent which he used to dig tunnels most of the way across Manhattan in a bid to execute the biggest heist in history. Twelve targets – two Hotels, four banks, four Jewelers (one of which was a target of opportunity that would not otherwise have been targeted), a Museum/Art Gallery, and the International Currency Exchange, yielding a grand (estimated) total of 5.675 Million US$ – 1930s currency (multiply by 10 to get modern dollars) in one simultaneous strike. The presence of this super-solvent had a profound impact on most of the execution planning – in several cases, the gang were planning to simply slather the stuff on the vault hinges, wait, and pull the doors down. But not all of the gang were trusted with the solvent (it was too easily mishandled), and some didn’t trust it; the rest simply used it to bypass security. Since we didn’t know in which of the robberies the PCs would intervene, my co-GM and I spent several weeks of our planning time detailing each of the locations and each of the plans for dealing with those locations. In some cases, the gang scored a lucky break, in others they got unlucky; in some, they were smart and well-prepared, in others, flawed assumptions came back to bite them.

In every single case, the existence and use of the super-solvent made a concrete difference to how the gang was to execute this brazen robbery, to how long it would take, etc. But when we first outlined the adventure, none of these was taken into consideration; the solvent was simply a means of rapid-tunneling from point to point and getting into the basements of the various establishments. In fact, we thought we were more-or-less done with plotting the adventure, and started detailing the locations simply to work out some color commentary. Once we started adding details such as how many gang members it was going to take, and expected takes, and the reasons for targeting each of the establishments in question. it became clear that if you had such a resource as the super-solvent, you would look to use it in the commissioning of the crimes, and not just as a stealth mode inspired by the criminal plot in a classic Sherlock Holmes short story, The Red-headed League.

Having different resources on the antagonist side changes what they can do, which should in turn change what they will at least try and do. Having different resources on the protagonist side changes how they can respond to events (or even know about them), which should in turn change how they will respond and what they will respond to. As a result, essentially the same premise can lead to completely different plotlines – but it won’t happen if you don’t put time and thought into assessing the impact and preparing to take advantage of it.

6. Different protagonists

Group A (a strong man, a fast man, a spell-caster, and a priest) will experience a different unfolding series of events to Group B (a tough man, an acrobat, a spy, and a brainy guy) even when faced with the same identical situation. This is one of the central realities that is my primary take-way from limited exposure to convention gaming (anecdotal reports, some playtest, adapting some published convention adventures, and discussions with GMs who run convention games).

Fundamentally, this results from the PCs having different resources to bring to bear. Even if the GM seeks to limit the variables by providing pre-generated characters (and most do), differences in the players still qualify.

The same principle can be applied to the circumstances of a non-convention game. Even changing a single member of a group can be enough to make a fundamental difference to a situation because of the change in resources that they bring. This is dependent, to some extent, on each member of the party receiving a full share of the screen time, however; the more central they are to the plot, the bigger their potential impact. Some characters can made a difference regardless – adjusting Zenith-3 plots to accommodate the presence of a high-powered telepath, for example, is now a matter of routine (I’m sure it must sometimes seem like I’m picking on the character or singling her out for special mistreatment, when I’m only trying to prevent excessive short-cutting of the plot).

But you don’t even have to go that far. You could employ a plot device as simple and subtle as the PCs being sent undercover to investigate allegations of bank fraud – only for the bank to be robbed. Do they blow their cover? Do they let the robbery happen? This situation is fundamentally different to what would be the case if the PCs were on the outside when the robbery took place!

7. Different challenge

Changing the PCs objectives is also another great way of breathing new life into a stale plot. For example, putting the players into the GM’s usual shoes by requiring them to let the bank robbers escape while making it look like they are not doing so, for some reason. This makes the bank robbery simply a stepping-stone to a larger plotline. Doing so covertly, and without damaging their reputation, and without putting anyone at risk, only makes it more challenging.

This works by changing the PC objective, which means that they will need a new plan in order to achieve that objective.

When I was much younger and more naive, I thought that plea bargaining and snitches were the only tools in the law-enforcement arsenal for getting to bigger fish by means of small fry. An excellent 1992 Australian crime drama, Phoenix – the Wikipedia page to which i have linked is rather short on plot description, I’m afraid – this page at Australian Screen Online gives rather more information – added awareness of undercover police operations to my repertoire, and shows like NCIS – especially NCIS LA and, more recently, NCIS New Orleans – have subsequently added to my awareness, so I now have a lot more tools at my disposal in this regard.

8. Different plan

If differences in resources lead to different plans in order to take advantage of the resource, why not skip the middle-man and simply have the antagonists behind the bank job come up with a different plan? There were a couple of very entertaining episodes of Numb3rs that started from this premise, and likewise CSI: Cyber. Heck, even Thunderbirds (the original puppet TV show) had a novel idea or two in this regard!

The big trick to this difference is that you have to think of the plan. It’s much easier in a novel, where responses are exactly what you want them to be; things get a little trickier when free will (in the form of the players) enters the equation. It’s often easier to proceed from a resource-oriented premise and simply work out how the change impacts a standard approach.

9. Different solution required

One of the simplest approaches is to look at how the situation was handled the last time it came up, and devise a stumbling block that prevents that solution from working, this time around. I tend to think of this approach as “the smart copy-cat” – doing the same thing that someone else tried without making the same mistakes as they did.

10. The Other side of the coin

Another way in which this iteration of the same basic plot can be to reverse the usual roles. Requiring the PCs to commit a bank robbery instead of stopping it, for example.

11. Different mood/tone

I’ve touched on this earlier, when discussing “Different antagonists,” but it’s worth highlighting in it’s own right. The same basic situation develops very differently if there is a different mood or tone to the adventure – comparing a relatively sanitized bank robbery from the comic books with one with a high (and mounting) body count, for example.

There is a perception in some parts of Hollywood at the moment that “Grim and Gritty” sells (thanks to success movies such as The Dark Knight trilogy), but recent developments have thrown that conclusion into doubt, raising suggestions that the “grim and gritty” cycle might be coming to an end, at least for now. The contrasts that are being highlighted in this respect are the success of Ant-man and Guardians Of The Galaxy and Deadpool vs. the comparative failure of Batman vs. Superman and the fading of the ‘grim and gritty’ reboot of the Star Trek franchise – once was an interesting experiment, but with the second movie the tolerance seemed to be wearing thin.

But I digress. In my experience, a different mood and/or tone is insufficient in and of itself to distinguish one example of a plot from another; but if that tone is then reflected in the planning of the bank robbery, it can be a springboard to a different experience from the adventure.

12. Different location

I sign-posted this item of potential difference under different circumstances. Sometimes, the plot is just a delivery vehicle for highlighting the uniqueness and diversity of a particular location by virtue of the differences in culture. This presupposes that there is a significant social or cultural difference from the location that the PCs are used to, and – to be really successful – that difference has to permeate the entire adventure in the form of different personalities, different expectations, different limitations, and different reactions on the part of the locals.

For example, think about a bank robbery in Venice. The means of reaching the bank, the bank security, the means of breaching the bank security, the means of escape, and the means by which the police attempt to prevent the escape, should all be affected. The location’s differences become the star.

13. Conceptually different

You can take the original “core” plotline as just a metaphor, analogy, or abstract description of something completely different. A “bank heist” is completely transformed if the “bank” is the well of unborn souls, for example. Or if you are stealing the radioactivity from a store of uranium.

Take a Rave – you can certainly consider such an event as a “bank” of youth. Steal that unlived lifespan from them, leaving the survivors as 90-year-old geriatrics…

14. A clever twist

Finally, you might have a clever twist in mind. I offered eleven different types of RPG plot twist in a two-part article in late 2014 (Part 1, ‘Pretzel Thinking”and Part 2, “Lets Twist Again’) to consider, after finding that the documented types of plot twist from TV and fiction don’t usually work in an RPG environment.

A plot twist plays on the similarity of the current occasion relative to expectations – until the moment of revelation, when the entire situation is transfigured, and what seemed to be ‘exactly the same’ is revealed to be something completely different.

A difference that makes no difference is no difference at all

To be effective, a difference has to infuse every possible aspect of an adventure, mission, crisis, or situation. It doesn’t matter if it’s a crime caper, a doomsday plot, a terrorist attack, a revolution, or whatever; find the point or points of difference and soak them up like a sponge.