Ask The GMs: Iceberg Plotlines: Massive Plot Arcs in RPGs
This is the second of these Ask-The-GMs that I’m tackling without recourse to my usual allies and fellow-GMs.
Today’s question is asks about something I’ve described using a number of different terms over the years. My current euphemism is “Iceberg Plots”, because 9/10ths (or more) of the plot doesn’t show in any given adventure. |
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“Onion” wrote: |
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The short answer to this one has been offered a number of times here at Campaign Mastery (and will be offered again, below), but there are a couple of stings in the tail this time around. First, I have no experience with play-by-post games, so my advice might not translate all that well; since the focus of Campaign Mastery is tabletop RPGs, though, I don’t intend to let that stop me. But the second part of the description throws in a curve ball: “…are always in the background.” And that can cause problems… |
Iceberg Plots, a.k.a. Ongoing Subplots
An iceberg plot is an ongoing subplot. It’s not the central focus of an adventure, it’s something that happens in the background, and may or may not involve one of the characters; it could simply be an ongoing evolution of that background, the passage of time affecting NPCs who in turn are relevant to the day-to-day lives of the characters either directly or indirectly.
It’s very useful for verisimilitude that a background not be static, that it evolve over time. I first wrote about that in Lessons From The West Wing: Time Happens In The Background over five years ago.
It also gives the players the impression, rightly or wrongly, that the world is “responsive” – that their actions (and those of NPCs) have consequences that will affect the game world.
But the biggest advantage that they offer is that by breaking the “static background” mindset for the GM, they actually do make the world more responsive to the consequences of PC actions! It’s a much shorter leap from “the world is changing just a little” to “the world is changing just a little because of what you did” – far, far shorter than going from a never-changing static environment to a dynamic one. If the world is changing anyway, all you need to do is pay attention to what the PCs are doing – something that should happen anyway – and include that as one of the factors driving changes.
The difference between an Iceberg Plot and a Dynamic Background Element
An iceberg plot is slightly more than an evolving background element, however. “Plot” implies direction, it implies a story – and stories have structure, a beginning, middle, and an end, at the very least.
You might have a local sheriff whose job is to maintain law, order, and peace in the streets. From time to time, he’s a thorn in the side of the PCs, from time to time he may be an ally, most of the time he’s just part of the furniture and as inexorable as the law of gravity. That makes him a background plot element.
If his attitudes evolve over time, especially in regard to his attitude toward the PCs, and if he slowly gets older and more infirm, and begins training a hand-picked replacement for when the specter of old age finally catches up with him, that makes him a dynamic background element. Instead of being the same every time he gets involved in an adventure, he – and his relationships – evolve in response to events and the passage of time.
If the GM has a plan for the character – if he is to slowly become convinced that the Chancellor Of The Exchequer is plotting against the head of Government, and begins letting that conviction influence the way he does his job, eventually leading to the Sheriff setting up a revolutionary faction for the purpose of ousting the Chancellor before the damage done to the nation is irreparable – then the character is no longer merely a dynamic background element, he is an iceberg plot. The changes from adventure to adventure might be minute, or might be significant, but they have a narrative structure, and the changes are not random – they have a purpose. There might even be times when the Chancellor does something that gives the Sheriff pause to reconsider, seeming to reverse the trend, or even completely doing so as the two come to a new understanding of each other’s postures and positions; that’s fine, too. It’s a story – it just happens to be one happening on the periphery of the players’ awareness, and that doesn’t usually affect them all that significantly.
In fact, from the players’ point of view, there is no difference between a dynamic background element and an iceberg plot; all it means to them is that the character is evolving in the way a person would, under the circumstances. Only from a metagame perspective is there a difference.
It’s All About The Players
At the same time, it must be remembered that the GM’s NPCs are not the stars of the show. That honor is reserved exclusively for the PCs. Iceberg plots only matter if they eventually get the PCs tails caught in the machinery – if the plot becomes significant to the PCs, in other words. There’s that sting in the tail that I mentioned earlier: an iceberg plot cannot “always stay in the background”. Eventually, events have to catch up with the PCs, and become centrally important – until the iceberg plot is resolved, one way or another.
Iceberg Advice: Make It Interesting (but not too interesting!)
There’s not much that’s more boring than trivial gossip about people you don’t know and don’t care about. If the gossip is salacious or juicy, that’s a different story. And if the GM is simply relating news about events that don’t directly affect the PCs, what he’s sharing is, basically, game-world gossip.
That’s a serious problem for iceberg plots, where the whole idea is to keep the plot from attracting too much attention until it’s had time to ripen and mature.
From experience, I can tell you that no more than one in five ideas for iceberg plots can meet both targets, and therefore succeed as plotlines. Probably not more than one in ten such ideas make good iceberg plots. There’s a constant tug-of-war between making it interesting and keeping it submerged.
The best solution is to ensure that the protagonist(s) of the iceberg plot regularly engage with the PCs on a matter completely or almost completely unrelated to the iceberg plot. That frees the GM to carefully plan each step of the iceberg plot using in-game appearances of the NPC as a ticking “clock”.
Iceberg Advice: Keep Up The Momentum
Think about some TV drama that you like. If a background plotline gets mentioned once a year, how much interest will it hold? Twice a year is almost as bad. The iceberg plot has frayed at the end, and snapped.
You don’t have to mention the plot every episode, or every adventure – but you definitely need to keep it as a regular presence, part of the plot “furniture”, and that is best achieved by having one or more of the NPCs involved appear regularly within the campaign.
Nor does there need to be an obvious or significant development in every appearance of one of the iceberg plot’s principle characters, but these need to happen frequently enough that there is a clear evolution taking place over time.
If you’re playing every week, this is easy to manage. A character featured in the iceberg plot can show up because of his “day job” every two, three, or even four weeks – no problem. This both keeps his existence and situation in the back of the players’ minds and keeps his situation from becoming too seemingly significant.
The less often that you play, the harder the tightrope becomes to walk. Playing once a fortnight, a monthly mention generally means roughly every 2nd adventure – that’s fine. Even every adventure can be tolerated, if the involvement is natural – the PCs landlord, for example.
Playing once a month means that every adventure requires an appearance by the character. That very regularity means that his problems become more significant to the PCs, and it is that much harder to keep the iceberg submerged. The best solution that I have found is a second iceberg plot revolving around the same character, so that the plot that you care about becomes just another part of that NPCs ongoing soap opera. Simply by giving you something else for the character to talk about, it deflects attention away from the important plotline.
The Lifespan Of An Iceberg
Tension, like subplots, can only be sustained for so long. There comes a point where the audience – your players in this case – get tired of waiting, when they want you to just get it over with.
If you wait too long to resolve your iceberg plot, it will have no impact, or even negative impact, when you do bring down the curtain. That’s what happened to the TV series “Moonlighting” – to quote TV Tropes, “Moonlighting: This was the whole premise of a romantic Dramedy series starring Bruce Willis and Cybil Sheppard as private detectives. The whole show jumped the shark in the fifth season when they finally consummated their relationship; the tension was simply gone and it become yet another sitcom. Lampshaded in the series finale, a great example of the show’s frequent Breaking the Fourth Wall: The two detectives come back to the office to find it being dismantled by people working for ABC; an ABC network executive tells them that viewers had enjoyed watching them fall in love, but after they’d already fallen they lost interest.”
(An additional note adds, “In reality the downfall of Moonlighting had a lot of other causes as well. Mostly it was the result of tons of behind-the-scenes problems that plagued the show for the duration of its run, ranging from script and episode delays to a writer’s strike that struck mid-season to the declining quality of scripts to the (infamously combative) lead actors who simply didn’t want to continue working on the show. Bruce Willis launched his film career with Die Hard between the third and fourth seasons and Cybil Sheppard, reportedly never pleased with the long working hours, wanted more time off to spend time with her growing family.”)
One of the benefits of planning an iceberg plot is that you can avoid this fate. First, you can keep the situation developing, rather than a static situation that seems to edge towards development and then falls back into its established rut; Second, you can ensure that the conclusion to the iceberg plot carries enough unresolved plot developments that the game can survive the conclusion of this long-running element; and third, by successfully keeping the plot almost-submerged to just the right degree while it is developing, you can prevent its conclusion from being too important to the ongoing campaign.
The major problem is knowing when a plotline has gone on for too long, and the campaign would be better served by canceling the resolution and leaving this as an ongoing dynamic campaign background element. As TV tropes notes in their section on Jumping The Shark, the telltale signs are only noticeable in hindsight – and at some remove. It’s altogether too common these days to be a prophet of doom and pronounce any change at all to be an example of “jumping the shark” – read this page (but for the love of heaven don’t click on any of the links or you might not escape for hours – TV Tropes is just that interesting a site…!)
On a Completely unrelated side-note, I was once asked why I thought TV tropes was so fascinating. It’s because it’s all about why people like what they like, and don’t like what they don’t like, and why other people don’t like the same things you do, and how those things have changed over the years. It simultaneously confers community upon those who felt alone in their opinions, reassures that those opinions are valid, argues with you just enough to get you thinking independently, and fills in all the spaces in-between with nostalgia. That’s a very heady brew…
The only consistent way that I have found to measure the “breaking point” of an iceberg plotline is to count the number of opportunities to resolve the plotline in the intended manner that have not been taken by the GM. Generally, you can get away with one or two of these in complete safety, but the third time you fail to bring down the curtain puts you into dangerous territory. On exceptionally rare occasions, you may be able to get away with as many as half-a-dozen aborted resolutions, though I have never seen this actually happen except by counting threats to resolve the plotline that never actually eventuate.
Somewhere in between these limits is the normal breaking point, in which interest in the plotline frays so completely that it no longer matters.
But this neat and simple guideline is contaminated by the fact that even solutions to the problem that don’t occur to the GM still count if they are obvious to the players.
So, that’s the foundation of the secondary solution: listen to what the players say to each other about the plotline when they aren’t in character. The major reasons why this is not the primary test is because player personalities are a factor (some players like to complain/criticize/speculate, others don’t share their opinions during the course of the game, or give the GM too much rope, some may simply dislike the specific iceberg plot, and so on), and because player reactions can only tell you when you’ve persisted for too long after the fact, and sometimes not even then.
The Life Cycle Of An Iceberg
Iceberg plots, like all plots, have a natural life cycle. They start with veiled beginnings, progress through a growing significance until they reach the point of ubiquity as a plot element, and then achieve criticality and “come to a head”. Crucially, there is also a fifth stage that is often neglected, but which can be just as important as the others – “After the titanic”.
1. Veiled Beginnings
In the beginning, the significance of the circumstances is not apparent. The iceberg has not even revealed the general shape of the part above the surface, to extend the metaphor. This might be one or more casual meetings between a PC and the protagonist of the iceberg plot, or a series of coincidences, or rumors, or newspaper accounts (or their cultural equivalent); they don’t even cause a ripple in the main plot of the day and aren’t even as prominent as a piece of “plot furniture” – they are wallpaper.
There should always be one PC who is more connected to the plotline than the others, and who should therefore be the focus of the relationship. In the Zenith-3 campaign, St Barbara is the team leader, so almost all political and administrative relationships have her as their focus; Blackwing is an ex-cop, so any relationships with law-enforcement types usually go through him.
That doesn’t mean that an ongoing subplot can’t connect with another PC; it simply makes it a little more noteworthy when one does, prompting immediate suspicion that this may be part of an iceberg plot – even if it’s just some window-dressing to conceal one. For example, Blackwing recently had an encounter with the Press Secretary of the Mayor of New Orleans (in the 2056-game world) and the two had a definite chemistry. He was impressed with her expertise, professionalism, preparedness, and competence; she was impressed with his poise and ability to take direction, even when what he was doing didn’t come naturally to him. Will anything come of it? Possibly, but probably not – her professionalism would get in the way, as would some of the character’s personal issues. However, the interaction will make him more aware of those personal issues (as a character), setting him up for a more significant plot iceberg (plotted in conjunction with the player) in times to come. So, in a way, this could be viewed as the first “glint” off that future plot iceberg. (More on this “real-game” example a little later – I can talk about the planned plot iceberg because the player knows all about – well, about most of it! – at least in general terms).
2. Growing Significance
From that beginning, the overall “shape” or nature of the plot becomes clear, and begins to impact on the characters in minor ways, primarily if not completely outside of the main adventure. For example, this might affect where a character is found when an adventure starts, or what he is doing. Initially, there should be little or no importance to these snippets of “character life”; they should be casual and occasional. Over time they gradually transition to the state of ubiquity, which I will discuss in a moment.
First, I need to revisit the question of how long this phase should last. Specifically, every instance of the iceberg plot should be different, however slightly. There may be a number of discrete “steps” to a relationship, or there may be angst about taking that next step, but there needs to be both development and importance without significance.
Importance vs Significance
The differences between those last two terms often cause confusion when discussing this topic. Importance means that it matters more and more to the character when it happens, and even begins to shape his in-between adventures circumstances; Significance means that it begins to matter to the other PCs for reasons beyond their relationship with the primary PC, and becomes a significant factor within adventures.
That means that you need to have enough variations on the theme on tap to continue the development of the plotline without making it too significant, or prematurely over-important. I’ll talk more about that in conjunction with the example, later in the article.
Evolution, Revolution, and Revelation
Any plotline will contain periods that fall into one or more of these categories, and each one will occur at least once in that plotline. They require different handling, so I thought I would take a moment to discuss each.
Evolution means that an event is a logical progression from whatever happened last time the plot iceberg manifested. It may be necessary that you call the players’ attention to the minor differences that have resulted from this evolution, or it may not – that depends on the circumstances, the plotline, and the individuals. However, you need to be subtle about this, as calling attention to the development makes it clear that you are deliberately progressing this as a plotline, breaking immersion, and undermining all the benefits of having an iceberg plot in the first place. That usually means that you can’t just do it off-the-cuff, but need to spend a bit of time carefully polishing your narrative.
Revolution takes place when some sort of significant milestone is achieved in the iceberg plot. If you aren’t careful, these can be Significant as well as Important, and can even loom as more Important than you want them to be. These problems are best avoided by presenting this as a natural evolution that the characters have been progressing toward for some time – an inevitable result of development. That makes the revolution more about “how far things have come” than about “where things are going.”
Revelations are the trickiest of all three, because by their nature, a revelation demands a reappraisal of everything that has occurred so far. Any flaws in your handling of the other two elements in the past can come back to bite you at this point. I often find it useful to employ a camouflaging smokescreen as misdirection: to prevent focus on the things that I don’t want the PC to pay too much attention to, I will accompany a revelation with some minor crisis or problem of a more immediate and potentially significant nature (the misdirection) and then orchestrate an easy resolution of this minor issue (the smokescreen). The implication is that the “big problem” is solved, or at least shelved, and anything else is minor and not worth worrying about.
3. Ubiquity
Ubiquity is reached when everyone (including other PCs) can assume that the focal PC is engaged in the plot iceberg whenever they don’t know where it is. It’s the point in a romantic relationship when family and friends begin telling each other that they should start making serious plans for an eventual wedding. The relationship is established and shows every sign of having established a new stability, replacing the situation that existed prior to the commencement of the plotline. The status has become quo.
This is a danger point, because this is the last opportunity that you have for tossing your plans and retaining the situation as a new dynamic background element. You also have the difficult question of how long this phase should persist; you need it to be long enough to confirm the impression of a new status quo, but not so long that it becomes unbelievable when you upset the applecart.
4. Criticality
Criticality occurs when the iceberg plot is revealed in its full terrifying majesty, when Important becomes Significant, and the plotline becomes the central focus of an adventure (or, at least, one focus). Criticality may occur in phases as one shoe drops after another and what it looked like you were building towards unravels before the players’ eyes.
Until the iceberg strikes the Titanic, it’s just a hunk of ice. Criticality is the point at which disaster not only cannot be averted, one or more PCs can see it coming – but are powerless to prevent the train-wreck.
5. After The Titanic
The significance of plotlines, iceberg or otherwise, is in how they alter the world, and how they alter the focal character. The aftereffects should mirror the buildup that took place: an immediate life-changing impact, and ongoing consequences that gradually lessen in intensity as a new status quo develops post-event.
The need for an extended after-effects phase is easy to demonstrate: once again, think of a TV show that you enjoy. Imagine that, over the course of a year, a new relationship develops between one of the principal characters that you like and a guest-star. One episode before the season finale, the relationship shatters and the guest-star departs, having wrought havoc on the principal character’s life. And the next week, that character is exactly the same as he or she was before this plotline started.
Such a miraculous recovery does more than strain verisimilitude to the breaking point, it breaks it and then jumps up and down repeatedly on the grave-site.
If PC actions are to affect the world, then NPC actions have to affect the PCs just as strongly.
That is why I felt it important to have Saxon collaborate on the plotline that has been mentioned a number of times as an example, and which will be dissected below.
Re-floating A Sinking Iceberg
There are times when what looked good on paper doesn’t work when playing. This can occur for all sorts of reasons; but the reasons don’t immediately matter. The bottom line is that what you had in mind simply isn’t working.
The character who was supposed to win their trust only to betray it is universally mistrusted from word one. The character who was supposed to die a poignant death was saved. The players see right through the villain’s master plan – and expose a plot hole big enough to pilot an aircraft carrier through.
When something goes wrong, you have three options: Abandon it (as quickly as possible), Alter it (immediately), or Live With It (possibly giving the PCs the opportunity to turn the tables).
Abandon It
Give up on the idea and write the circumstances out as quickly as possible. The character who was supposed to win their trust realizes that they don’t trust him or her and leaves – immediately. The character who was supposed to die will remain alive and well, and you’ll work out how your campaign plans can be salvaged later. The villain abandons his master plan – and begins concentrating on formulating a more devious one. End of plotline, move on.
Alter It
This is a constant temptation, and it’s rarely a good idea. Not only are the players sensitized to the plotline in question, but such “studio executive meddling” rarely has a good outcome. More often, this is taking an axe to a sinking ship’s hull to open a new hole “for the water to run out”.
I was going to say “never” but there is a sub-variant of “Live with it” in which this might work, under limited and exceptional circumstances – the perpetual problem of blanket statements. “Alter it” in this context means to rewrite your campaign plans assuming that the NPC part of the focal relationship always and deliberately intended to fail at whatever they were doing. You always intended for that dying character to be saved – now here are the consequences. The character who was supposed to gain the PC’s trust only to betray it always intended to do so bad a job of it that they weren’t convinced; they were coerced into even making the attempt. Or whatever.
This makes an immediate transition from Iceberg plot to Significance, regardless of the level of Importance that had been attached to it. Whatever the main adventure was supposed to be will have to wait – the PCs have just been handed a new and higher priority.
You may be tempted to do this on-the-fly. Don’t – at least, not completely. Take a few minutes to think through the ramifications and prepare yourself, or what you end up with will have even more plot holes in it than your failed plan proved to have.
Under no circumstances should you contemplate using the dice to overrule the players. This is railroading of the worst kind.
Live With It
My game plans always predicate the risk of failure. I work hard to ensure that whatever I need to happen in order to justify future plots is served by the very existence of the plotline in question; the adventures aren’t how I manipulate the future, they are side-effects of the circumstances that are shaping the future. That means that I have no stake in the outcome of any given adventure or plotline; the outcome is more-or-less irrelevant to the big picture. So let the players have their victory, they have seen through my scheme and earned it. Reward them with some XP and move on.
That’s possible because my plans are always reasonably general – even when very specific. It might be that for plot reasons, I need a manipulative demagogue to take power within the game; if the PCs expose and discredit the NPC I was grooming for the post, that’s fine, I can introduce another – or bring the NPC who does come to power fall under the control of one – or I can simply find another way to achieve whatever the demagogue was supposed to achieve, in campaign terms.
This is all made even easier because I don’t decide on what a villain has planned until after I have decided what the villain’s ambitions and goals are, and how the plan will accomplish them (or at least move his circumstances in the right direction). Knowing that, and his personality, enables me to determine what he will do when his scheme is blocked – and, unless the PCs manage to translate their achievement into a further one by stopping him as thoroughly as they spoked his plans, thats what he sets about doing.
In other words, the plans are never my plans, they all originate with, and belong to, a responsible NPC. All I do is make sure that there are plenty of NPCs out there with plans and ambitions that the PCs will want to oppose, and the rest more or less takes care of itself.
An example from Campaign Mastery’s Past
In The Echo Of Events To Come: foreshadowing in a campaign structure, I offered an example from the future of my Zenith-3 campaign: a detailed iceberg plot of romantic nature centering around one of the PCs (Blackwing) and an NPC Reporter. That plotline hasn’t started yet – the incident that I described earlier involving the Media Liaison / Press Secretary can even be considered to be foreshadowing it, as I noted above.
I would ask my players (other than Saxon, who collaborated with me on the plotline) to stop reading at this point and skip to the end of the article (Control-F and “Revisiting The Question” will take you there).
Everything in a blue box (like this text) from this point on is quoted text from that article. I’m going to interrupt it here and there to comment in terms of the context of this article.
A Big Example
I’m going to wrap this article up with a big example from the planning for my Superhero campaign, an entire character plot arc that will form a subplot for several years of game play before coming to a head. The basic plotline for this plot arc was developed in collaboration with Blackwing’s player, after assessing the character’s current mental and emotional state, and the vulnerabilities that result. In particular, it was decided that the character is currently:
- Inclined to trust anyone who seems supportive;
- Inclined to mistrust his own judgment; and,
- Susceptible to feelings of frustration and doubt.
In this plot, someone publishes a book that would destroy the PCs’ reputations, and they must ride out the media storm that results without making things worse.
I then go on to describe how foreshadowing is used within the plotline, but that doesn’t matter here. Each step in the evolution, each appearance of the iceberg plot, is identified by a code, which I then describe so that readers can understand the significance.
Dismembering The Code:
- The first two letters identifies the plot arc of which the event is part. In most cases, this will be “BW”, an abbreviation of “Blackwing Plot Arc”. In some cases, it may be another code, indicating that this plot iceberg complicates or interacts with another one, or with another plotline.
- Each major event or step in the plot arc is then indicated by a two digit number – “00, 01,” and so on.
- Some events are broken down into sub-steps, indicated by an alphabetic character – “BW03a” for example. These either occur simultaneously or successively – this is usually clear from context. If not, it means that I will decide when I get there.
- Some sub-steps are so significant that they are further broken down into events, also identified with a two digit numeric code, for example “BW17h01”.
Some abbreviations:
- “BW” refers to Blackwing. Aside from the team brick, he’s also a detective. And a living dimensional interface, though that doesn’t really play much of a role in this plot arc.
- “RA” refers to the “Runeweaver Addiction” plot arc in which one of the PCs is found to be addicted to magical power-ups.
- “St B” is often used as an abbreviation for “Saint Barbara”, the team leader and media spokesman, named for the patron saint of artillerymen and others who deal with explosives.
- “Champs” and “Z-3” are both abbreviations for the PCs team. “The Champions” are their parent team, and the team’s public profile; to the parent team, this group of characters are known as “Zenith-3”.
- “V” refers to Vala, a psionic member of the team with emphasis on information-gathering abilities.
- “IMAGE” are the government agency which has been put in charge of liaising with the PCs. While they have no direct authority over them, the PCs operations would be greatly hampered if IMAGE were opposed to them.
- “BC” refers to “The Bright Cutter”, which is the team’s (slightly small) starship, and the self-aware computer system that runs it. Another major plotline deals with the question of whether BC is a member or a slave to the PCs – one of several plots relating to the rights of “artificial people”.
- “De” refers to “Defender”, a Kzin Martial Artist, who hates and mistrusts humans but serves with the team to repay a debt of honor.
- “KB” refers to Kira, the AI who runs the Knightley Building, the team’s Headquarters. Modelled on a “reconstruction” of Kiera Knightley’s personality as presented in various Film and TV roles, and owned by the Knightley estate, who also developed the experimental building that houses it (2056, remember). The full name “The Knightley Building” is used to refer to the building itself as a location.
I’ve edited the above slightly to make it a little clearer – the original article provided context that this one doesn’t. Okay, on with the example:
The Plotline
- BW00 – St B meets Reporter Amber Lawrence when both appear on a Talk Show.
- BW01 – Meet Reporter – after RA13
This is the veiled beginnings phase. It ends when a second chance encounter ends with the reporter asking BW out on a date. You will note that I make notes about the timing of events – “after RA13” for example – when those plotlines are likely to impact on the iceberg plot or vice-versa.
- BW02 – First Date w/reporter – after RA15
- BW03 – Second Date w/reporter interrupted by emergency (BW has to leave, reporter tries to convince him to take her with him) – after RA16
- BW03a – Reporter files story on the emergency & on Champs readiness to go into action at any time – sympathetic piece
- BW04 – Third Date w/reporter – after RA25 – an emergency right in front of them – she meets rest of team – date resumes afterward – steps up the seduction, first sex (at her place)
The Iceberg Plot has clearly entered the “Growing Significance” phase; you can tell, because it can now be identified as a romantic plotline. Note that any involvement with other PCs is purely incidental at this stage.
There are a couple of milestones (“revolutions”) in these four appearances. The second date can be considered one such, and going back to her place after the interrupted third date is another. BW03a is critical, as it connects with the PC’s “trust anyone who’s supportive” mindset. Note also that there is clear development – an uninterrupted date, a date with an emergency to disrupt it, and a date resumed and a relationship progression in spite of a second disruption.
- BW04a – The morning after
- BW05 – “On The Job” encounter, Reporter gives info that helps in a case (Lunar city?)
- BW05a – Reporter uses [her] insights to give a more thorough report than anyone else
- BW06 – “On The Job” encounter, reporter gets into trouble trying to “get closer to the story”, was confident BW would rescue her
- BW06a – Reporter files inside story of the mission – first argument?
In order to submerge more of the iceberg, I then downplay the romantic angle and simply deal with an evolving professional relationship between the two. That comes to an end with a “Lois Lane” moment in BW06, and the slow strengthening of the relationship is demonstrated by the argument that is expected to follow between the two. That is, of course, another milestone; and you can’t have an argument in a romantic plotline without a reconciliation, so that’s what comes next…
- BW07 – Fourth Date w/reporter – asks for more explanation about something, puts finger on weak point of incomplete St B press conference, sex at her place
- BW07a – BW’s expanded explanation is used to clarify press conference/official line – second argument?
- BW08 – Reporter comes across trouble, calls BW
- BW08a – Reporter files inside story of the mission
- BW09 – Fifth Date w/reporter, asks BW to spend the night (her place)
- BW10 – Sixth Date called off (her deadline), Reporter asks if she can meet BW at base later, spends the night in his room
Tentatively, boundaries and professional courtesies are being established between the two, and is an increased level of trust. BW10 is another milestone in the relationship because the team live in a secure environment; this means telling someone outside of the team about the relationship, making it that bit more “real”. This is emphasized by the next step in the plotline:
- BW10a – The next morning meet staff and computer. NB: NO [news] story follows, builds trust
- BW11 – Team uses reporter to leak a story to bait a trap – reporter warns there will be a quid-pro-quo sometime
- BW12 – Reporter again spends night in BW’s bedroom – gets inside scoop on a mission but doesn’t use it, makes a point of that with other team members / base security
- BW13 – Big story inadequately explained – Reporter calls in favor from BW11 for the real story, manages to spin it to protect the real secret while giving the inside story – trust escalates.
At this point, the romance can be considered an established factor for all the team members. The iceberg plot has now reached the stage of Ubiquity, which means that it is time for me to prepare for the Criticality phase.
- BW14 – Reporter asks to spend a day “on the job” with each team member, doing an “in-depth” profile for a series
- BW14a – A day with St Barbara (BW’s reaction)
- BW14b – A day with BW
- BW14c – A day with RW
- BW14d – A day with De
- BW14e – A day with V
- BW14f – A day with KB + BC
- BW15 – In-depth profile series appears, revealing insights into team personalities & history that team might have wanted to keep private, but that might have been identified by a keen observer
- BW16 – A big story that the team had been hoping to sweep under the rug is exposed by the reporter – focus attention on the ethical conflict the reporter has been “dealing with”.
The relationship has transitioned from Important to Significant, as it now impacts the other PCs directly. BW16 is immensely important; this is my last exit point from the plotline before Criticality occurs. At this point I can still call off what I have planned and let the relationship continue or die as a dynamic background element; what happens next “pulls the trigger” and moves the plotline into the Criticality phase. Note also the use of “misdirection” to obscure the situation (and give me an out) in that final event.
- BW17 – rumors of a forthcoming book, a tell-all expose being written under a pseudonym, reach the team via a gossip column
- BW17a – St B is able to verify that there IS a book
- BW17b – IMAGE ask V & BW to investigate the book to discover what is in it
- BW17c – V & BW are able to ascertain that whoever wrote it has received a six-figure advance
- BW17d – V + BW are able to get their hands on a partial galley – revelations are dynamite – BW as a convicted Killer, RW as something akin to a Drug Addict, St B as a sexual predator, De as a human-hating megalomaniac, V as a revenge-thirsty invader of secrets, off-dimensional origins of the team, team as a political tool brought in to shore up support for the Throne
- BW17e – Reporter asks BW about the rumored book
One final piece of misdirection, necessary for consistency of character, and intended for the benefit of the other PCs since Blackwing’s player co-wrote this whole plotline. One key outcome of the whole plotline is the revelation that the team are from another earth in a parallel dimension – something that the team always suspected would come out eventually, but that they couldn’t find a way to soft-pedal to their satisfaction.
From BW17a on, the train-wreck is inevitable and the PCs can see it coming – but they should not immediately connect it with the reporter, that was the point of the trust buildup in the first place. I will probably run BW17e (above) and BW17f (below) simultaneously, in game time/ real-world time.
- BW17f – V discovers that the reporter is the author – as she uncovers a new chapter describing the team reaction to the book – does she tell BW?
- BW17g – Resolve the reporter plotline – she reveals that the sex was great but only a means to an end, “the people have a right to know who and what they are dealing with – I’ve done it before and I’ll do it again”.
The train-wreck happens, Blackwing finds that his “professional” and “private” life have collided. Outside of the impact on Blackwing, this plotline serves two important purposes: first, it comments on the price that the heroes have to pay for what they do (one of the campaign themes of almost every superhero campaign), and two, it gets the “revelations” into the public arena, which is the “big picture” purpose of the whole plotline. If I abort the calamity between Blackwing and the Reporter, I can still achieve this end by having one of the IMAGE personnel be the author. In fact, using this vector for the “metagame plot deliverable,” I can call off the entire plotline at any earlier point and still advance the campaign’s overall plotline.
- BW17h – The book is published. Effects, aftermath: “The Crucible Of Opinion”
“The Crucible Of Opinion” is a partial quote from an episode of the West Wing, from which part of this plot was derived. It’s there to remind me to review the episode in question as an aide to writing the event.
- BW17h01 – copies are distributed to all members, instructions to review them immediately, anywhere in the book they are mentioned – we have to know what to expect in fallout
- BW17h02 – St B reacts to content questioning her morality and trustworthiness
- BW17h03 – BW reacts to content suggesting that he is a corrupt ex-cop and a homicidal killer
- BW17h04 – RW reacts to content describing him as a drug-addicted ex-soldier who lives in a fantasy world with little resemblance to reality
- BW17h05 – De reacts to content describing him as a fanatic incapable of loyalty
- BW17h06 – V reacts to content describing her as a naive pawn, incapable of self-assertion or critical self-analysis
- BW17h07 – BC reacts to content describing him as a servile automaton with delusions of independence
- BW17h08 – KB reacts to content describing it as a failed, even dangerous, experiment in machine intelligence which has been corrupted into thinking itself the equal of a living being
- BW17h09 – “The staff want you to know that you have our full support. We’ve got your back, just tell us what you want us to do.”
- BW17h10 – St B reacts to content about the other members
- BW17h11 – Gov’t reacts to content – “The Champions have our full confidence.”
- BW17h12 – RW reacts to comments about the other members
- BW17h13 – Media requests for interviews go ballistic – they weren’t this heavy even when the team first arrived
- BW17h14 – De reacts to content about other members
- BW17h15 – Public opinion is strongly polarized by the book. Those who distrusted or opposed the team already now attack with venom, those who supported them defend them with passion.
- BW17h16 – BC reacts to content about the other members
- BW17h17 – The initial media response fans the flames of the vitriolic election campaign currently underway – “the timing is simply too coincidental to be plausible” for some. The book is seen as an attempt to deflect attention from the very real political problems of the Empire. Curiously, some attack Z-3 for participating in such a loathsome charade, while others consider them victims of a bureaucracy capable of any extreme.
Lots of people reacting. Some of it deliberately pushes PC “buttons”. All this can be described as the “After The Titanic” phase of this plotline. Note that I haven’t specified, or made room for, Blackwing to react to the personal crisis that instigated all this; how the PC reacts will depend on too many circumstances, but will undoubtedly color and influence those roleplaying opportunities that are listed for him. Such an opportunity is explicitly provided in BW17h21, below.
But my ulterior motive as a GM is revealed by that last item, which both influences the direction of politics within the game world and evolves a further piece of dynamic background – the relationship between the team and the government. Note that if I have to, I can simply have public opinion shift to achieve the same result, even if the team have managed to prevent the publication of the book that was to serve as the “trigger” – or I can have a copy of the book “leak” to achieve the same ends. There are many paths leading to the main plotline that will eventually occur, and I can pick another if this one is blocked; aside from the interactivity between players / PCs and game world, providing plausibility for that plotline is one of the major reasons all this exists as plotline.
- BW17h18 – KB reacts to contents about the members
- BW17h19 – A spokesman for the former government condemns the new government for their lukewarm support of the team, describing the official response as “damning with insincere platitudes”. They point out that they were fully supportive, and that the Throne encouraged this; but the reformers first act upon assuming power was to order the team to disband. This latest statement shows that the government cannot be trusted and should never have been elected and should now be impeached.
- BW17h20 – Protesters begin to assemble at the Knightley Building. Police and security are concerned, caution against inflaming the situation.
- BW17h21 – BW reacts to content about other members and the knowledge that his relationship with the author led to all this
- BW17h22 – Media begin showing news footage & photographs of BW and the author together in public. Some suggest that the Champions actively encouraged the book as a ‘safe’ way of leaking things without putting the public offside, and that the new gov’t disbanding the team was a response to learning these secrets and distancing themselves from the team. Others suggest that she has sanitized the book, and there is a lot worse still hidden.
- BW17h23 – V reacts to content about other members and to their reactions to everything that is going on.
- BW17h24 – IMAGE (ie the civil service) demands an official media policy & press conference to deal with the book. “Control the message or the message will control you.”
- BW17h25 – Team meeting about these events to agree on a response
- BW17h26 – The team hold a press conference
- BW17h27 – Security report that fans and supporters of the team have started to gather for a 24-hour vigil of support outside the Knightley Building. The police are setting up cordons but things could turn ugly with any provocation – and both sides are doing their best to provoke the other.
- BW17h28 – IMAGE’s legal experts report that there is nothing actionable within the book; because they are legally-registered eccentrics, they are not covered by or subject to normal libel laws. Legally, public or media can say anything they want to about the team.
Fallout continues – but the last item is worth noting as it highlights a consequence of the “legal framework” in which the team operates that they were previously insufficiently aware of.
- BW17h29 – Protestors and supporters clash, and the situation around the knightley building devolves into a riot. Police want Z-3 to stay out of it, you would only inflame the situation.
- BW17h30 – Gov’t (ie politicians) demands an increased media presence by the team over the next few days.
A crisis is always followed by Crisis Management. Interviews are a relatively down-key solution, but that’s because they usually work. The alternative is to go to ground and wait for the media (and public) to find something else to scream about, and that’s dangerous because it hampers your ability to respond to anything else that might happen. Note that there is symmetry to the plot arc, or iceberg plot, or plot loop, or whatever you want to call it: the whole plotline started with interviews and developed with interviews, so it’s only appropriate that interviews are part of the aftermath.
- BW17h31 – St B is interviewed about the book and whether it represents a breach of trust, and whether or not there’s more and worse.
- BW17h32 – V is interviewed about her relationship with St B. Interview is constantly disrupted by religious extremists.
- BW17h35 – De is interviewed about his loyalty and trust issues
- BW17h34 – RW is interviewed about the allegations in the book concerning him.
- BW17h36 – BC is interviewed (remotely) about his role in the team and how long he’s been with them etc.
- BW17h33 – BW is interviewed about his relationship with the author. When did it end? Does he feel betrayed? Does he still have feelings for her? etc
- BW17h37 – St B is (sympathetically) interviewed about the reasons for secrecy
- BW17h39 – BW is invited to return serve on the author and spill any dirt she doesn’t want to be public.
- BW17h40 – RW is asked how his teammates really feel about the book
- BW17h38 – V is asked how all this looks from an alien perspective.
- BW17h41 – De is asked what he really thinks of his teammates
- BW17h42 – BC is asked about his relations with the team and why they have kept him a secret
You can sense the winding down of the whole situation as you read through the above. One round of difficult interviews and media sympathies begin to soften; public opinion will almost certainly be following suit. The curtain has just about finished coming down on the plotline.
- BW17h43 – St B is informed that the media are beginning to find other news to occupy them, and that the media storm roused by the book is fading. There remain the usual number of requests to interview her (as much because ratings always spike when she appears as because of the current situation), and there are a few requests for Blackwing – normally an unpopular interview subject – because of his close relationship with the author, but that the real media darling to have come out of the whole episode is the Bright Cutter – they can’t get enough of him. Requests to interview him are running two-to-one compared to St B’s normal – they are calling him the “forgotten Champion”. The current expectation is that the book will be a three-day wonder, and this is day three.
I like to throw the occasional twist into the outcomes – and unless they have read this despite my request, there is no way that they will anticipate that this NPC will become a media darling, even though something similar happened to the equivalent member on the parent team years ago.
- BW17h43a – V, RW, and De are informed that they have no extraordinary media requests for today and can resume their normal schedules.
- BW17h44 – BW is interviewed, but the focus is on his new-found eligibility as a bachelor. What sort of girl does he like? Or has this whole experience soured him on women? After the interview, the reporter tells him to chin up, he’s almost out of the goldfish bowl – the public are losing interest in the story, and the press will soon follow. And, in case he’s gotten the wrong idea, she’s happily married already!
- BW17h45 – BC is interviewed about his impressions of the Empire. How much of it has he seen? What did he like? Where else has he been? How did it compare?
- BW17h46 – St B is interviewed about the difficulties of those in sensitive positions maintaining outside relationships in general. The book is never explicitly mentioned.
- BW17h47 – BC is interviewed about his perspective on the political questions. He dodges the brier patch with great professionalism while reaffirming an overall moral stance.
- BW17h48 – St B is interviewed about the coming season’s fashions, and her uniforms, and whether or not she would ever consider letting a professional designer work with her wardrobe choices.
- BW17h49 – BC is interviewed about his perspective on religious issues. He again avoids trouble without offending anyone. Several church Ministers try to trip him up but it quickly becomes clear that he is VERY expert in theology, has read every Holy Book on Earth-Halo, has perfect recall, and can quote from them at length. He soon has them tied in knots over their refusal to denounce criminal acts (base on West Wing episode I). If he keeps this up, she [St Barbara] might be able to hand over the job of Media Liaison.
- BW17h50 – St B is advised that the BC has accepted an invitation to be interviewed by one of the most controversial religious right-wing fundamentalist figures on the radio, something every other member of the team has managed to avoid by listening to the advice of IMAGE’s media dept.
- BW17h51 – BC is interviewed by the radical fundamentalist reporter. He is polite for a while and then takes total control of the interview, publicly humiliating her over her extremist position. (base on the religious critique in the West Wing). It looks like it’s going to be a whole new PR disaster for the team, but at the very end he confirms his support for religious tolerance and the rights of individuals to choose for themselves; he doesn’t have any final answers, and even if he did they would not apply to humans anyway. What he cannot abide is religious intolerance and bigotry and evil cloaked in the pretense of righteousness. He then reminds her that she insisted that he reveal his thoughts on the subject.
- BW17h52 – BC is finally asked what he thinks about the contents of the book. He systematically tears its credibility to shreds, while maintaining that on the occasions he met “Miss Lawrence” [The reporter] she was not at all biased or deceptive; he is quite sure that the book was reedited by an unknown third party to attack the team’s credibility, putting the most hostile spin possible on every statement it contains.
If you think back to the very beginning, this whole plotline starts with Blackwing being a guest on a Talk Show. Once again, the aftermath is a mirror to the events of the buildup.
A few more things to take away from the example:
- I’m not an expert on media relations or handling a political crisis. I simply paid close attention to a TV show that featured this sort of thing (The West Wing) and especially the extras, which included interviews with the show’s consultants like Dee Dee Myers, who were.
- One of the major problems that will have to be overcome is the presence of a Telepath on the team and the potential for premature unmasking of the plot. Countering that meant introducing a new technology into the campaign, and a plotline was developed (and has already taken place) explicitly to do this. It’s only partially effective as a solution, but it should be enough.
- Most of the buildup was written by trying to decide what would logically and realistically happen next in terms of an unfolding relationship between the PC and NPC who were the focus of the plotline. Notice that most of the non-milestone events can be moved around, hand-waved, or canceled without overly affecting the outcome; no single one of them is critical to the outcome, rather it is their accumulated weight that matters.
- There has been a lot of thought put into customizing the crisis and its fallout to the individual PCs in my campaign. Should any of them change, the content would have to change as well. But this helps make the players feel like this is really happening – verisimilitude again.
- While most of the events are presented only as vague general outlines, they are also quite explicit in terms of what I want that scene to achieve, plot-wise.
- I would expect that all the events of BW17h would form a single “adventure” – they are practically a scene-by-scene breakdown of the plot already, and have to be continuous or simultaneous with each other. (I might even call it “The Crucible Of Opinion”). Other parts will be subplots, located within other adventures or character-driven plotlines.
- Every PC will be affected in some way, more or less permanently; but outside of specific effects that the plotline aims to achieve, and those character consequences, everything else ends up more or less reset to where it was at the start of the adventure. It’s relatively “contained” as a plotline. Note that at no point do I dictate what a PC will do (other than the things agreed upon with Blackwing’s creator in advance), or how they will react; I simply use NPCs to ask them how they are reacting. Most of the character effects will have ramifications in plotlines featuring those PCs later in the campaign, and can be summarized as ‘airing their dirty laundry in the worst possible light’.
Revisiting The Question
So, if the question is, “can slow-building storylines that develop over time work in an RPG, the answer is an unqualified and demonstrable “yes”; but they can only do so if they matter to the PCs, and that means that they can’t stay buried beneath the surface forever. At some point, they have to explode into the lives of the PCs. Hopefully, this article has given GMs the tools they need in order to use this particular plot type, and avoid the pitfalls that lurk for the unwary.
Next in this series: A Target With Warp Drive: Digital Maps and Minis for Sci-Fi.
February 16th, 2016 at 12:57 am
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