Image Credit: freeimages.com / Mario Alberto Magallanes Trejo

How do you take three plot ideas and interlink them to make one grand adventure? I’ve often skimmed over this point because it’s usually arisen in the context of campaign planning, so I thought it was high time that I went into it in greater detail.

Another reason why I’ve been dodging this discussion for so long is that it’s really hard to find general rules or instructions to describe the process. To be sufficiently broad in content, it’s necessary to become so abstract and vague that you lose all meaning in terms of directly useful advice. Nevertheless, I’m going to dive in and have a go (I may follow this up with an example in a separate article if there’s enough demand).

Known Elements and Unknown Elements

With any one-line plot synopsis, there will be a few known facts and a lot of indeterminate facts. By the end of the design process, everything will need to be known of course; but those unknowns are critically important connection points to use in constructing the full plot. In addition, there will always be two – possibly three – additional elements: beginning, PC involvement, and Resolution. At the moment, any of these could be known, but almost certainly two of the three will be unknown. If there are only two elements, it’s because beginning and PC involvement are the same thing because the PCs are being targeted by the villain of the plotline. On top of those, each plot thread will have up to 16 additional structural elements, bringing the total to 19. Almost all of these will be unknown at this point in the adventure creation process. In fact, some of them will be unknown until just before the start of play, and some will remain in that condition right up to the point when they take place in-play!

The complete list of plot elements is:

  1. Initial Status – Everything the GM needs to know in advance about the setting and context in which the adventure is to take place, including any plans, goals, or ambitions of the PCs that are in effect immediately prior to the commencement of the plot thread?
  2. Beginning/Background/Purpose – What? Why? – What is the Enemy trying to do and why?
  3. Who? – Who is the Enemy? Are they a Villain, an Antihero, an Ally, a Betrayer, what?
  4. Plan – How? When? Where? – How is the enemy going to achieve his purpose, in his initial opinion? When and Where? How will the outcome bring about the enemy’s desired consequence? Optional: What are the flaws in the plans and why has the enemy not foreseen them?
  5. Action – What exactly is the enemy going to do from an outside/onlooker’s perspective?
  6. Victims/Target – Who does the immediate action target? Who does the ultimate consequence intended by the enemy target?
  7. PC Involvement – How are the PCs going to get mixed up in the events? Why?
  8. PC Reaction – How are the PCs likely to react to the combination of their involvement (7), the context and circumstances (1), the immediate victim(s) (6), and the Action described in (5)? How will the PCs involvement relate to their plans, goals, and ambitions? (1)
  9. Initial Outcome – Taking into account any enemy anticipation of the involvement of the PCs, either specifically or generally (it just happens to be the PCs but it might have been anyone in the right place at the right time), and the plan, what will the outcome of the initial action be from both the enemy’s and the PCs points of view?
  10. Witnesses/Experts/Informants – Information has to come from somewhere, and it’s always better to put most of it in the mouths of NPCs. In some campaigns you can also get extra mileage by placing these people in danger.
  11. Comprehension – At some point, the significance of the plan will dawn on the PCs. You can’t predict when that will be, but you can state an absolutely final point at which such comprehension will have taken place. Either way, you need to build time into your game for this to occur, possibly even a cut scene to be ‘spliced in’ whenever it takes place.
  12. Modified Plan – How will the initial outcome (9) and the fact of the PCs involvement (7) affect the plan (4)? Will it be revised, and if so, in what way? What will be the next steps in that revised plan?
  13. Response – At the same time, the PCs may be making plans of their own. You can’t normally predict what those plans will be, but need to allow in-game time for this planning to take place.
  14. Conflict – The combination of the modified plan and the PCs response to events will be a conflict between the PCs and the agents of the Enemy. Where and when will this conflict occur?
  15. Conflict Outcome – What will the outcome of the conflict be, from both the PCs and the enemies’ points of view?
  16. Setback – Third Plan Iteration – A part of any good dramatic structure, the PCs need to encounter a setback, probably as a consequence of a third revision of the enemy’s plans.
  17. Advancement – The PCs overcome the setback and make progress despite it.
  18. Twist – Not always present, but a plot twist can happen in or after any one of several of these stages. There can even be more than one. A previous article listed eleven types of plot twist: Part 1 and Part 2.
  19. Confrontation (Climax Pt 1) – That advancement leads the PCs into a confrontation with the enemy and/or the enemy’s plan.
  20. Resolution (Climax Pt 2) – That confrontation is resolved with a new outcome.
  21. Consequences – There should always be consequences – those experienced by the enemy, by the PCs, and by various affected segments of the general population.

These don’t necessarily have to occur in the sequence given. In fact, this neat, orderly progression will be the exception and not the rule. Some may not take place at all. But most of the sequence will be intact.

Two Dimensional Plot Structure

Using the known and selected unknown plot elements, the idea is to build up a two-dimensional plot structure that defines the relationship between the elements of the plotline, taking three individual plot ideas and turning them into one cohesive plot.

There are three types of connection between plotlines, and they all take the form of a relationship between an element of one plotline and an element of another:

  • Direct Connections
  • Common Links
  • Consequences

    Let’s look at each of these.

    Element Connections: Direct

    A direct connection occurs when an element of one plot thread is also an element in another, linking the two stories. A witness to one event is secretly the enemy in another, for example, or investigating a red herring in one case leads to the accidental exposure of another (unrelated) problem. Direct connections are usually fairly rare and always significant.

    Element Connections: Common Links

    A common link occurs when an element in one plot thread is closely related to an element in another. These are often interpreted as being more significant than they are intended to be. It’s like investigating a fraud allegation against a businessman only to discover (a) that it’s his partner who’s been committing criminal fraud, and (b) the businessman has engaged in corrupt behavior with a political figure. Or investigating an arms merchant for his involvement in a murder only to find that he was engaged in a completely different murder at the time of the first act.

    Common links can be sub-classified into associated, coincidental, improbable, and implausible. Associated links describe the situation in which both elements are connected to the respective plotlines as a result of some common causal factor. This is often that case when crimes occur in a very small community in which everyone knows everyone else, for example. You’re investigating something, and someone who is guilty of something else thinks your story is just a cover for the truth, and attempts to ‘deal with the problem’ – or simply flees instead of answering questions, or answers with easily-penetrated lies to buy themselves time to flee. It’s pulling someone over for bald tires and discovering a stash of guns and money in the back seat.

    Associated links are fine. Coincidental can be acceptable or problematic – refer The Conundrum Of Coincidence. Improbable links stretch credibility, but are occasionally unavoidable; they require special attention to detail. Implausible links directly impact on the verisimilitude of your story, and are to be avoided.

    It may not always be obvious to which classification a given link belongs. For example, a link may appear improbable or even implausible. A player remarks on it, to which you reply that his character is probably having a hard time believing it, too – inviting the player to get paranoid about who is trying to fool whom and what they are trying to cover up. And then the connection is validated and explained by an unexpected development, and the player discovers that it was an associated link after all, and makes perfect sense – once all the facts are known!

    Element Connections: Consequential

    Consequential Links describe a situation in which one element’s relationship with one plotline leads directly to another plotline. That makes them very similar to associated common links in virtually every respect, but the causality dominoes affect each other directly. One person does something criminal, bringing an investigation that panics someone who’s been planning something else illegal into acting prematurely, for example, so that the second plotline is a direct consequence of the first. The connection between the plotlines is thus more direct and intimate than is the case with associated direct links.

Completing The Plot Elements (preliminary)

Starting with the known elements, decide on any connections between them. Connections are always resolved in the sequence Direct, Consequential, Common.

Next, look over the unknown elements, and decide on the content of each unknown and the nature of the links. The sequence remains the same. Once all the linking elements are determined, and all the plotlines have been tied together into the one interwoven plotline, complete the remaining unknowns by assigning details to them.

Most of these connections will be preliminary in nature, the details subject to revision as necessary. Replace and refine until you are satisfied with the merged plotline.

Is there an Uber-villain?

One decision that will have to be made fairly early on is whether or not there is a single Uber-villain pulling the strings in the first two plotlines who will then be confronted in the third or even in a fourth. You can even let the uber-villain be long gone by the time the PCs put the clues together, letting him return to bedevil the PCs at a future time. The main consideration with an Uber-villain is making sure that your “why” decisions are rock-solid.

Climax Point

With three plotlines, you have three choices of climax for the overall adventure. Which is the most rational from a plot point of view? Which one is the most dramatic? Which one is the most exciting in play? If you’re lucky, all three will point to the one choice as the ultimate climax of the adventure; but as often as not, you will have more than one choice indicated, and will have to make the decision without a clear indicator.

This is a critical part of determining the adventure structure. You can’t proceed until you get it right.

Initial Entry Point

Next, which element is the most instantly intriguing – which one has the biggest hook? This will vary from case to case. Remember, too, that anything that connects to something one or more PCs wanted to do automatically gets a boost in this category. This is going to be the way you start the adventure, so you have to make every effort to get the choice right.

Linear Structural Rendering

From that starting point, you can work out the overall structure of the adventure as it will be experienced in play, i.e. in linear fashion. There are innumerable possible structures, but in most cases you will find that the choice of starting and climax points, with some basic guidelines, will make most of the choices logical and relatively easy to make. Those guidelines:

  • Use confusion where necessary, but unless it’s present deliberately, keep it to a minimum.
  • It’s not enough for the total spotlight time to be more-or-less even across all the PCs; you also need to share out the spotlight evenly throughout the adventure. It’s even possible that you will need to devise additional go-nowhere-significant plotlines for some PCs and integrate them into your overall adventure in the same way as described above in order to achieve this.
  • If a particular player needs a particular type of content – or needs a particular type of content to be applied sparingly – you have to be sure to touch on his needs at least once per game session. This introduces a new parameter that we haven’t mentioned before, adventure length. Right now, it’s very hard to judge this with any measure of accuracy, but you have to estimate it anyway in order to satisfy this guideline.
  • Theme can manifest in one of two ways – as variations that become relevant to each PC in success, forming a secondary plot through-line; or in clumps at appropriate times in the adventure.
  • Emotional Pacing needs to make sense – refer to Swell and Lull: Emotional Pacing in RPGs (Part 1, Part 2).
  • Revelations only pay off if the pre-existing beliefs are reiterated and reinforced first. Similarly, you need to prepare the ‘ground’ for plot twists in order to make them most effective.
  • Successive scenes need to contrast in tone.
  • Avoid patterns of PC involvement sequences. If A is followed by B is followed by C (where A, B, and C are scenes starring particular PCs), the next iteration should be in a different sequence – adding in extra scenes to be roleplayed as necessary that could otherwise be handwaved.

Oh, if only it were that easy.

What usually happens is that natural fragments will present themselves – one scene followed by another followed by… – but these won’t link together, or there may be multiple choices of structure. At the same time, you may compile a section in which you know that a number of scenes will take place, but you have no idea what the best sequence of them will be. Finally, there will usually be a few bits that just don’t fit comfortably.

Nevertheless, you have to fit things together as well as you can. This is one area where the real artistry of adventure design takes place; each GM will develop his own style. It’s rare that there is only one right answer but normal that there are multiple wrong answers to be winnowed out. You may need to tweak and revise multiple times before you find the structure that will work best, all things considered.

Incorporating the third dimension: The Timeline of events

Once you have divided the adventure into individual scenes and arranged them in such a way that they tell the story of the unified plot thread in a way that meets all the criteria spelt out above, you can start using context and continuity to make your plotline three dimensional. Doing so is a little difficult to explain, but here goes:

It’s extremely unlikely that the backgrounds and contexts of the three adventures will be identical. This is information that you have to get to the players in the course of play, but in such a way that it doesn’t provide spoilers to the plot twists and revelations that you have incorporated.

In addition, it means that you need to incorporate events into the background of various scenes to provide the necessary information and to show the (gradual? abrupt? a little of both?) transformation of one background/context into another.

Next, you need to look at what each NPC was doing in the course of previous scenes to the one in which they first appear. Passing encounters and brief interchanges and the consequences of any actions all build a foundation of verisimilitude upon which the adventure itself rests.

The more of these additional, incidental, cross-links that you can build into your adventure, the more three-dimensional your adventure will become. This is the second area in which the true artistry of adventure design makes a difference.

It’s also important to make a note of why each such scene is where it is so that if your planning needs to evolve in response to unexpected PC choices, you can assess how they are to be affected.

Internal Logic Check

At this point, you have have a complete adventure laid out, scene by scene, in synopsis form, with reasons for each item being where it is within the structure.

That means that this is the first (and last) point in the process that is suitable for a complete internal logic check.

Things to particularly look out for are:

  • Decisions made prior to receiving the information that justifies them.
  • Continuity errors in which an inconsistency in characterization occurs without explanation.
  • Is every decision made by an NPC sensible given what that NPC would know at the time of making the decision?
  • Is every choice of action reasonable under the circumstances the NPC believes to be in effect at the time?
  • Is every piece of information to be provided to the PCs something that they could reasonably learn, based on what they were doing in the scene in which they last appeared prior to the scene in which they acquire or demonstrably have the information?

Plot Dynamism

Where the major PC decision points and what if they make unexpected choices at those points? If the PCs engage in an activity – be it rock climbing or combat – that you have assumed will result in one particular outcome – success or failure – what are the alternatives? Is there anywhere in the adventure where the players should have a choice, but don’t?

While it’s perfectly acceptable to evolve the plot on the fly – and a great deal of the effort above is designed to enable you to do so, effectively – Spending a few minutes pondering these questions and making preliminary notes imbues the plot with dynamism, permitting it to evolve in response to changing circumstances.

While you’re at it, making notes to ensure that you will have any information that you might need to run the adventure at hand is time well spent.

This is the third major area where artistry in adventure design is a factor.

The Work Isn’t Done Until It’s Saved

I’m going to end this article with a couple of pieces of advice that everyone should have burned into their minds at all time. I generally do my element relationships on a page or two of notepaper, which is (relatively) permanent; but the many potential changes and evolutions that a plot undergoes during the development process means that electronic writing is infinitely more useful. Ans, whenever you are dealing with electronic documents in progress, this maxim is a must.

You can spend six hours working on something only to have it lost to a power failure, or a systems crash, or simply closing the wrong document prematurely. If you haven’t been saving it as you go, that work is lost, and may or may not be re-creatable. Either way, you have to spend time recreating it, or creating something else in its place.

The work isn’t done until it’s saved.

Measure Twice, Cut Once

This is a maxim from carpentry, but it applies to many other situations either directly or as allegory. What it means is this: don’t do anything from which you can’t recover until you are SURE that it is what you want to do. If you have to, save first with a version number appended to your filename. The number of times this practice will save your bacon is hard to overestimate!


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