Sometimes, to get through the most solid of walls, all you need is a door. Image by Gianni Crestani from Pixabay

A long time ago – 2013 – I wrote a series on Writer’s Block. Recently, that problem reared it’s ugly head in a very specific circumstance within my (still shut-down-for-Covid-19-reasons) superhero campaign. I’ve never encountered a writer’s block this bad in my entire life, to be honest.

You see, I have a long string of related events planned for the campaign, all of them consequences of a previous event having occurred, regardless of whether or not the PCs resolve that previous event when they come to it. I have some flexibility in the timing, but the basic outline is more or less linear. You can even divide it into multiple strands or plot threads that cross-connect and weave into one another.

At the same time, I had the initial setup for this part of the campaign worked out in detail – a nice little travel-yarn to set the stage for everything else. As the impetus for that initial setup… no, that’s getting a little ahead of myself.

The Backstory

In-game, the US has just gone through a period of extreme isolationism – yes, even more extreme than what’s been happening in the real world – and a subversive invasion by a group of extra-dimensional refugees who used knowledge and power to re-frame politics within the nation. The old political parties were rent asunder, and then found common cause with one faction of former enemies to create new political parties with new agendas and priorities, and each being steered by one faction of these refugees.

As I hinted, that period of isolationism is coming to an end, and both political parties can sense it. One wants to re-engage with the world but on favorable terms for the USA – these are modern-day empire-and-alliance builders. The other wants to re-engage with the world as the one true super-power (politically speaking). “Equal with everyone but more equal than anyone else,” if you get my drift. This group are – dare I say it? – more Trumpian than the first (It’s probably worth a side-note to point out that these geopolitical changes were first planned and described in my campaign notes back in 1996, twenty years before life imitated art)..

Not everyone is happy with this notion of being part of the wider world whether Americans liked it or not. There are a number of hard-line militia groups who liked isolationism and “America First, Last, and Always” just fine, thank you. Most are weekend warriors who never amount to anything all that significant. A few rise to the level of Domestic Terrorists, ready to use violence to achieve their goals.

One of those has just bought a pair of nuclear weapons from Russia, who needs money to deal with the resurgent 4th Reich (backed by a third faction of these refugees, it should be added). It won’t be long before Moscow and Leningrad are under direct threat; the Russians may have the backing of most of NATO, but the two biggest guns (the UK and USA) have been busy with their own problems, so that hasn’t helped them much.

The closest thing to a world government is the UN, a rather more muscular organization than in our reality, thanks to their military arm, UNTIL (in fact, it was the alien whose string-pulling and back-room deals led to the founding of the organization that it would eventually become a world government, but UNTIL and the UN have thrown off those machinations and been charting their own course).

The PCs are superheros who work with (in some respects) or for (in other respects) UNTIL. There is a critical presidential election coming up, and the political consequences of being seen to interfere are too dangerous to contemplate. In order to have agents who are free to operate without that perception and effective enough to get the job done, UNTIL have organized new superhero identities for the PCs and are sending them in via back channels.

The first phases of the plotline dealt with establishing the political situation. The second dealt with the initial insertion and a bit of cloak-and-dagger through the streets of a revitalized Sao Paulo. The third was a series of hand-offs between different “Kingdoms” within what used to be Mexico, and were designed to challenge the players, get them used to operating in these new identities, and enrich their world. They also grew close to their guide, a representative of the faction of refugees behind the political party that the PCs would prefer to win, but who are less likely to come to the aid of the Russians and others in trouble. In fact, there is almost an unofficial alliance between them – for the duration of this mission.

The Problem

But there’s the rub. For days now (game time) / months (real time), the PCs have been getting closer to the border and their real mission. They’ve encountered delays and difficulties that have upped the ante. All they know is that these good ol’ boys have a couple of nukes and plan to use them for some sort of public display on the 4th of July. They have a Plan.

Well, good for them. But I didn’t know what it was – not the faintest idea. I had the beginning, and the end, but not the middle – a Plot Divide.

There were all sorts of possibilities, but I had some rather strict criteria to apply. The plan:-

1. Had to be plausible, in the context of a superhero campaign;
2. Had to be plausible, in the context of this superhero campaign;
3. Had to be plausible, even clever, in the context of this group’s objectives;
4. Had to be im-plausible, in the context of giving ideas to any real-world groups who might hear of what was being described;
5. Had to challenge the Players;
6. Had to entertain the Players;
7. Had to fail to get in the way of later events;
8. Had to be spectacular enough to justify the build-up;
9. Had to contain at least one major surprise or plot twist;
10. Had to engage the characters (and players) in different ways so as to facilitate spotlight rotation amongst the party;
11. Had to contain a plausible way for the critical information to fall into the PCs hands at the right time so that they could act on it.

Nothing I was thinking up made it through this rigorous checklist. For week after week, everything I came up with was (1) too limp and uninspired; or (2) too predictable; or (3) too plausible, or too implausible, in the wrong ways.

The Light Dawns

Until last weekend, that is, when I eventually found a solution that worked. I can’t go into specifics, my players read this, but I can talk about the key to the solution.

I had to go back to the fundamentals. What do this group want? How can they use these weapons in a symbolic statement on July 4th, 1988, to achieve these goals?

I knew the answer to the first question in a superficial way, but hadn’t dug deep enough. The solution wasn’t their immediate political desires, but something more substantial and extremist-libertarian. It would require adding something to the recent history of the fictional-USA to provide them with a target whose destruction would serve those more fundamental ends, but that’s the advantage of having walled the place off from the PCs for so long – I can invent whatever I need to be there – in this case, something I’ve been calling “Warehouse 13”..

Plausibility? Check, Check, Check, and No

This objective, and these tactics, were clever, rooted in the ideology of the group, and made total sense given the totality of the in-game situation including the addition of the developments that provided the target. At the same time, without that history to create that target, they wouldn’t tell any such group anything they didn’t already know, wouldn’t give anyone plausible real-world ideas.

Surprise? Diverse problems and Spotlight Rotation?

The players, whose thoughts had been following similar arcs to my own, would be both surprised and challenged, and would have to deal with a crisis on multiple fronts, with multiple facets, at the same time. Some of those would suit the more action-oriented characters, some would suit the deeper thinkers.

No roadblock to the future?

Just the opposite – done properly, Warehouse 13 would facilitate the future, putting more of the building blocks in place and tightening the integration of the plot threads.

A Trail To Follow

Executing this plan would require my fictitious militia to have access to certain expertise that they would not be likely to have, innately. That meant that they would have to hire that expertise, and that in turn would create a trail that the PCs could follow. And in the process, it would create yet another layer of the onion, another uncertainty as to whether or not the PCs could fully trust the people who were giving them orders. One of the themes of this campaign is that “friends will become enemies, and enemies, allies”. There are multiple examples of this occurring throughout the campaign, and more on the way.

Fun?

You betcha! With at least one plot twist that I haven’t yet mentioned, and lots of scope to ham things up in the name of roleplaying, and surprises and challenges to be faced, it should be heaps of fun for all involved.

The Payoff

Finally, this plotline had a climax that was worthy of the buildup. What’s more, I had the option of pulling my punch-line – if it looked like the players were going to succeed too easily, I could up the ante, if not, then I could file that part of the idea away for a later occasion.

This ticked all my boxes. It rings true because it derives, fundamentally, from who this group were, and what they wanted.

As a result, I’m no longer feeling like I want to delay and hold things up in the campaign to avoid the inevitable. Instead, I’m eager and looking forward to it!

And, speaking of inevitable, I’m still plugging away at the final two parts of the Sixes System. It’s proving more difficult than I expected switching my headspace from one genre to another, but I’m getting there!