This image combines a number of public-domain textures and illustrations. Compositing by Mike.

There are a couple of expressions that I frequently use as metaphors, simply because they express a concept in a really compact space and in a way that everyone can understand. One is ‘The Iceberg’ to indicate something that is a lot bigger or more important than it seems on the surface. Another is ‘The spotlight’, for things or characters that are highlighted relative to their peers. And a third is ‘The Elephant In The Room’, to describe something that is obvious but that everyone seems to be ignoring or overlooking.

The last metaphor works because an elephant is a big animal. But what if the elephant blended into the room unnaturally well? What if it was, literally, an elephant in a gray room? Something of huge significance or importance that everyone is overlooking because it’s not immediately obvious – but that once you see it, you will never forget that it’s there.

I’m talking about Plot Holes. Everyone can sail right over the top of them without noticing them – until you do, and once you do, you can never escape that awareness.

This is a series about plot holes and ways to fix them so that even when they get noticed, it’s just a spur to your creativity and not a complete calamity…

You may have noticed the “Part 1 of 5”. So, what’s the plan?

• Part 1, Introduction (the article that you are reading) will talk about plot holes – where they come from, how they are discovered (and why it makes a difference), how catastrophic they really are, how they can grow like a cancer if not fixed, how to correctly select a solution to thew problem, and how to shift your mindset when encountering one.
• Part 2, Minor Repairs offers six basic ways of handling minor problems, ranging from Ignoring the problem to dropping in a retroactive explanation.
• Part 3: Significant Repairs deals with plot holes of greater significance in the medium term, and offers appropriately medium-term and medium-sized solutions. There are only three of them on my list so far, but there will be occasions when one of the solutions from part 2 will also solve your problem.
• Part 4: Major Structural RepairsDeals with even more significant plot holes, ones that can only be solved by performing major surgery on the campaign itself behind the scenes. In addition to solutions from earlier parts of the series, this article deals with three even more substantial repair techniques.
• Part 5: Critical Repairs deals with the most catastrophic plot holes. Structural repairs (part 4) are like fixing a hole in the roof, replacing the guttering, or even repainting – some cosmetic details may change but the significant work is beneath the skin and the look-and-feel of the campaign are not significantly altered. That’s not the case with Critical Repairs – these are reserved for situations so cataclysmic that the campaign will never be the same again afterwards (though it may be very similar). I have four solutions to offer in this category, plus the usual smattering of solutions from earlier in the series. It will also wrap the whole thing up in a nice neat (metaphoric) blue ribbon.

For those wondering – yes, I probably could have made this series smaller. But I’m anticipating having quite a bit to say about some of those more serious solutions, so I’m leaving room, just in case. I’d rather post a short article than find myself too squeezed for time to look at things in the detail that they deserve.

Some of what follows in the course of this series will undoubtedly be familiar advice to readers. I make no apologies for that – good advice deserves to be repeated. But hopefully there will be something new for everyone to chew on in the course of the series.

That’s a fairly full bill of work, so let’s get started….

Sources Of Plot Holes

It’s too easy simply to state that a plot hole represents a mistake by the GM. In fact, there are 9 ways in which a plot hole can creep into a GM’s plans, and the cause can materially affect how difficult it is to repair and how big a problem the GM has created for himself – and what methods of repair are most effective are definitely dependent on the specifics. So let’s dig a little deeper.

The causes that I have identified (and there may be more) are,
 

1. Characterization-Event Incompatibility
2. GM Logic Error
3. A Failure To Simulate
4. Player Theory & Confirmation Bias
5. Factual Error
6. Flawed NPC Scheduling
7. A Failure Of Memory
8. Contradictory Considerations
9. Player Confusion

Each of these merits specific discussion.

1. Characterization-Event Incompatibility

This arises when an NPC has done something that is out of character. The ‘something’ can either be in a past appearance (more serious) or in their character history (less serious). The other factor that dictates the seriousness of the problem is the importance of that break in character, taking into account domino theory, in shaping the current (and recent) world as experienced by the PCs.

The consequences of this type of plot hole range from trivial to a combination of both these factors being in the worst-case condition, which can potentially rate this problem all the way up in the Critical range, undermining the foundations of the entire campaign, though the more usual extreme result would be class-3, structural.

This is a trap to which GMs who do their job more off-the-cuff and less planned-in-advance are especially prone, and usually result from the characterization being formulated after the historical role played by the NPC, though it can sometimes result from the GM falling in love with a characterization that explains most of their past actions (overlooking the critical one or ones) and which is particularly fun to play, either for him or for the PCs to play against.

2. GM Logic Error

Of course, GMs are human too, and prone to the occasional mistake. A lot of game prep is – or should be – about giving the GM the chance to spot such errors before they enter game canon, presenting the opportunity to do something about them. The more a GM relies on improv basing adventures on a seed and knowing the characters involved, both player and non-player, the less they are prone to this particularly fallacy – in theory.

In practice, because this means that decisions are made off-the-cuff, it can be argued that GMs employing this style are even more prone to such errors, though when they occur, they are more easily dismissed as human error on the part of the NPC. The real problem that results is that these error rates are not always accurately reflective of the theoretical capabilities of the character, being more of a reflection of the GM’s personal limitations. The bottom line, then, is that improv doesn’t make you less prone to making these mistakes, it merely changes them in interpretation from a strict failure logic to a characterization failure. But when it comes to selecting the best remedial action, it’s better to call a spade a spade, which is why these causes of plot holes are being presented in the sequence shown.

Logic errors span the entire gamut of possible degrees of severity. If anything, they tend to be top-heavy on the scale, more likely to be more critical than less.

3. A Failure To Simulate

Which brings me to actual cases where a character says or does something in play – either pre-planned or unplanned – that contradicts what would be appropriate for that personality in that situation, or where the GM makes an error in adjudicating the complexities of cause-and-effect when there are multiple factors influencing events.

In fantasy campaigns, the latter don’t matter too much, because physics is subjected to such simplification that superficial accuracy is all that’s required. Inaccuracies in the interpretation of game physics within this genre are less important than other forms of failure.

More modern styles and genres, including pulp, can have a somewhat more demanding requirement of accuracy in simulating classical physics, simply because the fantasy wallpaper-over-the-cracks excuse holds less sway. Still, it’s generally enough for the physics to sound plausible, no matter how rubbery it might be in comparison to the real world.

Science Fiction campaigns come in three basic varieties – the post-apocalyptic, the Space Operatic, and the hard sci-fi. Post-apocalyptic campaigns generally regress technology while presenting fantasy as pseudo-science; so far as this subject is concerned, the constraints are somewhere between those of a typical fantasy campaign and a modern campaign. Space Opera campaigns are deliberately distortive of physics but in a very controlled and purposeful manner; sometimes, they need to achieve modern-campaign-setting standards, and at other times, they need only fantasy-level physics.

That leaves only the really serious sci-fi, which I have labeled as “hard” – though, in truth, it may deserve that label only in comparison to the other sub-genres discussed (certainly, literary purists will have a far more strict interpretation of the term). This is a realm in which the physics is so intractable that plots have to yield to it, and not vice-versa. Failure to accurately model the physics can be catastrophic to such campaigns, which is one reason why they are relatively rare. The reality is that most hard sci-fi campaigns are really dressed-up space-opera which pay greater lip service to physics – but that is enough to escalate this failure mode in seriousness.

These plot holes also span the gamut of possibilities, but tend to cluster more toward the middle of the range.

4. Player Theory & Confirmation Bias

I’ve been bitten by this one a time or two, myself, as I mentioned when first discussing the problem in “I know what’s happening?: Confirmation Bias and RPGs. What happens is that the players come up with a theory to explain current events, and then forget that it was just a theory, while the GM – who knows what is really happening, and so has paid little attention to the theory tossed out by the players beyond any immediate consequences of their mistake, forgets that the players ever had such a theory. As a result, when the subject becomes relevant once again in the campaign, months or years later, the players react in a way that accords with their theory and for which the GM has failed to prepare, or an NPC does something that makes sense in light of the “real” situation but which the players can’t understand because their theory has been blessed as campaign canon within their memories. It’s even been the case where a theory persisted at the game table for so long that it is misremembered as ‘fact’ even after it has been disproved.

Even worse, sometimes the players get “clever” and decide not to share their theory with the GM, or even the other players.

Ultimately, and at it’s worst, the players and GM are playing in two different campaigns with a superficial similarity – and, from time to time, the disparity catches one or both off-guard.

This, once again, is a more of a problem for the strict-planning school of GMs. It ultimately comes down to the PCs making an invalid assumption (from the point of view of the GM) and haring off down a rabbit hole in pursuit of the consequences of that assumption, or the GM making an invalid assumption about what the PCs will do in an in-game time-critical situation (from the point-of-view of the players), or – worse yet – reinventing history to get the PCs caught in a wringer and undo one of their past successes.

The net result is that even though there isn’t actually a plot hole there, a “virtual” plot hole comes into existence that can be even more pernicious and difficult to manage than a real plot hole would have been. The solutions tend to have to be in the upper-middle range, and sometimes, even higher up the scale. That’s because the problem itself might be amenable to a smaller solution, because you have to reset the campaign in the player’s minds – or reset it in the GM’s plans – you need to amp up the drama and impact of the solution.

5. Factual Error

In ‘Lessons from the Literary Process‘, I described an event from early in what was to become the Zenith-3 campaign, when I had a mental blank and forgot when the Communist Revolution in China took place. So, in answer to a question to which I didn’t know the answer, I mentioned the Emperor Of China.

Of course, I was immediately pulled up on that, but was fast enough on my mental feet to resolve the resulting plot hole at the time, using one of the many techniques to be discussed in later parts of this series. As I said in the article cited above, Factual Errors don’t have to be fatal; in fact, this one turned into the foundations of a major structural element of the campaign, an incident that was inspirational in devising this entire series.

If you commit a factual error, it produces a plot hole, but they tend to be relatively easy to resolve.

6. Flawed NPC Scheduling

If you don’t maintain a very clear timeline, and refer to it often, you can find that you have the same NPC in two places at once. This is especially easy in fantasy and modern and space opera campaigns because it’s easy to underestimate – or completely forget to allow for – travel time.

This can be a lot harder to fix than it sounds because there aren’t very many solutions and its easy to overuse them. It’s not impossible, but expect to be seriously stretched if you can’t employ one of those obvious solutions – for example, I had to once insert a public holiday into the calendar that didn’t get counted in the days of the month to give a villainous nobleman the necessary travel time to get from A to B.

The obvious solutions are doppelgangers, faster travel modes, time travel and proxies and magical simulacra or android doubles. Introducing any of them after the fact can turn one plot hole into several, because you may invalidate handicaps that the character respected on those occasions.

I’m actually going to highlight one in-obvious solution that I implemented in the early days of my TORG campaign (before the reality invasion when a common timeline became possible using modern technology): propagating dates.

Let’s say that an event happens in the capital on the 131st day of the fourth year of the reign of Pella Ardinay. What’s the date in Zesther, 200 leagues (about 690 miles) away? Using my usual scales (refer What Size Is A Kingdom?, that’s a minimum overland distance of 19 days travel. It could be more, but when I was drawing my maps for that campaign I made the conscious decision that things would be depicted not as they would have been geophysically, but by overland travel time. Distances on the map were described not as a measure of length, but as a measure of time, and locations in mountainous terrain were often depicted as further apart than they would have been on a more traditional map. so let’s assume that there’s as much downhill as there is up, and that the 19 days is a fair estimate.

So, if an event takes place in the capital on 131-4-PA, the date when word of that event reaches Zesther is also 131-4-PA. If an event took place simultaneously in both Zesther and in the capital, Zesther would record and report the event as occurring on 121-4-PA. The seasons change on different dates. Taxes are due on the same date everywhere, which is the date the taxes all arrive at the Capital.

So let’s say that I’ve made a mistake in my timing and to fix it, I need an extra two days of travel time for the Dwarven Horde. Let’s further suppose that the season is Summer. All it takes is a river swollen with flood waters from heavy rain in the mountains to move the date of arrival out by those two days, because the trip took two days longer If I needed him to get there two days sooner, unseasonably good weather can do that.

What it meant was that I could date an event and have that date be relatively meaningless with respect to any other date relating to events in any other location.

It’s not something to do with every campaign – it’s too noteworthy and too contrary to the way we’re used to things working – but when the campaign setting is sufficiently isolated from historical Earth, it’s another trick to have up your sleeve. But it does need to be implemented during campaign design, it can’t be imposed after the fact.

In terms of the seriousness of these plot holes, they span the entire range. As indicated, the obvious solutions can often have knock-on effects that are more disruptive than the original problem was, so these problems tend to cluster toward the extreme ends of the spectrum – either trivial to resolve, or really major, as a result.

7. A Failure Of Memory

I’ve been caught by this source of plot holes more than once, too. That’s why there have been two articles on the subject – ‘The failure of …urmmmm… Memory‘ and ‘In The Footsteps Of Footprints: how to document game events.

Well, that advice may mitigate the frequency of the problem’s occurrence, but it doesn’t obviate it completely; there will always be things that didn’t seem important enough, or that seemed memorable enough (at the time) that a note didn’t have to be made.

It’s like putting something in a safe place – which is another of those expressions that my social circle all use; you can never find it when you want it. Quite often, whenever we can’t find something, we will say that we obviously “put it in a safe place”.

Solutions to this type of plot hole tend to span the lower three categories fairly evenly. It’s relatively rare for them to escalate into the most severe category, though it does happen from time to time.

It’s always important to consider multiple solutions to this problem when it does arise; it can often be the case that a more substantial ‘fix’ has less future complications than a smaller solution that starts a chain of falling dominoes. While small solutions are generally to be preferred, that principle can be violated in this case.

8. Contradictory Considerations

There are lots of factors that go into most decisions made by the GM when it comes to plot. Sometimes, priorities change between designing the plot and actually implementing it, and sometimes they change on the fly. These contradictory considerations can create a change in direction in the plot as actually executed, resulting in a plot hole.

This can often happen when the PCs do something brilliant about a problem that the GM hadn’t considered – either he shuts them down despite that brilliance (risking allegations of plot trains that may or may not be justified) or he adjudicates fairly, bypassing some of the key stepping stones to later plots that the entire adventure was intended to justify.

These can be amongst the most catastrophic plot holes to resolve, certainly amongst the top categories of severity, or they can be relatively trivial. They demonstrate that
there can be times when no-one does anything wrong, but the campaign still ends up needing remedial action, and sometimes drastic remedial action.

9. Player Confusion

It’s one of the core truths of plot holes that GMs aren’t perfect. Sometimes, we have trouble communicating clearly to the players what’s going on in our heads; when players grow confused, they can roar off in strange directions.

When that happens, you have a choice – give them their heads, and try to make it work, or bring them back into line, even letting them backtrack on key decisions made on the basis of the misunderstanding.

It’s not too extreme to suggest that the decisive consideration in the GM’s mind when making a decision in such matters should be the scale and difficulty of the remedial action that will be required – if it’s minor or trivial, let the PCs have their heads. If it’s more substantial, but easily incorporated into the existing plans, let the PCs have their heads. If it’s a little more serious than that, then you might or might not choose to live with it – depending on the circumstances, and how soon the confusion becomes apparent – but it’s time to start seriously considering a backtrack. Certainly, anything more severe and the backtrack becomes far more enticing.

But sometimes, it’s not clear that the players are confused, at the time – that discovery only comes out later, and the GM can find himself presented with a fait accompli, and needing to right the ship.

So there are two pathways by which player confusion can lead to a plot hole. And those plot holes can cover the entire range of severity.

Discovering A Plot Hole and why the ‘how’ matters

There are lots of uncommon ways to discover a plot hole, and one or two really common ways.

Thinking about the game in between sessions? An uncommon way.

Doing game prep, and planning the day’s play? Those are uncommon ways.

Just before the plot hole gets read into campaign continuity? Another uncommon way.

Immediately the players assess what you’ve told them, and it’s too late? All too common.

Days, weeks, months, or even years later? Also all too common.

It makes a difference. Those uncommon ways offer a chance – however brief, however slim – to fix things before the GM is committed to a plot hole that needs repairs. Sometimes, that’s all you need, but it’s important not to implement a half-baked solution. If you’re sure that you aren’t actually digging yourself in deeper with a quick fix, go for it – but if there is any hesitation or doubt, you may be better off taking the time over a proper fix after the fact.

Sometimes, the awareness that there’s a problem can lead you to tinker with the pacing, deferring the problem point for a game session, giving you more time to implement a fix while never committing to the plot hole.

These rare opportunities when the stars align are priceless gifts; embrace them. Most of the time, though, you will find yourself in plot repair, usually because the players have just told you something doesn’t make sense – or because you’ve stumbled across an inconvenient truth long after the fact..

Scale Of Plot Holes

Before you can think about a solution, you need to identify the scale of this particular plot hole, in terms of how much damage it will do to the campaign. Small problems – as a rule of thumb – need small solutions.

Problem scale comes from three factors:
 

• the Damage done;
• Interval until the damage becomes apparent; and
• the Persistence of that damage.
  

  The Damage Done

  Plot damage comes in three types. There’s damage to the credibility of the campaign, damage to the credibility of the GM, and damage to the adventure potential of the campaign.

  Damage to Campaign Credibility

  When you expose an adventure to the willful exuberance of the players, you need them to invest in the plot as totally as possible, and not spend time second-guessing you. But guess what? They will do both, anyway, whether the occasional plot hole gives them reason to do so. So I discount this type of damage, and recommend that you do likewise.

  Damage to GM Credibility

  If you want to project an image of GM infallibility, this is important to you. I don’t; I know that I’m human and can make mistakes, and don’t care if the players know that, too. I would rather that they know that I care about the campaign and the entertainment that it gives them, and that’s enhanced by fixing the problem, not hiding it. So I recommend that you ignore this damage category.

  Damage to Campaign Adventure Potential

  Ah, now here’s the rub. This is why plot holes matter. Any campaign is a house of cards; it can collapse at any time. Its internal coherence, the credibility of its characters and plotlines, these are the glue that binds those cards together. The stories, interest, intrigue, personality, and – above all – the fun, are what the cards are made from. Take away some of that coherence, and you can still have a pretty good campaign – but take away too much of it, and the whole thing falls in a heap.

  Everyone’s tolerance level is different. Mine is very low – I work hard on my plots because I’m not satisfied unless they are great (fortunately, I think I also have the plotting skills to be able to meet those standards). Other GMs are more easygoing. But it’s not just the GM who needs to be satisfied; each player will also have a credibility threshold, and its something that can vary over different aspects of the game. Some players will let the GM get away with plot murder if the combat tactics and personalities shine. Others are content with fairly bland combat, but demand strong and interesting personalities amongst the NPCs and solid, solid, stories. Everyone’s different.

  It’s critical that you know where you have some leeway to play with and where you need to adhere to the highest standards. Until you do, it’s best to simply aim to be the best that you can be in every area, to play to your strengths, and to do your best to satisfy the only person who can give you instant and totally honest feedback without asking – yourself.

  Plot holes undermine the story. They undermine character reactions to events within that story. Only if your players and yourself are totally zoned in on the personal combat aspects of an RPG can you afford not to deal with the inevitable plot holes we all experience.

  The Interval until the damage manifests

  The second factor deals with the urgency of finding a solution. Plot holes can exist (so long as no-one notices them) for years before they assume significance within the campaign, and even if they do get noticed, you can get away with it through sheer chutzpah by promising that there is an explanation that will emerge in due course.

  That, however, commits you to actually finding and presenting a solution, so you are a lot better off if you already have some inkling of what it will be and what it will require.

  The shorter the interval before you need to have an answer, the more justified you are in being as drastic as necessary, and hence the more severe the damage from the plot hole will potentially be.

  At the same time, though, it can be a bad thing to have too great an interval, because it permits you to perpetually delay actually committing to a solution.

  Damage Persistence

  Some characters are hotel guests, here today and gone tomorrow. Plot holes related to those character’s actions or history can be ignored without ongoing damage for long periods of time.

  Some characters are lodgers, present for a substantial period of time before shuffling off to the plot graveyard, their stories told – at least for now. Plot holes related to these characters often can’t be ignored, but can be deferred if the plot hole in question never influences current events/actions.

  And some characters are furniture, present and involved frequently or even continuously. Plot holes related to these characters have to be resolved ASAP because the characters are so pivotal to the campaign.

  (As an aside, before I continue, I should point out that resolving a plot hole is the GM finding and documenting a solution to the incongruity; it doesn’t actually have to be presented to the players right away. Until that takes place, however, it will continue to cause structural damage to the campaign).

  Plots are like characters, as described above. Some are fireflies, there briefly and then gone; sometimes, a plot exists purely as a vehicle for some key revelation or character development. Holes in that plotline that don’t affect that lingering content don’t matter much, and can be resolved with a trivial solution. Others have a more substantial impact, serving as foundation or foreshadowing for future events within the campaign. The deadline for resolving those problems is the next development within that plotline. And some have an immediate and ongoing impact within the campaign, constraining PC choices from that time forward; these need to be resolved strongly, compellingly, convincingly, and as soon as possible.

  Of course, those four criteria are often incompatible; but it is better to wait until all four can be delivered, provided that the damage will not be catastrophic in the meantime. So you can’t wait forever, but can invest time in finding the most effective solution and implementing it properly.

Plot Hole Escalation

Even if the preceding section indicates that a deadline has been reached, it doesn’t necessarily force your hand if your solution isn’t yet ready to go. So long as you are aware that the unresolved plot hole undermines the adventure you are about to run, and that the damage won’t cause the whole plot to sink into the hole, you can cope with a little temporary subsidence.

Every event in a campaign has an ongoing persistence, becomes part of the campaign’s history, and becomes the foundations for the next level of plot structure, just as the ceiling of the second floor of a building is also the foundation that supports the third floor.

Every time the flawed event or plot development is referenced within the campaign, it does damage to the campaign. Every time a damaged event is referenced, it does secondary damage. And that causes tertiary damage, and so on.

What does “referencing” an event look like? It means that it influences or shapes the decisions or actions of a character, either PC or NPC, or that a consequence of the event does so.

Below is a graphic representation of a typical strong-continuity campaign for four players. Each has their own colored mesh of plots and subplots that occasionally link into the main plot that’s driving the campaign, but the campaign is still 75-80% character driven. And beneath that, a depiction of the worst-case scenario of the corruption caused by a single plot hole – the dots show where the corruption jumps from one plotline into another. It also shows the GM doing his best to treat the problem, but he is dealing with symptoms and not with the real problem. click on the image to open a larger one in a separate tab (1024 across)

The damage spreads through the campaign like a cancer, eating away at its credibility, a little at first – a sort of nagging afterthought – but slowly becoming all-consuming. I doubt if such a campaign would ever run to it’s conclusion – by the time the corruption is half-way through its growth cycle, it has become a dominant feature of the campaign, by the time it’s 1/3 of the way, half the campaign content has been tainted. Somewhere between those two points is where I would expect the campaign to begin to collapse.

I repeat, this depicts the worst-case scenario. It shows just how bad the problem can be.

Matching Solution Scale to Problem Scale

Obviously, if you were faced with such a situation, you would be justified in drastic action to correct the problem. Most are nowhere near this severe, and can be defeated with a correspondingly mild treatment.

The sooner you detect and remedy the problem, the milder the treatment that is necessary – most of the time. Worst-case cataclysms are rare.

The scale of the ‘treatment’ should match how significant the problem is about to become – not how serious it is now, though that’s a constant temptation, and not how chronic it might eventually become.

An untreated plot hole is like a cancer spreading through your campaign. If you’re lucky, it will be benign; but the most serious cases are malignant, and require drastic surgery if the campaign is to be saved..

If, for example, the villain of the campaign is a mastermind who makes a series of silly, out-of-character choices, driven by a poorly-thought-out character trait that doesn’t make sense in light of his background; had it been part of his makeup, that background would be entirely different, and he would never have become the threat that is supposed to drive the campaign forward. Every silly choice that he makes spreads the taint until every character’s plotline is infected. Those silly choices include ignoring obvious direct paths to achieving his ambitions before the PCs can get into a position to stop him, and wasting time and resources pursuing irrelevancies and illogical side projects.

If the character had been designed from the start to be driven by passions, the GM might have gotten away with this behavior; but you can’t be a part-time mastermind and a part-time egomaniac obsessed with trivia, the melange is completely unpalatable.

This situation is not unsolvable. It would entail drastic surgery on the NPC mastermind and his story, turning him into a victim of the real villain of the piece who has been mentally destabilizing him, perhaps in the belief that the end justifies the means. The entire campaign going forward would be reshaped accordingly, split into two dominant threads (one per villain); whichever one the PCs chose to deal with first emerging as an even greater threat than he already was. If one of the PCs had the appropriate mind-set and could gain the abilities, the second enemy might even be his future self from a world in which the PCs failed to stop the unfettered, undamaged, mastermind.

But discussion of actual treatments is premature – consider the above a preview of the fifth part in this series!

Opportunities in Adversity

It’s not all doom-and-gloom. Plot Holes may be a challenge to creativity, but it’s entirely possible for the solutions to strengthen a campaign. Every challenge, after all, is also an opportunity. You can strengthen weak elements within the campaign, reinforce the structural integrity of your house of cards, and ramping up the enjoyment that all concerned derive from their participation.

Those are side-benefits, but they also paint a vivid illustration of the way to differentiate between the different solutions that are to be offered.

The minimum requirement is to contain the damage, stop it from spreading. Solutions that do that in the least disruptive manner are obviously to be preferred – you don’t nuke a gnat. And the very best solutions will offer such side-benefits on top of these achievements, providing new opportunities for adventure and a richer, more interesting, and more fun gaming experience.

Counterbalancing those considerations is this: some solutions are a lot more work than others. Some require a higher standard of applied creativity, others require more time and/or more effort. And time, as I’ve shown, is definitely a factor. So there are multiple criteria to be satisfied when choosing a solution to the problem – enough that in every case, I would expect a single best solution to present itself. The one right answer that does the most for the campaign as quickly and painlessly as possible.

Every GM , every campaign, every plot hole, and every circumstance will be different. There are too many possibilities for any series of articles to make the decision for you. But this series can put the tools in your hands; what use you make of them is then up to you.

The next part of this series will look at techniques for fixing minor plot holes.