‘Puzzle World’ from freeimages.com / B S K
has only marginal relevance to this article, it’s a leftover alternative illustration from Designing A Game System (for the Zener Gate campaign).

The Elephant In The Gray Room is a metaphor that I have created to represent Plot Holes.

These are matters of huge significance or importance that everyone is overlooking because they are not immediately obvious, but that once you see one, you can never forget that it’s there.

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

In this part of the series, I offer six basic ways of handling minor continuity problems. Between them, they should resolve up to one half the plot holes that GMs will encounter..

Minor Repair Technique #1: Ignore the problem

If plot holes can result from failures of memory, fixing them can be compared with plugging holes in a hull made from steel mesh – the ship is still going to sink. Or, to put it more appropriately, why bother making the campaign history pristinely perfect when it won’t be remembered correctly, anyway.

Minor Repair Technique #2: Acknowledge and ignore

At least, that’s the argument that would be employed to justify this approach, and – like all good arguments – it contains more than a little grain of truth. But it overlooks three very important considerations.

First, the fact that human memory has always been fallible, and so we have developed a whole range of devices and techniques for correcting those fallible memories – with the written word still at the top of that list. And second, the fact that future events will be planned around that past, using it as foundation.

That’s actually a more useful metaphor that it seems at first glance. The justification for repairing any plot hole should always be grounded in the damage to the campaign that is being experienced right now, or that will be experienced in the future. If the plot hole is underneath a hollow space in the plot infrastructure that is yet to be built, put some warning tape around it and forget it; but if a load-bearing structural member happens to get it’s support from that particular point, it needs repairs.

The third point is that plans change. While the plan might not be to pin the entire campaign on a plot development that is undermined by the plot hole, you also need to consider the likelihood that such a plot development might become necessary or desirable in the future.

If the hole is in the backstory of a character who is never intended or expected to reappear in the campaign, it’s probably safe to gloss over it and move on. The more likely it is that this is the case, even if it’s not completely certain, the less urgent repairs seem. So this may be a viable short-term or medium-term solution to the problem, even if it might not stay that way forever.

What’s more, if the repaired plot hole is never revisited in the future, any effort expended in repairing it is completely wasted. I don’t know about anyone else, but I don’t have the time to waste.

At the same time, though, the domino effect means that repairing the hole – depending on the technique chosen – can take an unpredictable amount of time to complete. You may not be able to afford to wait until you need the solution.

Which brings me to the second solution, which is not to ignore the problem, simply to ignore the need to solve it – until it becomes necessary not to, bearing in mind the limitations that come with the notion.

It’s my preference, as a safety net, not to implement this solution until I have identified the nature of the ultimate solution that will be required. That’s “relatively” simple after a proper assessment of the scale and impact of the problem. But, since memory is fallible (as already noted), I also prefer to make some quick notes as to the “shape” of that ultimate solution – what is clear and obvious now might not be so clear when the time comes..

Minor Repair Technique #3: Depth Of Character

People are full of contradictions. One of my favorite solutions to the problem of a character’s past actions being inconsistent with the conceptualization of the character is to make the character more complex and hence more human. A great many discrepancies in action and choice can be explained by giving the character who made the “mistake” a solid motivation for the choice they made, even though it didn’t make sense in light of what had been revealed about the character prior to that event.

Never be afraid to make your characters more interesting!

Minor Repair Technique #4: NPCs are humanoid, too

It’s a very rare human being who doesn’t make the occasional mistake. Some of these are so egregious that we are left saying “I don’t know what I was thinking!” afterward.

And yet, it’s quite common to hold NPCs to a different standard, especially if they are mastermind types. Why?

Or, to put it another way, why not state that whenever possible, a mistake by the GM is actually a case of the NPC making a human mistake?

It isn’t always possible. Logically, when a plan falls apart because of a mistake, that’s the point at which the character should realize what has happened, and should react accordingly. If no such reaction was evidenced, it might be because the character has successfully hidden his inner self-fury – but that needs to be consistent with the rest of the displayed personality, and strains credibility if it happens too often.

Still, this solution is so useful that I am very careful when conceptualizing non-human characters and races to examine the ways in which I can justify some analogue of human fallibility. I don’t care if I’m talking about artificial organisms, aliens, or ancient dragons with Intelligence and Wisdom in the 30s.

Using this technique does require that bit of advance prep by the GM. Some mistakes can’t be characterized appropriately, and so as soon as a mistake is discovered, I need to be able to judge whether or not this repair technique is appropriate so that I can have the NPC react appropriately.

Of course, if a mistake is not discovered in-play and at-the-time, you have more flexibility.

Minor Repair Technique #5: Retroactive Explanation

I only use this technique when it’s effortless. There are times when the moment of identification of a plot hole also yields a spontaneous retroactive explanation. When that happens, I generally go with my instinct and look to implement that solution – assuming that it holds up.

There are two litmus tests that such explanations have to pass. The first is that the logic has to hold up – there is no point in patching a plot hole with another one! The second is that the domino effect has to be minimal – within practical limits, let us say.

It is sometimes possible to add additional content to the “patch” that constrains or limits the domino effect, and whenever the second of those litmus tests is failed, I actively look for some way of doing so. If I don’t find one, then I reluctantly rule out the “obvious” solution.

But usually, that’s either not a problem or it is a manageable one. There are then three ways of delivering the “patch”: as a drop-in; as part of a planned adventure; or as part of a specially-written mini-adventure created for this explicit purpose.

Assuming that the guidelines presented on earlier solutions are being followed, a patch only becomes necessary when a plot point intended to be significant in the campaign’s future – near or far – is directly affected. That justifies the use of a mini-adventure if necessary. It also makes it far more likely that the “patch” can be delivered as part of the adventure in which the plot hole becomes significant – if it is scheduled to occur soon enough.

That last point is a critical consideration. It is always better to deliver the explanation as soon as possible after the plot hole comes to light; with every passing hour of play, the status quo becomes more firmly embedded within the collective memories of the players. If it’s going to be a while before the patch becomes critically necessary, it makes a drop-in more attractive.

So, what is a drop-in, for the benefit of those who don’t recognize the term? It’s not unlike the information that I often package in a blue text-box at the top of an article here at Campaign Mastery, containing side-notes, glimpses behind the curtain, contextual explanations, mea culpas… well, you get the idea. So, a drop-in is literally an inserted package of text, usually only a paragraph or two, delivered out-of-continuity at the start of a day’s play.

Minor Repair Technique #6: The Wisdom Of Players

I’ve spoken of this last technique on a number of occasions, in a variety of contexts and problems. During general chatter before play starts, simply mention that you’ve spotted a plot hole and are fishing for solutions, then describe the problem in terms of what the players already know (and not revealing anything that they don’t know from in-play). Then just sit back and listen.

Of course, you are aware of constraints that the players aren’t; you know parts of the story that they aren’t. So you might not get anything usable. Or you might get a brilliant idea. I use those parts of the story that the players don’t yet know as filters for selecting the best answer.

At the same time, anything that hasn’t been revealed in-game yet is subject to revision as necessary, and there have been one or two occasions when I have, on the basis of the discussion, completely junked the planned adventure in favor of something similar (i.e. cannibalizing whatever has been prepared) that incorporates their solution.

If I become aware of a plot hole in the middle of play, I have even simply pointed it out in-game as something that doesn’t make sense to the PCs, sometimes after a die roll, to make it seem as though I was prepared for it to happen, even expected it and had done it all deliberately, improvising the rest of the day’s adventure before formalizing the plot developments between game sessions.

I’m often so adept at this that the players often never realize that I have deliberately let them steer me off-script in order to solve a plot problem that had been overlooked until it was too late. The last time it happened, for example, was in the conclusion to the Mictlan-tecuhtli adventure (the link is to the Jan 2016 article in which I described the villain for others to use).

But it’s fair to say that I’m well-practiced in all these techniques. They won’t solve every plot hole problem – but they will deal with an awful lot of them, very successfully.

In the next part of this series: Structurally significant repair techniques!