Number of current plots?

[Mojo_Bones]

I have recently started GMing again after taking about 8 years off. Looking back over my old games, I realizeI was quite linear in my plots. I rarely started a new plot until the current plot was completely, or at least nearly finished. I am trying to do more small plots mixed into the larger arcing plot this time.

So when Gming, how many plots do you have running at any one time? Do most just stick to one main plot with some small "side adventures" or do you do larger plot lines at the same time? Just wondering.

[Captain Obvious]

It's been forever since I've GMed much of anything myself, so I can't tell you how much I juggle at once with any degree of certainty.

There are a couple of things you can do that will add a little complexity though. First of all, the characters' disads are a good source of sideplots (or even main plots if you or the players put enough effort into them). Villainy Amok has some good ideas for these.

Next, you can look ahead to adventures you plan to run, and add some foreshadowing. If you have a major adventure planned that is based around Dr Impossible's latest invention, you can have Viper try to steal it. If an adventure hinges on the players rescuing an NPC, you should introduce the NPC far enough ahead of time that the players get to know him before the kidnapping takes place.

Lastly, you can start the next adventure before the current one is finished. The characters then have to decide how to prioritize their efforts. Do they investigate what appears to be a new serial killer, or do they continue their attempts to track down the Viper nest? Once things get really going on one plot, the other one will naturally take a back seat, but you can still throw in a few details here and there on the other one, and then the characters will be ready to hit it full force when the first plot is complete.

[Killer Shrike]

2-4, averaging 3. I basically let the players decide which ones to pursue, and I progress any plot lines that aren't being paid attention to by the players in the background while they do whatever it is they are doing.

[Spence]

If I have an established group I settle in at three completely separate plot lines. Two are usually clearly unrelated, but the third is always ambiguous and can be mistaken as relating to one of the others. If you work it right the players will mismatch some plot clues while correctly separating others. I also sprinkle in one shots for variety.

In one of my older "book" driven games the two major plot lines revolved around Demon and Viper, while the third was driven by a loosely affiliated team of superthieves, drawn from the various enemies books. In the new Champions Universe, I'd probably use two smaller organizations instead of Demon or Viper, but I'd use GRAB as the core of the thieves. It really muddied up the water when one of the principle villain groups hired the thieves to steal something.

[Curufea]

I only have a few active plots running at a time - usually 2 or 3.
The passive plots are just the same as the active ones, but it just isn't their turn yet to be pursued because the players would get confused if there were too many.
The total amount of plots I have at any given session (active+passive) is equal to the number of players + 1 (for me)
:)

As it's a pulpy kind of fantasy, each character backstory is part of a plot.

[Blue]

I cannot even come up with a joke for how many active plots I have in my game. I'm coming up on the last session of this run of the campaign, and it will tie up a few plots, but there will still be plenty of others that are ongoing.

It's just how I do things. I love to start a plot and see if I can tie it up in its own time.

Not to mention this campaign was intended to be contrived and over the top in how all the plots interract but don't seem to interract.

I could really do with a linear game next time I run something.

[steamteck]

My games been going on so long the plots practically generate themselves. There's a main one they concentrate on and maybe 2-3 in the background most times.

[Killer Shrike]

My games been going on so long the plots practically generate themselves. There's a main one they concentrate on and maybe 2-3 in the background most times.

Yes, at a certain point, many campaigns become plot factorys, making the GM's job easier.

[Scott Baker]

I'm also looking at getting back into GMing after an extended (decade+) absence from gaming.

Early on I mostly ran single plot, if you could call it that. Often it seems that it was more the adventure of the day. Of course, when you have a rotating cast of a dozen players and ~30 PCs, you don't always know who or what to expect for any given session.

After that, I followed what several others have already mentioned. I'd have one A story arc, and run a couple of B arcs on the side. The B arc sessions would intersperse with the A arc.

For the current campaign I've been planning, there's definitely an A arc for the overall campaign. By the time that wraps up, the campaign can either end, or if the players want to, it can continue on with a changed focus. There are also a major B arc, and I'll introduce one or two more as the game continues. I also want a C arc for every PC that we touch on every session or two and which will eventually lead to a 2-3 session "mini-series."

Scott Baker

[Vondy]

The word Byzantine comes to mind...

[Markdoc]

I tend to only run 2-3: one major storyline and one or two minors, plus a few unconnected short side adventures, simply because the players can't cope with more and often try to tie completely incidental events into ongoing story lines. Recently, I almost felt like saying to them "They are just pirates, alright? Perfectly ordinary pirates, of the sort you can find anywhere - not everyone with a funny accent is an evil cultist!"*

cheers, Mark

*one of my favourite lines from the fantastic fantasy comic "With cape and blade" comes when the main characters encounter the Flying Dutchman. The neo-platonist Reynard de Maupertuis says "See? Nothing supernatural at all! It's a perfectly ordinary shipwreck on the head of a perfectly ordinary sea monster."

cheers, Mark

[Spence]

I tend to only run 2-3: one major storyline and one or two minors, plus a few unconnected short side adventures, simply because the players can't cope with more and often try to tie completely incidental events into ongoing story lines.

Just about right. I usually decide on which is the major storyline by player interest. Where ever they focus becomes the primary plot. Once the players are comfortable with the game, the campaign will generally drive itself as steamteck and Killer Shrike mentioned up thread.

For me anything more becomes too convolted and difficult to keep straight. It isn't impossible to keep more lines, but it stops being fun for me and more like work.

[AliceTheOwl]

At the height of the plots, my game had five. Currently, it has 3 main plots, two of which are closely related.

Basically, I created the world, then the NPCs, then I figured out what the evil or differently-motivated ones were up to. They aren't taking turns at being evil, so it made sense that all of these different things should all be happening at once. I just need to calculate every game how much time has passed, so what the antagonists have accomplished meanwhile, and how the PC actions have affected these plans.

[Supreme Serpent]

Really depends. Starting out, probably one big one at a time as the PCs find their feet, players get comfortable with characters and the setting. Alternatively, if not sure about where to take the group, dangle a number out there and see what they bite at.

Once the campaign is going, probably 2-3 ongoing issues progressing at different speeds along with unrelated one-shots and various subplots.

So if I was to outline an example "what's going on" might look something like:

I. VIPER
a. Internal central power struggles/spillover
b. Local nest regular operations
1. Revitalized Man-Mutation Project
2. New Nest leader in town
3. regular smash&grab heists
c. Specific revenge operations
1. Dragonfist
2. Triton
3. La Pied

II. Lord Titan
a. general news from Zuraguay
b. front operations (Threshold)
1. anti-govt operations
2. show increasing corruption/break from LT

III. Others
a. Death's Head one-shots
b. Triton's Hunted by Russians - use Testosterone Boris
c. La Pied movie subplots
d. Dragonfist "Guardian Angel" type imitators running into gangs - trouble?
e. start seeding plots for future alien invasion storyline

[Rapier]

There isn't necessarily a hard and fast rule for how many plots to run at once. I've played in both types of plot-delivery and while the tenor of the games is rather different, I enjoyed both equally (in a plot delivery sense).

We are still rather new in my new campaign.

There is one very large over-reaching plot that they are just beginning to get hints about.

There was a micro-plot-arc about rescuing a damsel in distress.
Within this plot-arc, there was:
- a mini-arc about investigating a cult
- a mini-arc for working within a clan fued (between minotaurs and naga)
- a mini-arc for interacting with the competition
- clues and hints for a yet-to-be-discovered-micro-arc
- setting the stage for 3 mini-arcs (again, yet-to-be-discovered)

So I guess you could say that I had 1 main plot arc and 1 micro arc and 3 minis, for a total of 5. I also threw in the staging for the next micro-arc and a couple of the minis.

All in all, I've found that a serial plotline (where one plot is completely solved before another is begun) tends to seem more episodic. It has the feeling of being more like a TV show, where even if you missed last week's episode you can still fully enjoy this weeks. There is a general plot and time line but each episode is not necessarily vital. Kind of like Star Trek: TNG. There was continuity, but it was not necessary to see each episode to understand what was going on. You didn't need to see the episode, just be aware that Tasha Yarr died and you have as good a grounding as necessary to enjoy the current installment. Oh, the main part about this is that there is usually only one main problem (eg plot) and possibly a couple of minor ones running around. All minor plots are usually solved at the same time or before the main plot.

Intermingling plot lines tend to give more of a feeling of depth in a campaign. The feel is a bit more like soap-operas (or Desperate Housewivesy type things). If you miss one episode, you can't understand what some of the plot points mean and you end up at an AH-HAH! moment where you put 2 and 2 together and realise that all the X in the episode was because of something that happened character D last week. The main part about this method is that there are numerous plots running (both major and minor) and some plots (even minor ones) may outlast the closing of a major plot. One of the downsides to this method is that it requires the players to take good notes and be able to solve puzzles since clues may be spread out over many game sessions and not obviously have a tag on them that says "THIS IS A CLUE!"

[Savinien]

I try to stick with 1 - 2 main plots that spin-off further seeds as time goes on. I do most of my GMing online and have found it gets too complicated if I add much more.

I should add that my main plots are convoluted enough that during creation (before a plot sees play), other plots are spun off of them.

What's a plot anyway?