How To Create Your Own Plot Factory – Part I
Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #0834
Unending plots become a grind. Encounter after encounter with no resolution or reward in sight causes players to lose enthusiasm. And when they lose their drive, game sessions fall off the wheels.
When Players Sabotage Your Game
For example, why roleplay hard to squeeze clues out of reluctant enemies when it’s not going to get you anywhere soon?
So the lure of combat where you can beat clues out of foes becomes more appealing instead, because at least the combat generates instant fun for some players.
Another example, why pursue the plot at all? Because after umpteen sessions, where the end and its promised reward of magic and riches does not even appear on the horizon, why not become unruly and throw some random chaos at the GM screen?
So we need to resolve plots as a type of reward itself for players, not to mention deliver the goods once in awhile.
Plot Factories
What if you always had a plot about to hit the exciting climax stage?
Think about that for a second.
Every session the players believe they are about to catch up with an enemy and confront them, or they are about to get to the bottom of a mystery and prove their case, or they are about to rescue the prisoners.
How grand would that be? Your players would race to every session eager to find out what happens next!
No more dead zones of meaningless gameplay. No more apathetic players driving sessions off the wheels because they have lost focus. No more bored players disengaging and dragging the energy down.
It might be hard to grasp right now how you can do this.
How can you always have a plot about to hit a thrilling high gear every session?
My Adventure Building Workshop gives you a ton of tools and techniques for building adventures that do this.
Techniques like Spikes of Danger, Mining Carts, and the Legends & Lore Clues System. And this week I would like to introduce to you the idea of Plot Factories as another weapon in your Agile GM Toolbox to be able to run campaigns this way.