PCs and Plots: In Media Finiti Res

[Jay Turner]

Okay, I'm not sure about my Latin in the subject. It's been awhile. :)

Something I noticed, though, and this might be a specifically ME thing, was that an insane number of plots I've come up with for my D&D campaign have dropped the characters into a situation "in the middle of the end of things." That is to say, something happened that produced a situation, and the players must enter the situation, figure out what happened, and clean it all up.

Has anyone else noticed this? For example, the players find out that people have been disappearing from this small village. They investigate, only to find out that this wizard's dwelling overrun with demons. They investigate further (hacking down a few minor demons in the process), and find out that the wizard summoned a devil that promised to bring his dead wife back to life. The devil kept her promise by taking the wife's body as a shell, infesting him to act as her mindless drone, and creating workers out of his goblin servants. With this knowledge, the players team up with the survivors and kill the devil and her minions, saving the missing townsfolk.

Anyway, the adventure to its most distilled is this: 1) Learn of problem. 2) Investigate problem. 3) Learn of intricate backstory. 4) Solve problem.

Am I alone? Do your players usually come into the story in the middle of the end of the story's arc? How do you avoid it, if not? How can one make a D&D story that involves the players' characters from the beginning?

[jdagna]

I have found this kind of situation to be fairly effective.  It also kind of makes sense.  The police, for example, never get called in until a problem has developed to a certain point.

However, avoiding it is simple.  If I wanted to do it with your particular example, I would have the players be servants or friends of the wizard in question.  That's generally the best way to get players "in on the ground floor" so to speak.  They might also get hired at the beginning (perhaps the wizard needed a special ingredient that they could retrieve for him).  The difficulty here is that players often refuse to help such people, or feel like the GM tricked them later.  Pulling this off requires some trust, and a sense that they can affect the outcome.

The other general way is to have the players come up with their own plot.  Maybe they want to take over a kingdom, find a special item, etc.  The problem is that players are generally just to smart/cautious to do something like summoning a demon to bring their wife back from the dead, so basing everything on player choice will limit your campaign scope.

In fact, I'm running two campaigns right now: one where the characters are following the model you discuss and one where the characters are setting their own agenda.  I'm enjoying the former much more at the moment, though I've seen both models succeed.

[Jay Turner]

Well, I find that this type of plot lets me flex my muscles as a plotter without railroading the PCs too much. I get to come up with mindbending backstories that the players discover, Call-of-Cthulhu-like, as they play. I suppose it also gives them a sense that things happen without them, as well.

[Mike Holmes]

Jay, sounds like Bangs to me. Place a character in a place where he has to respond and let the players make their decisions. One of the characteristics of Bangs is that you frame the characters to the action, not leading them up to it. And, like your play, it's not railroading, because the players are left to make the fun decisions themselves.

Kickers, OTOH, are player generated backstory. Meaning that they can, sometimes, be more of a starting point for a story.

But in any case, given that you only narrate the events surrounding the PCs, it's no surprise that some backstory will have occured "off-stage" because it doesn't involve the PCs. An interesting way around this, if your interested, is to tell the PCs the backstory as an out of game narrative. Tell the players, not the characters, IOW. In fact you can do this third person. Then, when the players hit the ground with their characters' entrances, it'll not neccessitate them learning the backstory so much (other than for plausibility's sake).

If you want to leave the suspense in, however, then to some extent you have to begin In Media Res.

Mike

[John Kim]

Anyway, the adventure to its most distilled is this: 1) Learn of problem. 2) Investigate problem. 3) Learn of intricate backstory. 4) Solve problem.

Am I alone? Do your players usually come into the story in the middle of the end of the story's arc? How do you avoid it, if not? How can one make a D&D story that involves the players' characters from the beginning?

There is a simple answer to this.  The way to avoid it is to have PCs who are dissatisfied with the status quo.  Faced with a stable situation, they need to be the type who will want to shake things up and change things.  How exactly this is depends on the specific campaign.  If there is a peaceful, lawful society -- then the PCs may be villians.  If there is an oppressive government, then they may be revolutionaries.  If there is no government, then they may be a community trying to form one.  

This is fairly clear from most action/adventure plots.  A typical hero will just sit around if there is no villian to fight -- i.e. he is re-active as oposed to pro-active.  In contrast, a typical villian will actively move forward to conquer the town/nation/world even if a hero doesn't come knocking -- i.e. she is pro-active.  To avoid playing the villians, you need to make the status quo evil in some way.  For an extended campaign, the evil has to be deeply rooted -- i.e. the problem isn't solved by just killing the corrupt king.  

My Vinland campaign is primarily driven by the PCs ambitions rather than threats to them.  They have a variety of projects and goals they are pursuing.  Thorgerd pursued revenge for what happened to her parents; Skallagrim is advancing to become a powerful noble; and various others.  The loose order of viking society makes pursuing these laden with various possibilities.

[M. J. Young]

To address what appear to me to be the questions, I have done that, but it's hardly the only nor the most common way I design scenarios. I think, though, that I've played in a lot of them along the way, so it's probably pretty popular.

You might try having the situation arise around them, rather than having them come to it. To do this, you would have to think of how it could build quietly enough that 1) the player characters would have only the vaguest notion that something was happening and 2) they are unlikely to stop it before it reaches a significant level.

For example, you could suggest that in the valley beyond the mountain above the village where the characters live there is a mountain giant quietly gathering an army of humanoids to assault the free lands. Since most of these creatures move by night and seek shelter by day, the initial stirrings would be an increase in encounters, a farmer killed apparently by goblins he found in his hayloft, a couple of unusual sightings such as lone trolls and hill giants, and maybe some dying orc making some cryptic comment about the vengeance to come. The players become involved in investigating the farmer's death, routing out some of the verrmin, tracking the troll (who goes over the mountain back to the wildlands), but will they realize that this is all part of something bigger--and if they do, what do they do about it?

To apply a bit of illusionism to the scenario, at whatever point they realize that something is happening on the other side of the mountain, they're just in time to discover that the armies are almost ready to attack; they can take some steps on their own, and get word back to the village to send for help against the imminent invasion.

You'll notice here that the players are involved in discovering the clues from the first moment the evil plan begins, but still have the major problem to face (since whenever they cross the mountain to investigate further, that's how long it took the mountain giant to gather his army).

That's just one way. I've done a lot of others.

--M. J. Young

[Callan S.]

*snip*
Am I alone? Do your players usually come into the story in the middle of the end of the story's arc? How do you avoid it, if not? How can one make a D&D story that involves the players' characters from the beginning?

I would think this ideal, to start somewhere interesting.

Anyway, if you want them to start at the start, do the same thing with seeds to follow up. Eg, one PC meets a demon who offers a deal. Another rescues an attractive damsel with a dark past (ookay, that might be back to 'in the middle of the story' territory, but screw it! ;) ), while another finds the deed to a gambling den.

Besides, everything is encountered half way through, in RL too. Peoples lives are long stories of quite some interest. Somethings always been happening before you got there.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Jay,

You may be interested in this rather old thread:

Hooking the players

In media res isn't the main topic, but I think my points about it still stand.

Best,
Ron