At some point in your career as Director, Keeper or whatever it may be, you're going to realize you've done the same plot once too often. It might be Trail, Delta Green, Yellow King, Call, or any of a dozen other investigative horror/supernatural settings, but regardless of the How or Where the one guaranteed fact is, it'll happen.
If this is your first time at bat you might be feeling nervous. Surely this is the end? Hang up your hat? No more the wide and open vistas for you, that sort of thing?
How do you plot when you've run out of plots?
First, consider some of the basics we've already discussed. Those will never change.
A CORE CONCEPT tree bears CORE CONCEPT fruit. Everything you put in this moment has to reflect the core concepts of the setting and the game. Exactly what that means will depend on the setting itself, and your interpretation of that setting.
Second, consider the OPFOR, whatever it may be. Whether some forgotten threat from beyond the stars or a bloodsucker very much in the here and now, any OPFOR has these characteristics:
- Power appropriate to its function.
- Goals, which may be personal or professional.
- Assets, which it uses to reach its Goals.
Finally, remember that the players will have already clued you in to what they want to see. If half or more of the team is dedicated to infiltration and sneakiness of all kinds, then they want a sneaky plot. If they've gone full combat monster, then they want a combat plot, and so on.
OK, having said all that let's cover some specifics. I'm going to use Night's Black Agents in this example, but the principles can be used for any investigative setting.
Roundabout p. 187 of the NBA main book Ken Hite starts talking about possible scenarios, and gives nine active scenario examples:
- Destroy. The agents must destroy the local conspiracy apparat.
- Flip. The agents must flip an asset to their side.
- Heist. The agents must steal something
- Hit. The agents must kill someone
- Hunt. The agents must find someone.
- Rescue. The agents must rescue someone.
- Sneak. The agents must infiltrate a secure location.
- Trace. The agents must find something, possibly something that went missing long ago.
- Uncover. The agents must uncover a mystery.
The only one of the nine active scenario snippets that isn't common outside of the spy genre is the Flip idea, and even that can be encountered in settings other than Night's Black Agents. I can easily picture a Bookhounds story, for example, that involves Flipping an auctioneer, say, or a local government figure, so they're more friendly to the Hounds.
Hits probably aren't that common in Bookhounds either, but even then I can picture a situation in which the Hounds have to destroy someone's professional or personal reputation, which amounts to the same thing.
Hite also points out that you can reverse all of these concepts and make them reactive, so (for instance) the players' role may be to protect, rather than hit, a target, or defend, rather than heist, a valuable trove. That means you have eighteen potential scenario ideas, rather than nine.
In Swords of the Serpentine, for instance, it could be that your band of ne'er-do-wells is hired to protect, rather than Heist, the wedding presents at a highfalutin' nuptial celebration. Or remove all evidence that might help an official investigation Uncover a mystery, such as what really happened to those wedding presents.
OK, so I started this by talking about doing the same plot once too often. If you're like me, then you'll look at that list and realize that there are some of those nine you've done a lot of, and some that you barely touch. I'm big on Heists. Rescues are not uncommon. I've planned the occasional Sneak in my day. Hunts are a lot of fun.
But I don't often do Uncover, Trace, Hit, Flip, or Destroy. There's no real reason why not. Those just aren't scenario ideas I use often. I also don't tend to do reactive scenarios of any kind, since those carry an unspoken risk: they make the players sacrifice the initiative, and become passive. In a game like Night's Black Agents - in most settings, really - it's a good idea to encourage the players to be active. Passivity can be habit forming, and that's usually a bad thing.
My rule of thumb when stuck in a rut is simply this: take the basic principles, which you will always rely on, and apply those to a scenario idea that's outside of your usual favorites.
Let's Reverse an Uncover, Trace, Hit, Flip or Destroy seed and see where that takes us.
As stated, I'm using Night's Black Agents. I'll go further and say this is a Dracula Dossier game, using Whitby as the setting, with Alien vampires as the OPFOR. I'll use the Ancient Stones from the main book (p 147, Vampires are silicon-based aliens existing mostly outside our conventional Euclidean geometry. Their perceptions are not time-bound; they see all times as simultaneous.)
Let's Reverse a Trace scenario.
The Vampires want to uncover something, and the agents would rather they did not - or alternatively, the agents would rather the Vampires' agents get bad intel which they take back to their bloodsucker masters.
I already know from the core concept (alien stones) that these are entities with a peculiar grasp of reality, that are big on prophesy, blood sacrifice, time manipulation and weird science. Those are the tools at their disposal, which means those are the elements that will play into this scenario.
I also know that the OPFOR will probably include, if not an actual Perfecti, at least a Renfield or some similar supernatural leader-type, and other, more human agents.
I also know that, since this is Dracula Dossier and the setting is Whitby, that there's going to be all kinds of Dracula-related information that the OPFOR will want to uncover. This is where Edom once held Dracula, after all. There's bound to be all sorts of intel left behind after an operation like that.
Roundabout p. 103-4 of Dracula Unredacted the text talks about Billington & Sons and its dealings with the shipping firm Carter, Patterson & Co., which delivers fifty boxes (of grave soil, though the text doesn't specify) to Carfax. Since this is Unredacted, there's all sorts of intriguing handwritten notes that lead to further clues.
OK, so this is all coming together. I need a Reverse Trace, which means the OPFOR wants to Trace something and the agents want to muddy the waters. Given the situation and the setting it seems reasonable to say that the OPFOR wants to know more about those fifty boxes and their delivery instructions. Billington & Sons still exists. Carter, Patterson & Co. got bought out, but that doesn't mean all its records are gone - the new parent may have them. Billington is a small, family affair, and if there's one thing about a family-owned company it's that they keep everything. Absolutely everything. Including company records that nobody in their right mind would consider valuable, but which they (in their infinite wisdom) still have in boxes up in the attic - or wherever it may be.
So I have an OPFOR which will be arriving in Whitby any minute looking for information held by Billington & Sons. The organization the OPFOR works for is big on prophesy, blood sacrifice, time manipulation and weird science, so when they arrive it's a safe bet there'll be an uptick in those things - say, when the OPFOR arrives the first thing it does is conduct a blood sacrifice ritual up at Whitby Abbey, and its team regularly visits palmists, Tarot card readers and similar in the town. Or peculiar time events start to occur - odd Victorian vistas, say, or paintings in galleries that seem to warp reality around them. Google weird science facts and see which ones you want to borrow - that sort of thing. I quite like the look of bioluminescent human bodies, but you do you.
It's the agents' job to mislead the OPFOR. That means the agents need to get there first, and either remove the evidence the OPFOR searches for, or plant information that leads the OPFOR in the wrong direction. The OPFOR seeks one or more boxes of grave dirt, and to find it they want to get access to the delivery records from Carter, Paterson that are kept in Billington & Sons' attic.
It's up to the agents how they do that. They might choose to impersonate a Tarot card reader and, using their Gambling or Filch abilities, force a result that benefits them. Death Reversed? Well, that means ... They might manipulate weird science to make it appear as though the box the OPFOR's looking for is [over here].
They might do any number of things, but at some point there's going to be a confrontation at or near Billington & Sons, where the OPFOR sneaks in looking for records in the attic and the agents will have to make sure either that the OPFOR doesn't find them, or only finds the records the agents want the OPFOR to find. That means in turn that the Director will need to flesh out Billington a bit. Who's the current senior solicitor? Who's on the front desk? What's an old family office like Billington look like - the epitome of shabby good taste, a modern front hiding a classic interior, fancy front rooms and dusty old storage areas, something else?
Further there will probably be a second confrontation either at the place where that missing box is, or at a place of the agents' choosing - perhaps where the agents have planted a 'missing box' for the OPFOR to find. As Director you need to think of a few places where that might happen, so that when the agents spend a point of Tradecraft (or whatever it may be) you can suggest things like, say, that abandoned jet mine near Whitby where Edom used to keep vampires, or even an iconic location like Carfax or Seward's Asylum. Suggestion made, you need to have at least an idea of what might be found there.
I could go on, but rather than do that I want to draw your attention back to the process.
The problem was, you've fallen into a scenario design rut and are looking for a way to get out.
The answer was twofold. First, go back to base principles. You already know the core concept, the nature of the OPFOR, and your players' personal preferences. You can build on those three things to make any scenario you like.
Second, once you've reminded yourself of the base principles you then go to the seed idea list and remind yourself of the ones you least use. Pick one of those, and use that. This forces you out of your usual habits, which in turn will probably force you to think of ideas, situations, and settings that you don't often play with.
The best way out of any problem is forward, but if you keep doing the same thing that got you in a rut in the first place, don't expect to get out of that rut in a hurry. It's like repeating the same course of action again and again in the hopes you'll get a different result. Or doubling down on a bad decision.
Rely on core principles, then take the least-used option and see what that gets you. If nothing else, you'll get a different perspective on the problem - and your players will be surprised by the result.
That's it for this week. Enjoy!
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