Plot devices

[DocS]

So, what sort of plot devices have you guys used in your GMing?

One favorite of mine is the old 'Start the adventure in the Middle!'.

For example, when the session begins, you simply ask the party "So, who's driving the Speedboat?"

The party will look at you confused, so you ask them again "Who's driving the speedboat?"

They will ask questions here and there, you pause, and say "Well, you're all on a speedboat, it's going 90 miles an hour, there's no time to explain any more, but I need to know who's driving it for the next check!"

Here's where the party all pulls out their character sheets and tries to figure out who is supposed to be the best at speedboat driving. If you've really planned things well, you know who it is (for example, The Operator), so once they debate, and settle things, they point to The Operator and say 'Him! He's driving the boat!'.

At which point, you look confused at him and say, "You? Odd choice, I figured you'd be below decks........... defusing the bomb".

Let The Party's Jaw Drop, and then say, "Now, I bet you're all wondering how you got into this!"

Now, start the Adventure, say it's "3 days earlier", and run the game as normal, with one exception. Somewhere in the adventure, they will get onto a speedboat with a Bomb in it. You can 'fake out' the speedboat in a million ways, keep 'em guessing.

[Natalya]

I did a campaign with pre-generated characters one time. I passed out character sheets only partially filled and described them all waking up under a heavy tarp, smelling mildew and sweat, hearing wood creak and feeling every bump on the road, while listening to two men talk about whether they should risk stripping the PCs down now against regulation or wait until they were at the slave cells, and realizing they have no memory whatsoever of who or what they were and how they got in that situation.

There were cute moments, such as when one person asked, "We don't remember our alignments, do we?" "No." "Good," and snapped an NPCs neck for being a witness to a murder. (He was scrupulous, as he learned later on.)

[MASTERMIND]

DamonS and EPIC. Brilliant, absolutely brilliant. I loved both of those ideas.

However, those aren't examples of plot device. Those are examples of En media res a technique where narration begins in the middle of the story instead of from the very beginning. A plot device is person or object introduced into the story for the sole purpose of advancing the story.

Like in EPIC's example the dragon lands and begins to speak to the party in a language the characters do not understand. They find an amulet on the ground that allows them to understand the dragon's language. The amulet is a plot device. But the story began en media res.

Now as far as 'en media res' goes I thought those were top notch. I took notes which in my world is the highest compliment I can give you.

[Thinyser]

i've done this before ... this one time the very first words out of my mouth were "so you're all in the middle of a field of blowing wheat that is waist high, there is a large ruined grain elevator in the distance, the sky is dark with storm clouds and a dragon descending down upon you from above."

After my initial I would declare that I drop down and belly crawl towards the grain elevator using the wheat as visual cover... or teleport to the elevator if that were an option.

[DocS]

DamonS and EPIC. Brilliant, absolutely brilliant. I loved both of those ideas.

However, those aren't examples of plot device. Those are examples of En media res a technique where narration begins in the middle of the story instead of from the very beginning. A plot device is person or object introduced into the story for the sole purpose of advancing the story.

'Got me fair 'n square. on that one.... cept...

you spelled the Latin Wrong....

(And DAMON RETAKES THE THRONE AS RESIDENT LITERATURE DORK!)
..thank you.... thank you...

1) The "Everyone's a GM for a day". I wanted to flesh out a rather generic villain (CS Troops), so what I did was the week before, I gave every player a bunch of information about them with the following instruction.

"Next week, everyone will be sitting around The Fire talking their most striking experience with The CS"

How the game is run. Everyone runs a roughly 30-40 minute adventure, they make characters for everyone else, and it goes around the table, as the "storyteller" GM's a little mini-adventure with the common element of CS troops.

<More English Lit points for who can name this technique. Double points for the greatest English example, Triple for the greatest Middle Eastern one>

2) "Cut Scene".

Ok, so you want to establish villains as being big bad and lethal, but you don't want to eviscerate PC's merely for plot purposes. So, you draw up "mook" characters, and run a little 20 minute mini-session, where the players are playing... say... Tolkeen guards who. They can play, have fun, you run the session, have the nasty CS troops kill them in innimitable style (Hunt them down, handle shooting back, etc...)

And no one is mad since, well, their characters are unharmed. You got to try your villains out for size, they got a premonition of things to come. Run the rest of the adventure normally, but the Players really have a more vibrant idea of what's going on around them.

2.1) "Cut Scene... Redux"

After you've established that when they switch characters, the 'mooks' they play will probably die in horrific ways..... Then one day, you do this trick, and then you give one of them the character sheet of a favorite helpful NPC..... Just like in The Untouchables, when the scene cuts to Sean Connery getting jumped by The Mob... or Highlander when it cuts to Sean Connery eating with Macleod's wife... They know something bad is going to happen, heheheh.

[MASTERMIND]

You're right. I kept saying En Media Res when it is In Medias Res. My apologies.

I can't remember the term for it but we have done something similar before.

We called it "Storyteller in the Round" because we were playing World of Darkness game. We had a timer set to 30 minutes. I started the story and ran the game for 30 minutes. The second the buzzer went off the player to my left took over and continued for 30 minutes. This continued all night and we had a great time doing it. Although the style of the story changed with the Storyteller the setting remained mostly intact. We did it on Halloween night too which made it even better.

Along the other examples I did something also similar before. My players begged me once to allow them to play an "evil" campaign. They rolled up their evil characters and I gave them a direction and let them be as evil as they wanted (while taking notes). It was a very involved and interesting story. But before we could finish the story they came in one day and I had them roll new characters. A little confused they all complied and as the story unfolded they realized they were now protagonists facing off against the villains they were playing before. What made it even better is I let the characters live up to the evil standards set before and they made some of the best villains I have ever had.

[Killer Cyborg]

So, what sort of plot devices have you guys used in your GMing?

One favorite of mine is the old 'Start the adventure in the Middle!'.

For example, when the session begins, you simply ask the party "So, who's driving the Speedboat?"

The party will look at you confused, so you ask them again "Who's driving the speedboat?"

They will ask questions here and there, you pause, and say "Well, you're all on a speedboat, it's going 90 miles an hour, there's no time to explain any more, but I need to know who's driving it for the next check!"

Here's where the party all pulls out their character sheets and tries to figure out who is supposed to be the best at speedboat driving. If you've really planned things well, you know who it is (for example, The Operator), so once they debate, and settle things, they point to The Operator and say 'Him! He's driving the boat!'.

At which point, you look confused at him and say, "You? Odd choice, I figured you'd be below decks........... defusing the bomb".

Let The Party's Jaw Drop, and then say, "Now, I bet you're all wondering how you got into this!"

Now, start the Adventure, say it's "3 days earlier", and run the game as normal, with one exception. Somewhere in the adventure, they will get onto a speedboat with a Bomb in it. You can 'fake out' the speedboat in a million ways, keep 'em guessing.

A friend of my is finishing up his own system that I believe you might just love.
The premise is that you simply start playing, and figure out the plot and characters as you go along (although the GM has some sort of rough plot in mind).
The typical adventure starts like what you describe, only you don't play out the flashback of how they got there, you just figure it out as you go along.

[Killer Cyborg]

I always start with a "Roll initiative."

then tell them why. nothing brings a party together like gunning down some baddies.

I've used that one a few times myself.

[Warwolf]

Hmm... my only problem with using In Medias Res is that it smacks of railroading the group to a particular event. Of course, you can always use the "all roads lead to Rome" technique and at least make them think they have a choice.

[Lagos]

I think the best one is to deliver after they've picked up whatever equipment they want, give them all the money and gear their evil little hearts desire and open with these lines:

"As you're being escorted to your cell on Death Row..."

[Razorwing]

Hmm... my only problem with using In Medias Res is that it smacks of railroading the group to a particular event. Of course, you can always use the "all roads lead to Rome" technique and at least make them think they have a choice.

The hallmark of a great GM is getting the players to do what he needs them to do while letting them think it was their idea in the first place. It isn't railroading if the players belive they had a choice in the matter (even if all those choices would have lead to the same result).

[Kesslan]

Well there's the start them off in jail angle allright as was mentioned allready. Though in my case it wasnt death row. It was a slave ship.

Basicaly the GM let us make up characters from what ever setting to be played in the Phase World setting. Along with a few restrictions etc. He let us pick out our gear etc.

Then started us off with the line about only rembering being in some town/city what ever (I cant quite recall) that got attacked and thats all we could recall at the time. Sort of an amnesia thing.

Anyway so here we cometo in seperate cells, no gear etc. And the slaveship had fallen under attack, lost power to the gravity generators and (unknown to us) was on a stuck collision course for a planet where (unless it was diverted somehow) would crash, likely killing everyone onboard.

So first there was great fun in getting out of the cells, then overpowering some lightly armed (But armored) guards for their weapons, dealing with them, then taking their gear, to overtake even more heavily armed guards etc.

Eventualy we found our own equipment, got to the bridge. And I had the dubious honour of facing off in HTH combat with an enhanced Khreegor in my squishy SDC self wearing only light body armor and a force field. Not to mention it was still a zero-g environment.

It just sorta went from there. Interestingly enough, my character at the time was the only solid combat character and thus wound up donig most of the dirty work.

A side result of this was the GMs inclusion of various hazards in said Zero-G environment. Hanging live wires, zero-g fires, shuddernig ship, falling odds and sods....

Just from the environment alone my character took a fair bit of a beating and we eventually managed to escape from the ship along with other freed soon to be slaves and then pretty much just freeformed the plot from there.

In the end as far as some of the plot ideas mentioned above being 'railroading'. I think most of the best openings for an RPG almost allways involve some minor form of railroading. But just for that inital adventure. Afterall it's the GMs job usually to decide how it is the characters all wound up working togeather if their an assorted bunch of misfits.

[Spinachcat]

At which point, you look confused at him and say, "You? Odd choice, I figured you'd be below decks........... defusing the bomb".

Awesome!

[Noon]

I once used an in media res, where I said to the players their characters had been working the last few weeks on salvaging from an old site. And now they were having a few congratulatory drinks on having finished, when they hear their truck, with all the gear, driving off outside...when everyones inside.

Of course we never played out all the salvage, so it isn't a sting on the players time at all - they just get to straight away chase a stolen truck full of treasure that they get to keep once they catch it.

Although I think some of the players acted a bit as if I were screwing them over...amazing, really.

Hmm... my only problem with using In Medias Res is that it smacks of railroading the group to a particular event. Of course, you can always use the "all roads lead to Rome" technique and at least make them think they have a choice.

The hallmark of a great GM is getting the players to do what he needs them to do while letting them think it was their idea in the first place. It isn't railroading if the players belive they had a choice in the matter (even if all those choices would have lead to the same result).

It is railroading. Just because they don't realise their trapped in the matrix, so to speak, doesn't mean they aren't trapped in the matrix. Perception doesn't make true.

Your almost railroading/using illusion on yourself into thinking no ones being railroaded.

[mrloucifer]

I've never used this method of starting before... I may have to try it

[Noon]

Since when In life do you have a choice?

Well, presumably they could decline to play in your game. That'd be a choice they have in life.