Controlling the Narrative - Some thoughts on the Plot Control role
Advancing the plot via a map at Mirrorshades. (Photo by: Alex Beck, Horizon Megagames)
“How do I forge an alibi?”
“I want to plant a time-bomb in the fuel refinery”
“Can my agents kidnap the Pope?”
Plot Control is a relatively new role in the world of megagames, but it is rapidly becoming a standard addition to any control team. The exact responsibilities of the role vary from game to game, but the main focus is on dealing with actions that players want to take outside of the scope of the game rules - freeform actions, or wizard wheezes, depending upon who you ask.
As Plot Control, you have an intimidating responsibility - to ensure that the game is narratively satisfying for everyone playing, without disrupting the balance of the game, or rendering parts of it irrelevant. Players’ creativity should be the driving force that shapes the narrative.
I don’t claim to have mastered the role by any means, but what follows are some observations which might be helpful to others giving it a try.
Challenge is Good
The Mad Scientist has a super-fun idea for a robot that will destroy the city. That sounds like a big, fun, cinematic thing to add into the game - and they’re a Mad Scientist with an Underground Lair and a laboratory to rival CERN - so that sounds like the sort of thing they should just be able to do, right? Done! You can have it at the start of next turn.
Far too easy. Sure, it makes for a fun scene, but the player hasn’t had to put any effort in to achieve the result (not to mention all the players who lived in the city, who may well have had their games ended). It’s fun in the moment, but it’s not the sort of thing that creates lasting memories.
Instead, try to attach challenges to an objective which are proportionate to the narrative weight of achieving it. The giant robot might require stealing a power core from the city’s nuclear power plant, building and testing prototypes, and recruiting a qualified pilot or pilots. Now the Scientist has an entire day’s worth of objectives to work through. Succeed or fail, they’ll come away with a story to tell.
Make Consequences Mechanical
The Governor of Venus wants to kidnap the child of a powerful NPC, to blackmail them into obedience. The kidnapping is successful, and the Governor tells the NPC to publicly support their re-election campaign. A holo-vision broadcast is made, and you contact the players based on Venus and tell them that the NPC is someone they trust, and that they should think seriously about following their advice. If they don’t vote for the Governor, you’ll ask them to narratively justify to you why they didn’t.
Or you just give the Governor three “+1 Vote” cards.
As Plot Control, you have a crazy amount to keep track of. Each plot thread you leave hanging is another thing to forget, accidentally undermining a player’s effort and initiative. Giving immediate, mechanical rewards for players’ actions helps tie off that line of effort; if players want to get something further, they can, but they’ll then have to invest more resources, and so forth. Until the narrative has concrete mechanical consequences, it’s only relevant to a few players; once it does, it’s relevant to everyone in the game.
Of course, having a few overarching narratives running - especially narratives tied in to players’ goals - is key to any game. But keeping a hard limit on how much of the game exists only in the narrative space is essential: it keeps the mechanical elements of the game relevant; it enables you to keep track of everything that’s going on; and it makes sure that the really interesting narratives don’t get drowned out by non-events.
The mages at Dungeons of Yendor. Their entire game was plot driven and we think they had fun playing… (Photo by: Alex Beck, Horizon Megagames)
Understand the Game
The Head Miner has acquired an “Explosives” card, and wants to know if they can use it to increase the yield from their mine. Sure, you say - that sounds reasonable. Have 20 ore.
Except - you realise too late - the mine only produces 2 ore per turn. Suddenly, the market is flooded with cheap ore, players rush through the tech tree, and two hours’ worth of carefully struck trade deals are rendered irrelevant. Frustrating - possibly even game-breaking.
As a good general rule, players’ freeform actions should never be better than the regular action in the game. They might have a higher yield for an additional cost (maybe the Explosives generate an additional ore per turn, but lower the workers’ happiness each time they’re used), but they should never replace the core mechanics of the game. Those have (probably) been thoroughly tested and analysed by the game designer, whereas you’re coming up with costs and benefits on the fly.
What this means is that being Plot Control does require a certain amount of time spent understanding the mechanics of the game. Have an idea of which resources should be scarce or plentiful, how often combat should happen and what sort of attrition rates/territory changes might be seen, how much of the tech tree players should be able to unlock. Don’t memorise the amount of each resource generated each turn (unless you really want to), but do have some key stats to hand, or know where you would look to check them (player boards or similar). If possible, talk directly to the game designer.
It’s also helpful to understand the scale of the game - does “one food” represent enough to feed a village for a week, or enough to feed a city for a month? Is “one infantry” a 10-man squad, or a division? This allows you to maintain a narrative consistency to the game - in fact, a good understanding of the scale of the different resources often provides a good shorthand for getting the mechanical balance right. (Game designers - if you can’t answer these questions, you’re setting your Control team up for failure. Be aware!)
Involve Other Players
The High Priestess wants to cleanse the city’s cemetery of the undead aura that hangs over it. You tell her that she needs to collect three ancient relics. Great - has she heard any rumours of them? Where are they? The first one is hidden deep in the forest, in a forgotten temple. She sets out, alone, to seek it. You narrate the dangers of the journey…
As Plot Control, it’s very easy to get pulled into running a scene in depth for a single player or small group of players. On very rare occasions, it’s necessary, but usually it’s a trap. The rest of the game goes on; other players and Control need your time and can’t get it; and either the stuff that happens inside the scene is irrelevant to the other players, or they feel frustrated that a significant plot element got wrapped up without any way for them to get involved.
Instead, make players depend upon each other. The High Priestess doesn’t know where the three relics are to be found. Instead, she’ll need to identify players who have the ability to investigate - maybe the Court Librarian or the Itinerant Adventurer. Once the information about the forgotten temple is discovered, she’ll need to recruit someone who can navigate the forest easily - the Elven Huntmaster? The Mysterious Ranger? In each case, the other players have their own goals, so either a deal will need to be struck, or they’ll have to be sold on the importance of removing the undead curse. Either way, a narrative is growing that lots of players can get invested in - and you’ve had to do a fraction of the work.
When doing this, it’s best to give players something specific to ask for: “The Court Librarian could perform a Research action to look into it, or the Itinerant Adventurer could Gossip in taverns”. In a busy game, it’s easy for players to misunderstand or ignore a request which doesn’t refer to things that already make sense to them. And by establishing what the cost would be for those other players to get involved, you’ve neatly created some tension and the need for a bit of favour-trading.
Foreshadowing is Essential
China has spent their intelligence budget for five turns in a row on infiltrating the American military. They’ve rolled very well, and this turn they’re ordering a military coup which will hand control of America to a Chinese-backed corporation. The American team never saw it coming!
Sounds like an easy way to give the American team a terrible day.
In real life, people and organisations are taken by surprise all the time. Covert operations completely unravel plans, unexpected decisions leave competitors high and dry. This sort of thing makes for a great film or novel, but a terrible megagame. Every player in the game has to have a degree of control over their own destiny - or why are they here?
If you allow the American team to find out about the Chinese infiltration, you create the opportunity for a spy-vs-spy war of shadows. Better yet, include some other teams, and you’ve stirred up a narrative which could quickly involve half the game. As for the Chinese team - you’ve just provided them with a much more interesting challenge than just allocating some budget and rolling well. Played right, everyone gets a better game out of this.
If players commit tonnes of resources to keep an action secret, you do want to honour that - although consider just handing back some of the resources and telling them that there’s only so subtle you can be about stealing a nuclear warhead. But maybe the secret gets out a bit slower, or in the form of a breadcrumb trail that the target has to follow to get at the truth. The key point is - a player or team should never feel like there was nothing they could have done to prevent their downfall.
Don’t be a Hero
As Plot Control, it’s very easy to take responsibility for everything that isn’t explicitly in the game rules, and other Control players should leave this call up to you. But a lot of the time, detailed intervention isn’t needed. A player asks how they could ford a normally impassable river? Let them, and Map Control, know that it’ll cost 2 Lumber and one Field Engineer, provided they have good supply lines, and leave them to work out the details.
Your responsibility as Plot Control is the overarching narrative of the game - but not every freeform action has to spawn a complex narrative with multiple players involved. If a player wants to do something that should be well within the capabilities of their role, then just make a quick ruling and pass it back to the Control running that part of the game to resolve in detail.
For folks in other Control roles - aim to let Plot Control know whenever something unusual happens, even if it’s minor. It may be part of a more complex sequence of events that you’re not aware of, or it may give Plot Control an opportunity to seed events into a part of the game that’s currently a bit too quiet. If you’ve done a fair bit of Control, you’ll have a good idea of what’s worth flagging, but if in doubt, err on the side of over-communication.
Go forth and Plot!
This article has barely skimmed the surface of the delightfully complex and rewarding role that is Plot Control. Hopefully it hasn’t put too many people off! This is a role which can be done by anyone who enjoys creating a narrative and doesn’t mind having to come up with ideas on the fly - most megagamers, in other words. Just don’t forget:
Challenge is Good: Make your players work for their goals. They’ll thank you later
Make Consequences Mechanical: Convert narrative outcomes back into mechanical consequences
Understand the Game: Ensure you don’t accidentally break anything!
Involve Other Players: Make everything into a reason to interact
Foreshadowing is Essential: Always give players a chance to defend themselves
Don’t be a Hero: Involve the whole Control team in the narrative element
Best of luck!
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