Yes, it absolutely does. It’s a game, not a script, right?

but I’ve not played with a group yet that wouldn’t assume that anything they were told was important information that they were expected to act upon, because they’re the protagonists.

Keep in mind there’s a feedback loop here. If you’ve only ever played in games where every detail is a crumb you are meant to follow (possibly on rails), you might be shocked to play in a game where that wasn’t true.

Playing in a game with more than one group of PCs can change your perspective drastically (I don’t even mean like West Marches, just any campaign world where more than one group has played). The mere idea that there are other people in the world doing things unrelated to you deflates PC-centrism.

Take your rubric:

“First of all it has to encompass or surround the characters — if it’s something that has no impact on the here and now it’s just interesting detail, not plot. Second, it should be clear to the players that their characters are not expected to resolve or even try to resolve the backdrop plot.”

In short, what you’re saying is “here’s this incredibly interesting detail that directly affects your immediate environment. Now forget all about it because it’s on the other side of this perspex wall and you can’t interact with it in any meaningful way.”

If your players are good with that, more power to you, but I’ve not played with a group yet that wouldn’t assume that anything they were told was important information that they were expected to act upon, because they’re the protagonists.

MainQuest1: Talk of a Evil Wizard; SideQuest1: Orc’s pillage nearby farms; SideQuest2: Thieves attack the characters in town;

MainQuest2: Evil Wizard Kil’dreth dies; SideQuest1: Orc’s gather resources for an attack on town; SideQuest2: The thief leader plans to assassinate the guard captain.

Basically if the thieves arnt taken care of, then when the adventurers come back from killing the wizard the towns people may say that the thieves have been acting strangely lately or something, while before they were reporting robberies. Of course this just a basic time line. I also added side quests that are independent from it, therefore they will progress to the next step whenever I feel there is a dull moment. Every side quest that I added ends in something that would drastically change the characters world. Such as that orc attack would eventually end up with an allied attack of orcs and hobgoblins or other humanoids to destroy the main town. Also the main quest really would lead to something such as: The wizard was corrupted by the power of an artifact given to him by a dragon. That is my 2 cents worth anyways.

The detectives investigating the grisly homicides don’t find clues leading to the killer, but instead discover that one of the victims, a brilliant epidemiologist, believed that he had found the cure to the plague ravaging the city. His missing journals must be found!

However, my trap is that I tend to get too involved in my own backdrops. Even if the PCs would never care about the rigged political election, rumors of assassination, guild war, etc… I feel compelled to flesh them out in greater detail for myself. Sometimes this leads me to some amazing stuff that truly enriches the experience for everyone. Sometimes I waste a day or two (or three or four…) compiling detail that will never see the light of day in gameplay. The challenge is to strike a balance between the two I guess.

To address Rob’s comments…I think there are actually multiple levels.

Direct ‘in your face’ plot points – a key NPC says…’do this’ or ‘go here’. I feel that these are generally passive as far as the PC’s are concerned. i.e. The DM wants to get them on/keep them on track

Indirect plot points – details collected from conversations, investigations, etc. The players only gain these through active roleplay

Backdrop – ‘active’ details that both add color and potentially can provide sub-plots if the PCs choose to follow up on them. In regards to Ben’s example, the superheroes may create a lot of trouble for themselves by storming the courthouse…but that doesn’t mean they can’t or won’t.

Color – ‘passive’ details…the smell of the food in a market…a description of the duke’s battle standard… These won’t lead to sub-plots nor provide information to further the main plot, but they make they are vitally important to help the suspension of disbelief for your PCs (and the DM too!)

In my own current campaign, one of my PCs is involved in an investigation into the kidnapping of a high level wizard. At first I was quite intimidated on how to present this as I had initially on presented it as (what I assumed) would only be a backdrop detail. Thus, I had nothing prepared regarding the actual kidnapping! I needed one or two ‘direct’ plot points to get the ball rolling…namely a mysterious note to meet an NPC on a dark and stormy night… As the ball got rolling, I could then set up one or two ‘indirect’ plot points camouflaged within backdrop and color details. As a contingency, I’ve kept a ‘direct’ plot point in reserve in case the PC needs a little more help. I think the trick is to present several dead ends for the PC to follow up. If I only give info on one suspect…of course that’s the kidnapper!

That’s my question, is it required that the backdrop not be interacted with or just that it be ‘unresolvable’.

The tank that doesn’t enter play is colour. The tank that rumbles through and causes a building to collapse but is part of a struggle that has nothing to do with why you’re here is the ‘background plot’. The fact that since it’s the mayorality election day, the bars are all closed until voting ends may influence play etc. A witness to the crime may be dying of the plague. These problems flow from the backdrop. Unlike it, they are not insurmountable for the PC’s and are relevant to their main plot.

It seems to me that there’s more payoff from creating the backdrop if its resulting problems do interact with players and the main plot.

You get efficient use of creative time and the background plot is all the more real because it’s not just context/colour.

Am I loopy or does that make sense?

When the backdrop changes, we know the context of the action has changed, and the stage seems fresh and interesting again, so it’s important to change it every few scenes to know where the action fits in. But most of our conscious attention is on the foreground and background action, not the backdrop.

I like this metaphor. It certainly seems to serve the purpose for this article.

Hopefully “backdrop” makes it more clear that we’re really talking about a different beast, not something interchangeable with a foreground plot (or a background/subplot).

I can think of a few reasons why you might have chosen that way, but I’m curious to know what (if anything) made you decide against what might seem to be the obvious “foreground/background” terminology.