Backdrop Plots: May You Live In Interesting Times
Detectives investigate a string of grisly murders around the city.
That’s a fine plot for a game. It covers the basics by providing a clear problem, a potential for action, and a motivation for the players to get involved (they could be the detectives, the vengeful bereaved, or someone who may be next on the list).
Now take that same foreground plot, but let’s provide some context by adding a backdrop plot:
Detectives investigate a string of grisly murders on the eve of a tightly fought Mayoral election.
That’s more like it. Now we’ve got a world that feels more real because things are going on outside the PCs and their mission. It feels less like the whole world just exists to give the players a place to investigate murders. We know what cabbies are talking about, what the news is covering, and what the buzz on the street is like.
The World Is Bigger Than You Are
What makes a backdrop plot? 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. They couldn’t make a dent in it. It’s literally bigger than the PCs, either because they’re not powerful enough, it’s an unaddressable issue like a social trend, or it’s just outside their jurisdiction or they’re otherwise barred from dealing with it — the superheroes could bust into the courtroom and interfere in the Trial of Dr Null, but it’s understood that such blatant disregard for the law would end their careers. They may interact with it but not fix it.
A backdrop plot can make the world feel more real and establish the tone, the spirit of the times. In addition to adding detail it shows that the PCs are not necessarily the center of the universe — there are things happening that may have nothing to do with the PCs and their adventures.
A good backdrop plot can also add gravity and meaning to even the most mundane foreground plot. Smuggling a package from point A to point B is one thing, but sneaking across the border of two great nations poised for war is another. Do the armies ever even have to show up? No, but the tension is there, and the players feel their characters are part of a larger world.
Agents try to stop extremists from shattering a landmark world peace agreement (foreground) even while shocking news leaks out that probes have found alien microbes in the sands of Mars, the first evidence of extraterrestrial life (backdrop).
Feuding rogues settle scores in the grimy streets of the city of thieves (foreground) but there are rumors that the conquering army of a barbarian king is only a few days away from the city walls (backdrop).
Villagers need protection from raiding goblins (foreground) but they fear their prayers will go unanswered because the prophesied End of Days may now be upon the world (backdrop).
A backdrop plot can also encourage roleplaying and discussion specifically because it isn’t part of the action — the players _can’t_ cure the plague, so all they can do is talk about it and the issues around it as they scurry through the blighted lands. Pick your backdrop plots to emphasize issues or themes you want the players to think about or that highlight or contrast the foreground plot. Normally a plot with all talk could make a boring game, but the foreground plot provides concrete action so the players are not floating adrift in a sea of chat. Like Father, Like Son (Trial of Dr Null) uses this approach to juxtapose the big role-playing issues of the trial of the century and its ramifications on justice and society with the hands-on ‘smack the bad guy’ action of the foreground plot.
“There must be a connection!” (or, Players shave with Occam’s Razor)
Players have a nasty habit of assuming that all things are related: if it’s a detail in the game, it must have something to do with the plot. Does the election have something to do with the murders? It must! Why else would the GM have mentioned it? Put the mirror in your pocket, you’ll need it to get past the bat in the maze of twisty caves, etc.
You may find some players are unnaturally certain the backdrop plot is connected to the foreground plot, no matter how little sense it makes. You know the kind of players I’m talking about. If you want to deflate the insanity here’s a simple solution: put them in situations where they get to explain to NPCs in-character how they think the plots connect. They may settle down once they hear how much they sound like crazed conspiracy theorists (unless of course you are playing a crazed conspiracy theorist character, in which case carry on).
When Not To Use It
The more personal and climactic the foreground plot, the less you should emphasize backdrop plots. If you are about to finally corner the man who murdered your father, local current events are going to be more distracting than interesting. There’s already plenty of gravity to go around, and the players are probably already heavily invested in the game. A little backdrop can add color (a holy festival spreading cheer through the village even while the characters engage in deadly hunt for their prey), but you don’t need more plot.
More plot stuff: Situations not Plots and Plot vs Premise
Leave a reply to Daniel Ream
It violates Chekhov’s Principle
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.
You’ve mentioned the Forge before, so you’ll know what I mean when I say that this is a very simulationist approach to creating a milieu. It violates Chekhov’s Principle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chekhov%27s_gun).
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.
In the campaign I am running I called them side quests. Although the world is more of basic D&D, so its probably understandable. I made many side quests that will play their course along a time line that is in sync with the main story. So if the adventurers were to complete one of the main things in the campaign, then every side quests that the characters didn’t stop will move to the next step in their plan. Such as:
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.
Of course, the background plot and the main plot may not be what they appear. Sometimes the main plot is merely a McGuffin:
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!
[…] Backdrop Plots: May You Live In Interesting Times: Ben Robbins advises GMs to use a backdrop plot to provide context, contrast and a sense of […]
I really like this idea a lot! As I generally shy away from dungeon crawl/hack-n-slash style campaigns, I find myself spending a lot of time thinking about how to create a realistic and organic world for the characters to move in. Like you said, the PCs need to realize that, no matter how powerful they are, the world is still much bigger than they are.
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!
Thinking of this in terms of the “Conflict Web” approach to creating a “sandbox” for Player Characters to react to (Conflict Web -> Chris Chinn; “sandbox” -> Tommi Brander), this means making a Conflict that is larger scale than PC’s can hope to influence outcome of, though it may generate issues and problems in their conflicts or simply be colour.
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?
Sometimes a little goes a long way. In a recent Victorian Age game, whilst the players were visiting the besieged city of Strasbourg, I showed them a picture of the Prussian Battle Train poised to bombard the city with its big guns.
The thousands of troops (French and Prussian) surrounding the city, the relative emptiness of the streets, the parade of officers, the lines of refugees, etc.. had far less impact on the players’ sense that they needed to make their stay short than that one picture. They kept referring to it whenever the discussion dealt with the duration of their stay. They were never specifically targeted by the tank, they never attacked the tank, but its mere presence seemed to add a sense that Strasbourg might soon be erased from the map.
I think you’re explaining it better than I am ;)
Yes. The term “backdrop” uses the theatre-stage metaphor, where the backdrop hangs behind the action taking place on the stage, giving it an ever-present context. But the actors on the stage, whether they’re in foreground or background, don’t interact with the backdrop at all.
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.
Good question bignose. As you guessed it was “background” at one point, and in Like Father, Like Son (Trial of Dr Null) I called it a subplot. The problem is that either of those terms can also mean any foreground plot that just happens to be in the background at the moment (this episode your kid sister is in the background, but the next game she might be in the foreground).
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).
It’s interesting that you choose the term “backdrop”, rather than “background”, to contrast with “foreground”.
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.