Prepping Plots, Part One: Why Prep Plots?

"Don't prep plots" is a fairly common saying in RPG circles. I can't prove it, but I'm pretty sure the precise phrase was originated by Justin Alexander in 2009, although discussion about the changing face of what a Dungeons and Dragons adventure is goes back even further, and it's easy to see why. More open adventures take greater advantage of the strengths of the medium, allowing for more interaction and choice on behalf of the participants. 

Lots of modern Dungeons and Dragons players come in via the official Wizards of the Coast modules, which are, frankly, bad. Coupled with 5E's culture where DM burnout is treated as a joke, and prep often seems like a herculean task where you need to invest a bajillion hours in order to be Matthew Mercer for a few hours. Here at Magnolia Keep, however, we believe that prepping a linear plot can be easy and fun, so we're going to do a series on how to do just that! So let's start with a single question: why would anyone prep plots in the first place?

All aboard!

Purpose and Player Types

Some people just aren't built for more open-ended play. This includes myself: the multiple times I've taken part in hexcrawls, both as a GM and a player every the group has taken seemed arbitrary, without any major point. To the folks who enjoy those things, that is a story. "We went through the swamp, dealt with some zombies, and found a cool banner" is a session I played in, and while that's cool, I found it kinda unsatisfying, in part due to my preferences for episodic media (where each bit functions as a tiny version of the whole.) A more rigid preparation can help ensure that every time the group plays, they concretely accomplish something meaningful.

In addition, some players, such as my home group, struggle to decide what to do when presented with a sandbox. The openness of choice available makes any given choice meaningless. That guiding hand can prove invaluable, to let them focus on the other parts that they enjoy (such as combat or having fun pretending to be a goblin).

Foreshadowing and Structure

A nice thing about plotted campaigns is you know (roughly) where they're going and how they'll end. Whether they actually get there is another thing entirely, of course, but "Five sessions of plot" is easier to structure a satisfying conclusion to than "Five sessions of sandbox," so shorter campaigns (an increasing reality in our modern world) benefit from linearity.

This knowledge of where you're going also allows you to sprinkle in bits of foreshadowing, because you know where you're going later, and create connective tissue. In my home campaign, I know that we're going to end with Red Hand of Doom, so in the first session I'm mentioning things like Tiamat worship and the Goblinblood Wars. You can still do that in more open play environments, but there's a chance it can end up going to waste. That's not necessarily a major detractor, but is undoubtedly a cost of doing business. If you have something cool and you wanna make sure everyone sees it now, put the cool thing in front of them. 

Ease of Prep and Curation

One of the things that I've noticed about sandboxes is that they can tend to be...front-loaded. To pull from a few examples, colleague and bird-themed blogger Rowan has Castle Kelpsprot, with hundreds of keyed locations. When prepping open terrain, there are whole procedures to help make sure the area you're exploring is interesting. On the one hand, that's great! For those who enjoy it, this kind of prep is play, and I'm not here to take that away from anybody. If you don't, however, then you obviously shouldn't. 

Obviously sandboxes don't inherently demand scope (Cyst's series I linked below even recommends just starting with one megahex). You can absolutely keep prep down to a minimum past the initial map and dungeon, simply prepping things between when players want to explore them and when they get there (that's what designers like Kevin Crawford and Ben Robbins suggest doing), but to me at least that kind of ruins the mystique of the aforementioned world-if "Wherever I'm going" is where stuff happens anyway, why not just get to The Stuff and cut out the middleman?

A hexmap I made using Forlorn Encystment's procedures

Setting up a fine machine of procedures that can largely run themselves, allowing you to function as an impartial referee, is what a lot of people (including a lot of my fellow bloggers) see as a really good way to set up compelling experiences. However, if you're like me and enjoy giving things a personal touch (whether through player co-authorship of the fiction or otherwise putting your thumbs on the scales of drama), then that time is better spent coming up with Cool Stuff to throw at the players. The principle of preparing things the week before still works, but there is no artifice. 

Conclusion

The advantages of a more rigid and curated campaign for elfgames are manifold: they players who crave direction that sense of direction, a greater sense of dramatic oomf and flow, allow a group to make sure every moment of gaming time is spent with the maximum gnarliness possible, and even give the GM the advantage of knowing roughly where they're going. This is hardly the only way to prep a game of course. I've been discussing the downsides of traditional sandboxy play, but it has its advocates for good reason: a good sandbox allows for creation of a narrative that players have greater ownership over, because the story is fundamentally their actions. Games with looser prep like my beloved Blades in the Dark, by allowing actual player authorship over the fiction, stretch that even further (albeit losing the sense of objectivity of the world in the process). But I hope I've explained why, to some people, preparing a Big Damn Adventure in the vein of Curse of Strahd or Descent Into Avernus remains compelling. I just wish Wizards of the Coast did a better job making them not suck ass.

Next time, we'll take a peek behind the filing cabinet to see how we figure out the outline of a campaign with The Broad Strokes!