Not all conspiracies are connected to the plot
I was chatting on Facebook with someone on Tenkar’s Tavern, and he was relating a story involving a printing company, a church group, and what turned out to be a troublesome counterfeiting ring.
Naturally, my thoughts turned to RPG plots, and one thing that I thought was fun – and an aid in worldbuilding – is to take my usual love for Ken Hite’s Conspyramid and my own use of relationship maps and make sure that not everything is connected. I mean, folks do random stuff all the time, right?
So that person who you’re interviewing about the plot to overthrow the king? Yeah, they have nothing to do with it, but are terrified out of their minds that someone will discover that they’ve been having an affair with some other rando noble’s spouse. Or are involved in bobble-headed doll smuggling (“People LOVE those!” –Mal Reynolds). Or are planning on leaving their job, or selling the latest crop reports to a foreign rival.
I mean, not everyone is neck-deep in lies and deceit. But having various things going on that don’t have to do with whatever core conflicts are in the game makes for some fun side-issues, very natural-feeling rat-holes, and helps with a living world.
Of course, perhaps you’re in pure sandbox mode and there aren’t any “core conflicts” that the PCs are trying to unravel. There’s no grand conspiracy of vamp-wolves, radical oxymorons (the jumbo shrimp faction seeks to…), or a plot to wipe out the world (“…that’s always the story.” –Richard O’Connel). There’s just people being people, and that’s more than complicated enough.
A couple of caveats…
1 – Know Your Players. I know this should go without saying, but so often I find GMs forget this simple “Rule #1″ and just go, ‘Oh yeah! That’s a great a idea!” and then have no idea why the PCs end up chasing complete sidetracks and ‘lose the plot’.
I have a GM who does this all the time, he’ll throw out a few breadcrumbs adn see which one shte PCs get hooked on, and but very often “the wrong group get’s the wrong hooks” – (it’s a West Marches in the Big City Megadungeon campaign, so we have like 10 active groups all doing stuff in his metropolis and the megadungeon underneath, all occasionally bumping elbows, and often picking up threads of each other’s plots). Which is fine except in a few cases where specific plots were tailored for one group, who went hieing off into the sidetracks following something else made for some one else.
So, know your Players. Will they got overwhelmed with “Too Much Going On”, or “Lost In The Weeds” of sideplots, or will they appreciate teh verisimilitude of “This Has Nothing To Do With The World Revolving Around The PCs”? Some groups will love to uncover these cool little side treks, and for some it’ll spell your campaigns doom.
Sorry, only one caveat, but a biggy.
Yes. The world does not have to have versimilitude but it does have to be fun to play in. If the players didn’t enjoy being sidetracked on the Rail-line to Nowhere any amount of versimilitude adds up to failure.
I do like the wheels within wheels that are unrelated, but as evileyore says, cometimes the game lurches into red herring stew for some players.