Format of plot books Options

[Demonseed Elite]

This question came up on the Emergence thread, but I wanted to give it a thread of its own. I'm using "plot book" pretty broadly here to include various different formats that have been used in the past.

There's the campaign book, like Harlequin's Back and Brainscan, which consist of a number of detailed and connected shadowruns that are part of a larger story. There is often some background information and light fiction, but not that much, since most of the word count is devoted to the actual shadowruns themselves.

There's the track format, used in Mob War and System Failure, where you have multiple plots evolving simultaneously and presented with a mix of background information, light fiction, and adventure frameworks (less detailed shadowruns than campaign books have).

There's also the event book, such as Year of the Comet and Emergence (at least, I think this is where Emergence falls). Event books are usually a series of chronological and global events presented with lots of fiction and background information and also adventure frameworks or adventure seeds (little shadowrun ideas even less detailed than adventure frameworks).

I'm wondering what players and GMs think of these formats. Which ones are most enjoyable to read? Which ones are most useful to you as a GM? Would you like to see more of one format or the other or an alternating mix of formats used? What might be missing from these various formats that you really wish were in plot books? Do you have a "dream format" that you'd like to see plot books done in?

[Rotbart van Dain...]

Personally, I'd group System Failure with Year of the Comet and Emergence.

Those books are nice to read as they advance the history of SR and thus allow the GM to incorporate them into a house campaign. In fact, they may even have their own campaign books, like Wake of the Comet.

It would be nice to see real campaign books again, though - they make the life of GMs easier.

[Prime Mover]

Sort of agree with RVD like plot books that advance the story but a companion book to go along with it and flesh out some of stats and nodes etc can be big help.

[Synner]

One thing Catalyst might consider is the possibility of producing adventure and linked adventure ebooks that tie into and complement campaign/event books like Emergence. The market for hard copy stand-alone, step-by-step adventures just isn't there these days but pdf-only releases might be an alternative.

[Rotbart van Dain...]

Did Survival of the Fittest sell that bad?

[Backgammon]

The thing with written missions, as someone pointed out in another thread, is that sometimes the author is writting the adventure at a power level incompatible with your group, or that his vision of how shadowruns go down is completely out of whack with how your group deal with things. I mean, there are a lot of adventures where the runners are expected to defeat things like a group of Red Samurai. WTF, I don't think so.

Whereas the adventure seed concept is very easily adapted by the GM to fi his or her campaign.

The only thing, IMO, that sucks about adventure seeds is the lack of maps. Honestly, I have a feeling people buy mission books for the maps.

[bibliophile20]

[fistandantilus4....]

[Rifleman]

[Zen Shooter01]

Event books are best.

Published modules in the Keep On The Borderlands sense don't make much sense (which is reflected in their sales numbers), and campaign books fall into this category. First, you, the GM, buy the adventure. Then you have to read and understand it very thoroughly, so that you'll be ready to react when the PCs do something unexpected. Then you have to modify it to fit your particular campaign. Then the PCs go and do something you never expected and the whole operation is f!cked anyway. Which is a problem, because campaign books usually change the direction of the game universe, so they have to end up at the predetermined conclusion one way or the other.

By the time you do all that, you might as well have saved your money and written your own adventure.

Event books like Emergence, by contrast, provide a wide and diverse backdrop for the GM to set his own tailored adventures in. A book like Emergence provides enough material for six months or more of shadowrunning - campaign books or modules give you less adventure.

[Demonseed Elite]

[Ikirouta]

I like my adventures to be as freeform as possible. That means that I need as comprehensive background as possible for current events and for the "mission" for PCs. Next I need NPCs and critters and their motivations. Third, some location descriptions and maps would be nice. If the scenario is timecritical then some sort of timeline is needed too.

[mfb]

i think the track formats are actually the best option. they're somewhat easier to produce than campaign books--less stat balancing, etcetera. and it really is true that premade adventures aren't selling well, these days. on the other hand, while event books are fun to read, that's just about all they're good for--reading. they're not directly useful to GMs or players; all they do is provide more background for games to be run against. they're basically thirty-dollar novels.

the track format is the best of all worlds. on the one hand, they're fun to read, like event books, because they basically are event books. on the other, GMs find them directly useful because they provide adventures to run--just add numbers.

[FrankTrollman]

[Talia Invierno]

It's odd -- but the older the book, the more trouble I have fitting it cleanly into one of your three categories, Demonseed Elite.

For example, Paranormal Animals of Europe wouldn't fall under any of those, not usually being considered a plotbook -- and yet I've pulled two separate storylines, not from its critters, but solely from its shadowtalk: specifically, working in and around Rabid's attitude toward anything that has a bounty -- and some of the other runners' attitudes thereto -- and, more broadly, that teasing "H" reference under the wraiths category ... which has now been downgraded into just another form of shadow spirit.

(For anyone who is still playing with Earthdawn echoes: wouldn't it be a particularly effective tactic of the coming Horrors to bring the world to believe that they're only just another spirit: bindable, controllable, banishable?)

The structure fell into my mind as complete plotlines, just reading the shadowtalk. The only thing I needed to find were a couple of maps and generic templates to fill in two sets of details that would eventually be needed -- but the details are complementary to the storyline, and not the storyline itself.

Tir Tairngire, the mention of which may have sparked this thread, doesn't fall cleanly under one of those categories either -- and yet so many plotlines within our current campaign are drawn directly from its pages that I've stopped counting.

Maybe that's the thing that made some of the old books so re-readable and not just reference-able: they were sourcebooks, yes, and they had plot elements, and they had what has commonly been labelled "fluff" on this forum (the word by itself tells just how non-valuable that is considered, here) -- but the total was so much more than the sum of its parts. Now, all that seems to be wanted is the parts -- separately, in isolation, each complete unto itself except for the core rulebooks.

Take as one example the shadowtalk in and of itself. Different interpretations of various exchanges have been argued up and down the boards here -- so what's to keep players who've maybe read through the whole book on their own from coming up with their own interpretations of shadowtalk? and then perhaps be completely surprised by the GM's take? And who's to say that there is only one RIGHT tabletop answer? History, even modern history to the point of events happening around us currently, isn't nearly as clearcut as we would like to think. One scrap of evidence could turn -- has turned -- all our understanding of an event on its head: and then it's up to us individually to decide the amount of value we place on that evidence and its source. Three different GMs, three different interpretations of the shadowtalk: who's to say that two of them must be wrong?

And so the older books kept it vague, deliberately, playing off this subtle view of history and understanding even of current events. In fact, the different layers of shadowtalk made it very clear that even the Powers of the world didn't always know everything that was going on. Four different layers in Aztlan in fact: the collected articles and data, the shadowtalk about the data, the Players' discussion about articles and shadowtalk -- and then that brief insert at the end, giving yet a fourth layer of knowledge to which the first three are not privy. Campaigns cannot but differ wildly, based on which layer of knowledge and guesswork to build upon. Campaigns can even grow, as the PCs gradually move from one isolated sphere of "fact" to a wider context which throws into question all they thought they knew.

But now we seem to demand the explanation, straightforward and rigid and without any room for differing possibilities, with clearly defined player handouts and closed-off sections. Plotbook is to be plotbook -- only, argument only over the structure of its parts and how open-ended to leave that structure. Sourcebook is to be sourcebook -- only, facts and figures and maps and shadowtalk only insofar as it adds equally factual knowledge to the core, to be immediately accepted unquestioned or shown clearly to be false. Something like the old Neon Samurai teaser or the Laughing Bandit / KAT exchange or even the specific possibility inherent in the "That reminds me: never stiff a street doc" exchange just can't happen anymore in the future SR4 version of M&M -- couldn't even in SR3 -- because it gets in the way of the catalogue.

When did we lose our tolerance of possibility, in the name of efficiency?

[Demonseed Elite]

I disagree, Talia.

In posting this thread, I am specifically discussing plot books, but that's not the only type of book there is, nor the only type of book which covers potential plot ideas. Paranormal Animals of Europe is a sourcebook, which still exists in SR4. So far we've only seen core sourcebooks, such as Street Magic, but once the core sourcebooks are out of the way you'll likely be seeing topical sourcebooks like the paracritter sourcebook and the megacorp sourcebook, for example.

Tir Tairngire is a setting book and those also exist in SR4. Runner Havens is the first and Corporate Enclaves will be the second. I'm not sure how it can be said that those are lacking in plot ideas in SR4, I know I crammed dozens of them into the Hong Kong section, from the upcoming Executive Council elections to the 9x9 terrorists to the Bureau of Heaven and Earth.

Plot books didn't really exist in the very, very early days of Shadowrun, but they were certainly around in the early editions. Harlequin and Universal Brotherhood are both good examples.

[Zen Shooter01]

Talia, he's only talking about plotbooks. PAoNA isn't a plotbook, it's a bestiary. TT isn't a plotbook, either, it's a placebook.

Plotbooks are books like Emergence and Year of the Comet that detail metaplot events.

Which Demonseed has just explained quite articulately, while I was typing this...

[Zen Shooter01]

But I am going to suggest the following vocabulary.

Basic Book: Contains a game system in itself. Will be expanded by future supplements.

Plotbook: Details metaplot events. Emergence, Year of the Comet

Placebook: Details locations. Shadows of North America, Runner Havens

Catalog: Lists things and their governing mechanics.
Augmentation, Cannon Companion. Bestiaries are a subtype of catalog, listing creatures/monsters.

Rule book: expands on a subcategory of rules found in the basic book.

Street Magic.

[PlatonicPimp]

Givve me a track-book anyday. Campaign books were always a pain for me, because I don't run the campaigns, and all that crunch gets in the way. i also hate it when something important and world changing happens in them. Event books are fairly good, but lack the story potential of a trackbook. My favorite plotbook was Blood in the Boardroom. More like that.

[knasser]

What I want in a plot book is something that puts the PCs centre stage or at least facilitates that. For me, a plot book that details a sequence of events that the players have no affect on, one way or another, and are expected to just watch in wonder, is a negative one.

[fistandantilus4....]

[Zen Shooter01]

Knasser:

Taking Emergence as the example, I think that there are lots and lots of things for the players to do besides "watch in wonder".

No, they're not on the Aztechnology space station. But that crisis alone opens up so many opportunities for adventure. The PCs lose a favorite contact because the contact goes off the grid and moves to a tent in the mountains. A run gets jammed up because the freeways are clogged with people fleeing the cities. The PCs are believed to be in Sojourner's employ and so are hunted by the authorities or anti-AI policlubs.

No, the PCs aren't going to change the course of history RE technomancers - but when a contact hacker gets accused of technomancy, how will the PCs react?

Look, if it was Weird Wars, you'd know the PCs weren't going to end the war in '43 by assassinating Hitler. But that doesn't mean there isn't plenty for them to do.

[Talia Invierno]

I'm reiterating that the divisions in common use now weren't as clear-cut then, and that this lack of clear-cut division was relevant. Dividing strictly defined plotbooks from strictly defined anything else also isolates adventure module from greater world/country/whatever setting -- yet ever-more-narrowly-defined plotbooks are the most popular new types of publications after rulebooks. (Note the order of recent releases.)

Still, if you choose to limit discussion to one specific -- new -- division, then you also limit possibility.

That's about the extent of what I can say that shares context with what others in this thread are willing to consider.

[FrankTrollman]

[Talia Invierno]

And much less corporate-profitable ;)

Edit: Come to think of it, that attitude also means that nothing substantially new (per Goose totem, or otaku, or technomancers) can be introduced in a plotbook -- ever -- for to do so would create another instance where the new thing isn't in a core rulebook.

[Demonseed Elite]

[Talia Invierno]

[Demonseed Elite]

Let's say that it's a couple of years down the road and a plot book we're writing pretty much calls for a new magical tradition as part of the storyline. Well, we're not really forbidden from putting that new tradition in the plot book. It doesn't introduce any new mechanics, those are already in Street Magic.

That said, if we do another magic rules supplement down the line, I know I'd strongly recommend putting that tradition in that supplement also, so players who pick up the magic rules supplements don't need to pick up this rule book to play that tradition.

Still, it's not new mechanics. That's the thing that SR4 is really avoiding putting in supplemental books. Which did happen in earlier editions.

[TypeRyder]

I think I like the event books most - you can simply read them or you can build shadowruns based on all the stuff inside.

Sure, track books are nice if you doesn't like to think about a run for yourself - but I for myself have the problem that I really need time to prepare them (because it's not my idea and therefore I have to read the whole thing instead of improvise on the way) and most of them have IMHO a touch of railroading which I don't like.

Players never act the direct way, they always invent other ways to handle things and I simply don't like it to put them back on line. So I have to improvise anyway - and with an adventure seed I can easily fit that new situation in - much better than to integrate a homebrewn situation inside a tracked adventure.

The reason for me to buy tracked adventures is to keep in line with the story - oh, and to get some maps *g*

[Mistwalker]

I like the event books, but like some of the detail that is found in some of the campaign books.

Brainscan had lots and lots of info on the setup in the Arcology, allowing a GM to have lots and lots of runs with or without using the runs in the book.

Hmm, event books combined with setting book?

[edrift101]

Personally, I prefer to have a bunch of game ideas loosely described like in Runners Haven. I find that the best games are character/player driven and loosely based on a set of events that you would like to happen.

Honestly, I have yet to run one of the fully plotted out adventures... Mostly because they are so easily broken and pretty linear in design.

[redne]

One problem with campaign books like Brainscan is that the possibility that the characters can actually affect the events around them is mostly illusory. Although the GM may allow the characters to "deviate from the script", it usually means that the campaign will be broken in relation to official storyline. Then the GM has the option of forgetting the storyline or fixing things somehow. I, personally, think the fixing option might be even uglier than not letting the PCs go their own way in the first place (if anything can actually be uglier than cruel railroading).

[Mistwalker]

I have no problem with chars making world shaking effects/events. If the official book says that Johnny 5 did the deed, well, the runners aren't too unhappy, as the heat is not on them, and those in the know know who really did the deed.

[fistandantilus4....]

Besides, Johnny 5 is just a rogue Ares anthroform. Everyone knows 'he' couldn't have really been behind it. It was Dunkelzhan.

[Mistwalker]

Your spilled the super secret.

The assassin bunnies have been unleashed

[OneSeventeen]

I suppose I prefer the kinds of things that are most vague and, thus, more easily modified to what we're already doing. In fact, I kind of prefer if things are happening in the background a little bit. I get a little tired of stories where the heroes save the entire frickin' Earth/Universe/Existence. I'd rather run a game at a level where global events are messing up local affairs and the characters are having to fix/modify/destroy things on that level.

Others will, of course, disagree. I think it just comes down to what level you want to play your game at; I think there's a continuum between huge save-the-world type plots and little locally-scaled plots. I imagine this is difficult to do, but ideally a book that advances world events would allow for a GM to take the information therein and run either direction with it.

I also think it's valuable to have a book be such that a player can read it and when the GM incorporates something from it, they think, "Oh woah. I remember reading about that," which will (hopefully) sort of parallel the character's thought of, "Oh... I heard about that on the news/from my contact/in the bar."


117

[fistandantilus4....]

[Da9iel]

Or does they, proud fallen Iron Chef Drop Bear Elder #19?

[fistandantilus4....]

They does.

[Magus]

[fistandantilus4....]

See. And I'm not even in Florida. :D

[redne]

What the hell are you people talking about??? :?

Anyway...

[Slash_Thompson]

put me down for track books and event books,

don't get me wrong, I like reading the campaign books but they really don't have much use for me to actually run them (either too much to tweak or too much effort to keep players close enough to canon paths for the events to be coherent - more recent campaigns have improved this, a little bit.)

track books on the other hand, I can start dropping the runs into my regular games right away with minimal tweaking, since you're getting basically just the 'plot' of the run and not the 'mechanics'.

and event books work great for my group since I use them to generate my own run ideas with a greater sense of tie-in for my players (these are also the only kind of plot book that I encourage my players to buy before I finish using it - since the runs are mostly not detailed)

[FrankTrollman]

Much as it seems to hack some people off really bad, I prefer it when events are never explained or returned to again. It would be a major problem for me if it was ever explained what "really" happened to Saito because it almost certainly wouldn't end up being what it was in my campaign.

Maintaining a shared world requires a shared cast of characters and a shared set of countries, but it also requires a substantial amount of "unknowns". Quantum areas of the world and the plot where players can take actions that they know in advance will never be countermanded in any later books.

Let's take the throwdown in Cambodia between Queen Rochefort of the Republic of Cambodia and the Nagaraja of Nag Kampuchea. Player characters could potentially choose to support either side, possibly even causing one team or the other to win - which would probably involve killing the leader of the other faction. That's fine. But if the books ever come out with an official storyline of what happened there in the last 6 years it's a total coin flip as to whether your team's antics were even possible.

In general, more plot hooks should be dealt with like Saito or the identity of Sheila Blatavaska. The plot hook is thrown down, some possible answers hinted at, and then the acual "answer" left up to individual campaigns with the promise to never speak of this again. It's the only way for player character actions to be rectifiable with future releases.

-Frank

[eidolon]

Campaign book: I like them, but I tend to wait until I can pick them up used. This is mostly because rather than run them beginning to end, I usually end up mining them for stuff that either will spark a new game/campaign, or stuff to fill out an existing game/campaign. I usually don't care much for trying to run a story line that fundamentally does not allow for player actions outside those expected in the linear story. (That's me. Not trying to start an argument.)

Track book: Predominately the same to me as a Campaign book. I love to skim through them, and I'm always interested in the meta developments (even the ones that I toss out and leave out of my game world).

Event book: My absolute favorite of the three. As a GM, YotC gave me a framework against/in which to set any number of runs, games, story lines, and campaigns. I was able to delegate the larger meta-world to the book, pulling events and timelines from that, while I was able to focus on the micro - the runs, the character stories and plots, the interactions, the NPCs for my game, etc.

Which ones are most enjoyable to read?

Event books, as you describe them.

Which ones are most useful to you as a GM?

Event books, for reasons given above.

Would you like to see more of one format or the other or an alternating mix of formats used?

I would like to see more event type books, but I think it's important to have a few different ways of presenting things. The other two types you describe are good for exactly those purposes, but to me, the way to present major events in the world is an Event book. Sure, the stuff in the other two make up bits of the plot, but it seems that they do so best on a smaller scale.

What might be missing from these various formats that you really wish were in plot books?

Maybe some more "major players" lists, more info on the movers and shakers? I love having "real" people in the game world to lean on and use. I know, pretty weak, but I really can't come up with anything else right now.

Do you have a "dream format" that you'd like to see plot books done in?

YotC. ;)

[Rifleman]

[Demonseed Elite]

I agree that leaving a number of unknowns in the metaplot is important. The hard part is that we never really know what we'll be leaving as unknowns and what we don't. If San Francisco were chosen as a signature sprawl in one of the sprawl books, the writer might be forced to deal with Saito, or at the very least they are going to have to establish the current situation, which says something about the direction of the Saito storyline.

I also encourage GMs to break canon and not to worry about it. I did it all the time in games I GMed, even going against canon I had written. The canon is there to provide a basic framework and an ongoing story but it's not there to lock anyone down into it. It's a roleplaying game, after all, and the freedom to go outside of canon is one of the great things about this medium that hasn't been duplicated very well elsewhere.

[Rotbart van Dain...]

[Demonseed Elite]

I agree with you on that point. :P

[odinson]

[DireRadiant]

Wasn't there some kind of SR Atlas project?

[bclements]

German only, I think.

Bummer, 'cause I would have paid for it.

[Rifleman]

[Adarael]

[Talia Invierno]

Although atlases are not plotbooks either, and thus technically are outside the scope of this thread :spin:

It sounds like one solution which might appeal to most in this thread is to release one significant, almanac-type book with key atlas maps -- and it could probably be priced very high -- and to supplement a few key countries and world-sweeping events with (event or setting) plotbooks, focusing on scenario rather than specific PC role to bring about canon. Add a sprinkling of track-style plotbooks for maximal cherrypicking opportunities, the kind that are flexible enough to be widely translatable. (For example, Mob War worked particularly well, because most campaigns already have mob involvement in the background.) Minimally linear is desirable, but not always essential in something well constructed.

[Synner]

[mfb]

that is a succinct restatement of Rotbart's complaint.

[Rifleman]

[Talia Invierno]

Not really.

Edit: sigh, to mfb's post. Can I ever tell that most of you are using broadband.

And change doesn't necessarily translate to increased vulnerability.

[Rifleman]

[FrankTrollman]

AIs are no longer monolithic unstoppable forces. They are now compartmentalized entities which are very strong in every place that they are.

Before Deus was a juggernaut plot device. You either lost or got out of its way. In SR4, each AI has a number of avatars - each one powerful but capable of being defeated, even destoyed.

So you could quite plausibly fight Deus in SR4. A single node or group of nodes would have Deus copies and be very skilled and possible to overcome. If you won (by any of a number of means), Deus would no longer exist on those nodes, but may still exist on other nodes to fight later. The AI has gone from the Deus Ex Machina to Skeletor - the villain you can potentially defeat in climactic battle every adventure.

-Frank

[Rotbart van Dain...]

[mfb]

[Rotbart van Dain...]

Let's keep to the book, for simplicity:

[Synner]

Two words just to mess with your mind: Reincarnation and Transcendence. Dunklezahn is dead and gone too. Death, as many things in life, can be a question of perspective.

[Rotbart van Dain...]

I'd be happy to agree with you if this would be ingame text. However, it isn't, and Game Information should be cut & dried.

It's not that I'm shocked that they are gone - just disappointed to get told five years after the fact.

[Synner]

Would you like me to point out where several books say Dunklezahn is dead in the Game Information?

[Rotbart van Dain...]

If you are asking that way... yes, I would, thanks. :D

(Keep in mind that this doesn't solve the disappointment about the delay, but would only add new one about old canon inconsistencies having to serve as excuses for new ones...)

[Talia Invierno]

And then there's ancestor spirits ...

[Synner]

This is really not a challenge you want to put me; I'm not as good as Ancient History, but I hold my own.

For reference: about 3 times on page 12 of Survival of the Fittest alone, though the book is loaded with them. Then there's page 7 of Portfolio of a Dragon. Shadows of North America states that Dunkie was assassinated in the GI and I'm fairly sure there's at least one reference in Dragons of the Sixth World though I don't currently have either at hand. I could go on.

[Rotbart van Dain...]

AIs turning into Ancestor Spirits? Now that would make people happy. :P

[Rotbart van Dain...]

[MYST1C]