Admin post: please drag this thread back on topic or let it die. Thanks!

Fine: More concentrated metaplots where you don't need to read an entire book just to get part of it, let alone two or three (or four+). SoNA and CD were great in that respect that there weren't plot threads stretched across so many chapters that you needed to read it all just to kind of get it, especially with something like how Shockwaves was integrated into English-language sourcebooks. My favorite example is how in SoNA, Continental Divide was a history of the formation of the NAN. In SoE, The New Old World was a reference to what you were about to be thrown into ("Here's a list of groups and corps you will be bombarded with references to in the next 240 pages").

That's the one great thing about Bug City. It happened, and for years, people were able to play it without having to buy anything else for the book. But the whole book was one, mostly-contained, campaign that lasted for three years as it was written. Or with SoNA, I can read the chapter on Tir Tairngire without having to read all the other chapters because of some sprawling plot or canon NPCs doing crazy shit across the entire breadth of the book's subject matter. And then Target:UCAS came along and threw a huge wrench into it as the CZ officially ended, but if you still wanted to play in Chicago you didn't really need that book unless it involved one of the canon warlords because the aftermath has generally been, "It's almost as bad as it was, but there's more outside swag and fewer people with big guns outside looking to use you for target practice."

As opposed to, you know, anything released since 2004.

Basically, there's the older models of narrow and deep, or the current model of wide and shallow. When it came to sourcebooks, books on individual countries were there, but they didn't sell as a group compared to other books (except, AFAIK, Aztlan. And one can suspect that part of the reason Fanpro still has Germany SB copies is because the book is no good. That can be said for a lot of placebooks). Whereas I bet SoNA and the other Shadows of books sell pretty well. Now everything seems based on a model where you get some introductory material, more intertwined plot threads the the entire series of Alias, and every one is just... There. Just enough so that when something changes people look at it and say, "What the fuck just happened?" I'm hoping this changes, but I'm doubtful.

From a business and marketing perspective, it seems to actually be a good idea: Put a book together with a bunch of disparate topics like the SOTA books and it attractspeople who will probably buy the book because 1) "Oooh, spies!", 2) "Cool, adept powers. And spies!", or my personal favorite 3) "Ooh, another SR book!" And even worse is that looking at their fluff books all of them are compendiums with the exception of Mr. J's Little Black Book. People wanted Japan forever. Well, they get Japan and some other areas other people wanted, and of course appealing to the "Ooh, shiny! Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!" crowd. Same with Europe and Latin America (well, in theory). After all, SoNA seemed to sell pretty well as far as sourcebooks go, but they do invariably involve "plot creep."

From a gaming perspective, I think it kind of sucks because there is too much done too half-assed; plots that are teased out, referred to once or twice in another book, and then can end abruptly. I mean, just looking at how much stuff is being thrown at players, metaplot events much, much smaller in scope have gotten their own books like the Election of 2057, Bug City, or the Renraku Arcology shutdown, whereas for someone as completely catastrophic as events in the Aftershocks chapter of System Failure, approximately as many pages were devoted to that chapter (including art) as were spent describing the Arcology in RA:S.

I'm all for tightening up the game plots, narrowing the focus, and driving the plots deeper. It may be a bit of a stretch to call things like a national election, a quarantied section of a city, and a sealed arcology microcosms, but compared to the global nature of books like System Failure and Year of the Comet, they really were. If you take the election plotline, for example, it really spent a lot of story focus on particular candidates. Whereas YotC spent a lot of focus on things like entire nations.

My only concern is that by releasing the sprawl books, people will expect plots that touch every released sprawl, because every player has their favorite. There's no way you can really do that without the big, shallow, global plotlines. I personally think that if you make a narrow plotline interesting enough, people will want to shift their campaigns to that location anyway, much like many players did with Chicago for Bug City or Seattle for Renraku Arcology: Shutdown. And as long as you mix it up where these things take place from year to year, different locales get attention.

I think metaplots are overvalued in RPGs.

While I like the way the 6th World evolves, only the broadest metaplots are useful. Metaplots like, "The Chinese civil wars have flooded Hong Kong with Chinese refugees", or "the wireless matrix revolution takes place," are broad enough to be worthwhile. But metaplots involving individuals like Damien Knight, Ryumyo, or Captain Chaos are no good to me, because I can't allow anything to happen to those individuals - they have to continue in their canon forms so that the canon metaplot can play out.

The trick is that the metaplots shouldn't be focused on what particular personality is doing, but rather in the effects what they are doing creates. That's where players should be involved. Like the election plotline or Dunk's assassination; though the candidates featured heavily, the action was at a level where players could be involved.

Unless the metaplot is designed so that the players are supposed to bring about the fate of these personalities, like the role of Brainscan for the Deus plotline, when the players go right up against him and bring about the next part of the plotline.

I got a C in the course, sadly.

Hehe. No, it wasn't that, it was more that I...had issues with the whole 'going to class' thing.