St Forge: 3 Ways to avoid derailment

The mythical web the forever storyteller weaves. Quietly, behind the screen and when the players aren’t looking, ST’s across the world dream of telling epic tales. We spend our time in the shower, scrubbing away the filth of reality, lost in imagination of bringing our PC’s story to life. It doesn’t matter the nature of the story, or how complex the tale, or even if it’s just a badass combat scene set to the soundtrack of Kill Bill—players will find a shiny object and zoom off into unintended places. At times, it can feel like they are tiny Kobolds chasing after shiny mathrocks that create impossible conspiracies and scenarios in their own imagination.

The gall! ST’s spend forever crafting their sandboxes…and players dare to have agency! Le GASP!

But seriously ask yourself: Have you ever had a story end so far off track that your players discover they are now being held at gunpoint by a self-aware octopus? Or have you been victim to a seduction check gone…gloriously correct… and find yourself now storytelling a shotgun wedding between the son of Asmodeus and a Paladin? This my friend, is the chaos and fun of storytelling. Yet we must learn to embrace this chaos and still move our plots forward.

Here are three tips to relish in the insanity - while still keeping the wheels…somewhat intact.

“Thought you had underwater breathing did you?! Think I’m just fried calamari? Eat lead.”

Image Credit: Futurama

Think like a player!

Prevention goes the distance when trying to avoid plot derailment. Set aside some daydreaming time to put yourself in the role of the players and imagine what they would do. Even better, imagine yourself as the arch-villain plotting your global conquest. Like playing chess, outthinking our opponent is the name of the game. If you’ve ever played any competitive Vampire: The Masquerade LARPs, you might be familiar with the hours at Denny’s eating Moon over Mihammy while plotting the Prince-of-The-Week’s death. Only in this specific instance - you are trying to break your own plot. By keeping track of your NPC’s motivations and incentive to take the actions they will, you might find that sometimes - your own story makes no sense. This sort of self-developmental editing can be fun, and it doesn’t have to be a task done right before a session.

You can break your own plot at any time (for me, it’s typically right before I fall asleep. Then I have that OH SHIT! moment).

By taking this mental exercise ahead of time you can imagine several outcomes that your players might take. Which… allows you to think of the consequences of said actions. Which…allows you to plan what might happen because of those consequences. So on and so forth the web will weave until you have a conspiracy board of madness. You should realistically stop well before your living room wall looks like you need professional help.

All sarcasm aside: thinking about what your players will do and what logical actions their characters might take help to prevent you from being surprised at the table. Typically, when storytellers shoot off the cuff and improv, is when they find themselves in the land of plotholes and struggling to find a way back to the main campaign.

Excel Spreadsheet. Who knew?

There is a method called the 5x5 method of storytelling, and it has a few variations and can easily be the 3x3 or 7x7. I know it sounds strange to recommend math or matrix tables for plotting outlines but hear me out. The goal of this storytelling method is to provide you with a quick reference that looks… like a damn Bingo Card. If you’ve got a session (and this works great for political or court-based sessions), where the outcomes determine HEAVILY on player choice, and you can’t predict what the hell will happen. Try this!

Create a 5x5 table in a spreadsheet and put the main story in the left-most cube on the bottom row. This cube should be the main goal/hook of your entire campaign. Then on the rest of the bottom row, fill in any sidequests or other tangents YOU (the storyteller) are planning. You might have 3, you might have 5…maybe 21 (plz god no). Either way, this bottom column is for you.

Then fill out vertical what happens in every column assuming the players do NOTHING at all. Literal couch potatoes. They don’t even find or follow or take any action regarding these quests. As each story or mission ends, you can reference back to the entire plot-bingo card and see what columns the players impacted. If they did nothing, then you know what world effect in your sandbox will take effect. If they did something, it’s easy to delete and refill the column with an update and change anything else vertical. Since your players might find some random quest outside of your control—when they do, add it to the spreadsheet with the same principle.

No matter what outcome or how far off the ‘rails’ players take the story down: you will know the world impact from them passing up other plotlines. Plus, it honestly helps keep you track of what’s going on in a particular game if you are running multiple chronicles.

Tempo. Fear and loathing is your friend.

One-shot games, convention games, or games at a local store are often extremely time-sensitive. Same with streaming games for live content and an audience. The storyteller only has a limited window to engage both the players and the audience. If you rush through the content, then the content is left feeling hollow and empty. Devoid of any emotional impact. If you draw a story for too long over multiple sessions, then it risks never being finished or rampant boredom. I’ve found that tracking your story beats compared to your time allotment is a valuable tool for keeping story progression on track.

Let’s take The Red Opera: Last Days of the Warlock for example. With a three-act story beat and a four-hour game session for a chapter. Assume getting into character will take 30 minutes and set up, then 30 minutes to really get into character and run through the first act. That leaves about an hour each for the remaining two-story acts in that chapter. By knowing when you want your session to end, if your players get into a fantastic roleplaying session during act 2…then friggin skip act 3 that day! Rather than race ahead to cram the players back on track, expand upon what actions your players are taking at that moment. Find a way to resolve a good book-end to those impromptu actions, and then you have time between next session to chart a course back to the third act. Additionally, the third act is still looming! The party knows they will face what comes next soon, and that clock is ticking in their minds as well. Embrace that fear and loathing. Using tempo of knowing when to cut a scene or when to expand it, can help keep your sessions polished.

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Featured Image: Bunions by Hugo Cardenas. Art and animations at: Takayuuki.deviantart.com