Crisscrossing Players and Plots
Over at ars ludi, there’s an article about dealing with dozens of intertwining plot points. I can’t say it’s ever been a problem (keeping everything straight) with our games, mainly because there generally aren’t THAT many characters involved in our games. That said, it’s still very interesting to read about how Ben dealt with his unique problem.
The grid was a list of every important thing I wanted to put in the game: plots, events, episodes, characters, scenes, revelations, the works.
Every single item had its own line on the grid. Every revelation, every confrontation, every snippet that I thought needed to come out had its own line (Captain Danger’s sister has powers too! Felicity is really Cathy Grant!). Every thing that needed to come back in response to something that happened in the game had its own line (Maelstrom attacked those army choppers so the Feds are going to come after him, Captain Danger doesn’t know she has that thing in her jacket pocket). Every idea for a random situation, flashy encounter, or set piece had a line (Speed Demon tries to set a record for banks robbed in a day, a sorcerer transforms part of downtown to ancient Aegypt). It all went into the big hopper.
