Share Plotline / Thread Template

[Gary F]

Can someone share their templates for plotlines/threads, we're your storing your 'master data / notes' for an ongoing plotline.

It's not exactly a PBTA front, because those have a clock and such.

It's not exactly a Situation/Plot/Adventure, since it's more organic.

 

[ExileInParadise]

I have been setting up a new Cyberpunk Red game in Campaign Logger and throwing in tons of placeholders to mine plots from.

I am using Johnn's "Loopy Session Planning" section from RolePlaying Tips #488 "GMing Gods, Demons, and Immortals"

His session template there looks like this:

Session #:
Real world session date:
Who’s coming:
In-game calendar start date:
Log:
Threads:
News OOC:
IC:

https://www.roleplayingtips.com/npc...mons-and-immortals/#16-loopy-session-planning

The main thing you need to do with this is pretty simple... you keep a table / index of all the loopy threads in motion.
Between sessions you update them to add a "The next step is ..." particcularly for NPCs, Rivals, or Villains.

Then before a session, you marshal which loops might be needed for the session, skim over the "what's next" part and get the loop back on the mental pile to improv / take advantage of.

In Campaign Logger - I tag all my plot ideas with something verb noun. For fantasy it might be "storm castle" "catch dragon" "sink pirates"

Then I can put ideas in those places for future mining.

For my Cyberpunk game the starting plot factory was easy - list all the various items of things in the world, and add "heist"... so, an AI heist, various forms of Vehicle, Weapon, Cyberware heists, etc.

Once you "activate" a loop - give it a cool name so it helps become a mnemonic / memory aid.

You can also add a tag like "open loop" for active ones, and "closed loop" for plot threads that ended that you might want to reskin and recycle later.

If you intend to build a 5-room dungeon for a given plot from the idea mine/factory - then copy in the 5-Room Dungeon template to the Logger page and start working through building up the 5 rooms/encounters.

 

[Gary F]

Do you keep a reference document for the plotline itself? If so what is in it. The 5 room template?

 

[ExileInParadise]

Do you keep a reference document for the plotline itself? If so what is in it. The 5 room template?

I've pretty much stopped using files/notebooks for this sort of thing in favor of moving everything into Campaign Logger "Pages".

In logger, I create a * tagged Page for each basic plot idea: *"AV heist" *"Cyberware heist" etc.

If I have an idea for a 5 room dungeon for it, I will load the template in.

Otherwise, I just use the encounter/adventure seed madlib or dramatic question:

Can the players steal prototype cyberware from villain or:
Can the players stop villian spreading dangerous new designer drug.

Once the plot gets in motion in a session, then I need to add more of the session details described before and most importantly the NEXT step of that plot - villain does what? players might do what?

Now that Campaign Logger supports both Player public and GM hidden data on a Page - I can put "what the players know" in the public half of the Page - and put all my secrets and such on the GM half of the plot.

Until I put Player data in a Page, it is hidden ... so I can prep loops and ideas in the background using Logger, and then bring the players in as they trigger off each plot line.