Every GM’s notebook I have, for every game I’ve ever run, has a copy of S. John Ross’s The Big List of RPG Plots tucked inside it. It is blessedly brief, fairly generic, and versatile. When stuck for an idea for a game, it’s right there for me to mine for ideas. The problem is, after a while regular players start to become familiar with the plots, no matter how much I dress them up and twist them around. That’s why S.John’s list is my fallback. I have stacks of other products that I use for my primary campaign planning, both RPG-specific and general writers’ tools. Today I want to talk about a new one, Gnome Stew‘s magnum opus Eureka: 501 Adventure Plots to Inspire Game Masters, currently available for pre-order. I managed to get an advanced copy from Gnome-in-Chief Martin Ralya.
The Basics
Yup, it’s 501 plots, broken into sections for Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Horror. They’re further broken down into categories, lumping similar plots together. Then there are the specific plots, which seem to average about five paragraphs each. Enough detail to get you going, not so much detail as to bind you in. You have a plot to work with, but it’s up to you to adapt it to your setting and the specifics of your game. My initial though was “Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Horror? What about [INSERT ANOTHER GENRE HERE]“. Well, at the end of each plot there’s an “easily adapted to” blurb that includes sub-genres like Hard Sci-Fi, High Fantasy, Space Opera, Steampunk, Anime, Pulp, and so on. Nice touch. There are also “tags”, identifying features of adventures. In the back of the book are handy indexes sorting plots by genre and plots by tags. Very nice touch.
Using It
At over 300 pages, it’s a bit much to lug around along with all your other necessary game books. This is one that stays at home and gets used to plan big adventures, not something to consult on the fly. So here’s a bonus gamemastering tip from me, that applies not only to this book, but to your other sources of inspiration for your games: keep a page in your GM notebook with footnote-like entries. “June 26, 2010, ran adventure based on Family Problems, Eureka page 147″. If you’re running a long-term campaign, it helps you to remember what plots you’ve already used and you can avoid repeating yourself. It works for any media: “Ran adventure based on Burn Notice season 3 episode 9″ or “ran adventure based on B plot of The Damage Patrol episode 6″. If you want, you can also print a copy of the Table of Contents to put in your GM notebook, and highlight or cross off the plots you’ve used.
Usually I give advice about genre-bending, using Horror plots for Science Fiction games and so on. Eureka already does that, but I’ll say it anyway: it’s often fun to find ways to make a plot for one genre work in another genre. With the tags, you can also string together similar plots. Want to run a political game? Look up all the plots tagged “politics”. I think those pages might go into a GM notebook for easy reference, too. I can tic off the “politics” plots I’ve used.
Another tip: go for the A plot/B plot paradigm. While the characters are doing something on one plot, start introducing elements of the plot of the next adventure. Create layered games with subplots. Have a main party plot, and subplots for one or more player characters that unfold slowly over time.
Final tip: Never feel beholden to how you think a plot should play out. If the players come to a wrong, but logical, conclusion, and you like it better than your own ending, run with it. Tell them they’re clever and that it’s what you planned all along. Then use your original ending later, in another game or to fool them when they think they know what’s going to happen because we’ve been in this plot before.
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