There are a lot of ways to plot stories. You can search the internet and find dozens of them. For plotting roleplaying game adventures, and basic adventure stories in general, simple is better. The less complicated your plot structure, the fewer the number of things that can go wrong.
I recently hit upon using the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism as a story structure. It sounds weird, but it works. I’m even building a novel around it. Each Noble Truth is one “act” in the story. Here’s how it works.
Act 1: Suffering Exists
The characters encounter some sort of problem. It could be personal, it could be on a large scale. Suffering exists, whether it’s hurt feelings, a dragon eating a village, or aliens plotting to destroy a whole planet. This act established what the problem is on a personal level: who’s concerned, who’s affected, who will be affected. Any action should reinforce the problem: the jerk shows up to hurt feelings some more, the dragon attacks, an alien scout arrives.
Act 2: Suffering Can Be Identified
Now that you know what the problem is, you can begin to delve into the why. Why did the person do the thing that hurt someone’s feelings — and what exactly did they do? Why is the dragon threatening this particular village? Why do the aliens want to blow up the planet? This act is all about mysteries and motives, with a focus on character interaction and investigation. Any action in this act should lead to clues.
Act 3: Suffering Can Be Eliminated
Once you know why the suffering exists, you can start figuring out how to end it. How do you fix hurt feelings? How can you deal with the dragon? How do you negotiate with, or combat, the aliens? This act is about problem solving, putting together the clues. Any action should lead to answers on how to resolve the problem: learning the weakness, finding the macguffin, getting the map to the dragon’s lair, and so forth.
Act 4: There Is A Path Out of Suffering
Now that you know how to eliminate the suffering, how to solve the problem, go do it! Talk it out, fight it out, do the thing with the macguffin. It should conclusively end, or at least leave things in a good place, indicating that it will resolve itself from here.
This works well with linear-type adventures, like dungeon crawls, superhero capers and spy escapades. If you want to get more twisty, you can make the clues in Act 2 harder to interpret, more obscure. Act 3 is a time for plot twists and big reveals. Using this structure for beats can help you plan when to unveil the big shocking plot points, so that they help move the story forward. It works for both action and personal introspection as well.
Campaigning With It
Individual adventures can take this structure, but you can plot campaigns this way as well. A single adventure may be able learning suffering exists, and the path out of suffering may be leading to identifying the source; you know that the next adventure, you have to explore that mysterious cavern, or head to that supposedly abandoned space station. Think metaplot, and how you want the big details to unfold.
You can also run subplots and personal stories at different speeds. Everyone had problems. You can chart where each character is on their path to resolving their suffering, which may resolve itself sooner or later than the overall adventure plot.
Give it a try. I’d like to hear your thoughts and ideas: leave them in the comments, below.
Discussion
No comments yet.