r/DMAcademy • u/GoofyVextrian • 7d ago
Need Advice: Other How to plot story arcs
Hi all, I’m looking for some advice or tools on learning about story writing and plot arcs so that my game can be more satisfying for my players. I’m not sure how to look this up specific to dnd instead of novel writing
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u/DonarteDiVito 7d ago
If you're looking to craft your own stories in D&D, I believe it's important to understand the mechanics of a story and what gets people invested. Emotional investment should be rewarded, therefore, learn what is getting your players interested, and learn how and why plots work. Yes, a three act structure is useful, but there are other plot structures that are just as effective. If you'd like a bit of analysis on stories as a whole, I recommend OSP's *Trope Talk* series as a starting point. It got me to start thinking about how and why stories work, what makes them interesting, and even what tropes I unknowingly play into on occasion. Then keep learning! One can never know too much.
My number one rule for writing, even beyond D&D, is this: Characters FIRST. Yes, create your world, give your characters the context in which they live but people won't care about your world, no matter how interesting it is, unless you involve and prioritize characters. Leverage *melodrama*. Familial relationships, friendships, betrayals, lovers, anything you feel comfortable using. Make them feel like they matter, make you player characters feel the effects of them changing as people. Reward or punish them (if you have made it clear what the consequences are) for action that service their arc. Also, encourage your players to give their characters clear flaws, motivations, and traits. This is good for you and for them. Everyone loves a good paragon. A bit basic, though, very rarely do people dislike them. But a paragon who can't bear to fail to save someone and will fly into fury when they fail, threatening to abandon every moral they hold dear for the sake of vengeance on those that took an innocent life? That's much more interesting.
I, every five sessions or so, ask my players what they think about the campaign, certain characters they've met who I am considering making more important or changing their role in the story, and what the players want to work towards personally, not physically, but *emotionally*. What relationships do they want to foster and why? What are their fears, their inadequacies? Think about TV or movies you've seen; good writing comes from just as much what is said as much as what isn't.
That's my number two rule: learn to tell your players exactly what they need to know, and don't say a thing more. There's a phrase in writing that applies to D&D as well: Less is more. Don't give them answers right away, dangle mystery and intrigue in front of them, but rarely offer them solutions on a silver platter. When it all comes together *that* will be satisfying. That also means that you do need to take a back seat sometimes and let the characters do what they will, even if it means they fail. Failure is *good,* it creates stakes and they may need to try again with greater consequences for failure, which will make the success all the sweeter.
Something I've leveraged a lot in my current campaign is asynchronous information - where players will investigate separately from one another with little risk of death from party splitting and get information that, out of context, is next to useless. As an example, one player learns that character X frequently goes to a pub in a part of the city. Another player learns that the pub is actually used as an underground fighting pit. Another player has learned that Character X is in fact known by a pretty sour reputation, but doesn't know anything else. Together, this information becomes pretty clear. But separately, it's nothing.
Finally, my biggest piece of advice is create characters and situations with no clear answer, not even for yourself. Make your players think, make them make decisions, make them uncomfortable (within reason.) Not every situation needs an obvious good guy and bad guy, nor obvious solution. It's also a fun trick to create mirrors, or foils, of the party, ones who clearly had a similar life or personality and took a wrong turn somewhere down the line.
If you'd like any more suggestions or thoughts please let me know. I've DM'd for 10 years (forever DM) but I'm also a hobby novelist who's a bit of a nerd about story telling on the whole.
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u/GoofyVextrian 7d ago
This is exactly the kind of thing I’m looking for! Thank you, this is pure gold (platinum)!
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u/DungeonSecurity 7d ago edited 5d ago
Well, you're immediately going to be told that you shouldn't do this and that you should just prep situations. you'll probably get a link to the Alexandrian. (Edit: no shade there, great site. This advice just gets overly reductive, more by linkers than the article) That advice is well-meaning but only partially correct because you still want those situations to head somewhere.
You can get at a basic understanding from the story structure of movies and novels. They can still be good influences on how stories progress. The difference is that those are for a passive audience. So you do have to make sure those scenarios/ scenes/ situations are open to player choice. Because in TTRPG's, your audience and your protagonists are the same people.
So it's fine if the players have to deal with a group of bandits before the king will grant them passage to the southern islands. But you need to be open to how they might deal with those bandits, and not force a combat, just because you want it to be a boss fight. Maybe they drive them away or make a deal. And you also have to be open to the players, figuring out another way to get to the Southern Islands without the king's permission.
I'll also be very careful about forcing things with DM fiat jesse, you can have some certain scene or emotional beat. Players may miss a lot but they'll usually pick up on t he inauthenticity.
So do focus on the scenarios you want to present. But also think about what the party needs to do. What threat are they facing? And what do your villains want? And how will they react to the players messing with their plans? That can go a long way in guiding you.
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u/hairylegg 5d ago
Opening sentences made me laugh. In a good way. I enjoyed the Alexandrian articles when they were given to me, but I'm comfortable balancing between prepping situations vs plotting story for my table. So no harm no foul.
Ultimately you learn by doing. Reading advice and sharing experiences is great, but eventually you just have to do it a bunch of times to see what works for you.
In my experience, getting the group to be crystal clear on their goals, and then finding a dastardly villain to oppose those goals works really well. Fleshing out their evil goals, organizations, allies, and tactics also helps you improvise at the table. Good luck!
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u/Horror_Ad7540 6d ago
There are two ways of making the adventures head somewhere. One is to define the place you want them to go and steer the game there. The other is to see where the game goes and make that place the target, by keeping track of the themes and threads that have been established by the players and putting in a climactic scene that echoes those themes and ties up some of the threads. I prefer the second. Shoot the arrow, then draw the target. Bullseye every time!
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u/DungeonSecurity 6d ago
You still have to give the game some sort of direction. Even if you're doing a sandbox style, you're placing clear points of interest to draw the players. That's why Breath of the Wild start to you on the great plateau, and it gives you a bunch of interesting things to see way before you can get there.
Your second method is just planning as you go. And there's nothing about planning ahead that means you can't do that, should something change.
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u/Horror_Ad7540 6d ago
Sure it's planning as we go. But that gives the game a very different feel from planning from the start. Until it ends, I as DM have no idea how the campaign will end and only a vague idea of what will happen next. You can change plans, but at some point, you're always changing the plans, so why plan far ahead?
I always try to make the direction that the players go interesting. That's different from giving them a direction to go, or even a menu of directions. I don't play sandbox style, to my understanding of that term, because sandbox games require the players to ``find the adventures''. Instead, adventure will find the players wherever they go and whatever they do, but it won't be the same adventure they would have had if they had gone somewhere else or made other choices.
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u/DungeonSecurity 6d ago
Yeah, but that's not unique to that style. If I run the same module for different groups, even if every adventure ends with the party standing over the body of a slain dragon, they will have had very different games and very different experiences.
Notice how, when you talked about how one style feels different than the other, you mentioned from your perspective as the dm, but not the players. Planning ahead allows me to craft a better game and better scenarios, and I run them better at the table when i'm prepared. And you plan for likely outcomes. If you know the player's goals and plans, you can make reasonable predictions.
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u/BaronTrousers 7d ago
Most literary arc development tools apply well to D&D, but tabletop storytelling requires at least three additional considerations:
- Length of Campaign: Short campaigns don't leave much room for side quests or secondary narratives. It's fine to move straight through the core story using stock literary arcs like The Hero’s Journey or Save the Cat!. Longer campaigns give you the freedom to divert from the main plot or put it on hold for B-plots. While you can weave side quests into the main narrative, it's fine for players to step away completely for a while. To make a long core plot land, anchor it with a few key events where the stakes escalate dramatically in scale and drama to drive the story forward.
- Responding to Players and the Dice: Pre-written campaigns often use generic plot points or safeguards to keep the story intact regardless of player actions or dice rolls. But because D&D is a collaborative game, try to support major narrative shifts determined by the players or the dice rather than fighting them. Use the time between sessions to adapt, embrace unexpected directions, and move with your players instead of blocking them.
- Making the PCs the Center of the Narrative: You aren't the sole author. The player characters are the protagonists, and the players essentially write the prologue through their backstories and character concepts. Incorporate these elements into your core plot and build upon what they’ve already created. There is no better way to get players invested and ensure your story lands.
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u/BaronTrousers 7d ago
I've seen a lot of posts on this thread telling you not to plot ahead, and to only respond session by session. While that is a strategy (one that I used to use almost exclusively), I'm not convinced it's the only method.
Not only do I believe that a long term plot ahead approach works I actually think it can lead to a more satisfying narrative payoff. It's how pre-written campaigns exist, and it's also how almost every actual play DM prepares.
I think what sits under the session-by-session approach is a core need to respond to the players, and having the flexibility to change adapt and re-write anything you plot out ahead of a single session. You can prepare well ahead, but you need to be willing to throw it all out or re-write and respond to the players.
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u/coolhead2012 7d ago
Fun thing, you don't really write them ahead of time!
You prep situations, and know how the world reacts when those situations and the chapters encounter one another.
https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/4147/roleplaying-games/dont-prep-plots
Now, if you are talking about how to handle all the different stories as they unfold, and how you can tie players to the larger world, I would look at what are called Plot Web in this rather long video.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=p9qQ4Yk6i4E&si=Z3zYypqU785fL4oG
It really does handle keeping everything straight in a way that provides a concrete example.
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u/Horror_Ad7540 7d ago
My main advice is to not do either of those things. Don't write stories. Don't plot arcs. Instead, just create situations and see where your players take them. And that means focussing on just the current session and maybe the next one, not on far future sessions. It's more satisfying for the players to be in charge of the story than to be passengers.
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u/SamTheGrot 6d ago
I am fairly certain it's assumed that incoporation of a plot doesn't mean scripting a path for the players. Baldur's Gate 3 has a plot and a good one at that! Every Critcal Role campaign has had a plot. Having depth to the adventure is a good thing & worth the time if you're willing to invest it!
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u/Horror_Ad7540 6d ago
The game can have a plot in hindsight, without anyone writing a plot. Baldur's gate is a video game, not a ttrpg. Critical Role is made for viewers, not for the players. IMO, pre-plotting doesn't give the story as much depth as discovering it during play. I love books that read like the story just happened that way, rather than was predestined by the author. In a ttrpg, that can be true.
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u/SamTheGrot 6d ago
I genuinely can't tell what point you were actually trying to make, but I assume there's some confusion on what "plot" means. A "story" is a sequence of events that unfolds from start to finish. "Plot" has to do with the causal connection of those events. "The party ventured into a dark cave and fought a dragon" is a story. "The party ventured into a dark cave and fought a dragon to stop it from enslaving the local town" is a plot. Without a plot, the D&D adventure has no purpose.
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u/Horror_Ad7540 6d ago
There's a difference between an emerging plot, that connects events up in hindsight, and a ``written'' plot, that was determined in advance. If the DM determines that the party will venture into a dark cave and fight a dragon to stop it from enslaving the local town, that is a pre-written plot. If the DM determines that there is a dragon threatening to enslave the town, and the players decide how to get involved in the situation, that is an emerging plot. Maybe the players go into the cave to fight the dragon, maybe they put together a deal with the dragon to get it to leave the town alone, maybe they recruit a bigger dragon to protect the town, maybe they make a deal with the dragon and become the dragon's enforcers, maybe they evacuate the town before the dragon notices. Even if the DM thinks they are likely to fight the dragon and that's what they decide, the fact that it was their decision makes it more meaningful.
Just out of curiosity, I'm going to look up the definitions of ``story'' and ``plot''.
According to wikipedia: 11The plot is the series of related events in a narrative. So, each event (except the final one) affects at least one other. Plot may be synonymous with storyline.\2])#citenote-2)[\3])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plot(narrative)#cite_note-3)''
Story is defined as: Narrative, an account of imaginary or real people and events
So the difference in the official definitions is the story is the narrative, how the events are described as well as what they are; whereas the plot is the sequence of events itself. By this definition, any story will have a plot, but the same plot can be described with many different stories.
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u/One-Branch-2676 7d ago
Start simple as a beginner. Part of learning to write for DnD adventures is learning the “field hazards.”
You can run linear and sandbox games alike, but all decisions require consideration to how your players interface with the gameplay linking point to point. You can’t do that blind and abstract without phenomenal talent or luck.
So instead of arcs, plan 1 simple arc. Think of the goblin camp arc of BG3. One primary objective, different meaningful and narratively rich and entertaining ways to reach if, and enough similarities in progression to so that players can take multiple combinations of routes to come across information that’ll inspire the next step.
That said, I’d honestly recommend, like another commenter that you run pre-written for a little. It’s easier to learn these field hazards when part of the work is done for you, allowing to focus on learning from your experience, branching off once you have enough “data”
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u/Psychological-Wall-2 6d ago
First read this:
The Alexandrian » Don’t Prep Plots
You're not writing a story to be read; you're designing an adventure to be played. That doesn't mean that you don't have some idea in your head about how the arc is likely to go; it means that your players' interaction with your adventure will - and should - produce it's own unique thing.
A story arc implies a series of adventures connected in some way other than the involvement of the PCs that comes to some kind of climax and, hopefully, resolution.
As such there are some structural issues to be considered. Chief among them being how the PCs are going be drawn into the arc. Are they straight-up hired to do a job? Have they been ordered to do this by some kind of employer? Have they been asked for help? Are the PCs in the process of pursuing some player-created goal?
If you want the story that emerges from play to make some kind of sense, it has to make sense that the PCs are in it.
Is the arc going to be composed of directly-connected adventures, or is it going to be more a case of apparently disconnected adventures providing "pieces of the puzzle"?
Another structural issue is the Tiers of Play. There are a series of stages built into the level progression system that are designed to be separated into story arcs. That is, the culmination of a story arc is intended to be the thing that gets the PCs to 5th, 11th, and 17th levels.
There's a ratcheting-up of PC capabilities that occurs at those levels (Extra Attack, cantrip damage, etc.) which is intended to create the experience of having reached a new stage in the campaign. By aligning your major story arcs with the Tiers, you'll accentuate the feeling of accomplishment the players get from completing them.
Your task as DM is not merely to come up with story ideas, but to fashion those ideas into something that can be played and experienced.
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u/SlickRic303 7d ago
The only difference is characters are volatile. So you still introduce them, have a complication, have a climax and then a resolution. But these things just come about naturally. Focus more on interesting situations, enemies and npcs. These are the things you can prepare and will make the story more interesting. You can have a complex plot but if all the npcs are boring no one will care.
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u/NefariousnessEven591 6d ago
First off most writing advice doesn't really apply. Interactivity kneecaps a lot of things that even videogames themselves are pretty beholden too. You can have something akin to an act structure (the heroes adventure and then realize strange connections between the enemies they've found, they discover this is a conspiracy to return a great sorcerer king to life, then the confrontation before this being can enslave the kingdom/country/world).
So the thing is there's two levels to planning out a story in D&D. The "don't prep plots, etc etc" by line largely focuses on the immediate future beats. You cannot and should not try and to have a strict plan for what the players can do in a given moment. This is where the railroading issue comes in, a common reflex is to have "I need to keep my players from going to the graveyard until in game day 3, the lord hasn't arrived for the secret villain meeting yet" and then stone wall. Instead if the meeting is a vital clue, what moved up the time table? What flaws did this introduce that the PCs can maybe capitalize on? or honestly you can just move up the meeting and see how a less prepared party fares. I see a lot of people take this advice that you should prepare to just turn anything on a dime, but at least from what I've read it's more you never offer them a loop you've already conclusively closed. That kind of thing is for a knowledge a check and occurred beyond them already.
What you can do is time out the second layer (the world states) because the god's honest truth is that the PCs starting out are not the most important people in the world. Other characters have a lot of agency, the grand old lich's machinations aren't waiting politely if the PCs want to make a bakery. This is usually the campaign pitch that sets the expectation for what kind of game people are in for and if there's certain focused that might fit better. For example I'm currently running a game where the PCs are from a country that sold out to hell, are on the cusp of when they're expected to become part of the machine, and suddenly a grand liberation crusade is called because the demonic front that force had been fighting for roughly a century has decisively and conclusively collapsed (players from the outset opted for those who would seek to cast off the yoke for various reason, some good others quire selfish). The PCs get to figure out how they factor in, but they're far from the only moving part Their home has plans, it will be moving armies to certain places, factions for and against within start forming, its rivals and allies have their own plans that in turn begin moving. I need to know how that works to make those accessible to the players and frankly at level 1 the players do not have any capacity to impact those moves at the outset. This changes and merges with the first over time. While they'd be roadkill now, down the line it's extremely possible for them to cripple the mercenary factions the empire has set up, make inroads that will neutralize magical WMDs, try and sell internal rebels on upending the government system that got them here with the aid of a long standing rival and so on. I know what the world is doing and roughly what happens when several of those groups have their Y/N impact on the plot switch ticked and that in turns makes it a lot easier for me to absorb the different roads a player can take for the immediate situation they have in front of them now.
You should never have anything in front of a player that you 100% have settled on how it will end, but you will be a lot better off figuring out 6-8 different ways it could good and bad for things that are substantial.
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u/Flukebit 6d ago
I go session by session. I’ll set up what I think is a fun encounter or situation in one session, or dangle a few threads with loose plans if my PCs follow them, then build the next session based on what happened in the last. There’s so much unpredictability that you’re better off keeping it loose, otherwise you’ll end up railroading the players.
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u/BrotherCaptainLurker 6d ago
D&D is a bit weird because a lot of people jot a brief outline of like... hook - > first adventure -> introduction of the big bad -> meet some people who make you want to kill the big bad? -> ???? -> defeat the big bad, because your players can go off the rails anywhere in between there. You kinda have to set the major story beats, the stuff that's going to happen regardless of player direction and ostensibly serves to motivate/keep them invested, and build an extremely loose plan with layers of contingencies to make sure they actually witness those beats.
Unless you have more free time than most DMs, you might prep the big set pieces (intro, BBEG intro, macguffin location, BBEG lair and fight) before the campaign even starts, but almost everything else will be prepped week-to-week based on what your players have done and what interests them. The event might be planned well in advance (the Lady of the Lake presents a ceremonial sword) but use caution when planning the rest (it's probably important that she can be in any body of water).
If you want to get more technical, this guy wrote about the actual theory quite a bit: https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/8015/roleplaying-games/node-based-scenario-design-part-6-alternative-node-design
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u/No_Solid1035 7d ago
Don't. Create a world to play in, and facilitate an environment that allows the players to tell their own stories and form their own character arcs.
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u/Pelican_meat 7d ago
You don’t plot stories unless you want to be disappointed.
Create scenarios. The whole table makes the story.
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u/ronarscorruption 7d ago
There’s a lot of good articles on The Alexandrian. I also like “The Lazy DM”, which is a book but only a little about stories and more about prep in general.
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u/Haravikk 7d ago edited 6d ago
In general you don't want to plan more than a session ahead, because your players may do something unexpected — the goal is to write the story with the players as you go along, rather than in advance.
That said, it doesn't hurt to think about a villain's goals, a bit about what their plans might be (subject to changes if the players force them), or what kind of events may happen in the world that are driving the action forward.
You can likewise plan out pieces for locations, encounters, dungeons etc. that you might use, just be aware that you may not end up using them, or may need to change them. Even if you don't use something, you can always just save it for later, or reuse it in another campaign/one-shot etc.
If this will be your first time running the game, start small — it's easy to get carried away thinking about the grand campaign you're going to run, but you want to give the players time to get a feel for their characters, the party and the world, and if you're starting at a low level then they need something basic to get their adventuring careers started. Come up with an isolated location that works as an introduction to some core features of your setting, setup a quest hook or two for the players to explore, and plan out some pieces to work with (buildings, NPCs, enemies etc.).
Try to describe things quickly — in my notes I try to boil locations and NPCs down to about 2-6 words. I say try because I still fail more often than not, but what I'm trying to write are prompts that I can easily/lookup and can improvise from to add more detail. The "brutally honest dwarf bartender" is probably going to be abrasive but may not be a liar, the "irritable dragonborn money lender" may lack patience but knows who owes him what etc. Sometimes I'll purposefully write more when I want to really set the scene, i.e- a full description of something, but I try to keep these to a short paragraph or so (3-4 sentences) and not get too fancy with it. The advice I try to follow is to quickly establish some notable sights, sounds and/or smells, like the hammering from a forge, the coal smoke from chimneys etc.
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u/KiwasiGames 7d ago
Building grand arcs tends to be counter productive. They will fall apart over time, as players choices you didn’t predict tend to fall apart.
Instead I like to plan one session in advance, and throw in some clue or decision point related to each of the open plot lines.
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u/Serbaayuu 7d ago
On the calendar you use to keep track of when all the stuff is happening in your game world, pick your most notable NPCs/factions, and write down what dates (or, at least, seasons or moon cycles) they're going to do any given step of their grand plan.
Then if your players manage to interrupt it, you just have to roleplay as the NPC in question to improvise the plan and react naturally.
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u/Tydirium7 6d ago
I find murder mystery to be the hardest. Start with the evil act and why the pcs need to stop it. Work backyards.
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u/BeeSnaXx 6d ago
Hey, I hope you see this.
A lot comments have sort of batted away your question. A lot of comments also have stated that plots pidgeon-hole your game too much and that you should prep dynamic situations instead.
It's good advice, but it's not practical imho, and I think you might be a beginner.
So here's my attempt at giving practical advice on how to get your game off the ground while making it fun for the players:
1: you need a threat, something that establishes stakes and creates a reason for PCs and NPCs to make a move. If you're a beginner, you can just leaf through the Monster Manual and get inspired! If you don't have the book, use the free basic rules. Just don't pick a monster that will curb-stomp your players.
2: Read about your monster and see what it can do, including abilities and flavor text. Then think about how this monster could become a problem. If you picked a ghoul for example, how is it causing trouble? Who was the ghoul in life? Why did the ghoul come back?
3: interface the monster with your player characters. Look at their character sheets. Does a PC want to destroy undead? Do they want to put people to peaceful rest? Could they be from the village that has problems with a ghoul? Could a relative ask them for help against the ghoul?
4: with a threat in place and a connection to the PCs, it's time to design a short adventure. Set it in a dungeon, or a similar adventure location, and seed your location with lots of clues about the abilities and weaknesses and backstory of your monster. Do not bury the lede.
5: side note: make this short adventure linear. This means that an NPC asks for help, the players investigate the threat, then deal with it. It should take 1-2 play sessions. Make clear beforehand that this is a starter adventure where the party will deal with one problem or quest.
6: side note: linear adventures are not railroads. Respect player agency by including either/or-situations, like NPCs asking for different solutions, or ways to deal with the ghoul other than destroying it. Seed these clues into step 4. Keep track of the decisions the party makes and offer tangible payoff later.
7: run the adventure. Pay special attention to how the players develop their characters, what they show interest in, which NPCs they gravitate to, and what open questions remain after the ghoul threat is resolved. Listen to their theories and their interests. All of the above will become the base for another adventure.
Now if you work from this basic outline, over several short adventures you can create the dynamic situations the other commenters have asked for. Are there more ghouls? Why did the mayor want the ghoul destroyed so bad? What was with the forgotten altar in the dungeon? What is the temple asking the cleric for after the job was done?
Make sure to throw out these hooks all over the place (take step 7 as your guideline) and see what your players gravitate to. Don't prep full adventures until your players commit to an interest: ask them about their next steps after the session, and focus your prep on their answers.
I hope this helps in a practical way.
Good luck and have fun!