Quote from: Ravenswing;801835I've seen more than a couple threads about timelines where chuckleheads argue, often hotly, that Suchandsuch and Thisandthat incidents a thousand years ago were meaningful and relevant to the players.  Which is horseshit -- that's like saying that the Albigensian Crusade or the fall of Calais is meaningfully relevant to people of today...

I find that what is or could be relevant depends on what the campaign is about. In the real world I know about the Albigensian Crusade, the Cathars, siege of Cahors, and the back and forth ownership of Calais. So if a GM in an Indiana Jones style game had an adventure where the PCs search a cemetery in Cahors or a ruined Cathar castle for clues leading to the Holy Grail the possibility of the Cathar heresy, Crusade, ruins, and lost artifacts is known and is an organic outgrowth of real history. (And if I didn't know anything about the Cathars in the real world I could quickly get a surface knowledge via Wikipedia or reading one of several novels.)

In an RPG set in a fictional world where the players are on a similar quest for the lost Chalice of Life, a prior brief entry on a timeline mentioning the game world equivalent of the Cathars and their unique religious views or the Albigensian Crusade allows the later introduction of the quest for the lost Chalice of Life to appear (and be) an organic part of the setting rather than seeming or being just an unconnected ad hoc quest of the week. And as both a player and a GM I prefer the organic over the seemingly unconnected.

Quote from: Bren;801850In an RPG set in a fictional world where the players are on a similar quest for the lost Chalice of Life, a prior brief entry on a timeline mentioning the game world equivalent of the Cathars and their unique religious views or the Albigensian Crusade allows the later introduction of the quest for the lost Chalice of Life to appear (and be) an organic part of the setting rather than seeming or being just an unconnected ad hoc quest of the week. And as both a player and a GM I prefer the organic over the seemingly unconnected.

Great ... and exactly how many timeline items are you going to make me swallow so that you can hide that one historical nugget in?

Or you could, rather, have a PC find a book about the subject two sessions before.  Or a minstrel sing a sad old ballad about it.  Or, since none of the characters at the session have a History skill (or analog thereof), we wouldn't know jack about it anyway.

Think about it: there are a lot of background-hostile players in the best of circumstances.  How many threads have we seen over the years where someone bemoans that his or her players completely ignore the lovingly prepared background documents, and how many responses are from the "Fuck homework, I just want to roll the dice and play" crowd?  Even the most pertinent, short-term timeline's lost on them: they don't care.

Quote from: Ravenswing;801859Great ... and exactly how many timeline items are you going to make me swallow so that you can hide that one historical nugget in?

The Star Wars campaign that we ran for 10 years had 2 pages of bullet points organized by date. Some of them were possible hooks or backgrounds for adventures. Some were milestones for important NPC and the PCs themselves. Things like their own PC's birthdate are the sorts of things players do seem interested in.

In the games I run or play in History is a skill that some PC (usually more than one)has available. In a number of systems it is either an automatic or readily available skill. Of course one can toss a clue out there a session or two before the time that the PCs go after the lost Chalice of Life and hope that they will then go after the lost Chalice of Life two sessions later. Which is a bit better than tossing the information in the same session in which the information is actually needed.

Quote from: Ravenswing;801859Great ... and exactly how many timeline items are you going to make me swallow so that you can hide that one historical nugget in?

Or you could, rather, have a PC find a book about the subject two sessions before.  Or a minstrel sing a sad old ballad about it.  Or, since none of the characters at the session have a History skill (or analog thereof), we wouldn't know jack about it anyway.

Think about it: there are a lot of background-hostile players in the best of circumstances.  How many threads have we seen over the years where someone bemoans that his or her players completely ignore the lovingly prepared background documents, and how many responses are from the "Fuck homework, I just want to roll the dice and play" crowd?  Even the most pertinent, short-term timeline's lost on them: they don't care.

Couple of ways.

Make timeline items important.

I give the lovingly prepared background documents to you and you can't be bothered to read them while on the shitter.  How will you be able to make those oh so very important player decisions?  I wont help you.  I am merely an impartial referee.

Or

Just don't play with "Fuck homework, I just want to roll the dice and play" crowd

Quote from: Sommerjon;801873Just don't play with "Fuck homework, I just want to roll the dice and play" crowd

This too is an option.

Also I think Ravenswing's criticism misses my point. I suggested that some players prefer when events arise organically from the setting* and their knowledge of it and that for those players a timeline can enhance their experience by providing them with some information about the setting that would be available to their characters. To then point out that there are some players who won't read any information at all or who don't care about the setting outside of what is presented in game is irrelevant. Those players aren't likely to care much about the details of the setting so obviously a timeline isn't designed for them. Just as a book or story found two or more sessions prior isn't intended for those players who don't want to track clues across multiple sessions or listen to an NPC tell a story and then remember the story several sessions later. Different resources for different needs.



* EDIT: As an example, real Cathar ruins, artifacts, and mythology providing clues to the Holy Grail on earth is more fun for me than a quest on earth with entirely made up magical McGuffins and made up history and mythology. Similarly I enjoy things based on invented historical details already presented in an invented setting.

Quote from: Bren;801738Here are some additional details for the Star Wars Timeline.

This is what I would call an too extensive timeline. I like it the way Earthdawn did it. Roughly ten pages and overall very relevant for the players.

Quote from: Sommerjon;801873Couple of ways.

Make timeline items important.

I give the lovingly prepared background documents to you and you can't be bothered to read them while on the shitter.  How will you be able to make those oh so very important player decisions?  I wont help you.  I am merely an impartial referee.

Or

Just don't play with "Fuck homework, I just want to roll the dice and play" crowd

In my case it's mostly a GM thing. I like timelines (if relevant), because they gives me ideas what to do with the game. It makes it easy for me to come up with story seeds and work them out. Too much irrelevant info and I won't read it. Not any backstory at all and it won't appeal to me as much.

For example I won't read all of the Star War background, because a lot of stuff doesn't matter for my players. It's just dry history for the sake of history. The history of Revan and Malak and the Mandalorian Wars in KotOR is very relevant for the player and makes the setting in my opinion. That's the way to do it.

Another example is the new Werewolf game. The only backstory that game has is a tribe of werewolves kill Father Werewolf and get his job as the spirit border patrol, meanwhile pissing off another tribe. Presumably. Because in later books they question that myth and present other options. That is nowhere near enough for me to make it interesting.

Timelines are important for mayor events; you need to know when the next election is.



With that out of the way, the way I see it a timeline is a potential future barring PC action, a metaplot is what will happen in spite of PC action, so metaplot is always bad. Even worse is when later published metaplot negates what has happened in the campaign (not that the GM needs to allow it).


I.e, if in Ravenswing's "Scarlet Pimpernel" game the events of the Revolution were going to play out regardless of what the PCs did, up to and including trying to assassinate the leaders of the terror, to end it early (or prevent it in the first place), then it's metaplot. If the PCs can change the history of the Revolution, or knock off the Corsican corporal before he becomes a thing, or whatever, then it isn't a metaplot.

Note that this means that the timeline will have to change in response to the actions of the players.

Quote from: jan paparazzi;801720They must be relevant to the players. Otherwise it's just a waste of space.

The GMs are also players. If it's useful or fun for GMs, but the players never interact with it, it's still relevant.

Quote from: apparition13;802091I.e, if in Ravenswing's "Scarlet Pimpernel" game the events of the Revolution were going to play out regardless of what the PCs did, up to and including trying to assassinate the leaders of the terror, to end it early (or prevent it in the first place), then it's metaplot. If the PCs can change the history of the Revolution, or knock off the Corsican corporal before he becomes a thing, or whatever, then it isn't a metaplot.

It's a matter of agency, I expect.

Now those events -- barring the butterfly effect -- have a direction in mind.  One of the things I put into the SP timeline, given that I knew players would be curious, is that Napoleon just wasn't there; he spent the first years of the Revolution in Corsica, and the rest of it in southeastern France and Italy, and up until 13 Vendémiaire only a handful of people knew who the heck he was.  (The amusing bit is he was never a corporal; he was a military academy graduate directly commissioned as a second lieutenant.)  Certainly no one in 1794 knew that a young artillery brigadier serving in a frontier army would wind up being the dictator of Europe, and neither would the PCs.

Quote from: apparition13;802091With that out of the way, the way I see it a timeline is a potential future barring PC action, a metaplot is what will happen in spite of PC action, so metaplot is always bad. Even worse is when later published metaplot negates what has happened in the campaign (not that the GM needs to allow it).

You can sum it up that way. The way I see it a timeline tells us how it came to be. A metaplot tells us what comes next.

Another thing I like about timelines is that it brings some cohesion to the setting. In Earthdawn everything leads back to the Scourge. It explains why the surface is destroyed, why there are monsters, why there are dungeons and who made them and it explains the human culture and mentality. Following stories or quests should focus on rebuilding civilization.

Quote from: Ravenswing;802151It's a matter of agency, I expect.

Now those events -- barring the butterfly effect -- have a direction in mind.  One of the things I put into the SP timeline, given that I knew players would be curious, is that Napoleon just wasn't there; he spent the first years of the Revolution in Corsica, and the rest of it in southeastern France and Italy, and up until 13 Vendémiaire only a handful of people knew who the heck he was.  (The amusing bit is he was never a corporal; he was a military academy graduate directly commissioned as a second lieutenant.)  Certainly no one in 1794 knew that a young artillery brigadier serving in a frontier army would wind up being the dictator of Europe, and neither would the PCs.

Is that "would" inevitable, or could the PCs stop it should they (in character) decide to "do something" and succeed?

Quote from: jan paparazzi;802212You can sum it up that way. The way I see it a timeline tells us how it came to be. A metaplot tells us what comes next.

People have been using "timeline" a coupe different ways in this thread, both as "backstory" and as "potential future events". I'm using it here in the second sense, as GM scripted futures that may or may not happen, depending on PC actions, which I'm contrasting with metaplot, or scripted futures (GM or official publications) that will happen, no matter what the PCs do.

As far as I'm concerned, when the PCs start acting, even in a "historical" game, history is potentially out the window. So if the CoC PCs decide to take out what they think is a cult, who happen to wear brown shirts and have among their leaders some guy with a Charlie Chaplin mustache, I'm not going to prevent them from doing that, even if it winds up tossing the rest of 20th century history out the window.

Some backstory is useful to the players, more to some than others. More backstory is useful to the GM. Timelines (future) can help with the feeling of exploring a living world, as events happen in the background, but also in response to PC actions. Metaplot goes on the garbage heap; I'm not acting out parts in someone's novel*.


*There's a lot to like in Pendragon, but while I know there are people who like the Great Pendragon Campaign, I have negative interest in running or playing through it.

Quote from: apparition13;802341Some backstory is useful to the players, more to some than others. More backstory is useful to the GM. Timelines (future) can help with the feeling of exploring a living world, as events happen in the background, but also in response to PC actions. Metaplot goes on the garbage heap; I'm not acting out parts in someone's novel*.

I completely agree with your entire post. Backstory is helping me immerse in the setting, because it feels like the world is in motion. That's my beef with the new WoD games. They axed the metaplot, but they threw out the baby with the bathwater by axing the backstory as well. Without backstory the world feels static to me, no matter how many supplement they make for it.

A lot of people see a Timeline as a juggernaut that moves slowly along, crushing everything in its path.

I see a Timeline as a guideline, giving the GM and players a skeleton on which to hang a campaign.

In a campaign set at the time of Robin Hood, people generally know that Richard the Lionheart is going to go to the Crusades, be captured, be ransomed, return to England and pardon Robin Hood. If the campaign follows that timeline, does it make it a bad campaign? Will it crush the players' creativity? No, of course not. The PCs can take part in the Crusades, maybe help Richard avoid capture. If he is captured, they can do a Blondel and try to find him. They can oppose Prince John and help raise the ransom. They can help Richard return to England. They can do a lot of other things in the meantime.

Quote from: soltakss;802464A lot of people see a Timeline as a juggernaut that moves slowly along, crushing everything in its path.

I see a Timeline as a guideline, giving the GM and players a skeleton on which to hang a campaign.

And discussions can occur at cross puposes as you have people with very different points of view about gaming. For example in a game set before and/or during WWII (or any fantasy event of similar magnitude) you may have any of these points of view.

A) A game shouldn't have events like WWII. The setting should be defined by what the players want their PCs to do, not by macro events that are out of PC control.

B) Having events like WWII is fine, but the game should totally be about the PCs literally punching Hitler in the face and ending WWII nearly single-handed. Because they are just that good.

C) Having events like WWII is fine, but the game should be totally about punching Nazis in the face and saving America [or insert your country or even the whole world as you choose]. Punching Hitler in the face should be possible, but it is not required. The PCs may try to change the course of the war, but generally they won't be able to control events of that scale and scope unless they are playing Churchill, Stalin, Eisenhower, etc. Even Captain America doesn't end WWII.

D) Having events like WWII is fine, the game should totally be about characters in that setting. While character level events (squad, platoon, or company) should be in the control of the players, macro events like the entire course of the war or a major campaign generally are not in the control of characters. You may have a pivotal roll at Stalingrad or Normandy, but you aren't going to make or break the invasion. PCs are probably no more competent or powerful than very skilled humans or the heroes of WWII TV shows like Combat! or the Rat Patrol and the events they influence are on that squad, platoon, or company scale.

Quote from: soltakss;802464I see a Timeline as a guideline, giving the GM and players a skeleton on which to hang a campaign.

Totally agree with this.

Quote from: soltakss;802464In a campaign set at the time of Robin Hood, people generally know that Richard the Lionheart is going to go to the Crusades, be captured, be ransomed, return to England and pardon Robin Hood. If the campaign follows that timeline, does it make it a bad campaign? Will it crush the players' creativity? No, of course not. The PCs can take part in the Crusades, maybe help Richard avoid capture. If he is captured, they can do a Blondel and try to find him. They can oppose Prince John and help raise the ransom. They can help Richard return to England. They can do a lot of other things in the meantime.

This is the potential future scenario as apparition13 described. This is (luckily) not metaplot, but I still like a timeline best when it's part of the backstory. Again just like in the "How it came to be" chapter in Earthdawn.

Backstory + timeline = world in motion = immersion