To Metaplot or Metanot?

 In many ways, Dragons of Tirenia is a love letter to classic RPG settings that I grew up with, such as Dragonlance, Dark Sun and Legend of the Five Rings. One of the problems that each of these worlds struggled with was their metaplot: their ongoing storyline that changed the world from book to book. I loved these metaplots because I enjoyed seeing these stories unfold, but I also hated it. You’d fall in love with a character, a place, or an idea, and then a year later the timeline had jumped forward and the thing that you loved had changed or was gone. 

Dragons of Tirenia was never originally intended to have a metaplot. However, I really liked the idea that the actions of my players should permanently affect the world and the future games set in it. I’ve never liked the traditional idea that starting characters should do minor, irrelevant things, and only experienced and powerful characters should save the world; it’s much truer to the fantasy genre if beginning, inexperienced heroes find the fate of the world in their hands. Players who took part in more than one game could see how their characters’ deeds mattered, and I enjoyed spinning new plots out of old ones and having characters recur from one campaign to another. However, as I started to write up the world, this became a problem. Should I present the world as it occurred in my games, constantly in flux as the great Tirenian Wars unfolded, and risk turning off potential new fans?

I’ve found my solution in a few places. The first is the recent releases of many of the classic Dungeons & Dragons campaign settings, like Dark Sun and Eberron. Those present their world as frozen in time, with the promise that all these grand deeds are about to unfold. That way, Dungeons Masters can either use the old plot if they want, or ignore it if they don’t. My second solution is in the grand episodic campaigns like The Great Pendragon Campaign, which uses the life of King Arthur as a backdrop framework for the players’ deeds. All of the Dragons of Tirenia books will be presented as occurring in the year 1016 A.S., as the Tirenian Wars begin. Many of those key initial events we hope to write up as campaign guides so that you can play through them. Maybe things will happen as they have for me, or maybe they’ll occur very differently! Then, one day, we’ll write a Tirenian Wars campaign guide, laying out the entire ‘metaplot’ all at once: not as fixed events, but as a series of possibilities that could underlie your own Dragons of Tirenia metaplot. Meanwhile, in my own home games, the world will continue to evolve and change based on the actions of my players, as one possible version of the Tirenian Wars slowly plays out.

Art: 'Battle of Anghiari.' Peter Paul Reubens, copy after Leonardo da Vinci, c. 1604.