I realized this morning that there was another aspect to Skyrim’s design that I wanted to point out to tabletop players, but I forgot to put it in the last article.

In brief, it’s what I’ll call “nested plotting.” Nested plotting occurs when so-and-so asks your character to recover the staff of such-and-such, but on your way to do so you run across a mystical gem that you must return to the temple of blahblahblah. At that point, you have to decide to continue after the staff or go to the temple with the gem. (Or you can choose to entirely discard one mission for the other.)

This kind of nested plotting accomplishes one of three things, all of which are good.

1. The characters get a “side quest/B plot” that runs concurrently with the original quest/plot, which makes things feel more dynamic.

2. The players get some foreshadowing into what will happen after they’re done with their current mission.

3. The players get a choice of what to do next, helping to alleviate any feelings of being “railroaded.”

I’ve written about this concept many times before, but it really bears repeating. If you’re running an adventure where the PCs are investigating some haunted ruins and you know that next you want to use the classic Against the Giants adventures, don’t wait until the PCs are done in the ruins to plant the seed of the giants adventure. Do it while they’re there. They can learn about giants raiding the countryside when they go back to town to resupply in the middle of the haunted ruins adventure. Or maybe the giants’ path to town leads them right by the ruins. Or whatever. The point is, nested plotting just makes everything less linear and more dynamic.

1. 

   Redwolf · July 13, 2012 at 2:17 pm · Reply

   Just be careful not to overdo it. As a PC in one game, I ended up with a to-do list that looked something like:
   - Free a specific city from occupation, possibly requiring recruitment of allies
   - Defeat a big-bad using a magic item on loan from one powerful being AND give the same item to another powerful being by a set time
   - Find a way to restore a trio of party members to their original bodies
   - Go hunting in chaotic lands for the being that stole memories from one party member
   - Cleanse a region of underworld taint
   … and that’s just the big points I remember now, cast against the backdrop of overthrowing a regime and putting something better in place. It felt like the GM kept adding things nearly every session far faster than anything was being accomplished and led to out-of-game jokes about our “quest logs being full.” Plenty of things to do, sure, but as a player I have to say it felt overwhelming.
2. 

   Nathaniel · July 13, 2012 at 7:47 pm · Reply

   Both the original post and the follow up served as a catalyst for me. The first to open up more paths within quests, the second to be mindful to not overdo it. Thank you for your comments

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4. 

   Mary Robinette Kowal (@MaryRobinette) · July 17, 2012 at 8:02 am · Reply

   I’ve really been enjoying these posts. They are making me re-examine at the way I structure plots fiction.
5. 

   Epiphanis · July 17, 2012 at 8:56 am · Reply

   I actually view this as exposing a design drawback in D&D and other character advancement systems, esp. 3.x Ed. Gameplay and challenges vary dramatically as the PCs “level up”. So to have nested plots you have to have what amounts to two seperate adventures ready to run simultaneously. Whichever one they choose to tackle first will result in a change in their capabilities rendering the other less challenging when they get around to it. Sometimes this can be corrected with a little redesign, but even this results in wasted work on the DM’s part. Sometimes the levelling changes gameplay drastically, requiring equally drastic redesigns- chasms cease to be an factor after flying magic becomes available, etc. It’s not just a matter of adding more hit points or armor or whatever. The more tactics and gameplay alter as characters progress, the harder it becomes to run “nested plots”.
6. 

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