Shocking though it may, sometimes I’m actually really excited to write an article.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I don’t write s$&% I don’t want to write. I like what I write. But there’s some articles that I just can’t wait to publish. Sometimes, they’re about rules hacks that I know are going to really change peoples’ games. My Companion rules, for example. I couldn’t wait to share that s$&%. But sometimes, they’re about ideas, concepts, and theories that profoundly changed how I look at and run my own games. When that s$&% happens, I want to share it with everyone.

Turns out the articles that excite me the most are always the most divisive ones.

That last article I did? The one about Japanese narrative structures in video game design? Man, was I excited about that one. Because it’s been a game-changer for me. But man, was it ever divisive. As in, it divided me from everyone f$&%ing else.

I got a lot of feedback on that one. And most of it was from very confused people who either didn’t understand what the hell I was driving at or who sorta did but didn’t know how to actually use it to write campaigns. And there was a lot of discussion from people who thought they understood what the hell I was saying and how to use it, but very obviously didn’t.

Now, if you understood the article—or think you did—and you got some kind of good takeaway from it, good for you. Hell, even if you just got it and shrugged and said “hey, that’s neat, maybe I’ll try that,” good for you too. But I left a lot of people scratching their heads and saying “what the f$&% was that?!” So, if you liked the article, please don’t assume the Internet-standard smug-a$& attitude and belittle anyone who struggled with it. And please don’t try to reassure me that really, my article was great and that my s$&% doesn’t stink and I’m still a total f%$&ing genius.

I know I’m a genius. But I also know I f$&%ed up. I know because I know exactly what choices I made when I planned, outlined, and wrote that article. And when I look at all the WTF feedback I got, I can see all the choices I made. And how they were the wrong choices. Choices about not splitting things into separate articles and not explaining plot structure as a concept first. Choices about skipping to a particularly weird and complex narrative structure without discussing some more familiar structures first. And choices about how much time to spend on background and theory. They were bad choices. They worked for some people, but they didn’t work for most people. And, at the end of the day, it’s my job to reach most of my readers.

I’m not going to ax the previous article. Some people really liked it. And it really does have some useful stuff in it. What I am going to do is write the parts I skipped. And then, I’ll come back and tackle the kishotenketsu thing better once I have some solid groundwork. That’s my choice. If you don’t like it—because, for some f$&%ing reason, I get a certain amount of “feedback” every time I admit I made a mistake and try to correct it—if you don’t like that choice, you can skip this article. You can sit around, secure in your unbridled genius, and tell yourself how much smarter you are than everyone else. And you can snicker at me for selling out or kowtowing to the vocal minority or the lowest common denominator or whatever. And then you can f$&% right off. Because I don’t want to hear it.

Plot Architecture 101

Angry here. Just a quick note for the readers who actually value their time and skip my Long, Rambling Introductions™. The article you’re going to read today—or skim because your time is so f$&%ing valuable—should have preceded last week’s article about kobayashimaru narratives in role-playing games. See, in my infinite wisdom, I decided to skip explaining a bunch of stuff about plot structure because I thought you’d find it more interesting and exciting. But all I did was confuse the motherloving f$&% out of a bunch of you. Sorry about that. My bad. Even geniuses f$&% up.

For right now, we’re just going to pretend that last article didn’t exist, okay? I’m not going to delete it or anything. It’s still got good, juicy stuff in it. But I want to cover all the s$&% I skipped to get to that article. So this article follows from the article before last. The one called The Road Trip to Adventure. Okay? That’s the last article I wrote about plotting RPGs. I never mentioned that whole Japanese story thing.

Got it? Good.

In my last article—wink wink—I showed you how to plan a campaign or adventure like a road trip. As a series of stops on the way from one place to another without much concern for the twists and turns and surface streets in between. In other words, I showed you how to write out a series of very broad steps to carry your players from “you all meet in the tavern” to “and with Archduke Ferdinandrosaurus Rex dead, the world is saved and you’re remembered forever as heroes of legend, now go make new characters and let’s start again.”

In other, other words, I told you how to plan a plot.

See, in the end, a plot’s just a series of things that happen in a story. A plot’s not a story. A story is an experience. The whole, big thing that comes when you throw a bunch of characters into a setting and give them a motivation that pushes them through a plot with a sprinkling of themes and s$&%. The story’s the entire gameplay experience. Beginning to end. Soup to nuts. Foreplay to climax. Story’s something that doesn’t actually exist until you’re done with the game. With the campaign. Or the adventure. Or the session.

In other, pretentious, storeygamey, douchenozzle words, story is an emergent, holistic element of role-playing games. But if I said that, I’d have to f$&%ing shoot myself. If I could even get through that whole sentence without retching.

But plot. The plot’s just what happens to the characters as they make their way through the story. Through the game. The plot’s comprised of all the encounters that make up a scene and all the scenes that make up an adventure and all the adventures that make up a path or arc and all the arcs that make up a campaign. But just the summary of the s$&% that happened in those encounters and scenes and adventures and arcs.

The article that immediately preceded this one—and there were no intervening articles—just described a quick way to come up with a plot for a game. Any ole plot for any ole part of your game. And how to nest them all together and expand them into smaller and smaller plots to go from campaign to adventure to session to encounter as necessary. But there’s two things I didn’t cover in that article. The one that came right before this one. And I’m going to cover them today. First, I didn’t explain why you’d want to plan out a plot instead of just f$&%ing winging it from session to session. And second, I didn’t explain how to pick the right plot elements and arrange them into a good narrative.

And the explanations to both involve a little thing I like to call plot structure. Because that’s what it’s called. And I like to use the right words for the right things.

So, today, for the first time ever—because I’ve never written any preceding articles about it—I’m going to talk about plot structure. Because it turns out that there’s more to telling an interesting story than just making sure interesting s$&% happens.

Structure. What Is? Why Want?

A plot’s just a pile of things that happen in a story, right? Just a bunch of events. As long as interesting things happen, it doesn’t matter what those things actually are. Or when they happen. Right?

Wrong. Just. F$&%ing. Wrong.

See, if you look at all the stories that exist—at least all the stories people actually f$&%ing like—you’ll notice a lot of similarities between the plots. Not in terms of the s$&% that happens. But in terms of what kinds of s$&% happens when. I’m not saying all plots are the same. I’m not going to sell you that horses$&% about how there’s only seven different plots in the whole world. I’m saying that lots of plots have very similar overall shapes.

Plots are like houses. Every house is different. But most houses follow the same patterns in how they’re put together. Most houses have a front door, for example. An entrance that faces the street. And that door usually opens into a living area. Oh, sure, it might open into a foyer or hall that connects to a living area, but there’s still a living area right f$&%ing there near the front door. You won’t go through a front door and end up stepping in a toilet. Lots of houses have back doors. Doors that open into a yard. Some kind of recreational outdoor place. And those back doors usually also open into a living area. Living room, dining room, den, lounge, whatever. A gathering place the residents hang out in. Maybe with guests. Sometimes, there’s a second back door too. One that lets the master and mistress of the house get from their bedroom to a private part of the outdoor place. A patio or a terrace or a balcony. But, again, it’s rare a back door’s going to come out of a bathroom. Some houses have side doors too. Sometimes, the side door is also the back door. But the side door usually opens into a utility space. Kitchen, garage, cellar, laundry room, s$&% like that. It’s a convenient way to get trash out and get groceries in.

Meanwhile, the indoor spaces are usually joined up in pretty standard ways. There’s a traffic flow to a house. The living areas are usually interconnected. The living areas the residents share with guests are near the front door. The personal living areas—den, lounge, playroom, study—tend to be farther from the front door. Utility spaces tend to stick off the living areas. Kitchens connect to dining rooms. Cellars and garages and laundry rooms connect to kitchens or nearby halls that connect to the kitchen. Shared and guest bathrooms stick off the living spaces while private bathrooms and private bedrooms are deeper…

Look, do I have to go on? Or do you get what I’m saying? Two houses might differ greatly in size, layout, and number of rooms, but there’s still patterns, right? Intuitive patterns.

Well, the same’s true of plots. You can have big plots and small plots. Complex plots and straightforward plots. There’s plots spread out over entire franchises and plots that cover single episodes and even plots for individual characters’ lives. No matter the size, complexity, scale, and interwovenness of those plots, they all share certain patterns.

Those patterns are what we call structure. And whether you know or not, you get this. There’s a part of your brain that understands plot structure. I mean, you know full well that plots usually start with a beginning and then have a middle and finally, they have some kind of ending, right? “No s$&%,” you say, “that’s just how linear time and causality work.” But that’s wrong. And watch your mouth. Things don’t have to happen that way. You can tell stories backward, for example, or mix s$&% up. I mean, many TV shows and movies actually mix s$&% up with a thing called the in medias res. That’s where a story starts somewhere in the middle and then does the beginning stuff and then does the rest of the middle and then has an ending. But those stories still have beginnings, middles, and endings. And certain kinds of things happen in the beginnings, middles, and endings, even if they don’t come in chronological order. For example, even if we start in da middle, we usually don’t get introduced to the characters until we circle back around to that beginning s$&%. That’s because introductions are a beginning thing.

Now, our human brains have been trained by 50,000 years of telling stories—seriously—to expect certain kinds of plot shapes. And as civilization emerged and smarta$&es in different corners of the globe invented culture, more kinds of plot shapes emerged. So that, today, we’ve internalized them so much that we don’t even realize that plot structures are a thing and that it could be any other way.

And here’s the part where helpful readers scramble down to the comment section to tell me about their favorite story with a non-traditional plot structure. And here’s the part where I say, “no f$&%ing s$&% there’s stories that don’t follow common plot structures. Successful stories, even.” And keep in mind I’m not even talking about specific plot structures yet. I mean, I’m using the standard three-act structure as an example just because that’s one most of my readers will be familiar with and because I’m sure as hell not dumb enough to try to explain some other, more complex structure from another culture without laying the basic groundwork about plot structures in general first. But, yes, other structures can work. And free-verse and deconstruction are things. Though the only reason they’re things is that plot structures are a thing too. Truth is, though, for every House of Leaves or Magnolia or Rashomon, that endures the test of time, there’s eleventy-squintillion Odyssey’s that are more well-known, enduring, and beloved. And there’s a reason for that. And the reason is our brains.

Our brains expect plots to come in certain shapes. And some shapes are really good for getting stories into our brains. That’s why Homer used Three-Act Quest Narrative. It’s super effective! Moreover, some shapes work better for some media. But we’re not looking at particular shapes just yet. We’re just trying to understand that shapes exist and why they exist and what plot shape even means.

Good plot structure helps an audience grok a story. It’s just that simple. Stories with the right shapes fit into our brains. They’re easier to digest. And because we expect those shapes, authors can use our expectations to keep us invested. For instance, if a story starts with a humble character living a normal life, we know—we just f$&%ing know—something’s going to go wrong. We’re expecting it. We’re waiting to see just how s$&% gets turned on its head. If nothing ever happened—if the entire story was just this dude living a completely normal life—we’d totally check out. That’d be a boring-a$& story. But because we know stories, we have faith that the humble boring normality will end. Usually at the end of the first chapter of the book. Or within the first ten minutes of the movie. Or before the show’s first commercial break.

We’re so sensitive to that s$&% that, if we have to watch the main character live a normal, boring life for fifteen minutes in a movie, we complain that the movie was “slow to get started” or “it dragged.” And some people will just walk out on the movie altogether.

Structures also help plots fit together into cohesive stories. See, all sorts of s$&% can happen in a story, but s$&% doesn’t happen at random. And when utterly random s$&% happens in a story, it really f%$&s with the audience. And not in a good way. See, much as people like to be surprised. They don’t like to be too surprised. Surprise is exciting, but too much surprise makes us uncomfortable. It makes us feel threatened. Scared even. That’s because human brains thrive on patterns and a cause-and-effect understanding of the world. It’s essential for human survival. Human brains are pattern-recognition machines. To the point where they’ll invent nonexistent patterns rather than accept chaos. Plot structures not only promise patterns will happen, but they also establish little pattern skeletons so human brains can focus on the details that are layered over those skeletons like narrative flesh.

Plot structures don’t preclude surprises. They just ensure that the right surprises—tolerable surprises—will come at the right times. Twists and reversals won’t completely blindside us. And well-structured plots set up throughlines and foreshadow surprises so that, even when they do catch us off guard, we blame ourselves for not seeing the surprise coming rather than the author for f$&%ing with us.

But RPGs are Different… Aren’t They?

Okay, so plot structure is a totally important thing for a book, movie, or TV show to have, but games are different. Especially open-ended role-playing games. If you hold those to strict plot conventions, they’re not really open-ended, are they? They aren’t RPGs. Right? Right?

Be grateful you can’t see the look I’m giving you right now.

Games—especially table-top role-playing games—actually need plot structure more than non-interactive narratives like books and movies. Yeah. In non-interactive stories, the author controls everything. The characters do what the author tells them. And the author knows all. That means the story keeps moving even if the audience gets a little lost. Have you ever read a story where s$&% just wasn’t making sense? Or where something happened that seemed totally random and took you out of the story? Or where you felt like the story was dragging a little bit? Whatever the obstacle, though, you plowed on? And eventually, things made sense? Or it became clear the random event wasn’t random at all? Or the story picked up again?

The problem with a table-top role-playing game is that the audience is also the main characters in the story. They’re controlled by the same brains. So, if there’s something wrong with the story, the characters in the story themselves get sidelined. They’re the ones that get lost. Or bored. And because the story is part of a game—one that promises success if the players make smart choices and play well—incoherent plots and random bulls$&% can ruin the experience by sabotaging the players’ abilities to choose, plan, and play well.

Good plot structure empowers the players. Often without them even knowing it. And if doesn’t exactly empower them, it at least reassures them that s$&% will come together in the end. That there’s some kind of pattern, even if it isn’t obvious. Thus, it fosters trust between the players and the GM just as movie-goers trust producers, screenwriters, and directors. Except for the ones who work for Disney.

It’s a pretty simple formula, really. Well-structured plots establish audience expectations and ensure coherent, cohesive stories. In games, expectations establish goals—which every game needs—and cohesion and consistency let the players plan and strategize. Thus, as counterintuitive as it might seem, plot structure actually increases the sense of player agency. And it also ensures that, when the game’s done, the story the players just experienced will likely be a satisfying one. One that sticks in their brains and stays around for a long time.

What Was Planned Versus What Actually Was

It’s a pretty simple formula, right? I just said that. Well, what I meant is that it should be a simple formula. But it’s not. Because RPGs.

RPG campaigns and adventures need well-structured plots because, as I just explained, they’re audience participation narratives. The plot’s structure helps the audience participate. But, they’re also open-ended things. Hell, that’s the unique f$&%ing selling point of RPGs over other games. You—the players and the GM—can do whatever you want. Invent whatever you want. And the game will somehow manage to keep up. Whatever stupid, crazy-a$& decisions the players make, you—the GM—have to keep up.

Within f$&%ing reason. And I’m sick of having to say that. But every time I mention that it’s the GM’s job to react to the players and build a game out of whatever baffling, idiotic s$&% the players do, people hear me saying “the GM has to run whatever game the players demand.” No. That’s not true. The GM and the players agree to play the same game. And if someone breaks that deal, the other side gets to veto it. Or quit. But that’s another story.

Of all the different narrative bulls$&% elements that find their way into an RPG, the plot—the sequence of events that happen during the game—is the most malleable, mercurial, and un-f$&%-ing reliable one of all. Every time the players make a decision—and every time the GM makes a decision—they’re changing what’s going to happen next. To a greater or lesser extent.

That’s why smart GMs distinguish between the planned plot and the plot that actually happens. And that’s all they do. They understand the difference. They don’t try to force the players along the planned plot. They don’t throw out the very idea of planning as useless because you can’t plan for the unexpected. They just f$&%ing understand that there’s value in planning a plot and know they may have to adapt, adjust, twist, contort, or even throw out parts of it.

So, the planned plot’s the sequence of events the GM expects to happen during the game. Or the adventure writer. The planned plot consists of all those events that are spelled out in the module and all the encounters the GM designed and statted up ahead of time. The GM or adventure writer figures out what their players—or most players if they’re writing a module for distribution—are likely to do and makes sure the GM’s ready for that. When there’s a few different ways things can play out that are all reasonably likely, the GM or adventure writer plans out branching paths and conditionals and flowcharts and s$&% like that. A planned plot doesn’t have to be a straight line.

Now, smart GMs and adventure writers don’t just leave s$&% up to chance either. They hedge their bets. Because it’s easier to run things you planned for than things you didn’t. And it’s easier to present a well-structured plot if you don’t have to make that s$&% up as you go. So, GMs use all sorts of tricks to point the players toward the stuff they’re ready for. Now, don’t lose your f$&%ing mind. I’m not talking about forcing plots and railroading. I’m talking about s$&% like getting the players to actually want to confront the dragon you’ve decided the adventure’s about defeating.

See, truth is, the players don’t have to actually do anything. You can plan an adventure about killing a dragon or whatever, but the players might decide to camp out in the woods and kill boars or open their own noodle shop or run for town council or burn down a puppy orphanage instead. Plot structure’s actually a trick GMs use to point the game toward the things the game is about.

That’s why your Dragonslayers for Hire! starts with the players visiting a village that’s been devastated by a dragon so they can see how much it sucks for dragons to devastate things. And that’s why the players might learn about all the valuables in the dragon’s horde. And why the players will also find out that, after the last group of dragonslayers f$&%ed up the job, the dragon gave the townsfolk two weeks to feed it twenty of their children. And the deadline’s just days away.

Yeah, I know that s$&% seems obvious. “That’s just how you write an adventure, Angry. You have to provide motivation and urgency and s$&% like that.” Well, I know that. In fact, I’m pretty sure I told you that. But the reason that’s how you write an adventure is because of plot structure.

If you know your s$&% when it comes to plot structure, you’ll notice that the actual plots that happen in your game will start to conform pretty closely with the plots you planned beforehand. This means, you’ll be better prepared to run your games and you’ll be less likely to have to throw a lot of s$&% out. You’ll always usually be ready for most of the big encounters and events pretty often. That just makes you a more efficient GM.

But that doesn’t mean you’ll never get the fun of improvising. It doesn’t mean you’ll never get caught by surprise. Unexpected s$%& will still happen. But it’ll be manageable surprise. Fun surprise. Mostly, you’ll be surprised by the outcomes. The players will pull off all sorts of cunning plans and crazy capers to deal with the s$&% you were already ready for, empowered by the excellent plot structure that gives them the context they need to understand their goals and strategize about them. And, because players are such f$&%-ups, the outcomes will probably still surprise you.

You’ll also get to be surprised on your own terms. Either because you left blanks in your planned plot which you knew you could deal with at the table or because you decided, at the table, to do something different from what you had planned. I do that s$&% all the time. I invent characters and plotlines out of the blue while I’m running my game. Not because I have to. But because I want to. I improvise on my terms.

Understanding how good plots fit together also lets you improvise better. Ever sat at a table where you couldn’t tell where the GM’s planning ended and their improvisational bulls$&%ery began? That’s partly because those GMs understand—consciously or intuitively—what s$&% goes where in a plot. So when they pull some new detail or event out of their a$&, they make sure it’s the right kind of event or detail for that moment in the plot.

Point is, however much you plan or improvise, and however much you want to plan or improvise, good plot structures make your games easier to run, more enjoyable, and they empower your players. In other words, they let you run your best game and let your players play their best games.

But What IS Structure? How Do I Structure?

I know I’ve been pretty f$&%ing vague about plot structure. Sure, it’s the shape of the story. And sure, it’s a powerful tool. I’ve made that abundantly, excessively, painfully clear by now. But I still haven’t explained what structure actually is. And how to actually plan a structured plot.

The problem is that structure’s a pretty vague thing to begin with. It’s like trying to describe what’s happening in a lava lamp. Especially when it comes to RPGs. And the other problem is that there’s lots of different ways to define plot structure. There’s basically different kinds of plot structures. And each works best for telling specific kinds of stories and some work better in some media than others.

But basically, plot structure just means that most plots move through a series of phases. You’ve probably heard of acts in a play, movie, or TV show, right? Well, acts are a specific kind of phase. In the different phases of the plot, different kinds of things happen. In the first act of a traditional, three-act narrative, for example, introductory things happen. Set up things. You meet the main characters, you find out what their deal is, you meet some of the side characters and extras, you maybe meet the villains, you see what the big deal is the main characters have to deal with by the end of the story, and so on. All the pieces are just getting set out on the board.

Now, that doesn’t mean the first act’s the only place where introductory and set-up stuff happens. But that’s where most of happens most often. Occasionally, stories will introduce new characters in the middle of the story, but they don’t usually introduce too many new characters later in the story. And those characters have usually at least been mentioned beforehand. And it’s extremely rare to meet someone new in the final act of the story.

The plot’s phases tell you what parts of the plot go where. It keeps the plot organized. Introduce s$%& here, raise the stakes there, have the final confrontation over there, that kind of crap. But structure also defines the transitions between phases. In traditional, three-act narratives, for example, there’s usually some kind of something that happens that the heroes can’t ignore that marks the end of the first phase and the start of the second phase.

But there’s also some more subtle s$&% that defines plot structure too. Narrative things like conflict and pace and weirder s$&% like chronology too. But it’s hard to talk about that stuff in general. So, in the next article, I’m going to talk about a particular kind of structure. The simplest kind of structure. The one most of us are most familiar with. The three-act structure. And after we get that structure down, I’ll show you how to plan a nested campaign and adventure with it. And I’ll also tell you why three-act plots in RPGs are different from three-act plots in other, boring, non-interactive media.

Later, I’ll show you some of the weirder structures. I’ll show you how to turn that five-room dungeon thing into a more general five-point plot structure. And I’ll tell you about my current favorite plot structure. It’s based on Korean traditions and it’s been modified for use in all sorts of open-ended video games and it’s great for exploration-based campaigns. Especially when you combine it with three-act scenarios.

But you gotta learn to walk before you can sprint a marathon. And I’m too smart to throw that complicated s$&% at you before I even explained why this structure stuff is so useful.