The Bag of Threads

One of my players – interested in DMing their own game – asked me about how backstories factor into session planning, and how they connect to other events that occur in a game. My answer was substantive enough that I wanted to revisit it, rework it for clarity, and share here.

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I like to boil any backstory down to about one sentence. Then it goes into the bag of ideas that I pull from when I prep sessions. That same bag is where all the "loose ends" go after each session. NPCs, treasure, monsters, events, conflicts, debts, rivalries, complications, all sorts of one-sentence "loose ends" or "loose threads." For each thing the characters resolve, they leave multiple things unresolved; so this is a major source of ideas for preparation.

So for example, very early on, a character sold their shadow to a merchant. This went into the bag of ideas. At some point, selling the shadow was going to come up again, and probably complicate things for them. Either being shadowless would be an issue, or the shadow itself would appear in some compromising way. That idea gradually turned into "what if the merchant sells the shadow to a third party, and it's weaponized?"

But the great thing about those "loose threads" jostling around in the bag of ideas is that they get tangled together. So, what if the shadow thread was intertwined with another loose thread? What if "the character sold their shadow" gets tangled together with "the disappearance of that character’s sister was the inciting incident that led to their life of adventure"? 

So the party is attacked by a weaponized version of the sister’s shadow instead of the character’s shadow. Why is the sister’s shadow also detached? Because she sold hers too, of course. So that creates a parallel between the siblings. And provides a clue as to where she is, and what she's doing.

The characters eventually followed those clues to find the sister pragmatically working with a group of mindflayers. And those mindflayers provided a natural way to tangle together more loose threads. Different characters' stories were tangled together, and the mindflayers became a cluster of complications. So the sister is working with the mindflayers. Who are trying to bend the power of the paladin’s god to their own end. And they've also put a parasite in the rogue’s head. And so on.

And, of course, the players have to choose to pull on those threads. A lot of threads are dropped into games, and the players never grab them. And that's fine. They may go back in the bag, or I might discard them, if it seems like they're not really relevant anymore.

This is more art than science, but once you get used to it, it really makes session planning easier by centering it on the characters, their past actions, and the things they care about, as measured by what they focus on in the actual game.