THE MYTH OF "PLOT FINDING YOU"

A tavern. A dimly lit, somewhat musty, wooden establishment with one too many candles dripping wax onto an old wooden bar that has been wiped down so many times it has absorbed the sweat, blood, and collective hopes of every adventurer who has passed through its doors.

Somewhere in this very establishment, a player is sitting at a table, alone, picking at a slightly-too-cold bowl of stew, stew hearty enough to fuel a night’s worth of adventuring but also vaguely disappointing in a way that suggests it was made for sustenance rather than enjoyment.

The player is listening, not eavesdropping exactly, but listening, to hushed whispers of secret schemes unfolding just beyond their reach, or to the sounds of distant battle outside. And this player is having a thought: "Why does nothing ever happen to me?"

You, dear reader, may have had this thought. Or perhaps you have heard it spoken in hushed frustration by a friend, a comrade, a fellow player who feels like the world is happening around them rather than to them. Maybe you have watched, from a shadowy corner, as other players disappear into the woods on high-stakes missions, while you remain in the tavern, swirling the last dregs of a drink you nursed for the past hour, waiting, waiting, always waiting for something, anything, to happen.

LARP is an ecosystem. It has its own unique microcosm of personalities, ambitions, and social structures, a living, breathing, ever-shifting collection of roles that interact in ways both predictable and unexpected. It has active players and passive players. It has the veterans, the newcomers, the loremasters, the lore-ignorant, the dedicated, the distracted, the NPCs who are clearly on a mission, the NPCs who are simply there to be background color, the faction leaders, the social climbers, the wild-card chaotic players who exist solely to cause trouble, the people who hoard rectangles like dragons hoard gold, the ones who always seem to know where the action is, and the ones who never do.

And yet, there is a prevailing myth in this ecosystem, a myth so persistent that it infects even the best of players from time to time. The myth is that plot will find you. The myth is that if you wait long enough, if you stand in the right places, if you exist within the game world long enough, then surely, something will happen.

But plot does not find you. You find plot.

“Plot can only kill what plot can catch.”

It is a phrase spoken by those who have cracked the code, the ones who understand the great secret of interactive storytelling. And the reason they say it with such confidence, the reason they say it with the self-assurance of someone who has already made peace with the truth, is because they know something that many players do not: if you run away from the plot, you will never interact with it. 

Plot is not a force that chooses people at random. Plot is not some omnipotent, all-seeing entity that drifts through the game world looking for players to bestow itself upon. Plot does not tap you on the shoulder and whisper, “It’s your time now.”

Plot, quite simply, is a series of choices. And those choices belong to you.

PLOT IS A STRAY DOG. FEED IT, AND IT WILL FOLLOW YOU HOME.

Imagine you are sitting outside. A dog appears. It is not your dog. It is not anyone’s dog. It is a stray, cautious but curious, watching from a distance, waiting to see if you are the kind of person who is worth approaching.

If you ignore it, if you keep to yourself, the dog will leave. It will wander off in search of something more promising. If you engage, if you throw a bit of food onto the ground, the dog will take a step closer. If you keep doing this, if you show it that you are a source of something interesting, something worth paying attention to, the dog will stay. By the end of the night, it will follow you home.

Plot works the same way.

If you sit in the background waiting for something to happen, plot will move on. It might pause. It might stop and ask you if you are interested. But it will end up with the players who give it a reason to stay.

So the question is: how do you leave food for plot?

One way is to say yes, loudly. If an NPC asks for help, say yes. If another player invites you into a conversation, say yes. If a scene is unfolding nearby and you are unsure if you should get involved, say yes by stepping in. Too many players hesitate, waiting to be invited. LARP is not an exclusive, invite-only dinner party. It is a buffet. The food is there. You are allowed to eat. 

Another is to become a walking question mark. Players talk to people who look like they have something going on. People love including others in their stories. Make it easy for them to include you.

And the best trick? NPCs are cheat codes. Use them. NPCs exist to create plot. They are walking, talking, breathing story generators, yet many players treat them like part of the background. They are not part of the background. They are tools. Ask them questions. Pay attention to how they react. NPCs are written to drop breadcrumbs constantly.

Give people a reason to involve you. Plot is a tangled web, and the best way to get caught in it is to start weaving. You might try saying cryptic things out loud where people can hear them. ("If anyone asks, you never saw me with that letter.") Let people overhear your secrets. Make public deals. Create visible conflict.

Plot is not something you wait for. It is not something that happens to you. It is something you make happen.

ECONOMIC PLOT IS A HORRIFYING MONSTER THAT LIVES IN YOUR WALLS AND IT DOES NOT CARE ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS

Economic plot is a wildfire. It is uncontainable, unmanageable, spreading whether you want it to or not. It flickers in boardroom whispers, it rages through market collapses, it burns bridges between allies before anyone even realizes what’s happening. Economic plot is the storm no one controls, the game playing itself while people scramble to stay upright.

But plot between players? That is something else. That is a candle you can pass between hands. That is a fireplace you build together. That is something you can shape. It is not an accident. It is not inevitable. It is something two people choose to create.

Interpersonal plot is the most intricate, rewarding, and emotionally devastating kind of plot you can chase. Interpersonal plot is the story that players write together in real time. It is the argument in the rain. The secret meeting at midnight. The duel that should never have happened. The moment someone chooses loyalty over logic, or vice versa. It is where the best stories happen, not because of the game mechanics, but in spite of them. The game gives you stats, spreadsheets, rules about what is possible and what is not. But people? People make the stories that matter.

A rivalry does not need mechanics. A bitter, decade-long blood feud does not need a stat block. A grudge can live forever, whether or not guns are ever drawn. A love story can stretch across months of stolen glances, careful hesitations, unread letters. A lifelong friendship can be forged in a single shared look across a killing field. These stories do not need rules. They do not need numbers. They only need two people who agree: this is something worth making real.

A roleplay contract is an agreement when two players agree that every battle will end in a draw, not because the dice say so, but because the story is more important than the outcome. It is when a veteran warrior agrees to fall in battle to a rookie, not because they were truly bested, but because this is the moment a legend begins. It is when a detective and a master thief agree that their game of cat and mouse will never end, not because of probability, but because the chase is the story.

My broad point in saying all this is to demonstrate that interpersonal plot exists somewhat outside of the regular rules and interactions because it is a story built between two players. Unlike game-runner plot, which is structured and delivered within the confines of designed mechanics, or economic plot, which emerges from the natural progression of scarcity and power, interpersonal plot is an agreement, sometimes spoken, sometimes unspoken, to create something bigger than the sum of its parts. It is not dictated by the rulebook, nor does it require an official quest or system-driven conflict to justify its existence. It thrives in the spaces between mechanics, in the choices that do not necessarily affect stats but irrevocably alter relationships. It is the argument that doesn’t need skills to feel real, the betrayal that stings long after the scene has ended, the unspoken promise that, no matter what else happens in the game world, these two characters will always be pulled back into each other’s orbit. And because it is built on mutual investment rather than structured design, it is one of the most powerful, enduring, and deeply satisfying forms of storytelling a player can experience.

HOW TO BECOME PERSONA GRATA

Interpersonal plot is messy. It is unscripted. And most importantly, it does not happen by accident. If you want to chase it, you have to make it. I can’t tell you how to make people like you, or how to talk to others, but I can give some advice on how to make a character easier to interact with:

STEP ONE: BE A PROBLEM

Be the unreliable ally. Be the rival who helps, but only if there’s something in it for them. Be the one with a code that will absolutely ruin everything at the worst possible moment. 

This does not mean being an antagonist for the sake of it. It means making choices that force other players to react. Be unpredictable. Be just dangerous enough that people have to keep an eye on you. Make yourself essential.

I like to think of it like having a fuse. Engaging characters have two or three fuses active at all times. Fuses don’t have to be complicated either, maybe the plot this weekend deals with frogs, so you decide that your character has had a lifetime fear of frogs. The point is to create grit for other players to grab onto. 

STEP TWO: LEAVE EMOTIONAL TRAPS

Engaging characters tend to, at their core, be a series of unresolved problems wrapped in a layer of unique charisma. You want your problems to be infectious. You want other players to get tangled in them by accident, to stumble into your mess and realize, too late, that they now have something at stake. How do you do this? Simple. You make it personal. Here’s a few ideas how you might do so:

• Make promises you cannot keep. Someone asks for your help? Swear that you will be there. Then don’t be.

• Give people reasons to trust you. Then betray that trust in a way that hurts.

• Start relationships that are doomed from the start. Bonus points if both of you know it.

• Speak in half-truths. Let people believe what they want to believe (This one is my favorite).

• Be visibly struggling. People love a disaster they think they can fix.

The best conflicts are the ones that feel like they could have been avoided if only one person had made a different choice. The more people you drag into your bad decisions, the more plot you create.

STEP THREE: COMMIT TO THE BIT

Interpersonal plot works best when it feels real. This means that when you start a conflict, a relationship, a rivalry, or a doomed alliance, you have to commit. Do not let the scene end too cleanly. Do not resolve everything in one conversation. Let the tension simmer. Let the wounds linger.

If you get into an argument, walk away before it’s fully resolved. If you betray someone, do not immediately try to make amends. If you are caught in a lie, double down before you break. In addition to making the individual scenes they exist in better, this also keeps players circling back to each other, unable to let go of what happened.

PLOT IS A RIVER, A TSUNAMI, AND A GARDEN THAT CAN NEVER TRULY END

So what do the three types of plot have in common? What makes them different? The difference between the three is simple. And by “simple,” I mean: the kind of simple that takes a thousand words to fully explain, which is to say, not simple at all. It’s trying to compare a river, a tsunami, and a garden. One of them is directed. One of them is inevitable. One of them is built from scratch and then, somehow, immediately overgrows itself into something unrecognizable.

Gamerunner-driven plot is the river. It has a source. It has a direction. But if you’ve ever actually seen a river, like, really sat there and watched it, rather than just thinking about rivers in an abstract way, you’ll know that a river doesn’t just go. It meanders. It erodes. It branches. And yeah, if you throw a boat in, it’ll take you somewhere, but it’s up to you whether you paddle, or whether you just let yourself get carried along until you slam into a rock. The best gamerunner-driven plots don’t feel like plot so much as possibility. It’s not about setting up a railroad and expecting players to chug along obediently. It’s about creating momentum, giving just enough of a push that people feel like they’re in motion but never quite sure who’s steering. Sometimes the current is gentle. Sometimes it’s rapids. Sometimes you hit a fork, and the entire story diverges in ways no one expected. But the key thing? The river is always flowing. Whether the players realize it or not.

Economic plot is the tsunami. You don’t schedule a tsunami. No one wakes up and says, “Ah, yes, today feels like a fine day for an apocalyptic, world-altering event.” No, tsunamis just happen. They are already happening before anyone even realizes they are happening. A butterfly flaps its wings, and suddenly the price of swords triples overnight, or an empire collapses because someone invented a slightly more efficient way to mine ore, or an entire faction goes extinct because one guy thought it would be funny to corner the market on fish. It doesn’t matter if you planned for it. You can’t. By the time you understand what’s going on, the landscape has already changed. The world will never be the same. And the best part? No one knows who started it. No one knows how to stop it. All they can do is watch.

Player-driven plot is the garden. It starts with a single seed, one choice, one decision, one “Hey, wouldn’t it be funny if” that, against all odds, actually works. It’s collaborative. It’s organic. It grows in ways no one expects. And, in case you’ve never tried gardening before, let me tell you a little secret: no matter how carefully you plant, no matter how precisely you arrange your rows, no matter how much you think you are in control, eventually, nature is going to take over. The players plant the seeds. They water them. They prune them. And then, suddenly, one day, they look up and realize they’ve grown an entire ecosystem, one that is beautiful and chaotic and maybe even a little terrifying. At best, it’s a masterwork of collaborative storytelling. At worst, it’s an overgrown mess that no one really understands but everyone is still somehow invested in.

So what’s the common thread? All of them keep going. Gamerunner-driven plot unfolds. Economic plot mutates. Player-driven plot deepens. No one gets to hit pause. There is no reset button. The reality of much of LARP story telling means that it tends to keep going even after a logical endpoint. It is up to the players independently to decide when their story ends.