Hello, my name is Viriatha from Bard of Valiant, and Dave was kind enough to let me talk to you about how his 5×5 Method inspired me to morph it for my own game.
Maybe it’s the gamer in me but when I first read the post title “The 5×5 Method” I immediately visualized a grid. When I read Dave’s post, I got that feeling but it seemed more like a tree than a grid with branches flowing from one another and even sometimes intersecting.
I tried plotting out our campaign that way but so many of our plot sources had no connection to each other that it felt forced. Dave’s idea is terrific if your campaign is new or your brainstorming the next one but what if you’re like me and already in the thick of the stories? Intersecting plot threads are terrific but can be difficult to write or plan so I came up with this variation on the method for my game.
First, I made a 6×6 grid. I used 6 because I used one column and row for titles. You can use graph paper, a spreadsheet, html tables – whatever works for you.
Then along the top and bottom, I labeled the major plot threads we currently have going. I only used one word. This table is a reminder to me, not a thesis. You just want to toss something in the slot that’s going to jog your memory.
Then in each intersection, I started brainstorming ideas for how these plots would interact. Start jotting down notes in each space. Again, I didn’t want to write a lot at this point, just put down some reminders for later.
Do this for each intersection and you’ve got 25 adventure ideas that pull all your threads together into related stories.
If you’re like me, and in the middle of an ongoing campaign, you can include some of the adventures you’ve run already and just cross them out. This let’s you fill in squares and see how things are working together.
You can see my example here:
The trick is coming up with 2 ideas for each intersection. In the grid, each plot intersects twice – once from each direction. I suggest looking at that from 2 different points of view.
For example, “Invasion” and “Sewers” were my hardest to brainstorm in this example. I just tried to keep the emphasis on “Sewers” for one intersection and on “Invasion” for the second one.
Don’t try to force the ideas. If they don’t flow, just leave a square blank. You can always come back and fill it in later and players are great at providing inspiration.
The real advantage here is that no matter what plot your players want to pursue, you’ve got some ideas to develop in that direction.
My next grid will be using Chatty’s idea and coming up with 25 rumors!
This is, by the by, closely related to the method that ‘Shock’ uses to generate science fiction – one column is technologies and the other is social issues, and each intersection is basically a seed. This model is one of the cooler tools out there for turning the interesting and cool into the truly awesome, so thumbs up on showcasing it.
-Rob D.
.-= Rob Donoghue´s last blog ..Exclusive Rolls (and Roles) =-.
This is fairly close to a plot hook generator I developed years back. I use common key words/themes from the character histories my players provide to generate the x and y labels. Works well for creating plot hooks/arcs that the players feel connected to.
I may have to do this grid method in addition to the “tree” style that Dave wrote about originally and use the good ideas that come out of both. Thanks Viri for the guest post!
@Rob I’ve never played Shock but I love scifi; I’ll have to check it out.
@Shiatus It sounds like it would be a great way to do things.
@Bartoneous You’re welcome 🙂 I’m using a truncated version of Dave’s tree style for my background politics in that game.
.-= Viriatha Cordova´s last blog ..Random Treaures 9/30 [Links] =-.
This is a great step building upon the 5×5 framework to help get DMs more organized. I’m definitely going to use this method in my current campaign to help me solidly tie together some tangentially connected ideas and find ways those intersections can open up new plots.
@Katallos Let us know how it works out!
I think this is a great method for organization. I am working on a 5X5 for the paragon levels (players are currently 9th and will hit paragon in a few months) and I have been struggling with a way to organize it. What I would change would be to have more rows because my 5 plots do not all have all 5 locations the same. I am working on them having at least 2 per location, but to me it would seem forced if it was all 5 plots in 5 locations.
Rae
Man, I love this idea! It can be used for so much more than just adventures. You could list all of your major NPCs and plot out their relationships (or possible scripted interactions.)
I bet you could even use this to write a novel: list all of your characters, themes, and inspirations. Fill in all the squares with little ideas of how these things spark off each other. Take each square as the granule of a scene and structure them in an outline.
.-= DeadGod´s last blog ..Zombie Metrics =-.
@Raevhen Grids are beautifully flexible for that sort of thing. In the example above, 2 of them aren’t location based and I didn’t really think about placement when I was brainstorming though.
@DeadGod I’ve seen things like that in sourcebooks – relationships graphed between races and factions.