Doing it right

Hey /tg/, I was thinking about my latest campaign and I stumbled upon a particularly neat technique for creating a character-based plot I'd like to share with y'all.

Every player creates their character sheet, and with that they hand you a brief backstory (you don't need a novel, 3 sentences or so is adequate, but you can write more if you want). Then they write out 3 beliefs (Burning Wheel style; if you are actually playing BW then hey awesome), and 3 goals (short, medium and long term).

Now, look over the backstories and see if anything connects well. Macguffins, family histories, whatever. If nothing goes together, that's fine, you'll connect stuff later. But if something does connect, write it down.

Now, take each character's beliefs and write out two encounters for each: one that affirms the belief and one that challenges it. You don't want a fully fledged encounter, just a brief idea. Someone has a belief like "Life is best experienced when free"? To affirm that, "PC frees slaves;" to challenge that, "A community is saved from distress by a benevolent dictator." Now, you should end up with six encounter ideas per PC. Cut them out so they're all on separate scraps, scramble them, and then sort them into similar ideas. You want them to be as dense as possible while also making sense, so each encounter is positively dripping ideological challenges that will really mean something to your PCs.

Now, you take those goals and loosely define the steps they'll need to take to accomplish them. They're gonna go off the rails so keep it fast and loose. Now, like you did with the encounters, look for overlay (but don't cut these up, because they're not isolated incidents but chains of events) between the goals. The more your PCs actually want the things in the plot, the less pushing you'll have to do to get them there.

Take the long term goals and interweave them. They should take the better part of the campaign to get them, if not the entire thing. Then layer medium term goals on top of that, and short term goals on top of that (of course, cluster these near the beginning of the journey; the PCs will go through these quickly, and may even decide they don't want them anymore. That's actually good. Find out what they DO want, and make it happen).

Now that you've got everyone's goals interwoven in a nice network (and remember, keep this loosely defined because even when you give them everything they want, the PCs will still go off the rails), layer those belief encounters wherever you can, evenly spaced across the whole thing. You want to make it so every session, a goal is accomplished, or another step is being taken towards accomplishing one; and/or a belief is either challenged or affirmed. Any session that isn't getting the PCs closer to what they want, or making them question why they even want it in the first place, is worthless from a story perspective. Why have a random encounter when you can have one that makes them question why they're fighting for justice...or shows them just how powerful a righteous cause can be?

You've also got to make four relationships with NPCs, one familial, one factional, one antagonistic, and one with someone in the party.

EXAMPLES

>Beliefs
All things serve The Truth.
Hard work and perseverance can best inborn talent.
Merit is the measure of the man.

>Beliefs
Money isn't power, but it buys the best kind of power - death.
Good mead and music is great, but nothing heals the soul better than home-cooked food.
A man is defined by his wallet, watch, and belt.

Beliefs: Hard work defines a man, always make a profit, thievery is the greatest sin.