I'm preparing this game of Shadowrun where I have 3 main metaplots driving the campaign. One of them for instance is Seattle hosting the Olympics. Of course in Shadowrun, what the bad guys want is rarely obvious (unless they are really unorganized and bland). For instance the party might be hired to steal data from Knight Errant to end up being ambushed by well prepared cops and all of this was of course the plan of Mr. Johnson, who's actually working for Knight Errant, to make a diversion for another group of Shadowrunners in a different building (also hired by Mr. Johnson). So dozens of runs like this actually translates to Knight Errant framing metahuman activists for stealing sensitive information and justify more security measures for the Olympics and leading to the arrest of the leader of this activist group etc.
Brilliant! It's all working out after all. Muahaha. I have this big thing going on. But there's no way the players will ever know about it unless I get Mr. Johnson to make a big villain monologue explaining everything to them. How can my players ever know the hidden motivations, the metaplot and what part they actually took in the story without using the villain monologue trope?
Edit: I added the Shadowrun tag because I thought even though my example was specific that system agnostic answers would be acceptable but it's not. Shadowrun is really specific in its setting and tropes. To answerers I want an answer with the following considerations:
- Mr. Johnson is smart. He doesn't keep "receipts" of transactions with shadowrunners or anything that could incriminate him or the organization he works for.
- Mr. Johnson does NOT want anyone to ever see the beauty of his plan. He's not a comic relief evil guy. Mr. Johnson is human, he can make mistakes, but he will not keep written logs of his plans to be found by anyone. Yes the group can be smarter, but I don't intend to let the BBEG do stupid mistakes on purpose
- Since this question is now tagged with Shadowrun I want the answer to fit with minimal (or ideally without) adjustments to the setting.
Best Answer
When questions come up about how much detail to plan for when prepping for a campaign/session etc, one of the answers I tend to agree with is that you only do as much as the players are going to see/experience. There's no point in having a detailed history of some far off land if it is never going to come up.
To a certain extent the same applies here. Shadowrun's tropes tend towards having these complex, multi-layered schemes and plots, with various rival factions backstabbing each other and noone trusting anybody. The problem is, as a GM you can come up with these clever stories, but unless the players run into the details somehow then a large part of the effort is wasted. (A slight caveat to this is that knowing this information can cover you if your group is prone to going off in unexpected directions, as the detail can help you improvise on the fly).
If you assume that Mr. Johnson is as smart as you say, then the PCs are going to have to work to get the information on the complexity, and this leads to one of the key things – you need to give them a reason to dig further. There needs to be some sort of motivation for the group to start peeling back the layers of the plots to reveal just how clever/convoluted everything is.
Assuming that you think the PCs care, then you need to leave a trail of clues. As you say, Mr Johnson is too clever to do anything really stupid, which cuts out many of the obvious choices, but there are still as many options here as your fevered imagination can come up with.
For example, perhaps the PCs overhear snippets of conversation with other involved parties, or come across news stories or other media that make oblique references to characters/places etc the PCs are encountering. The key thing here is to be subtle and not spell the connections out too obviously. Assuming that you've laid the ground work and the players/PCs have the appropriate motivation, let them join the dots and fill in the gaps. This can lead to some fertile ground for further adventures as the group of runners plots how to extract proof of what is going on. Things can be especially fun if/when they make incorrect assumptions.
The key thing through all this though is not to force it. If you want to stay true to the motivations and intelligence of a typical Mr Johnson then you're absolutely correct, they wouldn't be so stupid as to leave details of their plans lying around to be found. However, all people make mistakes however small, and with the number of parties that are involved in your typical Shadowrun adventure, there is massive scope for information leaks in various forms that the PCs can stumble on. Don't explain everything, and make the PCs work and leave plenty of room for assumptions as to what is going on. A typical group of Shadowrunners are unlikely to ever have a complete picture, and that is fine.
It can be really difficult for a GM who has put such a huge amount of work into a clever plot not to want make it absolutely clear to the players how good it is, but resist this urge. A bit of confusion is a wonderful thing to prompt a healthy amount of paranoia, and then you sit back and smile to yourself as the players gradually realise just how deep the rabbit hole really goes and how far they are in over their heads.