How much plot do people want?

[Roz]

@Arkandel said in How much plot do people want?:

@Lisse24 I think that does belong in this thread anyhow. How much plot do you want before you're overwhelmed by clues/followups, for example? I knew people on Arx as well who just couldn't keep up.

There's a definite reaction where people think they need to be keeping up with any and all plot threads just because of the presence of those threads where they can see. It all becomes a lot more manageable when you internally say "Okay but I'm only going to actually pay attention to X and Y and let other people play with A and B."

[Lisse24]

@Taika Basically they were a bit of information tied to a plot that a player had access to.

So, a player could type @clues and see all the @clues that they'd learn about in the past and reference them, and reread over the information when they needed to. The clues were also searchable and able to be shared. It really is a pretty neat system that adds a lot to plots and such.

[Seraphim73]

I agree with a lot of what has been said before: enough plot to feel like there's always something to do/talk about without it feeling like there's no breathing room, save the ending of the world for never (because you'll just have to top it next week, and averting the apocalypse should never feel like something that's done every year or so), allow time for recovery and to find a new status quo after major upsets, and dangle plothooks for players rather than shoving plot down their throats (and as a player, grab hold of those plothooks with all of your might and try to hook others on them too).

[Taika]

@Lisse24 This is neat! But takes tracking code. chinrubs a quick compromise seems to have +jobs open and having running tabs of what's what. Clunky, but it would work until we could get some code strung together.

[ThatGuyThere]

Since the have been mentioned a few times, in general saving the world plots should be avoided but I will make one exception, if you are playing in a genre where saving the world really does happen on a regular basis.
For example if you are playing a Justice League game it would likely be a common event because in pretty much all of the comic iterations they saved the world at least once a year(even the comedy inclined Giffin-era league made with the world saving), same with the Avengers or other A-list super teams.

[Kanye Qwest]

@Roz Yes. Of course it's too much to keep up with if you are trying to be on top of all the plot. It's a game with well over 100 players, and any and every one of them is able to open investigations and generate clues and plot threads.

The best Arx advice is to focus on what is interesting to both you and your character, and don't feel slighted when other people are digging into the things that interest THEM and their characters.

[Chet]

The bigger your population, the more plot devices you'll need to churn out, to keep them fresh. The more diverse your range of theme draw, the more rotating castmembers you'll see. The narrower your population, the more personal plot involvement staff will need. The narrower your range of vision, the more direct supervision of plot.

[Taika]

We have code on Descent that lets Staff post up plots we want to see run, allows players to choose it, @mails out a synopsis in greater detail to the players, and opens a job. I think. I'll have to double check that last bit. It may just open a job with the synopsis. It also posts to a bboard when a new +plot is added to the list.

It's meant to pull in player ST's to help push bigger plots, or little threads of a bigger plot. Players can also pitch things they think would be cool to see happen, but don't necessarily want to st themselves.

This is separate from, but parallel to, +events.

ETA: I lied! I might have been working on tying it to +jobs, but it does not, yet, pitch a job. Damnit.

[Arkandel]

@Chet said in How much plot do people want?:

The bigger your population, the more plot devices you'll need to churn out, to keep them fresh.

I've observed the opposite. The bigger your population the higher a chance players generate their own content that much better, and the easier it is to draw Storytellers for these sorts of big productions where they have an audience for their stuff.

[Packrat]

Honestly one of the big problems I had with Arx when I played there was that a lot of the things which could lead to complexity and to player fed plot felt deliberately smoothed out and whitewashed for lack of a better term.

Noble houses as immutable and eternal entities with no transfer other merging of lands through marriage and centuries old existences, weirdly hierarchical and 'clean' chains of feudal obligation, a safely ignored church that proceeded to politically shoot itself in the head under NPC direction.

Then hordes of evil approach and everyone gets an irrefutable divine vision just to make sure. It made IC focusing on anything else rediculous and also made RP relating to it pretty dull. Especially with everything happening off screen.

[SG]

Honestly, I'd just like to have one or two plots where my decisions actually make a difference to anything. I'm happy to tag along and blast things once in a while, but by far the most meaningful RP I've had in the past 3 years is chatting in a crew lounge or hanging out in a safehouse chatting about the Urban Brawl league. Most plots I've taken part in have either no significance beyond a payday, or are held so tightly to predetermined outcomes, it's like reading the GM's storytime blog.

[Lithium]

I just want plots where there is meaning and purpose behind them. Where the players actually affect the game world in lasting ways.

Otherwise, it's just monster of the week nonsense.

[Arkandel]

@Lithium That's a separate problem to solve. How much plot you throw (or don't) at your players is different than the logistical challenge of following up on the aftermath of those plots, particularly if you're also including player-ran stories (which you should).

[Darinelle]

@SG and @Lithium too - I think this is vitally important. The other thing to remember though is you need four things for this to happen:

1. GM Buy-in, in that the GMs have to accept that the world is going to change, and not always in ways they expect. That means that plots that are set forth can't have ONE TRUE SOLUTION, they have to have problems and then you have to give players the agency to solve them in ways that you may not have thought about.

2. Player Buy-in, in that players have to take an active role in coming up with solutions, interacting in the world, and being willing to let what happens affect their characters. And to be proactive too, not just waiting and checking with some nebulous NPC about what the solution should be, or waiting for NPC orders. They have to actively think of things.

3. Communication. If I as a GM don't know that you ran a PRP and that this was the outcome, then I have no way of letting that affect the world. Which is not to say that recaps of every bar scene need to be done, but "Hey, I've been RPing about this thing for a month now, and I'd like to include the benefits of that in this scene in this way" is an important thing to communicate.

4. Trust. Sometimes it's not feasible or possible to show all the things players affect without spoiling the rest of the plot. Players have to trust that when you say "no, this was really a big deal you just don't know it" that it really was. Also players have to trust GMs to be fair and to be kind - if they try something really, really stupid it's awful to see that "stupid" decision that was made with (usually) partial information and (often) bad advice humiliatingly evident in emits or for the whole game to see, like the GMs are making fun of them instead of helping them rethink their character's life choices.

I guess it all boils down to collaboration in the end. Are we telling a story together, or are you trying to force me to GM a story I hate or that isn't consistent with the world theme, or am I trying to force you to play out a story where you have to look like a fool because you mistakenly chose a character who was a fool? AHAHAHAHA SUCKER.

I like telling a story together. It's my favorite part of MUing.

[Sparks]

@Kanye-Qwest said in How much plot do people want?:

@Roz Yes. Of course it's too much to keep up with if you are trying to be on top of all the plot. It's a game with well over 100 players, and any and every one of them is able to open investigations and generate clues and plot threads.

The best Arx advice is to focus on what is interesting to both you and your character, and don't feel slighted when other people are digging into the things that interest THEM and their characters.

I would say that having a concrete goal for your character is also key.

My primary Arx alt does not, at least not one that can be easily worked towards right now; her goal has thus been "find the information to help others however you can" which is not terribly concrete. That worked great in the first season, and helped spur RP for others, but so much is going on now it's difficult to track (and she's actually had some people annoyed or dismayed at her that she doesn't have info to give on their particular plot).

Conversely, my second alt is laser focused on one very specific small slice of metaplot and easily can track it; she may not have the answers she's looking for yet, but she always has a specific focus and so it's far harder to feel overwhelmed on her. (Though I feel a little bad since it's not one of the main focal plots, so it feels like a distraction when we should be more focused.)

Focusing on a specific goal is always great for character motivation, but it's particularly useful on games with multiple plots running like Arx.

[Darinelle]

@Sparks - I had trouble with this too in the other direction, in that my character has ONE JOB, dammit, and she will DO THAT JOB and if nothing is directly impacting that job she.... still does that job. So she can't really get involved in traipsing all over the countryside. I've found that having one thing she's interested in that is outside the main story but that interests me as a player helps a lot, and if I have information or don't about anything specifically going on then that's icing on the cake.

In the end, telling a collaborative story for me doesn't have to be world-changing, as long as it lets my character strive toward goals I think are fun. The journey, not the destination, right?

[Lisse24]

@Darinelle @Sparks Can I ask how the focused thing is going for you both on Arx? One of the reasons that I left, probably the main one, was that I couldn't keep up with the main plot, but that plot was so all-encompassing, that I couldn't get people interested in what my char was doing either. In the end, it felt like I was just spinning wheels and the whole experience was pretty frustrating.

[Darinelle]

@Lisse24 - For me? It's going really well. If I want to get involved in the major metaplot arcs, I generally either A) GM them (or parts of them), or B) go to meetings about preparing to deal with them, and then send my people on them to get them involved. Then I follow my own happy arc and do my thing.

Every now and again I think - "man, I kind of would like to enjoy this other thing" but then the feeling passes and I accidentally stumble into 10 days in a row where I can't seem to have a single scene that doesn't touch my own story that I'm only really telling like two people about ICly but where random strangers affect it /all the time/. Serendipity, yo.

If you want to give it another try you're welcome to poke me and I'll try to help you pick a character that suits. Or make one that would be able to get involved in some things but not EVERYTHING. I play Leona and I GM as Puffin.

[Arkandel]

@Sparks said in How much plot do people want?:

Focusing on a specific goal is always great for character motivation, but it's particularly useful on games with multiple plots running like Arx.

I mean to each their own, but I avoid playing characters that focused on that one thing, not because I find it's limiting to my roleplay but because it doesn't lend itself to three-dimensional characters. If I had PC obsessive to that degree I would need to go in fully aware I'm actually playing someone who has issues, and although that can be rewarding on its own, it isn't something I would choose to do as a general principle.

[Darinelle]

@Arkandel said in How much plot do people want?:

I mean to each their own, but I avoid playing characters that focused on that one thing, not because I find it's limiting to my roleplay but because it doesn't lend itself to three-dimensional characters. If I had PC obsessive to that degree I would need to go in fully aware I'm actually playing someone who has issues, and although that can be rewarding on its own, it isn't something I would choose to do as a general principle.

I agree that only focusing on one thing is probably someone who has issues, but someone who has one overriding focus that trumps everything else can also be largely freeing on a game with 700+ clues to metaplot and all manner of ways to get involved. I really like having ONE thing that trumps everything because it lets me say - "does it directly affect this one thing? No? Then it's optional." If you play a character who has friends in all the houses and is super social and who loves everyone and then three different metaplots happen to your friends at the same time, it can be frustrating to try to help them all and not feel like you've made a meaningful contribution to any of them. That's where having ONE priority can come in super handy, even if you occasionally dabble in other things.