@Lisse24 said in Shadows Over Reno:
@Arkandel I want to make clear that I think plot is extremely important. I just think the PRP/+event system is a terrible way to run plot.
In my experience, PRPs/+events are disconnected, isolated events that have no connection to what my character has done in the past or what my character will do in the future. There is little attempt to wrap things into the broader sphere or my character's development. Players pick them up and drop them with little care or consequence. Maybe yours are different, I dunno.
Mine aren't different than what you're describing, no, except within their own biosphere (plotsphere?); I sometimes allow one story to evolve into another, for example, so there's continuity. But when I say 'sometimes' I mean when players are engaged and follow it up, which hasn't happened in a long time for me. That is probably circumstantial though.
Can't say that I've ever been on one of mine, but the strength that MU's have over TT's is the ability to tell a long, sustained character driven story. To that end, if a +event/PRP is a nice way to spend an evening if I have absolutely nothing else to do, but I'd much rather be chewing down on some nice, meaty plot goodness.
I view PrPs as boxes; you get out of them what you put in there in the first place. So say, if my Werewolf goes into a building infested by Possessed where he has to put a bunch of them down and I treat it like a random adventure then it advances nothing; it's a story to tell over drinks, maybe. But if I allow him to feel and think about it - those were families who just got destroyed, that was someone's father he just killed and if he had been better at keeping track of these things maybe this wouldn't have happened then that's different. Next time he gets more proactive, or becomes obsessive, or starts to stalk the rest of that family to guard them (no need for a PrP for it, it's part of his routine now) and what starts as a... as almost nothing is suddenly way more.
As an actual example, on HM a Werewolf player had asked me to run an one-shot plot for him to justify a Glory spend. In it he ran into a rapey-spirit called Keep Running and destroyed it. Yay, he got his spend.
A couple of months later I ran a larger plot for the sphere where they were chasing an unknown enemy uniting spirits and actively hunting the hunters - the big bad turned out to be Keep Running who had remerged, stronger than before, and really angry. That got a rise out of that player - in a good way - who saw something he thought was a closed and shut chapter of his life come back to haunt him.
I also have a very specific opinion about pacing. In that I like things to be slow. I want to find out a little bit of info, have a week (or two!) to RP that thing to death and make decision. Then act, find out new plot info, and RP that thing out. Bonus points if the plot-RP leaves some effect on my char for the between down-time.
That's tough. I probably sound like a cranky old ST but it's rare for me to get players who're going out there doing stuff proactively for scenes although I'd very much like them to do so. For a while now I keep having to nag, tug on sleeves and page just to get answers from +jobs - or to get people to file those +jobs in the first place - but that means if I leave things be too long instead of the time being used to feed the story and build it up between sessions it grows cold instead.
@Auspice said in Shadows Over Reno:
The other reason I don't run stuff game-wide is because... half the time I do plots on the fly.
I'll be RPing with X or Y person and just in the process of it... start throwing in some sort of mystery or a crime (if Law/Hunter types). It's off the cuff. I can't really... schedule that. 
I never do that. @Ganymede has mentioned it a few times but I'm very self conscious about STing things in scenes my PC is part of. I'm old school, man.
I can survive for a while on romantic relationships and the such but there's only so much of that I can do before it turns into Shang with a thin layer of WoD on top.