Posts made by Coin

@Huzuruth said:

alight correction. Colin is Minneapolis

And probably not the coder in question.

@Pyrephox said:

(Seriously, every large social scene should have sub-goals for people attending - exchange packages or information, cause social strife between specific people, repair relationships, lure someone to an isolated corner and shiv them, SOMETHING.)

This forever.

@Pyrephox said:

"Hey, I know there's this sniper plot, but a I've had the Frankfort Frank Festival scheduled for two goddamned months. I don't really want to turn it into a head-popping extravaganza - can we work out something where I can run it without having to constantly pose terrified people in kevlar helmets?"

Yeah, this is essentially what I was saying above, except I looked at it from two players/storytellers coming to an agreement, while Pyrephox is looking at it from a point past the possibility of that agreement and at which staff has had to become involved in a mediatory capacity. But it's essentially the same solution. In this scenario, staff's reaction could reasonably be: "It won't be a head-popping extravaganza, but maybe pose a little tension because no one knows if someone might get shot, and we can add an incident towards the end after your scene is mostly over."

@Arkandel

In order:

Yeah, sure, that's fair. People need to be able to compromise. If Sniper Plot is important to me and you want to avoid it, I might do my best not to bring it up, but if it's at the climax and my character knows he's the next target, you're shit out of luck.

I think everyone who's running non-personal, game-wide plots should communicate. For Eldritch, I want to have a person on staff whose main job is to make sure people are aware of things that might affect each other's plots. It's gonna be difficult, but I think it would work great. It is, I think, essentially what @EmmahSue was hired on The Reach for, initially. In my example above, it's just as easy to have the runner of the Sniper plot page the runner of the Festival plot with: "Hey, would it be awesome if our plots intersected and the Sniper shot someone at yuour festival at a moment that affects your plot the least?" Communication is a two way street.

I think if one of the plots is being run by a staffer and the other isn't, it's still important for the communication to happen. The onus is only slightly more on the staffer, but only by a negligible degree. People shouldn't be afraid of paging staffers with stuff like this. A staffer running metaplot (as opposed to "regular" plot) should, IMO, always be on the look-out for how other plots happening can feed and be fed by the metaplot they're running. Lastly, if the plots are both being run by staffers, there's absolutely no reason there shouldn't be communication.

I don't really know what you mean with "precedence". If a plot is affecting things to that degree, it was probably either approved by staff or staff has looked at it and gone "we have no objections, carry on", which means there's no precedence-taking. It's all plot. At least, in sane games. There are always games in which plots are always crazy and contradictory, but if you have that as the default you have bigger problems in the "coherent narrative" department, anyway.

This is why I like +events for large stuff (like the example festival scene).

If the Sniper plot is already happening, it necessarily informs the Festival plot. It's at this point that the Festival plot should take the Sniper plot into account. It would be best (IMO, as with all things) if the Sniper plot affected the Festival plot. It's easy:

1. Decide if the Sniper threat is enough for the city or festival organizers to call it off. Get staff opinion, but don't necessarily delay everything because staff dwaddled.

2. Decide if it's enough for the PEOPLE to not go. Get staff opinion, but don't necessarily delay everything because staff dwaddled.

3. Grab the Sniper plot's ST, ask them if their plot makes sense for the sniper to target someone at the festival.

4. Run the festival as you envisioned it!

5. Insert Sniper attack when it seems appropriate, or if you don't want to disturb the body of the scene, tack it on at the end. Shots fired! Police sirens in the distance! Annnnnd curtain.

The way our comunity and communication works isn't ideal for this. But if you do it, it creates a sense of cooperation between the storytellers that genuinely helps players believe that the world they're playing in is interconnected, which, to me, is invaluable.

@Arkandel: Just despair. Alcoholism I can run with.

@HelloRaptor, I've been at WORK all day.

I work with decent people. It's the only reason I can deal with all you fuckers later in the day.

@HelloRaptor I didn´t run into assholes all day.

Just you and @Arkandel just now.

Assholes.

You're both assholes.

Whatever. Everyone knows I'll just be a jerk to you for no reason than to be a jerk.

That's how we do.

Trufax.

@ThatOneDude

Most of the things I plan on running for Eldritch will be cross-sphere friendly. But anything I run not on Eldritch will probably be just for my friends, etc., just on the main principle that I only have so much creative energy, and if I'm going to run anything outside of my game, I really need to want to do it.

@Thenomain

I ran a neat plot with a Fetch-Child and a Fetch-Spawn on The Reach. >.>

@silentsophia

I didn't care which brand. I just wanted root beer. The problem is that Dr. Pepper isn't root beer.

[wails].

My mother took a trip up to the U.S. to visit my brother. People asked her to bring them back a lot of different things: high-def mics, cowboy boots, silks for rolling cigs and joints, special brands of super-special teas, a phone or two, and other random crap. Some of this stuff you can even get here, just not as cheap.

I asked for a couple of bottles of root beer. You can't get root beer down here. It doesn't even exist.

She brought me Dr. Pepper.

She doesn't understand that Dr. Pepper is not root beer. Not even fucking close. And because she doesn't understand, I said thank you and drank one and left the other in the fridge.

Dr. Pepper isn't horrible. It's not going to kill me.

But it's not fucking root beer, now is it? The person who ordered the cowboy boots didn't get a pair of shit-kicker combat boots, did they? She didn't bring the person who wanted classic Zig-Zag silks for their fucking joints some random off-the-counter brand, she got them Zig-Zag.

I asked for root beer. I got Dr. Pepper.

Okay. Sorry. I'm done complaining now.

@Arkandel

No. Because people are judgmental.

Yeah. A small-to-mid-sized game is more like 8-20 players on any given night, with 14-35 active connections. Depending on alt limitations.

The vikings are coming, THE VIKINGS ARE COMING! AAAAAH!

@Arkandel, this is why I support NPCs holding the important positions at least at first. Makes people have to work for it and not just take the positions because they're available.

"Oh, I guess I'll just take this leadership position since no one is doing it." What?