Storytellers advice -- long-term viability

My current game is designed to be episodic in the beginning, so players will be able to come in and out a bit more as they need to be. And then they can start digging into the world around them and it'll become less episodes and more storylined. But by then, I'll have hooked them well enough to keep them playing.


All you playing OI don't read the above. :P
 
Actually, I'm seeing the "events" idea come up as a good PBP practice. Can someone give me an example? Do you post multiple events?


And then encourage players to start threads between characters?
 
Let's see. The most successful pbp Exalted game I've ever seen started off in a small town, but with the players broken up. None of us really knew the other was there at the very beginning. (By the way, this was I think Demented Ones' first pbp Exalted he ran.)

My character headed to the local mayor and social-fu'd himself into the position of "Minister of Urban Development." The Lunar was drawn to a cooking competition, in which his Solar Mate (another PC) was a contestant.


The fourth PC had come on rumors of the small town having a lead on a man he was chasing.


The last was the Zenith there to begin her righteous crusade to restore the Deliberative.


It all kinda crashed together when, drawn by the 8+ success smell of the Solar in the contest's food, an entire herd of yeddim stopped by and then found the local rice fields worth grazing on.


It took all five of us to get them out of the way and in the meantime we'd found that the town was actually being run by a corrupt DB immaculate. Took care of him and then used the city as our base for building out the take over of Creation.


Taking from this, I would give your players a setting. Perhaps a small village, or a great city, perhaps even a small province. Then set locations there. Town Hall, the Marketplace, the Slums, etc.


Have a few random things that might happen in each. Let your players drift where they want, and interact with them there. Eventually someone will cause a big enough stir to pull the group together and then bigger threads start coming into play. The child that they were playing with/feeding in the slums, turns out it they live in a Wyld-tainted set of tunnels underground and they're on the verge of picking up more mutations. There are older children down there that are Wyld addicted and can't leave. The youngest have to go out to beg for food for their older brothers and sisters.
 
In a PBP it's harder to judge where your players would like to go, because it takes half a dozen posts to hash things like that out.


Giving them the more obvious options ahead of time either directs them a bit, or let's them have ideas of their own. You know your world better than they do although they are adding onto it as well. Give them the rough outline, let them fill in the gaps too. :)
 
Yes, well, the minute-to-minute play doesn't translate well in this medium, hence this thread. The more I think about it, the more this hits the nail on the head. Give them a city. Key locations. Key people within. Factions, power-bases. Then, let them choose.


Stop playing it so close to the chest like it's tabletop. Give them the info. Lay it all out. Then run the NPCs, the rolls, the motivations when they choose to interact.


Guarantees buy-in and interest. Now, how the hell do you set something like that up?
 
They don't need all the info, not really. Here's a rough outline of a small town. I'm adlibbing a few things from my old games.

  1. The City of Lotus

  2. Town Hall
    Notable NPCs (Motivation)
    Mayor (Continue receiving his drugs)
  3. The Hidden Power (Lady Acerola, Dragonblood, Fire Aspect, E3. Disgraced Immaculate Motivation: Regain her honor. She was thrown out of the Immaculate for falling to the wiles of a Moonmad and became pregnant. Wouldn't terminate the child. Controls the Mayor through several drugs.)


[*]Notable Things

  1. One of the 'unused' offices actually leads to the above mentioned DB's home. She has her child here most time.
  2. The mayor's office is in major disarray, and the smell of burnt drugs is barely disguised (Percep+Aware Diff 2)




[*]The Immaculate Temple

  1. Notable NPCs

  2. Notable Things

    The temple is managed completely by mortals, with only Lady Acerola to guide their ministrations
  3. The worship calendar is very strictly enforced. Those who might work with the local spirits would find them decently willing to ally to break the calendar.




[*]The Markets

  1. Notable NPCs

  2. Notable Things

    A contest of some type (based on one of your PC's skills) is being held. The prize? Several jade coins, plus if the merchants are impressed enough they may have something extra.








Do stuff like that. Fill in more locations/NPCs/Notable things about the areas. All your players need is a good description of the town and the locations therein. If they want to go somewhere you're not listing, drum up some details for them and possibly have some more mobile NPCs that might drift between locations.



[*]Merchants from Lookshy



[*]None, unless Lady Acerola is in. (See The Hidden Power at Town Hall)
 
I had a long post that got eaten when the site went down. Basically it amounted to this:


I just started a game, Golden Devils: A Study in Heroism, with promise that it will be episodic. What do you think of this:


I create a "home-base" thread, a kind of base of operations or watering hole where the characters can interact and have chats "safely". Then I post separate "episode" threads that players can choose to take part in.


To start an new episode, I'll have a description of a location and it's power-bases/factions, and the players can have at it.


Thoughts?
 
Lochar said:
They don't need all the info, not really. Here's a rough outline of a small town. I'm adlibbing a few things from my old games.
  1. The City of Lotus

  2. Town Hall
    Notable NPCs (Motivation)
    Mayor (Continue receiving his drugs)
  3. The Hidden Power (Lady Acerola, Dragonblood, Fire Aspect, E3. Disgraced Immaculate Motivation: Regain her honor. She was thrown out of the Immaculate for falling to the wiles of a Moonmad and became pregnant. Wouldn't terminate the child. Controls the Mayor through several drugs.)


[*]Notable Things

  1. One of the 'unused' offices actually leads to the above mentioned DB's home. She has her child here most time.
  2. The mayor's office is in major disarray, and the smell of burnt drugs is barely disguised (Percep+Aware Diff 2)




[*]The Immaculate Temple

  1. Notable NPCs

  2. Notable Things

    The temple is managed completely by mortals, with only Lady Acerola to guide their ministrations
  3. The worship calendar is very strictly enforced. Those who might work with the local spirits would find them decently willing to ally to break the calendar.




[*]The Markets

  1. Notable NPCs

  2. Notable Things

    A contest of some type (based on one of your PC's skills) is being held. The prize? Several jade coins, plus if the merchants are impressed enough they may have something extra.








Do stuff like that. Fill in more locations/NPCs/Notable things about the areas. All your players need is a good description of the town and the locations therein. If they want to go somewhere you're not listing, drum up some details for them and possibly have some more mobile NPCs that might drift between locations.


And yes, this helps immensely.



[*]Merchants from Lookshy



[*]None, unless Lady Acerola is in. (See The Hidden Power at Town Hall)
Click to expand...
 
Just don't give your players all the pertinent information. They'll still have to show up and dig around to learn. It's just you can say 'these X places have the possibility of interesting things happening'


It'll make it easier on you and the players. :)
 
In a different game I ran, same system (tabletop, but very sandbox-y), the players were all 'drawn' to a central location, a manor in a fairly large city. Once they all got there, the butler performed a ritual to unlock their magic, and from then on just became a bearer of news. He could not leave the manor, so couldn't tangibly help them with anything they wanted to do, but had a very good idea of the people and events in town.


The players' sole goal was to raise their magic to a level where they could 'pass on' to another place (long story, plot-heavy) and they could do that any way they wanted. Some chose to help the city people with their problems (hunting down monsters in the sewers, investigating a case of child abuse), some chose to train privately within the manor, and some wandered about looking for whatever excitement they could find. If ever they grew bored with what they were doing, the butler was there to give them more news, though of course his knowledge was limited since he couldn't leave. They could choose to follow up on something, or leave it be; either way it would have effects on the city.


That's what I mean by the events system. I'll be using something in that vein with Apocalypse Roulette.
 
One of the most fun games I was in as a player was a solo game with an ST and a separate party playing other entities from time to time (such as an infernal coadjutor). Sadly the ST got mobbed by RL, but I will say that I've found it hard to play an infernal since that.


I want to experiment more with solo stories and the few games I've run have had solo themes. I feel it really helps the players get into their character rather than just sitting back from a meta perspective and shoehorning what they want to do into their character's actions/justifications (also for exalted motivations are supposed to be very driving so it can be hard to believe an exalt will hang around with a group that isn't working on that). I will say that starting up that kind of solo story thing can be hard because you really need to build it around the characters at least at the start. I've only done it recruiting from IRL friends that I could work through things with in advance. I'm not sure how you would go about recruiting for such a game on the boards.
 
Feantari said:
One of the most fun games I was in as a player was a solo game with an ST and a separate party playing other entities from time to time (such as an infernal coadjutor). Sadly the ST got mobbed by RL, but I will say that I've found it hard to play an infernal since that.
I want to experiment more with solo stories and the few games I've run have had solo themes. I feel it really helps the players get into their character rather than just sitting back from a meta perspective and shoehorning what they want to do into their character's actions/justifications (also for exalted motivations are supposed to be very driving so it can be hard to believe an exalt will hang around with a group that isn't working on that). I will say that starting up that kind of solo story thing can be hard because you really need to build it around the characters at least at the start. I've only done it recruiting from IRL friends that I could work through things with in advance. I'm not sure how you would go about recruiting for such a game on the boards.
Click to expand...
That's pretty much how all of my games run, right now. Take a look at Fallen, for example. Might help.
 
My next will definitely do this. I had forgotten that I used to not have players start together at the table either. It was a buy-in move. Players loved it and I'd usually get them together at some point, though it was up to them if they stayed that way. I got a lot of positive feedback from that and I realize now I should have done this in every game I have.


Thanks for the reminder.
 
The other thing I forgot was that I kept players in the same geographic location which gave us several perspectives on the same issue. That would be harder to transfer in PbP since I'd assume one thread per story arch.


Lots to think about. Good call.
 
I tried to do this with a PbP game here called Legends of the North, but as I was working with IRL friends that weren't regulars on the board it became quite a chore to always be poking people to check the board. I'd totes do it again or help, but it does require lots pre-game work.


=1&c[node]=6108']linky
 
WlfSamurai said:
The other thing I forgot was that I kept players in the same geographic location which gave us several perspectives on the same issue. That would be harder to transfer in PbP since I'd assume one thread per story arch.
Lots to think about. Good call.
Click to expand...
I think the same region still works, even in different threads. Or at different times.


All my Fallen players are within about a week of each other in terms of travel-time (which is to say, it would take Hygd a week to reach Crowley, Crowley a week to reach Einar, Einar a week to Dagny...], but a bit segregated by time. I look forward to when they realize how much they've already affected each other, and when I synchronize their timelines into a single thread...
 
Well, thank you. I try. I think it might be the best thing I've run, but we won't know until it's over.
 
All my dead games have one thing in common-


Players lose interest fast.


Whether its been school, work, Internet issues, or me just taking a small breather not to burn out, pbp games have this habit of being really hard to jumpstart again.
 
How long does a storyteller wait before one messages the interested people to check where they are with character template?
 
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