I don't think we want to just completely abandon everyone to their own devices, rather we'd like to work alongside with players to do things, since I don't think it's fun having to always come up with your own thing and how it'll turn out and what happens on a large scale as a result, etc.
What we've been doing thus far is getting player plots sent to us, saying 'yes' or 'no' to them, and then leaving the players alone to figure out everything for themselves. Which was pretty uncool of us, we'll admit, and had a lot to do with the fact that we just didn't feel like we had the energy to keep up with everything. But I think in doing that, we limited the effect that a plot felt like it had upon the populace; because we never really brought it to attention, had IC consequences to things characters were doing ICly, etc, players felt like their plot lines didn't matter and didn't have an effect on the world, which was actually the opposite of what we wanted. It was a pretty bad policy and left everyone feeling frustrated and we want to change it to something that works.
What will work is something we're not sure of, but trying to figure out right now. I think it'd get tiring and not to mention feel a little inconsequential on all parts to constantly have to NPC, in this case probably nature. Trying to take on all the responsibilities of nature-related things myself has pretty clearly not been working, but I would like to have some kind of force for people to react to/get reactions from. I'm just not entirely sure how to achieve that without actively playing everything myself, which is also a thing I don't want to end up doing.
... I am not sure if I actually answered your question, but I think the short of it is that we'd like to give more emphasis on the importance of player-driven events and provide people with a THING to play against in nature without having to actively/only play it ourselves. Doing that is what personally wore me down for a long time, so I really don't want to put that on anyone else.
Re: STATE OF THE GAME
What we've been doing thus far is getting player plots sent to us, saying 'yes' or 'no' to them, and then leaving the players alone to figure out everything for themselves. Which was pretty uncool of us, we'll admit, and had a lot to do with the fact that we just didn't feel like we had the energy to keep up with everything. But I think in doing that, we limited the effect that a plot felt like it had upon the populace; because we never really brought it to attention, had IC consequences to things characters were doing ICly, etc, players felt like their plot lines didn't matter and didn't have an effect on the world, which was actually the opposite of what we wanted. It was a pretty bad policy and left everyone feeling frustrated and we want to change it to something that works.
What will work is something we're not sure of, but trying to figure out right now. I think it'd get tiring and not to mention feel a little inconsequential on all parts to constantly have to NPC, in this case probably nature. Trying to take on all the responsibilities of nature-related things myself has pretty clearly not been working, but I would like to have some kind of force for people to react to/get reactions from. I'm just not entirely sure how to achieve that without actively playing everything myself, which is also a thing I don't want to end up doing.
... I am not sure if I actually answered your question, but I think the short of it is that we'd like to give more emphasis on the importance of player-driven events and provide people with a THING to play against in nature without having to actively/only play it ourselves. Doing that is what personally wore me down for a long time, so I really don't want to put that on anyone else.