Something we do feel that was misunderstood by players was that moving was imminent and that things being said/played out ICly were being interpreted as the OOC outcome. Because two god npcs played by mods decided to do a thing, that there was no changing it! And frankly, we have no idea how to discourage that kind of thought other than flat out telling people 'oh btw you don't have to listen to them when they do this thing' at the very start of every plot line we run. Which runs into the problem of how much can we tell the players about a plot point without them feeling that a) we've spoiled all the fun of it by telling you what will happen as the 'default line' and b) discouraging players from trying something that we as mods didn't think of because they're under the belief that the default line is all that CAN happen.
We do acknowledge that we mishandled the introduction of this plot point poorly, but one thing we really want to avoid is people feeling trapped into certain solutions. For example, using this particular plot point, we as mods came up with a few ways that it could be stopped, discouraged, etc before starting it! And we prepared general concepts of what would happen if x happened or y happened. But we also felt that telling/sharing these with the community straight out in the ooc post felt way too much like... telling the players 'these are the only ways this event can be handled' and players wouldn't try other things because of it, which is why we decided to go with a more open-ended route and see instead what the players would come up with. Which we admit backfired because then players felt there was now only ONE way to go about this plot and that was the complete opposite of what we wanted.
I think a real problem for us when it comes to running plots is just how much we should be letting the players know at the plot beginning. Like you said, knowing how something ends just discourages people from trying anything new, but also leaving it too open and free form leaves that feeling of 'what do'.
Would players have preferred we'd given them OOC options of different things they could do at the start of a plot, or would that feel like way too much hand-holding when it comes to working out how to work with a plot? I think if we could get a solid idea on how players feel about that, we could work something out because so far we've just been trying out things and being told 'no that was a bad way to do it' and it's... pretty discouraging to be honest.
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We do acknowledge that we mishandled the introduction of this plot point poorly, but one thing we really want to avoid is people feeling trapped into certain solutions. For example, using this particular plot point, we as mods came up with a few ways that it could be stopped, discouraged, etc before starting it! And we prepared general concepts of what would happen if x happened or y happened. But we also felt that telling/sharing these with the community straight out in the ooc post felt way too much like... telling the players 'these are the only ways this event can be handled' and players wouldn't try other things because of it, which is why we decided to go with a more open-ended route and see instead what the players would come up with. Which we admit backfired because then players felt there was now only ONE way to go about this plot and that was the complete opposite of what we wanted.
I think a real problem for us when it comes to running plots is just how much we should be letting the players know at the plot beginning. Like you said, knowing how something ends just discourages people from trying anything new, but also leaving it too open and free form leaves that feeling of 'what do'.
Would players have preferred we'd given them OOC options of different things they could do at the start of a plot, or would that feel like way too much hand-holding when it comes to working out how to work with a plot? I think if we could get a solid idea on how players feel about that, we could work something out because so far we've just been trying out things and being told 'no that was a bad way to do it' and it's... pretty discouraging to be honest.