DISCUSSION: To Plot and Beyond

[thusiamods]

Hey guys, your resident mods here with a... not quite a full-out discussion post, but we'd like to get some ideas and points of note out there and your feedback on the matter. Particularly involving the latest plot and currently running plotlines. There have been a few discussions on plurk, but we'd like to have something more formal to make sure everyone has the opportunity to read and get their input on things that'll affect them.

There's a few things we'd like to touch upon with this post, the main points revolving around current/past/future plots and how we as mods can make things more fun for you in the way we handle them. Also on our agenda are things like State of the Game, God Functions, Player Accessibility, and probably more. To keep things organized, we'll be using header comments to cover specific topics and linking them in the post for easy navigation, so once you see a topic linked here, feel free to jump right to it.

CURRENT PLOTS: Moving HQ | Bitey Dogs | Weres

Week of my Life Posts | State of the Game | Affecting the Gods | Nature

Comments

Re: STATE OF THE GAME

[murderofcrow]

I think that's actually a really interesting concept, and a pretty good way of putting some of our current problems.

Our concern has been that previously we did get comments about people wanting to feel like nature is more of a threat, actively invading their area, but at the same time that threatens that feeling of progress in the whole 'we claimed this area it is ours it is safe'. We've had difficulties working out the balance in how to do this and just ended up... completely dropping the ball on making nature an active presence because of it. But 'let people got out and do nature on their own' ends up with a lot of things handwaved and the mods end up missing things that people are doing with nature because of handwaving or because it's buried in a thread somewhere or in a mingle. We don't know the progresses characters are ICly making and thus sometimes end up completely overriding what they're doing as a result.

It's honestly been just as frustrating for us to try to figure out where the middle ground is as it probably has been for most players trying to work with what we'd left them to. I'd really like to figure out how to move on from here, but at the moment I only have general ideas of things we can do as mods and no idea if they'd actually work or not.

Re: STATE OF THE GAME

[fates_end]

Yeah, sadly there's no easy answer to things, so a lot of it is figuring out what does and doesn't work and learning from that. And of course, the method that worked at one place might not work anywhere else. Honestly, I'm looking forward to playing in this game some more, but I'm not good at actually helping figure out what makes it better, so I just try and focus on how it works the way it does, and hope that other people can figure things out from there.

But hmm, on the topic of nature, what occurs to me is that there should be a bit of separation between minor expeditions and major expeditions: Minor expeditions would be the handwaved hunting and gathering -- more about getting what you need and getting out before you encounter very much resistance. These things probably would not be a particularly big deal, since they're not likely to attract attention or change things in a major way.

On the other hand, major expeditions would be a much bigger deal and would have larger effects: This would be where "nature is invading" or clearing an area would fit in. They would probably be your monthly nature events, likely linked to whatever the "main" ongoing plot is, and whether they succeed or fail would have noticeable effects. The weekly plot posts would help a lot here too, since you would be able to tell where most of the focus is. Another big advantage to this method is that it lets you give some of the plots a "climax" so to speak, with a key moment punctuated by a major expedition.

Probably not the best option, but it simplifies things and probably makes it easier for mods to focus on what's most important to the players.

Re: STATE OF THE GAME

[murderofcrow]

Mmm, yeah, I think if we could figure out/work on getting everything to tie together better, things would... be better? Things happening for a reason, whether nature reacting to something people did or people reacting to something nature did because people did etc, rather than just always 'and now this happened okay go'. It'd help a lot with that whole feeling of a unified story, and give players the feeling that they're affecting things outside their immediate CR circles.

Re: STATE OF THE GAME

[best_ended]

Oh, yes this.

Like. I didn't know this when it happened but in Yukari's OOC post, someone mentioned HQ crushed a lizagon nest and... nothing happened...?

So consequences to things that characters/civilization gods do would be A+++