thusia_ooc | DISCUSSION: To Plot and Beyond

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

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Idk about opening up that document to the players, OOCly--because it could be interesting things that you can play around with for plots to happen with and surprise characters with. And when I say plots, I don't necessarily mean like. Lizagon or Flooding plots, more like Finding Out What The Hell Happened To Thusia plot--which I feel some characters have already been working on trying to decipher on their own/figure out one way or another. So keeping it hidden but revealing bit by bit according to character interaction would be more interesting--for me, anyway.

As for the maps, this is just me who's noticed that the games that have worked out the best have been the ones with settings that are defined. Camp Fuck U Die, for example, is a contained area--you can't move outside the barrier, BUT players put so much shit into that small space that maybe the barrier's expanded a few times without them looking. Sabra La Tau had the caves, again, an enclosed space but with minimal character-changes as uh. Caves... herp. The HQ actually fits with this feeling more than the world itself does. With Aather, it's all about being in different realms within one world--which can be travelled, apparently! Since characters Good End and go to other, previous realms and whatnot. So I just feel like having a set area until whenever HQ moves would not be a bad thing?

Again, it doesn't even have to be a MAP per se. Just a general idea of where the boundaries are--be it vagueish or whatnot. Say like "for some reason, Nature has been cleared out up to a waterfall in the East, this is probably due to people who have been Lost/Drafted! Any further than this and you will have to Battle Royale with nasty predators!" is more boundary and thus more to play with than what we have currently...

Though if we move, you can always start fresh with this idea in mind. (The Lost/Drafted people can bitch about having to cover such a distance to get back to HQ unless Yukari's idea for a portal in the second HQ works.)

Edited 2012-11-29 10:54 (UTC)

Yeah, that document is definitely one of those things where the balance of 'how much info is too much info' pops up again. We've kept it god only so that god players could work from it, but if we'd like to involve players more in some aspects of world design/build, it's something that's super useful to them because it outlines what we've come up with so far. I guess what we have to work out first is just how much we want to open up world building/design and how, so maybe that's a topic better left for later.

And okay yeah, I think I get what you mean re: the maps. I think it's something we can do pretty easily, though I think one hiccup we might run into is that it'd become an... ever expanding thing that'd require constant updates as people explored more, or that in order to expand more we'd have to do posts centered on that. Because there isn't a strong border/boundary when you have open nature! I MIGHT BE PHRASING THIS POORLY but I think it could hit/become the same thing we did previously with HQ, having to keep track of how much expansion was happening and running posts to help get the feel of expansion, and that was something that was definitely starting to wear on us as it continued on.

Yeah, I agree that is something to be figured out, re: world history/building.

As for the maps thing, yes, I agree that can definitely become a tedious thing! It's one of the things I got disgruntled about at the beginning of the game with HQ being slowly unveiled. It was fun at first, but it got tedious.

However, one thing to keep in mind is that people as a whole tend to stay together in more cleared areas. You see this trend even now with the HQ. People more frequently are in Levels 3 and 4 more than 1, 2, or 5. (Level 2 seems to have become the home for the crazier/mafioso-ish crowd, even...) Because it has been clearer longer and thus Safe. This is a behavior that civilizations go through and how Towns and Cities become a thing. Natural barriers such as huge-ass rivers or mountains or cliffs or what have you are also good for containing a population within a set area.

From what I understand is that there was an idea for HQ to change locations every once in a blue moon--this is a good idea, I feel! In that it will give us all different areas and regions to work with outside of murderjungle. And not only that but the topography changes and thus different boundaries.

So I guess what I'm saying is that while there COULD be expansion to the "map", it's not something you would have update nearly as frequently as HQ was. Maybe once an OOC or IC month? If that. But that's if you plan for HQ to stay stationary for a considerably long term.

That is true, I guess I'm really worrying more about the outermost potential rather than focusing on the actual likeliness of how things will go.

With locations outside of HQ, we also have the freedom to be less specific/detailed and as you pointed out less frequent updates because of realistic levels of expansion. I think it's something we can get to doing pretty easily by just adding more to the setting doc. Maybe subject people to horrible mspaint style maps.

In any case, thank you for bringing this up! I think it's something I can get going pretty easily myself if the other mods are cool with it, though it might not be something that gets done right away since we're planning a look over/clean up of all our internal docs and info pages first.

No prob!

And yes, I think a lot of the old school players here would find mspaint maps hilarious--imagine if one of the gods decided to be helpful and post up a map in HQ, even... using. crayons. or something. lizagon blood. :x

The original move definitely was outlined to make it easier to do stuff outside the HQ so if a loose map with landmarks would help facilitate that it shouldn't be too hard to add.

As for the rainforest, Dathusropi's one event that I ran actually had that weird hexagon grid thing that was actually meant to be a loose representation of a resources map in the area around the HQ. The map itself was ICly temporary since it was made up of just bits of things arranged on the floor and idk if many of the charas noticed when he mentioned that's what it was, but it could be a start depending how connected people stay to the rainforest.

Ugh! I love world maps! You know, you can always work on having characters try and dam up the flooding and pump it out in areas too - a way to have the same clearing mechanic work on the world as well.

I've made some world maps before if people need a general map to go off of, too.

DISCUSSION: To Plot and Beyond

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