Great discussion has been going on in Twitter today about the various aspects of running a large community plot. Here's your chance in adding your advice to potential DM's and to people who want to get involved with the plot.
-
Major updates are done! We've squashed the nastier bugs, but there are probably a few smaller ones still scurrying about. Send us a DM on Twitter (@lowerworldtsw) or to @Custodian/@Voltigeur on this site if you catch one! We'll be tweaking the site's appearance and updating guides as the month goes on. :)
Community Plots
- Thread starter Collapsible Myth
- Start date
Sarah Willis
I AM THE JUSTICE, NOT YOU
Make everyone matter.
EVERYONE.
Don't put dead ends, don't make people's clever ideas a waste of time. This is not a D&D module, this is a chance to engage people and make them feel important and useful.
Ex: I feel like I must make Cass pull her hair out, because Sarah follows wild, unintentional lures that should go nowhere? But they end up mattering, they end up altering the story, and I'm always left with a warm fuzzy feeling of mattering.
EVERYONE.
Don't put dead ends, don't make people's clever ideas a waste of time. This is not a D&D module, this is a chance to engage people and make them feel important and useful.
Ex: I feel like I must make Cass pull her hair out, because Sarah follows wild, unintentional lures that should go nowhere? But they end up mattering, they end up altering the story, and I'm always left with a warm fuzzy feeling of mattering.
Nuan
New Member
Thank you so much for posting this up here! It'll really help out! I'd made the original thread on Twitter because I was considering making a larger community plot either alone or with a friend who came up with an idea himself! But before I got started on any of that I wanted to get a community pulse on their opinions regarding Community Plots; Pros, Cons, likes, dislikes. What they remember as some of the best moments from past plots, what were some of the worst. Things that surprised them about past plots. Also what they want, what they hope for.
I'm no new hat to plots, but I am still something of a new hat to TSW. And nothing is more important to me than peoples enjoyment IN the stories I tell and feeling like they're affecting the story.
Feleth
New Member
TBH I feel that's a very important part of GMing in general and is just as mandatory in D&D modules as in MMO RP. But yes, it is one of those secret things that makes events memorable for people. Even if they weren't the biggest part of it, having a moment to do something is what makes people feel engaged.
Sarah Willis
I AM THE JUSTICE, NOT YOU
Hrm, from looking at the threads on twitter, something that's come up is time. Specifically, how do you get people in different time zones to play comfortably together?
I know Cass mostly does it by breaking people into one-on-one or small group RP for what they're investigating, then ties that back into the general plot with a Venice Report, so asynchronous RP is possible, with an occasional big event at as comfortable a time as possible, but I don't feel like that can fit all plots.
I know Cass mostly does it by breaking people into one-on-one or small group RP for what they're investigating, then ties that back into the general plot with a Venice Report, so asynchronous RP is possible, with an occasional big event at as comfortable a time as possible, but I don't feel like that can fit all plots.
Vomher
New Member
For time zones, I always felt that if there's a big event, generally weekends during the afternoon, early evening, or at most late morning/noontime EST, because it seems to catch the most people available at a time, but this is more for large, big events in-game or in document that require attendance to participate in. I've seen plots that only run late on weekdays after midnight, and oftentimes those are the most restricting. Only players with nothing going on during the week in their mornings or who can stay up late (and probably have nothing going on, or are good at surviving with sleep deprivation) can usually attend such functions.
Weekends always seem the most realistic.
With forum posts, time zones matter less so long as you are actually given the opportunity to post when able and it isn't shoved aside. Cass seems to do well with accommodation there, for example. Smaller events, as mentioned earlier, are also viable, but a large community plot usually has a big event at one point or another. As long as the smaller events still give each participant in them the ability to contribute, they seem fine, but if there's a lot of players then that's possibly quite a few small RPs going on.
Sorry for the incoherence of my terrible thought processes. :<
Weekends always seem the most realistic.
With forum posts, time zones matter less so long as you are actually given the opportunity to post when able and it isn't shoved aside. Cass seems to do well with accommodation there, for example. Smaller events, as mentioned earlier, are also viable, but a large community plot usually has a big event at one point or another. As long as the smaller events still give each participant in them the ability to contribute, they seem fine, but if there's a lot of players then that's possibly quite a few small RPs going on.
Sorry for the incoherence of my terrible thought processes. :<
OP
- Thread Starter
- #8
All great ideas and advice. What it boils down to in my opinion is that with large community plots, use every tool available to you. What's more frustrating to players is to find out that something is happening and they'll have no way to help flesh out the next part of the plot that they've been involved in.
As others have said is communication is key. You really can't please everyone and your job is to make sure that everyone is at least having some fun.
As others have said is communication is key. You really can't please everyone and your job is to make sure that everyone is at least having some fun.
Pattern-Weld
Dreamcatcher Laboratories, CoV
Make sure you leave many things open ended, for the characters to decide. No NPC should have their fate be decided, unless the plot begins with their death or something like that. Just because you as a DM have a certain vision for the way things go, don't force it if the players decide something else. This can make player decisions feel unimportant. Make sure that actions have realistic consequences.
Llenne
Civilian casualty specialist
Make just in case plans. Players do really weird shit sometimes. You can spend hours upon hours planning out a campaign and then they go and to the thing™ where they decide, hey, we're going to spend 45 minutes petting this cat and then go in a totally different direction from the one you were trying to send us in! Sometimes, mission plan gets changed mid-way because things get garbled or players go "nah, we've decided we want to blow up this cavern and kill ALL the civilians we were here to save".
In my old group, if there was a wizard NPC and the group found out about the wizard before the wizard had proven themselves trustworthy, they'd just murder him/her right off the bat. It was kind of confusing at first like "this is a support NPC, why in the bananas are they KILLING their SUPPORT". Well, turns out, they just hated magic more than they needed help. Go figure.
You can't control what your players will do, but you can try to account for the random shit they might do.
In my old group, if there was a wizard NPC and the group found out about the wizard before the wizard had proven themselves trustworthy, they'd just murder him/her right off the bat. It was kind of confusing at first like "this is a support NPC, why in the bananas are they KILLING their SUPPORT". Well, turns out, they just hated magic more than they needed help. Go figure.
You can't control what your players will do, but you can try to account for the random shit they might do.