Storytellers and GMing
Posted by Apostate on 11/16/20
So over the past few years in Arx, a lot of my approaches to GMing developed out of need and to offer solutions that just don't work at scale. I thought the game was going to have a couple dozen people when I made it, and most of the attempts at gating have just not been very effective. Even aside from the very high burnout rate of anyone trying to deal with the load of hundreds of people that would all like GMing, the response times were getting so bad that a huge percentage were being answered when it was long, long past being relevant. That's not satisfying for staff or players, so it clearly has to change.
For the forseeable future, free form queues are going away. If I unlock actions, it will only be for specific events as a way to track that event and that event only. Similarly, while there 4251 @clues currently that can be discovered, we won't be generating new ones specifically in response to player investigations.
Instead, I'm going to take a two fold approach to GMing. First, staff is going to be much more proactive than reactive, as some players over the past week may have noticed with a lot more spontaneous reactions to organic RP. That I hope to become the norm, along with far, far more GM events. Speaking frankly, the metaplot will essentially never advance unless I take a proactive role, and telling people 'wait for season 3' for using magic is not fun for them or for me. I wanna get there, and the metaplot is going to be having movement.
Secondly, I'm going to be formalizing PRPs, and appointing player storytellers and story coordinators. The database migration earlier was to assign OOC roles to players, such as guides that help provide answers and thematic guidance being noted now on finger info.
Story coordinators will be who I or other staffers will go to in order to find out what members of their org have had their stories stall out and need it unblocked. They will be the ones to make sure the PRPs advance, and signing off on ones that overlap with their domains/spheres, generally speaking. Player storytellers will have tiers of what kind of stories they run, with new lore being restricted to much more experienced ones. Often I've had hundreds of pages of lore writeups for PRPs that ultimately didn't happen, and I can't do that. So I need to have structure and make certain someone is successful at running more straight forward PRPs that do not deal with metaplot elements first.
Currently, Tehom is finishing coding on the update to the harm command, and survivability/armor changes, which should be done shortly. When that comes in, it'll also come in with specific GMing rules, and I'll formalize tiers of player storytellers then.
In the meantime, staff will continue proactive GMing approaches as we get ready for the next leg of the metaplot, and I'll start assigning story coordinators. Current PRP runners can talk to me about getting tagged as Player Storytellers.
For the forseeable future, free form queues are going away. If I unlock actions, it will only be for specific events as a way to track that event and that event only. Similarly, while there 4251 @clues currently that can be discovered, we won't be generating new ones specifically in response to player investigations.
Instead, I'm going to take a two fold approach to GMing. First, staff is going to be much more proactive than reactive, as some players over the past week may have noticed with a lot more spontaneous reactions to organic RP. That I hope to become the norm, along with far, far more GM events. Speaking frankly, the metaplot will essentially never advance unless I take a proactive role, and telling people 'wait for season 3' for using magic is not fun for them or for me. I wanna get there, and the metaplot is going to be having movement.
Secondly, I'm going to be formalizing PRPs, and appointing player storytellers and story coordinators. The database migration earlier was to assign OOC roles to players, such as guides that help provide answers and thematic guidance being noted now on finger info.
Story coordinators will be who I or other staffers will go to in order to find out what members of their org have had their stories stall out and need it unblocked. They will be the ones to make sure the PRPs advance, and signing off on ones that overlap with their domains/spheres, generally speaking. Player storytellers will have tiers of what kind of stories they run, with new lore being restricted to much more experienced ones. Often I've had hundreds of pages of lore writeups for PRPs that ultimately didn't happen, and I can't do that. So I need to have structure and make certain someone is successful at running more straight forward PRPs that do not deal with metaplot elements first.
Currently, Tehom is finishing coding on the update to the harm command, and survivability/armor changes, which should be done shortly. When that comes in, it'll also come in with specific GMing rules, and I'll formalize tiers of player storytellers then.
In the meantime, staff will continue proactive GMing approaches as we get ready for the next leg of the metaplot, and I'll start assigning story coordinators. Current PRP runners can talk to me about getting tagged as Player Storytellers.