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chipotleAllrighty, then. Bandari isn’t dead, but it’s on life support, and I’m trying to make a credible diagnosis. Most of it boils down to: I fucked up.
I may have built a stage people have shown interest in, but I did very little “writing and direction” afterward, hoping a couple active roleplayers who showed up around March and June would push things along mostly on their own. I can ascribe that lunacy to the general funk that I’ve been in for the past few months, but this doesn’t absolve me of blame. What happened, of course, is that said initial group of active roleplayers were essentially there ahead of the curve, and didn’t get enough feedback to stick around consistently. So, by August, the pattern things are still in had been set: 3-5 people connected most of the time, mostly standing around and fidgeting.
A few people have attempted to get plots going, to be sure. But they’ve mostly foundered. One was basically constructed to hang around the shoulders of another player who stopped showing up because he thought the premise of the MUCK was being violated when someone could be a giant and a shaman—a “problem” he didn’t communicate until a couple months after that plot ground to a halt.
While I think that particular player overstated his case and handled things in the worst possible way, his worry was legitimate. As much as I’d like it to be otherwise, there’s a tension between the setting’s focus on social roleplaying and what a lot of people like to do with giants: engage in wildly disproportionate power plays. I’m not talking about this strictly in the fetish sense, although of course that plays into it. The problem is that a substantial subset of the macrophile crowd has a “no such thing as too much” attitude. If ninety feet tall is good, two hundred feet tall is better. No, wait, magic control of your size is better! No, wait, magic control of everyone else’s size is better! No, wait, I can shift shape! Shift genders! Be both at once! Add a third! Shoot jets of fire! Be big enough to destroy cities with a single step! Level cities entirely with the power of my mind! EAT WHOLE PLANETS ARRRRRR cough cough—
Puzzlebox has the only workable solution to allowing this sort of character, I suspect: make everyone that sort of character. If anyone can do anything they want because that’s just the way the world works, the entire concept of “disrupting balance” gets all but thrown out the window. There are really only a handful of other ways to deal with this:
- The “See No Evil” approach: a generic setting—think Tapestries and FurryMUCK—with no enforcement of rules from a thematic standpoint. The resulting hodgepodge tends to work very well for scenes, but very poorly for plots. In a scene, two or three characters can figure out what they want to do and who’s in charge very quickly—and, yes, the BDSM overtone of that statement is intentional. The upshot is that people tend to come up with characters who are always in charge or never in charge in a given situation. When the fallen angel, the trickster god and the reality-warping psionic girl meet up, there’s only player negotiation to let them decide who trumps who. Sometimes that works but a lot of times it ain’t pretty.
- The “By the Numbers” approach: a system in which powers are essentially “bought” the way they are in more traditional roleplaying games. In theory, this can work really well. It’s my feeling that in practice this approach commits you to developing at least a rudimentary game mechanic system for conflict resolution. This isn’t a bad thing. Nor is it a good thing. It’s just a thing thing. It is, however, a thing that’s not as easy to do as you might imagine. I was a right bastard some years ago in criticizing a MUCK with a number-based character generation system, but the flaws were real. (I’m given to understand the approach they took was modified over several iterations.) I’m not opposed to investigating this further but I have a feeling that with Bandari it would be quite a trick, for the same reason that it’s difficult to have a pen-and-paper game system that handles both superheroes and “normals” with equal effectiveness.
- The “Just Trust Us” approach: try and describe a strict setting to begin with and try to approve only characters who fit that setting. Obviously, this is the approach that I took with Bandari. In theory, this can also work really well. In practice, though, it has two pitfalls. First, unless your character approval person is a real tough cookie, there will be a temptation to let characters through who probably really shouldn’t be approved—the biggest problem I’ve found in this regard is characters who simply aren’t very well thought out beyond the description. (And despite my description of myself above as a right bastard, I’m really not that tough a cookie.) Second, there’s no mechanism, beyond implicit trust, that prevents characters from going off into la-la land once they’ve been established.
So. A few characters did go off into la-la land, and a few characters who maybe shouldn’t have been approved were approved anyway. The latter one was directly my fault, obviously, although I suspect if I restructure the character request form in a way that forces people to think about their character history, why they’re in Bandari, and other things beyond the physical description it’ll reduce future similar problems. The former problem…well, that’s also my fault, in that it largely came from attempts to get roleplaying going.
So. While I came pretty quickly to the you can’t do everything yourself point in setting the MUCK up, I’m circling back to the you’ve gotta do a lot more yourself, kid point, and damn any perception of arrogance this might cause. I’ve been using “you don’t want people to look at it as your personal fiefdom” as an excuse not to get out there online and start pushing, and damn, that was pretty stupid, wasn’t it?
I’m working out a VDPA (“vaguely-defined plan of action”) for going forward.
- Look at the way Puzzlebox has separated out its wiki and its LiveJournal (i.e., what’s used for what), and see about creating a Bandari community here if it seems to make sense—to discuss where we are and where we might be going in terms of plots.
- Get a harassment policy in place. I wish it wasn’t necessary, but—and I’m sure this is something all MUCK wizards learn quickly—a couple bad apples can drive a greater number of “good apples” out of the barrel.
- Start working out a few plot ideas myself. I’d be curious hearing how people—particularly Puzzleboxians (?)—work out bigger plots, assuming they do that kind of planning. In my ideal world, everyone would have a character who has their own agenda and acts based on how they want to reach their particular goal, but in practice, I’m concluding a lot of players—even ones who can be pretty good in RP—need to be shoved out on stage.
Point #2 is causing me some current personal angst, because of the few active players, a couple seem to be unable to even grit their teeth and be in the same room with another character. MUCKs with two dozen locations and only one central meeting area don’t have the luxury of “no contact orders,” and while the bad apple in this case has definitely been irritating, I’m distinctly unhappy at the feeling of being backed into a corner over this. (While I know Asperger’s Disorder is the fashionable malady to claim among fandom, my suspicion is that said “bad apple” may actually suffer from it, as his social skills aren’t lacking in the crabby unsocialized fannish fashion but rather in a kind of spooky “I don’t understand the difference between compliments and criticism” fashion. Of course, as my ex-roommate ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
tacit observed long ago about another student at New College, understanding why someone irritates you doesn’t make them less irritating.)
As some concluding rambling thoughts, if there’s a lesson I should have drawn from the Giants’ Club on FurryMUCK, it’s that if I accept that I can’t please everyone all the time, I have a better chance of pleasing a number of people most of the time. If I manage to move forward and put in the effort I should have been putting in to meet people halfway, things can probably be put back on the rails.
Of course, that requires that a sufficient number of players meet me at the halfway point, too, and that’s going to mean getting people to be a little more willing to check in and see how things are going. I suspect an LJ community can help with that, presuming it becomes active. (It is, in fact, created now, albeit empty: ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif){kind=small}
bandarimuck.)
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no subject
Date: 2004-12-05 14:51 (UTC)I have a feeling they just had a larger audience to pull from (And thus a larger collection of ideas) in the first place, and that helped a great great deal.
On the other hand, I think I got more plotting with Puzzlebox in 1 week (Or at least plans of future plots) than I have the entire time of Bandari :/
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Date: 2004-12-05 15:30 (UTC)On a different note, it's rather fun to have a power and have one's character prefer -not- to use it.
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Date: 2004-12-05 15:46 (UTC)One bit of advice off the top of my head, something that might have given me a good perspective for how to run rules-free RP, is to look at some of the old messaged-based RP boards. There was a MUCH larger power gap between the most and least powerful characters on the Past and Future Inn where I cut my roleplaying teeth, and at least for the time I was there, things seemed to be pretty peaceful.
As for how we negotiatie plots,
no subject
Date: 2004-12-05 15:57 (UTC)I made a character there.
I never played her.
I need to either get back on the ball with that character, or make something entirely new and start from scratch.
Either way, I'm willing to try to help you out.
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Date: 2004-12-05 18:03 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-05 19:22 (UTC)Pbox eventually took off, left me behind of course but that's my fault, not Pbox =)
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Date: 2004-12-05 19:57 (UTC)Ovon's post-mortem definitely has some good food for thought.
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Date: 2004-12-05 20:01 (UTC)A pre-Bandari idea for a MUCK that I had would have had "staff actors," sort of the equivalent of helpstaff but whose job it was to simply be aggressively IC at newcomers, with the hope that at least one of the actors would be around at any peak time. They wouldn't be expected to be entirely improvising--there would be "script ideas" behind the scenes for ongoing stories and what have you, but they'd be sketchy ones, and improv would be a major asset. If you've ever been to the Adventurers' Club at Disney's Pleasure Island, it's exactly what I'm thinking of: actors who play the part of the club members interacting with guests, alternating between improvisational work and scripted happenings that could be loosely described as "plots."
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Date: 2004-12-05 20:06 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-06 08:49 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-06 09:52 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-06 10:36 (UTC)I consider myself at least somewhat a friend of the person, too, which is why I'm not "solving" it by just saying "you are the weakest link, goodbye." Understand I'm not accusing him of being a bad person, but it's possible he's a person who won't be able to jibe with the environment even under improved circumstances.
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Date: 2004-12-06 11:47 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-06 17:22 (UTC)As for getting people on the MUCK, why not advertise? The electronic equivalent of flyer bombing could work. It's crude, but it'll certainly get peoples attention. If you've got an appropriate web-space, or forum where yout think that would be possible, I don't see the harm in using it. There's no worry of quality, since the advertising can be your torrent and the character validation your sieve.
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Date: 2004-12-06 18:37 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-06 20:19 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-07 06:38 (UTC)---Simularities to what I see here
everyone clustered to one to two communication areas(there, one main channel, an ooc channel, with private scening channels, here the main bar, and whereever the focus of a scene decides to go)
a premise that starts with everyone supposedly being on the same power level unless they deliberately choose weakness(there, a fixed limit on points with no cross over between being enhanced mortal, vampire, werewolf, mage, and later, other things, here, old worlder vs shaman vs giant vs spirit)
a set of social constraints that frowns on someone doing certain activities even though they are well within the abilities allowed(there making a spectacle of one's self in a way that would either get on the five oclock news, or produce a back lash among the mortals who in theory shouldn't even know they are not alone. here giants going around and destroying bandari, or forcing the british to respond with artillery, old worlders with victorian sensibilities. Not sure if the shamans have any real constraints to worry about, outside of their individual tangle of spirit obligations)
the type of players being drawn upon(there a mix of folks out to gain the most powerful character posssible, roleplayers, sceners.-these two being different in that the sceners didnt care about continuity, just in making things go perfectly for them for in any particular scene- and socialites that where there to get on top of the pecking order. here much the same, but the vehicle for powerful characters is based on height and to a lesser degree spirit potence, not number of dots in powers, skills, and stats.)
---differences
level of structure and organisation(there one tyrant of head gm, who gave a limited few others specific types of authority, usually for refereeing combat, or handling one of the supernatural types she herself didn't understand well that was desired by one or more of the players, as well as very well defined and activity promoting form of awarding experience and very frequent meetings for dealing with specific problems as they arose between the gms and refs, here as noted an oftentimes absentee head gm, one primary sub gm, with the expectation that once a critical mass of active players is reached, the muck will live)
the background and what constitutes power(there a modern city infested by hidden vampires, werebeasts, willworkers, ghosts, faeries, oriental vampires, mummies, and those who hunt them, supposedly trying to avoid notice while playing various forms of shadow games against eachother, here a victorian company colony with shamans, giants, spirits, and expatriots, with no clear overall objective except to be there and slice of life stuff.)
the potential for many rp interaction areas
(there everything was done in the favored meeting place of the vampires, or in temporary channels around places where a gm or prime mover of an rp would favor. here a number of already defined rooms with the potential to, if needed, say a room was someplace else altogether, or to create new temporary rooms, if the existing rooms where inadequate.
no subject
Date: 2004-12-07 06:38 (UTC)step one, some of the sub gms, in order to keep the setting believable would be create characters more powerful by an order of magnitude than the normal player characters. originally these were intended to take backseat to regular characters. in actuallity, they came to become the characters most often used by those sub gms.
step two, for whatever reason, gms came to the conclusion that others could have those powerful characters as well on a limited basis, on the premise that they would not be abused. It took awhile but get abused they did. At this point those that wanted to on top of the social heap, also had to have powerful characters to compete, as did the perfect character types. This left those hoping to play normal characters high and dry as unless one of the socialites could gain something by allowing a plot line or rp idea to go foward, they would just sit on it, preventing it from going anywhere thanks to both their social position on the channels, and their in character ability to thwart activities.
step three, eventually in order to challange those with powerful characters, the gms introduced uberpowerful characters, causing bit of whining on the part of those with powerful characters, making the normal characters now irrelevent unless they were needed for some specific bit role in something their betters wanted to have happen. Also this insured that those that weren't 'IN' had go elsewhere if they wanted to do anything outside of getting on the goodside of one of the in crowd.
this is where I started fading in and out, staying mainly due to friendship with two of the gms and one of the players.
step four, the head gm finally awards an uberpowerful character to some she fell in love with, and that player inspite of restrictions, tries to turn the channels into his personal adoration cult. that very few went along with it, caused him to use that character, and the head gm's love to harass non cultists out of the channels.
I was not there for the head gm to finally blow a gasket and do the "I'm taking my marbles, and going home" routine
---What I have seen that lead me to suspect bandari was going down the same road, that lead me to fade out, then not return except rarely, and then to stay away.
increasing amounts of exceptions to the world logic given, giants with power, old world giants, mini giants to get around the idea of no old world giants.
a racheting up of power levels in response to demonstrated power levels on the part of those not 'IN'
a partial mistake on my part, the appearance that a character was there only to serve the roles desired by a sub gm, one that on the surface made him look blind and incompetant. It was later shown that the trouble makers would have been under his radar, if they had been sufficiently careful.
an unwillingness on the part of those that wanted to go through types of scenes and rps that violated the world logic, to do those rps elsewhere so that they could happen, but not force others to respond to them. there where a few instances where it was desired for Xecheq to end up getting big, so I had that done off muck for one to three day one shots. on muck on the other hand, in one case it was desired for another character to get big, and so it happened, on muck.
no subject
Date: 2004-12-07 23:24 (UTC)While I'd like to think there's a "world logic" to Bandari, it's not the kind of logic that prevents pretty fantastic happenings and creatures. Yes, I've stated that I'd like to keep such things relatively rare. And, yes, I know that when you allow for such things at all, a lot of people will attempt to be "rare," and that makes such things, well, less rare. But Bandari is, by nature, a town which is going to have a wildly disproportionate number of "rare" people. And there's absolutely nothing within the established constraints of the setting that prohibits nine-foot-tall rabbits or magically-created giants. Or steam-powered mecha, fantastic submersible pirate boats, or commercial airship lines. (All of which were, in fact, mentioned by people with respect to Bandari at various points in the past six months or so, even though none have come to fruition.)
As I said, I don't think that your worries were baseless. Some of the quickies run were things I wasn't real comfortable with. Generally, nobody bothered to talk to me about plots before they were underway, though, and sometimes the input I gave was disregarded. No, I don't want size-shifting to become commonplace, magic shouldn't flow like water, and I don't really want "power fights" like are somewhat unavoidable in a free-for-all setting like the FurryMUCK Giants' Club.
Having said that, the occasional "violation" is not a slippery slope to Victorian Dragon Ball Z, and I don't expect that there won't be Europeans messing with magic, normals occasionally getting enlarged, giants occasionally getting shrunk, and what have you. The point was never that such is impossible--the point was that such should never be casual. I want to prevent "my magic is defined as what I can pose" type characters, not all weird and whimsical events. And by and large, I don't think the magic has become casual, any possible faux pas in quick plots notwithstanding. In my opinion, Bandari is suffering something of an imbalance right now, but it's caused by too few players and too little conflict. And, when it comes down to it, too few active giants, not too many.
Lastly, you seem to imply that I was playing favorites with allowing plots. I'm simply going to reiterate that I gave you one of the most potentially important characters in Bandari's setting. You would have been at the center of the most major plot on Bandari to date. I get a lot of accusations of elitism based primarily on perceptions of my "fame." It'd be nice if people were more willing to judge me on my actions instead.
no subject
Date: 2004-12-08 14:50 (UTC)Each side would then be handled by three players. I favor three as this maximizes the likelyhood there is a manageable level of tension in each pole, but that that tension can be fixed if it gets out hand. It also reduces the chance of redundancy or peer pressure kicking in. When a conflict is resolved or becomes irrelevant, the poles of the conflict that are no longer a factor to the greater roleplay are dissolved.
Thus for example, in the rival shaman groups conflict, the struggle goes on for some time, each side getting allies among the spirits and the pool of general characters. Finally, one group gains an irrevocable upper hand with regards to allied spirits, thus winning. The shaman group then unopposed goes off to do whatever they had been working towards. The rival groups to it are likely permanantly dissolved rather than dealing with the messy aftermath, and the winning group heads back to their homeground. Those who favored either side or were shamans that were only marginally involved would still be playable afterwords and have a bit more history to their characters, but for the duration would end up having an active rp to jump into.
This also ensures that if enough people want to play some particular types of characters, regardless of power level, they can do so with a reduced chance of causing problems or monopolizing the focus of the role play on the muck.
no subject
Date: 2004-12-14 01:55 (UTC)Typically, an arc sprouts from an impromptu scene. I have a Neat Idea, or someone I scene with regularly has a Neat Idea, and we play it out. Once the scene comes to a close (sometimes with OOC calls of 'Curtain!' or "Cut!') there's a period of OOC discussion. A scene may have consequences, may not, and if they look like fun to play out, there will be agreement that we need to do it soon.
Thus, a plot happens. It's as simple as that, and as complex.
If the scenes that make up a plot are done in public, they become broader: two characters to three or four or more. Beyond five it becomes unwieldy, as players have different schedules...
There have not been world-shaking plots that I know of. There have not been any with a single guiding hand. Stuff just happens.
Some stories have a beginning and an end. Some don't. Most of the ones I've been involved in on Puzzlebox don't come out of a specific goal I have for a character; they emerge from one of my characters rubbing up against another one. Sometimes the rubbing is sexual, sometimes it's more metaphorical.
Puzzlebox was already going at a decent pace when the wiki was put up.
I do find myself wondering if the overlap between 'literate people capable of telling a coherent story' and 'macrophiles' is large enough to have critical storytelling mass on Bandari. The stereotypical macro, to me, is just a shrill insistence on being The Tallest Thing In The Room. It seems as likely to pull a muck out of the Giant's Club regulars as it is to pull one out of the denizens of the Herm Haven.
What would make Bandari attractive to someone who isn't interested in playing a giant or a squish-toy? Have you sought these people by advertising outside of the Giant's Club, the Macrophile boards, and your LJ?
Obviously you can't kick-start it by yourself; you need other people to bounce off of to make Good RP.
(Does Bandari have an OOC command? That's something I've found surprisingly effective on Puzzlebox. You get the occasional discussion about Whatever, and the occasional side comment on a scene in progress, but it's clearly marked as OOC, making it harder to laze into chatting about the shitty editing of whatever bad Japanese cartoon just showed up on Adult Swim. There's a big screaming [OOC] in front of every OOC say/pose, and you get poked by other players if you don't use it for OOCness.)
no subject
Date: 2004-12-14 06:12 (UTC)The flavor of the other comments here suggests that Bandari may be intended to have its stories fairly wiz-controlled. References to GMs, and giving out characters "crucial to a plot". People referring to RP-heavy mucks always tend to talk about GMs.
Puzzlebox doesn't have anyone in that role. At all. There was one person who left in a bit of a huff whose RP style seemed to be that (though it was never explicitly stated) and it really didn't synch with the place. This wasn't the entire reason for his departure, but I think it may have been a factor. Puzzlebox is an anarchy.
From what I hear involving other RP-heavy mucks, Puzzlebox is the exception; every other RP-heavy and story-favoring mu* seems to have explicit GMs. We just all improv at each other (http://greenlightwiki.com/improv/TheImprovWiki). (
The longer plots I've been involved with do not have any set end conditions. There are beginnings, and there are places we'd like to go, but there are not planned endings.
The 'staff actors' thing works. There's nobody officially assigned to this task, but I, and other people, have had periods of doing this - hanging out in a public place and being willing to try and give quality, IC interaction. It can really alter the path of a new character to ask a properly innocent question...
I don't know if an explicit role of 'staff actor' would work; the culture of Puzzlebox has evolved such that it's simply the Done Thing to try to interact with a new character, despite the pull of more familiar stories. Especially if the player turns out to be new to the muck, as well!
I seem to recall that things didn't really start to get moving in terms of regular narrative until there tended to be 10 or more people connected at a time, with most of them in places that showed up on WA.
no subject
Date: 2004-12-14 08:19 (UTC)That's what I'd like to move toward. Don't really focus on the idea of "big plots" as much as a bunch of characters with their own quirks and motivations, and figure out on the fly how those lead to interactions. It was my thought on an idea for a previous MUCK that the equivalent of the helpstaff would just be the "actors" who drag people into roleplaying, even if just by pulling them along in their wake.
While that seems to be the most natural way to roleplay on a MUCK, I admit that with the exception of Puzzlebox, I haven't seen it work on a large scale. Lynx was referring in a different response to having set times for roleplaying, which allows for long ongoing plots, and I've seen that work on multiple occasions. But, I don't think it'd work on a MUCK where individual, non-world-affecting scenes are likely to be pretty important. (While that counts as the obligatory veiled reference to tinysex, it's not limited to it.)
I'd take some exception to the last statement, I confess, in that you're somewhat more likely to find characters in the GC who have more thought in them than "I have a really big wang and tits the size of planets, woo!" (and who then proceed to idle at one another or talk about video games). But, sure, that's always been the $64K question. As with other places on furry MUCKs, you find people who are really verbally inventive when it comes to kinky sex, but who seem rather adrift when they're asked to spend an entire night being IC without kinky sex. And, in practice, there's not nearly as much kinky sex on Bandari as I suspect those people would like. :)
To the first, it depends on whether they like the rest of the setting. The people playing normal size characters by and large haven't been "squish toys"; they've been shamans and expatriate adventurers. The overall scenario has more in common with "TaleSpin" than it does with Rogue's Big Day of Stomps, and the setting's allowed for a great deal of pulp stuff, although that hasn't been pushed much. A fair amount of that actually comes from the previous MUCK idea I mentioned earlier, and I'm aware in the back of my mind that Bandari could always be retooled to be much closer to that original scenario. (Which didn't include giants, although of course being not-so-realistic pulp, they wouldn't be ruled out.)
And, no, I haven't done much advertising out of that realm yet. If I feel like the stage is a little more stable again and I can find what I'd consider to be a good hook to tell people about it, I'll look for other places to talk about it. I suspect that to develop, the MUCK is going to have to be more pulp adventure that includes giants, rather than giants with a pulp adventure backdrop. (I've been thinking of the two as somewhat balanced, but it's simply not a setting which encourages giants to go out and kick over buildings, and it's probably better to let those who won't be happy unless they're kicking over buildings--or being in kicked-over buildings--go away with best wishes and a consolation prize than to have them sit around moping.)
Yes.
no subject
Date: 2004-12-14 08:32 (UTC)I don't really want to be a GM; that's not the way I've roleplayed myself for years. I think the friend of mine who's done the most driving of plots on Bandari so far is a lot more used to the idea of having "roleplaying wizards" who do precisely that, though, so there's been a bit of unintended tension lately as I've metaphorically woken up and started trying to puzzle through what I'd like to see.
no subject
Date: 2004-12-17 04:58 (UTC)In some respects, there are GMs on Puzzlebox. Sort of.
In any particular continuing story, there's a character or two who's central to it. And the player of that central character has a certain extra degree of authority. Each character's player is the final arbiter of how much they'll change, and one mark of the main character of a story is that they go through changes.
Example: Both of the stories involving my character Charlotte-Sophia and her strange relationship with her medical prosthetic had a few points where there were sticky narrative choices that were deferred to me, without any real discussion.
Example: The long-running story of Amanita's rise and fall. My character Twin is an important figure in it, and a lot of the important narrative moments are private scenes between the two characters, but Amanita's the one most likely to introduce a new twist. It's about where she wants to go, for the most part.
Example: Sosael|Atazael|Inhatti and Meliaam. I'm the former. Amanita's player is the latter. So far, I've been the one driving this plot; most of the narrative drive comes from what I do, and she's a ready accomplice. Where do I want to go with this?
Much of the time, if anyone spoofs background characters, it will be the pseudo-GM-of-the-moment. The person with a plot idea and the energy to push it along.
In a long-term story, they're the one who keeps narrative coherency by spreading rumors of what's going on, or just being willing to show up here and there outside of the ongoing story and do non-narrative interaction that establishes their new story status and drops hints as to the whole affair. When Atazael suddenly changed to Inhatti, it was my responsibility to show Inhatti around the Mess a bit, introducing her to other characters/players, and summarizing her recent plot twist. Even alts not involved in a story I'm telling might mention it in passing: rumor is ever the stuff of idle conversation!
If you have a story idea on Puzzlebox, you are sort of a GM until the story ends. And you are an actor in it. If it's clear that you have some narrative drive, other players will be glad to help it along, with the expectation that when one of your characters is caught up in a story worming its way through their head, you'll return the favor.
(None of these are hard and fast rules. I've definitely worn the scene-scale GM hat in scenes that're part of plots I don't consider myself the real 'owner' of. It's a power role, and shifting power roles is a hallmark of Puzzlebox!)
Puzzlebox, though, is a very self-healing environment. It's really, really hard to make a major change in it. A random night's play isn't going to end up with half the setting destroyed. Well, not permanantly, at least. Twin, the sentient multi-galactic-mass black hole says that one of the reasons (she) lives in Puzzlebox is that the Puzzlebox can recover if (she) loses control and eats a huge chunk. I don't think Bandari can heal from a giant and a Venusian war machine having a running battle through the town.
I don't know how much of Puzzlebox's lack of GMs is because of the highly creative player-base (I suspect most of us could be a GM elsemu* if we were willing to spend the political/managerial energy in addition to the creative energy), and how much is due to the unusual setting. Perhaps even the inexperience helps: a lot of good players there say it's their first heavy-RP muck (including myself), or even their first muck, period.
no subject
Date: 2004-12-17 04:59 (UTC)