rpanons | Nobody flicks me in the butt without my consent

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1. About a year, year and a half? Non-jamjar games tend to be smaller, so if there's a lot of plot then it can all fall apart if a few critical players drop.

2. You don't have to have a definite story in mind, but you should give players at least a basic understanding of the world and what's going on in it. Remember, games are meant to be played - don't just expect players to follow your script and react to your story. It's their story. If you're introducing major new plot elements later in the game, be clear and willing to discuss them with players so they understand what's going on.

3. Some kind of plot device that draws characters back to a central location is good. Are letters really the only form of long-distance communication? That would imply that technology (including transportation technology) is very rudimentary... if it's going to take weeks or months for characters to get places, you might have a problem.

Thank you for the advice! I don't expect it to be a large game, so ideally all the players will be encouraged to exchange ideas and contribute to the plot.

The world's technology is stunted due to Plot and the most advanced technology available is likely to be steamships. Does handwaving long travel times seem plausible? I'm considering using a game mechanic to speed up travel to a more workable rate for gameplay's sake if keeping track of in-game time and real-time becomes a problem.

Handwaving long travel times is possible if you run the game with a flexible time system. I once ran a small game where an entire month of dates was open for gameplay all at once, so players could skip over large chunks of time and choose realistic dates for their logs. There wasn't any in-game time to keep track of because logs could be forwarddated or backdated as needed. If you're dealing with extremely slow travel, you could probably even work with time scales bigger than a month. But most likely, characters wouldn't be making trans-oceanic voyages on a regular basis, right?

This is the first time I've heard of a game allowing such flexible forward/backdating. Did you experience any trouble with players confusing timelines or accidentally info-modding from playing logs out of order? And it's my hope that more adventurous or heroic characters would become invested in the plot and search out answers, which would require a fair amount of traversing the world.

It was a very small game (10-15 players) and there were several separate plots going on, so it actually wasn't that difficult. We tended to outline logs before playing them to avoid getting things mixed up. The big time jumps were really only used for forwarddating major logs that were extensively planned out ahead of time. Since the major logs sometimes involved a lot of people and moved slowly, we liked to get started on them early to avoid falling behind. The big problem was that the month-long open period only advanced when the majority of players felt "ready," which could be anywhere from two real-life weeks to two real-life months... and that made some logs drag. But I think the basic idea is something that can work.

that sounds like a headache tbqh. did all the players plan the month out so no wires got crossed?

Yeah, exactly, we planned all major events. It worked because the game was small and slow, with very few unplanned open logs. I guess some rpers wouldn't like the lack of spontaneity, but smoothly executed plots where everyone gets exactly what they planned to get can also be very satisfying...

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