maybe we should try communicating through interpretive dance

[socksuke_uchiha]

Rundown: rpanons is an anonymous community for role-play related topics. This place serves as a forum for game discussions, canon discussions, RP solicitations (ATP, game ads, open memes), and advice. The occasional off topic comment is inevitable, but please keep heated social and political topics to their respective communities. Posting them here will only get them frozen. Subsequent threads made to bypass a freeze will then be deleted.

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Comments

Re: GAME IDEAS

[(Anonymous)]

I really miss classic jamjars. I've been kicking around ideas for a while trying to hammer out what would make my perfect ideal jamjar, but it's more a thought experiment than anything because there just doesn't seem to be an audience for it anymore and I probably have no business trying to mod anyway.

For whatever it's worth, personally, the number one thing I care about is the quality of events and similar mechanics. Metaplot is overrated, but I still look to a game to provide me with interesting things happening that I can build off and play around with and challenge my characters with. No matter how SoL you are, you can only do "here's a party plus the food makes you act a little funny I guess" so many times. However, having fun events is hard to advertise, since obviously anyone can say theirs are good, but the only way to prove it is by getting the game running for a while. Still, when it comes down to it, I'll put up with any premise, any setting, any AC, any size, if that game is offering toys I'm excited to play with.

Re: GAME IDEAS

[(Anonymous)]

hi anon, what do you mean by quality of events sans metaplot? i've found the best events need a metaplot to hold it together, but what you're suggesting is interesting if i could just wrap my head around it

Re: GAME IDEAS

[(Anonymous)]

Okay, admittedly that's a very subjective thing. And like a lot of this kinda stuff, it can be hard to really pin down and put into words what makes an event good. I'm having a hard time coming up with a useful answer that doesn't just drift off into long-winded essaying about events in general, but I've tried. I guess if you can expand on your own thoughts about needing a metaplot to hold things together, we can talk about that more too if you want. But this is absolutely all just one anon's personal opinion and IDK, I'm probably getting up my own ass a bit here, feel free to roll your eyes.

I think that at the end of the day, the importance of events is to push characters outside their comfort zones, making them adjust to new situations and interact in new ways and just deal with things they normally wouldn't. That's the appeal for players: events help you push your character in different directions, play on sides of them that don't often come up, kickstart CR that wouldn't happen on its own, and just... do things that you'd have a hard time doing otherwise, that might not ever arise naturally.

There's no reason a metaplot should be required for that, IMO, standalone events can do it perfectly fine. There is a lot of grey area between "total plot focus" and "pure crack sandbox", though. Actually, mission-based games can verge into this territory if the missions stand well on their own, and jamjar events can look a lot like missions, if you're doing things like setting changes and giving characters a goal. I guess you could say that a metaplot is kind of one huge overarching event, in the sense that it's similarly challenging characters in a more long-term, pervasive way; but a jamjar does still have continuity too, and characters still have arcs and build on things that happen to them over time.

Anyway, a lot of the classic crack event material honestly does serve the basic purpose above -- putting characters into weird new situations they have to respond and adapt to. And so a lot of the old standbys became standbys because they're effective at it. Like, forced honesty got popular because it's VERY good at bringing things to the surface that might not easily come out otherwise and can give CR a dramatic push in a particular direction. It's not changing anyone into a totally different character, but it's bringing out different parts of them. Likewise, there are many, many, many ways to place characters together and get them interacting, some of which are more effective than others but also effective in different ways. There are many ways to bring about h/c, or opportunities for cool badass moments, or make characters confront their personal demons, or challenge the way they communicate, etc etc etc.

Though all that said, above all probably the best thing anyone can do with events, with or without a metaplot, is variety. Give people options and make them flexible enough to run off with in different directions. The bigger trick then is managing that while also keeping things cohesive, and still having enough structure to provide a push without forcing it.

da, +1

[(Anonymous)]

status change events, monster of the week, missions, quests, mini-npc arcs. basically any event you can opt into that doesn't require back-reading other events that built up to it or requires prior metaplot to understand.

imo, as a former mod, i find people who don't do well without a lot of structure frequently are the type who don't pay attention to the long-running metaplot anyway, so these isolated micro-plots or stand-alone events work to the same exact purpose.

quality = you will get out what you put in, with rare exceptions