Overplotting and recruiting people
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First of all; this isnt meant to be a rant.
There has been a lot of focus on creating plots, pushing plots, and teh win and all that lately. I've begun to wonder if its gone a bit too far into the "Every character must have plots or be worthless" corner.To me there seems to be so many ongoing plots of varying degree that its actually hard to recruit people to join yours. As most of you know, plots can't be won or done alone. There is even so many deals and such going on that "I'll help you if you help me" isnt even cutting it anymore. The only way I can seem to get people on with anything is paying them more than an average quest of their level gives. And needless to say that is a lot of gold for a normal party. I know some people are bogged down with plots and people to such an extent that they can't decide on what to do, but there are differences.
Any plot related sendings I make seems to go unheeded unless they contain a DM presence (and I actually get tells asking if there will be, which is really sad in my eyes).
What are you doing to recruit for plots IG? What catches your interest in plots and make you want to join them? Do you have so many plots that you don't want to take part in any others?
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I think it's nice that is such a variety of plots and plot hooks out there waiting to be grabbed. No one should have an excuse that they can't find or participate in a plot of some kind or another (especially since Mol hinted at 6 plot hooks in the new Hullack!) No one should have to recruit for plots anymore for gosh sakes - walk around and a plot will come up and slap you in the face, probably several times.
Any plot related sendings I make seems to go unheeded unless they contain a DM presence (and I actually get tells asking if there will be, which is really sad in my eyes).
This is normal. DM involvement promises fun and excitement (and sometimes reward) as opposed to killing random lowbie spawns. Argue all you want, but which is more fun?
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Most of the time I ask the sender if it is a DM-quest. I tend to ask it only if I've already offered my aid… but I guess it isn't always the case.
Either way, I don't see a problem with it. If there is someone trying to KILL me, it does matter.
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There are still some great story tellers on coa, but in the last two years I've seen some changes toward plot frenzy that have in my eyes reduced the "magic" of the server. It seems to me that the plots are now the main focus of the players in general and not a colorfull story for their character. I've always been of the opinion that plots should be the result of character interactions and events. Right now it all seems so forced and frenzied with the plot hooks, and shopping lists, and people trying to pull things their way on the server. Characters that are not involved in the plot frenzy to tend to be ignored by the other players and the dms from what I can see. This of course just tends to encourage more plot frenzy and more cries for attention in the form of multitudes of plots and factions trying to "win" them. Maybe I'm just getting old, but some good old fashioned story telling without all the frenzy of manic plot chasing is what I come here looking for.
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Too many leaders, not enough minions. End result, a thousand of plots and none of them ever gets pursued.
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How do you tell a story without a plot?
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@HarryMcScary:
How do you tell a story without a plot?
It's called RP and emotes in the Guildhall for hours on end. Let's sit and I can tell you my life story over ale. Then we meet tomorrow in the baths and do it again. Then we start dating and calling each other "love" and exchange magic loot.
We don't do plots and quests. We're too good for them. We're RP elitists you know.
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Someone said baths and love?
Where's that elf log.
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Try not to think of it in terms of leaders and minions. You've got a lot of characters with their own agendas or missions to complete, not simply those who make sendings and those who answer them.
It's not so simple as plots being something that people NEED and trying to get them hooked on yours before they get too busy in other peoples'.
I would suggest taking a different approach:
Decide what it is your character wants to achieve.
Think of some ways they can achieve these things.
Roleplay your character and find ways to ICly gain the interest of other characters in what you intend.
Play an interesting character and regardless of whether or not other characters get along with you ICly, their players will look for ways to get involved with your character. -
DMs have said in the past on the forums, that the server caters to a large number of play styles. Don't plot if you don't want to.
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Frankly, as a player, I have never really been sure or understood on how to "Plot," how and when to get ahold of DMs for things I want to acomplish or anything like that. So, as Eagleman, I tend to just help whoever needs helping with there Plots if it suits to further the protection of defence of Arabel in some way, shape, or form.
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I dont have much problems getting assistance. Find some characters IG, make friends with them, and they will help you out. Simple as that :D
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I dont have much problems getting assistance. Find some characters IG, make friends with them, and they will help you out. Simple as that :D
This is what I find works for me. I develop friendships by questing and then use those friendships to further my plots or to join their plots. There a lot of plots out there so I am choosy. What I do find though is that those players who reject the idea of questing as somehow beneath them or that they are too busy to quest because they're busy plotting, those players seldom see my characters on their plots because they have not spent the time developing the IG friendships, through run of the mill questing, that gives my characters a real IC reason to aid them on their plots.
If you expect people to aid you in your plots because, if they don't, the end of the world will come, you may well be sadly dissapointed. If you develop IG friendships, you'll rarely have issues with recruiting for your plots. Players who have IG friendships can generally pull their IG friends off on plot quests whether a DM is online or not. Players who are trying to grab the character off the street need a valid reason for the player of the character to join in, and that reason is likely to be the expectation of DM spice and fun and loot and XP.
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@Khamal:
@HarryMcScary:
How do you tell a story without a plot?
It's called RP and emotes in the Guildhall for hours on end. Let's sit and I can tell you my life story over ale. Then we meet tomorrow in the baths and do it again. Then we start dating and calling each other "love" and exchange magic loot.
We don't do plots and quests. We're too good for them. We're RP elitists you know.
Have a few points to make here but I know I'm going to run too long, so I'll do it in list format:
1. Who's an elitist? Pot. Kettle. Black. It's a game. Let them play. If they're having fun doing whatever they're doing they're pretty much by definition netting a slight positive for player experience on the server.
2. In answer to the original question, Harry, you are conflating definitions of the word plot. You are treating it as if he were using the defintion "the plan, scheme, or main story of a literary or dramatic work, as a play, novel, or short story" when he was quite obviously using the definition "a secret plan or scheme to accomplish some purpose, especially a hostile, unlawful, or evil purpose: a plot to overthrow the government."
3. The main reasons that plots are growing stale on this server is because the goalposts for making those plots move forward has been reduced to fulfilling random grocery lists of reagents. I have a faction character who is trying to get a couple of things done now, and I can find almost nobody who cares to go finding reagents, and I can't blame them; it bores me to tears too. I would rather do something else, something more interesting to move the plot forward and inspire interest, but I am essentially restricted by the server's culture. There are also too many plots, and far too many far reaching ones.
4. The DM mandate to "get others involved" has been completely and utterly divorced from its original purpose and meaning. I'm pretty sure that the original intent of that was to make sure that enough people were interested in your plot so that it getting run would actually enrich their experience of the game. The idea was that "getting them involved" was supposed to be you doing something to enrich their experience already. In other words, "go do fun things, and demonstrate that others give a shit and then we'll run something for your plot". Now this mandate is interpreted as "put in your man hours". Rather than a plot going through when enough interest is shown about it and it's thoroughly demonstrated that the plot would lead to fun experiences, there's now a belief that that's not enough. You need to collect enough doodads first. You need to pay lots of gold and stuff. You need to collect so many doodads that you need to outsource your collection of doodads, despite the fact that collecting doodads entertains no one at all. Walking around big, empty areas collecting items that randomly spawn is boring.
4. Viserys Targaryen clones are not the only characters that should get plot hooks. Other characters who have less one dimensional ambitions are just as capable of making interesting decisions when put in precarious positions. Not every character needs to have sworn a fucking blood oath against a faction, PC, NPC, or race to be interesting. In fact, when everyone and their brother is plotting to assassinate someone, or overthrow a faction, or wipe out the giants, or whatever random hyper-specific goal they arbitrarily set for themselves before character creation, everything becomes quite stale rather quickly.
5. Ideally, if you want to keep things interesting, you should drift more towards the perspective that all players should get the opportunity to shine from time to time. Stories that are relevant to the PCs participating in them are better than stories which arent. Most of the stories I have participated in before here are the latter. Some guy I never actually met in game overthrows some other dude who I never met in game. NPC chaos in the streets ensues, and the 90% of the playerbase who had absolutely no involvement with any of this just stands around wondering why they're supposed to give a shit. Speaking of which, not every plot needs to involve server wide changes or chaos in the streets. This helps mitigate the "who gives a shit" response from the majority of the playerbase who inevitably did not participate in whatever caused all the noise. Oddly enough, subtle plots also are interesting. Find groups of characters who know each other, and do something to mess with one of their characters; observe as an adventuring party rallies to their ally's cause, and all of them are actually enthusiastic about participating because it actually involves someone they know. And not one celestial silver collected!
6. I think that all of us have been playing NWN long enough so that combat is only marginally entertaining. Mostly it's still entertaining for its ability to effect story elements that have yet to be written, so I think that you can take the whole CoA Sims mantra and stuff it. All I hear is talk about how getting people involved in a way that isnt going out and kicking the shit out of giants, stealing their heads, and then building a bridge towards your next plot completion marker out of their heads is worthless. I think that's absolute bollocks. This is as much of a creative writing exercise as a game, and if anything I write that doesn't immediately lead to something getting its ass kicked is dismissed as worthless, we've slipped well past roleplaying into one dimensional, bad writing. Simple as that. The only time that CoA sims talk is actually valid, IMO, is when the goal and plot, as well as the in game actions taken on account of it, are all boring and utterly irrelevant. IE, there is no reason that people should roleplay rebuilding a fence that got destroyed as part of an event. It should just be rebuilt.
A character who wants to build an orphanage, on the other hand, is not necessarily offering nothing. If you really, really think he/she is, then, in my opinion, you're not terribly imaginative. Let them build the orphanage, and then, if you want to piss off all of the good guys on the server, have a corrupt politician start embezzling their funding. There's a good way to start a conflict between good and evil, law vs chaos all at the same time.
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I can't comment specifically on the quantity of plots and their quality, since I've only been around a short while, but, with regards to perceptions and attitudes, I completely agree with yeahchris above and have felt this way for a very long time.
(Clarifying edit.)
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I wonder how can a player judge another player if he has never met him.
It seems you have a lot of intersting things about your character, so may have had those guys you have never met that managed to assassin another badass guy you have never met. But they did.
And someone was caring for it enough to think it was awesome and so changed the story of the server.
You can show how awesome your character is, roleplaying through hours is cool, sometimes. But you have to admit, sometimes people don't like what you do.
I have sometimes barely seen hours flowing in an entertaining conversation, but others I was bored as hell and all I wanted was to go out and do something cool.
Your character does not have to be rich at all to be considering awesome by the dms. I was shown several times that it is not your sucess rate that will say that. It is how hard they try and how they involve people into it.
It is about how they react when they lose and what they decide to do.
Damn, many times I have made useless sending and people attented only for the flavor of it.
What should matter isn't how many plots you participate, although it is damn cool to be in them, it is about your character story.
We knew this when we, most of us, played PnP. However this isn't PnP, the fact that your character likes red flowers isn't going to lead you to a quest against the evil red-flower-eating worm.
It has to be soemthing greater, something bigger. And more than we face in PnP we have to understand we are much more prone to failure in here.
I hope you can figure out anything from what I wrote. ;]
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I didn't think I'd ever say this but Lizard-Man's post is the whole truth. He's explained everything that needed saying in a simple and easy to understand manner.
If it was shorter I'd have made it into my new signiture.
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Harsil, I did not intend to pass any judgment on characters involved with plots along those lines, or even the value of the plots themselves. I'm sure they're very fun for the players with characters whose stories are invested in them. I was merely commenting on the fact that the vast majority of PCs are not invested in them, so the notion that spurring these sorts of conflicts is the thing we should be supporting to the exclusion to the telling of other types of stories is misguided. Too much emphasis is placed on starting random conflicts and being single-mindedly devoted to specific (usually inflammatory) goals, and when these sorts of high profile events take place it is simply assumed that it's going to involve the entire playerbase because important NPC 1 has been killed by NPC 2.
In reality, it's not a terribly effective strategy for involving people, and far too much DM attention is squandered on it. The conflicts are distant and vague for most PCs.
Furthermore, these sorts of far-reaching goals that are invented before character creation (particularly for application characters) make it so that you're contractually obligated to have all of your in game actions generally trend towards fulfilling a handful of goals. Your characters thoughts, opinions, and interests are far less malleable than another's might be, because they have to be in order to stick with it long enough to get anything done. In other words, the system spawns a lot of characters that are always doing pretty much the same thing until their ambitions either finally bear fruit and a vague political conflict occurs, or the player grows frustrated and stops playing the PC.
Lack of change, whether it be in PCs or in the game world, is the main fun-killer in roleplaying games.
The main thing I meant to get across is that you would involve the playerbase much more successfully by spreading plot hooks around, even sometimes putting weighty decisions and responsibility in the hands of unlikely people.
I once had a rogue on another server who was nobody of terrible importance. He held no titles, was a member of no criminal organization, and had never assassinated anyone. He was, however, an abject coward and had taken a low level job for the town guard which gave him access to their guard posts.
A DM noted his wishy-washy allegiance and nerve and had an enemy spy from an invading army approach him and offer him and several people of his choosing safe passage out of the town if he were to open the gates for the invading army. He reluctantly agreed and the town was destroyed. The defenders (his former friends) were all killed, fled, or were captured, except the ones on his list who agreed to leave peaceably. His former allies were all aghast at his actions.
This was not something that I had written an application for, nor something I had even intended to do a day before. I went from being the reformed pickpocket who was a spineless scout with friends in the guard to being an infamous traitor. It was something that came about because an observant DM, who had actually paid attention to his personality, history, and priorities, had given him the opportunity to make an interesting decision. And it really, really worked. And what's more: it involved people; most of whom actually knew me and gave a shit about me allowing an army to burn their house down.
That scenario would be extremely unlikely to happen here. Everything has to be very obvious and written in advance. You need to organize parties to search areas for some macguffin or another, often knowing full well that it doesn't exist, and gathering hedge magic materials. It's a dull, uncreative way of putting out plot hooks and measuring the worthiness of certain plots and stories over others.
I'm sorry; it just is.
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Yeahchris and lizardman have a far greater mastery of language than I. Well said both of you.
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Well sometimes the plot itself has some guidelines… others you only have to make yourself noticed.
For example, once my character was actively investigating the rift and openly declaring he would close it. The outcome? I was kidnapped and cursed.
Sometimes to get into a plot you need a lot more work than others. Some plots will need much more work than others. They are all different.
I agree it is sometimes very boring to go and hunt for all two hundred pink grains of sand in the desert. But if you invest some of your time trying you may eventually manage to finish it, and maybe even a DM or two will help you doing it.
Also, the others must have a chance to stop you too.