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[Tiruin]

That dang Duffle Bag in a Duffle Bag bit. It was so dumb, but too good to pass up.

Did you have any questions about your RtD? Is this a Shattered Dreams reboot/continuation?

That duffle bag thing can be your awesome hook y'know. ;3 As a player, we've no idea what you've got in your...*ahem*, bag o' GM tricks! :3

And yep--about that RtD! I'm more posting here as I think Roller's Block is more to mechanics and such, whereas I'm more concerned to how to plot a story and tell it well :x It's moreso because I've got anxiety in communication and in a social context, it generally comes off as 'I can easily understand anything others say but when I try saying things, it may be a bit mixed or too detailed after a few times where most people can understand it'.
Also wondering how folks play out plots with conflict as they go. This may be too much of a general question but I like writing out intrigue and relationships (people w/ others, people w/ environment, people w/ other entities and beings, etc). I've noted it's a thing with me in the part before a story's climax and right after the introduction (with imagery following the 5-part intro, rising action, climax, denouement, end, kind of picture )

So yeah, moreso on the fear of appearing bland or something akin to 'fear of unjust judgement'. However when that RtD was still alive, I've met a ton of tolerance and forgiving or otherwise very helpful folks in their feedback. Very awesome (and wholesomely supportive) feedback. I still fear messing up, unnecessarily.
And that's what cycles around and bites me back (causing an unproductive loop >_> which is probably the biggest reason I'm not running any new games yet now that I'm all free from other duties that take up most of my time)

[GiglameshDespair]

To be honest I'd say the best way to improve is to do
 If you never actually run the game, you won't get better.

Even if it isn't perfect, a game can still be enjoyed. Just go for it.

[RoseHeart]

To be honest I'd say the best way to improve is to do
 If you never actually run the game, you won't get better.

Even if it isn't perfect, a game can still be enjoyed. Just go for it.

[Rolepgeek]

The best game I ever ran on the forum is my first one, and I had just about zero planning for that.

The next few games had progressively more planning and become progressively worse.

[AoshimaMichio]

The best game I ever ran on the forum is my first one, and I had just about zero planning for that.

The next few games had progressively more planning and become progressively worse.

That's a interesting thing, you know. My first game was the same; a basic idea about "contagious sapient alien virus and futuristic planet exploration", no planning beyond that and it turned out to be pretty good. Wasn't my best game, but it still is one of the top ones. I hear Einsteinian Roulette was much the same originally, simple idea about idiots in space, an armory listing and look what it became: over four years of running, huge player base and its own sub-board.

Unfortunately it doesn't always work out.

[Solifuge]

To be honest I'd say the best way to improve is to do
 If you never actually run the game, you won't get better.

Even if it isn't perfect, a game can still be enjoyed. Just go for it.

The best game I ever ran on the forum is my first one, and I had just about zero planning for that.

The next few games had progressively more planning and become progressively worse.

I've heard similar experiences from Dexexe1234, who was a long-time MSPA and Bay12 Suggestion Game runner. Sometimes excessive planning, or laying complex rigid story bits out can paint you into a corner. A willingness to change or refine your idea over time is really important, as is letting your work grow organically.


On the topic of going into a project without extensive plans:

In "Take Joy", Jane Yolen (one of my favorite childhood authors) explains her creative process as starting with a seed. For example, it could be a scene; a Conan the Barbarian type takes tea with the Queen, which is a pretty ironic situation. For some people, depending on the medium, it might be a drawing or a song, a character or setting, or even a strong feeling. For Steven King's "Dark Tower" series, a poem he read in his Sophomore Year was the seed for his protagonist and his destination, and the rest of the Dark Western Science-Fantasy sorta setting extended from that.

Once an author has a seed, Jane Yolen suggested writers just allow their story to grow organically from it. Just think about how the thing came to happen, or what might happen because of it. How it fits in to a bigger picture, and what kind of Bigger Picture best fits that seed. As it grows, themes, plot hooks, challenges, antagonists, and character arcs might start to become apparent. If not, you can start to ponder those.

For my current Illustrated Suggestion Game, I started with a setting-based seed, a Scene, some Dice Mechanics, a Graphical Style. and some very long-term Story Beats I wanted to hit. We're only a few updates in, but the process of letting it grow has helped me create some little hooks, some near-future goals, and started to string out events pointing toward us a long-term twist and story shift. It's even changed some of the long-term Beats I had planned. For the most part, I'm leaving the content and scenes to be pretty flexible; I can shuffle around content to change the pacing, and add or react to new ideas on the fly. In general, I'm trying to treat the story as a living and growing thing, rather than as an extensive scaffold to drape some plot points and characters over (as I've done in the past).

[RoseHeart]

It's like Bob Ross says let it flow from the brush.

Sometimes it's nice to make sure you have a nice canvas and paint though.

[Liberonscien]

I had an idea for a game that is a cross between Counting Wars and Nomic.

[S34N1C]

Do tell

[Liberonscien]

Do tell

Well, each player must be in a faction.
Each player may add one to any faction's score or subtract one.
The faction that has the highest score may make rules that affect the other factions, nomic style.
The goal of the factions not in power is to overthrow the one in power.
I'm thinking there will be three factions.
The plan is to have rules that allow temporary alliances to form between factions.

Any suggestions?

[FallacyofUrist]

Here's a scenario.

Faction in power: new rule! Other factions cannot gain points or make other factions lose points.

If you're going to do this, you'll have to find some way to keep things moving and not become locked in place.
~~~
~~~
Here's an idea. Suppose you have some guy. He's worked for most of his life on one skill. Then he takes it a little bit further. If he's a doctor, suddenly he just preformed a surgery that not only restored his patient's eyesight, but also enhanced it to supernatural levels. If he's an actor, he convinced his audience that he actually was the character he was portraying. If he's a ninja, he just hid in plain sight.

This is Mastery, the ability to take a single skill to supernatural levels after decades of practice. And the guy who just achieved it? He's not alone. The world has many more other Masters alive, many of them part of the Guild of Masters, using their supernatural abilities to dominate the world and keep knowledge of Mastery from reaching public knowledge.

[NUKE9.13]

So, hey, I have a weird problem. Apparently Demonhood 2 has too much content. Which is to say, I received a complaint that the updates were too long and too frequent to keep up with. Now, I agree that updating more than once a day may be excessive, but I don't want to sacrifice quality- and sometimes a story takes a few extra words to tell properly. On the other hand, I want to provide the best possible experience to the most number of readers.

What I have thought of so far is adding summaries of every update to the first post, to let people catch up without having to read everything. But is this enough? Can anyone think of other things I could do to solve this problem- and to what extent is it a problem? Are you personally turned off by posts that take more than five minutes to read? The regular readers all thought it wasn't a problem, but there's a bit of selection bias there.

[S34N1C]

Personally, I don't mind the length of your updates, because I like the way you describe everything. If it were up to me, I would say to keep doing everything the same, but I understand that others may feel differently.


Basically, I love your writing style, and don't have any complaint

[Haspen]

If people complain about the amount, then you update too fast for them to read, process and vote/choose/suggest based on the content.

Keep the length but make updates more infrequent; maybe once per two day, or when you have at least 5 player posts after the newest update.

[Liberonscien]

Here's a scenario.

Faction in power: new rule! Other factions cannot gain points or make other factions lose points.

If you're going to do this, you'll have to find some way to keep things moving and not become locked in place.
~~~
~~~
Here's an idea. Suppose you have some guy. He's worked for most of his life on one skill. Then he takes it a little bit further. If he's a doctor, suddenly he just preformed a surgery that not only restored his patient's eyesight, but also enhanced it to supernatural levels. If he's an actor, he convinced his audience that he actually was the character he was portraying. If he's a ninja, he just hid in plain sight.

This is Mastery, the ability to take a single skill to supernatural levels after decades of practice. And the guy who just achieved it? He's not alone. The world has many more other Masters alive, many of them part of the Guild of Masters, using their supernatural abilities to dominate the world and keep knowledge of Mastery from reaching public knowledge.

There would be starting rules that prohibit that sort of thing.
I had the idea that a faction could create a new rule when it hit a certain number of points, then it's score was reset to zero.
A faction would have to collectively decide what rule to propose via an infaction government process.