[Poll] If you had to choose one type of event for the rest of your life what would it be

Like [A] or [B]

Assume this is in a long term game like Ryslig Savrou whatever

[A] event where an individual character can go through whatever type of preferred aesthetic; marked for death, memory share, Persona Shadow, nightmarescape, etc. However afterwards status quo is concerned

* maintained.

[B] Event that moves forward the plot in the entire game: now you're on the moon, now you have no money, now the locals hate you. However individual characters cannot really change this event unless maybe you put in a big player plot request

A, I guess. B is very much a sometimes food when it comes to games.

Honestly though I'd take any event other than "your character's are magically compelled to do A Bad Thing they don't want to do" events. I'm so tired of those.

May I ask in what sense? Like, would you prefer gamewide changes to be few and therefore meaningful? Or would several gamewide changes in swift succession still be good if they had some quality that is rare in your experience?

OH... yeah magical compulsion is really not my thing anymore

I'm actually really into magical compulsion in theory. My problem in practice is more that in a large game there will inevitably be several different interpretations of compulsion that will lead to intractable player conflict

Well the way you made it seem was like. The actions of players don't affect the arc of the plot in example B. While I understand that sometimes it's necessary for a big thing to just happen, ideally the actions of individuals should have some level of impact

See the actions of players don't really affect the arc of the plot in A either because it's more like bad things just keep happening

B would also apply to a game where pieces of specific conspiracy keep getting unlocked

my problem with magical compulsion is that, once the novelty of having your character Do A Naughty oocly (and subsequently angsting about it afterward) wears off, it just seems kind of... lazy.

I guess my actual question is sort of more about "given that the ideal of a plot shaped equally by the autonomous players is out of reach, would you rather have the illusion of plot or the illusion of autonomy"

It can be done well. For example: In Ryslig, the whole thing with the god factions is not my cup of tea, but i definitely get how that's compelling. An outside being's influence is driving your character arc. That's neat.

but then i see events that look like The Year's Test Drive Meme where its just "your characters want to hurt each other for a month" and i fall asleep at my keyboard.

lengachan Oh yeah that's true, I suppose, I hadn't thought about it like that.

I'd still choose type A though because generally I have more fun with that sort of thing. If I'm not affecting the plot, i can at least have fun with a weird body swap plot

Ryslig God plot has also apparently advanced a lot recently like with this conduit plot where they're legitimately fighting over the landscape and stuff is actually changing

In terms of like player for player, the number of conduit characters who survive has an actual consequence

I did suspect that you would choose A anyway, I guess I just felt a flash of guilt about my own cynicism

A, there's at least a lot i can do on a personal/cr level with those kinds of things even if the plot isn't impacted at all

these both seem like the worst of both worlds

A is less annoying in that you aren't stuck with a permanent change you can't do anything about

i wouldn't join a game like B, as a player you are just a prop in the story the mods want to tell and that's no bueno

Yeah I guess this is the contradiction in the DWRP jamjar model in that I really don't see how a game with 200 players can respond to the actions of all those characters

it's possible to do it if you do plots where lots of characters doing a thing will affect stuff, or if you run smaller groups doing things

in reality, not all 200 players are going to be actively contributing to every or even most gamewide plots

Ah the good old "does your character vote to stay or go" poll

I guess what I find awkward about those is if it's like a 51-49 poll

it's not voting so much as...you can have outcome a or b (which may not necessarily be fully transparent to players in how it affects things long-term at first) and if enough people do event thing, then you get outcome a. if not enough people do event thing, then you get b

from what i've seen from running a plotty game and being in plotty games, you usually have a small group of very active players who are way into advancing the plot, a larger group that is interested but participates a bit less, and then the ones who basically do little to nothing with the plot and usually do their own thing and only jump in once in a while

(unfortunately the small group usually gets wanked on for 'being the mod's favorites' because...they actually DO stuff consistently)

so if you balance out like..having stuff for all three of those groups to do, it can work. not every event has to work for everybody, but if you do it like that you need to kind of rotate the types of events you do so everyone feels like they get a chance to participate on a regular basis

games like that are a ton of work to run though

Yeah it's true that every game I've been in that large I can think of a very finite group of people who were actually like, can my character change the plot, please

another thing is you have to make it accessible to anyone who wants to jump into being very active, you get problems there too if it seems like it's not possible to break into that super active group