Friday, April 24, 2009

OWbN Wide Plots

There's been talk on the Council list about the KJ Plot that OWbN ran a few years back, which I said we should learn from and was asked what specifically.

The lesson I think that was learned, or should be taken, is that meta plots in the One World By Night is that they should be flexible enough that no member chronicle feels they need to follow a rigid script and can put their own unique spins on it, and that players can feel they contribute to it and can make it personal to them, and don't need to get involved in online scenes or special event games where it's focused solely on a handful of players. At the same time, it should contain enough details so that it's consistent acorss the board and a player who goes to one game and is told "omg! Seatlle got destroyed!" doesn't go to another game and get told "Seattle beat back the sabbat and won!"

So, for an OWbN meta plot, it needs to be open so that if one game wants a Michael Bay style rain of fire, volcanoes and gun-fu, it can, and another game can run My Dinner with Andre with talking and scenes in a library with warmed crystal goblets filled with blood, and a third can run a cloak and dagger CSI/24 game ("There's NO TIME Madame Justicar!"), and from that, the coordinators running it, can see where it's going and try and create bookends based on involvement.

It's similar to the way WW runs V:TES storylines, but I think that's the best possible solution for OWbN over a MMO style "here's this weekend where we'll run scripted events and then it'll end!" or taking a TT game and moving around and telling other players "oh, no, it's changed." We're in OWbN because we're not Cam Inc, and we don't have global storytellers and mandated plots, we let the Chronicles (which is Players and STs) make up the story. If there is to be a meta-plot, it should be a plot line that is shared across the board that is open and yet guided.

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