Storyteller Discussion and Features list

[TehomCD]

I'm going to be experimenting with a slightly new format here that might be helpful. One of the difficulties in approaching issues is trying to identify the order things should be worked on: breaking things up based on priority, implementation time, and features which act as prerequisites for one another. For long-term projects, I felt it might be helpful to open the floor to a discussion of features that people would like to see go into it, and then try to create issues based on the minimum set of requirements to make these come to life, allowing for future iteration/expansion as things come into the game.

The first project I want to try this on is a storyteller/player-run-plot system which we've discussed for many years, but never really took shape. I want to drill down on requirements for it here based on some recent discussions I had with some players who pitched ideas. With their permission, I'll be posting some of their ideas here, and my own reaction to it.

PHILOSOPHY/HUMAN-READABLE DOCUMENT (Pre-Scene Stage)

What you want at the SETUP STAGE of a scene is clarity and smoothness in the setting of dates, and the ability to tie the scene to the IC everyday world. What I mean by the first objective is that setting a scene should be easy, and I believe the tools we have now are almost perfect for it.

What I mean by the later is that while a Storyteller may only run a scene at a certain date, with the right tools they could have that scene 'ripple' both before and after it actually happens, giving players things to talk about with each other and RP and making the scenes less of a 'day I have story and fun' and just the lynchpin of this weeks-long event that happens. Scenes could also, then, include people who won't even be at the event in question.

My theory is that this could make even a small scene feel that much more meaningful and yield a good amount more of RP outside the scene itself.

Example: I want to run a scene about a kidnapping in the Northlands. As a ST, I could use characters who are more mystic and send them a vision about it, relating to a challenge they will face in the scene that they do not know about yet. After, you could emit that there is some rumors going about a certain area, adding another layer to the plot like the presence of bandits. A few days later, the Baron of the lands receives a messenger from a mother in distress, begging him to please find her daughter, who went missing. After you emit a whole town in vigil hoping the girl will come back.

If you pace this right, all it took was the ST were three instances of writing a paragraph or two of plot, but that could maybe raise stakes and investment in it. Especially if you can weave the metaplot of the House and/or characters in it.

I largely agree with the above: my phrasing would be that everyone would like for PRPs to feel consequential: that there should be a more robust system of communicating potential impact of any event to both the game and other story runners, as well as arbitrating exactly what those effects should be. The former is supported in a limited fashion from RFRs/requests, but there isn't really a system in place for the latter: staff can be informed, but player storytellers only can be by being directly told or via emits that everyone sees. Game impact is also decided entirely by staff fiat, which both scales poorly (1-4 people continually arbitrating effects) and can be inconsistent due to very visibility into precedents of similar events and current world state.

TOOLS AND WHY WE NEED THEM (Pre-Scene Stage)

Many of the tools we have are quite fine. The new ones we need, in my opinion, are the following:

Visions: We should be able to send visions to characters. They are a great way of adding mystery to the plot, and having people going around the org going 'Oh god, something is going on!'

Emits: Emits to the Org you are STing for, I think, are needed to rope characters into things, to keep people appraised that there are things happening in their lands and that there is plot they can ask about or join coming their way.

Story Emits: Story Emits would serve a purpose of making the other places of the world aware that there are things happening and that they could approach your org about them to talk and maybe join them.

Custom Messengers: Sending letters as commoners of a noble's lands, or someone's parents, would all make the plot feel far more real, and also help to explain the plot if you feel like a player didn't understand what happened very well. Maybe a good way to diferentiate NPCs from PCs is that NPCs can only be reached through a 'name+surname' string instead of just 'name'? Dunno, you guys are coders!

The first proposal for initial features was above, and focused largely around storytellers communicating things to players. None of the above is particularly difficult, though all storyteller commands also need non-repudiation implemented: tracking for who sent what/to whom, etc.

A feature I'm particularly interested in myself is the idea of triggers and actions. Triggers are the idea of things happening as a result of some condition being met: for example, many characters have secrets revolving around being sensitive to magic, or reacting in some way to the influence of the Abyss. I'd like to have a working event-based system in place where many of these things can happen automatically when a storyteller has a situation that meets these conditions, which also requires that storytellers be able to trigger these events in some way that isn't too arduous. For example, giving storytellers the ability to spawn npcs, and some of these could be flagged as Abyssal, which might then trigger in-combat effects for different characters. Additionally to this, there should be some way of a player sending information in some limited way to storytellers for things they need to be aware of: ideally, this information should be as minimal as possible for providing the storyteller with context of what would happen and anything they need to tell the player, without giving away spoiler details to a storyteller who doesn't need to know them. The latter use case brings me to the idea of 'actions': many players have secrets that involve either abilities they have or resources they can draw upon that ideally would be coded, but currently all require GM ruling. At the minimum, players should be able to tell storytellers about these in a similar minimal way: a description of what they can do and a system for resolving it. Most secrets currently lack a system for resolving them, and that's something we'll need to hash out. While that'll be a lot of work, the good news is that the more formalized things become, the easier they'll be to completely automated down the line.

Feel free to discuss any feature proposals down below. As we hash them out, I'd like to make each one into a separate issue under the 'Storyteller' project, and move them into either long-term or near-term features for prioritization.