Thoughts on a Heroic Mortal game

[leticia]

It occurs to me that if I can't line up all players' schedules just so (and I
know I can't) a pickup-type game might work. But I am hesitant to go with an
unscheduled style of game because without a schedule, it can be hard to round
up players. Thoughts, particularly from potential players and wiser GMs than
I?

Comments

[fadethecat.livejournal.com]

I'm having trouble getting my pick-up game going. On the other hand, I haven't been very aggressive in grabbing players, and need at least two to do anything interesting at this point. SSO, on the other hand, seems to do remarkably well with that style of scheduling. So... it might work?

[sariel-di.livejournal.com]

Because I'm having trouble sleeping:

I think the trick is to standardize your picking-up. Like, the reason TARDIN worked as well as it did (till three-fifths of the players hiatused) was because we were all always available at the same time on the same days; it might as well have been a formal game, except for less frustration from available people when one or two happened to go missing.

And the reason SSO works as well as it does is that we don't really go "Oh, if enough people happen to be in the same room at once, we'll play" any more. Beth is on at a set time range on set days (barring RL or other-game interfering); players don't get any scenage if they can't show up during those times; we effectively wind up having regular SSO scenes, even if there aren't always the same people playing in them, just because it's always "M-T-W (or maybe Th-F if it's pre-scheduled), no earlier than 10AM, no later than 3PM". And we schedule, too; see also me spamming cityofcandles recently to make sure we wrapped a plot point I was needed for before I hiatused.

(The other reason SSO works so well is that all of us are pretty self-motivated, and we're fairly careful about not getting into extended storylines that require players who have a lot of trouble hooking up. For the Marchesquest, we OOCly plotted which PCs would wind up in what groups when the party split, to break up the two players who had the most trouble with matching schedules; before that, Unni OOCly plotted to see which PCs could even make the scheduling attempt longterm; etc. This is problematic if you want a close-knit party, but if you can find excuses to shove people together when the players want it to happen and let them seperate when the players can't keep things up, you're good.

And the last reason SSO works is because most of us know what's happening offscreen while our characters aren't around; we don't have to stick to strict ratios of IC-time-vs-OOC-time to keep track of things, and we timeskip when we want to, and etc, and it still feels like a fleshed-out universe. Which is tricky to get. [coughs])

So what I'd suggest would be making sure, one way or another, everyone gets regular scenage. Or at the very least, that you're running regular scenage. Something like "As long as at least one player shows up on X day during Y time period, there will be a scene," that sort of thing. (At least until your players get plothooked enough to pester you for scenes themselves. [grins]) You might not get a very close-knit party, but you'll at least keep people involved and interested.

The other thing I'd suggest is not being afraid to schedule. Maybe make a seperate LJcomm or a mailing list or whatever if it helps, but if you come up with something like "character X needs to talk to character Y" or "Character A is dealing with plot point B and character C could get involved if C's available"? Don't wait for the players to just happen to get together, and don't trust your players to remember schedule decisions made in the MU*; schedule it, post the schedule somewhere that people can see, and poke them if they go missing without reason. [nods]

And the last thing is encouraging players to random side-RP and meta discussions and whatnot, even if you're not around, as long as they give you a chance to approve stuff before they decide it's canon. [grins] So even if you don't get to be involved in that particular scene, they might provide fodder for more, and they can definitely get a RP fix to keep them interested.

...and now it's late enough for me to try sleeping again. >_> Luck with your game! [apologizes if the miniessay is incoherant]