Storyline Idea

[Landri Aker]

I've been thinking about what could get people involved. As many of the stories seem to center around either one person or an invasion. I come up with something to pull in the Omega and the CMC plus anyone else who may have knowledge. This will not be something time stamp planned to every detail.

Story. Poison mother. Someone, sometime sneaks into the Reactor room (not like it's hard.) And starts feeding mother something tasty but end up hurting Mother. The hunt will be finding out how is feeding this to mother, why and how to stop it's effects.

Granted we all know nothing can blow up or destory the station but the idea it might go boom, might get people more involved. I don't know just an idea I'm throwing out to see who is interested in the CMC and Omega groups.

[Sara]

Rant:
It would seem like stories revolving around few people are much easier to come up with. This is not bad thing since
running in to talking black ball was probably most akward moments that I have came up. And that bit of storyline was made by players.

Honestly the very idea of of omega is a bit shady. They would not do things openly but their decisions would affect station as whole. Catch my drift? Chios should be manager of this station.

I don't think I should not answer visitor questions like "How I join in omega" in bar. There's two options what to tell them. First is to direct applicant to group leader (which is not obivous since it doesn't read anywhere and they are probably not online) second is to just tell them wear floating text and pretend to be one (see the problem here?)
Looking at necronom forums it would seem that it never happens anything in NVI. Or just to get to action you should know right people... Or be up 24/7... Boys and girls - both options are NOT reasonable.

So there's no active gamemastering or storytelling and virtually no open information about what's going on.
Factions and their bad terms are good fuel of story but it would need open brainstorming and co-operation with
faction leaders. If that's not possible (eg. because bad terms with people) it should be bypassed since roleplaying of tens or hundreads of players should not be hindered because few people. Catch my drift?

Solution would be quite simple: Just post smaller open events that have not posted before like "Billy and Bob drinking beer in reactor and singing irish songs." If someone want's to hear Billy and Bob singing they can just show up or IM can they join the band too.

More open events and less clicques.


Oh, I did have one idea too. That's idea of spacecraft making forced landing on Dimai. For crew it would be survival story and later casual players could loot things and go sightseeing. Blowing the station up is tempting but not only way to include others in plots.

[Eglantine Broome]

It's an interesting idea, but there are several flies in the ointment that I can think of.

The first issue is that the reactor is constantly patrolled and has so many cameras, sensors, and so on on it that the most likely would consist of looking at the recordings of what happened and moving from there. That's operational, and can be worked around, but it's a huge issue.

The next issue is that Mother was not always protected. There was a day when Mother was called "The Infection" or "The Invader" and the main plan on the station was to get rid of her, and it's what Omega was tasked with -- getting rid of Mother. In those days, even calling Mother "Mother" was an act of rebellion, and implied you accepted her being there. It was muttered very quietly, as if the wrong people heard you, you could end up dead or worse.

The reason I mention this is that the whole of the ship tried to poison Mother and failed. So the reaction of many people that Mother had been poisoned would rightly be that she'll be okay, it will just give her indigestion. I'm sorry, but my reaction as head of Omega will be to shrug it off initially (and have someone review the recordings).

The last difficulty I see is that you won't have help from Chios (which means Omega and the CMC), and they'd be more interested in swatting whomever was involved with that.

Now then -- as apparently negative as I am being, that's not what I mean. I am just saying that if you want to have a plot like this, here are the obstacles in your way. Mother is protected. Mother is watched. The CMC and Omega would tend to ignore threats to Mother (she's been shown to be able to take care of herself), but they'd move against anyone who would hurt her.

However, those are not reasons why it is a bad plot, those are reasons it is a difficult plot. Imagination can solve difficulties.

Eg

[Landri Aker]

Ok I set let me address the first problem.

Reactor room always watched. Now there can be ways around that by simple having a spy or mole to cut camera feeds and/or pay off the patrols. Sorry but everyone has a price just need to find it. Even with cameras there are always blind spots. Plus the station is label as space trash so not everything will work like it's suppose to. It is quite easy to get around the first problem just need to think of what could go wrong.

Second problem is another one where it needs to be accepted that something is going wrong with Mother. I'm sure data on her has been leaked and the possibility of finding some kind of poison to work on her has come up with. So Omega could always shrug it off at first but after a period of week, she doesn't get better then Omega could be concerned.

Of course the person trying to kill Mother won't get help from Omega or CMC unless there is a traitor or spy or ex-employee.

The only problem I see is will leaders think about this idea, mull it around their minds to see the possibilities of this. What if Mother did become sick, systems on the station slowly start to lose power, glitches popping up with data files. This would end up involving everyone who lives or stops at the station. And not just a one day story invasion.

[Sara]

Sounds like an idea. However it's not good idea to guard something when you know nothing is going to happen. "Lets poison mother"-event sounds a bit far fetched too. You can't give exact time when sabotage is about to occur. More like "take this pill and call me in morning"-solution would work. Instead of one sabotage incident there would be need of dropping wrong things in right places like ten times a day and that's hard to miss. More of all this kind of event would need lots of co-operation and thinking out of box - beyound conventional win/lose outcome. Just a sheer size means Mother does not die easilly so this would be ongoing plot for year or so.

[DylanFox Petrov]

One indicator that Mother is not well would be the Commander not feeling well, since he depends in part on Mother's life force to fuel some of his psychic power. Are you ready to have the amgry midget all pasty-faced and more irritable than usual? Just sayin'...

Landri Aker said:

The only problem I see is will leaders think about this idea, mull it around their minds to see the possibilities of this. What if Mother did become sick, systems on the station slowly start to lose power, glitches popping up with data files. This would end up involving everyone who lives or stops at the station. And not just a one day story invasion.

[Sara]

I suppose it's not a problem for Landri. You'll be venting it on us, the crew :P

[DylanFox Petrov]

Sara, anyone can do up a stationwide storyline. Really.

Cliques form because certain groups of players are online at certain times, have similar interests and similar playing styles, and so tend to gravitate together. If it seems that storylines center around particular people, it's because those people are the squeaky wheels, so to speak, and are able to grab everyone's attention. Running an ongoing storyline is hard work, and not everyone can devote the time and energy that it takes to do this all the time -- just like it's not reasonable to expect people to be online 24/7. Said Squeaky Wheels thrive on this sort of work.

If you want to be informed about something that is going on that you seem to have been left out of, then you might have to role-play with someone you don't like. If you show that you want to be involved, and are persistent, thoughtful and can leave your OOC feelings on the landing pad, you will get the information you seek and be able to actively participate. Role-playing is cooperative story-telling: everyone involved has to give something to get something in order to make the story grow.

Sara said:

Rant:
It would seem like stories revolving around few people are much easier to come up with. This is not bad thing since running in to talking black ball was probably most akward moments that I have came up. And that bit of storyline was made by players.
.......
More open events and less clicques.

[Sara]

The term clique is exclusive and not inclusive.
That's the problem. Not that we are having
people from diffrent parts of globe in same sim.

It's interesting that you brought up playing
with people that you don't like since I have
thought for 20 years now that roleplaying is
fictional situations and persons. Dividing
SL net personalities to who you want to
play with and who you don't want is a bit childish
since you really can't know the person behind
screen personality.

Thinking about that roleplaying is indeed
co-operative storytelling and thinking about
same time roleplaying is supposed to be
kept in small circles are contradictionary
to each other. But I have seen this
pattern repat itself in other role-playing
instances and it takes more than it gives.

[Landri Aker]

I like the idea of you Dylan feeling if mother is not alright but not to sound OOC like but your normally angry and pale faced. And no Sara I won't not take it out on the crew.

This idea would run longer then an event. That is why I didn't put this in the event area as there will be no set time to stop it. The goal is to find the cure and the person who did it. This was to get people's thoughts on the idea not to have a talk about clique or venting.

Would it be possible,what kind of things need to be talked about. That sort of stuff. I could care less about cliques as for now they hold no purpose on this talk.

[DylanFox Petrov]

Speak to the reps of Omega and the CMC (Eglantine Broome and Justine Morrow, respectively.) about what would and would not be possible. Getting input from Oni would be nice, too, since he has a few visions about the way his world works. Get your villains set up, as well. Would they be one-shot bad guys, or a continuing menace to the station? Are they an organized group, or one crazed and/or righteous individual? Will you have AVs playing your bad guys, or will they be "invisible" NPCs? Be sure to have vague hints to get things moving and specific clue-by-fours with which to smack dense people.

Other than those things, I can't see where you have to plan out too much else. People are going to surprise you: I was a gamemaster for 20 years, and my players always got me on the hop. Have a goal (catch this bad guy to foil the plot, etc.), but you can plan on the story not going the way you planned. Flexibility and quick thinking are a must.

Oh, and please do get the Crew involved if you can. People tend to forget that we are part of Chios, too.

[As for the Commander always being pale and angry... He's a space brat who doesn't do tanning salons, so yeah, he is pale, but he isn't -always- angry. He's just having a bad day... er... week... Okay, a bad year.... :-D ]


Landri Aker said:

I like the idea of you Dylan feeling if mother is not alright but not to sound OOC like but your normally angry and pale faced. And no Sara I won't not take it out on the crew.

This idea would run longer then an event. That is why I didn't put this in the event area as there will be no set time to stop it. The goal is to find the cure and the person who did it. This was to get people's thoughts on the idea not to have a talk about clique or venting.

Would it be possible,what kind of things need to be talked about. That sort of stuff. I could care less about cliques as for now they hold no purpose on this talk.

[Eglantine Broome]

I think that if you work on it, you can make it a decent plot. Just remember things people have said here. You just need to make it believable within context, and also remember the ICA->ICC rule. The degree to which someone actually threatens Mother is the degree to which there will be consequences for those people when caught.

[Eglantine Broome]

DylanFox Petrov said:

People are going to surprise you: I was a gamemaster for 20 years, and my players always got me on the hop. Have a goal (catch this bad guy to foil the plot, etc.), but you can plan on the story not going the way you planned. Flexibility and quick thinking are a must.

Dylan is spot on here.

Something to remember is that when you start a plot, you own all of it. When one other person gets involved you own half of it. When a third person gets involved, you own only a third, and so on. In a place like here, when you start a plot it will run away from you and you can't control it. Don't even try, and don't get upset when you can't.