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Author Topic: locking plot quests  (Read 594 times)

jrizz

locking plot quests
« on: September 06, 2010, 12:05:09 am »
I understand wanting to lock a quest to a particular group but with the small size of our community and the mainly adult demographic, (meaning that for most of us game time is not the priority of our lives) I dont think that plot quests should ever be locked.



We are playing a fantasy game where we RP, so it is not much of a stretch to just RP who was/is/has been there. Heck it happens all the time for people that make one session but cant make the next (locked or not). So why lock them at all?  I mean if you have to RP why MR X is no longer on the boat in the middle of nowhere with you, why cant you RP that MS Z has been there the whole time?
 
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Dorganath

locking plot quests
« Reply #1 on: September 06, 2010, 12:55:17 am »
If you're talking about the "Do Dragons Weep?" series, they have been locked after the first because of where they went and what had to be gone through to get there.  



For specifics, the group went to a Pit (as in the Pits of Endless Strife), and to get there, they had to solve a one-shot puzzle with a limited window of opportunity. Even within the bounds of it being fantasy, that's a pretty big stretch to include some random person who has no idea how they got there or what was going on prior and RP that they were there the whole time.  In most cases, you can. This was pretty story-dependent though.  



The plot team is trying, as a group, to keep all the plot quests as open as possible, and we're trying to get away from the multi-session quests so that they can remain open.  If it matters, this particular quest wasn't supposed to go beyond 1-2 sessions, but due to people being what they are (read: unpredictable), it's gotten drawn out. I don't want to speak for Minerva, but I'm pretty certain she didn't want to lock it nor draw it out into four sessions, but that's unfortunately what we have.



I'd remind you and everyone reading that it wasn't completely uncommon to have a locked mini-series during the last campaign, and again, it was for a story reason.  Anyone (granted, there's darned few of us remaining) who went on the Great Dungeon quest will remember that it was locked for three consecutive sessions to whomever signed up for the first one.  And that was the minimum.  If it took us longer, it would have gone even further.  The reason it was locked was again...where we went and what had to be done to get there.  



Again, the plot team is trying to avoid locking the plot quests. It's not helpful to our efforts or yours.  Despite this intention though, things can happen due to the actions or methods of the players, and when that combines with setting, location or other significant factors, things like this can happen.
 

jrizz

locking plot quests
« Reply #2 on: September 06, 2010, 12:22:09 pm »
Not that I fully agree with you about random person X joining after getting to some place but I do understand the point. Although often random person Z does not make a session and that is also just as big a stretch to have to say "Z decided to just hang out in the pit of despair".  



Now on to your dragons weep example. As above sure it is understandable, still it does not have to be that way. On part 3 of dragons weep it says you must have been in session 1 to participate. No big deal really, this thread is about not locking plot sessions due to our communities small size and adult demographic.
 

Dorganath

locking plot quests
« Reply #3 on: September 06, 2010, 12:38:22 pm »
Yep, I understand your overall point.



And please read again what I said about what the plot team is doing to try to prevent having to lock them.  



We'd rather not. It's not helpful, as I said, but even so, sometimes conditions will make it necessary.  That's all.



So just understand that when they are locked, it's not because we're trying to shut people out or limit what people can do.  We're trying to keep it as rare as possible, so just know that the intent is to keep them all open, except where circumstances dictate otherwise.
 

Unknown User

locking plot quests
« Reply #4 on: September 06, 2010, 12:42:47 pm »
To be honest, I prefer locked quests - my time for quests is often limited, and spending the first half hour of every session explaining to the newcomers what is going on stretches out each session, and makes it harder to attend. Even more, I hate coming into quests and realizing that everyone is operating with a body of knowledge that I don't have, and that by coming I'm inconveniencing everyone else. I see your point about RPing someone was there all the time, but just because it could be done, doesn't mean it should be...



With particular regard to the Do Dragon's Weep quest ... its been going on for almost three years. It would be very difficult to jump in at this point in the first place, let alone after we jumped into the pits. The other issue is party dynamic - ICly, the quest probably would not have been well-known to the general adventuring population, and there are certainly a number of individuals who would likely have been excluded at the outset for purely IC reasons. If you don't lock the session, you have to back up and find out whether people would have been allowed to come in the first place, which just gets too complicated.



I think open plot quests is a nice ideal, but there are a whole host of reasons why its not a good idea in every single case. If a group of dark elves wanted to go on missions to help the dark elves rumored to be amassing in Dregar, that would certainly be a plot quest... would you argue that should be opened? Scifibarbie and I organized a player-led investigation a while ago that we really wanted to be as open as possible... but it was a stealth operation, so we limited those who knew about it to preserve secrecy, and only told people with a high MS/hide - we could have made it completely open, and kind of wrestled with that, but in the end, RP considerations won out.
 

Gulnyr

locking plot quests
« Reply #5 on: September 06, 2010, 01:22:47 pm »

   
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               Originally Posted by ycleption
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there are certainly a number of individuals who would likely have been excluded at the outset for purely IC reasons.

         
      

That actually happened.  I am responsible for two characters not attending.  That is very, very far from my favorite thing to do, but it was inline with IC events and concepts and was all handled IC.



I think the IC part is the most important aspect to consider.  Sure, the event could have been open, but someone just happening by in the Pits is beyond crazy(1) and totally breaks immersion.  The same is true of any closed-off or hard to reach area.  There's no good IC explanation for that.  There aren't even any bad IC explanations for it.  If there's not going to be some reasonable bottom limit of verisimilitude, we may as well just quit.  I like inclusion, I just don't like inclusion that breaks the feel of the world.  That could lead back to those monstrous race conversations...



(1) Something that is occasionally beyond crazy but usually right at the crazy mark is the oddity of half the world's adventurers converging on a village no one has ever heard of at the same time on the same day with no particular reason why they are there.  That is also known as 'the way many quests start.'  That's bad enough, so locking events when passersby and random hook-ups are even less likely isn't a bad thing.