What Makes A Good Story Arc?

[Sai'nu]

Well, I'm sitting here wondering to myself; just what does?

I've tried to take a small roll in this and I've seen a few of you try as well. So, what is our community opinion on this? I'll throw in some of the things I've learned for myself so far.

We seem to enjoy more open-ended plotlines. Where we have our clear cut villan yet the outcome isn't narrowed down to our participant RPers going just one way to get to the end of the plot.

This open-ended play also seems to stim from our need to take RL into account that sometimes we may just not be able to commit to 'the game' as far as the speed of the story goes. I like this though; it gives us breaking points for our characters... a historical referance when we're not able to be in it from the start to the finish or have to bow out because of Real Life for awhile.

We also like to make our characters flexible sometimes. Since I'm writing this I'll just put it as Batak is not always Batak. Sometimes we explore the different sides of our characters and I think 'this' also gives us some salt in our story arcs.

Props; coordination of time and events. This seems to be another love of it.

However I think the most important part for me since I've joined the community is discovering that it is Communication with all of our players that drives a good story arc. And realizing that some of our Epic adventures realistically won't always have a majority of the community playing.

Maybe we should work on more mini-quests? Anyway; figured I'd catch some of your thoughts. You've been at it far longer than I have.

[Cijj]

I, as an RP event maker in the german community, like to set out a certain situation for players to react to.

Just some Imperials Checking out some wreckage near a well frequented spot..or something like that. Roleplayers react, small stories are created and maybe I push them with another set-up 4 days later or something like that.

There is always a group of players who have a large P&P or LARP background who like to really do a Gamemaster job and create large stories, which is okay, but not for me.
I am an SWG made Roleplayer, so I like to work with set-ups and players reactions.

They form stories by itself