I’ve personally found smaller staff work on games where the culture is to tend to crowdsource plot/story trajectory to players to run without a lot of staff oversight and management.

Definitely pros and cons to both methods. Games that want to centralize and keep a tighter leash on plot get to set the pace and keep story to what they imagined, but then it adds a gate wherein everyone has to cross to move story around, and it becomes a wait-and-stare game for staff to drop the next pieces. I’ve played on both types of games myself and experienced upsides and downsides to either style.

Letting players run more freely with things releases its own beasts but can free up staffers, and they can concentrate on more egregious things like responding to system mechanics, more major theme plot missteps, or creepy people creepin’.

I’ve personally found smaller staff work on games where the culture is to tend to crowdsource plot/story trajectory to players to run without a lot of staff oversight and management.

Definitely pros and cons to both methods. Games that want to centralize and keep a tighter leash on plot get to set the pace and keep story to what they imagined, but then it adds a gate wherein everyone has to cross to move story around, and it becomes a wait-and-stare game for staff to drop the next pieces. I’ve played on both types of games myself and experienced upsides and downsides to either style.

Letting players run more freely with things releases its own beasts but can free up staffers, and they can concentrate on more egregious things like responding to system mechanics, more major theme plot missteps, or creepy people creepin’.

This thread has personally been a huge help. I feel right now I could easily become one of those blipping-through players because I’m so out of practice.

I took my own hiatus from mushing a year or two just because I found myself never having time and would feel super guilty whenever I had to cancel (lots of rl like moving houses, new position responsibilities), and now that I find myself with enough breathing room to feel the itch, I don’t even know where to start!