@KDraygo said in IC Consequences and OOC Acceptance:

So PvP games may work best on games with short episodes, where characters are “wiped” or killed off in each episode, without consequences that are long lasting. If you lose or die, it’s fine because in a month or two, the slate is wiped clean and a new story is created.

This is our hope, because our theme cycles through PCs by time jumping generations every six months. This is part of the design because we feel it will give players the “freedom” to go big and do heroic things and not feel FOMO by no longer having their epic character anymore because “anymore” might be a couple of months at best.

Like supporting PC on PC conflict, we anticipate that this will cause some self-selection among players who don’t want to invest time in a character that has a 6 month or 12 month shelf life.

But hopefully it will draw in players who do embrace the idea of playing a character’s arc until it ends and then starting over with a new one.

We’ll see how it works in practice.

@Faraday said in Requring Character Connections at Chargen:

So there was this one TV show where the main characters had each been (independently) kidnapped and then wake up in a strange town with no idea why.

I absolutely loved that show. So bummed that it was only one season…

@Pavel said in Requring Character Connections at Chargen:

My main thought process with any rule or policy like this is “why?”

If I can get a good reason why, even though the rule is off-putting to me, I can take some satisfaction in knowing it was actually considered rather than just some arbitrary thing that was decided.

The idea was supposed to be that new players would have people they could go to for RP rather than start out not having any connections and wandering around unable to get hooked into RP and plots. If they already knew each other, they would have at least someone and something to talk about to get the RP ball rolling.

It didn’t work that way in practice, but that was the theory. They explained it often since a lot of people had the same questions you guys have.

I just wanted to drop another note here thanking everyone for their insights on this and @STD for starting the discussion. I am a ‘worst case scenario’ kind of person and wasn’t really expecting anyone (or very few people) to join ND but we have 17 registered bits (including myself and 1 alt) and people are really running with the idea and creating things to make it their own.

And I really don’t think that would be happening if I still had the Handle policy in place. So thank you 😊

Yeah, gonna +1 here on what folks are saying about incorporating player backstories. Most people I know would love to have their PC history come up, it’s a great bit of collaboration and an excuse to get some great melodrama in.

There are only two big things I’d caution about, which amount to either retconning or resolving the PC backstory, which can seem like good ideas but can wind up upsetting players if they’re not handled carefully. (I’ve seen these more often in TT than online, but I think it still holds.)

Retconning is when you drop a big reveal that the PC only thought they knew what happened in their history and there’s some (usually dark) secret going on there. Ranging from your classic “Obi-Wan never told you what happened to your father” to full-on, like, “your history was actually a Total Recall implant by the bad guy and your life is a lie.” This can actually be really fun! But it’s a big change to the character going forward, and one that people might not appreciate implementing in RP. It’s not something I’d recommend doing without explicit permission from the player; even if it diminishes the impact of the big reveal, it’s just a huge risk unless you know how they’ll take it.

Resolution, meanwhile, can seem like it’s an unambiguously good thing but can actually wind up making a character unusable. The A-Team was sentenced by a military court for a crime they didn’t commit, so if someone offered them a pardon for a job they’d presumably be over the moon… and then if they got it they wouldn’t be the A-Team anymore, they’d just be Some Guys. If my character wants something they don’t have as a fundamental part of their character concept, getting it can be a great plot point that changes the character in an entertaining way that’s great to work through, but if it feels like it happens too fast or too easy it just winds up a letdown at best and makes the PC unplayable at worst. (“Oh, the banishment that forced my PC to leave their old lives behind and fall in with the game’s setting has been rescinded, and they’re free to leave the game and return to their comfortable happy life? I guess they… do… that, then.”)

@Twinkle Ahh, gotcha.

Thanks. A shame, but it’s nice to know the place went down gracefully rather than crashing and burning.