New: War Table
We’ve been working with the team down in Dystopia Rising: Texas and with their approval we’re stealing their War Table mechanic and tweaking both the mechanics and the story to better serve our story.
The War Table is designed to be a space in which every player character can derive some method of interaction.
Combat character receive missions, goals and choice-point mod hooks here.
Economic characters have the opportunity to interact with trade-routes and item sinks.
Political characters make deals, manage large-scale off screen troop movements and exchange letters and information with NPCs on the “warfront”.
We’ll introduce the War Table this month and the Zone of Mechanics associated with it.
Change: Research
In an effort to continue to improve how Research questions function, we will have a Research Folder secured to the table in Ops. From now on you will bring your Research Questions to Ops. The binder will have blank forms so that you can be sure all the information we need is filled out, and a log so that you can specifically write down when your research was submitted and so that the Ops Marshals can note when they responded and when you picked up your Research.
At least twice an event our Employee Team will get together and answer any questions the Ops Marshals didn’t have the material/knowledge to answer.
As always, any research submitted on Sunday will not get a response until the next event.
Change: Scrounge
Scrounge will now be seeded 7 times during an event between Friday night and Saturday night. Most of these seedings will be about 3 hours apart.
We’ve created a list of 7 areas around camp and each area will be seeded once per event, although the list will rotate to avoid a pattern being established.
The only exception to this is the initial seeding for a weekend that typically happens during set-up, that seeding will not be restricted to any particular area.
Guest Blog: Jeff Dahl -
Plot and How To Snag It
As the player of Doctor Maximus Capacity Ewing (Super-Genius!), I’ve earned an advanced profession and I’m often involved in events going on every weekend to the point that sometimes I have to work to avoid them! I’ve been asked many times - by newer players as well as those who’ve been around for awhile - for advice on how best to get involved in ‘Plot’. While a complicated topic, not least of which because many people have a different idea of what ‘Plot’ is, I’m going to do my best to offer my dubious wisdom to you all at the request of our beloved dictator, Krista. I want the people around me at game to be having as much fun as I am, and as we all know, sitting around bored isn’t any fun!
The first step to getting involved is know what’s going on for you to get involved in ! Some of this information is often findable before game itself; rumors, posters, and notices up on the game’s facebook page or website can reveal times and places that people can go to get involved in things that have been planned to happen. Once at the game itself, many more avenues of information open up - namely, the other characters and the NPCs themselves! Talk to people, be pushy if you need to; unless the subject at hand is something likely to get someone killed (like assassin business!) or the character in question is unusually non-conversational, most people will be happy to let you know what’s they know about what’s going on that weekend. If you’re Educated, or have a friend who is, you can always go to the library and do research to dig into something you’ve heard of as well - this can sometimes get you vital information that will put you in the middle of the current plot!
If there’s something specific that you’re looking to get involved in and you know someone is already involved - ask them about it! If you approach directly and ask how you specifically can assist/get into things, most of the time the person will offer a way to get involved. Similarly, if you run into an intriguing NPC you can talk to them and see if there’s some way you can get involved in whatever shenanigans are going on with then. If there’s an NPC you want to get involved with but who isn’t around, you can often send them mail at the post office - remember that NPCs are people too, and your character can nurture alliances, friendships, and enmities with them.
‘You just said that the plot often comes to you,’ I hear you saying, wondering at all the footwork that I just suggested, and you’re absolutely correct. If you want to have people seek you out to get involved in things, however, you’re going to need for people to know who you are! Joining (or forming) a crew is often the first step of this - being part of a larger group means there are more chances for people to learn about things going on that you might be interested in and let you know about them, above and beyond all the other benefits of joining a crew! As for you personally becoming well-known, the key there is to establish a reputation. Any reputation will do, so long as it means people know you and it’s something that relates to the sort of plot you want to get involved in! If you become well-known as a barrister due to constantly offering to write up contracts and negotiating grievances, when those NPCs come into town wanting legal counsel they’ll think of you. On the other hand, becoming well-known as the town drunk means that when someone announces a drinking contest, someone will come and get you! How does one establish a reputation? Being loud about it. Put up posters offering services in your field. Approach people constantly about it. Offer to teach classes in your specialty, if appropriate. Tell everyone you meet about what it is you do, focusing on one point that they’ll remember. If you introduce yourself as ‘Gertrude’ it might slip peoples’ memory - but if you introduce yourself as ‘Gertrude the Gardener, PLEASE don’t step on the flowers over there…’ people will remember, and when appropriate plot comes around, they’ll think of you.
If you can’t find plot, though - start some! Hold your own events in whatever religion, group, or trade that you call your own, and invite everyone with the aforementioned posters and word of mouth. Put in Personal Plot Requests to arrange situations that you think would get the town involved in your personal story. The key is engagement with other people, in some manner - engage, engage, engage and you’ll be involved in no time.
What if you’ve tried all of this, though, and haven’t found results? The answer is simple - ask OOCly. Talk to staff, talk to other players between games, ask people to get you involved. Most of the players in our community will be happy to try and figure out some way to do so, and staff can advise you on how to get involved as well!
I hope that some of you out there find this helpful, and I’m always happy to answer questions - so hit me up on Facebook and Discord if you have any!