@bear_necessities I think it all comes down to staff working with players. What I commonly ran into was a conversation that went like this:
Me: I’d like to run something for this group. Is there a hook I can use? Or I could do X?
Staff: Eh. They will never succeed at X.
Me: Oh, okay. I think they’d have fun just trying even if they couldn’t actually succeed, but I can do something else. What about Y?
Staff: I’d rather you didn’t. We’re going to do something similar later.
Me: Okay, is there some hook you had for them that I could run with?
Staff: Yeah, but they’re not really that active.
Me: Right, I wanted to try to give them something to do to get them active.
Staff: I mean I guess so but I don’t really like anything you’ve pitched so far.
Me: Okay, could you maybe give me some idea of what you’d like to see?
Staff: never replies again
And then I never run a plot.
The Network was pretty open for people running just about anything (hahah I got my dynamite) and I REALLY liked how they’d have little mini sessions to teach anyone that wanted to how the combat/dice system worked so people COULD run things.
Even for games that have a Super Sekrit Metaplot I think that kind of thing can work, along with making sure to write like, PrP hooks for certain groups. This faction has a haunted mine, wanna run something? This group has no real reason to get involved with the metaplot BUT if they pull on a certain lamp in their library they’ll find an old book that will give them a hook to it, want to run with that?
etc.
It does take me a LONG time to want to run something on a game though, because I get very very nervous I will screw up the system or run something that’s not in theme. Having someone willing to teach you the ropes of the system and then an open staff who wants you to help add to the game really, really helps with that anxiety in my experience.
