Thoughts on pre-planned Time Jumps to Retire Characters and Play Their Descendants

[GF]

Absolutely. I sometimes think about a supers game I want to run,* where each character will eventually be retired and replaced by a legacy inheritor of the mantle.

*“want to run” in the sense that I don’t care nearly enough to learn the necessary coding skills, to acquire a domain, or to build a staff to support it

[helvetica]

I can see the time jump approach being really beneficial for faction leadership fatigue. When it stops being fun (which it always does) there’s a built in out that doesn’t involve letting some total stranger play your beloved character.

[Pavel]

The main thought running through my head with this idea is prohibiting people from playing part of the same lineage in a row. So if you’re the head of the Chesterton house in the year 1000, you can’t be the Chestertons in 1018; you would have to be a descendant of someone else’s character.

But that’d take a lot of trust and probably too much admin oversight.

[MisterBoring]

As a small sort of potential alternate path for this, I am also for a game with a stated RL end date that forces the retirement of all characters via a terminal plot point.

Meteor strikes the planet and kills everyone. Old god rises and devours the planet… whatever. Just as long as the game has a hard RL end date.

[helvetica]

@Pavel said in Thoughts on pre-planned Time Jumps to Retire Characters and Play Their Descendants:

The main thought running through my head with this idea is prohibiting people from playing part of the same lineage in a row. So if you’re the head of the Chesterton house in the year 1000, you can’t be the Chestertons in 1018; you would have to be a descendant of someone else’s character.

But that’d take a lot of trust and probably too much admin oversight.

I don’t see a problem with someone investing in a single family line multiple times, over the course of multiple characters (probably from different angles, since you could conceivably a fighter, social character, healer, etc. in any new incarnation). If that’s what interests them and they aren’t a problem player in other ways, making it against the rules reads to me as a kind of arbitrary bureaucracy. If anything, it might help staff maintain thematic continuity since you’d have players around who know the history and IC culture of a faction.

[Pavel]

@helvetica I never said it was a problem, it was just an idea.

[devu]

I love this so fkn much. It is so cool to see one generation effect the world (solve a major problem/big bad/disaster/whatever) and then skip forward to play in the fallout. I was on one IRC game that did this, and it was so neat. Sometimes the skips would be 4-5 years, sometimes 10+.

I think it works especially well in a Mu* situation, with requests and whatnot, since you CAN give advance notice of a skip, and maybe let your players +req one or two things they’d love to see resolved, or set in motion for the future. …Personal things, I mean, since most Family/House/Metaplot things will be taken care of.

It’s a lot of work, but Arx’s rapid fire crises-to-the-end is honestly pretty satisfying, and it could definitely make sure everyone’s satisfied before a timeskip. Wayyy smaller scale, though. What Arx is doing is not sustainable. ‘please +req up to two (2) things you would like to see resolved across any/all characters before/during the timeskip’. Something like that.

[helvetica]

@devu said in Thoughts on pre-planned Time Jumps to Retire Characters and Play Their Descendants:

I love this so fkn much. It is so cool to see one generation effect the world (solve a major problem/big bad/disaster/whatever) and then skip forward to play in the fallout. I was on one IRC game that did this, and it was so neat. Sometimes the skips would be 4-5 years, sometimes 10+.

It’s a lot of work, but Arx’s rapid fire crises-to-the-end is honestly pretty satisfying, and it could definitely make sure everyone’s satisfied before a timeskip. Wayyy smaller scale, though. What Arx is doing is not sustainable. ‘please +req up to two (2) things you would like to see resolved across any/all characters before/during the timeskip’. Something like that.

I was thinking about that, too. And about like, okay… did this player not finish their character’s life work before the skip? Would I, as their child, feel the need to finish that work somehow? That could be cool, provided the former player isn’t too disappointed if something like that were to occur.

[devu]

@helvetica said in Thoughts on pre-planned Time Jumps to Retire Characters and Play Their Descendants:

@devu said in Thoughts on pre-planned Time Jumps to Retire Characters and Play Their Descendants:

I love this so fkn much. It is so cool to see one generation effect the world (solve a major problem/big bad/disaster/whatever) and then skip forward to play in the fallout. I was on one IRC game that did this, and it was so neat. Sometimes the skips would be 4-5 years, sometimes 10+.

It’s a lot of work, but Arx’s rapid fire crises-to-the-end is honestly pretty satisfying, and it could definitely make sure everyone’s satisfied before a timeskip. Wayyy smaller scale, though. What Arx is doing is not sustainable. ‘please +req up to two (2) things you would like to see resolved across any/all characters before/during the timeskip’. Something like that.

I was thinking about that, too. And about like, okay… did this player not finish their character’s life work before the skip? Would I, as their child, feel the need to finish that work somehow? That could be cool, provided the former player isn’t too disappointed if something like that were to occur.

Hell yeah, unfinished business could be an AMAZING plot hook/backstory! Not everything needs to be tied in a neat bow, and some things are better left unfinished? But sometimes there’s also one or two things you really want to see through on a character, and it’d be nice to find a way to accomodate that while still keeping to a reasonable workload for staff, and not just… dragging things out so a handful of people can finish up?

[mietze]

I think this is an interesting concept and I’m looking forward to someone doing it and hearing about it! I’m not sure it would work for me since for health and work/stress reasons it seems the last few years I sometimes need to sit out for varying amounts of time, so I find really slow paced (or fast alternating with a long break) games tend to work a little better for me now. But I think this would be neat over the long term. And it could solve some problems of dead lines/houses when all the gung ho people wander off (they can fade easily into the background) as well as giving fresh opportunities over time too. But I do think it would be really important to viciously prune inactive lines instead of hope someone at some point will revive.

[Alveraxus]

So unfinished business. That is definitely going to be a theme, because there will be long-term desires/goals of the various families/duchies/kingdoms that will not be able to be accomplished in a single generation. So there is that sense of building up to a legacy, that I hope is not too grand.

We’re planning on trying to tie things together in interesting ways with secrets and the like. And part of will definitely be uncovering a mystery in stages. The “antagonists” that invade every 18 years will eventually need to be defeated, but there are several keys along the way to ensuring they don’t come back, and it will, in some cases, be left to later generations to finish the work of the formers. At least, that is kind of the vibe we are aiming for.

I appreciate everyone’s comments and feedback so far, and the questions. It’s given us a lot to think about, but it feels from the overall vibe of the thread that some people really like this idea (which is what we hoped) and some people are thinking that this is not for them. Which is also fine, because we’re not necessarily chasing every player. I feel like games that try to cater to everyone ultimately cater to no one to any great extreme when all is said and done.

I also appreciate the encourage. We’ll keep working away, and I’ll monitor this for other thoughts, but hopefully take some of this feedback in house as we are thinking through some of these mechanics. Thanks!

[Roadspike]

I like the general idea of this – one of the things I love about The Network is that there’s a set end-date for each of the parts that you play (not the actor, but the parts in the shows they participate in), which lets me play concepts that I would never try for a long-running character, but could be fun for 3-6 months.

Have the freedom of knowing that you’ll only have a character for 9-18 months (I think I would keep things flexible so that if it takes a little longer or a little shorter to tie up all the plotlines Staff wants to tie up, that’s fine), you have a lot more freedom to create the type of character you wouldn’t usually, and you have a lot more freedom to explore stories about loss and failure (because you’re just losing for one generation, you can gain it back next generation).

One concern that you might have is player-created Houses – are you going to let someone else take that House over next generation, or are the players who created it going to feel like they own it now? Are they going to be disappointed that the vision of the next generation doesn’t match their vision for the house?

Something I’ve noticed from The Network is that downtime to arrange the next generation is going to be very important, and you’re going to want something for players to do while you’re sorting it out. The time it takes to disseminate the information on what happened over the last 18 years, approve/alter/deny everyone’s proposals for what their previous characters have been doing and how their new characters grew up, and getting everyone on the same page is not going to be insignificant, and you -need- to have something for folks to RP during that time. Maybe there could be a 1-month break at each time-skip where staff can put up a list of major events over that 18 years and players can do vignettes in the midst of any of them? Show how the previous generation matured and the next generation grew up through the major events of their lives?

[Roz]

@Roadspike said in Thoughts on pre-planned Time Jumps to Retire Characters and Play Their Descendants:

One concern that you might have is player-created Houses – are you going to let someone else take that House over next generation, or are the players who created it going to feel like they own it now? Are they going to be disappointed that the vision of the next generation doesn’t match their vision for the house?

Did I miss the mention of player-created houses? I’m not sure if I missed it or if you’re just riffing on the possibility.

My general suggestion there is: don’t do player-created houses.

[helvetica]

I would say don’t do secrets, either. Talk about a storyteller resource sink.

[Roadspike]

@Roz Just riffing. And yes, I think that limiting player-created content in general so that you’re closer to (but not quite) a roster game in the first generation would be a good idea. Keep things a little more controlled and reset each time jump so that the game keeps on a trajectory that Staff is comfortable with. For example, if a Romeo & Juliet storyline brings two opposing houses together, either use the time-jump to split them apart again, or even better, to set up another alliance against them so that the sides shift each time-jump and player actions have impact, but don’t upset the story Staff wants to tell.

[Roz]

@Roadspike said in Thoughts on pre-planned Time Jumps to Retire Characters and Play Their Descendants:

@Roz Just riffing. And yes, I think that limiting player-created content in general so that you’re closer to (but not quite) a roster game in the first generation would be a good idea. Keep things a little more controlled and reset each time jump so that the game keeps on a trajectory that Staff is comfortable with. For example, if a Romeo & Juliet storyline brings two opposing houses together, either use the time-jump to split them apart again, or even better, to set up another alliance against them so that the sides shift each time-jump and player actions have impact, but don’t upset the story Staff wants to tell.

I think you can have player-created characters. But your houses are going to be part of your thematic framework in a much more lasting/enduring way, and IME it’s best for staff to take the lead on those.

[Roz]

@helvetica said in Thoughts on pre-planned Time Jumps to Retire Characters and Play Their Descendants:

I would say don’t do secrets, either. Talk about a storyteller resource sink.

Double-post because I missed this, but I do very much think it’s worth thinking hard on the fact that the overall game setting and framework sounds like it’s gonna be catnip to a fair number of people, and you might end up with a crush of players. Having secrets for every single PC is a really big investment and tough to pull off equitably. Might consider something more like house secrets, or group/org secrets, or something that doesn’t have to be quite so personalized to every single character, and will be able to last through the various players you have wander in and out.

[helvetica]

@Roz House secrets is much more manageable, but if there really is going to be regular turnover built into the game with the time jump/char musical chairs… at some point, a thing isn’t a secret and it’s just a house plot.

[helvetica]

@Roz double-post because I wanted to say don’t double-post

[Third Eye]

Have ‘secrets’ been mentioned by the OP or is this just a port idea from Arx?

Genuine question, I engaged in some skimming.