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Episodic Games & 'Down Time'
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I’d actually be curious to see how Alveraxus handles this, when they get there. In many ways, a generational jump is episodic, and I know it’s a thought I’ve kicked around as a problem to solve when thinking about generational games or time jumps. Anyone playing there that can speak to it?
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While I have yet to play in one, I do like the idea of games being episodic, or even just having a set runtime so to speak.
The way I feel about it, downtime should be downtime. If you’re doing interactive story-driven stuff, it’s not downtime. There should be a clear separation. I feel like downtime shouldn’t just be a downtime for story driven interactive play, but a downtime for anything outside of OOC clerical stuff and getting set up for the next episode.
I had a thought where PCs earn XP during the uptime, but spending it is only allowed during the downtime windows. The downtime can represent training montages, buying new things, and other types of logistical stuff that’s important to the PCs.
I have more thoughts on this, but have to get back to work.
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This Text-Based Gaming Blog I’ve been trying to follow’s latest feels relevant to this. Cool interview with Clockwork from The Network after it wrapped.
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@bear_necessities said in Episodic Games & ‘Down Time’:
Does an episodic game NEED a downtime where everyone goes back to a central facility as the “real” them?
I kind of feel like yes, actually. If you’re moving directly from action to action, the PCs are never given a time to breathe and react. And I think reaction RP is often more meaty than the action itself, just in terms of character development.
There’s a lot of room in there to think about how much downtime is needed, and people will likely have different opinions and preferences on that. But I do think there’s a good amount of value in it from a RP perspective. I didn’t play on The Network that long, but I was around for at least one hiatus, and having that aftermath exploration was definitely valuable to me.
But also I think just having the chill time for lower key social RP is a benefit, not a detriment.
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@bear_necessities man. I LOVED that apartment building setting. Loved it.
I think one of the biggest issues was how long the downtime was. It felt… long.
Also we played LOTR.
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@tsar we have killed so many games with LOTR
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I recall from conversations with The Director on early days of HorrorMu* that the plan originally was to just tell short horror stories. Then everyone makes a new character for the next one, with no real connection between them at all.
But she figured people would like some sort of consistent flowthrough of the story from one to the next, so that’s how the whole facility and the ‘archetype characters’ like The Penitent and The Bravo and so forth were created.
I think I agree with Roz, the downtime between the episodes, and to explore having memories of being different people, personally I found that fun.
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@Livia Yeah I think having an ‘anchor’ character is important, I guess I am just trying to figure out how you could make the downtime not seem like it is taking for.ev.er?
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I haven’t played any of the games mentioned but don’t think I’d need an anchor character.
Something to do during downtime, yeah, unless it was only a couple of weeks. With two teams of GMs, one developing the next ‘season’/‘episode’ and one running the current one it could be minimal.
I wanted to try this, not really episodic the way it’s meant here, but intended to have quick character roll-over.
Call of Cthulhu on The Love Boat.
The cruise ship Starry Wisdom makes various ports of call at scheduled times. New characters can get on and old ones get off. By choosing their destination players can choose how long their PC will be aboard. If they survive that long.
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Yeah I’m not sure, and as with most things one persons forever is someone elses ‘oh man I didn’t get enough time to touch base with everyone I wanted to!’
I feel like we got 2 weeks on HorrorMu? Mostly? I admit it’s been a minute and I can’t remember, but it seemed about that. Network I never really played through a hiatus as I have kept on drifting away from the game unfortunately.
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I’m not the target audience for episodic games because when I get into an RP and a character properly, I tend to want to keep going with them for a couple years, and while I might take breaks, I don’t tend to get turned off by game or character plots continuing around me.
I think full stop breaks might work best when you know you’ve got a dedicated group who will be able to consistently follow the scheduled active and hiatus periods. For a broader population, being able to continue the momentum if they’re feeling it is probably pretty valuable, and might make the transition into a new setting easier if they’re building hype through the shared social activity, even if they won’t be carrying over the character or setting.
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I do love a good, structured downtime between major arcs, whether those are episodes or just metaplot pushes. It’s nice to have some time where you know you can relax a little and pursue some slice-of-life or personal drama without the “tea party in the zombie apocalypse” issue.
But I do think you have to be careful about how long those times are. The Network tended to feel a little too long for me, but I think that’s also because it was such an isolated setting and blank slate characters. I could see being more chill with a longer downtime if it was like - the ‘episodes’ were missions into alien territory, and then the ‘downtime’ was being back at home base, having access to all the NPCs and your character’s life to pursue.
Balance in all things, I suppose. And making sure the downtime still has something hooky for people to poke at - this doesn’t have to be a mystery or something staff-run. If, instead of full amnesia, you had a situation where specific chunks of someone’s memory were gone at the start of the game, and each downtime they could pursue and ‘reveal’ that part of themselves if they wanted, it would be very player focused, but still give that feeling of ‘pursuit and revelation’ that could keep restless players engaged over the lull.
And it doesn’t have to be memory. In a horror game, it could be player-led additions to the setting - each downtime you get to create a piece of the town or an artifact in the creepy vault, or whatever, and explore its curse and backstory. Or if you’re in a weird magical school setting, every downtime each character gets to work on and demonstrate a single magical project. Just something to provide enough structure for people who need it.
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@Pyrephox said in Episodic Games & ‘Down Time’:
I could see being more chill with a longer downtime if it was like - the ‘episodes’ were missions into alien territory, and then the ‘downtime’ was being back at home base, having access to all the NPCs and your character’s life to pursue.
So, basically… X-Com MUSH?
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@bear_necessities This is an issue for me too – after the first 2 or so Hiatuses, I wasn’t much interested in most of the “cruise ship” RP in between Seasons on the Network. I know that others really loved those times, even more than the Seasons. Miniseries helped quite a lot during Hiatuses in order to get in even more short stories.
It could be interesting to have a second Storyteller team (or just one more Storyteller) whose duty was to run story during the downtimes. On a game like The Network or HorrorMU*, this could be someone who runs the conspiracy that’s behind the program (so that there actually could be a mystery for players to unravel). On another game it could be someone or a group of someones who runs a shortened Season – or just have two Storyteller teams (led by a couple of Administrators) who alternate seasons and then you don’t need downtime at all.
I agree with @Roz that a game probably does need some downtime if you’re having episodic stories, since they tend to be a little more intense and go-go-go than your “standard” storydriven game.
Formerly known as Seraphim73 (he/him)
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@Tez said in Episodic Games & ‘Down Time’:
I’d actually be curious to see how Alveraxus handles this, when they get there. In many ways, a generational jump is episodic, and I know it’s a thought I’ve kicked around as a problem to solve when thinking about generational games or time jumps. Anyone playing there that can speak to it?
tldr: We are still figuring some of it out and might change anyway, but the nutshell is that once we have the Dramatic Conclusion
to our Third Act plot (the war that we are kicking off this weekend), we’ll have about a one month period while we sort out everyone’s future characters, during which we’ll have non-ST guided soft RP where players can do epilogue RP for this generation and once their next-gen character is approved, begin prologue/flashback RP with those characters.So if there’s interest, we can circle back in a few months after we do it and say how it went. I’m sure there will be some good, some bad, and some awful as we stumble our way through things.
Longer version:
We haven’t really fully announced how we’re planning to handle the downtime, and we’re making some changes in our planning now as we are gearing up for what is effectively the Third Act of the Alpha to kick off this weekend, but I can give some general guidelines about the plan. Bearing in mind the Captain Coldism about how long the plan lasts (almost as good as the Mike Tysonism). So I don’t expect it to go entirely how we expect it. BUT.Current idea is that after the dust settles from the climactic war, we’re going to segue into a period of maybe a month or so of soft epilogue RP while we do the administrative details to setup the following generation.
Staff will not be running any plots, although player STers might. The players will have plenty of interesting drama to RP about, based around the outcome of the war, who lived, who died, etc.
OOCly, that’s when players will sort out what they want do for the Beta Generation. Characters who survived - will the survive the 22 years in the time jump? Where do they want to be? Who wants to play children of the existing characters, who wants to do something completely different, etc. We’re going to let the players sort out how they want their relationships to be and what they want their characters to do, and then as those approvals start coming through we’ll likely blend Epilogue into Prologue.
Assuming that we can sort out everything that players want within a month (there may be some succession to attend to as well - our succession mechanic test did NOT go very well, so we’re going to try to learn from that), we’ll plan on kicking things off similarly to how we did the Alpha generation. A lot of ST run social events to let the new characters get to mingle and meet ICly, and then hopefully off to the races.
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@Alveraxus I would be Very Interested to hear how this goes. Good luck!!
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@Roadspike Would it be better if an episodic game had episodes with little to no downtime? So like, the game tells a specific story in Episode 1, then takes maybe 1-2 days at most to set up for the next episode and we’re off?
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@MisterBoring Whether or not that’s better, I don’t know if it’s practicable. And there are folks that really like that down time between episodes (I like some, just I would prefer that it be a couple of weeks compared to a month or three, again, I know people who prefer the downtime to the episodes, so YMMV).
I think that the only way you could possible get anywhere near even just a couple of weeks between episodes is to have two Storyteller Staffs, because there’s going to be some cooldown time and some administrative ramp-up time on either end of an episode. Even then, I think it would entirely depend on the setting/theme of the game whether the shortest possible downtime is the best option, a medium length, or a long downtime. I think that if you have intense episodes without much time for the players or characters to catch their breath, you’re going to want a medium-long amount of downtime; if you have episodes that meander and have time to catch your breath in the midst, then I think you would want shorter amounts of downtime.
I could see, say, a WWII game that has people at the front (or on alert at the airbase or whatever), needing a month or so between campaigns, to let the characters (and players) breathe and find their new status quo. But I could see a murder mystery game needing much less time between cases (because you’re probably going to get a little bit of investigation time and some breathing room in there, and it isn’t likely to be as life or death all the time as a combat game.
