Investment, or: How smart players do dumb things
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Most of what I think has already been said so I’m just going to chip in one thing: The more options players have to make things happen themselves instead of waiting for a story teller to do things for them, the more likely they stick around, too.
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Two things I want to comment on - players making the ‘wrong’ choice ICly (when they know what the right choice should be OOCly) and incorporating player choices into the story.
There’s a LARP principle that we talk about at the start of every game during our opening workshops that I see a lot of MUSH players take to heart, which is don’t be afraid to make good mistakes - if you are faced with a choice, sometimes making the choice you know is the wrong choice OOCly leads to more fun RP than if you were to make the right choice ICly.
I think if you come from a perspective where winning = the thing, then yes, not being able to do what you want when you want it can be frustrating. If you come from a perspective where the journey = the thing, then sometimes it doesn’t matter.
I have a very firm storytelling principle when I run a scene or a plot which is that if a player comes up with a clever move that I didn’t anticipate, I don’t no sell it. Even if it undoes the entire plot, and shifts to an entirely different resolution. Because ultimately, the players are not the NPCs in a story that I am writing, they are the PLAYERS and I am putting up a scenario for them. Even if it means that somehow the really cool dragon I was looking forward to them fighting never shows its face because they find a way to defeat the big bad WITHOUT having to get the MacGuffin hiding in the dragon’s hoard, well, good on them.
I can always find a way to use that dragon later, right?
