Why Planet of the Week Didn't Work Out

T mentioned something about PotW not panning out the way the staff had hoped in one of the threads--maybe I'm entirely misreading him, but I think it's worth giving a bit of thought to.

I believe the reason it didn't work out is it attempted to involve the entire grid, a hugely ambitious attempt, but it didn't really cater the plot to any specific characters, which every good plot should do.

Take Bothawui, for instance. The plot there essentially revolved around a cheese festival and a pending power shortage, with a backdrop of some political upheaval that was going on. I was in a good position, ICly, to have a great deal of influence, but nevertheless I felt that nothing happened in reaction to anything I did--the plot continued on whether or not I tried to do anything. The hero of the day was someone who was online for the power grid's catastrophic failure scene. It had very little to do with me.

So eventually PotW just became a week-long event that everyone went to to rack up +votes and maybe shoot at some monsters or whatever, because they were never personally invested in it. It was just "hey, you're on this planet and something is going wrong; you should check it out or something." This might even make a good plot hook for the earliest stages of a plot, but it should soon embroil a small group of characters completely.

I'm not sure how many staffers helped with a given PotW, but the amount of work it required must have been astronomical--running a huge scene is a draining prospect for anyone, and I never got the impression that there were more than two people doing the bulk of the work.

Staff-run events should not just be announced on +events for everyone to show up to. If there is to be a huge planet-wide event, characters shouldn't just Happen To Be There. They should be shepherded there by storytellers. Though there will still be a lot of effort that goes into keeping track of multiple characters in multiple places and coordinating actions, an event should be staffed by a large number of storytellers, filling the world with NPCs. If someone is there, there ought to be some clear motivation presented them.

(I got the impression at a number of the previous PotWs there was a stronger motivation, but for Force users only. This was incredibly lame.)

What ended up happening at most staff-run +events is large numbers of people showed up, milled about for a while, and then the staff-run baddies showed up and everyone shot at it for a while. This isn't fun for staff and it isn't fun for players. With the exception of most of Bo's plots, which were usually for smaller groups and were also usually significantly more fun to play, there was seldom the feeling that your character was contributing anything really meaningful to the scene. You were just waiting for the staffer to make whatever happened happen--the result was a staffer feeling drained and unappreciated and the players frequently just idling out halfway through, unmotivated to finish the scene.

Unless I have grossly misunderstood the concept of the storyteller, this is not going to happen in DH2. Each staff-run scene is focused on the characters that are involved. And rather than a handful of staff occasionally throwing an event every few weeks, that is usually unrelated to the story and almost definitely unrelated to your character's story, you have ten devoted storytellers constantly engaging your character and your friends and trying to weave these stories into the broader galactic epic. The storyteller will not end the evening after most of the participants have idled out by throwing a pack of NPCs at them to fight, but with a satisfying conclusion to an adventure the characters are interested in not just because it's an adventure, but because they have some interest in seeing it through to its conclusion.

In effect, +events will be less about +vote orgies and more like a tabletop session; rather than a script, the storyteller will be involved with a give and take, reacting to the players, and giving them something to react to, adapting on the fly to their ingenuity instead of presenting them with an obstacle and waiting for them to figure out the right way to pass it.

All this to say, I think a number of people are looking at the abilities and functions of the storytellers in a completely wrong way--if staff pulls it off, this will represent a significant change to the way a story-based game works.

I think, for the most part, POTW were run by maybe 2-3 staffers tops. Which is crazy for the scope they were trying to accomplish.

That's the sense I got. It was too ambitious, understaffed, and not sufficiently customized.

Most PoTWs involved six to eight staff members. A core group of about three to four would plan, prep, and run the main TPs. The remaining staff members would be in charge of running more improvised day to day RP. Some planet of the weeks had more support (Ord Mantell and Kuat) and some had less (Oona).

Recent POTWs have deviated from rather lame model of "baddies show up an players open fire." Two of Kuat's three primary TPs involved zero combat, for example.

I do agree that players haven't been able to influence events enough. Sometimes we failed to account for that. Sometimes we tried to account for it but failed to cover all the angles.

For example: The Kuat TPs were created to influence each other but we failed to account for the +event times. It was a pretty amateurish mistake on our part that we should have accounted for in the planning stage. Many of the primary players in the "meltdown" TP were morning and early afternoon players and, though their actions had been meant to greatly influence the maze TP, the maze TP was scheduled outside of their connect times.

Eh, we tried some ambitious things, we had some fun times, but rcrantz's critique is by and large pretty accurate. Few POTWs had more than 3-4 people really running them from start to conclusion.

Bothawui was actually the one I was involved with which went relatively well, in the sense that players ran with it. Maltorus Valen dramatically revealed himself, the Jedi and Sith players did some unexpected dueling, and the power station thing, while pretty basic, seemed to amuse people. Plus, two people ended up in a tarpit and had to be dragged out by Anakin (would have been cooler if he'd ended up in the tar pit too). There were definite flaws, and it tried to do more than it really could, but it wasn't an utter failure. I can think of several which kind of were.

Pretty much. We had some good ones and some bad ones.

We learned a little something each time and progress was slowly made. Probably the biggest flaw was the inability to consistently provide interesting and meaningful RP between major TPs despite assigning three or more persons to that task.

rcrantz hit the nail on the head, really. While most of the PotWs were fun, they generally revolved around the Light-side/Dark-side struggle. T will say it's not the case, but it was. Even if it wasn't the main event, it would generally be the underlying story and the final conclusion. Gulp's summary of Bothuwai should be proof enough.

Bo's events (and, from what I hear, the couple of +events Grip ran) generally drew praise because they allowed every type of character to shine for a brief moment, even if the stories were largely Force-centric. We can't deny that the core Star Wars was Luke vs. the Sith, but at least the other characters had a value to the story outside of sideline viewer.

Actually, it is the case that they have been force-centric. I've been on the case of other staffers about that for over a year now. Most players aren't force users and for most of the last year the Jedi and/or Sith weren't both in good enough shape at any given time to put on a really good event for everyone.

I've only used the force as part of the backstory in one of my last five TPs (the Dark Matter Munitions TP over Ord Mantell) but Bo and I did our best to make it a TP for everyone.

Edit: I'm really not sure how I get blamed for this sort of thing. Historically I've been the biggest critic of our Jedi/Sith on staff.

I don't see why proof is needed. Yeah, they were force-centric.

The Kuat POTW, which didn't turn out so well, was about 60/40 Force-centric; the Dark Matter Munitions plot wasn't especially Jedi-oriented at all, but the Sar'Kato scenes the next day were highly Jedi-oriented (80/20).

At the time, we thought the Jedi/Sith conflict needed the shot in the arm. It's pretty irrelevant either way, except insofar as we can draw useful conclusions for the future.

One of them--to recap one of rcrantz's points--is that focus and mass are antithetical. Some plots are going to focus on Jedi- and Sith-specific stuff -- some are going to focus on pilot- and mechanic-specific stuff -- some are going to focus on Resistance-specific stuff -- and trying to set them up so that everybody has an in is insanely ambitious; it means you have to make sure everybody shines in one TP. Far saner to make sure that everybody has a chance to shine in a plot here or a plot there, rather than trying to make 30 people shine in one room at the same time.

I think so many staff members automatically organize Jedi-Sith TPs because they are easy. You have a fair idea of their driving forces, goals, and general mentality.

I've found that the hardest group of people to write, plan, and organize TPs for are independents because most independent characters don't share a common goal or mentality with other independent characters. For example, I tried to organize the Underworld Auction TP without posting an +event but I never could herd its target audience in the right direction short of a blatant announcement.

Edit: And it didn't help that my connect times were opposite that of several members of the target audience.

No one's blaming you, Mr. T. We're just expecting you to be the first one to argue it, if only for the sake of arguing it.

The Force has always been a critical element in the story of Star Wars. Those who have played (powerful) Force users exclusively often forget that there's more to it than the Force. Why step aside and let a techie open the locked door, when you've got a lightsaber that does everything that /and/ dice french fries?

And, I agree, Gulp, it's very easy to overlook people in large scenes like that. But, in PotW, there has always been a push to get the entire grid on a planet, which created that unfortunate congregation effect. If I am correct about the function of storytellers, they will be able to provide a more widespread distribution of plot-related RP without having to have everyone in a single room.

On DH1, I think Criminals and the Black Imperium were constantly overlooked on the TP-front.

As far as I know, our attempts at criminal TPs consisted of my Underworld Auction attempt, a couple of bounty hunter TPs, an early "influence the election through duress" TP, and a couple of pirate TPs. That isn't much and it is far more attention than the Black Imperium ever received.

I think we can do a lot better than we have on DH1.

Here is my take on why planet of the week did not work out.

During these massive events, there was a ton of RP for everyone and those that did not want the RP still turned up for the votes. I never noticed a problem with turnouts.

What was frustrating for me was to go to a planet of the week, put in two or three days of RP and legwork, and then see one of the same group of three powerful jedis/siths rushing in to put in 2 hours of one line poses and somehow crack the thing wide open, defeat the badguy, and take all of the spoils.

After a while, it just was not worth it anymore. I stopped going - I cant speak for why others did. I really do not think staff dropped the ball on the planning or execution of these events and most of them were very well thought out.

748: it wasn't always the Jedi cracking it open, but it was a problem that events didn't really take into consideration who had been doing the RP.

T: I'm really not blaming anyone, in case that wasn't clear; this is pretty much the way all staff-run events and TPs go. It has been this way since I first started playing on Elendor. There were basically three types of TP: Festival, Fire, and Fighting. The latter was bad at getting everyone involved; the former were completely unvaried and uninteresting. I think PotW was an ambitious goal with a fair amount of potential, but it delved too greedily and too deep.

You have mentioned a difficulty getting Independents drawn into plots; this is something worth considering, and not just on the stock plots front. Let's look at ways that "independent" characters in different works of fiction (be they book, movie, or game) have been drawn into a plot that involves more than just themselves.

Star Wars: Han Solo gets hired to transport Luke and Obi-Wan to Alderaan. Once there, he gets captured, and is enticed by a reward to help rescue the Princess; over time, he befriends the party and symbolically joins the cause by returning to express his loyalty and save Luke.

Thief: Garrett is manipulated by various factions into helping them out, sometimes being left high and dry once he has completed his duty--which generally incites him to trying to exact revenge.

Terry Pratchett's Going Postal!: Moist von Lipwig is forced to either run the post office, or be summarily executed and forgotten.

EDIT to add:
Generally independents are motivated more by self-interest than anything; they may be sympathetic to a cause, but they generally have to be tricked into coming along. It is difficult to organize a TP that is just for independents, but you could probably get a large number of them involved through various means.

The blame me comment was in response to the propensity of staff to focus on Jedi-Sith conflict in TP development so no worries. It just struck me as odd that it was the third time this has come up on an online BB and for the third time my name was associated with it.

Only because we hold you in such high regard, T.

I just want credit where credit is due. Of all the things I could be blamed for ...

Do you think that being the most heartless, soulless, merciless staffer every single day is easy? Yes. It comes naturally to me.

Do you think I enjoy it? Of course I do!

Mr.T wrote:

The blame me comment was in response to the propensity of staff to focus on Jedi-Sith conflict in TP development so no worries. It just struck me as odd that it was the third time this has come up on an online BB and for the third time my name was associated with it.

Ah. Yeah, I honestly didn't pay attention to those bits, as they hold pretty much no interest for me.

The POTW idea never really struck a cord with me. Admittedly, I never participated in the +events or plots either due to a lack of matching times (early on) and a general aversion to the giant +vote orgies that were going on. I am not sure how many players have that aversion, but I was always more interested in smaller player-centric (even if not my own) +events that occassionally popped up here and there... many of which I tried putting on after doing a little investigating in how I might be able to help generate some RP (and reward people with my extra credits).

The problem with POTW can be summed up by a nice line I read elsewhere... which I'm kinda paraphrasing (because I can't find the exact quote)

"A plot that is about everyone really isn't about anyone..."

and so no one really feels hooked into it.

That's not a problem with PotW. That is a problem with the storytellers, storytelling policy, and the story itself.

Sanguine: Or lack of those things, as the case may be.

Sure, that is fair to say.

But you can't blame the wrapper because the action figure broke.

Right. The problem you encounter with most +events is that people want to get as many people as possible to show up. This tends to make them unmemorable at best and utterly dull at worst. (My personal favorite is when some of the more obviously vote-whoring players start posing about how bored their characters are with the event.)

There is, however, a similar problem that you get on MUSHes: most people (there are exceptions, and they always insist on pointing out that they are exceptions, which is sort of irksome at the best of times; henceforth when I say 'everyone' or 'no one' I actually mean 'most people' or 'very few people', excluding the exceptions to my statements) don't want to play the support character. Everyone wants to be the hero. This makes running plots with more than a few people very difficult, because it's hard to be big damn heroes in that case. And it's often hard to make someone feel like a hero if they don't even know why they're at the scene, ICly. "What's my motivation?" &c.

I would take a look at how people run scenes then.


Clearly, PotW is not the problem.