Plot team

Overview

We want to try to produce as much plot as is humanly possible for Empire, to try to make the event as busy and interesting and cool as possible. There are two core challenges to make this happen, one is to write the plot - the other is to run it at an event. This section lays out our strategy for how we will try to get as much plot written as possible for the events.

From experience we have found that large plot teams do not work well. In fact large creative teams do not work well, beyond half a dozen people, stylistic and taste differences rapidly accumulate, making it ever harder to write content that the team are happy with. In a large team the majority of ideas are stifled by an environment in which somebody is guaranteed not to like it. Large teams are also increasingly difficult to get together, so they fall back on electronic meetings, emails or forums, all of which are vastly less productive.

Our plan is to create multiple small independent plot teams, ideally comprising up to half a dozen creative people. The goal is to encourage a couple of core creatives with proven experience to put together a small team of friends to work with them to create plot. This approach should allow the team to meet regularly and to create plot they like, without too much concern for how other teams view their work.

Editorial Control and Central Coordination

Andy Rafferty and myself will provide the central coordination for the work produced by different teams. If two teams are working on plot based around a foreign nation, we will look to ensure that the plot is consistent, or discuss ways to merge or combine the plots being written by the teams. The goal in this respect is to ensure campaign consistency.

We will also provide editorial control, working with plot teams to ensure that we are happy with the plot being run. If you are writing plot for a PD Empire event, then you should expect it to get heavily edited. If you don’t like having Andy and I rewrite your plot then please don’t submit it. The first section of this guide lays out our criteria for this editorial control. We want to have as much plot as possible, and give plot writers as much freedom as possible to produce plot, but we also want to have quality-control and a definitive underlying style of plot that reflects the player-led nature of the game.

Responsibility NOT Control

We want to encourage the plot teams to take onboard one or more plot responsibilities.The idea for this is for a team to be responsible for ensuring that there is plenty of plot involving specific elements of the game or locations in the game. We want plot based in and around the tavern, the senate, the synod and other critical game locations. We want plot for young players, for politicians, for traders and for warriors. We want plot involving the barbarians, the eternals, the foreigners.

Taking responsibility for an area gives Andy and I an indication of what areas of the game you are interested in. It also gives you a little more leeway to create characters and details linked to that area. Critically it helps PD to try to ensure there is a good spread of plot across the game. Responsibility does not imply exclusivity or control, other teams may still write and run plot linked to a location, theme or power group. You must not get into the mindset of thinking you control that area of the game, because it will lead to unpleasant surprises.

Choose your level of Plot Secrecy

Plot leaks damage plot and the wider game. They are a form of favouritism, with those players who know the organizers well enough to hear the plot leaks, which undermines the confidence in a level playing field that is needed for a good fest LRP game. They also damage the plot itself, reducing interest in it.

However too much plot security also damages a game. NPCs need to know the brief they are going to be using and the earlier they know their brief, the better they can prepare. In theory it is possible to run a plot and tell your NPCs nothing, in practice that approach undermines the plot as the NPCs are unable to respond naturally and it also makes playing the parts vastly less enjoyable. That makes interaction with those characters and your plot less enjoyable but it also violates one of PD’s fundamental rules - that the game should be enjoyable for the crew.

I cannot stress enough how important it is for crew to enjoy playing roles - otherwise they don’t come back. In the opinion of PD, crew enjoyment playing roles for the plot teams is more important than plot security for Empire. It is all too easy to get defensive about plot, but plot is ultimately just a tool to make the game more enjoyable for crew as well as players.

Your team can influence the level of plot security they want to use. We are creating a forum for plot writers to store their work and eventually a wiki for it to go on. However these areas are all independent - your team’s work is not automatically shared with other teams. If Andy or myself feel it is appropriate to share a plot with another team then we will speak to you first, where that is a practical possibility. If you want to share your plot with other teams, then you can do that, but our assumption is that a team is a basic unit for creating plot and does not inherently need to share plot with any other team - rather we would encourage you to identify crew to play the roles you need and to share the plot with them.

A Nation cannot be a Responsibility

There are ten Nations in the Empire and these form the basis for the most basic IC political divides. We also expect that players will want to run their own events based in the Empire setting and that the nations will be the most logical basis for doing that. For both these reasons we are determined to avoid any plot team assuming responsibility for a single nation. You are welcome to take responsibility for a particular Varushkan Sovereign, or for the Trolls of Wintermark - but you cannot take responsibility for Varushka or for Wintermark.

The problem with aligning plot teams along IC and OOC divisions - like the nation structure - is that plot becomes balkanized. The consistency of the world is profoundly undermined by the notion that an individual plot is “for Wintermark players”. Plot should not respect these nation divisions, it should affect any players who come into contact with it.

Even worse, we are encouraging players to strongly identify with their nation. However we explicitly do not want plot writers to identify with a single nation. If that happens, the writers can be seduced into being concerned with the outcomes of their plot, the implications for “their” nation and have a desire to ensure that their plot is focussed on “their” players.

The result can be like having football results determined by the football fans instead of the players. The writers fall into squabbling with each other over plots that are perceived to be to the detriment of the nation they have identified themselves with. Everyone wants their team to win. Although we are encouraging the plot writing teams to create plot independently of each other, we need teams to be respectful and supportive of each other.

For all these reasons we categorically do not want plot teams to strongly identify with the area or areas of responsibility they choose. If you are a plot writer for Empire then every player in the game is one of your players - they should all be treated accordingly.