Hi gang:
As I continue to figure out the online PBP format, to work out what I do and don't like and what to do (and not to do) as a player, the GM'ing side of my brain is also whirring away. It's going to be a while before I'm ready to actually tackle GM'ing a game on E, but I do have some ideas floating around that I'd appreciate some advice on from those more experienced in this format than I am. Any light y'all can shed will be thankfully received.
There are two, related ideas I am batting around in particular.
Idea 1: The Multi-Forum Game.
Is there a rule -- either formal or informal -- against spreading a game across multiple forums?
What I mean is this: one possible idea involves starting up a small-group, fairly structured and directed action-adventure system game in the Non-Adult Forum. The choice of that forum would make it accessible to people waiting for approval and provide a bit of a "mentoring" opportunity for E members, and would also make it clear what the game's expected focus would be. (Due props for this idea to epobmhr or Iain who I first saw in the SR game threads and who's been trying to get something similar going.)
However, I was thinking it would also be nice if, supplemental to that "main" game, we could have an opportunity for people to explore relationships and character-building and good old-fashioned sexytimes in freeform format, in the Light, Bondage, NC or Extreme thread of their choice. The sub-thread RPs would be, from the point of view of the main game, "non-canon" and wouldn't have to be woven in with its or with each others' chronologies -- they would essentially be parallel-world fics using characters and settings from the main game.
This seems to me like it could be workable... but is it in fact an extremely terrible idea or a complete no-no?
Idea 2: The Directed Game
As part of the idea for the "system" game described above, I've been giving some thought to a way to streamline the narrative process so that what seems to me to be a common bottleneck -- the exercise of posting dialogue a few chunks of sentences at a time back and forth over long spans -- can maybe be alleviated. The idea is for scenes to be played out strictly sequentially, for each scene to "star" a specific player (taken in turns), to close the game's "planning thread" to anyone not in the current scene (a more general OOC thread would be available for everyone else's questions and interaction), and then to have those in the scene roughly sketch out a span of dialogue and actions in conversation with each other so that one person -- the scene "star" -- can take away that sketch and write the scene themselves.
The process could essentially be thought of as "shooting the scene." Upon reading, suggested edits, a rewrite or two and approval by the fellow players and GM, the scene could then go in the game thread and the next scene in the cue could be planned, and so on.
(The game would also have a set number of available scenes for each player -- an idea I've cribbed from Fiasco.)
I think this could work... but I'd be very interested to hear the experiences people may have had, on this board or any other, with anything similar. I do see that it may simply be moving a bottleneck without resolving it... but what I'm hoping is that the "shooting" process, because it's quick and rough, can speed things up by getting everyone's ideas down without their having to find the muse to work them into complete scenes of their own.
Thoughts and feedback are welcome, my thanks to anyone who gives this thread a gander.
