Ideas Germinating - but need some experienced advice

[Cyrano Johnson]

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.

[Thufir Hawat]

To me, that sounds like an interesting experiment worth attempting, but YMMV.

[Cyrano Johnson]

Thanks, Thufir.

If anyone sees any holes in these ideas, I'm seriously totally happy to have them pointed out. I have no idea whether some of this is reinventing already-attempted wheels or not.

[consortium11]

Idea 1: The Multi-Forum Game.

Can't see an issue with this at all. In essence it's no different to if two players from a group game decided they wanted to do an independent story together, with the only real difference being that they're reusing characters. Outside of some practical considerations (such as making sure everyone remembers what happens outside of the "main" game is non-canon), I can't see any problems.

Idea 2: The Directed Game

As long as those taking part in the scene agree then I can't see a problem; I've done it a number of times for certain games I've played. If people are online at the same time then there are a lot of public real-time writing programs out there (such as Meetingwords and lots of others) that mean that it can be true collaborative writing; whoever is "leading the scene" can push it along while anyone else taking part can make/add suggestions without either breaking the flow of or cluttering a thread.

[Cyrano Johnson]

Thanks for that response. Glad to see things like Idea 2 have been tried with some success. I'm hoping the forum format will work for it, because FWICT getting people from a group online at the same time is murder.

[Cyrano Johnson]

I've continued to advance with this concept and am about halfway toward having something roughly ready-to-play. In the meantime as I work on setting-related stuff, I'd love to solicit the opinions of some of the GM's Corner regulars -- those of you whom Shadowrun interests, anyway -- on the questionnaire posted in the World-Building forum here: https://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=172624.msg8139183#new

Thanks in advance to anyone who has a chance to look in. 

[Cyrano Johnson]

Update: I've finally put up a World-Building Thread for this game and posted the first two chapters outlining the fundamentals.