Idea: Regional Storytellers

[Pel]

The storyteller would be cloaked right? Or would he play a part in the story?

It would be cool if he could switch his chat to be from different "characters"-- like change the name that comes before the line of chat. I think such a thing could be coded much more easily than the npcs.

OR-- by spawning the NPCs, which the storyteller then controls, he would be able to switch from ship to ship and speak as that character. If Kazinsal coded that, then it could be an excellent storytelling tool.

I think it could be similar to 88Flak's plugin, where each system has an invisible NPC base from which certain NPCs can spawn (which can be designed in the ship designer-- model, loadout, affiliation, pilot, name). Each system has NPCs appropriate to the region-- when they spawn they interact with player characters.

I'm sorry I keep going into the technological side of things, but I figure there will have to be at least some modifications to make this idea work. Quite possibly less than what I imagine.

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[Commissar]

i like this idea. thats one of the things that attracts me to tabletop games.

you have a basic, vagueish outline and everything that happens is up to the players who take part (with GM moves where appropriate)

am i close in my own words description?

That's pretty much it.

As to the storyteller being cloaked or controlling ships, I imagine that would depend on what the scenario called for. Where there were human (or alien, for that matter) antagonists, I imagine the storyteller would appear as one of them, as required. If it were an environmental hazard, like a misaligned jumphole, there wouldn't really be much call for the storyteller to be visible.

It would be cool if he could switch his chat to be from different "characters"-- like change the name that comes before the line of chat. I think such a thing could be coded much more easily than the npcs.

OR-- by spawning the NPCs, which the storyteller then controls, he would be able to switch from ship to ship and speak as that character. If Kazinsal coded that, then it could be an excellent storytelling tool.

I love this idea. It'd reduce the 'Oh, it's a guy in an invisible ship talking to me' factor, and if the storyteller played his/her cards right, the people involved might not even know that they were part of a scenario until after the event. I don't have even the faintest understanding of code though, so I'm not going to pretend to know what'd be involved.

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[Rodent]

I'm kind of already one, dan.

[Tabris]

This idea intrigues me. (nerd)

[Caconym]

Sounds epic. I'd love to have that. However, you'd have to be careful as this might lead to some flaming, or abuse. Imagine if, for example, a RS beamed someone he does not like in a transport in the middle of Omicron Iota, or in the sun of some random system. That would be abuse. I suppose it would be easy to counter, by removing RS privileges, but it would still create a fuss and bring more work to the admins who have to punish the responsible RS. Another problem is if you don't warn players before commencing one of these. Most of the people on Disco will react correctly and just RP along and have fun. However, say this involves a lolwut, or a noob, or one of these silent power traders/non-english-speaking people. They would both ruin the RP atmosphere (in the noob's case, probably not on purpose) and then most probably raise discussions/flaming/trolling in game or on the forums later on (mostly with the lolwuts here. The power traders would just ruin the RP). So apart from these two issues, I love it.

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[Durandal]

Look, you're on the right track here about needing devteam elements that interface with the players and factions of the server and then implement their ideas reasonably, but doing it regionally is really not going to end well. You need a group of people who are well versed and patient enough to cover every region methodically, otherwise you will end up with people trying to bend things in a way that suits them, as Watsas pointed out already.

The closest you are going to get to "regional" focus is the factions (and governments, which tend to be collections of the house's law enforcement and corporate factions) who can then present their ideas to this story implementation group. I've pretty much already volunteered for such a thing, but outside of a few preliminary conversations there hasn't been much done with it, and what's really needed to get the ball rolling is a decisive greenlight from the lead story dev, which is Max (Echo 7-7) last I checked.

[Coin]

regional storytellers with admin powahs!

what if i accepted the role for the omicrons, the taus, the borderworlds, hispania, bretonia, liberty, kusari and rheinland*.

would that make me lead storyline-development-type-person?

*have intentionally excluded gallia from this list, as i would obviously write gallia out of the mod.

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[Echo 7-7]

Look, you're on the right track here about needing devteam elements that interface with the players and factions of the server and then implement their ideas reasonably, but doing it regionally is really not going to end well. You need a group of people who are well versed and patient enough to cover every region methodically, otherwise you will end up with people trying to bend things in a way that suits them, as Watsas pointed out already.

The closest you are going to get to "regional" focus is the factions (and governments, which tend to be collections of the house's law enforcement and corporate factions) who can then present their ideas to this story implementation group. I've pretty much already volunteered for such a thing, but outside of a few preliminary conversations there hasn't been much done with it, and what's really needed to get the ball rolling is a decisive greenlight from the lead story dev, which is Max (Echo 7-7) last I checked.

Appointing storytellers is a bit different from planning for lore developments, as the former suggests active involvement in the roleplay environment and so on. Because the Development team doesn't strictly interact with the server in such a dynamic way, it's hard to say where our involvement should start and end.

The closest thing I have going on a similar topic is the "regional storyline planner" role, which I've assigned to one (non-Dev/Admin) player for Kusari who volunteered for it. If that progresses well, then I can start to look for other players to participate in storyline planning. The mod, after all, can have aspects that are too big for just one person to manage.

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[Tabris]

It does sound like an interesting idea and would make things more interesting, more...dynamic as it were. Of course the guys incharge would have to be un-biased in the regions they're in to prevent overpowering irrationally. D: