Future game set-up concepts

[TF - The Fortress]

Who is despairing? The game was played, the end has been reached, time to get the next one set up and going

Sure you can choose between American Express or Visa or Mastercard, but you're still using a credit card.

There isn't a lot of room for change at this point forward from a big picture/pantheon standpoint. As far as the minutae as to what the various individual realms do, that's of course open to lots of change -- but I rather doubt it does. The Shieldlands will remain a crapshow, the Hunt will continue to hold their primacy, the Karamuhl will continue to burrow into the mountains, and the world will continue to revolve around the sun.

[WM - The Waste Mage]

†

[TH - The Hunt]

There's been longer breaks from the game in the past. This is a game where weeks per turn and years per game with the occasional hiatus for the DM or two-week gap between player responses is to be expected, and I've seen it every time we've played. So I'm not seeing this as an exceptional situation or outstanding trend.

As far as pacing preferences goes, I prefer the game when there's days to make each decision and compose each response since that results in better decisions and responses. I also think the game runs better when plans typically play out over multiple turns and players aren't trying to cram tons of motion into each.

There's no need to make a big thing out of this. You can if you want to, but there's no need to bring down the community by preaching powerlessness or making dire predictions. If you're bored and have nothing better to do with the game, you can go somewhere else, or write something that helps increase engagement.

[TF - The Fortress]

The longer breaks tend to be between games and/or during the winter holidays (Dec to Jan).

I look at each game as a novel. We've essentially reached the epilogue segment of 'A Hunting we will go!.' The previous novel, "There's a hole in my Bay (and it's full of devils and demons)' was fun reading as well. One of the other installments, "Something Cthulu this way comes (aka The Fulgarian Massacre)' was an absolute delight as well. Each game is fun, but has a finite time to it -- all good books come to an end. I'm looking forward to the next novel and can't wait to see the title.

[TH - The Hunt]

I didn't get to see most of the story for Taelshore, but what I did see seemed like an inversion of how stories usually work--high tension at the beginning which was immediately released by a turn one climax, followed by a long lull, with a sudden spike at the end that chucked us straight into the sequel.

I know more than a few things about books and novels. To date, Diaspora I through IV ain't it. I-III had a long way to go to form a complete arc by the time they ended. If we ended this one now it'd be the same situation.

Story Structure.png (199.42 KiB) Viewed 476 times

IV as-is neither works narratively from the perspective of those opposed to Hircine's dominance (bottom left) nor from the perspective of those in support of it (bottom right). Any valid story structure has ups and downs, highs and lows; a similar level of tension at the end as it had at the beginning, and heightened tensions in the middle. In most cases, tension is built gradually and released suddenly, because that's generally what humans enjoy.

[TH - The Hunt]

Since the Hero's Journey also showed up in that image there... It's interesting to think about it in that context, too. Hircine's ascension (or rather, the point at which it's determined whether he will ascend or not) would represent the midpoint, not the end, of one such journey. This is equally true for anyone who's directly involved in how that event unfolds, whether they see themselves as the hero, Mishrak, or some hypothetical entity that interferes (or attempts to).

The Hero's Journey story doesn't end when the event (the Crisis) occurs, it ends when things return to normal, or a new normal is established. So, virtually half the story would be missing if the game ended with the divine ascensions, assuming those were what we were supposed to focus our attention on.

That's a big assumption. That aside, if players lose interest because they can't influence what happens when the trip reaches the deep end, it would be helpful to direct their attention toward the influence they'll have over what happens next. If their efforts weren't focused on the unknown, that means they've been focused on the known--and that should matter.

Players who were heavily committed to engaging in a deep dive into divinity, revelation, and alien mysteries will have sacrificed their connection to and influence over the mundane and the ordinary, putting themselves into a position where it's someone else's turn to guide the story, and design where goes next.

[WB - Water's Blessing]

In cooperative story-telling, the story is over when the majority think its over. Was I done with Friedrich's story when the world blew up in the Great Bay? No. It was just getting started. But each of our individual stories are side-stories. If the majority feel like the story here is exhausted, then it's time to move on even if some of us still have tales we would like to play out. For the record, I am in agreement with others that the meta-plot feel done enough even if the story of the mountain people has longer to go. Plus, I don't see this story as a self-contained story. The epic of the gods was a three-part story last time. So, the end of this game wouldn't be the end of the story. It would be the end of the first act.

But even if it wasn't, this story could easily be seen as a self-contained story. I feel, and I think a strong case could be made, that the climax of this story was the Shieldlands war. Most of the regents of this game was involved in that war in one way or the other. It was the clash where the Islands and the western forces squared off against the Hunt with the Shieldlands being the battlefield for the conflict. Everything after that could be seen as the "return to normal".

[TF - The Fortress]

MF, there are complete story-arcs for many players in Diaspora IV, what is publicly known vs what has occurred in emails/reduced audience forums/etc allows for those stories to complete.

As a side point, stories do not have to follow the rigid structures you have indicated above. Reminds me of the scene in 'Back to School's when Rodney Dangerfield gets a failing grade on a book report...and he had had the author of the book write the report.

Long story short, I like to view them as novels/novellas/short stories -- stand alone stories set in the same universe -- not a continuous series where you have to read each one to know what has happened before and not to set the stage for the next.

[TF - The Fortress]

In cooperative story-telling, the story is over when the majority think its over. Was I done with Friedrich's story when the world blew up in the Great Bay? No. It was just getting started. But each of our individual stories are side-stories. If the majority feel like the story here is exhausted, then it's time to move on even if some of us still have tales we would like to play out. For the record, I am in agreement with others that the meta-plot feel done enough even if the story of the mountain people has longer to go. Plus, I don't see this story as a self-contained story. The epic of the gods was a three-part story last time. So, the end of this game wouldn't be the end of the story. It would be the end of the first act.

But even if it wasn't, this story could easily be seen as a self-contained story. I feel, and I think a strong case could be made, that the climax of this story was the Shieldlands war. Most of the regents of this game was involved in that war in one way or the other. It was the clash where the Islands and the western forces squared off against the Hunt with the Shieldlands being the battlefield for the conflict. Everything after that could be seen as the "return to normal".

Agreed.

Riva had a complete story-arc for myself. 'New CE' Riva has plenty of stories to tell as well, but they are a different breed than the ones from NG Riva.

[TH - The Hunt]

Previous games haven't ended because the majority felt that the story was over, they ended because the majority felt the story couldn't continue due to events beyond their control. And not long ago in this conversation, that was the argument being made. Either way, 'the majority' hasn't spoken, a minority is choosing to speak for them as if the rest need to be dragged along by a so-called 'group decision'. This has become typical. I know for a fact that at the end of each game before there were many players frustrated by the game abruptly ending due to events beyond their control while they were in the middle of something, or on the cusp of something. I would dare to say that's been the experience of the majority, here.

At the series level, tension has been building up game after game without being released. This has explicitly become part of the story. If what we do with D4 in the end doesn't resolve this, that means D4 itself can't be the climax of the series like it's been built up to be, it's at best the midpoint. No argument is going to turn it into a resolution if the same tensions from D1 (or earlier!) still dominate at the end of D4. Like, if D4 establishes a pantheon that has the same or worse flaws and instabilities than the previous ones. A story that 'ends' like that--like these!--is a story that isn't finished.