An Audience With The King -- Discussion Thread

[Marileangorifurnimaluim]

Hi.

I've really enjoyed the creative writing and collaborating with such talented and imaginative people.

I've teetered between being challenged by the collaborative part (Chez moi? A control freak? No...) and the discovery that for me, to put the effort to keep the game alive and interesting, I really need to post every other day. I'm a slow writer, and I can spend hours on one post. I'm currently cornered in some sloppy writing I did late at night just-to-get-the-post-done-'cause-I-said-I-would. Gramil is now headed for Minas Anor for no particular reason. *Sigh* I'm not usually so careless.

In my opinion, yes, the game is too cumbersome. Estelyn was following it, and in chat she likened it to War and Peace - in a good way. She likes Tolstoy. But it is hard to follow. Having other stories interspersed randomly breaks up the flow and makes it difficult to jump off of another person's writing, and it doesn't have the feel of most RPGs I've seen. We're not accomplishing our goal in that sense. I think that is the main reason people aren't running with the ball.

If we were to do it all over again, I'd suggest we have groups of four take different stories, or even the same story in different threads. (Four different interpretations of Jarl.. hm.)

The best feature of the game is the time limit. Most people can stick to their guns for a certain period of time.

In the future, I'd make the time period slighty shorter: either 21 or 30 days. Tops.

In fact, since we find ourselves asking this question at the 21-day mark, that is a good indicator of how long the mentored games should run. Those who are 'into' RPGing (is that a verb?) will want to get into something meatier by then (ahem). Those who find it doesn't work for them will know by then.

We are not spending enough time on the discussion threads!

I think Pio in particular is overworked. She is doing Jarl, Girion, Rubin too I think, and is doing a lot of work on the Lonely Star (I saw 13 posts in a row with her name on them, clearly she was the dealer in that card game). These are all Primary characters in the Dale AND Harad story lines.

The only way to avoid having the work fall on the more experienced Mentors is to not have them play major characters in the game. That traps them. Of course the more experienced players in any kind of game will be handed the ball. Their efforts should be devoted instead to the discussions, and a minor, if valuable, character at most.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the king looked into the Palantir...

Wow. That was long-winded and rambling. To sum up:

• Let's keep going
  Next time let's have the following changes
• Shorter - 21 to 30 days
• Smaller - teams of 4 or 5, one simple story line (even if 5 teams take the same story in five different threads, eh?)
• Mentors in smaller roles
• More emphasis on discussion

[ October 16, 2002: Message edited by: Marileangorifurnimaluim ]