Willow
07-09-2008, 04:00 PM
Originally Posted by Oliver White:
Note: in the post Oliver references another thread by Thomas King. That thread information will be combined into this thread, but first Oliver's information on Getting Involved...
A while back I was asked by a friendly neighborhood staff member 'Have you ever considered telling your own story in the game; why not run a plot?' My response then, and still is, I have no idea how to go about that. Give me an example, and I'm off and running; however in the absence of the example, I'm not sure what running my own plot entails. King's post, while useful, doesn't have that 'example' that I am looking for as a guide. As a engineer and a teacher, I know the power of examples. This post is meant to be an example. Not of a player-run plot; but of what we, as players, can accomplish. It naturally focuses on the library. And if you read last week's newsletter (when the Memorial room opened), you know where this is going.
To begin with, Ollie started the game with minimal cash, and quickly burned through it. That began his IG quest to find a job. Around the same time, the library opened and for various reasons, I decided Oliver was going to spend a lot of time there. Coincidentally I happened to be in the library when a new tome was dropped off. The staffer dropping it off mentioned that it hadn't been checked for typos yet, and if I wouldn't mind, would I do it? Sure. I ended up going overboard and re-writing half the tome. That was probably the most fortunate mistake I ever made. But is a good illustration of how one starts getting involved: find something small you can contribute and do so. Small is good: it doesn't lock you into anything long term; gives you a chance to naturally build up to something bigger; and since it's small, it's likely not a priority for staff, so you won't be duplicating something already being worked on.
I further drew attention to myself by filing a number of assists, pointing out minor errors throughout the library. All of that combined to Oliver getting offered a job as a student librarian. Here's a second point to mention: You help the staff, and they'll reward you. Don't do the work expecting a reward, do it because you want to help. Just know that, no good deed goes ... unpunished . Some more work behind the scenes, and Oliver was rewarded with the 'head student' position. (I'm still amazed when these types of things happen to Oliver, because I certainly never ask for them.)
At this point in the story, and this is certainly not me bragging, Oliver's player essentially runs the library. The memorial room is a wonderful example of what that means. My friendly neighborhood staff member wanted to finish off the top floor of the library, felt that the rooms in the northwestern corner seemed redundant to what was planned for the basement, and asked me what should go there. (That, I, a humble player am being asked to contribute content is a bit of an ego booster and very scary all at once.) Another player and I tossed ideas back and forth (at one time we were considering making it a multimedia room, with slide projectors, film reels, phonographs, wax cylinders and the whole works) and we finally settled on the idea of a memorial room. What was important to me was that the room not directly compete against the museum. The museum has artifacts from around the world; our room has artifacts from Arkham or the school. As I initially conceived it, it would contain items from the University's past: old lettermen jackets, class rings, class photos, etc. (I'm rather glad that I didn't really do the final design, it certainly would not have come out as nicely as it did.)
Running the idea by my staffer, it was quickly approved. Now the fun part began, we actually had to build it. I wrote up a rough idea of what I wanted both rooms to look like (flat top display cases, really nice furniture in the reading room, etc.), another player furnished the wonderful name, Philips-Theobald. One email and a week later and Boom! we've suddenly got two rooms that have our descriptions! That's a good feeling.
One of my goals with the head student position was to grab newer players, get them a set of keys, give them the feeling that they're empowered, and hopefully they'll stay on past the trial period and we've got steady population growth in Arkham. The memorial room was my first big challenge. A character approached Oliver for a librarian job. Oliver hadn't spoken much to Viktoria, I'd never really had any OOC conversations with her player. But I took a chance and said 'How about instead of a plain old librarian job, you consider something else? We've got a new room that's going to open up, and we need someone to furnish it. That'd be you, if you accept.' I explained generally how I thought it would work -- you'd come up with ideas of items, pass them to a staffer, and they'd be built -- and so she agreed. I honestly had no idea what went into building the various artifacts, felt somewhat intimidated by it, so I really punted it all to Viktoria.
At this point in our narrative, the room is entirely in Viktoria's hands. She did whatever she did to get all the props constructed. I invite her to share her experiences, if she's willing. I know that I submitted a few items for the room (mostly wall stuff), and it's really nothing more than writing up what the look and examine descriptions should be. (I'm fairly sure I threw in a few 'if you have a high enough skill Y, then you get extra info Z', but apparently I don't have skill Y, or they were taken out.)
And that's it. It was conceived entirely by the players, furnished by player ideas (I think the only non-player items in the room are the Indian artifacts found on the island). And lastly, the opening party was planned by us as well. (Party planning tip 101: get a non-engineer involved. My idea of party planning was 'Willow, I need food and tables'. The final result is much better because we had a feminine touch.)
A few days after the opening, I heard Viktoria tell Evan one of the stories behind an item in the room. That set off the light-bulb above my head, and now we're starting a new facet of room: the lecture series; where Viktoria will share the background and whatever else she has conceived for each item in a slightly more formal setting. It wasn't something I had planned on having her do, but realizing how much work is apparently behind each item, it'd be a shame not to do something like that. So, not only have we contributed props, but Viktoria's now helping contribute to the mythos.
And that's not the end of the library. We're currently working on another room with an entirely different purpose, also with mostly player generated content (if my idea gets approved, this'll create some really cool player interactions). And long-term, I've got my eye on those three classrooms in the library. We certainly don't need all three, so I'm always on the look-out for interesting ideas for renovations. (If anyone has one, aside from my media room idea, run it by me...)
To conclude, seeing my ideas become manifest in the library, has turned me into a very big cheerleader for players getting involved. I pushed the Law&Order thread as well as the Larkin's thread in the same direction. And it's ultimately not hard to do. Simply find something in the game that you like, think about how it could be improved, file an assist or two, and then contact a staffer about it. Go slow, expect it will take time, expect that you'll have to do more than a bit of work (you wouldn't believe how much time I spent researching the Dewey Decimal Classification system), and then reap the rewards of tangibly impacting our digital world. As a final note, assisting in this manner can give you a reason to play, simply beyond just logging on and being there. Your game time now has meaning, and that helps get you through the periods where absolutely nothing is going on, and you wonder why it is you keep logging on.
Hopefully the above, typically long post of mine helps demystify a process, by providing a concrete example of how things can get accomplished. I see a lot of new players in the game these days, and there's a lot of the game world that needs buffing up. It would be great if the former took on the latter.
Note: in the post Oliver references another thread by Thomas King. That thread information will be combined into this thread, but first Oliver's information on Getting Involved...
A while back I was asked by a friendly neighborhood staff member 'Have you ever considered telling your own story in the game; why not run a plot?' My response then, and still is, I have no idea how to go about that. Give me an example, and I'm off and running; however in the absence of the example, I'm not sure what running my own plot entails. King's post, while useful, doesn't have that 'example' that I am looking for as a guide. As a engineer and a teacher, I know the power of examples. This post is meant to be an example. Not of a player-run plot; but of what we, as players, can accomplish. It naturally focuses on the library. And if you read last week's newsletter (when the Memorial room opened), you know where this is going.
To begin with, Ollie started the game with minimal cash, and quickly burned through it. That began his IG quest to find a job. Around the same time, the library opened and for various reasons, I decided Oliver was going to spend a lot of time there. Coincidentally I happened to be in the library when a new tome was dropped off. The staffer dropping it off mentioned that it hadn't been checked for typos yet, and if I wouldn't mind, would I do it? Sure. I ended up going overboard and re-writing half the tome. That was probably the most fortunate mistake I ever made. But is a good illustration of how one starts getting involved: find something small you can contribute and do so. Small is good: it doesn't lock you into anything long term; gives you a chance to naturally build up to something bigger; and since it's small, it's likely not a priority for staff, so you won't be duplicating something already being worked on.
I further drew attention to myself by filing a number of assists, pointing out minor errors throughout the library. All of that combined to Oliver getting offered a job as a student librarian. Here's a second point to mention: You help the staff, and they'll reward you. Don't do the work expecting a reward, do it because you want to help. Just know that, no good deed goes ... unpunished . Some more work behind the scenes, and Oliver was rewarded with the 'head student' position. (I'm still amazed when these types of things happen to Oliver, because I certainly never ask for them.)
At this point in the story, and this is certainly not me bragging, Oliver's player essentially runs the library. The memorial room is a wonderful example of what that means. My friendly neighborhood staff member wanted to finish off the top floor of the library, felt that the rooms in the northwestern corner seemed redundant to what was planned for the basement, and asked me what should go there. (That, I, a humble player am being asked to contribute content is a bit of an ego booster and very scary all at once.) Another player and I tossed ideas back and forth (at one time we were considering making it a multimedia room, with slide projectors, film reels, phonographs, wax cylinders and the whole works) and we finally settled on the idea of a memorial room. What was important to me was that the room not directly compete against the museum. The museum has artifacts from around the world; our room has artifacts from Arkham or the school. As I initially conceived it, it would contain items from the University's past: old lettermen jackets, class rings, class photos, etc. (I'm rather glad that I didn't really do the final design, it certainly would not have come out as nicely as it did.)
Running the idea by my staffer, it was quickly approved. Now the fun part began, we actually had to build it. I wrote up a rough idea of what I wanted both rooms to look like (flat top display cases, really nice furniture in the reading room, etc.), another player furnished the wonderful name, Philips-Theobald. One email and a week later and Boom! we've suddenly got two rooms that have our descriptions! That's a good feeling.
One of my goals with the head student position was to grab newer players, get them a set of keys, give them the feeling that they're empowered, and hopefully they'll stay on past the trial period and we've got steady population growth in Arkham. The memorial room was my first big challenge. A character approached Oliver for a librarian job. Oliver hadn't spoken much to Viktoria, I'd never really had any OOC conversations with her player. But I took a chance and said 'How about instead of a plain old librarian job, you consider something else? We've got a new room that's going to open up, and we need someone to furnish it. That'd be you, if you accept.' I explained generally how I thought it would work -- you'd come up with ideas of items, pass them to a staffer, and they'd be built -- and so she agreed. I honestly had no idea what went into building the various artifacts, felt somewhat intimidated by it, so I really punted it all to Viktoria.
At this point in our narrative, the room is entirely in Viktoria's hands. She did whatever she did to get all the props constructed. I invite her to share her experiences, if she's willing. I know that I submitted a few items for the room (mostly wall stuff), and it's really nothing more than writing up what the look and examine descriptions should be. (I'm fairly sure I threw in a few 'if you have a high enough skill Y, then you get extra info Z', but apparently I don't have skill Y, or they were taken out.)
And that's it. It was conceived entirely by the players, furnished by player ideas (I think the only non-player items in the room are the Indian artifacts found on the island). And lastly, the opening party was planned by us as well. (Party planning tip 101: get a non-engineer involved. My idea of party planning was 'Willow, I need food and tables'. The final result is much better because we had a feminine touch.)
A few days after the opening, I heard Viktoria tell Evan one of the stories behind an item in the room. That set off the light-bulb above my head, and now we're starting a new facet of room: the lecture series; where Viktoria will share the background and whatever else she has conceived for each item in a slightly more formal setting. It wasn't something I had planned on having her do, but realizing how much work is apparently behind each item, it'd be a shame not to do something like that. So, not only have we contributed props, but Viktoria's now helping contribute to the mythos.
And that's not the end of the library. We're currently working on another room with an entirely different purpose, also with mostly player generated content (if my idea gets approved, this'll create some really cool player interactions). And long-term, I've got my eye on those three classrooms in the library. We certainly don't need all three, so I'm always on the look-out for interesting ideas for renovations. (If anyone has one, aside from my media room idea, run it by me...)
To conclude, seeing my ideas become manifest in the library, has turned me into a very big cheerleader for players getting involved. I pushed the Law&Order thread as well as the Larkin's thread in the same direction. And it's ultimately not hard to do. Simply find something in the game that you like, think about how it could be improved, file an assist or two, and then contact a staffer about it. Go slow, expect it will take time, expect that you'll have to do more than a bit of work (you wouldn't believe how much time I spent researching the Dewey Decimal Classification system), and then reap the rewards of tangibly impacting our digital world. As a final note, assisting in this manner can give you a reason to play, simply beyond just logging on and being there. Your game time now has meaning, and that helps get you through the periods where absolutely nothing is going on, and you wonder why it is you keep logging on.
Hopefully the above, typically long post of mine helps demystify a process, by providing a concrete example of how things can get accomplished. I see a lot of new players in the game these days, and there's a lot of the game world that needs buffing up. It would be great if the former took on the latter.