The Power of History

Creating a Richer MU* Environment

            One of the things players want to experience when they step onto a MUSH is the sensation that they’ve entered the world.  That’s part of RP in general.  People want to feel like they’ve stepped into the pages of the books they admire, or up onto the movie screen, or into an entirely new experience altogether.  That’s why we spend hours putting painstaking descriptions together and putting up the newsfiles that will guide our players into seamless integration.  It is also why we run tinyplots at all.

            Some games don’t do a very good job of creating that experience however.  RP takes place largely in a void.  Events seem disconnected.  A tinyplot run in March has no bearing on a tinyplot run in December and will have no bearing on a tinyplot run next year.  Characters themselves seem to grow and change and have history, but the game itself does not in actually achieve that effect.

            However, history is part of the world.  It’s part of world building.  The game has to have history.  The new player should be able to come in, and be able to start asking around and piecing together what has gone before.  Players and RP should be continuous enough to make this sort of digging possible.  For example, on Hogwarts Express, two very dedicated players got themselves into the Order of the Phoenix, which was a player-invite only organization.  They did not do it by approaching the wizards and saying they wanted to get in.  Rather, they began asking questions about all the past events.  They went to other players and started really digging into what happened in past tinyplots.  It helped that we had a tool for certain characters to file their “case reports,” in the MLE, for they were able to scour those as well.  Without any prompting from any wizard, they found all the holes, lies, and inconsistencies…and went to confront the person they were tracking in this way:

            “We know you’re up to something.  We know you’re doing it for a good reason.  Whatever it is, we want in.”

            And they got in.

            But this wouldn’t have been possible if there weren’t continuity.  That’s really the key word here.  Continuity is what separates a true immersion experience from a flat, 2 dimensional roleplay environment.  If a tinyplot had just sort of been run and everyone had forgotten about it and moved on without it having any actual bearing on today’s events.

            Continuity lets players feel like the world is doing interesting things even when they’re not directly impacting it, meaning they feel part of a richer environment.

            Continuity gives you ideas for tinyplots where you might normally be running dry.

            Continuity allows you to have knowledge at your fingertips should a player want to go looking at microfiche of newspaper files from last IC year—and what allows that action to matter, at all.

            How do you achieve continuity though?  Well, never fear.  Rane is here with tips and tricks for players and staff alike.

 

Trick #1:  Recordkeeping

            If anyone is part of any IC organization which has to keep records, such as law enforcement, military personnel, legal people, etc., and that organization contains more than 4 people, it helps to have a livejournal or other forum to post up reports in-character.  This can’t be the bbs, because those things have to get cleaned out eventually, and players are historically bad at reading them.  My theory on why is that if they have 16 of their friends paging them when they first log on, they forget all about those announcement things, but they’ll click over to the website between poses because it doesn’t spam the crap out of their log.

            Why does this help?  First, it helps everyone stay informed.  Second, it helps everyone keep their facts straight.  Third, if a character wants to lie or conceal facts, it gives them an IC forum to do so in black and white.  When another character walks by to question those things, they can go ask PCs who were there, then compare what’s said to the notes in character.  This is very useful for creating RP all on it’s own.  Imagine you create a new character who is a rabid internal affairs investigator at local law enforcement.  You’re brand new to the game.  You don’t know anyone.  You click open these files and you read and see that a detective has put up some awful sketchy notes in some places on a file where the criminal was ultimately shot in the back of the head.  Your IA guy starts coming up with some questions.  Now you can take note of every name of every person in the file, do a quick +finger to figure out who is still active and playing—and have a reason to schedule RP with each and every one of them that not a single GM or RPGen had to hand you.  By the time you’re done RPing with those 5 people or so, your character is fully introduced.  People know who you are.  They’re trying to figure out what to do about you.  You’re in the RP.

            That’s why those sorts of records are so helpful.  History is a source of many, many plots, and it’s more than just the stuff you find in books.

Trick #2:  Loose Ends

            Always, always, always let some loose ends dangle from your tinyplots.  A villain gets away.  Maybe not the main villain, but the villain’s sideman or apprentice.  A question goes unanswered, “But we never did learn who he was working for.”  An item remains unfound.  “But we never did find the key to the vault, and so the treasure remains untouched to this day.”  Maybe someone is left who didn’t get their comeuppance: “But that skuzzy defense lawyer arranged it so he could walk home free…”  Maybe a criminal is still around, in prison.  Or perhaps a beloved NPC remains hurt.  Laura is still in the mental hospital, rocking herself to sleep every night and heavily sedated over the events of that night.  Maybe some mysterious, weird element gets thrown in.  “When we got there, there’s this baby sitting there.  I guess it was his kid.  Weird birthmark on her arm though…”

            You don’t have to know a thing about what that element is.  You don’t have to know the answer.  The point is that question is there.  Take note of it, somewhere, if you can’t hold it in your head.  Do another plot that has nothing to do with it.  Then a plot or two down the line, whip it back out.  It doesn’t even have to directly relate to the problem that came before, but it can.  Here’s some examples.

·         The Villain’s Apprentice, all grown up, comes back to seek revenge on the man who killed his mentor.  Not yet strong enough to take him on all at once, he concocts a scheme to get stronger, and this scheme starts to threaten lives.

·         The Villain’s Employer comes back for round two, and throws a new problem into the mix, and this time enough reference is made back to the previous plot that the players get to find out that not only is EvilCorp causing THIS problem, but they were also behind the LAST problem.

·         As we researched the problem of the Swirling Doom Vortex, we learned that the only thing that could possibly help was the Crystal Dragon Jesus Statue held in the Unopenable Vault.  Now the fate of the world relied on finding that very key which we could not find the first time—and fast.

·         Another criminal has been caught, and the Skuzzy Defense Lawyer is back.  This time we’d better have an airtight case, or he’s going to eat us for lunch.

·         Shanker Jim?  We need information on him fast.  “Well, remember how we just caught the Faustian Sniper? They were cellmates in prison.  We’d better get down there and ask him some questions.”

·         Laura’s voice is shaky on the other end of the telephone.  “There’s something going on here.  They’re doing something terrible here at the mental hospital.”  Suddenly, the line goes dead.

·         The ninja said he was looking for a baby.  He drew a mark, like this, before he disappeared.  “Oh god.  That mark was on the arm of the baby that the Dogooders brought home.  We’ve got to warn them!”

And so forth.  If you’re doing this right, you’ll have run a plot or two between these two plots, where you lay down more questions and random elements.  Or maybe a oneshot or two where you put something weird down and just let the question be answered later.  By the time you’re five or six plots in, you have this intricate world history, full of unanswered questions and threads for characters to pick up on and explore.  If you have some truly proactive player, they might even come right onto scene, read over this, and do something like this:

·         I’m going to play the Prosecutor who has vowed to take Skuzzy Defense Lawyer to the mat.

·         But we never found out what happened to Villain’s Apprentice?  I’m going to use my underworld contacts to start asking some questions.

·         Hmm, maybe I’d like to play Laura’s psychologist…

They’ll do this knowing that eventually you will probably bring these unanswered questions back around to haunt them, meaning they’ll get a chance for some cool RP eventually.  Not only that, but if someone has a history with Laura, they’ve got a reason to RP with Laura’s doctor.  If there’s an idealistic young Prosecutor trying to take on the world by storm, the Cynical Cop has reason to take the guy out for a cup of coffee.  Or whatever.  It’s all about providing reasons to RP with each other as well as providing ways in which the world stays immersive.

Tip #3:  Treat the NPCs like Real Characters

            Some people just sort of do redshirts.  If they need a cop, it’s a different cop all the time.  The cop says their extra-ish lines, or the paramedic melts away with the injured guy, and they’re never heard from again.  A lot of the time this shorthand is useful and necessary.  But there’s an alternative, and the alternative is a fantastic way to introduce more RP.

            For example, let’s say two players decide to RP getting into a car wreck and they need an officer on duty.  So they emit unnamed Officer.  You’ve been needing a plain old patrolman NPC for awhile, so you look back and see the interaction.  To drop a big plot hint, you later have the officer pull over another player.  You name him Officer Snarky, have him zip off one-liners that would do Will Smith proud, and have him mention the car accident in passing.  The players now are cued in that Officer Snarky was that NPC.  Now Officer Snarky has history.   Maybe you start using Officer Snarky again and again, until everybody on the game knows he’s the wisecracking, ticket happy cop.  Then maybe the next time you need NPCs to get shot at, you have Officer Snarky…at the playground, off duty, with his daughter.  He spends the whole scene covering his daughter with his own body so the PCs can shine—maybe not the coplike reaction but definitely the Dadlike one.  The next time the PC who saved his life and his daughter’s life needs a ticket fixed, the PC says, “I’ll call Officer Snarky.”  And it works.  They then know who this NPC is and what he represents and what he’s been doing.  If you need to kill him off this will have impact.  If you need to introduce a villain maybe it was Officer Snarky all along.  Suddenly random people aren’t just floating into and out of the PC’s world:  people they’ve known all along and seen all along are interacting with the world in ways both expected and unexpected.  It’s even better if some sort of list of who these NPCs are and who can control them is accessible and available, so that when people hear names dropped and can’t find them with a +finger they’re not entirely confused.

            To say this all takes a lot more work, especially for the Admin, is an understatement.  But if you’re going to take the time to do this, why not take the time to do it in a way that’s going to provide lasting enjoyment for you and your players and give the experience that you tacitly promised by opening up a MUSH in the first place?