Story Railroading.

[Creutzfeuer]

Communication is key, and something horribly lacking here on Disco. Top to bottom, there is no sense of flow and communication in matters of development.

There's absolutely no reason why the larger Story cannot be driven by, or at least skipped upon as a stone skips on a lake, the player made RP, touching down here and there. Yes, at times there is cringe, lack of effort, or selfish bits, but doesn't mean the entirety of the story arc should be written behind closed doors in the hands of 2 or 3 very human people. One of the very appealing things about playing in a small niche game envrionment such as Discovery Freelancer (at least to me) is that it is developed by actual participating players is the hope and potential that your little world comes to life and evolves around you rather then just waiting for the next mage patch the game corporation will drop next.

I hope the system Markam wishes to implement can bring a sense of community involvement and not community ignoring, but it remains a hope, and just that.

The fact that the "new system of communication" is devised again behind closed doors, to be revealed when finished, is telling in itself.
If the dev-team knows that there need to be changes towards more player participation - why again do something without player participation...?
That is an organisational problem as much as it is a ..."problem"... of mindset.

Another problem is the quality of non-participation-"story"-development. Openly lauding people for ignoring the input and RP of players involved in a "story"-line is ... not good.
Sends the totally wrong message.
The whole concept of RP on this server needs to be reconstructed and streamlined. I understand that there is a core of players who revel in the forum-RP, keep it.
But also make a different style of RP possible - like for example voice chat RP over the Discord. This would make people more invested in their characters and encourage participation.
I could (and will on request) name how I deem this implementable.
Regarding the general structure of RP there are also other oprions and I will try to write down the TED talk I had with two friends yesterday:

Take the nonsensical "story" beat about the looming extinction of the INS presented in the latest patch and obviously never do such a thing again without player participation, that's a given.
Also make people participate in this "story" by giving them the opportunity to actively shape it without setting the result in stone beforehand. How to do it?
I could hardly be be bothered to only skim the text about this "story", which is ironically benefical for my viewpoint.

So you have the Liblawfuls make a move on the INS, the BAF-NPC's suffering a defeat while helping. Bretonian government is unsure about further involvement,
that's the gist of hours of hours of "story"-work (you got to be kidding me?!).
You can salvage this on many levels and I will concentrate on the Bretonian side of it, as it offers a good example.
There is the story-input about internal discussion about how to proceed further.
If so, then I tell to the dev-team the same I tell my players in Pen & Paper: Act. It. Out.
Design a similar event as the "Operation Condo...r" in O-48. Make a schedule in advance, drop a forum post, have people enlist their factions to it.
Event creation is simple from an organisational and RP point of view.
Story beat goes like this: There are two high ranking individuals in the Bretonian government said to have tremendous influence (at least one has or will have)
on the upcoming decision-making how the NPC-faction will act. Those two characters you sit in a Yacht and have them travel slowly from an observation of the
military desaster back to planet New London. The characters are embodied by either dev's or trusted acquaintances. They are present in Bretonian space
and can be interacted with. Setup finished.

For the sake of argument (and I apologize in advance for any shortcuts I take or factions I might "misrepresent" - it's an example) say there are four player-factions active and present
to interact with the situation: BAF, BMM, Gaians, Mollys.
They have their own agenda reached by internal player interaction or definitive decision of the respective command staff:
BAF wants to continue the military engagement.
BMM wants withdrawal for obvious economic reasons
Mollys want a continuation as it binds ressources of lawfuls outside of Bretonian space.
Gaians are not that interested, want to "just" cause a bit of commotion.
[Note: None of my depictions represent the reality of faction decisions made.]

Also Mollys might have gotten some intel on who the more important government individual is regarding the NPC-government-decision-making.
This opens so many pathways of how RP could organically evolve:
Mollys could try to sell a wrong information to the BMM, could then try to assassinate the government official during the event.
BAF wants to convince the officials to continue the engagement, so you have the 1iC and 2iC hounding them with arguments and trying
to bring forward as much conviction as they are able to, show of arms, reworked battle-strategy, you name it.
BMM also present and presenting counter-arguments to end the engagement.
Molly attack might fail while the transit goes on (or not). Or the Gaians might anticipate the stance of the BMM in advance and extort them for
a shaky agreement of non-interference int he situation.
As the event concludes, there might be a definitive situation reached (a dead official for example) and this shapes the upcoming decision of
the Bretonia NPC-government in a significant way.

Anyone who has a basic understanding of how RP works can see the multitude of possible story developments here.
Also it is a comparatively easy way of encouraging player participation and by just doing so strenghten player involvement in the
fate of the respective NPC-faction. Makes people more emotionally involved. And (rightly so) gives players participating in the event and surrounding pre- or after-events
the sense of "making a difference" in Sirius.
Yes this means the story-dev-team is presented with a new situation: the outcome is not set in stone. The story shifts organically, you have to think of contingencies for different outcomes,
you have to COPE - sounds familiar? I am a Pen & Paper GM for 10 years now and I don't railroad people, don't even prepare myself in advance of a game night, just go with what the players
present me and where they are headed. A GM is there to provide structure and helpful advice. Being a story-dev is not the same as being a GM. A GM is a story-applicator not a story-instructor and this server needs
more GMs who are like this. Everybody who just instantly recognized what I wrote, you are the right person for such a thing. Step right up, please.

All of my depiction has one underlying notion about player factions though, I want to delve into this topic quickly as it is tightly connected to what I said about organically developing RP.
I agree to the assessment that the role of official and unofficial factions need to change to accomodate a urgently necessary change of RP-paradigm.
Players want more influence in the story and the decisions regarding NPC factions (I totally get why Saronsen is ...agitated... about what went on without him even knowing).
That means that the concept of player factions needs to be thought differently.
Factions should be part of the "political" decision making, more like lobbies or political parties in their own self-image, if they wish to.
By going a route of story development as pictured regarding Bretonia you could make such a development process a steady and recurring thing.
Have people be involved in it with their faction.
And I can easily provide any example for this - take the Corsairs. There is a Council of Elders that makes decisions, NPC driven and therefore driven by the "story"-dev-team.
Why not get the head honchos of the existing and active Corsair factions together once a month and have them REALLY TALK about what should be the way to go or the
goals to aim for. Have a story-applicator be present to take note and then create a story-line out of it.
Check back with the factions involved and provide structure. This could lessen workload on developers and encourage people to participate.

This community is slowly dying of inactivity. We cannot advertise in a traditional way to gather new players or rope back older vets.
We need to rely on mouth-to-mouth advertising and therefore the players need to be intrinsically motivated to tell their friends and acquaintances of Discovery.
I have a bunch of friends who would be much more eager to lend me their ear, if I could whole-heartedly tell them "This is a REAL RP-server!"
And I'm willing to bet money on it that some people reading this are nodding right now.

I will gladly sit down and talk in voice chat with anyone from the higher-ups about all of this, if the walls of the ivory tower have a door built-in that is...
You can find me on Discord under the same username.

____

"But what if one person is the 1iC of two interacting factions?" - Well, get a stand-in and have a story dev supervise the whole thing, if it is important for the canon.
Also kinda "forces" a decision of such an individual which faction is more important to them, not necessarily a bad thing. An interesting problem, less so for
a person with integrity and a sense of fair RP.


Thank you for coming to this TED-talk.^^