[HoE] Meta-Plot Adventures

["John Goff" <johngoff@erols.com>]

> >
> >A valid point, but there's got to be a better way to do it than a random
> >draw, particularly if the story is to be the "final word" on the subject.
> >Were I making the decisions, I would lean toward a selection method based
> >on quality of the write-ups: he who tells the best story, tells the true
> >story.
>
> I agree.  I prefer the idea of a good representative Posse (not that there
> is anything wrong with it but, for example, what if the winning group
> included a Cyborg and Doomsayer sent back in time? would that not seem odd
> for official purposes) and a well written write up.  I would argue against
> luck o' the draw as while it's not that I don't "trust" players, sometimes
> I would like to see important things, like the fate of the Ghost, one of
my
> all time favorite WW NPCs, dictated with something a bit more even then a
> random draw.  You don't know what your going to get, or how Bizaar the
spin
> is, and if I read that the Ghost was killed by a Crossbreed Cyborg
> Doomsayer, I am not going to be happy, even if that adventure were picked.

Okay, first of all, guys, give me/us a little credit. I didn't want to come
out and say "If the story is ridiculous, we're going to likely draw again"
but there, it's said.

If I just compile them and read them all myself and determine which I
consider best, you're really talking luck of the draw anyway. Let's be
honest after reading two to three hundred stories detailing the same affair,
I'm likely to be a little punchy at the end. And a majority of the folks
that didn't get picked as "best" is going to be perturbed when they read the
story that "wasn't as good" as theirs. The upshot of picking one on merit is
we get one happy posse and a bunch of dissatisfied ones.

Leaving it as random as possible is the only way we can avoid that. Now I'm
hearing that won't work either--rather vehemently.

Now, we could do a consensus, but I'll be honest, reading two to three
hundred stories straight through is going to take more time than any one of
us has right now. The schedule is tight and getting tighter. It's simply not
an option. In fact, reading them through just to get a majority vote doesn't
work either, 'cause it really entails the same amount of work.

Sorry if I seem a little tense about it, but after some lengthy discussion,
this seemed the only workable method to give individual players a shot at
influencing the storyline. Believe me, we hit this from nearly every angle
imaginable.

One of the ideas that seemed neat at first was a voting coupon that we'd
determine a majority, then draw one at random from the winning votes,
contact the group, see if one of them wanted to write a story, wait for them
to write it, then fit it into the next available slot in an Epitaph.
Problems: can't reach the winning group (how long do we attempt?); winning
group, once reached, doesn't want to do it (repeat process); get a really
flukey story like you guys have already mentioned, ala Cyborg Doomsayer
assainates Lincoln, Grant and Jefferson Davis with a particle accelerator
(now we've got no easy out, short of telling the group, "Yeah we said we'd
use it, but this _sucks_" <g>); the group is late sending it in (heck, we
have had trouble getting people we're _paying_ to do it on time <g>). All of
this conspires to making planning the publication it's going to be printed
in a production nightmare. And that was one of the best.

However, if you guys--who have been our most loyal fans and _my_ primary
target audience--are that dead set against it, maybe we should just do a
simple majority vote and forget the individual posse idea.

I've got a couple of days to think about it before the adventure has to go
into prep for publishing, so I'll mull it over seriously. If I can find a
way to make it work around your guys concerns, I will. I'll also watch the
list to see what thoughts you have on the subject as well.

Worst comes to worst, I can always just drop the idea altogether and make
sure adventures are written so that the specific details of the outcome can
be left hazy in the future of the setting, while the meta-plot elements
evolve as a result and the posses still have a hand the storyline. I'm not
thrilled with that (it depersonalizes the idea) but it's an option.

John

.