Traceroo
Rogue
This edition is a little complex, so please bear with me.
I want to teach you to learn to distinguish between story elements that are active within the game world, and custom content that would have to be written especially to fulfill your request. This difference is important in knowing how likely it is that the Plot Team will be able to meet your expectations.
Imagine that you’re eating in a restaurant.
You’re presented with a menu of the restaurant’s offerings. You make a choice, and you may ask for customization - something on the side, perhaps, or with or without certain ingredients. Small customizations are easy for the restaurant to deliver on an expected item. The cheeseburger with Swiss cheese instead of American cheese is pretty easy.
Now imagine that you sit down in the same restaurant, but you crave something that is not on the menu. You go to a steak restaurant and ask them to make tacos for you. The kitchen staff might be willing to do this to honor you as a customer. Nevertheless, it will slow down their expected process, and probably cause a lot of hassle in the back that you don’t see as a customer. In the end, the tacos delivered by the steakhouse might not be what you hoped for. They also could be delicious, but perhaps hard to repeat!
This metaphor applies to stories being offered in a LARP. If you want to get more involved in story activity, it is much easier for this “restaurant” to offer you what is on the menu. In other words, it’s easy for Plot to present to you more of the stories that you see already onstage, things attacking the town now, items mentioned in the Rumor Sheets, and the subject matter of mods that you’ve already tackled.
Alliance Denver’s creative staff really loves making you happy! When you place small customizations, that’s pretty easy to accommodate. When you order something that is not on the “menu” at all, that’s harder for Plot to arrange for you… but being good people, and creative sorts, we try to answer those requests when we can.
Some things that might be described as NOT being on the menu are:
How can you recognize the difference?
If any of the above is true, this storyline is “on the menu.” It’s something that the Plot Team is prepared to write and present to you.
How can you make this easier?
Acarthia’s October 2017 event welcomed more than 100 Player Characters (PCs). Although the Plot Team has 7 members at this time, at any given time, usually only about 3 or 4 writers are active as we each cycle through the obligations to our jobs and real lives in balance with writing for Acarthia. We do our best! Nevertheless, the active writers have to balance carefully how we dedicate our limited time in preparing for the game.
When you order what’s not on the menu, the Plot Team hopes to be able to respond to your quest in some way, but doing so is not always the best choice that we can make for the game as a whole. Team Prometheus hopes to entertain and involve as many PCs as we can with the resources we have. Oftentimes, that means giving the greatest part of our attention to what is presented on the menu, what we have planned for the whole game. Custom orders must follow later, if we have resources leftover.
A story about your character history is of tremendous interest to you personally. It’s of limited interest to your close friends. Beyond your inner circle, most players in the game may not share the love that you have for it. That story takes as much time and effort as it would take Plot to present something really wide that may appeal to many players.
You may be interested in the rumored wizard shaman of the lizardmen who dwells in the Fens, very far away from New Acarthia. Get 12 friends who are also keenly interested, turning in BGAs, and researching this item, and it might become much easier to find success in contacting the lizardmen.
Your offstage quest outside of New Acarthia which can be accessed only through BGAs is really important to your character. You’re very passionate about this goal! Bring friends with you. The more, the merrier. Complex, detailed BGA responses that go to 5 or even 10 PCs are so much easier for the Plot Team to accommodate than dedicating a great deal of attention to entertain only 1 player. Bring friends along, get them interested in what’s meaningful to you!
Perhaps you read in the Players Guide about a less well known guild or order, and you really want to get involved? Get 5 or 10 friends and start a chapter of the group in New Acarthia. Host a meeting for interested parties, and write to the guild to ask for support at a specific date and time when you’re hosting your meeting. This makes it much easier for your loving Plot Team to support this effort than fleshing out a minor group to entertain just 1 interested PC.
(And remember the golden rule from the entire How To Work a Plotline series of messages: TALK TO OTHER PCs!)
By ordering what’s “on the menu,” you’ll find that it’s much easier for Plot to lay a trail of breadcrumbs before you to follow toward information, mods, discussions, field battles, and all the glory that you desire!
If you haven’t met the success that you hoped for in questing toward certain elements in the game, try a re-examination of your efforts in light of this perspective. Have you been questing for an item that’s not on the menu? Is anyone aside from you actively requesting this story? Do you have a whole group that’s eager for it? And how easy will it be to present this onstage in New Acarthia for you, and of interest to the game as a whole?
Team Prometheus hopes that this may give you new ideas to change your approach. You may always contact any member of our Plot Team if you’d like to discuss particular quests privately. We may have specific suggestions for you about recruiting more people, or trying a different approach that may make it easier for us to tie your desires for custom content into the larger story of the whole game. We’re really invested in your fun, and we want to help you out! Help us help you.
Love & Kisses,
Auntie Trace
Team Prometheus
2017 Acarthia Plot
How To Work a Plotline 1
How To Work a Plotline 2: Info you get from NPCs
I want to teach you to learn to distinguish between story elements that are active within the game world, and custom content that would have to be written especially to fulfill your request. This difference is important in knowing how likely it is that the Plot Team will be able to meet your expectations.
Imagine that you’re eating in a restaurant.
You’re presented with a menu of the restaurant’s offerings. You make a choice, and you may ask for customization - something on the side, perhaps, or with or without certain ingredients. Small customizations are easy for the restaurant to deliver on an expected item. The cheeseburger with Swiss cheese instead of American cheese is pretty easy.
Now imagine that you sit down in the same restaurant, but you crave something that is not on the menu. You go to a steak restaurant and ask them to make tacos for you. The kitchen staff might be willing to do this to honor you as a customer. Nevertheless, it will slow down their expected process, and probably cause a lot of hassle in the back that you don’t see as a customer. In the end, the tacos delivered by the steakhouse might not be what you hoped for. They also could be delicious, but perhaps hard to repeat!
This metaphor applies to stories being offered in a LARP. If you want to get more involved in story activity, it is much easier for this “restaurant” to offer you what is on the menu. In other words, it’s easy for Plot to present to you more of the stories that you see already onstage, things attacking the town now, items mentioned in the Rumor Sheets, and the subject matter of mods that you’ve already tackled.
Alliance Denver’s creative staff really loves making you happy! When you place small customizations, that’s pretty easy to accommodate. When you order something that is not on the “menu” at all, that’s harder for Plot to arrange for you… but being good people, and creative sorts, we try to answer those requests when we can.
Some things that might be described as NOT being on the menu are:
- Your personal character history story
- Exploring areas of the world far outside the borders of the Duchy of Acarthia
- Digging into the one-time mention of an isolated element you read about in the Players Guide
- Pursuing a complex story that takes place in the world somewhere offstage from New Acarthia
How can you recognize the difference?
- Is the story element represented onstage in New Acarthia already?
- Did you meet an NPC, in person, onstage related to this story?
- Did this story attack the town through field battle, crunchies, or in a mod?
- Did you go on a mod that explores this story?
- Was it mentioned in the Rumor Sheets?
- Was it mentioned in one of the baronial reports?
If any of the above is true, this storyline is “on the menu.” It’s something that the Plot Team is prepared to write and present to you.
- Is this element only from your character history?
- Does it exist outside the Duchy of Acarthia?
- Does it exist outside the Kingdom of Acarthia?
- Is it from beyond the mists?
- Is it from a different Alliance chapter?
- Can the story be accessed only through mist travel, rift, or extreme means of travel?
- Is it something mentioned only in the Players Guide, and with no other source?
- Can you access this story only through BGA?
- Can you access this story only through BGA that’s written by only 1 single Plot Writer and no one else?
How can you make this easier?
- Get more people involved.
- Tie it into something you can act on here, now, onstage.
Acarthia’s October 2017 event welcomed more than 100 Player Characters (PCs). Although the Plot Team has 7 members at this time, at any given time, usually only about 3 or 4 writers are active as we each cycle through the obligations to our jobs and real lives in balance with writing for Acarthia. We do our best! Nevertheless, the active writers have to balance carefully how we dedicate our limited time in preparing for the game.
When you order what’s not on the menu, the Plot Team hopes to be able to respond to your quest in some way, but doing so is not always the best choice that we can make for the game as a whole. Team Prometheus hopes to entertain and involve as many PCs as we can with the resources we have. Oftentimes, that means giving the greatest part of our attention to what is presented on the menu, what we have planned for the whole game. Custom orders must follow later, if we have resources leftover.
A story about your character history is of tremendous interest to you personally. It’s of limited interest to your close friends. Beyond your inner circle, most players in the game may not share the love that you have for it. That story takes as much time and effort as it would take Plot to present something really wide that may appeal to many players.
You may be interested in the rumored wizard shaman of the lizardmen who dwells in the Fens, very far away from New Acarthia. Get 12 friends who are also keenly interested, turning in BGAs, and researching this item, and it might become much easier to find success in contacting the lizardmen.
Your offstage quest outside of New Acarthia which can be accessed only through BGAs is really important to your character. You’re very passionate about this goal! Bring friends with you. The more, the merrier. Complex, detailed BGA responses that go to 5 or even 10 PCs are so much easier for the Plot Team to accommodate than dedicating a great deal of attention to entertain only 1 player. Bring friends along, get them interested in what’s meaningful to you!
Perhaps you read in the Players Guide about a less well known guild or order, and you really want to get involved? Get 5 or 10 friends and start a chapter of the group in New Acarthia. Host a meeting for interested parties, and write to the guild to ask for support at a specific date and time when you’re hosting your meeting. This makes it much easier for your loving Plot Team to support this effort than fleshing out a minor group to entertain just 1 interested PC.
(And remember the golden rule from the entire How To Work a Plotline series of messages: TALK TO OTHER PCs!)
By ordering what’s “on the menu,” you’ll find that it’s much easier for Plot to lay a trail of breadcrumbs before you to follow toward information, mods, discussions, field battles, and all the glory that you desire!
If you haven’t met the success that you hoped for in questing toward certain elements in the game, try a re-examination of your efforts in light of this perspective. Have you been questing for an item that’s not on the menu? Is anyone aside from you actively requesting this story? Do you have a whole group that’s eager for it? And how easy will it be to present this onstage in New Acarthia for you, and of interest to the game as a whole?
Team Prometheus hopes that this may give you new ideas to change your approach. You may always contact any member of our Plot Team if you’d like to discuss particular quests privately. We may have specific suggestions for you about recruiting more people, or trying a different approach that may make it easier for us to tie your desires for custom content into the larger story of the whole game. We’re really invested in your fun, and we want to help you out! Help us help you.
Love & Kisses,
Auntie Trace
Team Prometheus
2017 Acarthia Plot
How To Work a Plotline 1
How To Work a Plotline 2: Info you get from NPCs
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