Board Thread:Roleplaying/@comment-5424581-20160208150954/@comment-26103034-20160404195726

Emperor Maximus wrote: (If you're planning on making a free, open story RP, my advice is: don't. The players will need something to keep them interested, so will try and latch on to any story hooks you dangle in front of them. So I would suggest having a story in mind from the very start, and plan out how you want it to progress (but not too detailed or there won't be any room for players changing plot). And also don't stand in the way of the players, let them progress through the story. With this, you didn't allow any of us to solve any aspects of the mystery, because anything we tried came up with nothing.) (I would semi-agree with this. Have some plot, but there needs to be a big event for this to work. Here, there were only small but important things. I left early on, and haven't followed, but I believe this became more of an RP with a plot. A distinct thing happening that was important but you could only interact with it one way, really. If you have an RP with a civil war and some good lore and several factions to join, then it can work better. (I started one a while ago that is going pretty well, about a civil war in Elsweyr) .You might be able to pull this back by quickly tidying all the loose ends up and leaving it as a free RP or by getting a piece of paper, google doc or word document and planning it out, making sure it makes sense, and accepting that there is now a plot.)

(My advice for making a free RP? Make sure there's stuff happening, but wide stuff. One person recruiting mercenaries means that those people are the people that stuff is happening to and that there's where the plot is. And it means it needs plot. If you make a very detailed world (or maybe if you're lucky and good at improvising), then people can make characters and let them do what they want. In mine, I had a civil war in Elsweyr. Two people went to an inn, one person talked to a somewhat drunk and decided to join the rebellion, another over heard two people talking about secret stuff and decided to follow them. The secret stuff isn't a massive thing, it isn't important and I didn't force people to get involced. It is important to a small extent, but not massive)