Wildcard:Simulation tips

Suggested reading

• Avatar rules for avatar options. (Feel free to expand that article with crazy new options if you can think of any, though!)
• Web protocol for a rather technical approach at describing how avatars work and are transferred to a network.
• 'Unplayed Simulations' category for ideas best avoided.

Link-in point

The recommended way to pick a link-in point, i.e. the point at which the characters appear in the sim, is to have it be a place where you can describe a few important traits about your setting without roping them into the plot just yet.

In fact, if you can, make it a point that is a few in-character days removed from plot - that gives you flexibility. If turn-out is good and a lot of people are playing your sim, you can run a session that gets forward-dated to the point where plot begins, then use the buffer in a different fashion.

Plot

It's a good idea to give people two things to do - come up both with a sim plot arc and a character plot arc (if you control enough characters to make that worthwhile, or if your NPCs will be close enough to the players to have their own side-quest going without disrupting the flow).

Examples:

• Pandiamonium is an obvious case:
  (1) The cycles of the moons
  (2) Dread's entrapment.
  Those aren't equally weighted and don't need to be.
• Chimera also had a two-pronged approach:
  (1) Reaching Lycia
  (2) Thylis' unique history as an autonomous Puppet.
• Mer also had two, though they overlapped, making it less immediately obvious:
  (1) The Quest of Rule
  (2) Azur's identity crisis and patchwork past (allowing for a lot of background information to be discovered).
• Planetshine:
  (1) The Cosmic Rain
  (2) Sirena's undeath.
• ...

You get the idea.

Why is this important? Because typically, people aren't very interested in sim plot (which is akin to what most trapped characters will be feeling on some level: they want off the network, the sim plot is in the way, not an end in itself); a way to get them interested is to use pieces they are interested in (character development) to feed them enough bits of the sim's atmosphere from the sidelines that they start to get involved in it by proxy.

Sessions

I'd recommend planning sessions based on what you as a gamemaster feel needs to be done. Think of your session like a short story - you're starting in the middle of something, not at the very beginning, make liberal use of that to keep what needs to be done short.

As a rule of thumb, sessions cover about five minutes IC time unless you rush things along at some point by timeskipping ahead. That isn't a lot of time at all, so put people in where they should be to make the important decisions, get those decisions done quickly, then let the session continue until its natural end.

Recaps

Don't be afraid of recapping whole story segments. We all know we're playing in a real time sync'ed environment, and that some important things will be decided off-screen.

Good things to decide off-screen are generally decisions/plans for actions that take a while to execute - it gives those who later object to them ample time to sabotage it. A good example would be 'Where do we go next?' in a world where travel is slow.

Things you should avoid recapping most promimently includes character developments between characters you yourself do not own - at least not without checking with the players first.

NPCs

Only applies to worlds that has NPCs, obviously.

I generally believe that one should strive to make NPCs more interesting than PCs wherever possible. It may sound counter-intuitive, but I've come to get the distinct impression that people to large part roleplay to be part of a story, not to be the story, something that can only be achieved if the world itself would carry on merrily without PC intervention (i.e. there already is a story that one just needs to be a part of).

You want your PCs to be an interesting addition that stirs things up in the world, you don't want them to be necessary in the truest sense of the word. A plot threatens to stop being fun when you need to act in it to keep it moving and it begins to feel like a chore/obligation.

Timelines and -frames

We're synchronised to real time. You'll probably want to have a way to arbitrarily delay the plot for those days where RP is in a bit of a lull, or alternatively have set delay-segments in your RP that you can back- and forward-date sessions that actually happen around.

For example, if you have a plot that can happen in place A and a plot that can happen in place B, you can make the travel between them take a long time, then if people want to play during the travel timespan back- or forwarddate to the event timeslots.

As most RPing happens on weekends, it makes sense to have planned lulls during the week at the very least.

Activity

From experience: The only way to get people to play in your sim is to keep asking them about playing in it. I very distinctly don't mean the 'do you have time for RP today?' manner - it's not about trying to figure out when they want to RP as much as what they want to RP. Sometimes the answer to 'What do you want to RP?' is 'nothing', that's fine, respect that and back off (not that I think anyone reading this would honestly do anything else). The best way to counteract a series of 'I don't know's or 'Nothing's is to have a plan (or several!) that could/should be pursued IC.

In other words: Instead of asking 'Want to RP today?', ask 'Want to do plot point X today?'. Of course that can get just as irritating, and sometimes you need to just develop a feel for whether you're dealing with someone who wants you to supply the ideas or someone who's got a bunch of their own that approach might be stifling.

Either way, however: Be willing to invest a large chunk of free time into your sim. No one's playing right now? Great, draw a map! Still no one in the mood? Make sure the wiki page is up to date, and you know where all the characters are in IC time. Still a lull? Write a few interludes. Make it clear that your sim is alive and kicking and people are welcome to play at any time.

This ties into the same basic psychology that makes 'A plot threatens to stop being fun when you need to act in it to keep it moving and it begins to feel like a chore/obligation.' true - you want your players to be a part of the sim, you don't want them being the sim. They're welcome to play with your world, they're not necessary for it to function.

Puppets: Y/N?

Whatever feels right. It's a lot easier to continue to dictate the happenings in a sim if you have Puppets to dictate it for you, though. You can have a similar degree of control without Puppets by simply controlling enough player-characters (as a GM, that includes the ones that have been abandoned by their players) to fell decisions for you, but that tends to be tricky to pull off right.