Setting up a schedule

[Luiniel Blades]

Okay folks here's the situation.  I'm enjoying this game a lot, as I am sure most of you are.   I am also sure most of you are aware, one of the things that make a story enjoyable is pacing.  Without it the story becomes dull and eventually we get bored and leave it unfinished.  It can especially be a problem in a play by post sort of game, where the story sometimes moves along at a single in/out of character post once a day.  I propose we work together to not let that happen.  Here's a few things I've taken note of and a few ideas to help us along.

First off, we have very little coordination as far as the posting rate is concerned.   Currently it's a situation of us checking in on the game when we have time and there may or may not be a new post.  I think we should establish a time of day where we all check in to see if there's been a post.  In order for this to work, we'd need everyone to post there work schedules to figure out what time of day would best work for people.  Example:  From 6:00 p.m.- 8:00 p.m. Monday - Thursday, everyone checks in to post and respond.  In this way we can begin to coordinate our efforts and around that time of day everyone is checking in.

  Once this becomes an established idea in everyone's mind I think the pace of the story will begin to flow a bit better.  During that time it will be like playing a short session where everyone involved in the scene will respond to each other and a few posts will occur within that block of time rather than sporadically throughout the day.  Of course this method couldn't possibly account for everything that goes on in ones life, what with jobs, family, different time frames, parties, random internet glitches and just wanting a day to yourself but hopefully it will help to alleviate some of it.  

Doomed Hero has heroically taken on the roll of very nearly single-handedly running a game of this scale for so long, and I believe he may have doomed himself in this task.  I have never seen or heard of anyone running a game with this many characters for so long and not letting it bog down or having the players eventually call it quits.  He is a great Game Master but he is just one person and I think we owe it to him to ease his life a little.


Now for all those involved; I just have to say that I am amazed with the dedication everyone has given to making this game great.  Especially those characters that have had to wait for months before getting any screen time.  Thank you.

As for myself I am currently unemployed and therefore have way too much free time on my hands.  As such almost any time is good for me to post.

[Gabboge]

I'm generally good to post most days early in the morning.

[Exile]

One obvious problem with any kind of schedule is that we span rather a broad geographic area.  I'd be mildly surprised if our time zones varied by as little as 8 hours.

[Doomed Hero]

My thoughts exactly. I've asked for 3-4 posts a week to keep things reasonable. I'd like people to shoot for 1 a day but I understand that real life gets in the way.

[Ilona Ebonblade]

Sounds fair to me, trying to synch up times would be almost impossible given work schedules. Some of us have consistent regular schedules, others can suddenly become unavailable for all but the wee hours of the morning.

[Pheros]

I try to check the boards a couple times a day (it's in with my standard run of the news websites), so I can respond whenever.  Formulating a response, of course, takes a bit more time sometimes.  Especially with all those damn language color changes...heh heh

[Luiniel Blades]

All of these are valid points.  The idea behind this was to try and figure out if there was a possible time frame where people could hop on and rapid fire posts at one another.  This is why the first step was to get everyone to post their primary work/school schedules up and then try to figure out if even a majority of the time zones worked with one another.  Even if it's only an hour long window I think it would be worth it.
 
Of course with a group this large and how random real life is, it could very easily be nearly impossible.  Some people may have day jobs while others have night or graveyard shifts.  6:00 am here could be 2:30 pm some-where else, some people in the resistance group might be free when some people in the shadow group are but not the rest.  The variables are numerous and I know this idea is at best unlikely, but if we just say it won't work and leave it at that then we won't know.  I'm also not asking everyone to give up there personal time to sit at their computer or online with their phones and hit refresh every 10 minutes to see if someone responded.  This idea will require everyone involved to participate, sort of like making time for a session, but if you don't want to then no problem.

[Doomed Hero]

This might work on a case-by-case basis.

For example, in the Meta thread I mentioned a scene where Dunk is going to have to do a little sleuthing. I might speed up that scene by saying "hey Dunk, I'm going to be sitting at my computer this evening and will have lots of time to post. Does that work for you so we can do some back and forth posting?"

For scenes that are only a couple people this kind of coordination might be handy especially if the posters knew that the other people involved were going to be right there to quickly reply.

[Exile]

Even with a glance at your profile, Luiniel, I can't see an indication of where in the world you are... so your proposal of "6-8pm" could be just about any time for any of the rest of us.  If you're, say, PST then I can tell you right now that there's no chance of me committing to showing up daily for a 2-4am check-in.  

The key's to try to get people to check in at least daily, and to make use of the automated email prompts.  Those are quite easy to knock out of sync (fail to notice one, and you won't get another for that thread until you check in - no matter how many posts occur in it)... but they do help.

With Doomed now emailing us when a scene-switch occurs, things should also (hopefully) be easier to keep moving.  I know that I look for new posts less obsessively when I'm not in the scene than when I'm at the heart of the action: reading a batch of posts together helps it to flow better when I'm not hanging on every little event... but those emails help to ensure that I'm unlikely to miss my cue.