A Suggestion For Plots

Age : 34 Posts : 718

I was speaking with Aaron over Skype and the discussion eventually came to the site plot. Currently the site lacks one and from what I'm told, this site seems to have trouble getting activity for plots. When I suggested starting a plot as a means of improving activity, I was told plots seem to have the opposite effect here.

Now I don't know what this are like here from experience, but I do have about a decades worth of experience roleplaying and plotting. Something I've learned is that you can't MAKE rpers be more active. You can only hope they enjoy the content you create more than the other things that take up time in their lives. With that in mind, it is still heart breaking to see lots of work and effort put into a plot event only to have few to no participants.

My suggestion is a system I devised as an admin for another forum. It's a bit of extra work for staff but the pay off is basically a gauge that lets you know which factions are ready for a plot event while also making the advent of a plot event a clear and obtainable goal which rpers contribute towards by being active. For a naruto forum I'd probably call this system:

Village Fame

The Village Game system allows staff and members to know which villages are most active and thus ready to handle a large scale plot event.

How to accumulate fame?:

Each time a village member completes a mission, his/her village gains fame equal to the experience they earned. Nuke-nin collectively add to their own fame as if they shared a village.

How much fame is significant?:

50 Fame - Obscure
150 Fame - Rumored
300 Fame - Acknowledged
500 Fame - Well Known
750 Fame - Famous
1000 Fame - Legendary

What do all these vague titles mean!?:

The fame a village has dictates the scale of the plot events staff will be willing to hold for them. The more famous the village is, the bigger the event will be. Bigger events means more rewards in exchange for more danger.

Obscure - Only small incidents that involve 1-4 members of a village. While there is a threat to the village as a whole, it is a relatively small one that wont be the end of the village should the participants fail.

Rumored - Moderate incidents where the entire village must be put on alert. Anyone in the village can participate and the danger present is enough to legitimately damage the village, but it is nothing the community couldn't recover from.

Acknowledged - Village-wide incidents that seriously threaten the safety of the village. Village members and Non-village members whom are traveling nearby can participate. This represents a serious breach in village security where the kage or many innocents could be targeted.

Well-Known - National incidents that effect an entire country. Local villages and non-locals travelling in country may participate. These conflicts are filled with skirmishes, rebellions, and small scale battles over land or resources.

Famous - International incidents that affect multiple countries. Villages of affected countries or those travelling within them may participate. These are wars and inter-village conflicts equivalent to the great ninja wars.

Legendary - World-Wide incidents that affect everyone. All site members can participate. These are plot events where the fate of the world is at stake and requires the full strength of at least one village to resolve.

What good is this?:

This helps keep the scale and timing of your plot events be reactive based on the current activity of your members. Don't make things too big if there aren't enough people in a village to cover it.

The best part is that this is just a suggested prototype. You guys can re-balance it however you please. Maybe you want to make these fame points consumable at the will of the kage. So a village can save up for a bigger plot event. Or maybe a village just gets one of each plot type as they rise in fame. Maybe once every 4 months all village lose 100 fame. It's up to staff how to implement this should they like the concept.

Age : 31 Posts : 8965

Sounds like a notoriety system rather than a site plot.

Age : 34 Posts : 718

This isn't a suggested plot, but rather a structure through which villages can earn plots based on collective activity. It's to ensure efforts are never wasted on a plot event that no one will/can join. Well, not ensure, but it mitigates the chances of that happening. It will also let people determine village activity by glancing at a single page rather than trying to look through the approved characters and then stalk each one for their posts.

If it sounds too much like notoriety then change the names, it's all just trappings and fluff anyways. Whats important is the core utility of tracking activity and using that information to judge how much attention a village should be getting from staff members that do generate plot events.

Age : 29 Posts : 3145

The problem with the last plot was that people were messaged saying either you sign up for it or we will consider you inactive. You could also try to give a good reason why you don't want to participate; not sure how that worked out.

A reason? You forcing the plot onto me is one, for starters.

I think the problem is (other than the one highlighted above) that we aim to make the plots far too spectacular and global. Instead we could have a festival in Kumo to support activity, Amy's offical hokage coronation/wedding in Konoha and Zack can execute some one in kiri. Those are plots/events too :3

As long as something interesting and different is happening, curiosities will be piqued and people will be interested in getting involved.

Posts : 757

I don't know how plots work on this site, but in my experience one of the best ways to get one started is to force your most active members to do something.

The staff can allow an event to happen that either effects one or many RPers directly (like a plague or a death) and then basically leave it up to the most active (by which i mean the kage) to do something about it.

So if you follow a plot more typical to an anime (single super villain) you can have one person role play this character and then leave what happens to the village entirely up to the people running it. It depends a lot on the active people within the village, but this can change if the plot is interesting enough and pulls people into post.

If the site is low on activity and total members, you can just isolate events into missions dealing invasions/organized crime and things of the sort and have a weaker super villain. Allow plot based missions that involve more risk and also allow people to be rewarded more for them so they feel like posting is a good thing and they get rewarded for writing more and writing better. It all depends on the creativity of the administration to make up one and the dedication of the members. There a sense of belonging that you get when your Kage directly tells you to do something in a specific post, vs having a post that just says XXX is happening do these missions to stop it.

Age : 32 Posts : 1912

Big Ghost wrote:: I don't know how plots work on this site, but in my experience one of the best ways to get one started is to force your most active members to do something.

I don't like you anymore >_>

Age : 30 Posts : 1012

I like the idea of a genjutsu world like in Road to ninja. But eh, that would change people's characters completely and it'll be a mess here with how pass events were ran. Konoha is obviously the bigger village, with kumo (Imo) slowly getting 2nd. I always saw Konoha being a base for the events/plot.

Age : 32 Posts : 1912

Cross wrote:: I like the idea of a genjutsu world like in Road to ninja. But eh, that would change people's characters completely and it'll be a mess here with how pass events were ran. Konoha is obviously the bigger village, with kumo (Imo) slowly getting 2nd. I always saw Konoha being a base for the events/plot.

Stop it, I will not be forced into any plots. Last time we did this kind of thing, things turned out to become a massive fuckfest that actually cost us activity. If people want to do things, let the respective Kage of that village do something for it's people that is NOT forced. These things can be simple, and Amy and I are personally planning things for Konoha already, so Kumo and Kiri can look after themselves, if Zack decides to actually do shit with the new people that joined his village.

Ideas:

Tournament: Rank based tournament for people in the village.
Festival: Host a festival to honor the dead, the past Kage or other leaders of the village that have passed away, make it one huge thing people can attend and RP about, building plot in a way that can be a grudge held against those responsible, setting up new relations with people and maybe even other villages, etc etc.
Tournament: Rank based tournament for people in the village.

Yes, I said Tournament twice. Personally, I wanna see a fun tournament where the C and the B rank can clash, while as a grand finale, some S ranks and A ranked or whatever fight for the entire village to see how strong their higher ups are.

Age : 30 Posts : 1012

I wasn't meaning it to be forced. I was only suggesting ideas that can be altered. Forced plots become shitty, die out, or take too long to do. Any plot should not be mandatory in my opinion.

Age : 31 Posts : 1637

Cross wrote:: I wasn't meaning it to be forced. I was only suggesting ideas that can be altered. Forced plots become shitty, die out, or take too long to do. Any plot should not be mandatory in my opinion.

That is all.

Age : 29 Posts : 1585

I agree with what has already been said by Chris, Cross and Alex. Large scale and mandatory events are counterproductive, while small local events can help activity in a perfectly controlled way. As for your fame system, I don't think it will help members come up with plots.

Age : 31 Posts : 1490

Panda wrote:: I agree with Chris, Cross and Alex. Large scale and mandatory events are counterproductive, while small local events can help activity in a perfectly controlled way.

A Suggestion For Plots Yes%2Bsir%2BD%2Bthis%2Bgif%2Bwas%2Bgolden%2B_483d2e3ead21878f296690ac04d468c4

Edit: If organized and done right.

Age : 32 Posts : 1912

Well, you lot can do whatever the fuck you want, Konoha stuff is already in the process, and should be up this week if I can reach Amy >_>

Posts : 372

Small events tend to breed large events as is.

Age : 34 Posts : 718

This can be locked and archived. It's fallen off topic entirely. This thread was not for people to throw out plot ideas but rather about a single idea on how plots overall could be approached.

Age : 29 Posts : 4301

Solved.