Ideas For a Plot Voting System

[Kinaed]

I'd like to add a system to the game where people could suggest plots, other people could vote to have the plot happen, then it does with check by the staff to approve it. Any idea how that might work?

[Olither]

I actually like that idea alot. I think that player ran plots would be interesting, too, with immortal approval, like a Daravi smuggling soldiers into the city or a mysterious gentry buying out the Merchant's Guild.

[Kinaed]

I agree - it'd reduce the load on the staff to run plots, and it'd be cool if players could.

So, how do we do something like that? Any caveats/rules about how it could or should work? What might it look like?

[Callista]

Why does this necessarily need to be voted on by people? Wouldn't advanced knowledge of such actually take away from the surprise and potential fun of it?

Why not skip the middle man and go straight to the imms with plot ideas? I'd like to see flexibility with the imms and the potential removal of RPA when its for the benefit on mudwide rp (and not personal gain/getting out of a tight spot/etc). Let's say I go to the imms with an idea (Daravi smugglers, as was the example used before), and I had a plan on who it might involve and how I planned to implement such. If it was considered for the benefit of the game, it'd be nice to get some assistance in such FREE rather than spending QP for it. There will still be some issues as to what is considered personal gain and what is 'for the good of the game', but this might be a good way to go as well.

[Kinaed]

Can't keep that stuff residing too strongly with the staff because the staff doesn't have the necessary time to pull it off.

On TI, the responsibility for having and generating RP fun is and always has been that of the players. We provide the environment and tools, but running plots and whatnot is a time consuming exercise, and most of the imm staff work a 40 hour week before coming home to relax on the game. It doesn't mean all RP on TI should be about tea cozies, however.

The voting idea was just to keep plots in perspective and prevent players from being able to force something really nasty - like there are PC nobles, so who would be upset if the heir of House <name> died? Vette plots by the pbase, for example.

In general, it seems like a good idea, but implementing it on the right level of granularity is hard. We don't want people putting in plots that just target others, nor do we want plots that players cannot run by themselves being the mainstay of the system. Finally, whatever it is, it needs to generate RP rather than either linger off to the side as a 'nice idea, but of no real practical use.'