Poofing Plots

[kitwolf 0]

How do you handle the dropped plots? That has always been my big gripe when someone poofs.  You have relationships, plots and other interactions that are now suddenly dead in the water. its a reality of how we play/write but what do guys do when the activity check clears out half the characters.  Restart the pots? Pretend relationships didn't happen?

[jenneral_jennson 154]

25 minutes ago, kitwolf said:

How do you handle the dropped plots? That has always been my big gripe when someone poofs.  You have relationships, plots and other interactions that are now suddenly dead in the water. its a reality of how we play/write but what do guys do when the activity check clears out half the characters.  Restart the pots? Pretend relationships didn't happen?

 

I retcon relationships so they never happened or have the other person deceased or they broke up and the partner left town (can anyone say character growth?). I do the latter more than I ever do the former. Why waste a learning experience for a character? 

 

I also tend to connect these characters of mine with players who I know without a doubt will remain and probably never leave.

Edited August 26, 2017 by jenneral_jennson
Editing to add

[Elena 546]

50 minutes ago, kitwolf said:

How do you handle the dropped plots? That has always been my big gripe when someone poofs.  You have relationships, plots and other interactions that are now suddenly dead in the water. its a reality of how we play/write but what do guys do when the activity check clears out half the characters.  Restart the pots? Pretend relationships didn't happen?

 

I never pretend it did not happen. Whatever had been written (or half written and half planned) has happened as planned. I cannot restart plots, but I can give them a new twist and take some characters out somehow. Others remain in the shadows as NPCs. 

 

Characters have been killed in battles, lost at sea, sent back to Europe, run away with a lover, fallen ill and sent to hospital, arrested, sold in slavery, kidnapped, etc.

Edited August 26, 2017 by Elena

[featherstone 69]

If it's just an unfinished scene, and that was our first meeting, I'll retcon it away. If it's an actual plot, I'll NPC the poofed guy and find any conceivable excuse to justify their disappearance. I actually wrote posts on purpose to tie loose ends, explaining that someone had left the city, someone had died, etc. Once I had to kill off a character because their absence was preventing a very important plot from advancing. That death is still a plot point in the board's history, becoming an excuse for additional developments.

[Uaithne 543]

As much as possible, I try to be proactive. In request threads, I tend to mention that if the other person goes inactive, I can and will work it into the plot. Sometimes I say that if the character has under X number of posts before the member poofs, I'll request someone else for the position.

 

Obviously, this can't always happen. If I still have communication with the member, I see what they want to do, and I also allow them a guilt-free "out" so that they don't stick with it (and still not be active). Sometimes people will irrationally cling to a role or plot because they feel bad or obligated.

 

If I can't get ahold of them I normally just figure out a way for my character to carry on. Most of the time I don't retcon unless we didn't get very far. Character development is character development. I don't tend to kill the other character off because it's not my character. I come up with another reason.

[featherstone 69]

23 minutes ago, Uaithne said:

As much as possible, I try to be proactive. In request threads, I tend to mention that if the other person goes inactive, I can and will work it into the plot. Sometimes I say that if the character has under X number of posts before the member poofs, I'll request someone else for the position.

 

Obviously, this can't always happen. If I still have communication with the member, I see what they want to do, and I also allow them a guilt-free "out" so that they don't stick with it (and still not be active). Sometimes people will irrationally cling to a role or plot because they feel bad or obligated.

 

If I can't get ahold of them I normally just figure out a way for my character to carry on. Most of the time I don't retcon unless we didn't get very far. Character development is character development. I don't tend to kill the other character off because it's not my character. I come up with another reason.

 

Killing them off is a last resort. In that case, character poofed in the middle of a scene where she had to give another char an essential contribution. I could godmod her into being helpful, or unhelpful, or just drop a bridge on her - which was justified in context, and at least didn't turn her into something the player wouldn't ever have thought.

 

As a side note - I used to try to contact a player in every way before writing them out, but lately I've been told that off-site contacts are rather creepy. So whatever, I guess?

[jenneral_jennson 154]

36 minutes ago, featherstone said:

As a side note - I used to try to contact a player in every way before writing them out, but lately I've been told that off-site contacts are rather creepy. So whatever, I guess?

 

Yeah, I don't do any of that. Not because of the creep factor (it's not really especially if you have their contact info for that specific reason) but because I don't care enough to bother. I give them a long while before I move on. If they verbally quit its immediate but if they just fade away I give them a month or two to reappear and then I'm done. No ifs, ands or buts and sans contact. 

Edited August 26, 2017 by jenneral_jennson

[Uaithne 543]

6 hours ago, featherstone said:

As a side note - I used to try to contact a player in every way before writing them out, but lately I've been told that off-site contacts are rather creepy. So whatever, I guess?

 

I think I know what you're referencing and it might be out of context.  Most people will supply off-site contacts if asked; I think it's the making it mandatory it portion that many people think isn't appropriate.  If someone gives me their skype, I have no problems following up with them about their characters and stuff.

 

Edited August 27, 2017 by Uaithne
clarification

[Death Kitten 200]

Okay, the nature of Nova is different from the way you guys play on forums, so I probably should take a moment to calibrate you guys on how it works before I respond to the original question, because it might be a little confusing otherwise.

 

So, in Nova the players work in an unpublished document together behind the scenes, posting it when it's finished. Each finished post is probably most comparable to a thread for you guys, but I think your threads will go for the whole scene, where if things go too long in Nova sometimes we'll split a scene across multiple posts. Once a post is released, it typically is considered to have happened in the game, but it's common for people to revise posts in progress depending on what's happened in others that have released while it was being written.

 

All that to say, if someone disappears before a post is released, often times it'll just get chucked and never released, which can get frustrating, but depending on what's happened in the unpublished post, sometimes it can be cleaned up and reworked to give some sort of wrap up for the characters belonging to the MIA player. If someone leaves after posts have been published, but they're involved in the ongoing plot, we typically try to give some sort of acknowledgement that the characters are gone now, such as mentioning they've been transferred elsewhere, talk about stuff that might have happened "off camera" (for a lack of better term).

 

I have tried to implement a character will on my game, asking for people to state what they want to have happen to their character if they go unexpectedly MIA, but people tend to either give me information in IM (which I'm not gonna remember later) or they just don't acknowledge it at all. If I have someone's contact info outside of the game (that I got from them, I will never ask for someone's contact info from anyone else) or if I know any mutual friends, I'll try to check in to make sure everything's okay and see if they intend to come back. I only consider it creepy to reach out to someone off site and/or outside of the game's chat if the person didn't provide the information to start with.

[VirusZero 176]

If someone vanishes then I'll either:

1- act like their character was there the whole time but doing other things. (Especially since in many missions there are tons of other things they could be doing... Like if the player character's objective is to proceed into an apartment complex to hunt for an enemy then they might head off to clear the area out and get people out.)

 

2- have them come up with a reason to head back to base. (Maybe they took a bad hit and had to fall back. Maybe they found some critical evidence they had to return.)

 

3- kill them off. (Truth is that the games I'm in are often dangerous. Characters get hurt all the time. Active warzones with flying attacks are they very definition of not safe. So it wouldn't be beyond reason that characters could die. Though in many cases I don't kill off characters unless it's at or very near the end of the arc. To give them chances to come back.)

[katherineespair 36]

I only count threads that have been roleplayed. 

 

If a person dissappears in the middle of a thread, that roleplay doesn't count.

 

Then I gage the emotional level of my character. If they are acquaintances that just met, then it really doesn't matter what happened to a stranger. If they had a deep connection and the other person dissappears then it effects my character. They may look for them and hold out hope they'll appear again. If the other person comes back and wants to continue, they will have to deal with the IC consequences of their actions. 

[FriedKilamari 46]

On 8/26/2017 at 11:22 AM, jenneral_jennson said:

 

I retcon relationships so they never happened or have the other person deceased or they broke up and the partner left town (can anyone say character growth?). I do the latter more than I ever do the former. Why waste a learning experience for a character? 

 

I also tend to connect these characters of mine with players who I know without a doubt will remain and probably never leave.

 

I often do the latter, myself! It's a growing opportunity for a character, which I hate wasting.

 

I tend to treat these on a case by case basis? If someone just entered a thread with me and then drops out, I feel less guilty moving on and acting like it never happened. If there was more involvement, I'll still move on, but act as though the characters simply parted ways and go about business as usual, and it leaves room for the person to rejoin at a later date, if they want. It really all comes down to communication, in the end. If someone comes to me and expects to pick up where we left off, exactly where we left off, I'm gonna be a little more prone to saying no; but if they come to me and want to find a way to make the relationship work in the current time, I'm more than cool with that.

 

In a case in which I was the poofer (college and depression are a bad combo), when I came back I talked with the person I had a thread with and we worked out that the characters had gotten separated, and picked up in the current time with them finding each other again. When I poofed again for similar reasons, when I came back a lot of things had changed in the plot, and my rp partner and I came up with a really epic, awesome plot that involved my character traveling through realms to save her friend and would have lead to amazing character growth for both. Unfortunately, we both left that site, but still continue roleplaying together.

[CovertSphinx 710]

I usually go case-by-case basis. Depending on the level of importance to the remaining character(s)/plots, I'll come up with an appropriate write-out that'll push the story along in another direction. If there's only been like, 1 or 2 threads and the connection isn't important, well, often it can be ignored as a "one-off" or "fling". I've gotten pretty darn good (if I can toot my own horn a little bit) at twisting narratives on a whim to push the characters on my boards into new combinations with each other.