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[Aristotle]

Hi everyone. I've been using Storycrafter for probably around four years now (I used to be on here as Plato, but unfortunately that account is tied to a now dead email address, and I can't remember the password for the life of me. But that's by-the-by). In all that time, I've only taken part as a player.

However, I've had an idea for a story kicking around for a while now, and I'm planning on finally taking the plunge and setting myself up as an SC. There's probably about a month of planning and world-building to go before it's ready to be released upon the world, but it seemed like time to try and picked the brains of some of the members of this site that are more experienced at running stories.

So, does anyone have anyone have any advice for someone setting up their first story? Tips, tricks, things to avoid? I'd be grateful for any pointers.

[Praetorian]

Firstly, it's all about presentation: detail helps, but too much can be daunting. Show a good plot with some idea of depth. A good backstory always helps.

If it's a rule based game, try to be as clear about the game rules as possible, rather than copy/paste "Normal SC rules apply". Try to keep rules and background SPERATE (It's why there are two pages...)

Try to avoid having the SC as a main party character. A Plot Vital NPC is fine... but if they're the central hero, tends to take the focus off the players.

Give players details, as much as possible without confusing them (Ensuring continuity) so that they can make a good character (Good detail and depth tends to attract the better class of writer...)

DON'T get disheartened if your game only gets 1 app in three days. Sometimes players have a "wait and see" attitude: many large stories are made then just crumble after an hour! So, maybe throw updates, some background "story" examples, and you'll draw in people.

Arguably, however, no "formula" is a winning one. Some simple games get tonnes of players, just via the concept. Some really well thought out and complex games get maybe 2... And some just don't take off. You need something that seperates it from other games and acts as a hook.

Well, enough of my vanilla advice. Hope this is sueful, but I'm always happy to engage in a discussion about what works and what sometimes doesn't LOTS of good and bad experience on my end (As a good and bad admin...)

[Aristotle]

Thank you for the tips, Praetorian, much appreciated!

With regards to rules, I'll be avoiding them in the 'stats and dice rolls' sense (as I find it tends to slow things down to much), but there will be rules of player conduct, how their actions can affect NPC's, etc, which I'll try to lay out clearly from the off.

For world detail, I'm working on a fair amount of stuff (possibly too much to lay all of it out at the start, but tabletop experience has taught me it's better to know too much about your world and have to hold some bit back for latter than too little and be forced to wing it). Currently, though, I'm aiming to present all of the background info 'in character'; by posting a thread with extracts from fictional scholarly articles, letters, etc, to lay out the details (as you can probably tell, I'm going down the fantasy route). Does that sound workable, or potentially more vexing to the players than just laying everything out in a straightforward manner?

As you can probably tell, I'm going down the fantasy route: I'm aiming for a George RR Martin-esq tone, if it had Guillermo del Toro as a visual director. It should be interesting, if I can bring it all together.