Pacing

[dunlaing]

IIRC, Spider's battle against the Smiler could be seen as one long, slow Story Arc--or perhaps several. Perhaps you could place a limit like "only one card may be played to the Story Arc per conflict scene, period" to get that long, slow burn feel of Transmet. Hmmm, maybe I'll polish up that idea for my long-term pacing issues.

I think it would be worth looking at pacing from both sides actually. As written, With Great Power... has a bit of a "writing for the trade" feel to it. It seems like it would be impossible to resolve a story arc in one night, and nigh impossible to resolve one in four sessions.

It would be nice if there were some way to scale the Story Arc. Maybe a certain number of asterisks for each space on the Story Arc? If you're playing a long story arc, use all the spaces. If you're playing a medium length story arc, use only the spaces with at least two asterisks. If you're playing a short story arc, use only the spaces with at least three asterisks, etc.

Obviously, you'd want to use something cooler than asterisks.

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There's a thing called the "Levitz Paradigm" that describes how Paul Levitz used to write Legion of Super Heroes stories. He'd have one story running as the A plot, while the B plot would get a few pages and the C plot would get a brief mention. The next month, the B plot would take center stage, the C plot would get a few pages, and a new D plot would get a brief mention.

It may be beyon the scope a bt, but it would be interesting to see guidelines for how to run a campaign using multiple Story Arcs that run concurrently at different stages.

[Mike Holmes]

That sounds very cool. And very doable. Just need separate tracks for each plot, and jump around back and forth somehow...

Hmmm.

Mike

[dunlaing]

You might also need seperate Importances for each plot (although in LSH each plot would typically involve different characters).

Or should the fact that Bouncing Boy has established that his Love For Duo Damsel is important in the Great Darkness Saga carry over to Mordru Wakes Up?

[Mike Holmes]

Hmm. Actually, thinking about it, each character should have one or more arcs going (instead of everyone on the same arc). You participate in scenes on any arc, but your stats only count for your arc.

Would that work?

Then all you need, again, is some mechanism for who's A this session. I'm seeing something like PTA's episode rating method for this.

There are probably problems with this, but it sounds really, really cool. Because, indeed, comics don't end all the stories for each character at the same time, or start them. So players should be allowed to get through them as quickly as makes sense for the story in question.

I'm thinking that there could be benefits for participating in another character's arc. To keep everybody interested in each.

Hmmm.

Mike

[Michael S. Miller]

Hi, Mike & Bill.

I've got a very table-level way of thinking about games, so here's what appeared in my brain when I read your comments above:

GM with Thought Balloon: "Let's see, my 2s and 3s are still wild against Bill, because he's just started a new Story Arc, but only my red 2s are wild against Mike because he's on space #6 of his Arc. That also means that he can draw from this green-backed deck of cards, an so can I, only if I'm acting against Bill. And I have to be careful about what Aspects I Imperil because Mike can Devastate them, but as long as I keep them to scenes that only Bill is involved in, they're safe. --Now why have Mike & Bill fallen asleep while I'm deciding what card to play next?"

Multiple Story Arcs is definitely in Advanced Optional Rule Territory. The complexity it could add is mind-boggling. You're both absolutley right that it would do a great job of mirroring the nature of actual comics: stories without end. If either of you, or anyone else, has ideas of how to make it work, go for it. Right now, I've got too much on my plate.

[dunlaing]

See, this is why the money flow goes from us to you. You're supposed to do the hard work :)

If you stick to the Levitz paradigm model, things won't be quite so complicated as your thought balloon, since there will be seperate plots, not just seperate story arcs. It's more of a "Darkseid only gets to draw from this one deck in this scene" and then in a later scene "Ok, we're on Mordru, so I get all the decks back and 3s are wild again." You'd never have competing rules in the same scene.

To do what Mike is suggesting, I think you'd need to revise the rules considerably to make it more workable. Perhaps leave the GM's rules constant and only change PC rules. (e.g., instead of dropping wild 3s, the PCs get additional wilds) That way, the GM doesn't have to consider where in the story arc each character is (and probably shouldn't--that's how Bouncing Boy saves the day, he's always being misunderestimated)