Are you creating your own plot?

No one is "running" plots. Tell the story of your character and hope that plot happens.

Cute.

I have the sneaking feeling that players tend to preface most pcs with a grinding period.   It solves the problems of thieves who can't steal anything, merchants who can't make money, or warriors who can't kill anything.

I suppose I'm asking if people get trapped in prepwork like this.   If the desired story is "play a byn sergeant", do you find you ever get there?

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To answer your original post, i and my friends made our own plots. the staff mainly got in our way. Story of anyone driven, really. i also did my own plots while solo which was usually less prone to staff dickery. And i tried to keep busy in the prepgrind phase with things that werent skill grinding in either case.

Well yeah, in that sense, it's kind of hard to get caught in prep work because once you get to "good" level it's hard to hide that aspect of yourself. Once you know how the game works, it's kind of hard to get stuck in that. I think that's why you have players that say the game is too easy, make it harder. So in a sense, especially since staff is more like "tell your own story. We'll help you.....maybe." There's a lot of needless death and storing.

i think a couple of problems with this kind of winning is a) what happens when you DO make Byn sergeant? B) what happens when you CANNOT make Byn sergeant? Now I'm using the Byn as an example, just like you did. But the point there is, I've seen people store after they've made it or they're kind of stuck because there's a long lived character in the position. 

The next problem are those players that want to play their character as "struggling through the harsh life of a zalanthian" or "the fuckup". The way skills are coded, you're eventually going to get good at the skills you're purposefully being bad at. So again, they kind of end up storing the character after a while, because how long can you fail at grebbing?

i think people end up getting killed a lot during prepwork, because they get impatient with the grind (a common player problem). Because really, why is my 30 year old warrior woman bad at every warrior skill on the sheet, when she's been a warrior all her life? Suppose I don't want to be a fuck up to start out with? Suppose I can't log in when my Byn sergeant is on, to go on little "kill five jozhal" missions on field training day?

i guess what I'm saying here is winning like that is limited to the code or who's in an org. If your goal is a coded one, you'll get there but that could get boring. If it's not coded, how do you do it without staff's help?

The notion of players spontaneously generating plots out of nothing is completely overrated, but it has nevertheless managed to somehow become an expectation that today's RPI admins push onto players. These days, if you don't spew a fountain of plots, you're not allowed to be unhappy with anything on an RPI. Same thing happened over on SoI, the human town had essentially no admin presence whatsoever for the first two months, but when people complained that there was nothing going on they were just told "well, run some plots." Meanwhile, the game was completely bereft of any plot material.

You can't fucking "run plots" if there's nothing to work with. If the game hasn't got anything on which to base something beyond everyday roleplay, it's not going to happen. The kinds of plots (using the term very loosely to mean basically anything out of the ordinary) that you can create with no hook are always shallow and contrived. I remember back on Arm a few years ago I mailed staff to comment that the criminal side of the game was utterly dead and without even the slightest bit of material to work with, and an admin suggested that I rob a fucking tavern. I'm not going to discard my character in order to generate some so-called plot that's dead on arrival and can't possibly lead to anything worthwhile.

A game needs to be set up in a way that fosters the kind of roleplay that, over time, naturally leads to plots. You need things for criminals to do that make sense, are realistically doable, and that others will care about. This in turn will create purpose for the law enforcement clan in the area, which will lend relevancy to the templars, nobles and merchants, and so on. That's just one example; it could be a somewhat functional economy creating actual competition between merchants, which gives them reasons to hire crooks or bribe templars. It could be a well-designed wilderness that gives tribes and hunters a reason to care about the existence of other tribes or hunters.

It all trickles down (or up) in this way, but it needs to start with something designed into the game which the players can shape into activities and events that are meaningful. SoI hasn't got this, Arm hasn't had it for years, and it seems to simply be a forgotten thing in today's RPIs. If the game is just created as a bland, featureless expanse of rooms and towns with none of the design that breeds friction and interdependency, plots will always be these artificial "I have to come up with something to do in order to get noticed" stories that are full of shit and clichés.

dude its no different now than it was over a decade ago as far as making ur own plots go. u start with other players and then see what unfolds. jcarter hit it on the money and it sounds like u expect others to do shit for u and u have the nerve to say the game isnt welldesigned fuck ppl got on just well when it was even shittier. i may be a hater on a lot of imm leadership but the game design and world being a barren backdrop for plots is straight up some of the stupidest shit ive heard here. maybe ull have to clarify that but ur way off on that afaic

If money were given back some meaning (i.e. if you could actually do anything with it beyond a certain point, like buying property, wagons or carts, status, rented NPC help like door guards, gladiator slaves to pit against each other, quarry teams for excavating stone for major city projects, and many such other ideas), and at the same time it was made less easy to get from grinding, then there would be plots galore for obtaining it.

The introduction of subguilds with crafting skills turned out to be a great way to demotivate people from seeking money from others.