Ramona - A Guard in Ashford House Colours, Bigsby - A Thoughtful Looking Young Man in Nondescript Clothing, 2 Ashford Archer, 1 Ashford Scout arrive, following Lisebet.

Arvie arrives, following Gaspar.

3 First Legion Centurions, 3 Setarcan Royal Shields arrive, following Patrizio.

3 Armed Confessors arrives, following Insaya.

Lou says in Crownlands shav, "Bear with me as I work on this because I forgot to feed and walk puppies, so I'll be trying to do that in between poses. Most of my stuff is pre-written, though I'm sure I'll have missed some things."

Sylvie says in Nox'alfar, "same, tho."

Lou says, "Bear with me as I work on this because I forgot to feed and walk puppies, so I'll be trying to do that in between poses. Most of my stuff is pre-written, though I'm sure I'll have missed some things."

Lou says, "Make sure you are on Arvani language too, even if the log will translate it."

Lou says, "Welcome to my seminar on plots. Plotting has changed a lot over the last few years, and not all of those changes have been recorded. So, I figured I'd give an overview on plotting in general to help out players who might be confused on how to move forward with plots and motivations. I'd asked in advance for questions from players so I could be ready for answers, but I never received anything for any of the times I requested that information. I had hoped to be a bit more prepared in advance. So, I'm going to talk a bit and open the floor for questions.}"

Lou says, "Generally speaking, plots can be used for a number of different things. A player GM can create a plot for a player that might want to go and do something, and we refer to that as a PRP (player run plot), this is what we traditionally think of when we talk about plots. As this is the most cut and dried way to do plots, I'm going to skip this a moment and move on to the other ways to use the plotting system.

However, a player can also create a plot to track their progress on anything they want to do; in these instances, a player should both have a plot and a goal. They'll link their goal to the plot. This is especially important if you want to do things like host ritual of cleansing (which can still be run through a plot!), track your character secret, or dig into a mystery of some sort."

Lou says, "For instance, during the beginning of Bastion plot, the Metallic Traitor/Horned God (they're the same person, just lots of different ways to reference him), took an item out of the Grayson Crypts. We know it's 1) magical, and 2) clearly a bad thing since the Traitor wanted it. I've got a plot set up to track the progress of what that item is and what we can do to potentially destroy it or take it out of play. My character has held a lot of meetings, started research into the item itself, and broken the news to the characters that the item will most effect, as it is a weapon. She's also talked to others who might or might not have had visions about this item."

Lou says, "With tracking plots in this fashion, you can hold @cal events for your hosted meetings (highly encouraged) or set up flashbacks for those you can't meet in a face to face. You complete the RP, and then when that RP session is over, you can plot/createbeat to write a summary of what was discused, and then plot/add/rpevent to add the log or plot/add/flashback to add the flashback to that specific beat."

Lou says, "What the beats do is give you a trackable log of progress of what your character has done so that any character you've added to the plot, at any stage, can use the plots/timeline command to review all that has been accomplished so far. And, if you later decide to add a GM to the plot, they can also see your progress. Or, if you decide to create an @action for the plot, you can use this plot as a reference so staff can review what you've done already. They can go directly to you for any clarification, if what you've written in the @action or in your plot notes isn't particularly clear. The best practice is to make sure you've included enough detail that either staff or the players helping you understand your past actions."

Lou says, "If your plot requires investigations or clues to move forward, as some do require a clue to progress to the next stage, at least through actions, you can record all of the clues that you've discovered that relates to your plot. With the plots/add/clue command. And, if your plot is associated with a particular metaplot character, line mine is the Horned God / Metallic Traitor, you can plot/tag that plo with the same tags as the appropriate linked clues. In this case, it would be plot/tag Horned God - with ties maybe to the Sylv'alfar War, and the War of Stolen Names - since this plot is all going back to 500 years ago and why the Horned God has his panties in a bunch over Alarice's success over his endeavors."

Sparrow, an enthusiastic and bubbly assistant arrives, delivering a message to Aconite before departing.

Lou says, "In the meantime, if you have goals associated with the plot, you can goal/rfr on it once every 30 days. Goals can only be used to get things like non-combat skills, XP, prestige, or legend. IE: The stuff that's tangible, but doesn't give you story action."

Lou says, "If you want to do an @action, a player can do one action per episode. Episodes are those periods of GMing that tell a story from start to finish. You'll know when an episode over because the heading on the Story Updates will change names. Right now, it's the Sack of Bastion. You can submit an @action for that episode until the name changes. As far as I'm aware, though I /could/ be wrong, the only deadline to submit a personal action for an episode is the changing of the name of that episode on the Story Updates board. The deadlines in the +crisis were only for the ORG crisis actions for the crisis events, unless you opted to use a personal action to affect one of the crisis events, then it applied there too. Personal actions are not considered a crisis action otherwise."

Lou says, "If you are not certain where to get started on something, sometimes the best thing you can do is go to staff in a +prprequest (this still works) and just ask or find a player GM and get them to ask or submit a PRP on your behalf. When asking staff, be specific about what it is you want to do. So, say, if you have a clue that generally refers to a demon roaming a particular spat of land, and you're not sure if anyone has cleared it out yet, that's the best time to go to staff and see if there's still maybe rumors of demonic activity in that area - and if it would be possible if a player GM could run that sort of event, and what Risk level might be needed to run that sort of event. Staff will give you the details you need to move forward, either with a PRP GM or otherwise. In some cases, but this is less likely, they might even decide to just run it for you if they have time. The same goes if you decide to just have a PRP GM submit it on your behalf too."

3 Armed Confessors have been dismissed.

Lou says, "If you have a gift, as some characters do, that you want to explore. You can submit a plut on your own behalf that allows you to explore that gift. When you do, in the section for GM Notes, tell staff how you want to explore your gift. For example, your character has the ability to dreamwalk, maybe. This allows you to go into other people's dreams. You've told a few people about your ability and they want you to find a dream they keep forgetting, because something happened to make you forget, and that's important. You'd set up a plot just like a PRP GM would, with all of the same information, but instead of telling staff what you intend to do as a GM in the GM notes section, you tell them what it is your character intends to do and how you intend to do it."

Lou says, "In this example, in the GM notes, I'd say: My character is going to gather her friends a long with Jenny (our forgetful dreamer) to help with find the missing Dream Jenny wants to find. She'd try to bring all of her trustd friends along with her while she dreamwalks, and hopes to attempt to cooperatively work with Jenny, whose dream she intends to walk, to find the dream. She'd hope that Jenny would be able to be aware enough or with them during this dreaming delve to help guide them as best she can. They'll be trying to access the memory without being killed by other things in the dream, since dreamwalking is crazy, stupid, dangerous that might be trying to keep them from it. If it gets too dangerous, she'd try to pull everyone back out of it, hopefully safely."

Lou says, "This type of plot, the actionable, I'm going to go do a thing about my secret kind of plot, would be considered a subplot if the plot you are using to track your progress. When it gets submitted, you'll want to make sure to add the =TrackingPLot# at the end of this one. This tags it as a subplot, which you can see, on your main plot. For instance, in my Mapping Arvum To and Fro plot wiht the Explorers, I have a main tracking plot that shows all of the plots I've run, as well as my personal progress as my tracking plot has some goals for Lou too once I finish GMing everything for it. You can see how subplots link together on your tracking plot here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1J0Lad8DVTsWu2kWJAbN4x3bfXm0SC4C5qHkio-bwMsE/edit?usp=sharing"

Lou says, "I tried to highlight all the various things I listed previously in there discussed above so you can more readily see all the beats I had put together too."

Lou says, "Staff would review your plot and add notes to it on their end, and either approve it or send it back to you with notes for updates. They'd let you know what Risk Level GM you need to find and then when it's approved, you add all of your friends and Jenny to the plot, and the GM as an extra. The GM would then +prprequest to staff to get the notes they added to your plot so they'd be aware of any any information staff will allow you to find, as well as what the GMing rolls will be to help determine the success or failure of obtaining that information, and what any consequences might be for failure. IE: loss of stats, damage, emotional or mental trauma, etc. Dreamingwalking is crazy, stupid, dangerous! The GM gets the notes and then schedules the scene with you! In this case, where you are doing an actionable plot, the GM would add the beats to your subplot and submit it for a staff review for any additional rewards, if there are any. IE: prestige, money, legend, materials, etc - are typical rewards from plots."

Lou says, "You would also want to create a beat for your tracking plot for whatever IC flavor you'd add on your end of the adventure you took or the ritual you cast or whatever it was you were doing. The subplot is already linked, and ideally you'd link the RP log to the subplot itself, but I'd still mention which @cal event it was in the beat, as RP logs can only be linked to one plot. I think there's something in the GitHUB about fixing that so more than one plot can claim an RP log since an RP log might fit more than one plot."

Lou says, "As for getting ideas on how or where to start, if you'd rather just brainstorm on your own, the best thing to do is just ask a group of people to help you with things that might seem fun. In some cases, clues might give you ideas, or you could reach out to any NPCs that might be willing to help out, if you ask them about certain topics. When you do get your ideas, and decide to take that next step to either get a Gm to PRP for you or to set up your actionable, non-tracking personal plot (IE: the like the Dreamingwalking scenario above), try to be as specific as possible so your player GM or the staff member working on your information, knows exactly what it is you want out of your experience and can tailor their notes to the player GM with that in mind."

Lou says, "As a Senior GM, I've had people come to me with - I want a horror story and it won't be fun unless there's something big and dark for me to fight. I can work with that, and I have, and they got a version of the Hobbit's Shelob out of it (gigantic, magical, former Abyssal familiar spider that ate travelers) because they weren't specific and I kinda had to guess what would be dark and horrific for them to fight. So, if you have a specific idea of what you want to do, we can make sure it's good on your behalf, otherwise we work on hope and a prayer :) We want you to enjoy what it is we're doing for you."

Lou says, "For your tracking plot, if you've kept everything up to date, and want to see what sort of worldly affect your actions might have had, that's when you plots/rfr it to staff's attention. Give them a brief summary about what it is you've been doing, and let them know how you think it's affected the world overall, and what sort of outcome you are hoping for. This is where you've seen the Vox posts for Faye's traveling library or Mabelle's creation of the Laurent Art District pop up - where you got to see what the world thinks of the things they've been working on once they felt their project was complete enough to plots/rfr it."

Lou says, "This is where I've run out of stuff I've pre-written. This is a link to a plot that I've written for the Clement family as a GM, along with the plot seed they gave me. As a GM, staff asks us to answer 5 questions, which I've found has also really helped me consider things as a player that I want to do as well. Those 5 questions are listed in the plot write up. But, I kinda also wanted you to see the 'behind the scenes' process of how we have to present stuff to staff as well, in case it helped you think about stuff you are doing moving forward: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1k65eIduBU4RFQIZ-rO6mB6gA6XoZe1ilFnclqgON0fA/edit?usp=sharing

You cal also find some of this same information in 'help rfr' (that is also long)."

Lou says, "=You can also find some of this same information in 'help rfr' (that is also long)."

Wash says, "So do goals have to be part of a plot now? or a subplot?"

Lou says, "Goals are purely for your personal use. It's helpful to have a goal if you want to get additional XP or other rewards for completing them, but they're totally not necessary. I have found that the minimum XP they give you for a goal, which you can submit on the same one over and over again, is 50. You can sometimes more than 50 XP, depending on what you've written up and whether or not you've submitted on it before."

Lou says, "I also use goals to get legend for a plot that a player GM doesn't submit a legend reward for, but that's because I was working to become a Legendary Explorer also."

Lou says, "I'm going to open the floor to general questions. If you have one, please use line/getinline"

Lou says, "And hopefully I haven't confused you further!"

Gaspar has joined the line.

Lierre has joined the line.

Mia says in Sylv'alfar, "If you can ask IC instead of using the OOC tags, which I know seems unnatural for an entirely OOC conversation, it will appear in the logs for others to read. Just FYI."

Mia says, "....It also might help if I wear speaking the right language when I said that."

Aconite says, "Sorry about that."

Lou says, "One thing I DO want to bring up is that staff is also allowing plots to be used for Domain changes again. The caveat is that you have to use an @action to get the reward for the Domain changes. You can use the PRP to do the story related part, and then when you are ready you can use your once per episode per player @action to request your domain changes, letting staff know everything you did to get the changes, as well as any additions to those actions you took through PRPs to follow up to ensure the changes stuck. SO, maybe a GM ran a PRP where you found a shanty town, you fought pirates to rid them of the menace, but you still had to convince the people of the Shanty town to become your subjects, which in turn allows you to claim the land for your own, thus increasing the area in your Domain. The PRP was the cleaning out of pirates, the action follow up would be all the people you RP'd with about helping you to convince the town's survivors to join your domain, allowing that land to be claimed and your poplation to be increased. This is where you'd ask your friends who are diplomats to help, etc."

Mia says, "Nono, don't apologize! I just wasn't sure anyone realized."

Lou grins at Mia.

Turn in line: Gaspar

Gaspar says, "So, the spoopy Lyceum ghost that's been hovering about: It sounds like creating a plot to investigate that might be a good idea for me/Gaspar. But I've had people reach out to me about that and we're going to meet on Monday to discuss it. Would it be wise to create a cal event for the meeting to attach it to the plot or would that be overkill if it's just a meeting to talk about mutual experiences? I am..not a jump in feet first kind of guy, so I usually err on the side of not making a mistake in "Lou" of taking a chance. -.-"

Lou says, "Yes! Absolutely do create that @cal event. That way you can capture the RP. The whole idea around plots is to ensure that you are RPing around something, chatting about it with like minded individuals, creating plants, bringing other players in to help you with it, and staff absolutely wants to see the evidence you are doing that. It also lends credibility to the fact that you are RPing about it."

Lou says, "I've even forgotten to @cal things a time or two, but I keep RP logs. I turn it around and throw it all in a Flashback just so I can add it to a plot later.""

Gaspar says, "And on the topic of domain changes, do you know what the extent of those changes are? How much can change? Are potential elevations back on the table?"

Corrigan has joined the line.

Lou says, "That I can't answer. Specifically, Apostate addresses it in BB News/80 (which for log purposes, the number will change. It's the News post titled: Actions and Previous RFR restrictions dated 11/12/21)"

Gaspar says, "Thanks so much, I'll check it out. :)"

Turn in line: Lierre

Alberico, the Malespero aide, Louis, a Malespero Armsman, Mar, the Magpie arrive, following Pasquale.

Lierre says, "Thanks for this, Lou. Very helpful and informative. Okay, question: are there any limits to how small scale and loose/sandboxy a plot can be? Like a plot with a pitch that's something like, "I want to explore these [insertplace] woods and see what I find" with GM'd scenes that feature maybe one or two players, with players not knowing exactly what they'll find?"

Arvie leaves, following Gaspar.

Lou says, "I'll be honest. With the exception of maybe 1 or 2 players telling me they know X, Y or Z - where any of those could be monsters or shav'arvani maybe being in the area, that's kinda how most of the plot seeds I've gotten for the 14 explorer plots I've done over the last year. It helps to know the sorts of things you might LIKE to find, but we can generally just make it up as we go along too. I've thrown demons, cultists, giant spiders, abyssal creatures, shav'arvani settlements, etc at people in those instances. It doesn't really matter how many people you bring, just so long as it is generally more than just you. Plots are meant to be spread out. I've personally done a secret delving plot for my character with just 2 or 3 other players joining me in the shenanigans. So, there you go.""

Lierre says, "Thanks! I was hoping I could sort of stumble into a relevant plot thread that way."

Lierre says, "That answers my question very well."

Lou says, "I don't know that my stuff was relevant when I threw it at people, but I've definitely thrown some meta plot hints at folk. Like, I've had the Traitor/Horned God's cultists harassing, capturing, and scouring the land of shav'arvani with any type of magical talent on Mia's lands, as an example, while he was ramping up to do more bad. He's traditionally known to reap an area of any people he can find to make some of his monsters."

Turn in line: Corrigan

Lierre says, "Perfect!"

Corrigan says, "Hi Lou, so like what exactly is the difference between beats and flashpoints? Are beats written in a way that would be a step by step summary of an rp scene? And can flashbacks be either a rp log or a summary of said past scene if a log isn't available? Can I just keep adding those in and they stack, or do they override each other?"

Lou says, "Flashbacks are generally RP logs too. Flashbacks are a tool you can use for asynchronous RP. So, say you have someone across the globe you needed to scene with for something, you can use a Flashback to do that. It takes a lot longer to RP it out, in most instances, and sometimes you need to be super patient with people whose RL's have taken grip on them, but they allow you to complete a scene start to end, even if that scene might take a few weeks or longer. but, you can definitely summarize a scene, OR if you created a to yourself (if your client lets you do this) you can populate a Flashback with that log too. Beats are kinda limited in that they can only hold so much information. There's a character limit, where Flashbacks are not beholden to that character limit because it is largely web based and not attribute based like the beats are; the TLDR - there's a difference in how each thing is coded, one for the web and one in game. Beats are also what players/staff see when they type plots/timeline plot#, and are the more immediate way for a player to get up to date on a plot without having to delve into logs or flashbacks. My earlier example on my maps plot shows how a plots/timeline listing comes up. I can repost the link if you need it."

Lou says, "If you created a LOG for yourself is how that should have read."

Lou says, " And to answer your other question, you can add as many Flashbacks to a particular beat as needed. However, you need a Beat to add the Flashback or RP event at all."

Corrigan says, "Ohhhh ok! perfection, thank you and thank you for this event! everything is crystal now"

Lou says, "I typically add a beat either after each meeting or each cluster of meetings if they are related to each other. Then add all of the supporting documents afterwards. Then when something new happens, that gets its own beat with its own supporting evidence."

Lou says, "I do not have anyone else in line. Are there any other questions?"

Mia says, "Basically, I think of flashbacks as IC records and beats of OOC records of things that happened IC. Though I could be wrong because I am terrible at systems."

Lou says, "Yeah. I always kinda write stuff up from a past tense - this is how it all happened - kinda sense for the beat."

How to you get the scene in the logger? Griffin wonders.

Lou says, "An @cal event automatically logs. This is why we are using say rather than OOC, so people can see everything."

Lou says, "OOC is cut out of logs completely, so you'd only see the IC parts."

Lou says, "It looks like we are winding down. So, I hope that means I've managed to answer the most pressing questions in my write up! I'll give it 5 more minutes and then I'll close out the log, unless someone has anything else."

3 Armed Confessors have been dismissed.

Wash has joined the line.

Turn in line: Wash

Wash says, "If you leave a plot before it is resolved, do you leave the cast? So if a plot is over, but the player is gone/missing/idle/retired, how do you get it off your list?"

Griffin is overheard praising Lou: Thanks for the brief on prps!

Lou says, "If you leave a plot before it's resolved or before it's closed out, you are removed completely from the cast and cannot see anything pertaining to the plot any longer. Only people on a plot can see the plot information. However, if the plot owner is dead and/or retired, there's a couple of things you could do. If you were still interested in pursuing the plot, you could +request to staff to be made the new owner, so that you can keep all the current tracking history, clues, RP logs, and flashbacks, and then start adding your own content to it as the new leader of the plot. Or, you can ask that staff close it out since only staff, the GM, or the owner can use the plots/close command. I took over Aiden's old plot looking into griffons by requesting to staff to be set as the new owner of the plot, for instance."

Wash has joined the line.

Wash says, "How many plots is too many plots?"

Lou says, "LOL. Between GMing, being a participant, and having my own personal tracking plots (8 of them!!) I have 33. So I cannot answer that question."

Wash says, "Why are some of my plots yellow and some gray?"

Turn in line: Wash

Lou says, "Yellow plots are plots you've been invited to, but have not accepted. Gray plots are those that you have accepted. Accept the yellow plot with plots/accept Plot# and they will go gray."

Wash says, "Oh shoot. I didn't know that!"

Lou says, "Once you accept it, I think you can also plots/rewardrecruiter <plot ID>=<recruiter> and get the free XP for joining a plot."

Lou says, "Okay. Imma gonna close out the log here. Thank you for coming everyone and if you have questions later, feel free to ping me if you see me around."

Pasquale has a red plot. Is that just someone being artistic?

Lou says, "Very likely they used color in the title, which is discouraged."

Lou says, "There were a few of them like that before staff told people to cut it out."

Flores D'loto, a deep golden dappled buckskin Torean stallion, Briar, the fleet and agile shrike, Alejandro, a gravely sober middle-aged Torean leave, following Aconite.