Post-Reboot: Setting, tone, and overall direction. Where have we been, and where are we going?
Pemander here. Okay, so the first thing I want to do here is explain to everyone why the reboot had to happen in case any of the players don't really understand it or think it might have been unnecessary. Back when PAMS was still BSAA and the leadership of the RP was different, the intended mood of the RP was pretty light-hearted and overall not super thought-provoking or emotional. I should note that there is absolutely nothing wrong with that, and an RP or literature in any other medium can work really well with that kind of mood and tone setup. The problem (and I think this lead some of the players to be frustrated with the old GMs and vice-versa) was that there was a gradual push from many of the players toward something with a little bit more emotional depth and variation. That rift grew quite a bit over time until it lead to a lot of bad feelings between some of the participants in the RP and caused a pretty huge shift in who was GMing slash 'in charge' of the group. When Dex, Tox, myself, and eventually Nioki took hold of the reins, we recognized the fact we had to make a change in the way this RP was run.
The lot of us agreed that we definitely didn't want to just start a new RP outright, because a number of the players in PAMS had characters that they didn't want to just trash, but they also wouldn't feel comfortable porting them to an entirely new universe without the ability to keep their histories intact. Retcons were also completely out of the question, because while they can be helpful at times, the scale we were looking at made them likely to cause more harm than good. In the end we made the decision to pursue a large-scale setting, mood, and tone change entirely through in-character events so all of us could have our cake and eat it too. The plot that ended in 'The Flood', or what was essentially the return of magic to the world, allowed the players to gradually adjust to the new environment their characters were expected to exist in while also recognizing the way things used to be and avoiding any huge hitches in the backstories.
Overall, I personally think that the reboot could have been done much better than it was. The actual main event (The Flood) worked out really well and everyone played fantastically, but the lead-up to that was jerky and inconsistent - mostly due to my own laziness and impatience. However, there's not much that can be done about that now, and it was an important lesson in how to manage plots that are supposed to involve all the characters.
So the question is: where are we now, and what are we supposed to do? This is a bit open-ended by design - after all, one of the main reasons the reboot had to happen in the first place is that the GMs weren't adjusting well to the direction the players wanted to take. So we're definitely going to be keeping an eye out for criticism/comments from all of you guys in case there's anything in particular you'd like to see or something you want to change. We do, however, have a general idea in mind for where we'd like to take things. This part of the notes is going to basically just end up being me and the other GMs writing things down and discussing them as we think about it, and it's not organized in any particular way. We'll try to keep it trimmed down enough that it's actually worth reading through.
A recurring theme in the RP is the idea of a sort of…fate, or destiny that essentially revolves around narratives - both the narratives of the individual characters and the world as a whole. The PAMS-era Earth (which might actually not be called Earth anymore, we haven't decided yet) is defined by a general adherence to the concept that things what make good stories are more likely to happen, so long as they don't contradict facts established earlier in the narrative. In a way it's sort of inherently meta, because the things that happen in the world can happen just because it'd be really engrossing if you were reading about it (which we are), but it's not fully meta. That is really, really important. Your characters are never going to recognize the fact that they are characters in a concrete sense (meaning made up and entirely under the control of another entity), though they might recognize that they are characters in an abstract sense (meaning their actions are to an extent defined by tropes, character archetypes, and the universal push toward personal narratives). The main villain of the RP, J.J. (that's not his real name), told everyone just before the reboot event that basically the PAMS-era world would be a paradise where everyone is important and gets their own story and is happy and la la la la~.
That's not true.
Or rather, it's sort of true, but not in the way you'd expect. The current in-game world does not solve your problems or make you happy, because that'd actually be in direct conflict with the idea that narratives are important. Any plot needs a conflict, whether internal or external, and the world will actually actively shove conflicts your way in order to set you up with a personal story that you need to trek through. It's not really something that you can outright recognize and choose to ignore or avoid. What you need to realize is that the PAMS universe being defined by narratives in-character does not actually make it significantly different from a lot of fantasy literature. After all, you don't really want to read a story about someone whose life is just fine and completely average and nothing ever happens to them. Or at least, if you do, it'd be going for an entirely different mood than we are. Basically the way the PAMS universe functions is very similar to any other fantasy universe, and the only difference is that we recognize in-character that tropes are in effect and stories are important and things might happen simply because they need to happen for the plot. To some this might be seen as an excuse to pull a bunch of shit out of our asses whenever we write ourselves into a plot hole, but we're going to avoid that at all costs. The fact that things can happen just because they're interesting does not mean we are going to drop Giant Space Fleas From Nowhere on you all the time and say 'urrr well it makes sense in-universe!'. In fact, the situation is quite the opposite. What we're going to try to pursue is a setting in which most events, no matter how insignificant they may seem, factor into a greater narrative that involves all the player characters and quite a large number of NPCs as well. It's important to note that the 'villains' of the RP are just as much bound into the laws of literature as the player characters are. I put 'villains' in single quotes because a running theme in the RP is going to be that a lot of the villains are not particularly…well, villainous. Don't get me wrong, they'll do bad things, but the player characters will likely come to realize along the journey that some of the villains are just doing bad things because that's what they think they're supposed to do. It's what they're comfortable doing. It makes them happy. It will probably end up being a bit of an emotional conflict with some of the characters to consider that the bad guys are only bad guys because it makes them happy and feel right, but some of the other characters might simply not care. And that's OK. You can have your characters think that the behavior of the main antagonists is unacceptable, and they probably won't actually disagree with you. But a lot of them are very charismatic and they'll all have their own stories going on that go much deeper than 'lul let's steal some candy from babies'. They are actual people who serve an actual purpose in the world. In a way, the antagonists and the characters who live to drum up seemingly unnecessary conflict are the people who keep the world turning. We'll get more to that later in the RP, but I just want everyone to know that it's definitely OK to like the villains, and have your characters like the villains. There is going to be a gradually building conflict with the player characters where they recognize that the universe has sort of shoved them into the 'designated hero' role, and they might not necessarily like that! You see, the world is not perfect. Not by a long shot. There's a sort of invisible force, a grand destiny that tends to push people into roles simply for the sake of a good story. We are playing the long game with this, folks. You are not going to get very many hints about this right away, and your characters will probably be pretty happy with the way the new world works. At first. Just keep an eye out for subtle hints to a slightly more melancholy mood. That melancholy will be building throughout the RP and it will play a pretty significant role in the overall plot.