II.A.2. INFO: APPING A PLOT-PC

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Prologue Buckle in, because this section is admittedly wordy. Apping a Plot-PC is an optional way for players to get more involved with fleshing out the universe. Plot-PCs are canon characters who function more like NPCs rather than as protagonists. This route requires more work (running some type of plot or event) in exchange for perks (regained abilities, flexible activity requirements, and your character possibly having amassed fabulous power and influence).  Who and What Plot-PCs will have arrived any time in the last five years of the game. They arrive alone (unless you speak to another player ahead of time, and agree that your characters appeared together, and both your apps reflect this). It is up to you to decide what your character would have done in the last few years. Maybe Gaius Baltar founded a cult. Maybe Nick Fury built up an intelligence operation. Maybe Talon Karrde built a smuggling operation. Maybe Haman Khan rules a space colony. Maybe Slaine Troyard is watching birds. Maybe Sauron took over Mars and has turned it into a land of darkness and madness. Maybe Honoka Kosaka became an idol. Maybe Phillip J. Fry became a delivery boy. You can do literally whatever you want to do. (This includes having your characters work together over the last few years, so long as both your apps reflect this in the “so, what’s your character been doing?” section). How Plot-PCs are the most experimental part of the game and, to be perfectly honest, there may be kinks at the beginning. But Plot-PCs are also possibly the most exciting, part of this game. If you think of Earth-PCs and Colony-PCs as the protagonists of this story, Plot-PCs should serve the role that NPCs do in video games: giving quests to the protagonists, challenging the protagonists, helping the protagonists, putting obstacles in the protagonists’ way, delivering information, providing local color and immersion, etc. Plot-PCs are expected to "give back" to the game by running events in a way that Earth- and Colony-PCs are not -- although, in exchange, they can have superpowers and sweet social status, and are subject to relaxed activity checks. (More on that in a moment.) Tentatively, we envision a couple of ways that Plot-PCs can enrich world-building:  Fetch quests. Plot-PCs can send (and their players can run) quests where Earth- and Colony-PCs recover things. The reward for PCs participating in the plot should be roughly commensurate with the amount of effort the PCs expend. Variants on fetch quests are also encouraged (e.g., a recovery quest where Carmen Sandiego steals some Gundams and all the PCs must work together to track her down. Carmen would run the plot from discovering the theft to recovering the Gundams, after which she could join the crew, escape nefariously, die, whatever). Immersion. At one end of the scale, this is where you app Phillip J. Fry the Plot-PC delivery guy. He doesn’t contribute much to the plot, but he provides someone for the PCs to interact with when they order a pizza. In the middle of the scale, Jerid Messa might be the ineffectual rival who keeps attacking the Pericles and has to get chased off every few weeks. He’s fun to shoot at, and reminds characters that, oh yeah, there’s a deadly war going on. At the far end of the scale, Scrooge McDuck might run an industrial city-state on the Moon, and characters have to interact with him every time they want somewhere to hide, or to borrow money, or to deal with his people whenever they want to steal a ship from his shipyards. Providing alternative livelihoods. The Earth-PCs and Colonial-PCs will have the opportunity to jump ship around the (OOC) four week mark. If you want to play a Plot-PC who runs a paramilitary force or a smuggling operation or what have you, that’s fine. Straight-up fights. Maybe Yzak Jule and A-Drei Karlstein and Klim Nick are in the colonial military and attack the Morning Star! Yzak, A-Drei, and Klim’s players would play out attacking the Morning Star, and Earth-PCs would play defending the ship. Maybe Yazan Gable and Ali al-Saachez run a paramilitary group that a group of PCs think is evil, so the PCs attack to stop them. Dropping information. Winter Celchu is a spy who drops in to hand out plot-moving information! (Yes! If you sign up to run plots, the mods will hand you metaplot information!) Any combination of the above. Please, string these things together! Scrooge McDuck will give you a brand new battleship, but only if you bring him 100 gold bars, but the only place to get the gold bars is Fort Knox, which is guarded by Yazan and Ali! Phillip J. Fry is Emperor of Mars and won’t deliver your pizzas until you liberate the planet from his tyrannical grasp! Anything else! Short-term or long-term, funny or serious. The name of the game is Open Space because it’s in space, but also because it really wants to give players the ability to come up with and operate their own plots. Anything you can come up with to contribute to the depth and richness of the universe are fine. As a caveat, you don’t need to have a perfectly planned out plot when you app. If you’re flexible or indifferent, give us a rudimentary idea, and we’ll hook you up with other people who have rudimentary ideas to work together. And now, bribery: bucking the power nerfing Plot-PCs will arrive in this universe without powers, just like Earth-PCs and Colony-PCs. However, in the time that they’ve been in this universe, they may have regained or gained powers. Most Plot-PCs will have only found a few pieces of solar quartz in their years here (and may not have regained any if they sat behind a desk for five years), which means that will only have regained/gained a few quartz's worth of powers. As a rule of thumb, they can have acquired one quartz (and one quartz's worth of powers) for every year that they've been in this world (or five quartz, since no Plot-PC may have been here for more than five years). However. If you propose a fun plot where your character has more powers than the five-quartz default, and in your app you explain why your character needs to have those superpowers to pull off the plot, then you can handwavehaving acquired more quartz (and thus gained/regained more impressive skills) between the time that the character arrived and the time that they encounter the protagonist-characters. There must be proportionality between the skills you want your character to have regained and the substance of the plot you want to run. Your character cannot have regained world-destroying abilities if he's just going to show up once and bake cookies with Commander Hayes. And to reiterate, you only get to take the short-cut to superpowers if you make a case that it's plot-necessary and then run the plot. The IC goal of the nerfing-exception is to make things fun for characters who challenge the protagonists  by giving them the power and influence needed to pose a genuine hurdle to the heroes. Those hurdles can be kind-of-beneficent (like running a smuggling operation and asking the protags to smuggle something for you) or blatantly evil (conquering a country that the PCs must liberate, trying to kill the PCs, etc. More bribery: activity check Some characters are just more interesting when the protagonists only see them once in a while. Some characters die and then… well there’s no need for activity check anymore because they’re dead. Tentatively, you only need to do something with a Plot-PC every six months, and if you make a persuasive case to the mods that going inactive for even longer will have a long-term plot payoff, that’s okay, too. We want to encourage interesting storytelling, and sometimes that means characters “coming and going” from the protagonists’ POV. As a caveat, however… … be kind. Because there will be basically no meaningful activity check for these characters, kindly don’t app the popular protagonist of a popular series if you’re going to drop in on courier duty for five comments once every five months. It’s one thing for a rare, obscure, or ancient character who was never going to have canonmates to do this, but if Anakin Skywalker or Harry Potter or [main character of currently popular canon] does it then it presents a problem for castmates. There aren’t any hard-and-fast rules on this. Just be considerate. Old, minor, and “nobody else plays them and I won’t be basically screwing someone over from apping their castmates” is great for Plot-PCs; new, main, popular characters really are not. If it would make you mad if someone else did it, don’t do it. The mods will reject a Plot-PC app if you (1) submit a popular character and (2) indicate that you won't be around much -- if you're concerned that either one of those might apply to your plans, email the mods and ask before you submit an app.  tl;dr, if you propose and run a substantial plot, your activity will be flexible outside that plot. But no apping major or popular characters if you indicate that you're barely going to be around. Secret Plotting If Alice apps Dumbledore and Bob apps Snape and they want to RP some stuff under an OOC lock and then unlock it after Dumbledore and Snape’s big reveal in the main game, that is okay. And the equivalents of that. Basically, Earth-PCs and Colony-PCs have to do all their threading in the main comm. But the name of the game with Plot-PCs is “whatever works for interesting storytelling.” If that means doing locked threads off the main comm and unlocking them for fun shock value, go for it. Calendar It will take 4 OOC weeks before Plot-PCs will interact with Colony-PCs and Earth-PCs, unless you’re interested in playing a Plot-PC who’s signed up with the Colonial or Earth military, in which case there will be an event in the second OOC week that the mods would love help with. Rule of thumb When all else fails, (1) be reasonable and (2) if it leads to good storytelling it’s probably okay. Or ask on the FAQ. Or email openspacemods[at]gmail. Why are you doing this? A couple reasons. OOCly, some people like running player plots.  OOCly, when one mod team runs all the plots and events, the mods burn out.  ICly, there's usually a big divide between PCs and native characters. We want to blur that line with PCs who have been in the world for a long time.  ICly, some characters are just more interesting as allies or enemies than as protagonists, or are only playable for a short term. This game wants to accommodate that kind of character that doesn’t work in a normal game where everyone lives together for a long time, and allow them to burn fast but bright. Bring us your “spy characters who show up to drop off messages and don’t participate in the action,” your “villains who no one can possibly work side-by-side with,” your otherwise-unplayable muses yearning to be free! ICly, in most games it's difficult for villains and "I run things" characters to have amassed the kinds of resources that make them a threat in their own canons. By giving them a head start on the "protagonist" characters, Open Space lets characters wield the influence and clout that they did at home. That influence and clout makes things interesting for the protagonists to work with or work around.  OOCly, some people’s schedules let them play all the time, making them great “POV” characters, and we hope people will have a great time as Earth PCs or Colony PCs, who are always involved with “the action” and moving the story forward. But for some people, RP drive and availability ebb and flow. With the Plot-PC idea, the game hopes to accommodate that kind of player.  tl;dr Apping a Plot-PC is like apping on a harder difficulty -- you have to put more into the game (also, your character had to survive alone in a strange universe for years. That's hard too), but in exchange for helping flesh out the world and give the protagonist-characters things to do, you get perks that the Earth and Colony routes don't have.