Karen Cravens wrote:

>On 1 Jan 2002, at 18:56, Troy Johnson wrote:
>
>> I think a "to be opened" archive is a good idea. Ideally it would be
>> someplace we could post our DM notes and world building stuff and would be
>> easy to update.
>
>We've been trying to figure out how to do this.  There's the Wiki, 
>but it's really not designed to easily make certain parts restricted-
>view.  That may change, as we switch everything over to a sitewide 
>recognizes-you-if-you're-logged-in system, but still.  (Tim, and 
>others who've started using the Wiki extensively... any thoughts?)

There is a page on the Kalyr web site covering some of the deep
secrets of the gameworld, but it contains big, big spoilers.  I don't
really want my players reading it. 

But that's mainly large-scale 'world-level' stuff - I don't have
anything outside of my hard disk on the local politics and plotlines
that the players are involved in.
 
>> Asking GMs to have their games fully outlined seems reasonable, though
>> things change and grow so much when you have a group of intelligent, capable
>> players to work with that that would be a living document.

>Yeah, I dunno as how we'd necessarily want people to plan things 
>out in advance, but just being able to say "After players A, B, and 
>C ran into NPC X, she reported their plans to Villain Q, and that's 
>why Q was able to do what he did" is useful in giving a new GM the 
>behind-the-scenes information.

Having a well-developed setting, I tend to make a lot of stuff up as I
go along (there's a lot of Schoedinger's cats about!)- while I do
maintain a database to keep track of (far too many) NPCs.
 
To take a current example - in my Play-by-Web sister game to Kalyr,
one PC is about to lead an investigation into the near-sinking of a
submarine; he's identified five people that worked on it before it
almost sank.  But at this moment of time, I as GM have not decided if
it was incompetence or sabotage, and which if any of the five might be
a saboteur.

>> I am not sure how co-gamemastering would work. It seems like the extra time
>> it would take to coordinate between the two would about equal the time that
>> one person would have to put into the game. Does anyone have any good
>> examples of co-led games that work well? And more importantly, how they pull
>> it off?
>
>It depends on the type of game; the sim-type ones (7thorder, 
>cardassianglory, etc.) tend to have multiple gamemasters.  But 
>they also tend to have a higher number of players, *and* the 
>gamemaster's role is slightly different than in a "conventional" 
>game.  I'd envision a co-GM in a non-sim game as being someone 
>who more watches over the GM's shoulder, and is kept up to date 
>on the NPC-X sort of background things as they happen.  
>Something the same effect as the "to be opened" file, except that 
>the co-GM gets to absorb it as it happens, and ask questions.

I've seen a co-GMed game (with one main GM and two assistants) work
very well.  The main GM controlled the world and the plot, one
assistant ran NPCs, and the third never posted publicly but must have
been doing *something* behind the scenes.   I rank that game (which
ran for three years, and ended with a pre-planned conclusion) as the
best on-line game I've ever played in.

But on the other hand, I've tried being an assistant GM and failed
miserably, probably because the roles of the two GMs was never
properly defined (and the other GM was a bit awkward at times).
-- --------------------------------------------------------------
Game(s): Kalyr
Listowner tools are found at http://www.phoenyx.net/listowners/