Storyboard Modding
From Tazlure Gaming System Wiki
While Event Orientated Modding is the preferred style of the Tazlure Game System, it is something that needs a player momentum of around 5-10 players that regularly interact with each other. Even in areas that are predominantly locationbased there will always be SOME storyboard threads.
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Definition of Storyboard Modding
In a storyboard thread a moderator is leading the story and keeps the PC in one thread during several pages as they move from location to location. On occasion there is more than one PC in the thread, but often these stories are One on One with the moderator.
Pro's of Storyboard Modding
- Storyboards result in actual stories, which location threads do not. Loc threads are a scattering of scenes without any cohesion besides the implied one embraced by the players themselves. So they are easier to follow for readers.
- Storyboards can be epic. It's easier to write amazing, world-shattering epics in a storyboard because no one else lives in that player's storyboard world. There are no repercussions or impacts of the player's thread upon other players.
- Storyboards are convenient. With a single, linear plotline, a moderator can run his/her storyboard pc from now until the end of time in only one thread. They might break their story up into smaller pieces...ending one thread only to direct the pcs to a new thread immediately thereafter...but that very direction effectively continues the same storyboard and the same previous thread.
- Storyboards avoid the custom of "thread hopping" and "mod hopping" that routinely happen in location-oriented material.
Con's of Storyboard Modding
- Storyboards routinely run out to four, five, six or more pages of linear content. That makes them time consuming to skill.
- Storyboards are portable, but they can't be handed to another mod easily, unless that mod reads up.. a lot!
- Storyboards must be plotted and developed independently from all other content. The player living in a story thread might or might not touch or interact with his environment, based on the moderator's whim. Some moderators are better at this than others, but ultimately, there is no interconnection with the other players in their location.
- Storyboards challenge the power of the player to shape their own pcs and define their environment. Should a pc wish to adjust his content or interact with another pc, he must arrange this OOC, and at the convenience of his story: he cannot simply join their scene if that player is also in a story thread.
- Storyboards cost the moderation greater work in the long run. Why? The players grow accustomed to being lead, and no longer understand how to pursue their own content, and second, the moderator assumes a greater responsibility to "plot" for that player, shifting the content focus off of the player and on to the moderator.
- Storyboarding is HARD. Only precious few moderators in our history have successfully run a location using storyboards exclusively, and they do so magnificently. Sadly, they are rare...and in an attempt to emulate their efforts, many mods end up trying the same trick, generating complaints of "god modding" or creative control.
What to Save Storyboard for
- Rural threads. If you're not in a place where there are many opportunities...you should stay in your existing thread. That mountain retreat or maybe a battlefield.
- Travel threads. This chronicles travelling from one populated area to another.
- Dungeons. Well...here you are. Underground or in a haunted keep or in a spooky mansion.
- Impassable threads. Anytime a thread becomes impassable due to mortal peril, keeping pcs within it and requiring them to remain until they've found a way out...which is sometimes easier than other times.
- Dreams/Visions/Cerebral threads. Since there's no physical movement (actual IC relocation), there's no need to shift threads.
