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<blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 7418694" data-attributes="member: 82106"><p>My experience is that 'episodic play' which focuses on a series of fairly unrelated incidents, often featuring a 'cast' of recurring characters, but not always is one of these. I like to use the example of the good old Stargate series. Each episode generally begins with the protagonists (a mostly continuing cast of characters, though which ones are involved on any given episode varies) opening the Stargate to a new set of coordinates. There's usually some backstory to WHY, but often its just exploration. The whole thing is tied together by a set of global assumptions (the Goa'uld, etc.) which provide fodder for the elements of each successive episode. There's usually a modest meta-plot in most of these things, but it can be very weak to basically non-existent, as desired. Usually the early stages of a campaign of this type would be largely exploratory or highly mission-oriented, with the characters developing and acquiring more complex links to an emerging overall context. </p><p></p><p>OFTEN, I would estimate USUALLY, the overall world is not defined at the start in any great detail. Star Trek, for example, starts in "Where No Man Has Gone Before" and establishes only the existence of the ship, its bridge crew, the existence of a 'United Federation of Planets', and that's about it. A few additional details are established during the episode, that the USS Enterprise is on a long-range exploration mission, that without its warp drive it is decades or centuries of travel time to home, etc. Now, SOME additional things were established by the show's producers by this time, but most of the detailed 'lore' of the milieu was established by writers in their scripts on a weekly basis from whole cloth. I expect the same would be true for Stargate SG1, etc. </p><p></p><p>The same pattern holds for other genre. In the D&D cartoon stuff is pretty much established as it happens. Mission Impossible simply created whatever organizations, locations, geopolitical situations, countries, etc. that were required for each week's episode. </p><p></p><p>Obviously in an RPG context it can easily work the same way. All that need be established at first is the bare minimum framework to allow for the basic episode structure to be established. The rest will take care of itself. In a Story Now kind of rendition the nature of the episodic format will be partly dictated by the player's stated goals and interests, or perhaps by an overall campaign theme that is agreed on by the participants before it starts. Genre conventions can take care of much of the details, and the rest will come out through play. Each episode would probably address a specific character's or several character's dramatic needs. Judging by the kinds of things seen in the TV shows I mentioned there would likely be existential threats, moral quandries, physical danger, possibly threats to the status quo of the 'team' itself, etc.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="AbdulAlhazred, post: 7418694, member: 82106"] My experience is that 'episodic play' which focuses on a series of fairly unrelated incidents, often featuring a 'cast' of recurring characters, but not always is one of these. I like to use the example of the good old Stargate series. Each episode generally begins with the protagonists (a mostly continuing cast of characters, though which ones are involved on any given episode varies) opening the Stargate to a new set of coordinates. There's usually some backstory to WHY, but often its just exploration. The whole thing is tied together by a set of global assumptions (the Goa'uld, etc.) which provide fodder for the elements of each successive episode. There's usually a modest meta-plot in most of these things, but it can be very weak to basically non-existent, as desired. Usually the early stages of a campaign of this type would be largely exploratory or highly mission-oriented, with the characters developing and acquiring more complex links to an emerging overall context. OFTEN, I would estimate USUALLY, the overall world is not defined at the start in any great detail. Star Trek, for example, starts in "Where No Man Has Gone Before" and establishes only the existence of the ship, its bridge crew, the existence of a 'United Federation of Planets', and that's about it. A few additional details are established during the episode, that the USS Enterprise is on a long-range exploration mission, that without its warp drive it is decades or centuries of travel time to home, etc. Now, SOME additional things were established by the show's producers by this time, but most of the detailed 'lore' of the milieu was established by writers in their scripts on a weekly basis from whole cloth. I expect the same would be true for Stargate SG1, etc. The same pattern holds for other genre. In the D&D cartoon stuff is pretty much established as it happens. Mission Impossible simply created whatever organizations, locations, geopolitical situations, countries, etc. that were required for each week's episode. Obviously in an RPG context it can easily work the same way. All that need be established at first is the bare minimum framework to allow for the basic episode structure to be established. The rest will take care of itself. In a Story Now kind of rendition the nature of the episodic format will be partly dictated by the player's stated goals and interests, or perhaps by an overall campaign theme that is agreed on by the participants before it starts. Genre conventions can take care of much of the details, and the rest will come out through play. Each episode would probably address a specific character's or several character's dramatic needs. Judging by the kinds of things seen in the TV shows I mentioned there would likely be existential threats, moral quandries, physical danger, possibly threats to the status quo of the 'team' itself, etc. [/QUOTE]
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