Now let’s talk a little about kicking off the event itself. You have your ideas, you’ve got a list of NPCs and clues and all kinds of neat things for people to do.   All you need now is a group of willing players.   The last thing you want when you’re ready to roll out your story is to log in to see an empty friends list, or a friends list full of people in various dungeons and raids.  So what are some good ways to get the word out and lure the masses in?

Pick a night when people are usually available. Tuesday nights have turned into an unofficial RP night for us.  Patch days very often meant unstable servers, especially in places like Shattrath and Dalaran.  So, on nights when the Outland and Northrend servers were going splat, we were tucked away in Stormwind, hanging out and RPing.  Are there nights that a majority of your guild is around?

Pick a start time when people can be around. Feathermoon’s a west coast server with a healthy chunk of east coast players.  So if we start an event at 7:00 eastern time, chances are there will be west coast people who haven’t even left work yet.  However, starting an event at 9:00 server time means the event’s just getting going at midnight for the people on the Atlantic seaboard.

Try watching your friends list and guild list for a couple of weeks, and making note of when people are around and RP is happening.

This might mean rearranging your own schedule a bit as well.  For Bricu and I, Tuesday isn’t only RP night; it’s Lost night as well, at least for a few more weeks. The night Naiara was taken, we got the event started right at 7:00 server, minutes after Lost was over.  But that meant that the Panzercow couldn’t stick around too long on his surly dwarf, Beltar.  So while we were working out the details for the second night, we decided to start the event earlier.  Lost could be recorded.  (Funny thing is, we got lucky — it ended up being a rerun that week anyway, so we weren’t at risk for accidental spoilers after all!)

Pick a place everyone can get to, or have a way to get them there. For both nights of the Naiara and Maggie plots, we knew we had some characters attending that were below level 80.   We made sure to find places where there weren’t big angry mobs that would aggro on the level 20s — the grounds of Caer Darrow for the first night, and the mausoleum beneath Wintergarde for the second (where Thel’zan the Duskbringer spawns) — and had people available to summon them in.  That way, anyone who wanted to come out and participate, could.

Confirm with your co-conspirators. While you’re playing the scheduling game, make sure you coordinate with anyone whose presence is essential to your event.  If they can’t make it, you’ll need to figure out what you want to do — can you postpone?  If the role isn’t character-specific, can someone else do the job?  If the role is character specific, are there other ways they can make their presence felt (forum fic, follow-up RP, etc)?

Get the date out there! There are several ways you can do this:

• Write up a forum post — Put all the important information into an OOC post: who is hosting the event?  When will it be held?  Where will it take place?  The what and why parts might be a little tricky, if you’re trying to keep some surprises up your sleeve, but try to at least give your players a bit of information.  Sometimes if they know what the general theme of the night will be, it will affect which character they want to bring.  Hosting something that will require sneaking?  They might want to bring their rogue instead of their warrior who goes clanking about in his armor.

  Put links to pertinent background information in the post, if there is any.  Give your players some lead time so they can make plans to be available.  Bump the thread once or twice as the date gets closer, and encourage players to ask questions about it if they’re unclear on any aspects.

• Spread the info around. Are there several guilds that hang out together?  Ask if it’s okay to post about the event on friendly guilds’ forums in case there are any players who would like to come.  If it’s an event that’s really open to anyone who’d like to come, consider posting it on your official realm forum as well.
• Use the in-game calendar. Sending out invites via the calendar lets you get an idea of who can and can’t be around.
• Remind people with the Guild Message of the Day.  Ask your guild officers if they can set the message to reflect the date and time of the event.
• Call out in in-game channels. This, like bumping the forum thread, should be used wisely.  If you’re in a channel with RPers you’d like to invite, send out a couple of reminders via that channel, but be careful not to spam it.  Toss out a brief reminder a day or two before the event.  The day of, maybe give a couple hours’ notice (“Hey, guys, I’m running an RP event tonight at 6 server in the Park in Stormwind.  If you’d like to come or have any questions, /whisper me!”), and then a callout as the event’s starting.

Allow for fashionable lateness and RL pwnage. Even if everyone’s aware of the start time, chances are a few people will still be late.   That’s okay!  Build in 10-15 minutes or so for people to wrap up whatever they’re doing in-game, or for them to get out of traffic, get in the door, and kick off their shoes.

Be flexible. Sometimes things just don’t shake out the way you’ve planned:  a co-GM’s video card dies; the server won’t stay up for more than ten minutes at a stretch; a friend has a crisis and needs you there; everything’s in place, but you’ve got a case of the plague and feel miserable;  only two people show up. If any of these or similar reasons are making you think, “Y’know, it’s just not a good night for this,” it’s okay to postpone. Let people know you’re cancelling as early as possible.   If you have a new date in mind, get it out there as quickly as you can.  If you can’t be online at event-time, ask someone else to field the “Hey, what’s going on with Event X?” questions so no one’s left in the dark.

I’m sure I’ve missed some good ways to promote your event and get the word out to your players.  What other things have you done to let your RP group know that mischief is about to commence?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/wwarby/ / CC BY 2.0

Back in the day I took a course on Educational Psychology. According to my professor, the key to knowing what intervention to use when working with a particular kid was timing. My professor felt so strongly about the idea of timing that he wrote a song about it. He also made us sing it. In class. Repeatedly. While you won’t get to hear this song–not unless we ever have a WTTRP Podcast–I have to agree with my professor about the importance of timing in RP. Timing, including the pacing of stories and story arcs, scheduling time for RP and questing, AND writing fic, is key to good, consistent RP.

If a story arc about your toon’s fall from grace and subsequent return to glory occurs in the span of three weeks, you rushed the arc. If your toon has been pregnant for over a year, not only do I feel bad for your toon, but you took too damn long to get it done. Pacing stories, and the arcs they are contained in, is not an easy task. RP happens with your group. This means your schedule, and your circle’s schedule, have to coincide. If one adds up:

• Real life responsibilities
• Time for Alts
• Down/Recharge time
• Mishaps

Then scheduling time for Arcs can be as complicated as raiding.  In addition to the all-important communication between parties, the successful pacing and plotting of arcs requires patience and deadlines.  I will not try to figure out which is more difficult.  For some, patience is a breeze.  For others, patience’s is a skill that they never developed.  Assigning realistic deadlines, while a boon for some (like me) is a pain in the ass for others. Regardless, if you are writing or developing the arc, you need to set the pace.  I suggest that you talk about how long you want the story to take with the circle before you start RPing or Ficcing.  I also suggest frequent conversations with everyone who wants to participate in the story AND with other individuals who are running story arcs.

Timing also includes how, and where, we find our characters in any one arc.  Let’s say your toon is involved in three stories.  You are running story #1, you are ficcing a bit part for #2 and you’re playing a confound in #3.  I firmly believe that it is possible to participate in all of the stories.  If we take a look at our own lives, we can see that our own stories involve a number of moving parts:   planning a big event, working, going to school, down time with friends AND down time for ourselves.  Therefore, it’s entirely possible for our toons to do the same thing.  We need to keep our timing/timeline straight for this though.

While WoW does have Mirror Images, let’s be honest:  Mirror Images aren’t the most efficient way to conduct your character’s overbooked RP schedule.  Unless the point of the arc is to overburden your character and confuse the timelines, players have to try and stay consistent with the timeline over all.

For instance, a few weeks ago, a friend and fellow RPer came to RP Night for an arc that was already ficced.  The problem being the characters in the Pig, at that time, we’re ready for that storyline yet.   While everything worked out beautifully in the end, there was a bit of scrambling to figure out the timeline.  Thankfully, our circle is patient when it comes to these matters.

Scheduling time to quest/gear up/raid and to write are also important to the timing of stories and story arcs.  To be fair:  We play WoW in order to experience the content Blizz created for us.  RPers just like to add their own stories to the mix.  There are some titles, gear and instances that our toons should have experienced.  So play the damn game and enjoy it.  Just keep in mind you have to schedule time for RP and, if you agreed to fic something,  for writing.  RP happens with other people, so don’t leave your group hanging.

Timing is a difficult, but necessary, art that one needs to become proficient in.  One cannot have a moment of badass, increase their ABV, or realistically contribute to their circle without having a good understanding of timing.  The best way to work on timing?  Communicate, be patient and schedule your time.  At least, that’s my understanding of timing.  How do you feel about the need for timing?  Do you have any other factors we could use to improve our art, or did I miss the point entirely?  Feel free to share!