modormenace | METAPLOT AND OPEN COLLABORATION

METAPLOT AND OPEN COLLABORATION

The world of Mask or Menace is intended to be a dynamic, evolving environment where character actions have meaningful impact. We aim to accomplish this by building a setting that generates a broad range of hooks for player engagement. Other plotting options (e.g., player plot requests, reporting NPC injury, etc.) are on this page, where all comments are screened.

Players are encouraged to approach us on this page to brainstorm with other players and othewise engage with or investigate the setting! Please make sure to use the subject line to indicate what you're trying to accomplish:

Plot Brainstorming: These are open calls for collaborating on a plot idea with the mod team and other players. To open a brainstorming session, please submit a central idea or jumping off point for discussion! The team will unscreen these once we've determined viability to allow for input from other players who may be interested in developing the idea with you. In most cases, submissions involving investigation of modplot elements should be submitted like this to allow for collaborative planning.
<big>PLOT BRAINSTORMING SUBMISSION</big> Player: Your name/handle Character(s): Yours and those of whoever else might be already involved. Plot Pitch: A broad stroke summary of your idea in 1-3 sentences. (e.g., 'a renaissance faire goes wrong,' 'time-loop,' 'a zombie attack') Details: Please lay out any elements and ideas you've already got covered and are not looking to change. Looking for: If you have any particular plot hooks or themes you're hoping to get other players interested in exploring with you, this is the place to list them! Anything else: Anything not covered above!
MORE COMING: Watch the Mod announcements for more on this page!

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PLOT BRAINSTORMING SUBMISSION

Player: olesia
Character(s): ruka, almost certainly husbando jaime, (???????????)

Plot Pitch: lmao I DON'T KNOW!! I JUST GOT HERE

Details: so i asked a question over on OOC wrap-up regarding "hey, if the world changed(??) when we weren't looking(??), how do we know we're in the right place(??)" and i got a COME OVER TO THE SCREENED POST reply so here i am on the screened post!!!

in-game wise for justificationy: while in the f2020 world, ruka obv noticed the nanite tattoo was gone and used knowledge of that to try and find other Mom-Verse imports (with limited success, turns out it's hard to find people when there's only like five of you and three don't check their phones), and so on ""returning"" and still... not having tattoo, is kinda suspicious

she's done world hops and she's done world reality rewrites and also a ton more world hops and is very stressed all the time because of it investigation-wise it would probably start with snooping around on publicly-available world documents (news, history, etc) for Other Things That May Have Shifted (LOOKS SUSPICIOUSLY @ JEOPARDY), and w/ inevitably bullying husband-with-a-supercomputer-in-his-spine this will likely also include hackin some mainframes for the deeper dive????

Looking for: ANSWERS???????? im howling how do i keep accidentally hitting the questions that veer into IT'S A SECRET TO EVERYONE territory.

Anything else: not editing any of my sleep-deprived previous commentary but adding a note here: moving the discussion to this entry for the sake of emails!!! we need emails. or at least i do.

David is Psychometric and a technopath. He's going to be investigating this initially through his own home security systems, both using the psychometry to see if the physical objects are the ones he installed, what they say over the month, and if anyone tampered. Then he'll use his technopathy to double down with software.

If strange discrepancies are found, he will likely expand his search with other help.

David is also a publicly known Psychometric thanks to his TV show, so he might even be someone that people might say 'maybe he can help us figure it out' and he can be contacted easily for readings.

PLOT BRAINSTORMING SUBMISSION

Player: rel
Character(s): Sypha Belnades, probably Martin Blackwood and Jon + more occult imPorts but I haven't actually talked to anyone about this yet haha

Plot Pitch:

Sypha is super curious about this Church of the Ancient/Unholy Web Mistress and she canonically is all about storming castles/holy sites and laying waste to the evils within (tm) and also she is not impressed by the supernatural.

So I'd like to have her be involved in some sort of investigation in to the Church, but also I am not good at plotting/planning/carrying through these plans. So while I can Get The Gang Together, I actually kind of suck as a thought leader in rp :P Thus where other PCs and mods come in.

Details: haha what

Looking for:

-exploration of ooky-spookiness of Jeopardy in general and the Spider Cult in very specific
-WHO CONTROLS OUR FATESSSS srsly I'd love for some existential questioning of free will and philosophical ~tension~ to come out of this
-Lots of monsters to kill: ample opportunity to flex fighty muscles
-Psychological horror: what it says on the tin

Anything else: lmk if this is the right place for this...

Potential for proof either way: One of Ashley's powers is Shadow Step, the ability to teleport via shadows to places she's been to before. Can she still Step to her pre-Fractured World haunts i.e.. They're the same places she went to before, or would she have to visit them again before being able to Step there i.e.. Different world, different places?

Project Walkway is a multi-billion dollar media entertainment empire promoting acting and modeling the world over (through movies, fashion shows, magazines, interviews, & updates on all platforms). Its headquarters is stationed in Nonah, but it has satellite offices in every city and several other non-porter locations worldwide.

Allison doesn't own it. She just works here. There used to be more than hers here, but she's the only one left currently in-game. This location is open to all players.

There are any numbers of jobs people can do in relation to Project Walkway: acting, modeling, directors, editors, producers, composers, photography, costume designers, makeup artists, journalists, social media management, publishers. The sky is really the limit on how you might want to align yourself with the company and the numbers of jobs that touch a media empire!

(I'd request knowing anyone who joins up to PW, so we can all properly give shoutouts to each other, rub elbows as being coworkers in places, and even plot-hook each other!)

Edited 2020-11-06 12:51 (UTC)

A number of disrepancies arise in the course of Ruka's research:

Multiple historical events that ImPorts remember no longer seem to be recorded in news and media, such as the Russian invasion many years ago and the vast majority of IC events that correspond to player-run plots. Most recently, Beff Jezos' Top Import competition is entirely missing from chronology. Other events seemed to have occurred in the place of these, though the dates, times, and involved persons don't match.
Specifically, AtlanTech seems to have been more actively, publically involved in ImPort than anybody can remember.
Based on statistical analysis, if Ruka is able to interview several PCs (10+), there's a significantly higher-than-expected number of incompatibilities with what ImPorts remember having done and subtle differences in their homes. This indicates differences in lived events, as well as long-term habits, etc. Even the 'missing time' stories that NPCs make up suggest that what they remember is slightly off.

While longer-term research may yield other results (more mod responses pending), I wanted to get this note out for you tonight!

News reports and Next Floors 'neighborhood community' type forum comments in Jeopardy suggest that there has been some unusual activity in Jeopardy around the Church of the Ancient Web Mistress. Specifically, a vehicle with out-of-state license plates (California) has been seen around at various times of day, and when approached by curious churchgoers, the driver simply left.

For now, there have been no significant: reports of unsual events related to the Spider Cult, certainly nothing resembling the Duel of the Fates plot, and little conflict or drama. No monsters have appeared, and few individuals involved show signs of trauma or 'horror' genre experiences.

Using psychometry, David will find that most of the memories of the objects around his home and other frequented locations are significantly 'off.' Purchase dates, times they were used, how they were used, etc., do not line up with what he remembers, though there is nothing inherently sinister about the 'new versions' of experiences. Perhaps even more unsettling, however, is that roughly twenty percent of his belongings still 'read' the exact same as they did before, down to the exact details of what ImPorts or NPCs might have been present, emotional states, and so on.

Ashley's shadow stepping will function as it always has. She'll find herself in the familiar 'haunts' she has visited before.

However, there may be some subtle differences to the locations. For example, the décor or wallpaper may be slightly different, and any NPCs who frequented those locations will divulge extremely minor differences in mutual experiences, although this requires a bit of pressing/insistence and they will get annoyed that she seems to be making a 'big deal' about nothing.

Ooooooh, this'll be fun. Cheers!

Hey all! Thanks for getting back to me. If it's not too much trouble, I have a couple follow-up questions.

- For "vast majority of IC events that correspond to player-run plots", this looks like an intentionally nebulous guideline. Would it be safe to say that, for events where none of the directly-involved characters remain in game, it's definitely gone?

As for events where those characters are still in game, should this be taken as sort of a Player's Choice deal? For instance, if I personally ran an event in 2017, could I say it still happened in this new chronology? / Could I say "it mostly happened, but different characters were involved / it ended differently" ?

This is a sort of, how much control are we being given over the plots that we-as-players explicitly ran ourselves?

- This one specifically is just because Ruka really cared about this event and would be one she would investigate deliberately, but: modplot event THE SHIMMER (plotting, conclusion). Still happened / no longer happened? I bring this one up mostly because of the whole De Chima "park full of trees that look like people" thing — since if the event didn't happen, or happened differently, Park is Gone.

- Is the Porter/military base on the Moon officially gone? I'm told this was part of a player event, but because it was A Porter, I thought I'd double-check.

- Finally, just for total clarity: if characters have previously kept personal, physical records of their lives in-game — photo albums, private diaries, conspiracy boards, etc — the events detailed would correspond to the events of the New History, correct?

May I press a little bit for the answer to the last question asked by Ruka's player? The one to confirm that private, personal records would be changed as well?

Thanks for letting me know!

Hi, Rel! As I type up a bit of a wrap on the November mini-event and segue into future events, would you mind if I give your character a bit of a nod based partially on her investigation work? She'll basically appear in a vision. If you can get back to me quite quickly (hopefully you aren't asleep already) that would be great. Thanks, sorry for the rush!

China.

No worries. You have my permission - hope this reaches you in time!

You're perfect, grrl! Since you seem to be up, how's this?

Most of the scene plays out the same-- the disguised woman charging through undefined space. Her hair comes sharply into focus, blonde, lit up by the energy of her mask.

Then the perspective skews, ever so slightly. A second figure edges in from the side, her back turned. She's lithe and narrow of build, her hair chestnut brown, almost orange in the sunlight, cropped short on her neck. Her fists are balled. Her voice rings out, distorted, but the words are discernible:

"It was you!"

China.

Edited (signing as China, a me) 2020-11-23 05:34 (UTC)

Ooh sounds good! Sypha's hair tends to be described (in most places where I've read it) as coppery or strawberry-blonde, and she also has a Spanish accent so that might further the voice distortion; how much of that is going to be audible or not is up to you tho. I'm excited to read this.

Hi Olesia,

Apologies for the delay in getting back to you! As you may have guessed, in addition to fairly hefty and unfortunately overlapping RL complications for the mod team, providing answers on this particular topic requires a fair amount of careful thought on the back end. In transitioning to a new chapter of metaplot, we're doing what we can to balance the preservation of important game history/details with the task of streamlining years of accumulated lore to make the prospect of participating less daunting... while trying to make the effects any changes have on the setting ICly exciting and engaging rather than distressing for our playerbase!

As a general rule: while the differences characters may notice between the world of MoM in August 2020 vs November 2020 could be unsettling, there don't appear to be any significant, disruptive changes. In fact, the relatively frictionless and almost accommodating nature of the shift might even seem statistically unlikely to Ruka and others with a background in dimension-hopping.

Q: Would it be safe to say that, for events where none of the directly-involved characters remain in game, it's definitely gone?: A: ICly, It would be impossible for characters to ascertain if the world has a new, alternate history of any specific event without having knowledge of the original— they'd have nothing to compare with.
OOCly, it's probably easiest to think about the historical events in MoM as being considered current canon or not. If an event (and any directly observable, persisting effect it had on the setting) no longer has any active impact on player characters, it's not current canon.
...and we can't think of anything more 'superhero comics' than that!
Q: For events where those characters are still in game, could I say it still happened in this new chronology? / Could I say "it mostly happened, but different characters were involved / it ended differently" ?: A: This depends on the scope of the event in question. If the only things you're affecting are aspects of the shared setting you wouldn't need mod permission to use, you're good to go, though as always you'd need permission from other players involved before writing in changes that would significantly impact them. In cases where events resulted in a permanent change to the shared setting of the game (such as the creation of player-submitted locations like the Ted Kord Memorial Center or Nox's Import Museum) by default, these locations still exist. However, they may have undergone minor changes in appearance, and in some cases, have new histories that don't match imPort memories.

If you would like to contribute a specific alternate history of a significant event you previously ran that leans towards world-building or would have an impact on how the native population feel about imPorts (Oh, that hospital was opened to support the survivors of Actual Cannibal imPort Shyest the Beef's wild rampage through the woods of De Chima back in 2012) please run it past us!
Q: Did THE SHIMMER still happen? Is the "park full of trees that look like people" gone?: A: This is a good example of what has and hasn't changed! When Ruka looks for reports of the Shimmer event occurring, she won't find any mention of it in the media, and the native population won't know what she's talking about. However, if she chooses to go to the location where she remembers there being a park full of trees that look like people, it will still appear to be there. The individual trees may look different or seem to have moved pose or position, but not significantly.

If she then asks about the trees and their startling resemblance to people, friendly locals will cheerfully inform her they are the work of an artist who spent years carefully training them to take that shape (probably while asking for autographs and pleading for selfies).
Q: Is the Porter/military base on the Moon officially gone?: A: No! The base exists, though all records suggest it was established decades ago and is a largely unremarkable part of operations at NASA. It's about as newsworthy and accessible to the native population as the International Space Station is in real life.
Q: If characters have previously kept personal, physical records of their lives in-game — photo albums, private diaries, conspiracy boards, etc — the events detailed would correspond to the events of the New History, correct?: A: This we leave up to the preference of individual players, as people may have different ideas of what would count as their character 'losing their personal progress', which we promised wouldn't happen. Players can choose to discover their character's personal, physical records have been altered if they want to use that as a prompt to engage with the setting shifts. If they don't want to deal with that level of alteration, personal items can essentially have arrived with them on Oct 1 and appear unchanged.

As these setting details may be of interest to other players, we'd like to ask if you (and any other players with characters involved in this investigation) would be willing to help disseminate the information ICly, on the network or through any other means that would be true to their individual characterisation. We would write an OOC announcement linking relevant posts and this Plotting thread, so that players can ask for more guidance or ideas on what characters might notice.

If you'd like to talk details or have specific ideas/questions about Ruka's individual role, we can hop onto Discord to hash things out or move the conversation to Mod Contact.

Please see the answer above!

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METAPLOT AND OPEN COLLABORATION

Questions

as requested:::: PLOT BRAINSTORMING (??):: TAKE TWO

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Plot brainstorming

Question for mods

Employment Opportunity: Project Walkway

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