Darkness Emergent Dev Blog 1

Hello, friends! I asked Silja to make this space on Discord and post on our blog  so I could have somewhere to share a few of the thoughts behind how we make Darkness Emergent. My plan is to use it from time to time to offer insights, our design philosophy, and the occasional preview. Today I wanted to talk a bit about the epilogue we posted, and my motivations and decisions behind doing it the way that we do. 

Why we write an epilogue
There are several reasons why we take the time to write this. I should mention it’s typically the last hurdle in our development process after the event, and it takes our very tired writing staff several hours to write and edit. Still, I think it’s important to do, as it serves a variety of purposes.
1) It showcases hard work the writers put into the event. We have a very long and involved development cycle for Darkness Emergent that produces a great volume of material. I’m very proud of the writers, and all of the great materials they produce. The epilogue helps people grasp the breadth of writing we prepared.
2) It chronicles the resolution of our stories. It’s very easy for PCs to get caught up in RP and potentially miss the in-character resolution for a story they contributed to. Other times, we write stories with the intent that the resolution will be provided after the event. This helps provide the payoff (or the crushing disappointment) to complete the experience.
 3) It shows what else was happening. At Darkness Emergent, PCs are able to choose which stories they pursue, subject to their ability to find and join them. I think it’s important to showcase that your experience, from the moment you select a faction, is likely to be vastly different from someone else’s, and to show what you could have done. Plus, it’s neat to know things such as why the Arsene Society was trying so hard to steal a set of keys, or who was the backer behind the Executive Board’s social experiment.
4) It helps with story continuity. There’s a bit of an asterisk on this one, as I seek to keep Darkness Emergent as largely episodic with limited but distinct tie-ins to previous events. My goal is to keep this experience as accessible as possible, as it should be easy to go to your first DE without having to know what is soon going to be a year’s worth of lore. However, for those who want to play a PC who’s in the know, this material is out there. 

Some rules I follow, and why
As the epilogue is written from the perspective of an omniscient narrator and also functions as the single source of truth for the event, it has the potential to provoke strong reactions. To mitigate any strong feelings, we adhere to a few principles.
1) Maintain objectivity and fairness in all things. At a high level, it will not go over well if the staff appears to have favorites. We’re now entering our third Darkness Emergent, and I fully expect that before long, some players may begin to notice that other players who are especially good at chasing down plot are very often at the center of things, and feel frustration. Very likely, those players might reply it’s a skill issue. We really do try our best to ensure equal and fair access to plots, but from my perspective, these sorts of conflicts will always happen in the same way that if you build roads, people will have car accidents. We have to manage this sort of thing through proactive steps, and our practice of not naming PCs is intended in part to mitigate people from unfairly being accused of being favorites.
2) It’s not intended to function as larp awards or RP nods. As neat as it may be to be mentioned in this sort of thing, I don’t want people who aren’t mentioned to feel like their contributions aren’t meaningful. There are easily dozens of interactions, nudges, and encounters that shape these events that are beyond our perspective. Once again, by not naming PCs, we want to avoid a popularity contest and minimize feelings of exclusion. However, I fully support people giving one another RP nods. I saw a suggestion that we make a channel for that? Let me give that some thought….
3) We don’t want to undermine IC sources of information. While we are the single source of truth for the event, a healthy rumor mill makes for a great game. Our Nosferatu players also go to great lengths to be informed. I will give a shout out to the PC Nibbles whose IC recap was a delight to read, and I think it would be fantastic if more people followed suit. (I’m also told there’s at least one other PC who wrote another recap as well - I haven’t been able to find and read it, otherwise I would happily offer them my compliments). As an aside, one of my favorite moments from my own gaming career was making OWBN’s equivalent of Lady Whistledown’s Society Pages. I want other people to have a valid shot at that experience too. Overall, I’m delighted that the response to the epilogue has been very positive. I will plan to keep this around for the foreseeable future, and to make any adjustments to the style as needed.