I am not going to assign individual staff to particular locations or spheres of influence; every staff member can work where they see fit. The game world will be small to start with, and build out only as demand dictates. There may be some need for moderators or storytellers to specialize, but I'm not going to structure the system so that it mandates that specialization. I would rather encourage cooperation and interaction in plotting and playing out events, so that if something requires multiple storytellers to enact, those people are available. This should reduce staff burnout, help prevent IC isolation of areas, and allow wide-ranging repercussions of events to be explored.
I am thinking staff members might break down along these lines:
- Storytellers: Manage everyday IC events and keep the game moving along. Run Events, maybe some Quests, and personal plots as requested by players. Leaning towards requiring one season (3 months) on the game.
- Senior Storytellers: May run Quests and Trials, are encouraged to work on plots of wider scope. Require a successful season as ordinary Storyteller.
At both levels, Storytelling is all about… telling stories. Storytellers plot. That's really all they should be doing.
Storytellers will have access to an all-staff plotting forum and player-specific threads where they can make notes about things they did or designed or would like to do for a particular PC. In theory, if a ST drops out, someone else should be able to read those notes and more or less pick up where the lost ST left off.
- Moderators: Moderators are responsible for ensuring the ongoing operation of the game's systems. This includes administrative matters and routine tasks such as fielding questions, reviewing new characters, and approval of PC-requested upgrades such as Expertise awards and Resource bonuses. In addition, Moderators have oversight over the long-term development of the game; this encompasses such aspects as the overarching social and political direction of IC polities and factions, developing historical events and their present repercussions, game metaphysics (e.g. roles of reincarnation, religion, magic, monsters in the setting), and appropriate expansion of the game into new regions, races, and polities. Moderators may provide support to Storytellers through modding the occasional thread, but are not generally expected to oversee plots themselves. However, Moderators should be familiar with the considerations that go into devising and running plots; applying to this position requires at least one prior season as a Storyteller.
In addition to everything Storytellers have access to, Moderators get access to administrative notes where such things as jobs and wage records and warnings and bans are noted. (I presume jobs and wages will be a thing.) Possibly also a staff-side development forum, I'm not sure yet how that will be structured.
- Administrators: Handle code and site matters, as well as Moderator tasks, and have final authority over everything on the site. I figure this is pretty much going to be me.
I like this layout. I think the biggest trouble will be keeping outside development happening only where things already exist. We don't want the first thing that happens to be a new moderator trying to develop the other nomad band, or the new coastal city inhabited by the new oceanic race. I presume that is easy enough to make clear, however.
Will there be a system of policing who becomes a staff member/monitoring what they do? Or will it be more open?
Caveat: right now, this is just a bare-bones scheme on paper. Details may be subject to change in practice.
I want to promote staff collaboration at both levels (ST/Mod), everybody being sounding boards and discussing ideas together and cooperating to realize them. Ideally everybody of a rank should be at least aware of what their peers are working on. So Moderators will have a specific collective development board. I'm not wholly sure what everyday development will happen at that level, but I tentatively think it will involve more history and factions than races/polities.
Possibly also some high-level direction for ongoing plots. STs should manage scene-to-scene, with maybe some hooks for future scenes. Senior STs should be managing whole seasons, with an eye to groundwork for the next season. Mods should be thinking multiple seasons to a year down the line, looking at plotting in context of the future of the game, and otherwise providing the framework that STs of both levels will fill with details.
There will be times when new races/cities are developed, but only when there's enough ST/Mod support. There will probably be an ongoing draft board for working on new nodes (a group of polities/races), but nodes won't be released until the community can support them, and they will be released wholesale rather than piecewise.