Friday 11 February 2011

A series-ful of plots, series two: The New Series Opener

Happy Palindrome Day!

Well, since I'm running a second series of The Door In Time, might as well...

I've discussed this before and much the same stuff applies, but anyway...

2.1: Hello Again, Faithful Viewer!

A new run of your series (which we'll call a season as to try and keep confusion to a minimum, never mind that the new series box sets are called series, and people argue over which season the latest series was...) might have the same cast of characters and players, new arrivals and absences to the lineup, a Time Lord with a regeneration hangover, a wildly different format, even someone else GMing. So what's new and what's changed?

Edit - a great big bit on regeneration episodes at Bigger On The Inside, go read!


Of course, you don't need to model the series so much that you have to worry about hooking a new audience, just any new players you have. Try not to baffle them with in-jokes for the game or the player group, though, and try not to scare them off!

If you've rejigged the setup (introduced or written out a time machine, regenerated the Time Lord PC, set the game on modern Earth for a few months, lost all but one of the PCs) it's time to introduce the new status quo. Bring in prominent new NPCs as well as any new PCs, show how things work differently now...

New PCs, and especially new players, need a bit of spotlight time. How much depends on the spotlight comfort level of the player, but a little bit at least. Look at Martha's introduction in Smith And Jones, where we see her and meet her family before a weird boy (like a Mysterious Man but harder to take seriously) runs up to her and waves his tie at her.

In amongst all this, a complicated plot might well be best avoided, so an Aliens Of London (or Leadworth) story with a one-session-sized threat to a new PC's home spacetime may be a good idea. But you can also drop in a Series Arc, introduce a new monster that will get a big role later on or bring back a classic monster that won't EXTERMINATE overshadow the rest of the game...


Example: New Worlds

Trying to learn what really happened to his missing physicist brother, Jodrell Bank technician Richard Evans is shocked to discover that alien invaders are abducting scientists, taking them to a distant world to work for them, to research something called the Alignment. Running for his life, he meets a girl called Emily running the other way, followed by a man who calls himself the Doctor...

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