I’m hopeful Lemmy can avoid the hate/outrage/fear cycle. At the moment it feels very peaceful.

I often wondered if a need to sell advertising space and user data led to reddit pushing content that catered to anger, outrage and fear, as it drives engagement.

In that case here’s what I do that works for me.

I have a very loose concept of what the story is about that I separate into Acts. The number of acts depends on how long the story is supposed to run.

I then detail scenes in each act.

In each scene I have a detailed description that sets the scenario then dot points of the npcs and include their motivations and information they may provide the PCs (if appropriate). I generally write a few scenes to take into account how I expect the players to act in prior scenes.

Before the next session I review what happened last session and adjust my plan accordingly.

I found doing it this way kept me focussed while at the same time provided a loose enough structure that the players can have agency.

Also, I try not to waste work. For example, if you planned a scenario where the players are framed for murder in a town, but that session they avoid the town altogether. Then I reuse that scenario in a later town with appropriate adjustments.

So if I understand the state of play the parties are in a land ruled by a king, there is a necromancer somewhere to the north of the kings location, and a dungeon. There’s a burnt out town with a now saved water source thanks to group 2.

A few questions.

• Will the two groups meet up in real life for the odd session where appropriate? Or are they now in essence playing in the same world but entirely separate games?
• If the former is the dungeon a separate experience for the two groups or will they meet in the dungeon?
• Did the necromancer kill the npc or did group 1 kill the npc?

Assuming the necromancer killed the npc, and the two groups will meet in the dungeon, for a session together, I’d probably do the following:

• have the necromancer be the ultimate boss of the dungeon. Too powerful for either group but powerful enough for both groups to tackle together.
• Have the parties enter the dungeon as enemies but ultimately have to work together to defeat the necromancer. This could be aided by having a few rooms that are separate but with puzzles requiring both to work together to progress. The idea is to keep them from fighting before confronting the necromancer.
• Have the king treat group 2 as expendables who are only given extremely dangerous jobs, for now. This should hopefully diminish the alliance initially allowing you to slowly build the npc relationship as the group is useful to the king.
• At the end of the session have the groups go their own way then treat them as entirely separate stories. The idea of trying to schedule two different groups sounds exhausting.

Bear in mind though the above only works if the players would have fun. That’s the aim of all of this.

Also have a look through this website for some good tips on streamlining DM prep - [link]https://slyflourish.com/choosing_the_right_steps.html[/link]

In my view there’s nothing they could do.

Reddit is, in a sense, a parasocial company. It relies on the good will of its users and moderators to generate and moderate content for the site. Users then develop a sense of community and an identity around the site. The fiction of a social relationship then continues.

By adopting a policy that makes it difficult for third party applications to persist and by their behaviour in the intervening weeks, they’ve highlighted the economic nature of users/moderators relationships with the site.

People generally don’t like when a social relationship is treated as economic by one party, typically the other party is offended. It’s almost like if a friend came to your house for dinner and at the very end said thanks and slapped $10 on the table then left. Unless there was a clear discussion beforehand about chipping in for ingredients etc, it kind of cheapens the interaction.

So effectively, if my relationship with Reddit is now less social and more economic, then why would I contribute to them without compensation? This is especially true for moderators who collectively are estimated to provide $30 million per year in free labour for reddit.

I am, of course, aware that the relationship always was economic at its heart, and the site wouldn’t function if people had to be compensated for their interaction. But the illusion has been shattered and in my view can’t be repaired.