Professor RP · @ProfessorRP
10th Oct 2014 from TwitLonger
The Structure of an SL #Lesson
As you may have gathered, I run a lot of SLs and have a lot of accounts. Thus, I find myself thinking about the structure of an SL occasionally. Today, I was thinking about the actual structure.
In my experience, the way an SL goes can be divided into three parts, which I will talk about in detail.
1) Introduction
2) The Quest
3) Payoff
-Introduction-
The introduction is simple. It's your starter. It's your hook. It's what makes your characters want to follow along the SL, likely sacrificing a few hours of their day to your mindless rambling. It's the dead body on the first page, or the strange occurrence. Something to make them go "What?", and with any luck, followed by "why?"
-The Quest-
The Quest it the bulk of the story, and it itself can be divided into parts.
1)The Investigation
2)The Journey
The Investigation is simple. it's the characters looking into the "what" and "why". You see this in games when the main character has to wander around town talking to NPCs. This is also where the minigames would be.
The Journey is when you find out where you need to go next. You hop on your horse and your ride to the next town, or head toward the next boss battle, or the next major NPC. This is usually where you have your basic random encounters; the screen swirls and suddenly you're in combat!
-The Payoff-
Finally, we get to the payoff. This is the part that makes it worth it. You have just spent hours grinding for experience (or fun, and please make it fun), grilling the locals, and playing stupid minigames and quick time events so you can get to this moment. It had better be worth it!
It doesn't really matter what it is. It can be the final boss, it can be saving the world, it can be an OMG SUPER RARE ITEM!!!1!!1! As long as it is something.
Really, that something depends on who is playing, what they expect, and why they are playing.
Any thoughts? Suggestions? Feel free to tag me.