Hi everyone, I am going to share some of my ideas here as well, some are no doubt shallow and others might be otherwise unworkable but either way upfront approach usually is the best one.<br/><br/>I try to first ask some basic questions that I think are important for longevity of a group game, and ponder what might be some of the answers below each one.<br/><br/><strong>1. What does the player need and get out of the game?</strong><br/><ul class="bbc_list"><li>Sex - plenty of it and in varieties that cater to the players interests (I am shallow I admit but I would not be writing erotic fiction without that part)</li><li>To have any of the former, we must be able to meet characters that provide enough depth and challenge to actually get our protagonists to want things</li><li>We usually need to have some sort of developing situation / plot to keep staying within the game interesting, and usually also to keep the game within some sort of manageable area and manageable amount of locations</li><li>To keep things interesting and pleasant, it would be also lovely if the setting actually perked some interest in us, be it culture, history, established structure vs survival, what ever we find compelling</li><li>Different people have different needs. Some of us like smut, others like romance, and some much darker things than that. If there is very wide player population, content spread must be high enough to cater to everyone in some fashion</li></ul><strong>2. What do the other players need and get out of the players part?</strong><br/><ul class="bbc_list"><li>In my opinion, the general writing style within the group game should be similar (same tense and such) to keep the game pleasant to follow for anyone involved, and to outside readers</li><li>We should also be able to stick to some sort of posting schedule, in group games consistency is many, many times more important than amount of posts only few players are able to keep up - slowest dictates the pace in some ways. one post expected from each player in every two days or such might be realistic when everyone is quite active - for example</li><li>It would keep everyone a lot more comfortable if every players writing was in good enough standards to not get anyones literacy spider sense tingling - expecting some standards is a good thing, not elitism</li><li>Everyone cannot get along perfectly with everybody - characters of writers who are more compatible than others tend to get more scenes together sooner or later, in some measure I think it should be encouraged, but player population should be such that everyone has something to do</li></ul><strong>3. What are the basic elements that create unwanted tensions?</strong><br/><ul class="bbc_list"><li>Drama bleeding from between characters to between the writers tends to be the most usual mood killer. There are many things that can cause this, and I do not believe in game where it would not happen at one point or another. It should be recognized quickly enough and managed before it gets people involved too uncomfortable to continue writing.</li><li>Overly competitive settings are blessing and curse drama wise as well. Competitive situations are interesting to handle and write - but when ever there is competition there are winners and losers, and such situations at times tend to get some feathers ruffled. Competitive situations crafted in a way where both winners and losers gain something are possible, even if difficult to create at times</li></ul><strong>4. What is the best way for a game to avoid depending on one player / character too much (to prevent game death by important player disappearing)?</strong><br/><ul class="bbc_list"><li>I suppose most important thing is that character(s) that are really instrumental for integrity of the game should ideally be npc:s that can be taken over by different people if need be</li><li>Ideal solution would be one where each character in game is important in their own way, but in terms of game world integrity expendable. Anything that is not expendable, should be NPC that is agreed to be able to change player if need be for game integrity reasons</li></ul><strong>5. How to manage game consistency vs scene length?</strong><br/><ul class="bbc_list"><li>Erotic games tend to have sex, sex is not always between everyone participating, and writing scenes takes time. Managing the consistency of time in game can be quite a task at times. For a game to succeed, there must be some agreed way for it to retain its integrity</li><li>There are many ways to do this, but one good way is to have a sort of announcement in main thread of passage of time in game. I do not mean hour by hour basis but for example morning - noon - evening - night sort of thing</li><li>Scenes between limited number of characters ideally should be able to either move on their side threads, or move to some other medium altogether. I have played excellent game elsewhere where for example one on one scenes could be played anywhere, be it separate thread in forum, email or irc. In case of irc or email,  people just posted the log of the encounter in its own thread. Why separation to somewhere is important is that even if the characters are in scene that can be short in in game time but take long to write, the characters can participate in main thread in its consistent time continuum while they are still being written in the scene that started previously.</li></ul><br/>I think there were other things that I wanted to say, but at the moment these were the most important things that came to my mind - lets discuss!