Thanks for all the consideration, mods. A surprise increase in the game population does throw a few bumps in the road, but live and learn.
My other current game has a big focus on investigations/plot info dissemination as well, and they do a few clever things that I think could be useful to consider (they are also much, much smaller than this game, so some of these ideas might have to be massaged to fit a game of this size.)
When there's an event going on, perhaps there could be a section on the event post for handwaved "investigations." For example, a comment for each faction where people can post things like, "Godot hits up Sutoku HQ and bribes the tengu at the front desk with a cup of coffee before asking about how that big string cheese job is going." Mod NPC replies with "he says it's going well, but they keep having problems with the demon rats trying to steal all the cheese." Quick reply, info provided, my character has something that they can share with others ICly. Or...
Another concept which seems to work really well is a an OOC/handwaved "plot share" post. After some amount of time in which people can "gather" information, there's a post where everybody shares that info. This could be divided up into the factions for our purposes, or I could say something like, "Godot found out about demon rats stealing string cheese, but he'll only offer this info if someone buys him a cup of coffee." People who tag me can thread that out or we can hash out the details and keep it handwavy, but the idea is that there is an obvious place to share and get plot info, and nobody has to guess who has it or how they can get it.
I also like the above suggestion of bolding plot hooks within event posts, just to give people a more obvious idea of things to ask about. I think a lot of times people just don't know where or with whom to start if they want to get invested in a plot, and giving them a lot of easy ins is a good way to make sure they are able to do so with a minimum of stress.
no subject
My other current game has a big focus on investigations/plot info dissemination as well, and they do a few clever things that I think could be useful to consider (they are also much, much smaller than this game, so some of these ideas might have to be massaged to fit a game of this size.)
When there's an event going on, perhaps there could be a section on the event post for handwaved "investigations." For example, a comment for each faction where people can post things like, "Godot hits up Sutoku HQ and bribes the tengu at the front desk with a cup of coffee before asking about how that big string cheese job is going." Mod NPC replies with "he says it's going well, but they keep having problems with the demon rats trying to steal all the cheese." Quick reply, info provided, my character has something that they can share with others ICly. Or...
Another concept which seems to work really well is a an OOC/handwaved "plot share" post. After some amount of time in which people can "gather" information, there's a post where everybody shares that info. This could be divided up into the factions for our purposes, or I could say something like, "Godot found out about demon rats stealing string cheese, but he'll only offer this info if someone buys him a cup of coffee." People who tag me can thread that out or we can hash out the details and keep it handwavy, but the idea is that there is an obvious place to share and get plot info, and nobody has to guess who has it or how they can get it.
I also like the above suggestion of bolding plot hooks within event posts, just to give people a more obvious idea of things to ask about. I think a lot of times people just don't know where or with whom to start if they want to get invested in a plot, and giving them a lot of easy ins is a good way to make sure they are able to do so with a minimum of stress.