This week were are working on the overall story branching schemes.  This year the players will all feel like they are apart of the same team.  We're also continuing our want to have everyone in the same world because every story matters to us.

Getting these details down is usually the hardest part of the story telling process.  We want it to make sense that 10 parties are in one place and that several encounters are simniliar.  What we don't want to do is fall into the MMO pit where people are doing the same quests and have no effect on the world.

In the previous year it was one of the things were were most proud of, but it was a lot of work on dungeon masters.  We would have these branches based on players decisions, but it made more work for the DM.  This year we're fixing that, thanks in large part to an idea inspired by the first couple of years of True Dungeon.  Bill and I were chatting and I brought up one of the early years of True Dungeon were a single DM would escort you through the dungeon, introducing you to other DMs in the room.  That conversation led to turning our DMs into parts themselves for our tournament.

So all of the players begin in the same place, and there's one master story teller for each group.  The teams then decide which direction the yare going to go in, and are branched out to a DM who "is" that part.  Within each of the DMs adventures there are 2 branches they could go, and the decision has a strong effect on the story.

This idea is really going to ease the DM workload and provide players an even stronger feeling of a living world.