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What is a Player Event?
On Thain we encourage players to pursue their own character stories without the express needs of a Dungeon Master. Character development is an extremely personal and time consuming process, and we encourage players to develop intricate and meaningful character storylines the likes of which you might find in great film, comics, and books.
As an example, perhaps your story is the tale of a former Watch Gangster who settled into the Frozen Northlands of Thain, where his past history as a criminal and the obvious tattoos he bears from that former life don’t earn him the kind of derision and exile they might in the Kreis. How might his past catch up to him? Using Player Eventing tools, it’s possible to invite others to events in which this past plays out in ways that they too can interact with – perhaps one day as he works the decks of an ice-trawler with two of his (and your) PC friends, his old gang shows up looking to pull him back into one last job, and he and his new friends have to acquiesce for some reason.
Using our Player Eventing tools, you can create these Gang-Member NPCs, control them, speak through them, all while your own character reacts and interacts, as you personally run them. You can dress the set of the area they must travel to for this last job using our fully open placeables system, you can create the NPCs that they must rob from, and you can narrate and play out the scenario in which the theft becomes more complicated and self-conflicting than a simple last grab-and-dash. Perhaps his new friends discover his gang tattoos. Perhaps the job means hurting people he didn’t plan on. The twists and turns of the story are your own, anything you can dream you can tell. Telling this single simple story is a huge payoff, not just for your character, but for everyone’s: you can spend weeks afterward role playing out the consequences with your character’s friends. Thain is a world utterly open to the progression of your story, and you don’t have to wait for a DM to help you do it – pitch events and involve others, and it is very likely they too will involve you in their own events in the future.
We also encourage players to pitch directly to others, helping move forward their stories and goals once you get to know them, perhaps in small individual scenes or perhaps in broader scenes that involve others and continue to complicate those goals in thoughtful ways. Thain’s player-eventing culture makes everyone’s story a shared and collaborative enterprise that ensures you can always find something to do with your own. It is our goal that your story is always yours first and foremost – that you can dream and envision a broad-strokes character arc and play it out with the help of other players, while still joining larger DM events that might have even higher stakes and higher character moments when suitable.
Player Event Guidelines
In order to keep a cogent world, we do have a few guidelines surrounding player events that we ask players to be mindful of as they seek to tell their stories:
1. When involving a faction in your event, we ask that you seek to build the factions up rather than tearing them down! This does not mean they cannot be antagonists to one another, most Thain factions have reasons to distrust each other, but avoid strawmanning your opposing factions and instead try to fairly portray the complexity each settlement and faction faces that might drive them to act a certain way. If you aren’t sure what these are, check out our Factions Section, play with characters from those factions, or talk to a staff member.
2. Avoid using live module NPCS or speaking for an entire faction – Examples include Steward Bargus Tel’moran, King Rugar Greathammer, etc, but they also include large-scale faction action, like having a legion of Steinkreis Knights arrive at a settlement and declare war upon it. We ask that players try to keep two to three degrees of separation from major faction NPCs when devising an NPC idea, such that there is plausible deniability for that group when necessary: An antagonistic Steinkreis Noble might claim to know Bargus and threaten to snitch to him about the events unfolding in a conflict scene if he is not placated, and a suitably vague air of “does he actually?” can still create very similar tension as if Bargus were in the room, without creating undue obligation upon the setting to forever remember the particulars of this event.
3. Use events and your NPCs to complicate rather than solve the setting. An NPC who antagonizes the characters or is an obstacle toward their goals is a strong NPC choice to use the setting through – an NPC who removes obstacles (Example: a high priest who simply resurrects the subject of a mystery plot) or simply represents additional power for your own character (Example: A captain of the Guard who names you high-guard of Steinkreis) are NPCs that we ask you not play. Your NPCs should not exclusively support your own goals, but should instead have motivations of their own, and strong NPCs complicate rather than simplify your character’s goals.
4. Please allow DMs to direct changing faction relationships, especially in the case of interfaction war. If you want to see further conflict between two factions that you think have good cause for further friction and increased tension, we encourage events that raise the temperature of the room – however we also ask that you try to involve willing player characters on the other side of the conflict in these stories, and do so with a collaborative spirit that builds your opposition up.
As always, if you have an idea for a plot or something that might involve significant additional lore, changing faction relationships, or the involvement or approval of major faction NPCs in order to do, please feel free to reach out to a member of the DM Team through Discord or In Game. We are always happy to take requests under consideration, give feedback on ideas, and help you build the version of your idea that best fits the setting by giving you additional information and permissions as you might need them.