I have currently run into a situation where one player has exited a scene, and I am waiting on a few others to finish the last challenge in the current scene. They aren't "laggards" per se, just addressing a second obstacle in the current scene, unrelated to the player in question.

The other two players do not necessarily need to be involved in the next scene, so it would be nice to complete it in parallel with the other two players completing the current scene... hopefully that makes sense.

Note that this issue would not be resolved by allowing multiple place cards, since the player in question has already played her 3 cards per scene, and would not then still be unable to participate further in the current scene.

This would be very useful, especially for games with a large number of players. There are some specific types of games I've run in person that I can't effectively do on Storium without this feature.

I would permit all players to comment on all story threads, however, whether or not they're part of that thread. Also, make sure players can join a thread after it's begun (perhaps after resolving the challenges in their own thread).

For those of us who want to split up the players into groups, if would be awesome if one could make two scenes going on at the same time, to prevent people from getting confused and putting cards to the wrong challenge.

So, like many of you, I've had the same thought. Scene 2 of my first game and I'm wishing I could send different characters on different paths.

This would have to be concurrent, otherwise I fear that momentum would be lost with the players. My idea would to have side by side scenes on the same page. This gives the narrator the ability to have everything on one screen, and everybody is kept up to date. You could add the option to keep PCs blind to the other scene, and just have it grayed out, but still state when posts are made to let both sides know the other is working.

This would work well with the ability to have multiple scenes running at once - perhaps as long as there's no players in both scenes.

I think proper support for splitting the narrative would be great. Right now the most engaging way for the players to play (every player active in every scene) makes for some weird stories. We're mostly playing it off as comedy right now but I think it would be detrimental in more serious games. Letting the narrator pick the characters for each scene is an excellent first step but it's also a bit boring for the players not in a particular scene, especially if the scene drags on.

I guess I would implement it like this:

- narrators can always start a new scene if there are 'free' players (i.e. ones not currently in a scene)
- players visiting the game will start on the scene their character is in rather than the 'most-recent' scene.
- leave it up to the narrator to govern the overall narrative and bringing the players together if necessary. He/she can add more or longer scenes for faster players and less, or quicker scenes for slower players.
-default to the current simple setup of including all players in every scene, let narrators discover they can exclude characters and run multiple scenes later. The overall goal is to make the interface work pretty much as it does right now for players while adding discoverable flexibility for narrators.

It seems like the current interface could accomodate simultaneous scenes quite well, simply by not requiring that scenes be locked when a new one starts.

Maybe some visual indicator on the scene navigation bar for which scenes are active would help it out as well. And some way for the narrator to indicate which player characters are present in a scene.

Because sometimes your characters split up and are doing different quests simultaneously

Thanks Anonymous! I went looking through all the threads but somehow missed it! :D

They've received this request a lot (and I totally agree that it should be possible), and answered that they're thinking about it. See the suggestion here:
https://storium.uservoice.com/forums/211322-general/suggestions/4622468-threaded-parallel-scenes

Also, I think the single scene / non-present player sits out model, besides hurting momentum from a player standpoint, pushes a narrator to herding the group along together. In an actual story it would be common for characters to not be together but the narrator may feel obligated to keep as many characters as possible present in each scene. I think this limits the overall potential of the narrative.

@C David Dent I think the multiple location approach would work pretty well. It would avoid splitting characters into separate tabs or pages. It would also split the card pool for the scene. I also agree with @Mr. Cat that this feature is a necessity and people will simply find cumbersome workarounds if it is not implemented. If the multiple location approach is taken I think it would make sense to still separate the action within the scene, as opposed to interleaving actions occurring at different locations. I also think that some of the scene options should be available for each locale: challenges, assets, specifying characters (if/when that feature is added), etc.

Definitely want this. Today I got the email notification reminding me to post--but my character's not active in the current scene. The narrator should at least be able to turn off notifications for players who aren't part of the current scene, so they don't think, "hey! I better post something--even though I was told I'm sitting this one out."

Honestly, I think if functionality like this isn't added, people will try to innovate non-ideal workarounds which will clutter things up. (For example, by creating duplicate games "Empire of Bob: Tavern" and "Empire of Bob: Palace" and running scenes in each.)

This seems to me a question of "how" not "if" and most importantly if the first (beta) implementation has flaws, no Narrator is obligated to use it.

Perhaps if you could add multiple locations to a scene and then assign characters to those locations.

It might mean having to assign obstacles, NPCs, assets and goals to particular locations as well.

Having players "sit out" a scene is rough, since that means they'll be out for a couple of days - which might be long enough to lose momentum.

Besides, on of the strengths of this particular medium is that it *can* run in parallel, compared to tabletop play.

Heh, jinx!

Sabe: as a player you do have to make a move in order to choose your outcome (otherwise there's no explanation of what you did in the story), but *technically* you don't have to move at all. The narrator can start the next scene any time they like.

...oh man, I tried it just now and it totally works. I guess I was reading the "should" in "You should wait to start the next scene until all players have made at least one move and finished their part in the scene by choosing an outcome" as a rule rather than a suggestion!

I haven't been in any games as a player, but I thought everyone was required to make a move and choose an outcome before the scene could end? Players have at least commented that you can't choose an outcome without making an accompanying move.