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[MageSteff]

Add my voice to those saying you should have help running your ARG. Orbital Colony was supposed to be a very small very short (we were aiming for just a few weeks, not the several months it turned into).

As you are very familiar with the storyline (i.e. your written work) it might help if you sent your team copies of your work so that they can at least be as familiar as possible with the background information, and something to guide them in helping you produce your story.

Trust me, until you are one of the main PMs for a project, you have no idea how much time you will be spending on it. Trust me, it is at least double the amount of hours you spent preparing for the game. While OC was running, I was working a full time job, then I would come home and spend at least 8 to 10 hours on the game, between character interactions and watching how the players were progressing. Add in time to eat, shower, run errands, I was sleep deprived for most of the game. And I wasn't the only one on that schedule.


If I may suggest, you get someone to at least help watch the back end while the game is running - someone to make certain content goes up on time and is proof checked before the players hit it. I would also suggest having at least 1 person for each main character, everyone can fill in on the minor ones, but major characters take a lot of time while the game is running, answering e-mail, interactive chatting, etc. Players can sense a change in "voice" if more than one person is "controlling" a main character. Players will pick apart the change in voice for (non-existant) clues - frustrating for players if they don't find anything and frustrating for the PM as you watch players chasing red herrings of their own making.



Good luck on your project.