What if we start the chat -- in the RPR chatroom -- at x time on Tuesday and finish at y time on Wednesday? We could plan to run it 24 hours or 48 hours or whatever. That way everybody gets a chance to comment and react. I can post a tidied up transcript in this thread (tidied up in the sense of removing typos, not in the sense of editing anybody's statements for content...).

I'd prefer to do the discussing in the chat room and not here because that way people can comment as things occur to them and the comments can be organized later. But, I'd like to set an agenda as follows:

The major problems I see that we need to address are:

(1) How are we going to handle story time?

An example of this problem appears on the London thread at present. Simon and Druscilla are ready to forge ahead, but there are several story elements missing that need to come before the action in their posts. [PLEASE don't delete any posts that are already up!]

There are several ways to do this. We need to discuss them and decide how we want to hanlde it for this story.

Some points under this issue would be: How long do we wait for an anticipated post? What do we do if the post is not forthcoming within a reasonable time? How long is a "reasonable" time?

(2) What do we do about missing members? Obviously, people have events that must be addressed before they can think about an internet writing project. A two week vacation, however, is a different question from a two day bout of the flu.

This is the shoal on which most of the stories I've worked on have crashed. (To use a semi-nautical metaphor.) If you are writing a story about King Alfred... what do you do when Guthrum and his nephew disappear along with Count Baldwin of Flanders and Alfred's chief thane? All at the same time, all for reasons unrelated to the story? Answer: the rest of us whine awhile and then give up. I dont' want to do that with BE. This one is too good.

(3) What are the major storylines we want to work on?

Neither Decius nor I was prepared for the fact that there are people at AW who are interested in this time frame. We both thought that, at best, one or two others might want to write and maybe three or four bored people might want to read. But there has been a lot of interest. This is good. But it means that, as a group, we need to think about what the major themes of the story are going to be and where we want it to go.

Decius and I had focused on stolen naval plans and an affair between a wealthy man and his maid. (I'm afraid my interests in a story always lie in social and psychological ramifications rather than in plot qua plot. Which isn't to say that I have no interest in events. Obviously there must be events to precipitate any sort of movement, whether psyhchologically or any other way.) But other people have other interests and other subjects about which they want to write. And we all need to be on the same page... sort of.

It's no fun if everybody knows EVERYTHING before it happens!

(4) How many threads do we want to have going? We can create as many as are needed, but I hate to have bunches of threads with no posts. Or few posts. (I've been looking at AS groups, Roman Republic, The Legion and The Regia in particular. All three groups had about 5 to 6 threads in which people actually worked and about 20 more that had fewer than 5 posts.)

What additional threads do we need?

Should there be one for "London: The Theatre District"? Do we need Paris or Berlin or New York or Rome? St. Petersburg? (And if so, who's going to Russia?)

(5) There are probably other things that people have identified as subjects that need to be discussed. Let me know. Or just raise them yourself in the chat room.