My ideal is a story that's completely bottom-up. That is, it emerges from the RP that everyone involved does, rather than from a story that's been pre-written. It's pretty clearly an ideal that isn't easily realized, and it requires that whoever brought the story to the table lets go of the idea of knowing how the story will go, but when it happens it's very memorable.
Let me give you an example:
A few months ago Otto Vann came to me and asked if I could arrange for him to be robbed. He'd ICly hired another player to guard his gold, and wanted them to have a foil. I agreed, and RP followed in which we used various means (cue sexy sax) to find out where his gold supplier was, when they sent gold to his main storehouse in Ul'dah, and the route the wagon took. We hit the wagon and walked away with a nice haul.
Later C'kayah and his cousin Miah had a falling out. She was privy to Grand Theft Otto, so she went to him and became his mistress and tried to get him to come after us. At one point she even tried to cue the Sultansworn into the job. All the RP around this was completely bottom-up, emerging on the fly from everyone involved. A lot of the things that we all thought would happen didn't (Miah trying to get the 'sworn to convict C of robbing Otto, C'kayah trying to frame Miah for supplying the poison Jin'li used to poison the wells in Ul'dah), but that's just like real life. It was still a big pile of fun RP that no one planned out or really expected.
Let me give you an example:
A few months ago Otto Vann came to me and asked if I could arrange for him to be robbed. He'd ICly hired another player to guard his gold, and wanted them to have a foil. I agreed, and RP followed in which we used various means (cue sexy sax) to find out where his gold supplier was, when they sent gold to his main storehouse in Ul'dah, and the route the wagon took. We hit the wagon and walked away with a nice haul.
Later C'kayah and his cousin Miah had a falling out. She was privy to Grand Theft Otto, so she went to him and became his mistress and tried to get him to come after us. At one point she even tried to cue the Sultansworn into the job. All the RP around this was completely bottom-up, emerging on the fly from everyone involved. A lot of the things that we all thought would happen didn't (Miah trying to get the 'sworn to convict C of robbing Otto, C'kayah trying to frame Miah for supplying the poison Jin'li used to poison the wells in Ul'dah), but that's just like real life. It was still a big pile of fun RP that no one planned out or really expected.
