I've run a few major plot events for my LS where there are too many attendees to throw everyone into a party, as mentioned above. (I've also tried running an event in the LS channel, which is an Utter Nightmare, hoo boy.) In light of this, I try my best to pick remote locations as a setting for such things, to mitigate the confusion that would inevitably follow with someone walking up.
However, we've still had some randoms chance upon us during these scenes. Thankfully, they were polite and lightly inquisitive at most, and often they simply stayed and watched the scene as a quiet observer or left. Sometimes I'll send a quick OoC /tell to the person to explain that it's a major plot event for our guild, as I worry that some of our IC themes and conflicts may not jive with someone else's sense of immersion. (For example, our main antagonists are resurrected/cloned Allagans, which, while viable within the lore, may be too "out there" for a walk-up to ICly acknowledge meeting.)
Again, most people have been super polite when I told them what was going on OoCly. Although, on the other hand, I was also being polite towards them. There isn't really any reason to be rude. Running a huge plot event with a lot of people participating can be stressful and a lot to juggle at once, especially if you're a lone Storyteller of the scene. Still, I'd never really stonewall anyone from participating, necessarily... but being that they haven't followed the plot of our guild, I worry that they would feel inherently confused about what's going on, and also kind of weirded out, haha.
Edit: Of course, if we're just doing a random free social beach party or whatever, I don't think I'd mind random walk-ups joining in. Same deal if I'm playing a one-on-one scene somewhere, really. (Although sometimes it can be sad when the scene is high-feels and very personal to the characters and the mood is shattered by a random person walking up and saying hi, I generally accept that this is an occurrence that could happen in RL and don't purposefully exclude the new person because of it. I just roll with it!)
However, we've still had some randoms chance upon us during these scenes. Thankfully, they were polite and lightly inquisitive at most, and often they simply stayed and watched the scene as a quiet observer or left. Sometimes I'll send a quick OoC /tell to the person to explain that it's a major plot event for our guild, as I worry that some of our IC themes and conflicts may not jive with someone else's sense of immersion. (For example, our main antagonists are resurrected/cloned Allagans, which, while viable within the lore, may be too "out there" for a walk-up to ICly acknowledge meeting.)
Again, most people have been super polite when I told them what was going on OoCly. Although, on the other hand, I was also being polite towards them. There isn't really any reason to be rude. Running a huge plot event with a lot of people participating can be stressful and a lot to juggle at once, especially if you're a lone Storyteller of the scene. Still, I'd never really stonewall anyone from participating, necessarily... but being that they haven't followed the plot of our guild, I worry that they would feel inherently confused about what's going on, and also kind of weirded out, haha.
Edit: Of course, if we're just doing a random free social beach party or whatever, I don't think I'd mind random walk-ups joining in. Same deal if I'm playing a one-on-one scene somewhere, really. (Although sometimes it can be sad when the scene is high-feels and very personal to the characters and the mood is shattered by a random person walking up and saying hi, I generally accept that this is an occurrence that could happen in RL and don't purposefully exclude the new person because of it. I just roll with it!)
