New year, new game. Maybe.
I'm posting this here first before posting it on the other boards because I figure the audience most interested in Anarchy will be here.
Who: GM + 3 to 4 players.
GM = me, dashingly handsome with 24 years of playing/GMing experience but limited to PbP games for the moment.
Players = no Anarchy experience necessary, but PbP experience is a big bonus. Ideally you'll be someone who enjoys writing and exploring the Sixth World.
What: A combat-heavy PbP Anarchy game. The basic premise is that you are Sioux Wildcats on a behind-the-lines mission. I'll post more details if there's enough interest. Character generation will be Prime Runner, with some added perks for being badass Wildcats. (Also some constraints. For example, negative qualities shouldn't be anything that would disqualify you from service.)
When: In-world time will be January 2077.
Where: North America. You'll be behind UCAS lines on a covert op.
Why: It's going to be Anarchy for two reasons:
1) Because I haven't played Anarchy before and want to; and,
2) there's going to be a lot of combat and it would take literal years to go through it via PbP with proper initiative rolls, complex and simple actions, etc. I don't want to focus on the minutiae; I want to explore the characters and the world. You're Wildcats, so you're going to be the deadliest things on two feet. Given your physical superiority, I am more interested in how to you react to evolving situations.
The basic thinking is that 3-4 players will be enough to cover the Meat/Magic/Matrix trinity. A rigger will be useful. One character will be the officer-in-command and will be the default decision-maker if the players can't OOCly come to a consensus about a course of action.
I have successfully GM'd two PbP games to completion, largely through stubbornness and determination. I've been paying attention to other Anarchy PbP games to get a sense of the pros-and-cons. In some ways, PbP is perfect for the system since it allows for lovingly crafted descriptions of the game world. In other ways, it's difficult to leverage every aspect of Anarchy gameplay. (For example, it is next-to-impossible to interrupt someone to interject a plot point.) This will be a bit of an experiment as we figure out what to keep and what to skip.
As for the question of GM control vs. player control, I would suggest that we tackle the first chapter in a more traditional arrangement (with the GM at the helm, puppeting the NPCs and adjudicating rolls) and then migrating to a less-centralized arrangement in the second chapter once we've established a rapport both OOCly and ICly.
That's the high-level vision. I'll leave this here for a few days to gauge interest before casting the net wider, if necessary.
Edit: grammar