Timeline Idea

bankuei mentioned an idea he'd had based off of a discussion of Situation, Scene, Conflict, and Resolution on Mighty Atom, which reminded me of an idea I'd had.

Basically, it was a visual indicator (a line) with marks representing significant story chunks placed on it. The GM would bring this with them to each game and show where the group was in reference to the storyline elements that the GM had planned on bringing up. The original idea was to keep players in line.

But now I think of it as a way of saying "Boom! Here's a roadblock you're gonna face if things go the way I'm thinking tonight. I'm placing it three marks in, so about three scenes or so. I'll go ahead and desrcibe it now ... everyone gets bonus points/fate chips/whateva for bringing in thematic elements related to it OR if everyone can work toward it and find a neat way of avoiding it/intercepting it/etc. then you'll all get bonus XP/something else rewardy. Also, if you like my idea and don't want to avoid it, and bring in elements you think will add to it, I'll either give full narration rights or triple XP or something like that.

The point being is that it would give everyone a sense of pacing without forcing a method of pacing in the rules and give rules to reward for meeting or circumventing that big scene the GM came up with.