Q: I’m a huge fan of the LBD–thanks for all your hard work! With LBD, I liked how the transmedia elements complemented the story. With Sanditon, so far it’s difficult to get attached to the characters and approach the transmedia (it seems bigger than the story). I just don’t have the time, but I want to have a full experience without feeling like I’m missing out. I know it’s early in the process, but do you have any advice/can you make it more accessible to those who don’t want to role-play?

A: Hi there. Thanks for the great question. Welcome to Sanditon is definitely a departure from The LBD in many ways. Now as for the story, I think it’s jarring because you as the viewer have just come off this crazy ride on The LBD and here we are starting things up (almost from scratch) with WTS. When Lizzie Bennet started there wasn’t all this transmedia/world expansion. It was just Lizzie, Jane, Charlotte, and Lydia. We don’t even mention Darcy’s name until episode 4.

So in WTS, right now there isn’t big drama, it’s setup. So far you’ve gotten 7 minutes of video, some transmedia elements, and a whole huge fictional town to play in. So yeah right now there’s a lot and it definitely looks overwhelming.

Here are the three ways I think you can choose to experience this.

1. Just watch the videos here on Pemberley Digital’s YT channel: What you’ll get will be our version of the story of Sanditon. Granted our version is already quite a departure and will continue to be. Heck just the presence of Gigi Darcy and the Darcy name guarantees that. As I said before, right now we’re about 7 minutes of video in and well, it’s pretty much just character and setup at this point.

2. Watch the videos and follow the official accounts on twitter. Between these two you should be getting 95% (if not 100%) of our story. This is pretty much no different from The LBD experience. It’s probably less crazy because you won’t need to subscribe to 4 YT channels to track everything.

3. Go all in. Videos, Official Twitter, Townsfolk, Domino, anything and everything. You can get completely lost in this world. It’s big, it’s vast, and it’s grown to such in literally a week. It is absolutely astonishing.

Is it bigger than the story? Yes and no. There are stories upon stories, upon stories, upon stories happening in the world of the townsfolk.

There are now over 600 residents of Sanditon, CA. The line between creator and consumer keeps getting blurrier. — Hank Green (@hankgreen) May 14, 2013

Now this is just my opinion, but like The LBD I feel you can experience our story pretty cleanly by just watching the videos, and like The LBD you’ll get a richer character story by following the in character official accounts. But UNLIKE The LBD, you can now be a part of the world. You can get your hands dirty and play in the sandbox or stay clean and watch everyone else play in the sandbox. WTS is a massive experiment and an evolution of the format. We’re definitely trying some new things and how you want to experience it is entirely up to you.