As an RP-oriented MUD grows, there's always the danger of spreading people (and storylines) too thin.
When I first started OtherSpace, because it was an original theme coming out of my head, I kept a pretty tight hold on the reins. No one else knew the races, worlds and histories as well as I did, and I felt fairly protective of the storylines.
But as the experienced playerbase grew, and the veteran players became staffers and storycrafters in their own right, I could gradually ease up on the reins and let staffers run with their own stories.
There have been times I let players take things too far and should have stepped in, but didn't: The destruction of La Terre comes immediately to mind.
More recently, I have done things like step in and offered polite-the-scenes urging to staffers who, as an example, happened to be running similar invading-alien-of-the-month style plots. These plots were good, taken individually, but because they started running parallel, they generated quite a bit of OOC gnashing of teeth among players who were tired of dealing with The Latest Alien Conflict plots. When it ceases to be special and becomes a chore, it's time to step back and re-evaluate the benefits of a plot. Luckily, I've got a pretty cool staff, and when I make that kind of request, they find ways to throttle back and make it work ICly.
Beyond that, if you don't set out to tell a hugely complicated story, it shouldn't overwhelm the participants - although it can feel as though it might spin out of control at any time. And the players caught up in those stories, I think, should feel that edge-of-the-cliff sensation. Even if you have the most fundamental, world-changing storyline in mind for an arc, it needs to have a fairly easy-to-grasp handle for people to grab - and for you, as the crafter of the plot, to grab down the road and keep ushering the story down its proper path.
Now, this doesn't mean to dominate the course of the story, but it does mean helping to keep the story moving and to set the appropriate tone. I do this a lot with IC news posts that get broadcast throughout the galaxy, as various worlds, leaders, political scientists, etcetera, expound on the latests events. This often gives players more fodder to spin RP off of, lets them decide where they stand about any given issue involved in the storyline, and it gives me a chance to revisit the central threads of my plot fairly easily.
With OtherSpace, I've found the problem isn't so much in overwhelming people as keeping them conscious of the central issues. If you've got a means for providing news - and making that news matter to the people who inhabit your world - then you've got an essential ingredient for maintaining story continuity and a sense of life in your RP MUD without necessarily seizing control of every aspect of the story.
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