Idea Co operative world building as people play

[DigitalEcho]

So often what you'll see in a thread is that the world builder puts together a backdrop and a hook, perhaps some guidelines for the players to build characters, and keeps the ball rolling as the story progresses toward a climax.

I think this model is both limiting and a major factor in why threads fade out.

Idea: The original writer starts with a character and a small portion of a world. Fleshing it out only by moving around in it with the character. That writer decides which tags apply to the world, be it futuristic or fantasy, cyberpunk or sword & sorcery. Nothing but this.

New writers (not players) join the world with the full authority to add locations, characters, organisations, objects, whatever. Over time, characters may actually meet if writers are minded to move them around the same locations. There is no contrived group to which everyone belongs. The only limit is that the tags be observed. Don't put a magical girl into the futuristic gritty realfest. No, your half demon god of love has no place in the slice of life story about a group of soccer mums coming to terms with the death of their friend. Observe the tags but otherwise contribute without the need of strict approval as to whether or not that location actually exists or I think it's "fair" that your character can do that.

I feel like a lot of the problems with the characters people try to write stem from the constraints of structuring the shared medium. So how about not?

I think I'm going to try this and it'll stay open. Every time someone contributes to the world it will drive interest for the next. I think people might even be persuaded to write well simply to keep up with each other.

Hell if someone joins and god mode kills my character I'm just going to start another one. I only ask that you try and be interesting when you do it.

I'm not going to do a big character bio thing either. The OOC thread bios should contain nothing you haven't shown the reader in the course of the narrative.

If you get what I'm thinking of here. Say something.

 

[Idea]

I say this a lot but... yeah it's not as uncommon as one might think this sort of idea. I've seen many different versions of it, though they aren't really my cup of tea due to how chaotic they are, not usually anyway.

Also, from my experience, most people world build over time rather than front loading, unless they are the GM of a roleplay, in which case there is more of a tendency to want to create one's own world which usually means frontloading. Speaking personally, I find a world with more stable and solid information with ground to stand on to be more engaging, but that's a tangent right now.


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Now that said, the fact that it's not that uncommon doesn't make it a bad idea. Quite the contrary in fact, there definitely are people who would be interested in such a thing. I think your biggest concern in implementing it is community fragmentation. An idea like this isn't bad and really allows players freedom, but if you join a roleplay you'd want that roleplay to be about something. Otherwise, you'd just join a different roleplay about that thing or even make your own. If the roleplay allows for everything, then it is fundamentally isn't about anything, which means that you will not a roleplay you will have a bunch of mini-roleplays going around, each with their own settings made better or worse. Furthermore, while you might be ok with your character just being offed because someone else made a god mode character that went on a rampage, will your players really feel the same way about their work?

It's hard enough to keep people interested when there is one well-thought out thing they invest themselves in, but a bunch of fragments is a lot taller an order. Players who are left alone will probably grow bored of playing by themselves and thus bored of your roleplay. And the melting pot of players will largely depend on whether you have players who are willing to be interested and invested in the works of others.

For this purpose, I recommend two things:
1. Lead by example. As GM, try to take an interest in and work to really interact with the the things the others are into- if you can't do that much, you shouldn't be attempting this idea in the first place.

2. Encourage and provide incentives for the players to take an interest in the work of others and want to explore that work of their own accord.

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And now I've said my peace. Best of luck and happy RPing!

 

[ElectronicSnow]

I agree with collaborative world building as the story unfolds. As long as we know the basics, all players should contribute to making the world come to life.

 

[Crayons]

I think it sounds interesting and definitely worth trying.

You might want to have a little more interaction in the way the writers build the world together though, for example by the "world" being a relatively small space like a town or city. Otherwise all you'll get will be different people writing about different things with no connection at all save for the tags (which are very general).

New writers (not players)

What do you mean? Is it more of a writing exercise than a roleplay? Is the emphasis on world building only, or is the world building there to form the basis of a story/stories?

 

[Phantom Thief of Hearts]

If you want to do that then you're gonna need frequent contact with the other writers for the lore just to avoid continuity errors.

 

[DigitalEcho]

I say this a lot but... yeah it's not as uncommon as one might think this sort of idea. I've seen many different versions of it, though they aren't really my cup of tea due to how chaotic they are, not usually anyway.

Also, from my experience, most people world build over time rather than front loading, unless they are the GM of a roleplay, in which case there is more of a tendency to want to create one's own world which usually means frontloading. Speaking personally, I find a world with more stable and solid information with ground to stand on to be more engaging, but that's a tangent right now.


-----------------------------------------------------

Now that said, the fact that it's not that uncommon doesn't make it a bad idea. Quite the contrary in fact, there definitely are people who would be interested in such a thing. I think your biggest concern in implementing it is community fragmentation. An idea like this isn't bad and really allows players freedom, but if you join a roleplay you'd want that roleplay to be about something. Otherwise, you'd just join a different roleplay about that thing or even make your own. If the roleplay allows for everything, then it is fundamentally isn't about anything, which means that you will not a roleplay you will have a bunch of mini-roleplays going around, each with their own settings made better or worse. Furthermore, while you might be ok with your character just being offed because someone else made a god mode character that went on a rampage, will your players really feel the same way about their work?

It's hard enough to keep people interested when there is one well-thought out thing they invest themselves in, but a bunch of fragments is a lot taller an order. Players who are left alone will probably grow bored of playing by themselves and thus bored of your roleplay. And the melting pot of players will largely depend on whether you have players who are willing to be interested and invested in the works of others.

For this purpose, I recommend two things:
1. Lead by example. As GM, try to take an interest in and work to really interact with the the things the others are into- if you can't do that much, you shouldn't be attempting this idea in the first place.

2. Encourage and provide incentives for the players to take an interest in the work of others and want to explore that work of their own accord.

--------------------------------------------------------

And now I've said my peace. Best of luck and happy RPing!

If you look at the various threads up on site you'll notice that almost none of them ever reach a satisfactory conclusion, the vast majority fail even to complete what I'd call a chapter. I believe that the need for GM control is one reason for this. A GM is one person, and he isn't Tolkien. Attempts to "front load" the world result in patchy worlds without a lot of detail. Players are faced with the problem of writing in those worlds without the benefit of good detail or the authority to add to it as needed. Players wander off because they can't engage with something that has so little substance without employing a little license and that is the one thing they don't have.

I actually like this idea of community fragmentation and consider it to be kind of the point. What the story is "about" will depend very much on what people decide to do. I find having the guideline of a genre, which is what tags really are, to be more than enough to maintain cohesion in a given world.

As to concerns of players about their characters, I think this is a consequence of the role play paradigm. "Players" need their characters to survive, to accomplish things, to be liked and to be cool because they are the avatar of the player in the game world. Notice that none of these things necessarily align with the making of a good story. But now imagine if the player can create characters at need and supply themselves with whatever fuel is needed to express what they need to. Suddenly it's not so important that Mary Sue be the greatest that ever lived because her writer isn't dependent on her to experience the game world. I could demonstrate this point by releasing characters I've kicked off as "open" characters which other writers could pick up and do something with, a kind of starting point. I'd like to see this mental shift in the "players".

You are totally correct that they will need to have interest and investment in what one another produce in order to make the most of this approach and that I'll have to show people what I'm trying to accomplish.

 

[DigitalEcho]

What do you mean? Is it more of a writing exercise than a roleplay? Is the emphasis on world building only, or is the world building there to form the basis of a story/stories?

This is key.

A player is someone who is required to seek my consent, either through abiding by rules set forth in my OOC thread or by drip fed plot nodes in game, in order to do anything to the setting or "my" character that I may or may not take issue with. A writer is trying to write well for the purpose of drawing the readers interest.

My intention would be for story lines to emerge out of the world, it isn't merely an exercise in world building. I'd like to see the world emerge organically as a byproduct of the stories that people end up telling. As such I'd probably encourage people to stick close to their characters rather than zooming out and trying to lay down a load of lore. It's bad writing anyway. Dune is an example of avoiding this problem, Herbert (in the books at least) doesn't tell us the ins and outs of the setting, they are experienced without comment by the characters. This would be a matter of keeping the perspective close to the action. Herbert ends up with a lot of detail and intricacy without doing an excessive amount of exposition.

 

[Andei]

If you look at the various threads up on site you'll notice that almost none of them ever reach a satisfactory conclusion, the vast majority fail even to complete what I'd call a chapter. I believe that the need for GM control is one reason for this. A GM is one person, and he isn't Tolkien. Attempts to "front load" the world result in patchy worlds without a lot of detail. Players are faced with the problem of writing in those worlds without the benefit of good detail or the authority to add to it as needed. Players wander off because they can't engage with something that has so little substance without employing a little license and that is the one thing they don't have.

I actually like this idea of community fragmentation and consider it to be kind of the point. What the story is "about" will depend very much on what people decide to do. I find having the guideline of a genre, which is what tags really are, to be more than enough to maintain cohesion in a given world.

As to concerns of players about their characters, I think this is a consequence of the role play paradigm. "Players" need their characters to survive, to accomplish things, to be liked and to be cool because they are the avatar of the player in the game world. Notice that none of these things necessarily align with the making of a good story. But now imagine if the player can create characters at need and supply themselves with whatever fuel is needed to express what they need to. Suddenly it's not so important that Mary Sue be the greatest that ever lived because her writer isn't dependent on her to experience the game world. I could demonstrate this point by releasing characters I've kicked off as "open" characters which other writers could pick up and do something with, a kind of starting point. I'd like to see this mental shift in the "players".

You are totally correct that they will need to have interest and investment in what one another produce in order to make the most of this approach and that I'll have to show people what I'm trying to accomplish.

I do think that GMs can be under a lot of pressure to create content so that everyone is on the same page, and that there’s definitely something to be said about giving players room in the lore to build and impact the world they play in. That said, I think a ‘total sandbox’ where the players can forge their own corner of the world to do with as they wish is the other end of the extreme. Rather than being a single cohesive world, you will probably end up with these kind of ‘island worlds’ just floating about independently of each other. I don’t think genres are a sufficient enough guideline to keep this kind of ‘sandboxing’ from happening because they are not entirely standardised - you can have slice-of-life happening in a fantasy world where there are no such thing as dragons and magic is a very low-key thing, while sci-fi can range from a Star Trek-level interplanetary odyssey to a world almost identical to 21st Century Earth but with a clone organ donor system.

Additionally, I think that the primary place a role play character ‘comes from’ isn’t the world or the story line, but the player. This means that a player’s top priority is (and I don’t think this is wrong) what is fun for them to write. If you give players the freedom to construct a world that is fun for them to play in, then there might be tension when they encounter other characters who don’t agree with those construction choices. As GM this would be a different kind of pressure as suddenly you might have to deal with colliding plot points and lore that have been spawned by conflicting player choices regarding their world building - so either way, it’s going to be the GM making the big decisions.

Finally, I think it might be harder than we like to admit that we in general do struggle as players with at least a bit of protagonist syndrome with our characters - we’re writing them, we put a lot of love into crafting them, and I just don’t see many players being cool with seeing all that work and investment go down the drain, so they will by and large resist their characters getting offed. Same thing with playing a pre-made character, I think it’s harder to get invested in a character you yourself haven’t crafted.

I think it’s an interesting concept and I’m all for more involvement from the players, but I think a balance needs to be struck, and I’m not sure the ‘current model’ so to speak is so broken that the right reaction is to completely 180 the other way and go full sandbox (which is not what you’re doing, but it does sound like you’re leaning closer to that than what’s currently being done). Hope that helps!

 

[Delinquent]

I think this idea is one of those that sounds great on paper, but doesn't really work in theory.

If you allow everyone to add to the worldbuilding with barely any restrictions, you'll never end up with an coherent worldbuilding.

Also, I don't really get why this is framed like GM-led roleplays never let players contribute to the worldbuilding. Like the vast majority of the ones I've seen have been more than happy to let players add locations, characters, organisations, objects, etc as long as they run it by the GM first.

 

[ElectronicSnow]

Dune is an example of avoiding this problem, Herbert (in the books at least) doesn't tell us the ins and outs of the setting, they are experienced without comment by the characters. This would be a matter of keeping the perspective close to the action. Herbert ends up with a lot of detail and intricacy without doing an excessive amount of exposition.

This is an excellent example, you just got thrown in to a crazy world but it started making sense. Really had to trust Herbert tho.

Overall there seems to be a happy medium between overly-controlled worlds* (that don’t grow organically other than by GM) and overly loose worlds (where all players are adding to an incoherent story).

*which is not a judgement call, most tabletop rpgs I’ve played have strictly GM controlled lore.

Edit - This guide (of course) is describing what I was thinking about. Authoritative GM vs Collaborative vs Participant. A Comprehensive Guide on How to GM

 

[Idea]

If you look at the various threads up on site you'll notice that almost none of them ever reach a satisfactory conclusion, the vast majority fail even to complete what I'd call a chapter. I believe that the need for GM control is one reason for this. A GM is one person, and he isn't Tolkien. Attempts to "front load" the world result in patchy worlds without a lot of detail. Players are faced with the problem of writing in those worlds without the benefit of good detail or the authority to add to it as needed. Players wander off because they can't engage with something that has so little substance without employing a little license and that is the one thing they don't have.

I see. If I may be so bold, I think you're somewhat off the mark. Yes, GM control can hurt an RP but the reasons why RPs die have almost universally more to do with players circumstances than GM malpractice. Which isn't to say that GMs are blameless, but that the circumstances that result in the death of RPs- stalling, a dead OOC, missing players who just ghost, etc... - are almost universally the result of things which all but disappear when players are actively engaging with one another and working putting genuine effort in rather than following whim.

I say that while being someone who was once a GM whose excessive degree of control killed his RPs. I know that what are describing can happen, but I think are fundamentally mistaking the issue. From my experience at least, most roleplays present players with enormous opportunities for worldbuilding and freedom in what they can do with character creation. Even tighter worlds allow you to plop things into them so long as they fit within what is established. Most GMs do give players room for a certain license. But 'a certain' license or 'a little' license does have its limits. More importantly, even within those limits the opportunity isn't taken.

The trend I've observed, is that generally players worldbuild exactly as much as they need to justify what they want to do, rather than the worldbuilding being an exercise to add something, and despite having the opportunity to do more. This isn't to say players doing this is wrong, but just saying that the idea that players don't engage because there isn't enough to engage doesn't really hold water in most cases, as players both have things to engage with which they just don't and have some license to add their own content within what is established.

I actually like this idea of community fragmentation and consider it to be kind of the point. What the story is "about" will depend very much on what people decide to do. I find having the guideline of a genre, which is what tags really are, to be more than enough to maintain cohesion in a given world.

I think you may have misunderstood what community fragmentation is. Community fragmentation is when your community starts forming little communities that don't particularly engage with each other and drift further and further apart. This phenomenon is usually followed by said community slowly dissolving into obscurity because it, well, it isn't a community and people came to be engaged by something which in the end doesn't exist so they get bored of it. Other times, the subcommunities may even grow hostile towards one another.

Furthermore, I'm not quite sure what exactly you'd be doing. It almost sounds like you're slapping your name on what effectively amounts to other people's roleplays:
-You are leaving the creation of the story, and even the topic and starters to the players
-Worldbuilding left to the players
-Characters still just the players.

And all of this is without even demanding world cohesion with each other, outside of genre. Now it may sound like I'm being overly harsh, but I'll get to why it's important to point out in a moment.

As to concerns of players about their characters, I think this is a consequence of the role play paradigm. "Players" need their characters to survive, to accomplish things, to be liked and to be cool because they are the avatar of the player in the game world. Notice that none of these things necessarily align with the making of a good story. But now imagine if the player can create characters at need and supply themselves with whatever fuel is needed to express what they need to. Suddenly it's not so important that Mary Sue be the greatest that ever lived because her writer isn't dependent on her to experience the game world. I could demonstrate this point by releasing characters I've kicked off as "open" characters which other writers could pick up and do something with, a kind of starting point. I'd like to see this mental shift in the "players".

Assuming you're right and there wouldn't be any shift at all, I don't think the shift would occur in the way you think. I can prove it too, because we have an example of exactly this type of thing as an established roleplay type here on RPN. It's called "Nation Building" roleplays. They are roleplays where you have control of a nation -or equivalent- rather than or in addition to a character.

What happens in these though, is not that you become detached from your previous views as a player, what happens is that those views change to a broader sense of "protagonist". If you get to control a portion of the worldbuilding now your portion of the worldbuilding is your "character".

You can't make players engage the story in a more narrative viewpoint, that's something that players can only do themselves. As a GM the best you can do in that regard is not punish them for it and working with them. I think what you are suggesting here is more working in parallel with the players rather than working with them though.

And this is where the problem lies: The main draw for a player in an RP is their own thing- their own character, typically. They do care about telling a good story, but they are invested in their own portion of the story. They engage with the larger one because their "thing" their character is part of that larger whole, not by choice but because they just are.

But if you expect players to give up on this massively important reason to even be invested in the roleplay.

At the same time that you direct them to do all the things that would ordinarily be the GM's job except for the fact that you still get to boss them around with the rules you make.

What reason would I, as a player, have to not just make a roleplay of my own? The incentives in, shall we call the "usual roleplay paradigm" are gone and in anything but name the person is making their own RP.

- - - - - - - -
Edit: To clarify I am not suggesting that players inherently don’t care about the narrative, nor that there aren’t any players who genuinely and of their own according prioritize the narrative or take genuine interest in what other players make. What I AM saying though, is that such things are a product of the players own nature and possibly their efforts not something they are conditioned into by any decision the GM makes. I am saying that if a player came into the roleplay wanting to play a character, and with any of the positive or negative aspects of the mindset thus associated, not amount of giving them more world building tools is gonna change the fundamental reason for their participation.

 

[DigitalEcho]

I see. If I may be so bold, I think you're somewhat off the mark. Yes, GM control can hurt an RP but the reasons why RPs die have almost universally more to do with players circumstances than GM malpractice. Which isn't to say that GMs are blameless, but that the circumstances that result in the death of RPs- stalling, a dead OOC, missing players who just ghost, etc... - are almost universally the result of things which all but disappear when players are actively engaging with one another and working putting genuine effort in rather than following whim.

I say that while being someone who was once a GM whose excessive degree of control killed his RPs. I know that what are describing can happen, but I think are fundamentally mistaking the issue. From my experience at least, most roleplays present players with enormous opportunities for worldbuilding and freedom in what they can do with character creation. Even tighter worlds allow you to plop things into them so long as they fit within what is established. Most GMs do give players room for a certain license. But 'a certain' license or 'a little' license does have its limits. More importantly, even within those limits the opportunity isn't taken.

The trend I've observed, is that generally players worldbuild exactly as much as they need to justify what they want to do, rather than the worldbuilding being an exercise to add something, and despite having the opportunity to do more. This isn't to say players doing this is wrong, but just saying that the idea that players don't engage because there isn't enough to engage doesn't really hold water in most cases, as players both have things to engage with which they just don't and have some license to add their own content within what is established.




I think you may have misunderstood what community fragmentation is. Community fragmentation is when your community starts forming little communities that don't particularly engage with each other and drift further and further apart. This phenomenon is usually followed by said community slowly dissolving into obscurity because it, well, it isn't a community and people came to be engaged by something which in the end doesn't exist so they get bored of it. Other times, the subcommunities may even grow hostile towards one another.

Furthermore, I'm not quite sure what exactly you'd be doing. It almost sounds like you're slapping your name on what effectively amounts to other people's roleplays:
-You are leaving the creation of the story, and even the topic and starters to the players
-Worldbuilding left to the players
-Characters still just the players.

And all of this is without even demanding world cohesion with each other, outside of genre. Now it may sound like I'm being overly harsh, but I'll get to why it's important to point out in a moment.



Assuming you're right and there wouldn't be any shift at all, I don't think the shift would occur in the way you think. I can prove it too, because we have an example of exactly this type of thing as an established roleplay type here on RPN. It's called "Nation Building" roleplays. They are roleplays where you have control of a nation -or equivalent- rather than or in addition to a character.

What happens in these though, is not that you become detached from your previous views as a player, what happens is that those views change to a broader sense of "protagonist". If you get to control a portion of the worldbuilding now your portion of the worldbuilding is your "character".

You can't make players engage the story in a more narrative viewpoint, that's something that players can only do themselves. As a GM the best you can do in that regard is not punish them for it and working with them. I think what you are suggesting here is more working in parallel with the players rather than working with them though.

And this is where the problem lies: The main draw for a player in an RP is their own thing- their own character, typically. They do care about telling a good story, but they are invested in their own portion of the story. They engage with the larger one because their "thing" their character is part of that larger whole, not by choice but because they just are.

But if you expect players to give up on this massively important reason to even be invested in the roleplay.

At the same time that you direct them to do all the things that would ordinarily be the GM's job except for the fact that you still get to boss them around with the rules you make.

What reason would I, as a player, have to not just make a roleplay of my own? The incentives in, shall we call the "usual roleplay paradigm" are gone and in anything but name the person is making their own RP.

- - - - - - - -
Edit: To clarify I am not suggesting that players inherently don’t care about the narrative, nor that there aren’t any players who genuinely and of their own according prioritize the narrative or take genuine interest in what other players make. What I AM saying though, is that such things are a product of the players own nature and possibly their efforts not something they are conditioned into by any decision the GM makes. I am saying that if a player came into the roleplay wanting to play a character, and with any of the positive or negative aspects of the mindset thus associated, not amount of giving them more world building tools is gonna change the fundamental reason for their participation.

I'm prepared to accept that there are many reasons why a thread might fade out, equally experience tells me that what I'm picking up on here is a major reason that is being largely overlooked by the community.

Players tend to build to the extent that they can get away with in order to further the ends of their character and no more.

This includes entities like nation states which are little more than composite avatars. An NPC might die but the state will always strive to go on and rise to greater heights of glory. It's just another avatar which is not the same thing as a character and serves a totally different purpose.

I've understood what you mean by fragmentation but I don't share a fear of it. If someone branches off and adds resolution to an area of the game world this is not a negative and there's nothing to prevent people from interacting with what others create. This is in stark contrast to the usual state of affairs where people are too timid to take any license whatsoever with one another's avatars.

Good examples of how this leads to poor outcomes is in dialogue or in conflict. People would strongly object to another writer putting words into "their" mouths and so there's a lot of delayed back and forth which is unlikely to reach significant depth, dialogue is abandoned before it can be developed because it's just too awkward and holds up the story for anyone outside of it. Similarly conflict is reduced to verbal sparring and ends up lacking in its choreography. This is to say nothing of how the medium as is exaggerates the incidence of conflict because of the gamification inherent in the avatar concept.

As to slapping my name on things, you're mistaken. The average GM ought to have a high word count in whichever world they kick off and seek to keep alive under any model. This also points to a fundamental conceptual failure. Who said that this world is "mine" anyway? The whole point of what I'm considering is to raise the quality of the interactions by ceding a measure of control over them. Control and domination are epidemic in our cultures and I, increasingly, cannot help but see the negatives of this reflected back at me everywhere I look.

I absolutely do envision working more in parallel with players and it's true that I can't force them to think in any particular way. I reject the notion that I have or need the right to boss anyone around. The incentive for anyone looking to join in should be obvious though. Building atop what others are doing and joining them in a collective endeavour.

My hope is that you're wrong about players and the effect that increased freedoms will have on them. There is only one way to find out for sure.

 

[Idea]

I'm prepared to accept that there are many reasons why a thread might fade out, equally experience tells me that what I'm picking up on here is a major reason that is being largely overlooked by the community.

Players tend to build to the extent that they can get away with in order to further the ends of their character and no more.

I think the larger issue here is that you seem to be confusing the player having to run things by the GM with the player being forbidden from doing things. Having to work within the constraints of what's established as being the same as having less freedom.

Not being able to do everything one wants is not the same as not being able to do more. Frankly, I would argue that the idea of "I can't do X thing" being the same as "I don't have freedom to add things" is more harmful to any roleplay than any constraints a GM sets. And I'm not saying this is necessarily what you are referring to, because honestly there haven't been a ton of examples from actual roleplays rather than books which are a completely different medium with entirely different forces at play, but in all the years I've roleplayed I've seen maybe two examples of anything like what you appear to mean: A situation in which the roleplayer wants to add to the roleplay, but the GM prevents that not because it is a direct contradiction or issue, not because it would be incredibly disruptive for everyone else, but because they want to control players more, thus making it so the player can't search for alternatives or can't easily add other things if they just bother looking into the world a bit and talking to the GM.

I've understood what you mean by fragmentation but I don't share a fear of it. If someone branches off and adds resolution to an area of the game world this is not a negative and there's nothing to prevent people from interacting with what others create. This is in stark contrast to the usual state of affairs where people are too timid to take any license whatsoever with one another's avatars.

No you see, that response shows you didn't understand what it is... because what you just stated as the potential positives are the exact opposite things to community fragmentation. Yes, there's nothing stopping people from interacting with others, but that doesn't create incentive to. Exacerbating choice paralysis doesn't seem to me like a great recipe for dealing with timidity either.

Good examples of how this leads to poor outcomes is in dialogue or in conflict. People would strongly object to another writer putting words into "their" mouths and so there's a lot of delayed back and forth which is unlikely to reach significant depth, dialogue is abandoned before it can be developed because it's just too awkward and holds up the story for anyone outside of it. Similarly conflict is reduced to verbal sparring and ends up lacking in its choreography. This is to say nothing of how the medium as is exaggerates the incidence of conflict because of the gamification inherent in the avatar concept.

Wait, hold up. So your idea also involves people being able to direct mess with other's work, freely?

As to slapping my name on things, you're mistaken. The average GM ought to have a high word count in whichever world they kick off and seek to keep alive under any model. This also points to a fundamental conceptual failure. Who said that this world is "mine" anyway? The whole point of what I'm considering is to raise the quality of the interactions by ceding a measure of control over them. Control and domination are epidemic in our cultures and I, increasingly, cannot help but see the negatives of this reflected back at me everywhere I look.

I absolutely do envision working more in parallel with players and it's true that I can't force them to think in any particular way. I reject the notion that I have or need the right to boss anyone around. The incentive for anyone looking to join in should be obvious though. Building atop what others are doing and joining them in a collective endeavour.

The world isn't yours, but the roleplay supposedly is. And that is the issue. Even if you're ceding some power that doesn't mean you're throwing out all of it- meanwhile though, your idea fundamentally calls for players and GM to blend together, your contribution to the world may even pale in comparison to that of some players. Which, to be fair, is something which can happen in almost any roleplay- however, in those roleplays at least the GM provided the basis.

This is to say, even if they are extremely few you still get to impose some rules on what can hardly be called different from just a collection of roleplays you really have nothing to do with.

Unless I misunderstood your earlier statements your idea is effectively a miniature RPN where people can come in and mess with your roleplay.

My hope is that you're wrong about players and the effect that increased freedoms will have on them. There is only one way to find out for sure.

Despite what I'm sure sounded harsher and more confrontational than intended, I do hope that if you do implement this idea that I am wrong. I hope your idea goes well and that if you are, perchance, correct that the stars align to give your RP the best possible circumstances to really make that clear. In the end of the day, the point is for everyone to have fun, and if your idea can do that better then may it be successful and spread.

I am about as sure as that the Sun will rise that your assumptions are incorrect at a fundamental level and you are misplacing blame. Nonetheless, I still wish you the best of luck.

 

[Beckoncall]

Take a look at "The long year" -- it's a game involving collective storytelling you might get a kick out of! the rules are online!

 

[Arkaeis]

Multiple Settings - NoWhere. A Paradox Pocket Realm ( Open to Everyone )

While I was in a state of deep thought I felt my attention taken from me as a... maid... yes a maid I do believe to be comes up to me asking if there's anything I would like... I hesitate for moment as I find myself aimlessly looking in the maid's direction suddenly I nervously adjust my jaunty...

www.rpnation.com

I'm just gonna drop this here lol.