Viewpoint Collaborative Storytelling vs Improv in Written Form - Which side do you take?

[yutohase]

In my time of RP’ing, especially in group settings, I’ve seen two different breeds of general RP styles crop up.

The first, which I am personally a bit partial towards, is what I call “collaborative storytelling”. It is, from my experience, a more structured type of RP, with it somewhat outlined and discussed beforehand, so the players know the gist of what they have planned, not just the setting and the plot, but how their respective characters interact with it. Usually “collaborative storytelling” involves knowing the general ideas of the beginning, middle and end, but RP’ing out the finer details.

The second, which I have seen a lot more of, is what I call “improv in written form”. Usually, with an “improv in written form” RP, I’ve noticed that really only the original premise is expanded upon in much detail, and people usually write off-the-cuff responses without much discussion between players.

So, my question for all of you is, which style of RP do you prefer, or do you prefer a mix of both? I for one would like to see more of the “collaborative storytelling” style in RP’s, but I wanted to hear everyone’s opinions.

 

[nerdy tangents]

So I think you don’t have to have a set plot so much as you have to understand timing.

When I did groups the ones that lasted the longest where the ones that had a pretty open ended concept (school roleplays both of them) where the players or the GM set up a system of time jumps.

What kills roleplays is when you don’t progress the story enough and people get bored with the current scene.

But you don’t really need a plot to accomplish that. You just need to know how to move from one scene to the next.

This ironically is a bit easier in groups as the players or GMs are more likely to have a plan in place to progress the story through time jumps before starting.

1x1s tend to be slower paced because people roleplay when they have a spare moment in an otherwise busy schedule. So the progression of the plot is usually more character driven. You rarely see a 1x1 with a story structure. It’s usually “premise + character interactions” which is something that works best when it’s two people writing back and forth.

 

[Zodia195]

I've been in both types of RPGs, and I do prefer the first option. As a RPG creator myself I always prefer something that is more 'narrative driven' because to me it's still a story and I love plot progression. However I do value the 'down times' so there's char development too, which I tend to notice happens more in a more 'open-ended' RPG. Still even in Improv written RPGs, I've seen though who take their RPGs serious will still try to come up with plot ideas. In one RPG I am in on another site, I am in such one RPG, setting is a "Summer Camp for Demi-Gods (Think Percy Jackson)" and main GM has something planned to happen, but currently we're in a 'downtime moment' for regular char interaction.

But yeah I do prefer the 'collaborative writing' one.

 

[Daisie]

Wow! Here's a topic I can get behind.

Years ago when I started on RpN, I only RPed "improv-style", mainly because I didn't really understand that there was another option. Improv-style of RP reflects that fast-paced, instant gratification sort of mindset. It isn't always bad, but naturally because there's less planning ahead, there's more risk involved.

When I did discover that plotting out was a thing, I was kind of skeptical at first. I thought that plotting ahead of time would surely sap the surprise out of things, and thus the fun.

It was on my 2nd (and current) RP with my main partner that we actually started slowly making that transition into plotting ahead. We sort of discovered that whole mindset on our own - started wanting to plan ahead instead of going off the cuff.

It was a bit awkward at first, I think because we weren't all the way transitioned. We were planning ahead, but separately. Our ideas really didn't mesh. They felt forced because we had built up totally different plans from each other and tried to "wing it" when it came to combining them. Sometimes it worked? But very rarely.

Eventually (after a lot of frustration) we discovered it was a lot easier to coordinate an entertaining story when we worked together rather than separately. Don't get me wrong, our independent ideas were good, but as they say, two minds are better than one. Putting our brains together on plotting made it so that our ideas were even better - the concept of an ox that can pull 1,000 lbs working with another ox of the same caliber being able to pull 2,500 lbs altogether. We made stuff MORE than double our skill.

We started working together like that and we found that we'd made that transition without even realizing, lol. And that our fears about sucking the fun out of RP were unfounded, given that surprises still happened, and we were still just as invested in the story.

So that's where we are now! We're loving it.

 

[Viper]

I am absolutely on the side of cooperative storytelling. I care a lot about the overarching story, the arc for our character's relationships, and making sure that really cool scenes that I want to happen, happen. Can't do that without talking to my partner and getting them on board too! Plus, its really fun to world build and brain storm! Sometimes i like to brainstorm more than I like to write the actual RP lol.

Once the RP is established and we plan on continuing it long term, I tend to make a blueprint/timeline diagramming major events that can/will happen in the RP, then we mostly improvise the interactions and story between the bullets. Think a vague timeline like:

• Our characters get locked in a building.
• Supplies start to run low and tension rise. A physical fight happens.
• Susan is found dead in the basement, her rations stolen.
• Remaining characters investigate her death to find a culprit
  • find a hidden entrance to the basement, discounting all alibis.
  • Its revealed that Susan was in a secret relationship with Matt.
  • Etc.
• The killer is found, but they are still trapped inside the building.

Something like that! We can change it at any time, of course, but it really helps to have a timeline so that we don't forget what we talked about/planned.... which is especially important cause I only post once a month and plans can easily be forgotten in that time. It's really helpful!

 

[Natasha4E]

In my experience, it depends a lot on my partner, and how the chemistry is between the characters. I am fine, adapting to how my partner likes to work, if our ideas for setting/theme/characters seem to match.
Generally I find that with improv, the roleplay dies a slow death sooner or later because we get stuck somehow. It can be very fun, but it's risky.
With collaborative writing, it takes a lot of time and inspiration, things not everybody has. I love doing it this way because I like planning. My style of RP'ing takes more patience than that of most, anyway, because I like things to be slow going.

 

[Idea]

Extent of Planning

A number of times in discussion forums, and in the interest checks I make, I stated that I am a "planner by nature". This is something both ingrained in how I think - I know that I tend to always start just about anything by laying out how I intend to do it and what I need, and in general I try to abstract things before working into the concrete of them - and something I learned about myself from experience. I've tried many kinds of roleplays, with among other things varying amounts of planning, and so far I've found that practically all of my most enjoyable and memorable RPs were ones where I got to do the most planning with my partners.

Now that being said, even I don't go into an RP knowing how that RP will end. I have a much greater extent of planning on things I make entirely on my own - individual posts, my characters and their internal arcs, future events with my NPCs and the world if the setting is entirely or mostly of my own making. In regards to what I plan with my partner, establishing that certain scenes or events will happen, having a solid idea of how the premise plays out, and generally outlining the very broad strokes of a current or future arc in the plot is about the extent of planning I get with an average partner. On very rare occasions though, I get a partner that's truly into planning as well, and we can get down to planning how scenes play out. There's even one roleplay, though it's not on RPN, where me and my partner have gone as far as to having both players write both of our characters in the posts.

Note that regardless of the extent of planning I use, I do keep a certain flexibility. In a sense it's similar to my approach to length requirements in that while I find my requirements useful and important, and in general I want my partners to meet those, I am not gonna complain if on a rare occasion they need to make a shorter post because the scene is really just that lacking in content or room to write. Likewise, while there's no point planning if one doesn't stick to the plan, there is room to make amendments to the plans and small changes to fit the scenes as we come up with new ideas or find the way we are actually fleshing things out in practice ends up leaning better into another direction, not to mention that "fleshing out" process itself is flexible. It's different from making a whole script, all that's being done in the planning is establishing that some key points are hit, context and potentially consequences.

Another thing to address is planning in groups. There is an added difficulty to planning within group roleplays. If you're a player you have a severe lack of control compared to a 1x1 roleplay, and often you lack the knowledge of the setting, characters and plot to make any meaningful plans (while I can somewhat understand the reason why, it's nonetheless frustrating how many GMs insisting on obscuring a large portion of the details regarding the lore, worldbuilding and in particular magic system of their own setting). If you are the GM, then you need to be careful not to railroad the players or play favorites. However, I nonetheless have enjoyed planning out things in group roleplays, from potential future events, to arranging character relationships (siblings, friends, etc... prior to the start of the roleplay) to more recently making secret plans with GMs for dramatic reveals for instance. When I GM RPs, on the other hand, I can't help but making a lot plans for potential future events, even if I know they are probably not going to be realized because players are unpredictable like that.




Planning is Needed for Set-Up

Now we come to the question of what exactly I get out of planning. Fundamentally, the answer to this can be boiled down to planning allowing you to set things up in a way as to maximize their potential. Now, don't get me wrong, seldom will you actually accomplish that, but you can't do it without planning, and even if you don't actually 'maximize' the potential of something you can still not only improve it but get a lot out of the process. You might, rightfully, ask why planning is necessary to do this, and the answer is that the alternative to looking to the future is to look to the past and the present only. Intentionally setting things up is not possible unless you know or have a good idea about what's ahead. In other words, with improvisation at best you can stumble into a set of circumstances that happen to be both narratively satisfying and make sense to follow through with. Don't get me wrong, the moments you stumble into can be great as well, but you didn't set up you just took the opportunity when it happened to present itself, and odds are if you didn't create an opportunity and only happened to come across it, the opportunity will not be as good as it could have been. What you gain from writing without the planning - a more organic feeling and more surprises- is a tradeoff for a more structured approach that lets you arrange timing, pacing, character design, plot design, events and so on to play as well off each other as you can make them to hit the narrative beats you want.

As an example, let's take a hypothetical RP scene that has these really romantic vibes, the two characters A and B have great chemistry and whatever happened in that scene really moved them. For additional context in the previous scene, A was going through something really horrible and so this present scene is B trying to cheer them up, though it evolves into more. Then, A confesses their love for B. In an improvisation style roleplay we could see B accept the confession due to the overall mood of the scene being great for that. On the other hand, B might reject probably for shock factor or because they don't want the character to be romantically involved with the other at least not yet. By contrast a planner player might take the opportunity to have B see in this A trying to escape the reality of the situation, making a confession not out of a true desire for a relationship so much as out of desperation due to what happened in the scene before. You'd have drama, but you'd also be tying things with the rest of the plot and themes. However, what truly would be done planning that improv couldn't, at least not intentionally, is doing this while having in mind a future scene that would purposefully be similar to the one the characters just went through, but with a changed context and a healthier state of mind for A, letting them make a second confession which this time would be accepted. The growth and new context to this second confession would add to the catharsis and make use of many plot, thematic and character elements, tying them together to work in harmony for the best effect rather than working each in isolation or only looking at them through the present moment.

In general, I find this to be an improvement on the quality of storytelling. To be clear, I am not saying that planning automatically makes your writing quality better than that of someone who doesn't. I am suggesting, however, that I find better writing has better structure to it and weaves it's various elements with more purpose than incidentally. A certain amount of the incidental is inevitable in roleplay, as the side of playing a role leads to a consequent inability to focus purely on the most relevant parts. Planning therefore does not make you a better writer, but at least one aspect of writing quality is promoted by planning (with a tradeoff from another, organic writing, as planned writing tends to feel more artificial than improvised one, though either can easily feel forced if the writer is too unskilled or detached). I very much care about things like narrative structure, and thus it's one of the things that leads me to enjoy the fact it can be done better with planning. Furthermore, this care for structure and set up, of pulling different aspects of the story and coordinating them, leads to a side effects I really appreciate: Planning also makes use of worldbuilding elements and other elements of context.

This happens both directly and indirectly. On one hand, worldbuilding elements themselves can be used for set-up. Establishing the existence of different cultural norms is good set up for fish-out-of-water type comedy sequences, a direct introduction to how dangerous a monster is excellent for tension building when the characters are faced with a choice of whether to go into the woods infested with those monsters, or they could ultimately be relevant as a weapon to be fight off some powerful enemy. On the other hand, worldbuilding can be necessary to better explain and integrate other elements of set-up you want. For a character that's obsessed with magic, having at least in your mind a solid foundation on how that magic system works is essential. Designing a character that survived in the wilds might call for a good grasp on just what they had to go through and how they might have affected them. If you want to foreshadow that a character is leaving a symbol of romantic affection behind, it might be good to come up with a symbol that in that setting could represent that.

As someone who loves worldbuilding, and for whom details like ambience, worldbuilding, foreshadowing etc... Are something I want to read and write into posts, planning is very helpful in integrating more of it and better with other narrative aspects like themes, character and plot. Plus if you're like me and you like exploring worldbuilding for it's own sake, you can also coordinate events to allow to explore more of the world without making it too forced.



Planning Is Generating Content and Direction Up Front

There are also some more utilitarian reasons for my enjoyment of planning. After all, planning is, in effect, creating the content before you have to post it. It's not creating your whole post ahead of time, at least not in the way I do it, but you still have some of it a priori and some direction to guide you a priori. Depending on the extent of your planning, you may know a thing or two has to be happen, or you may know what happens in almost your whole post and you just need to figure out the in-betweens. Even on the lighter version you certainly at least have an idea of where to go, so it's easier to narrow down your choices, and may even be easier to come up with the actual content (limits breed creativity after all).

On top of that, since you don't have to come up with as much content as far as what happens, you can afford to give more attention to other aspects. Integrating character moments, worldbuilding, foreshadowing and so on into individual posts becomes easier when you have more room to think about them, and in turn they can help provide the content you need for those in-betweens or for the details on exactly the key points that were planned play out.

Of course, the extent of each of these contributions varies with your own personal standards for what you want in your posts though. If you're fine with only making very small, barebones posts with only what your character does next in them, then the planning might contribute almost the entirety of your post (which admittedly, would be a case in which planning could probably be quite boring). For someone like me who likes longer posts written over a larger period of time as part of my writing style, the contribution of planning to the overall content of each post is much smaller (not counting planning I do entirely myself for that post alone), but the second aspect has a much bigger impac.



Planning Fits My Writing Style Best

Lastly, well, I just like it. Planning fits very well into how I like to write, for the reasons above and others I will mention now. Indeed, when you plan things out, you do lose something, as I mentioned you lose the element of surprise and it becomes harder to write things in a way that comes across as organic. In return, you get a better narrative structure, including things like a more consistent plot and character arcs, you get access to actual set up, more weaving of all of your narrative elements, all of which in service of a improving as much as possible the payoffs of what you made and the story viewed from the whole.

Roleplay, however, is a hobby. If it's not fun, then the point is mute. However, as it happens, my way of enjoying writing is not as much on the writing process itself, but in looking back at the finished product. What I like is seeing what I made in the end, and how people respond to it. Seeing my ideas brought to life, sharing them, and seeing them interact with other people's own thoughts. Then, looking back proudly on what I've done. This is what brings me the most enjoyment in writing as a hobby- and it's something which, all of the things planning is intended to do reinforce.

Another reason is the aforementioned love of ambience and worldbuilding. I like roleplays in a long, detailed post format, with a slower rate of posting. As mentioned planning promotes having worldbuilding and other context elements both because it uses them as tools for set-up, letting you tie the better into the rest of the narrative, but also because since what will happen is already at least partially established you can focus more on those other things. As such, planning helps and promotes the inclusion of things I love, namely worldbuilding, which in turn are an essential part of the format / style of roleplay I prefer. In fact the adding of detail and length in general is helped by planning because you can arrange more things to consistently have the content to write in that way.

It should be noted as well that I don't value the advantages of improvisation as highly either. While it's harder to write things organically I am not bothered by things like fluent time or very long dialogue / monologue, plus 'harder' doesn't mean it's not feasible to continue writing things in a way that feels organic even if they are artificial. As for surprises the unknown and unexpected are more likely to cause me to stress about it than it is to bring me a lot of joy. As I always say I work best with more information, and I prefer a good fleshing out of a skeleton than a parade of surprises. After all, if you try to take the story in a certain direction, or if you've been building up a character in a certain way, a wild card that can tear it all down is prone to really demotivating a person.






As a final fun fact, I also tend to do some small planning for these posts. I usually delete these, but here are the notes I made before starting to write the extensive version:

Spoiler

-----> Coordination (arranging character relationships for instance)
-----> Structural (better story telling, actual intentional great plot moments, loss of organic for artificial, maximization of potential) + Go Beyond Plot and Characters (set up, worldbuilding)
-----> Just Like It (Prefer to look back on my work and feel proud, mistrust of surprises, loss of the element of surprise)
-----> Future Content at the ready with more idea of how to manage it, know where things are going, easier to post, also since the plot is established showing other parts (like character) in how things are written is easier.
----->

But, in conclusion and to more directly answer the question: I definitely prefer what you call "Collaborative storytelling".

 

[BackSet]

I was unaware there was a difference, if I'm being honest. They're both telling a story so really they both count as collaborative storytelling in my opinion. I feel like a better term would be planned storytelling vs improv storytelling.

Personally, I usually do improv because that's my writing style even when I'm doing solo writing too. I do plan ahead a bit with solo stuff but I usually don't write it down because I'm really good at remembering writing ideas. Now if only I could have the same amazing memory in regards to school stuff.

Another reason I prefer improv is because I'm just... really bad at organizing, especially organizing people. I've tried planning a few times and people just... don't respond. So, you know, why plan when nobody's willing to work with you there.

I think the most planning I usually do is the "first episode" (and even then it's only really the Cold Open) and a lot of worldbuilding that I communicate really poorly (Admittedly, I actually do have to do improv there too cause people will ask me questions I didn't think about a lot).

 

[monxmiracle]

Having done both, I find that having some structure and narrative to follow really helps me to focus and narrow down waht to write duirng the course of the roleplay. For me I enjoy having a specific story and end goal to reach as that helps motivate me to keep writing. I also find that it better helps me to develop my character through the course of the story over it being solely character driven. I find when its improv based I have too many options to continue forward so it stumps me when i want to think of what to write next. I also find it leads to a messy and confusing narrative in a group setting especially when people are not on the same terms. Pre planning and plotting before hand or at least before a scene starts helps to make sure everyone is on the same page. Though one pitfall I find with the collaborative story telling is that you need to pace out the story appropriately. If the story lingers too much on one scene particularly in a group setting people may get bored and have no idea how to move forward. So its a good idea to figure out a way to bring everyone forward, without constraining them too much. In this case having a good balance of improv and collaborative planned storytelling is much better for a group. As it not only provides a bit of structure but also enough flexibility as you move between scenes. As for me personally outside of groups, I much prefer collaborative and narrative driven storytelling over diving into the story blind. It just feels much more organized, and fulfilling. Just having all our ideas organized before hand at least for me is a nice aid to keep me invested before hand. Although only con is that you may feel a little more constrained, but in the end the overall narrative will feel much more succint than if you hadn't gone ahead and pre-planned it with your writing partners.​