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The difficulty in cooperative storytelling
Aug. 3rd, 2005 03:28 pmThe difficulty in cooperative storytelling, that is shared storytelling, is the sharing part. You can't go breaking someone's toys, or rearranging them utterly. While you play with them you need to play by the rules, and depending on the social contract at the end of the day you need to give them back largely as you got them. This is why so few attempts at shared gming responsibilities work in the roleplaying scene. It can work, but the tools to do so are usually lacking. Ars Magica, perhaps the big example of a game that tries to put forward shared creative responsibilities utterly fails after five editions to actually give any tools to do it with. And it fails to offer any guideline son social contracts, it may not even mention them at all but I’m not sure about that as I haven’t read the 5th edition that thoroughly.
Other games try to avoid this issue altogether by removing the gm role. While this works to various degrees it has its own issues.
One of the things that draws me to group constrained writing exercises like the Lexicon is that it both offers the opportunity for someone to be a creative force and a the same time providing a valid set of guidelines, a social contract, to maintain the responsibilities each person has to the creative whole. My respect of that, and my experiences of seeing it as necessary, is one of the reasons I may have been coming on strong recently.
In Tantaene Animis Caelestibus Irae one of my design goals has been how to balance the issues of narrative control while still maintaining wonder and a sense of exploration, bringing in elements of pacing and structural controls as parts of the tool box. Theres been some success, so much so that I’m now pondering bringing in a little more narrative control of the back story using the mission element. As trust has increased on all sides (and remember the majority of these players are people I’ve gamed with extensively) the ability to allow more and different forms of sharing presents itself.
Roleplaying is all about cooperative storytelling. It’s probably what keeps me in this hobby as it’s a form of creativity I take a great deal of interest and pride in. But cooperation requires trust and trust requires people being able to agree to a common social contract. Without that the whole house of cards tumbles down and no one has any fun. I’m pretty proud of the players in tantanea for that reason and I’m excited to be beginning a new arch in the story.
Other games try to avoid this issue altogether by removing the gm role. While this works to various degrees it has its own issues.
One of the things that draws me to group constrained writing exercises like the Lexicon is that it both offers the opportunity for someone to be a creative force and a the same time providing a valid set of guidelines, a social contract, to maintain the responsibilities each person has to the creative whole. My respect of that, and my experiences of seeing it as necessary, is one of the reasons I may have been coming on strong recently.
In Tantaene Animis Caelestibus Irae one of my design goals has been how to balance the issues of narrative control while still maintaining wonder and a sense of exploration, bringing in elements of pacing and structural controls as parts of the tool box. Theres been some success, so much so that I’m now pondering bringing in a little more narrative control of the back story using the mission element. As trust has increased on all sides (and remember the majority of these players are people I’ve gamed with extensively) the ability to allow more and different forms of sharing presents itself.
Roleplaying is all about cooperative storytelling. It’s probably what keeps me in this hobby as it’s a form of creativity I take a great deal of interest and pride in. But cooperation requires trust and trust requires people being able to agree to a common social contract. Without that the whole house of cards tumbles down and no one has any fun. I’m pretty proud of the players in tantanea for that reason and I’m excited to be beginning a new arch in the story.
