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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Crimson Binome" data-source="post: 6781321" data-attributes="member: 6775031">What you are advocating would be the equivalent of five guides, each describing things to each other in the order that they become relevant. Without a central authority, there is no way to maintain consistency in anything. If you make up a detail and declare it, and it contradicts a detail believed (but not yet declared) by another player, then you've just stomped on their immersion as well as if the GM had done it, but you don't have a unified vision to back it up.There can be only one final authority. The players should try to understand how the world works, but they'll never understand it as well as the one who actually designed everything and knows how it fits together in the background. If a player tries to share their own vision, as though it was authoritative, then they're likely to contradict some other things within the world - which would put a huge burden on the GM, who is in charge of running everything else in the world that isn't on-screen right now.Between the nineties and 3.X, that's a hugely influential piece of RPG history. It wouldn't be a stretch to say that the whole school of thought, codified during that era, is the Establishment against which other games distinguish themselves. Which isn't to say that you can't do your collaborative improv thing, if that's what you enjoy, but don't expect many others to buy into it. People who like RPGs, by and large, like them for what they are rather than for what you want them to be.Edit: Sorry, that came out sounding way more hostile than I'd intended. You raise a valid point, and it makes sense how collaborative improv could increase immersion at the table. The single-author style definitely experiences a bottle-neck of information, when the GM needs to divide their attention multiple ways, and splitting up the responsibility for world-building (and detail-building) seems like a sufficient way of addressing that issue. At worst, it's just a trade-off in priorities.</blockquote>

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