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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9843783" data-attributes="member: 42582">There's no "collaborative storytelling" in Sorcerer or Apocalypse World, if played in the way the rulebooks set out.For instance, from AW (p 109 of the original rulebook):Apocalypse World divvies the conversation up in a strict and pretty traditional way. The players’ job is to say what their characters say and undertake to do, first and exclusively; to say what their characters think, feel and remember, also exclusively; and to answer your questions about their characters’ lives and surroundings. Your job as MC is to say everything else: everything about the world, and what everyone in the whole damned world says and does except the players’ characters.There's also this, on p 113:• Ask provocative questions and build on the answers. Start simple: “What’s your living space like?” “Who’s known each other longest?” But as play proceeds, ask for immediate and intimate details of the characters’ experiences. . . . ask questions like “Why can you only fit two people in the cabin of the Tank?” “How do the people of the Tent City make you feel?” “How do her lips feel under your palm?” Very good stuff. Once you have the player’s answer, build on it. I mean three things by that: (1) barf apocalyptica upon it, by adding details and imagery of your own; (2) refer to it later in play, bringing it back into currency; and (3) use it to inform your own developing apocalyptic aesthetic, incorporating it - and more importantly, its implications - into your own vision. It’s especially important to ask, the first time each character opens her brain to the world’s psychic maelstrom, what that’s like for her. Maybe it’s the same for everybody, maybe it’s different. And after the first time, always, always add details of your own.It's nevertheless the case that the play of these games will reliably produce something like a story, in the sense that it will have protagonists in some sort of conflict, with rising action and climax/resolution. But that's not because of any "collaborative storytelling". That's because of the rules for (i) framing of scenes/situations, and (ii) resolution of declared actions.</blockquote>

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