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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Pielorinho" data-source="post: 222846" data-attributes="member: 259">Not a shot at all -- that's a good question.THere's several differences between what I'm describing and just writing short stories together:1) Storytelling in-game is cooperative, but each person has primary (not sole) responsibility for certain parts or characters in the story.2) Storytelling in-game is primarily spontaneous, even though a lot of stuff may go one between sessions.3) Storytelling in-game is to some degree unpredictable:  while people are working together to make the best story possible, nobody knows for sure what the best story is gonna be.  Your idea of the "best story" can be interrupted and changed by someone else's idea.4) Storytelling in-game is almost always chronologically rigid.  When you write a short story together, you might write the climactic scene before you write the second, third, and fourth scenes.  When you play a storytelling game, however, you almost always play through the scenes in chronological order.It's a different experience from playing in, or running, a standard D&D game.  Since I'm pretty good at math, I find it significantly harder; my writer-friend considers standard D&D games to be significantly harder than storytelling games.I've written stories with other folks, and that's fun.  I've played beer-and-pretzels D&D games with other folks, and that's fun.  I've played diceless storytelling games with other folks, and that's fun too.  They're all related to one another, but they each have a different emphasis.***I should also point out that in a storytelling game, the players aren't fitting their characters to the GM's story, not necessarily.  In fact, we often played with "plot points."  These were poker chips that players got that they could use to change aspects of the story.  You could use them to help you out:[Throwing in a major plot point chip]  "Hey, look!" I say, pointing down the road.  "That looks like -- it is!  It's the Garibaldi Circus troupe!  Hopefully our friend Gepetto is still with them!"or you could use them to screw with the story.[Throwing in a minor plot point chip] And there, beside the door to the mansion in which a murder just occurred, are a pair of muddy riding boots that weren't there when we went to bed.Sometimes we'd let these chips regenerate from session to session; other times, you could spend experience to get them; and other times still, you'd earn them by doing in-character things that didn't help you solve the problem (e.g., giving your real name to a set of guards who might arrest you, because your character doesn't believe in lying).Storytelling games can really blur the line between GM and player.  Again, it's different from writing short stories together, both in format and in emphasis; in some ways, it's closer to round-robin storytelling.  But it can be lots of fun.Daniel</blockquote>

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