Collaborative Storytelling

So I've got this gig next week where I'm hosting a panel at Saboten Con in Phoenix. If you're in the neighborhood, you should come check me out on Friday. I'm doing a game that my friends at Smash Fiction created called Surprise Party! Prepping for it has me thinking a lot about the tropes and archetypes we utilize in writing and how fun story telling games can be. Well.. with the right crowd. I have no disillusions about this stuff being fun for everyone, but if you have a free and wild imagination, this stuff is awesome.

​I'm sure I've given the rules before, so I won't go into detail, but suffice it to say, the game is fun. You draft a part of adventures to replace the core group in an established story like Lord of the Rings or Star Wars, and then explain why your group of adventurers would do way better. I love it. I love the thinking on your toes. I love creating a narrative on the fly. It's competitive, but superbly creative as well.

I have to give it to Dan, Claire, and even the non-Mulkerin members of Smash Fiction for the creativity that has going into the games they've created for Smash Meta Fiction. Obviously, Surprise Party is my favorite, but after describing it to friends, I have other people wanting to try out Collaboratory  and  Shipwrecked for themselves. They're fun games, great for a night when no one brought a board game or if you're at a Convention and want to try things with a pick-up group. They're all engaging, hilarious, and most of all, fun. 

All of these games are a strange, fun form of group storytelling, something I rarely get to participate in (unless you count table-top RPGs...).  Did I really have a direction for today? I guess it's just that collaborative storytelling is fun and I really wish I could engage in it more. 

​DFTBA