Storium

Don’t know anything about Storium beyond what I read on RPS a couple days ago, but it certainly sounds interesting:

The result is distinctly literary, which is probably why there’s so many authors and fanfic writers playing. One of them is Stephen Blackmore, author of Dead Things, who’s creating a Storium setting called Redemption City: “This is collaborative storytelling that has some mechanics in place to help keep the story moving rather than to determine specific outcomes. If anything I think it might actually be more accessible to non-gamers than to gamers.“ He explains, “This is very much a writer’s game. The mechanics are so unobtrusive as to sometimes feel almost incidental. Storium lets you play with plot, theme, metaphor, character, voice. What other online game not only allows that but encourages it?”

If the mainstream commercial interactive industry has proven anything over the past two decades it’s that it knows nothing about storytelling, and I’m being charitable in that appraisal. However, as was learned even earlier in the pencil-and-paper world, going all the way back to Dungeons & Dragons, most players also lack the requisite skill to drive even a static narrative, let alone adapt one on the fly.

Storium seems an interesting compromise because it necessarily expects someone who’s qualified to initially take the narrative reigns, while still allowing for collaborative if not competitive storytelling. Definitely worth a look.

— Mark Barrett