Superhero Fan Fiction RPG Campaign

[Shadow7]

Hi everyone,

 

I was wondering if anyone has ever tried to put together a RPG campaign strictly using fan fiction writing?  Perhaps where all of the participants were to play a character, and one person would start off the campaign describing something.  Then each of the participants would describe what they would do in the scene, and then maybe one of them would add to the next scene and so on, so that each would have a hand in contributing to the scenes of the campaign.  Each of the characters would write their own involvement and maybe even interact with the other characters based on what they describe themselves as doing.  Has that been done before?  I know a lot of people play online, with various means of play, is that one of them?  Just curious, how that would work and if it has ever been played before.  Would rules be needed for this style of game, or could the participants agree to make it fun without taking advantage this?  Or if rules were needed maybe using something like the LARP rules since they have been simplified or do the regular rules work in this manner? Thanks!

 

Shadow7 

[csyphrett]

On 3/17/2018 at 9:36 PM, Shadow7 said:

Hi everyone,

 

I was wondering if anyone has ever tried to put together a RPG campaign strictly using fan fiction writing?  Perhaps where all of the participants were to play a character, and one person would start off the campaign describing something.  Then each of the participants would describe what they would do in the scene, and then maybe one of them would add to the next scene and so on, so that each would have a hand in contributing to the scenes of the campaign.  Each of the characters would write their own involvement and maybe even interact with the other characters based on what they describe themselves as doing.  Has that been done before?  I know a lot of people play online, with various means of play, is that one of them?  Just curious, how that would work and if it has ever been played before.  Would rules be needed for this style of game, or could the participants agree to make it fun without taking advantage this?  Or if rules were needed maybe using something like the LARP rules since they have been simplified or do the regular rules work in this manner? Thanks!

 

Shadow7 

I have seen this and been briefly part of a Green Lantern campaign like this. it's usually called freeform and you can find threads for this among yahoogroups and most writing clubs and I believe RPGnet but I am not sure about the last.

CES  

[RDU Neil]

We have used freeform in the past as part of "blue booking" though that usually ends up with me as GM writing short stories between sessions to help bridge things, provide context and scenes that give the players insight into the bigger picture, etc. Some of our online/email games have basically become writing workshops in some instances. When 9/11 happened, we had a team of NY Supers (and some players who lived in New York at the time) and we had a big discussion on how/if to incorporate it into the game. In the end, I provided some basic guidelines, but it came down to each player writing their own short story about what their character did that day. We all decided that despite rescue efforts, the towers still fell, and it was still a tragedy, but it put the PCs in the thick of the horror and they saved a lot more people than happened in the real world.

 

I'd love to do this kind of thing, but generally the guys I play with are gamers before writers, so they prefer rules and structure to free form story telling. You just need to right people, just like for any social engagement.