The basic idea is that one person starts writing the story (or writing and drawing, as most often these stories can be described as comics).  After one or two panels, the author solicits ideas from the audience.  After suggestions are provided, the author picks however many he or she likes, then draws another set of panels.  Repeat.

I believe these stories are meant to emulate computer games.  That’s why they’re so often written in second person, as in “You open the door”; e.g. “What Do You Do?“.

MS Paint Adventures is not a game. Except that it is a game, absolutely.

—Greg Costikyan

Of course, there are also obvious parallels to various forms of role-playing (cf. Parsely).

What are the characteristics of this “thing”?

By providing suggestions, the readers have a sense of being more involved in the story.  The process of suggesting courses of action naturally leads to an engaged community of readers.  Some choices generate enough suggestions to be put to a vote by the readers.  (Ruby Quest notably did this several times.)  Obviously, this form of storytelling is well suited to online forums; readers can discuss and have input on the story even if they only check the forum once a day.  (It depends on the speed of the story, of course.)

Another thing to note is that the readers don’t need to do much work to interact with the story.  This allows for even casual readers to participate, even if they don’t actually affect the story.  (See also 42 Entertainment’s inverted pyramid player model.)

In this form of storytelling, the author can pick and choose whichever suggestions he or she desires to take.  The characters in the story can even reject suggestions judged to be absurd.  (“That would be a stupid idea!”)  Cynical readers will say that the author is “forcing” certain actions into the story (or “railroading”, a term that I suspect is from roleplaying game fandom).  I think this is actually an intriguing criticism, because it comes from the viewpoint that interactivity is expected.  In other words, because the net-native nature of the story allows readers to influence the plot, they should be able to.

As for myself, I think the balance between “order” and “chaos” has to be worked out with each individual author and audience; in fact, with each individual story.  However, I will say that the potential of net-native literature has, at this point, barely been tapped.  If you want to create something entirely new, you’ll need to let the audience influence the story.

What do we call this “thing”?

People on the MSPA Forum call them “Forum Adventures”, which is fine for their community, but I don’t think it would work as a true umbrella term.  (After all, there are other possible game and roleplaying forms that could occur on a forum.)

1d4chan calls them “Quests”, because so many started popping up that they had to call them something.  (Enough to warrant an entirely new forum!)  However, I don’t think this term is descriptive enough.  (What doesn’t “quest” mean at this point?)

I’ve come up with a number of possible terms:

• Improvisational storytelling—This art form does appear to have a lot in common with improv comedy.
• Many-to-one storytelling—Descriptive, but academic.
• Many-to-one roleplaying—”Roleplaying” seems more in line with Parsely than this particular narrative form.  But this does make me curious as to what many-to-one roleplaying would really be like.  (I suspect there have been one or two games that tried it, but I can’t recall at the moment.)
• Crowd-sourced storytelling—Actually, this sounds like it might be something different.  It seems to imply that there is no one author/moderator.  Once again, it makes me wonder what “crowd-sourced storytelling” would really be like.
• Audience-prompted storytelling—This is my favorite of the terms (as you can probably tell from the title of this entry).  I think this term well captures the idea of the author creating stuff prompted by the audience.

Where can we take this in the future?

Most of the current audience-prompted stories take the forum of webcomics, with a few completely text-based ones.  There’s the whole universe of graphic design to draw on (acrylics? pencil sketches on notepaper?), but let’s go farther.  It’s easy to imagine other media forms involved, like video.  (Anyone else get a shiver imagining Joss Whedon and Neil Patrick Harris with a video camera and a web forum?)

This can lead us to think of audience-prompted storytelling as a process:

1. Author provides content.
2. Audience discusses content.
3. Audience provides suggestions.
4. Author considers suggestions for inspiration of new content.
5. Repeat.

This definition is broad enough that many existing works fit into it.  In theory, a massively multiplayer game that pushes sets of new content has probably let player comments influence the creation of that content.  Legend of the Five Rings and its “deep, evolving story” are a better example.

While many experiences could fit into this mold, I think the real strength of this particular narrative form is h0w easy it is to participate.  Anyone can sign up to a forum and plop an idea down in the correct thread…and they might have a powerful influence on the story.  And even if they don’t, they may spark a discussion about their idea.

That’s the kind of thing that just might make people feel welcome in a new community…

A more-or-less-collaborative writing project instigated by Andrea Philips: My Super First Day.  This year’s effort is not as elaborate as my first one, but I didn’t want this to pass by without contribuing something.  Go read.

After reading that article, I found myself thinking about some of the challenges inherent in transmedia stories.  There’s one problem that suggests itself immediately.

What happens when someone reading one segment realizes that other segments also have elements important to the story?

Some people may feel betrayal.  They may have the impression that the thing they just bought is really just an advertisement for some other thing.  The best defense against this, as far as I can tell, is to make sure each product provides value on its own—for a story, that would mean that it feels like a complete story on its own.

Some people might feel confusion or frustration.  They may feel there are things in the story that they don’t understand, and these things are keeping them from enjoying the story.  However, I believe there are techniques to help prevent this reaction.

Transmedia Grounding

Many stories (I might even say “most”) make use of a viewpoint character.  This is a character that the reader (/viewer/player) understands and sympathizes with.  Whatever strange events happen in the story, the viewpoint character is surprised by them.  This lets the reader know that it’s okay to be confused or startled by odd things happening in the story.  It’s especially important for stories featuring elements of science fiction, fantasy or horror, because those elements are far removed from the reader’s daily life.  The reactions of an “everyday” character makes sure the story is grounded.

This device can be useful in transmedia stories.  If someone is reading one story, and elements of another story are introduced, those elements are foreign to the reader.  Therefore, the viewpoint character should react to them with surprise.  This will help the reader accept the new story elements as part of the fictional continuity.

A quick example should illustrate the point better.

Spirit Cards

Let’s say we have a television series called “Urban Mage”.  A twentysomething named Josiah and some of his friends discover that they each have a talent for sorcery, and they fall in with various urban mages and get drawn in to their conflicts.  The mages fight by manipulating electricity, starting fires, divining information and occasionally warping matter.  (I promise I made this all up for the purpose of this blog post, although I did recently reread Mage: the Ascension…)  So, in this case Josiah is our male lead and viewpoint character.  He knows next-to-nothing about magery, but he has to learn quickly.

Now let’s say there’s a web game where players learn about “Spirit Cards”, a form of magic that uses enchanted cards to call in favors from spirits.  Players of the game learn about another new mage named Acacia, and along with her they learn the rules by which Spirit Cards work (incidentally forming a nifty strategy game).  Acacia’s story is told through quests and updates on the website, and while the Spirit Cards are obviously built on the Urban Mage conception of magic, specific references to the television show are rare and far between.

Finally, let’s say that there’s an episode of Urban Mage where Acacia appears and consults with Josiah.  This is the first time that Spirit Cards are even mentioned on the show, but Josiah knows all about them and is able to use his mastery of Spirit Card rule nuances to do whatever it is that needs to be done in this episode…

That will probably upset some people.  People watching the television show without playing the game will be completely confused by the Spirit Card stuff.  People who started out playing the game will be upset that everyone in the main Urban Mage universe seems to know about the cards and rules they spent so much time mastering.

A much better way to handle the situation would be to have Josiah surprised by Acacia and her cards.  He has the opportunity to be taught about this new form of magic, and through sympathizing with him, the TV audience is able to understand it as well.  Also, the web game players are shown that their card game has an important role to play in the larger Urban Mage universe.  (It’s also a great opportunity for subtle in-jokes.)

Of course, it’s possible to go too far with this example.  If Acacia’s magic is played up too highly, she can seem like a Deus Ex Machina (or a Mary Sue!).  The ideal resolution would show that each character has something to offer the other.

Ultimately, I believe that when people read (/watch/play) media, and they really enjoy that media, they will pursue mastery of it.  If you respect your audience’s mastery of your content—if you show them that you’re proud they care about your stories so much—they’ll love you for it.

Endless Frontier features a number of characters in your party.  Each of these characters is carefully designed and characterized.  Each of them is represented in conversations by several portraits that show various emotions; “default”, “happy”, “grim” and so on.  Some characters have portraits that are quite individual to them; Kaguya has a “flirty” portrait, for example, and Xiaomu has a “just been spanked” portrait.  (Don’t ask, just take my word for it.)

When you visit a town in the game, you’re presented with a screen that has several menu options; “Inn”, “Save”, “Shop” and so forth.  The background of this screen is a street in the town, with several of the character portraits visible as well.  The impression is one of your characters chatting on a street corner while they decide where to go next in town.

The really interesting thing, though, is that the character portraits are chosen randomly.  (“Aleatory” means “having to do with chance or randomness”.)  When confronted with a tableau of random character portraits, the player can’t help but think—”What the heck are they talking about?”.  The character tableaux give the impression of being a snapshot of a conversation.  It really makes the player wonder what the characters are doing.  Why is Kaguya embarrassed and Suzuka exasperated?  The urge to think up a rationale for the situation is strong.  (“Apophenia” is the tendency for humans to discern patterns in meaningless data.)

The ultimate impression conveyed by this little feature is that your characters hang out together, converse, banter among themselves.  It really makes them feel like real people.

Put simply, it’s a series of video games featuring characters from many different Japanese animated series about giant robots.  Someone probably thought “Wouldn’t it be cool if Mazinger Z teamed up with the RX-78 Gundam?”, and with a bit of negotiation and programming by Banpresto, that experience was provided in video game form.

One problem with creating a crossover continuity like this is negotiating with all the rights holders.  I suspect it becomes easier as it goes along; if you’re a right holder confronted with the opportunity to have your character appear in a video game, it’s more comforting to know that it’s the fifth video game in the series and features a dozen other properties along with yours.  Not only that, sometimes one company holds the rights to many different properties (see Tatsunko vs. Capcom: Ultimate All-Stars).  Still: Negotiating rights is non-trival.  While I don’t know for certain, I suspect that the difficulty of negotiation is the reason that very few Super Robot Wars games have been translated and released outside of Japan.  (Wikipedia says this as well, but there’s no citation!)

Generating Originals in the Original Generation

Over the years a number of Super Robot Wars games have been released, featuring characters from many different animated series. But along with all of those characters, Banpresto created a number of original characters to help “glue” the various continuities together.  For example, 2nd Super Robot Wars for the Nintendo Famicom featured “the Cybuster piloted by Masaki Andoh“.  These characters are referred to as, of course, “Banpresto Originals”.

Since Banpresto has been associated with Bandai since 1989 and wholly owned by Namco Bandai since 2006, the Super Robot Wars games also feature guest appearances by Namco characters, such as KOS-MOS (from Xenosaga) in Super Robot Taisen OG Saga: Endless Frontier.

In 2002, Banpresto released Super Robot Wars: Original Generation for the Game Boy Advance.  This game featured only Banpresto Originals, characters created (and thus wholly owned by) Banpresto.  This game was also the first Super Robot Wars title translated and released in North America; in fact, all three Super Robot Wars games available in North America are “Original Generation” games.  (They were retitled as “Super Robot Taisen”, though.)

In my view, Banpresto has pulled off something rather slick here.  They’ve created what might be considered “fanfic” characters to hang around in their crossover stories…and when enough characters were available, they were all pulled together into a new continuity independent of any of the original properties.  While many people probably bought the Super Robot Wars games because they were fans of the giant robot series, Banpresto took that opportunity to build a reputation, a reputation that says Super Robot Wars games feature solid gameplay.  Then they were able to leverage that reputation in order to sell games whose IP they fully owned.

Sometimes you just need to do something outlandish.  Something crazy.  Something chaotic.  Sometimes you have to do something that will catch people off guard, shake them up and jolt them into new ways of thinking.

Sometimes you have to do something nobody expects.

Whisper

Pretty fun.  This whole writing project thing may even continue.

I’m doing more PHP work on secret projects, and I’m also working in Inform on a project for the TIGSource Commonplace Book Competition. (I’m actually working in Inform 6; it’s more programmer-oriented than Inform 7, but hey, I’m a programmer! And it’s what I learned. Maybe someday I’ll learn 7.) I bet I’ll even be able to finish this one for Halloween.

Oh, yes, Halloween. I always want to have something…special happen for Halloween. We’ll see what I can *ahem* dig up.

Now I’m going to work on stuff for the TIGSource Procedural Generation Competition. My life has been so busy recently I haven’t had as much time to work on this as I would have liked…I don’t know if I’ll even be able to produce something showable. But we’ll see.