So I was sitting there browsing the forum on my phone when I suddenly had this idea
(… suspense)
We should all work together on a game.
Yes… Hold on… I will explain my crazy idea.
What will essentially happen is firstly the genre of the game will be decided through a pole by us fellow forum members.
once the genre of the game has been decided, a list of people interested in being a part of the project will be made. People will then be selected at random and will be expected to each write a chapter following on from the last person.
This will then in turn will create a game full of many components that have been combined together to create a game that we have all had a hand in and will hopefully love.
Yes there may be problems with this idea but it will be fun to create this game if not anything else.
There’s been attempts at this in the past. I think the last one’s still being worked on.
So you can probably get some tips from the participants there. I’m sure it’ll be a lot of fun for people.
I wouldn’t do
Instead I’d suggest using the vignette structure of Choice of Games to your full benefit. Create a central theme, then let everyone write individual vignettes that aren’t connected to each other. You can stitch them together later. Or you can let each vignette writer pick some important information that they’re going to have carry over.
It means everyone can work on their vignettes at the same time. And that you’re not reliant on any single writer failing to deliver their piece on time, and thus delaying the whole project. It also gives people freedom to make their sections as long or as short as they like.
I’d take a leaf out of the books of tv shows that have self-contained episodes. So if your game’s about a Captain that flies around the galaxy on their starship, visiting strange new worlds, seeking out new life. Well every player can write their own alien encounters, or visit to new planets, or other exciting adventures. You can even make it so the player can choose which order they do things in.
With the likes of a Captain on a starship, they fly off at the end of the episode, everyone’s learned a lesson, but they rarely refer to what happened in previous episodes. They generally end in a sort of soft-reset.
All that said, ignore what I’ve said if the participants want to do things differently. Personally, I’d suggest something short, fun, easy to write and surrounding a common theme that everyone’s interested in.
I’d also suggest changing the thread title to something about Forum Group Community Created Game
This seems like a pretty cool thing. If you get it started, we should talk about the project. I’d love to write a chapter/episode/vignette/whatever for it.
I will firstly ask the writers whether they’re fine with me creating a poll so that our fellow forum members can vote on the genre of the game. However, if the other writers would prefer to decide the genre of the game themselves, then that would be fine.
Not confident enough yet in CS to join this but I’m happy to provide any overruling suggestions. One might be to focus on a group of characters and each chapter features one of them and you can play them in any order.
I had one idea that might work well for this type of game. I actually got the idea from an old movie called “The Pagemaster” if any of you remember that, and if you’ve never seen it, go watch it now. To start with, the main character is just a regular person, nobody special in a normal world like yours or mine. One day while at the library he starts encountering strange people trying to force him into strange situations, like one person proclaims the player to be the Chosen one, and must recover the medallion to save the princess. Another says the player is special agent 81, and their mission, should they choose to accept it, is to stop the syndicate from leaking the presidents private emails. We then learn that the player is caught in a spell that is causing books to “leak” into the real world around him, and to stop utter chaos from ensuing and probably destroying society, the player must travel through a series of stories, including various genres, to find the wizard (or whatever) to get them to fix the situation.
This idea is meant to be tongue-in-cheek humor, with a little bit of meta self awareness mixed in. It’s one of about two dozen half baked ideas I have for games.
I think that sounds so much fun, Fantom. And it would be a perfectly meta way to explain why all the writing styles for each section are different, because they’re different books so to speak. It’s just add to the flavour.
Would some quest need to be solved in each of the books? Like defeating an evil, or finding pieces of a broken artifact, or the piece of the books that don’t fit and taking them out, or writing a missing ending or something?
That could work. Or something similar, like passing through alternate dimensions or being stuck in some sort of completely crazy dream world which just changes at random from time to time. You’d probably need a purpose for going to those places though.
Edit:
Or the idea @Jacic uses in Wizardry Level C, where stepping through some sort of doorway has the potential to transport you to some sort of completely different place.
