Where can I find collaborative writing/role-laying partners?
March 31, 2018 2:20 PM Subscribe
A couple friends and I have a sort of shared world, where we have a Dropbox full of character concepts and "threads," in which those characters interact. It's light-hearted urban fantasy with some erotic overtones. Where can I find other people to engage in this sort of thing?
I have a couple scenarios I'd love to explore, some more overtly erotic than others. I'd vastly prefer something with a low-pressure, write-when-you-can aesthetic over something real-time. Ideally, things would be kept private unless we explicitly choose to share them.
DO people have any resources for "partner-seeking," for lack of a better term? Are their any established online places where this kind of free-form stuff is encouraged?
I have a couple scenarios I'd love to explore, some more overtly erotic than others. I'd vastly prefer something with a low-pressure, write-when-you-can aesthetic over something real-time. Ideally, things would be kept private unless we explicitly choose to share them.
DO people have any resources for "partner-seeking," for lack of a better term? Are their any established online places where this kind of free-form stuff is encouraged?
Storium Review
I backed Storium on Kickstarter and was around from nearly the beginning. It has a mix of rpg and collaborative storytelling elements.
Each story has a narrator and (potentially) several players (limits set by the narrator). Story happens in "scenes," in which the narrator/GM sets challenges which players overcome (or fail to overcome) with their various traits cards - a player might use "Filthy Rich" to bribe the guards, or "Master of Martial Arts" to defeat them, or "Coward" to run away. The player uses the text input to describe what they're doing, and attaches the cards to affect the challenge.
There are restrictions on free players' activities. There are a lot of dropouts, both players and GMs. The social features are limited, so players don't have a good way to get to know each other and build rapport before jumping into a game. The rules structure is both loose enough to allow player abuses if the GM doesn't rein them in, and strict enough that many players wind up either ignoring the cards-points system entirely, or finding ways to use them that have nothing to do with the original purposes. (Example: there is no player-vs-player mechanic; some people have attempted to make one.) A lot of worldbuilding gets done on Google Docs, because the site options are very limited.
Some people love Storium - and they get very defensive when the flaws are pointed out. There are some terrific features: easy ways for the GM to attach art to a scene; the card mechanic is very nice when it works out; character design is fun. But the gaps in support include "copyright details are a tangled mess" and "there is no archive option" - you can't easily download a completed story, or even a character sheet, other than by saving out html pages and converting them manually to something else. There are privacy options; they have pros and cons but are mostly fine.
If you love it, it's great; if you notice its missing features, that awareness is only likely to grow as you continue using it.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 12:09 PM on April 9, 2018
I backed Storium on Kickstarter and was around from nearly the beginning. It has a mix of rpg and collaborative storytelling elements.
Each story has a narrator and (potentially) several players (limits set by the narrator). Story happens in "scenes," in which the narrator/GM sets challenges which players overcome (or fail to overcome) with their various traits cards - a player might use "Filthy Rich" to bribe the guards, or "Master of Martial Arts" to defeat them, or "Coward" to run away. The player uses the text input to describe what they're doing, and attaches the cards to affect the challenge.
There are restrictions on free players' activities. There are a lot of dropouts, both players and GMs. The social features are limited, so players don't have a good way to get to know each other and build rapport before jumping into a game. The rules structure is both loose enough to allow player abuses if the GM doesn't rein them in, and strict enough that many players wind up either ignoring the cards-points system entirely, or finding ways to use them that have nothing to do with the original purposes. (Example: there is no player-vs-player mechanic; some people have attempted to make one.) A lot of worldbuilding gets done on Google Docs, because the site options are very limited.
Some people love Storium - and they get very defensive when the flaws are pointed out. There are some terrific features: easy ways for the GM to attach art to a scene; the card mechanic is very nice when it works out; character design is fun. But the gaps in support include "copyright details are a tangled mess" and "there is no archive option" - you can't easily download a completed story, or even a character sheet, other than by saving out html pages and converting them manually to something else. There are privacy options; they have pros and cons but are mostly fine.
If you love it, it's great; if you notice its missing features, that awareness is only likely to grow as you continue using it.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 12:09 PM on April 9, 2018
Elliquiy Notes
I signed up for Elliquiy after seeing this post; it's a curated membership erotic RP site.
There's a questionnaire required for membership; it includes topics like "what kind of RP experience do you have" and "describe your ideal writing partner" and things that boil down to "we get a lot of extreme and kinky content; are you okay with that?" (Not as in, "are you willing to write or read that," but "you're gonna see thread titles that mention activities that you don't want to participate in.")
They expect people to read the rules first. Anyone who feels comfortable at MetaFilter isn't going to have a problem with their rules: Elliquiy is not a meat market; take no for an answer; no stories featuring people under age 16; what's said in locked forums stays in locked forums.
Giving a gender is required during the application process; options are Male, Female, Neither, and Decline to State. I believe people who transition can write to the mods to change this as needed.
Approval process takes a minimum of a few days, and can take a few weeks. From the activity details, I suspect their approval mods are only active on the weekends. During the waiting period, people ask questions/offer writing prompts, to get a sense of how you participate in the community. These are "writing community icebreaker" questions like, "what character are you most interested in playing" and "what would you pick to be the next breakout original series on Netflix?"
There's a LOT more on the site, after approval. And there's a lot of biases that I'd forgotten existed - men who write only male characters, involved only with female characters, who must be written by a woman.
They have a lot of tutorials: How to fill out your profile and your likes/dislikes list; how to write an "about me" post to find co-writers; how the forums are set up; how to add pictures, and so on. They try to keep content separated by rough content category - the BDSM stuff stays in the BDSM forum; the non-con stays in the non-con forum. (If a story has both, it goes in non-con.) Like MetaFilter, the mods are active and supportive - they answer questions quickly, and stomp down hard on abusive behavior.
It does allow non-explicit content, and there are plenty of writers who mention that they're not only interested in pornish stories. Finding good writing partners seems slow, but it seems a safe venue to explore a wide range of options.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 12:10 PM on April 9, 2018
I signed up for Elliquiy after seeing this post; it's a curated membership erotic RP site.
There's a questionnaire required for membership; it includes topics like "what kind of RP experience do you have" and "describe your ideal writing partner" and things that boil down to "we get a lot of extreme and kinky content; are you okay with that?" (Not as in, "are you willing to write or read that," but "you're gonna see thread titles that mention activities that you don't want to participate in.")
They expect people to read the rules first. Anyone who feels comfortable at MetaFilter isn't going to have a problem with their rules: Elliquiy is not a meat market; take no for an answer; no stories featuring people under age 16; what's said in locked forums stays in locked forums.
Giving a gender is required during the application process; options are Male, Female, Neither, and Decline to State. I believe people who transition can write to the mods to change this as needed.
Approval process takes a minimum of a few days, and can take a few weeks. From the activity details, I suspect their approval mods are only active on the weekends. During the waiting period, people ask questions/offer writing prompts, to get a sense of how you participate in the community. These are "writing community icebreaker" questions like, "what character are you most interested in playing" and "what would you pick to be the next breakout original series on Netflix?"
There's a LOT more on the site, after approval. And there's a lot of biases that I'd forgotten existed - men who write only male characters, involved only with female characters, who must be written by a woman.
They have a lot of tutorials: How to fill out your profile and your likes/dislikes list; how to write an "about me" post to find co-writers; how the forums are set up; how to add pictures, and so on. They try to keep content separated by rough content category - the BDSM stuff stays in the BDSM forum; the non-con stays in the non-con forum. (If a story has both, it goes in non-con.) Like MetaFilter, the mods are active and supportive - they answer questions quickly, and stomp down hard on abusive behavior.
It does allow non-explicit content, and there are plenty of writers who mention that they're not only interested in pornish stories. Finding good writing partners seems slow, but it seems a safe venue to explore a wide range of options.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 12:10 PM on April 9, 2018
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