Storytelling Game - Alternate Form Role-playing Games

Alternate Form Role-playing Games

An early design of a collaborative storytelling game not based in simulation was created by Chris Engle c. 1988 with his Matrix Game. In this system, a referee decides the likeliness of the facts proposed by the players, and those facts happen or are rejected according with a dice roll. Players can propose counter-arguments that are resolved in a dice rolling contest. A conflict round can follow to resolve any inconsistencies or further detail new plot points. Matrix Games are now presented in a board game format.

In 1999, game designer Ian Millington developed an early work called Ergo which established the basis for collaborative role-playing. It was designed with the rules of the Fudge universal role-playing system in mind but added modifications necessary to get rid of the need for a gamemaster, distributing the responsibility for the game and story equally among all players and undoing the equivalence between player and character.

Modern rule systems (such as the coin system in Universalis) rely less on randomness and more in collaboration between players. This includes rules based on economic systems that force players to negotiate the details of the story, and solve conflicts based on the importance that they give to a given plot element and the resources they're willing to spend to make it into the story.