Lore Forum Feedback thread.

[Petitioner]

Yknow, I only just now noticed this exists. Huh, neat. Looking forward to writing something for this when I have the brainspace for it. Personally, I love the idea, and while I understand the complaints mentioned earlier in this thread at some level, I also think that those complaints come from a point of view I fundamentally don't share.

Roleplay isn't just "writing"—it's collaborative storytelling. The thing that separates roleplay from solo writing like a novelist or fanfic author does is that others are involved in the creative process; not only inside of it (playing their characters) but also in a meta sense, outside of it. When you work with someone else on a freeform project like collaborative storytelling, or pen-and-paper gaming, or a pickup ballgame, there has to be a mutual agreement of the terms of the activity, and trying to expand the terms of engagement in a large community where everyone is engaged in a collaborative activity like storytelling, as we do here, does nothing but expand the options for those interested in new approaches.

That is to say, if you don't like it, there's nothing demanding you submit short stories for canonization, and you don't have to participate. That's a good thing! You can maintain total creative control over your own stories (within the bounds of the rules, the framework we all implicitly agree to operate with by joining this community at all). For those who are interested in handing over a lot more responsibility to others, now we have the option to just throw something at the wall. If the relevant people (here, storyteam) don't like it, it doesn't stick, and we can just repost it in Stories & Biographies for all to see. If they do like it, then we've contributed to and shaped the world in our own way, and given others more to work with, that they know they can include in their own stories without any lore incompatibility issues. That's also a good thing, imo!

Personally, I like the idea of my own creative work giving others more options for theirs, even if I don't maintain total control over it once I put down my metaphorical pen. To me, that's in the spirit of roleplaying, because it's inherently collaborative. The difference here is just that even more responsibility is placed on the other partner in the collaboration (storyteam), yet that other partner also takes a more passive role.

In short, this is a fun option to have, and I'm glad that this exists.

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