Righto, Hal and I managed to get a wiki operational:
http://www.rpgdl.com/wiki/
basically, how a wiki works is that everyone can edit the pages, and the history of old edits is kept in the archive in case someone accidentally writes over something useful or whatever.
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Now the idea I had was to make somewhat of an RP-fanfic -- open one section of the plot, and let everyone edit it, starting out with a bit of a draft, then adding in details, making sure that none of the characters are portrayed out of character, making sure that the descriptions are done properly, and ensuring that the writing all flows nicely. When everyone's happy with that section of the plot, lock it so that it can't be edited further, and open up the next section.
I'm enthusiastic about the idea because for a few reasons--it doesn't necessarily restrict how many people can be involved, but can go forward if minor people get busy, and it also (in theory) will end up a nice, coherent piece of writing to read. I'm thinking having one user responsible for each major character would be a good idea, and let roleplay interaction determine a lot of the scenes from there. What I'd like to know is who else is interested, and whether the experienced DMs around here think something like this would work.
Oh, and suggestions for setting would be useful too. (Not that I don't have a few ideas of my own, but based on this forum, a lot of settings have already been taken >_>).
It ..could work.
But at the same time, I've never seen a single unrestricted round robin fanfiction writing turn out well. Ever.
Hum.
I'll offer more detailed 'whys' when I am not tired. =)
Dracos
Okay
*waits for details*
...
*wonders if Dracos ever sleeps* >_> <_<
Sleep? What is that.
Anyhow...
What you described technically has no reason it shouldn't work, but at the same time, experience dictates execution is a far bit away from theory. The primary reason that round robins tend to fail in my experience is that they have many times over the fail points of a story written by one author or even a game GM'ed.
With single person writing, there's a unity of vision and a single major fail point (that person). With GM'ed games, there's lots of fail points, but there are also plenty of tools to try and keep folks together. A round-robin/group-writing tends to have all of those fail-points and many more, with far less tools around for dealing with it. Yes, there is as much potential for it to turn out awesome as there is for it to fail, but in my experience, every last one seems to go the route of pulling itself apart. Whether it is folks commenting on it that touch a fail point, lack of folks commenting on it that touch a fail point, a guy leaving (which shouldn't be a disaster but tends to be), personality conflicts (without the inequity tool of a GM that can at least partially mitigate this. Admin/Writing leader helps but only to a point). Most commonly, there's disputes over character actions which easily stall the thing. And then, on the simple fact it is really hard in that environment to get unified writing vision.
Yes, all of these are suppositions. They don't have to happen. But they usually do. I don't think a wiki environment would necessarily provide any real additional support that changes this probability. Even with close friends, the general trend tends to move heavily towards it tearing apart roughly.
Notably, adding role-playing and swapping GMs to this environment is unlikely to produce better results.
Truthfully, I'd bet on dunefar being able to toss in some thoughts more positive as his game borderlined this, but then it also could stand as an example of how easily it can get disrupted too.
Dracos
With better organization, I think it could work.
And it has worked, in the past (I think). From what I remember, that whole Dragonlance series was apparently based off of an actual series of gaming sessions.
There have been several published books written by multiple authors in the same setting, just with different characters. I think if we all approach the situation understanding that we need to work together, we can have a good time.
It's only the people who want to be the most awesomest and have their characters be cooler that really make things difficult....
I, for one, am interested in this.
Mmm, Dragonlance was written by two people following a much larger gaming group. I've also heard odd quotes attributed to these authors (in some of their other books) that really doesn't mesh with this well.
It's really something hard to know.
Anyhow, Good Luck. =)
Dracos
I used to do something similar to this in the Wheel of Time universe. Each person had their own character, which they played in threads on a message board. All the characters in the thread played their own actions in addition to fleshing out the surroundings and NPCs, if necessary deferring to the originator of the thread in that.
It can work, though as everyone here seems to agree, it's difficult. I'd be willing to join in, if I can find the time. =)
Heh, I forgot to mention, but a project with some vague similarities to an RP started up already; namely an IAQ:
http://www.rpgdl.com/wiki/index.php?title=RPGDL_IAQ
It has held together considerably longer than Genocide Heart's previous attempt at GMing (which...died at about 40 posts). In fact the discussion topic on the forums is at...724 posts already (not that discussion posts are necessarily a good measure, but suffice it to say that it's doing fine so far). Granted, it has slowed down a bit in the past couple days (though I also haven't seen GH around, and he's been known to disappear for weeks without warning when real life interferes).
This does all make me curious as to what a GM could do with planning (since much of this was spontaneous and disorganized...though for all I know spontaneity helped make it catch >_>).