Quote:
Originally Posted by PK
The best introduction I can think of is this short video explaining how it works.
(What follows assumes that you've watched that video. I'm not going to attempt to further explain how it works, just offer my thoughts and experiences.)
I've been using it for about two weeks now. I'm playing in three stories and narrating one of my own. My experience is that the "card-play" system provides just enough of a "game framework" to preserve the RPG elements that we love -- resource management, tactical play, etc. -- but is "lite" enough to facilitate asynchronous play.
By asynchronous play, I mean that the site and system do not require (or even assume) the narrator and players to be logged in at the same time. Everyone logs in when they can, at whatever frequency they can. (When the narrator creates a story, he sets expectations, such as, "2-3 scenes per week" or "1-2 scenes per day"; ideally, players will only sign up if they can meet those expectations!)
Clashing schedules is one of the hardest things to overcome in remote gaming, and the "challenges" system built into Storium targets that issue very well. I have players who log in 4-5 times a day, and one who can only log in every other day, and it doesn't matter -- the story is flowing smoothly.
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I've had a pretty decent amount of experience with freeform play-by-post 'games' before, and one thing I've noticed over that time - it is
much more hit-and-miss than in-person gaming for keeping a story flowing. You'll very, very commonly run into people who simply stop posting, or go much slower than they anticipated, etc. Watch out for that.
A lot of those games were less collaborative and more adversarial in nature - the very basics of the Storium system might still work in that sense, but it doesn't sound like it's set up to handle it. It'd basically require a rework such that non-narrators can set up challenges. Not sure how that'd work out *shrug*
Anyways, I haven't backed Storium yet and I'm unsure if I will (though I realize I only have a short time to decide). I wish there was a way to actually see the site and how it works without backing, but it seems to be very much a 'buy blind' effort at the moment.