Well, we could try something old.

Sure, let's get some life back in this place.

I love this idea. Did you want to start it in this thread or just discuss the idea?

You should do it like one of those exquisite corpse games where you write three lines on paper and fold it so only the last line can be seen, and the next person takes it from there. I'm not sure how this would work without paper though.

We should have sign up, for sure. However many people want to join in on the fun, they do so. We go down the list of people over and over until we lose interest or finish the story.

I think it'd be only fair if Radb wrote the first entry. His idea and all.

I'll play. Writing briefs doesn't give me much of an opportunity to flex my more creative muscles (such as they are).

I haven't played in any of the CHUD drafts before, so I'd hate to be the newbie who starts making up rules. But if Radb started the first entry, he could lay down provisions to keep this thing from going off the rails before it even has time to start. Stuff like "keep this character" or "entries must be longer than this many words," etc. etc. That's if he wanted to; it's his idea.

Bring it on!

Knock it off, nerds.

Don't you have some cars to yell at?

We're not supposed to write. There's a strike on. Computers will be seized.

If the cars start collaborating on shitty nerd fanfic, they'll get theirs too.

It's a good idea, and I'd be up for it, but Slater's right: I'm sure we can come up with an idea that doesn't involve pre-existing cultural figures. It'll just take a little more work is all. Besides, we already did the "different take on your favorite movie" idea. I know -- I was the schmuck who wrote about Indiana Jones defending John Nash.

The idea of a revolving setting isn't bad, nor is the idea of allowing people to add in secondary or tertiary characters. Right off the top of my head, a couple of things spring to mind. The first is inspired by Slaughterhouse-5 by way of Sliders: the "unstuck in time." A central character finds himself slowly shifting through history, however, the twist is that he never encounters any major historical figures. I might even say stay away from the big ones, too. Now that I think about it, that's Quantum Leap without the historical figures, so maybe not so much.

I've been going through some of the old threads in this forum, back when various editors were put in charge of revitalizing the CHUD Stories, and it seems like one of the big problems with it was that the scope was too small. People were given prompts that only allowed one specific interpretation. What made the first few months of CHUD Stories great is that we had genre-based topics with twists. Our first was serial killers, and one of my favorites was a story called "Valor is Only A Word," about a serial killer who targeted a fictional city's major superheroes. It was pretty great.

I'm thinking rather than trying to get everyone to collaborate on a single story, why not get back to that genre mold? Why don't we set deadlines, contribute stories, etc., rather than one massive choose your own adventure? A shared universe is fine -- we've done it before -- but, as has been in the past, the thing has died with the readers. People don't want to write the stories if people aren't going to read them.

So, with that, I suggest "geek detective or noir" stories.

I like that. "Geek detective/noir" is accessible but I'm not one for "fan fic." It'd be great to see activity in these parts again and if the first attempt fails miserably, we'll pick up with a different genre. Good call on the Slaughterhouse-Five idea. I'd love to write something, but if it involves Indiana Jones running into King Kong, I might sit out.

Even though this is basically what everyone else is hinting at, we could have have each person (or small number) do a short story. Then have the next one relate to it, not necessarily with the same character or same situations. Instead, it could be something as simple as a framing device or a physical clue. For example, STORY ONE involves a kid who has a bad dream in the middle of the night, walks to a park. STORY TWO starts in a park where two guys are engaged in a coke deal, cops come, they run, one gets shot or whatever, the other runs down an alley. STORY THREE is about a mouse and his little mouse family who live in that alley. See where this is going?

Those were all shitty ideas off the top of my head and by no means am I suggesting those for full-fledged write-outs (but feel free), I'm just implying that it'd at least give the next poster freedom and it links them together loosely. It doesn't have to be a cohesive whole thematically, but it'd be neat if we could just set them all in one night in New York City, etc. And when we've exhausted one or everybody's posted (like a round), we start a new one.

I think either of these would be the best possible take on the idea. The problem with creating a shared setting is that coming up with the setting itself takes too much time. We tried that with our Lumiere stories, and my recollection is that it only takes a couple of stories before getting the geography and continuity right gets all muddled.

I like the track Andrew is on, and I think that picking a general setting ("one night in New York") or idea ("geek noir," pimp pimp) is the best way to go. Let's create the sandbox, then let people play.

If people want to play, we can start this thing up tomorrow with an official draft sign-up. Like I said earlier, I haven't done any drafts before but I read them and am familiar with the rules more or less - I just barely broke 200 posts so yeah, I don't qualify for a lot of shit. But unless you guys feel differently, I don't think the requirements need to be steep or anything. If someone doesn't post their draft entry/story on time/at all, the next person can just use the last framing device. I doubt anyone's gonna get too up in arms about it, especially if all of the round is in the same setting or locale anyway.

I think a companion discussion thread is essential though; keeps things from getting too messy, plus people can drop in to just read the stuff without having to sift through interjections and comments. Just some thoughts.

As another aside, depending on how many enter, we might wanna be a little more lenient on the time since we're doing more than just naming movies, bands or broads.

You wanna head this thing up Radb? I doubt it'll be much work but if that ain't your thing, that's cool. Just figured since you brought this monster back to life, you'd want to take some credit for it.

I would suggest not doing the stories themselves in a thread.

Submit 'em on the CHUDStories main page the old fashioned way?

I don't know if CHUDStories is even active. But a blog or anything would be preferable to a thread. The individual stories could be taken on their merit better that way.

We actually tried that, made up a town called Lumiere and had a bunch of stories set in it. The threads are still there -- just search this forum for "Lumiere".

This also reminds me a bit of the fantastic Coldstone RPG that we ran a few years ago.

A blog, run by a single person or persons, would allow the overall quality of the stories to be monitored and edited. It would keep the format unified, but still allow people the freedom to play. Also, having editors would allow for catching errors in punctuation and/or grammar and/or general notes that could improve the story. It would take more time, sure, but I think the result would be much, much better.

I already voiced my concerns about Lumiere, and Coldstone was phenomenal, but it was a one-shot deal for the most part. If it's a thread, at some point, people are going to get bored and this forum's going to be dead again.

I'm just thinking that if the intent is to revitalize this particular forum, there are better, stronger ways to go about it. I'd be interested in helping.

I get it. I think Rath's right; it's probably the best route. I'd love to help too but I think a seasoned Chewer who has done CHUDStories before should take the reins. Still, I'd love to help in any other capacity I possibly could. Let's just do it soon before everyone here forgets about the revitalization efforts.

The 'One Night in (city)' sounds like a bang up idea. We use an already established location that everyone is at least passingly familiar with and does allow for a great flexibility of characters/situations, while still keeping to a loose theme (the single night). Maybe something odd should be happening like, I dunno, snowfall or the end of the world or something if we wanted to rein it in a bit further.

A separate blog sounds suspect. I know I'd never go there, but I damn sure always come to CHUD. Have separate threads for each story, so you don't have to weed through comments.

Have a thread for each story featuring a link to the blog it's posted at. Use that thread for discussion of the story, not posting of the story. It's sort of how it used to work when CHUDStories was actually being updated on the site, we'd just have the stories posted somewhere else.

I don't know if any of the editor types from back then are still around....