Why collaborative storytelling is a meaningless phrase

[Max_Killjoy]

I think that describes about half of the discussions in this forum. And quite obviously people will think differently. Still, one should not fall into the other trap and think that humans can never understand each other.

I tend to see the human minds as having a large set of axes, where we might share the same type of axes but have different degrees of them. So we can be radically different to one another, but a truly alien mind would have a completely different set of axes altogether. The "mind space" would be different, so to speak. Which is why it is so hard for science fiction writers to imagine "real" aliens, despite the fact that they can imagine different types of humans.

Anyway, that is completely off topic.

It's on topic in that I suspect some of the "all gamers are doing Strong CS even if they think they're not" crowd are failing to grasp that some other people do not think like they do, and either can't or won't imagine that someone else isn't "thinking in story" when they're playing their character.

What has been the conclusion in this extraordinarily long thread? I tried to follow it a bit but I got completely lost (not enough time) at some point.

To me, collaborative storytelling is not a meaningless phrase at all. It hardly describes all role playing gaming that takes place, but it certainly describes some of it.

I guess you could make a case for that all RPGs are accidental collaborative storybuilding (which is not the same as telling), but that would describe all human life as well and indeed becomes rather meaningless.

That hits a lot of it.

"Weak CS" applies to a lot of gaming simply by being broad, and has some utility as part of a toolkit for explaining what an RPG is to the unfamiliar person.

"Strong CS" applies to the way some people game, but not the way others game.

A few people are Strong CS zealots and will insist that all gamers actually are doing Strong CS even if they think they're not. As we've seen in this thread multiple times, part of their failure to comprehend and/or accept what others are and are not doing rests on conflating what you term "accidental storybuilding" with deliberate collaborative storytelling.