Storytime Unleashed
I just finished creating a collaborative storytelling platform that allows the creation of open source stories, called "Storytime." The basic idea is that artists who use a combination of MSPaint art (or any other digital art) and text can create individual "chapters", which are then linked together into multiple storylines. Over time, the community upvotes (or downvotes) individual chapters and new chapters are added to the most popular storyline, causing it to rise to the top. However, the less-popular storylines remain visible (allowing for alternate endings). In this way, I hope people can create really cool stories together.
Chapter Dynamics
Individual chapters are ranked based on a "story score," which is a sort of cumulative tally of bonus points from the chapter itself as well as proceeding chapters that are linked to it. In this way, an individual chapter can benefit from upvotes or chapter submissions that have been made indirectly to it (i.e. bonus points garnered from chapters farther up in the storyline). In this way, the strength of overall chains of chapters trumps the strength of chapters on an individual basis.
Open Source, Collaborative Features
If new artists develop popular new story ideas, the direction of that story can always change. So although a story about Jack and Jill might well start off with them going up the hill and end with Jack breaking his crown, the PA-G community would have the opportunity to change that storyline into something a bit more interesting. For instance, Jack and Jill could walk up the Hill and THEN built a high-tech water distribution system for their entire village so no one will ever have to waste their time going up that hill again.
Zombies First
I started off Storytime with a short, uncompleted open source story called "Adventures of a Zombie Rights Activist." I hope you can check it out and let me know what you think: http://www.pa-g.co/index.php?p=story&z=1
