Ribbon Drive — Avery Alder

Author: Avery Alder.
First released: 2009 · current iteration published in 2011.

Nearby question

Can a cultural medium outside the rules text guide fiction without becoming a scenario?

Ribbon Drive is a structured freeform game organized around playlists brought by the players. Participants play a road trip, share narration of obstacles and scenery, and let music guide the journey and shape the unfolding story.

What it makes possible

The playlist provides pacing, tone, association, and prompts without prescribing a sequence of scenes. Some inspirational burden is externalized into material selected before play, while remaining open to collective interpretation.

Music reduces some blank pages while still asking players to convert affect, lyrics, or atmosphere into fictional proposals.

For Resonance

Ribbon Drive shows that a generative device can be cultural and perceptual, not only mechanical. It is a useful case for Situation and Vector research: provide direction and handles without writing the trajectory.

Source: Avery Alder — Ribbon Drive.