In my academic studies using IF to teach CS [1], I've found it can be very powerful to "play" or "tell" stories in person. (These are middle- and high-school students.) Usually, at the end of a class authors will volunteer to share their stories, and then they will ask for a volunteer to be the protagonist while the author reads as the narrator. (This becomes important when the stories are serious and touch on real-life situations where it could be painful to have someone else misread, misinterpret, or make fun of your story.)

[1] Proctor, C., & Garcia, A. (2020). Hogg, L., Stockbridge, K., Achieng-Evenson, C., & SooHoo, S. (Eds.). Student voices in the digital hubbub. Pedagogies of With-ness: Students, Teachers, Voice, and Agency. Myers Educational Press. https://chrisproctor.net/media/publications/proctor_2020_ped...

> but so much fun in small groups.

In my 40+ years playing IF, I never considered this. What an interesting idea. I did play an email correspondence campaign in the early 90's but that was a ton of work for the DM since he was writing pages and pages of story. But it was a fun in-between.

I don't know how to find the reference, but I read somewhere that originally they were meant to be played in groups, sort of a campus-wide puzzle contest.