Why is it a good thing to avoid setting your game in the real world?
Dr. Acula
need surreal or fantastical settings.
Take three games that received a lot of attention and good reviews:
Varicella, Savoir Fair and Galatea. Now, take away their contrived
strangeness and self-indulgent surrealism and what you're left with is a
pretty inane story.
Bathroom fixtures and office buildings aren't all that fun, but Moon
Ministers and talking statues can get tiresome too.
dgr...@cs.csbuak.edu
I thought Varicella was done pretty well. Its core was rather surreal
(assasination and generally being nasty).
--
David Griffith
dgr...@cs.csbuak.edu <-- Switch the 'b' and 'u'
Andrew Plotkin
> If you have a good story, believable characters and good puzzles, you don't
> need surreal or fantastical settings.
If you have a good story, believable characters and good puzzles,
you don't need realistic or familiar settings.
--Z
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*
* Make your vote count. Get your vote counted.
Dan Shiovitz
Dr. Acula <edw...@wood.com> wrote:
>If you have a good story, believable characters and good puzzles, you don't
>need surreal or fantastical settings.
>
>Take three games that received a lot of attention and good reviews:
>Varicella, Savoir Fair and Galatea. Now, take away their contrived
>strangeness and self-indulgent surrealism and what you're left with is a
>pretty inane story.
So you're saying it's tedious how all the fantasy games are filled
with trolls, Jacek?
--
Dan Shiovitz :: d...@cs.wisc.edu :: http://www.drizzle.com/~dans
"He settled down to dictate a letter to the Consolidated Nailfile and
Eyebrow Tweezer Corporation of Scranton, Pa., which would make them
realize that life is stern and earnest and Nailfile and Eyebrow Tweezer
Corporations are not put in this world for pleasure alone." -PGW
Rexx Magnus
> Any other examples? Any other criteria?
"World" is my all-time favourite, simply because of the vivid imagery used
in the depiction of some of the landscapes - that was what made it real
for me. IF seems to differ from linear fiction in that it doesn't matter
how good the plot is - if the locations are described poorly, you'll feel
as though you're walking through a black and white sketch.
--
UO & AC Herbal - http://www.rexx.co.uk/herbal
To email me, visit the site.
Chris Molloy Wischer
Dr. Acula
> Who said that it was a good thing to avoid setting a game in the real
world?
Emily Short does. She considers setting your game in the real world the
cardinal sin of IF design.
If you want an exotic setting, why not use a historical one? Here's the
catch: It requires a good deal of research. It's much more convenient to to
set your game on a putative Carolingian court and give your characters guns
with laser sights. That way you can replace historical accuracy with cute
anachronisms.
Rexx Magnus
> Emily Short does. She considers setting your game in the real world the
> cardinal sin of IF design.
>
Largely because when people do it, it tends to degenerate into an
"exploration of my house/school/work environment" which often has silly
little things that require distinct familiarity with the environment to
suss out.
Dr. Acula
> If you have a good story, believable characters and good puzzles,
> you don't need realistic or familiar settings.
Strange settings obscure the story and the characters, which is a good thing
when the story isn't much to brag about and the characters lack
psychological depth.
Chris Molloy Wischer
games like "Explore My Campus And Meet My Tutors And Tie A Pencil To Joe's
Glasses To Make Him Say The Thing He Always Says" and on the other there
would be the games that have no grounding in reality at all, taking place in
a universe where the laws of physics hold differently.
And in between there are all the other games, be they set in historic Paris
populated with fictional characters, or set in outer space, or set in what
seems like a fantasy world but actually turns out to be Earth in the near
future, or whatever. Makes me wonder what definition of "Real World" Dr.
Acula is using, and how that corresponds to the definition that Emily Short
may have meant.
"Rexx Magnus" <tras...@uk2.net> wrote in message
news:Xns93EC70E6DB8...@130.133.1.4...
Eytan Zweig
"Dr. Acula" <edw...@wood.com> wrote in message
news:whv5b.22494$mU6....@newsb.telia.net...
> If you have a good story, believable characters and good puzzles, you
don't
> need surreal or fantastical settings.
>
> Take three games that received a lot of attention and good reviews:
> Varicella, Savoir Fair and Galatea. Now, take away their contrived
> strangeness and self-indulgent surrealism and what you're left with is a
> pretty inane story.
>
Take away their stories and you're left with rather boring worlds (except
for Galatea which doesn't have a story in the first place). Take away
their protagonists' backgrounds and you have really silly stories (again,
except for Galatea, which won't change much). Take away the letters "e"
and "r" from their texts and you're left with meaningless gibberish.
I can't see your point here, except as an attack on some other people's
works.
> Bathroom fixtures and office buildings aren't all that fun, but Moon
> Ministers and talking statues can get tiresome too.
And do you feel that the IF community is suffering from a really strong
trend of everyone putting moon ministers and talking statutes in their
games?
Eytan
Dr. Acula
> So you're saying it's tedious how all the fantasy games are filled
> with trolls, Jacek?
The troll is actually one of the few creatures I enjoy in the fantasy
setting. You might say that I feel a strange bonding with it. It sure beats
the wizard with the pointed hat or those cute critters with hairy feet
(whatever ther're called).
Harry
the world a better place by saying:
The main thing that drew me to text adventures when I was a kid (oh,
so very long ago) was the ability to explore a strange new world. The
main reason I enjoyed Worm In Paradise by L9 was because it allowed
you to live in a futuristic city with robots and stuff: anything but
normality. My preference for such a 'different setting is not just in
IF. I prefer SF and Fantasy to literature set in the 'real world'. I
like to read to escape my everyday troubles, not to read about someone
else's everyday troubles.
This all just comes down to personal taste, you see. Perhaps a lot of
people would like to play a game about going to a bar, not getting
lucky, watching tv and fighting with their relatives. Just not me.
-------------------------------------
"Nostalgia isn't what it used to be."
http://www.haha.demon.nl
(To send e-mail, remove SPAMBLOCK from address)
Rob Steggles
"Harry" <gad...@SPAMBLOCKhaha.demon.nl> wrote in message
news:ti7elvs7agd2d4d3r...@4ax.com...
> The main thing that drew me to text adventures when I was a kid (oh,
> so very long ago) was the ability to explore a strange new world. The
> main reason I enjoyed Worm In Paradise by L9 was because it allowed
> you to live in a futuristic city with robots and stuff: anything but
> normality. My preference for such a 'different setting is not just in
> IF. I prefer SF and Fantasy to literature set in the 'real world'. I
> like to read to escape my everyday troubles, not to read about someone
> else's everyday troubles.
>
see IF become something some of us could earn a living at again and to do
that my marketing antennae tell me that we need to seek out a new mainstream
audience. Sci-fi and fantasy is OK for a certain section of the world, and
when home computing was a new thing there were enough folk out there that
could easily enjoy these settings and were willing to play those games,
largely out of novelty. But those novelty seekers have by and large moved
on/grown up/grown into more complex graphical games, as many of you have
pointed out. BTW, I speak as someone who has written fantasy games,
surreal games and thrillers in the past. I have no particular axe to grind
against fantasy/sci-fi, I'm just trying to see if the medium can broaden its
horizons in order to find a new audience.
The question is then, "what does IF for the mainstream look like?" I think
it has to seriously consider placing itself in the real world, not
necessarily one that is accurately modeled but one that is detailed to a
consistent level throughout. A new audience would surely appreciate a
familiar setting with 'real' people while they get used to the interface and
the style of play.
> This all just comes down to personal taste, you see. Perhaps a lot of
> people would like to play a game about going to a bar, not getting
> lucky, watching tv and fighting with their relatives. Just not me.
It doesn't have to be about *your* real life Harry :-)
Rob Steggles
Daryl McCullough
>Just homing in on one aspect here...."believable characters". IF, by its
>nature, is fairly limited in the way it handles characters (generally ASK
>ABOUT x, TALK TO only are implemented) - I think this is a given. Some
>(notably Emily Short) have done some outstanding work within the framework
>on offer, but the question have any IF characters been created that players
>and IF writers truly believe portray some kind of emotion?
>
>Galatea is a memorable example but the only other one that springs to mind
>(including ones I have created) is Floyd, but he was more of a
>get-under-your-skin-in-a-cutesy-way, but no less memorable for that.
>Michael Bywater, when writing Jinxter for Magnetic Scrolls, told me that Xam
>the gardener was mentioned in only a couple of locations and less than 50
>words but was recalled by virtually all the testers. I suppose a criterion
>to determine 'good character' here is if the character (not necessarily the
>story or puzzles) survives the test of time, ie is memorable for some
>reason.
>
>Any other examples? Any other criteria?
Well, I would definitely include the thief from the original "Zork", Black from
"Jigsaw" and Alley from "Photopia".
--
Daryl McCullough
Ithaca, NY
Daryl McCullough
>
>
>"Dr. Acula" <edw...@wood.com> wrote in message
>news:whv5b.22494$mU6....@newsb.telia.net...
>> If you have a good story, believable characters and good puzzles, you
>don't
>> need surreal or fantastical settings.
>>
>> Take three games that received a lot of attention and good reviews:
>> Varicella, Savoir Fair and Galatea. Now, take away their contrived
>> strangeness and self-indulgent surrealism and what you're left with is a
>> pretty inane story.
>>
>
>Take away their stories and you're left with rather boring worlds (except
>for Galatea which doesn't have a story in the first place). Take away
>their protagonists' backgrounds and you have really silly stories (again,
>except for Galatea, which won't change much). Take away the letters "e"
>and "r" from their texts and you're left with meaningless gibberish.
Take away the trees and the birds'll have to sit upon the ground (hum)
Take away their wings and the birds'll have to walk to get around
Take away the birdbaths and dirty birds will soon be everywhere
Take away their feathers and the birds will walk around in underwear
Take away their (whistle) and the birds'll have to whisper when they sing
(Chirp chirp!)
Take away their common sense and they'll be heading southward in the spring
Oh, remember me, my darling when spring is in the air
And the bald headed birds are whispering everywhere
When you see them walking southward in their dirty underwear
That's the Tennessee bird walk
http://birdwalk1.tripod.com/Tennessee_Bird_Walk.htm
Daryl McCullough
Strange settings can be part of the enjoyment of a story. Also, some stories
*require* a strange setting to be told.
Harry
<robert.insert...@talk21.com> made the world a better place
by saying:
<snip>
>The question is then, "what does IF for the mainstream look like?" I think
>it has to seriously consider placing itself in the real world, not
>necessarily one that is accurately modeled but one that is detailed to a
>consistent level throughout. A new audience would surely appreciate a
>familiar setting with 'real' people while they get used to the interface and
>the style of play.
>
I think the main reason people play games is for pure escapism. IN
fact: that is the essence of games.
For me personally, exploration is the key ingredient for a fun gaming
experience. To boldly go etc etc. When solving a puzzle opens a whole
new section of a game this is a bigger reward for me then moving the
plot forward or getting points. And since I like to experience a sense
of wonder, I like the new areas to be strange and exciting. Perhaps
that is just me.
I do think a real-world setting can be interesting. It just depends on
what part of the real world. If IF gives me the chance to experience
what it is like to be an international secret agent or a diver on an
expedition to a sunken wreck this would please me to no end. But 'Ho
hum normal life with the loves and lives of ordinary people ' would
not peak my interest. Again: just saying what *I* like. Just one
opinion.
>> This all just comes down to personal taste, you see. Perhaps a lot of
>> people would like to play a game about going to a bar, not getting
>> lucky, watching tv and fighting with their relatives. Just not me.
>
>It doesn't have to be about *your* real life Harry :-)
For your information, I *did* get lucky once. So there: it proves that
example wasn't about me.
>
>
>Rob Steggles
>
Harry
David Thornley
>need surreal or fantastical settings.
>
is the best setting for the story and characters.
>Take three games that received a lot of attention and good reviews:
>Varicella, Savoir Fair and Galatea. Now, take away their contrived
>strangeness and self-indulgent surrealism and what you're left with is a
>pretty inane story.
>
Well, if you combine the three, you will get an inane story. However,
the stories themselves make sense in their settings. There's a story
of political intrigue, a detective story, and a conversation, none
of them inane in themselves. All of these sorts of stories have
been set in something approximating the real world as well as
more fantastical worlds.
>Bathroom fixtures and office buildings aren't all that fun, but Moon
>Ministers and talking statues can get tiresome too.
>
Anything will get tiresome if done too much and not well.
Including people who insist on denigrating other people's works
because the works do not conform to the critic's prejudices.
--
David H. Thornley | If you want my opinion, ask.
da...@thornley.net | If you don't, flee.
http://www.thornley.net/~thornley/david/ | O-
David Thornley
and fantasy novels contain settings that are carefully thought-out
extrapolations of things the author thinks of, and are worthy of
note in that sense (cf Vernor Vinge and Terry Pratchett). Others
are art forms in themselves. Some are educational, based on research
in settings we would not experience for ourselves (Forester's
Hornblower novels come to mind, or for that matter Fraser's
Flashman books).
Settings, like stories and characters, can be interesting for
anybody with a sufficiently open mind to consider them.
Besides, in IF it's difficult to set up a complex story without
railroading the PC, and NPCs normally lack psychological depth.
If you insist on stories like Dickens' with characters like
Dostoyevski's, then I would suggest that you will not like IF,
and may as well leave.
Rob Steggles
>
> For me personally, exploration is the key ingredient for a fun gaming
> experience. To boldly go etc etc. When solving a puzzle opens a whole
> new section of a game this is a bigger reward for me then moving the
> plot forward or getting points. And since I like to experience a sense
> of wonder, I like the new areas to be strange and exciting. Perhaps
> that is just me.
I don't think it's just you - the novelty and discovery impulse are at the
root of this IF thing IMHO.
> I do think a real-world setting can be interesting. It just depends on
> what part of the real world. If IF gives me the chance to experience
> what it is like to be an international secret agent or a diver on an
> expedition to a sunken wreck this would please me to no end. But 'Ho
> hum normal life with the loves and lives of ordinary people ' would
> not peak my interest. Again: just saying what *I* like. Just one
> opinion.
OK I understand your tastes, and I guess they reflect the majority of
former/curretn IF players and authors (including myself to a degree) but I
was really trying to find out what you think others might like?
Specifically, others that are part of the mainstream. I'm not looking for
the definitive answer, just some opinions/an open debate.
For example, like them or not I'd say mainstream includes things like
<deliberately selects a load of worldwide US shows and stuff > The
Simpsons, Friends, Frasier, <insert random famous cop drama - Hill
Street?>, <insert medical drama - ER?> <insert random courtroom drama -
perry mason?>, <insert random soap - Dallas>,< insert random Disney
Classic - Jungle Book>, <insert random kids programme - Sesame Street>. I
can see that elements of all of these could be used in IF or as a basis for
constructing story and characters - I just don't see a lot of that sort of
thing being done and I'm interested to know why 'cos I think that's where th
e money is....
> >It doesn't have to be about *your* real life Harry :-)
>
> For your information, I *did* get lucky once. So there: it proves that
> example wasn't about me.
I accept it's not about you, just some friend of yours that you happen to
know really really well, right? Don't worry I won't tell
Rob
Dr. Acula
> I guess there are levels of reality. At one extreme, there would be the
> games like "Explore My Campus And Meet My Tutors And Tie A Pencil To Joe's
> Glasses To Make Him Say The Thing He Always Says" and on the other there
> would be the games that have no grounding in reality at all, taking place
in
> a universe where the laws of physics hold differently.
>
> And in between there are all the other games, be they set in historic
Paris
> populated with fictional characters, or set in outer space, or set in what
> seems like a fantasy world but actually turns out to be Earth in the near
> future, or whatever. Makes me wonder what definition of "Real World" Dr.
> Acula is using, and how that corresponds to the definition that Emily
Short
> may have meant.
Let's take "Hell Hath No Fury" by Charles Williams. The book is set in a
small town in the rural South. The climate is hot and sultry. That's the
setting. The remaining 99% is story. There are no Grave Robbers from Outer
Space or Moon Ministers or talking statues. Instead there's a well-written
dialog, three-dimensional characters and a twisty intrigue. It's not
jam-packed with laser guns and mutant monsters either. It's no masterpiece,
but it's a good book dealing with mature themes.
Modern IF seems to cater to the needs of people who enjoy Ed Wood movies.
It's almost as if the people who write and play IF today hadn't evolved
emotionally since the late eighties. I find that surprising, since most
people who are into IF nowadays - especially the trendsetters - must be well
in their thirties by now.
Michael
> Besides, in IF it's difficult to set up a complex story without
> railroading the PC, and NPCs normally lack psychological depth.
> If you insist on stories like Dickens' with characters like
> Dostoyevski's, then I would suggest that you will not like IF,
> and may as well leave.
Isn't that kind of a defeatist attitude? I would rather see authors
strive towards fixing this trend (which, I think, they are) than just
shrug my shoulders and settle for Zork clones.
Quintin Stone
> Modern IF seems to cater to the needs of people who enjoy Ed Wood
> movies. It's almost as if the people who write and play IF today hadn't
> evolved emotionally since the late eighties. I find that surprising,
> since most people who are into IF nowadays - especially the trendsetters
> - must be well in their thirties by now.
I thought we weren't supposed to feed trolls, people?
/====================================================================\
|| Quintin Stone O- > "You speak of necessary evil? One ||
|| Code Monkey < of those necessities is that if ||
|| Rebel Programmers Society > innocents must suffer, the guilty must ||
|| st...@rps.net < suffer more." -- Mackenzie Calhoun ||
|| http://www.rps.net/ > "Once Burned" by Peter David ||
\====================================================================/
Dr. Acula
> I can't see your point here, except as an attack on some other people's
> works.
I'm not so much attacking their works as their approach to writing IF.
> > Bathroom fixtures and office buildings aren't all that fun, but Moon
> > Ministers and talking statues can get tiresome too.
>
> And do you feel that the IF community is suffering from a really strong
> trend of everyone putting moon ministers and talking statutes in their
> games?
Talking statutes would be less cliche than talking statues.
Rob Steggles
> Chris Molloy Wischer
>
> > Who said that it was a good thing to avoid setting a game in the real
> world?
>
> Emily Short does. She considers setting your game in the real world the
> cardinal sin of IF design.
where does she say that? I couldn't find it on her home page. Setting a
game in the real world does not sound like a cardinal sin to me. Difficult
maybe, if your goal is simulation, but not a cardinal sin surely?
Rob Steggles
Andrew Plotkin
>
> > Who said that it was a good thing to avoid setting a game in the real
> world?
>
> Emily Short does. She considers setting your game in the real world the
> cardinal sin of IF design.
Excuse me, but I believe you are hallucinating.
Christos Dimitrakakis
> If you have a good story, believable characters and good puzzles, you
> don't need surreal or fantastical settings.
>
However, some stories can only happen in surreal or fantastical settings.
> Take three games that received a lot of attention and good reviews:
> Varicella, Savoir Fair and Galatea. Now, take away their contrived
> strangeness and self-indulgent surrealism and what you're left with is a
> pretty inane story.
>
> Bathroom fixtures and office buildings aren't all that fun, but Moon
> Ministers and talking statues can get tiresome too.
Your criticism is not constructive. There are plenty of games in
realistic settings. Those games were not rated highly because they were
in a fantastical setting, but because they were fun to play. Still, they
were not as surreal as other games that I can remember. They were more or
less in the middle ground.
Having also read your later posts, it seems that you'd like IF with a
lot of dialogue and realistic characters. There are a lot of games like
that but they have limited interactivity and they play more like a story.
But I guess you think you know what is best. So, why not enlighten us by
writing your own game? If that's too much, why not just tell us how a
game should be written from your point of view?
The only thing you said in your posts so far is:
"Oh, I don't like those games"
and
"I like this book by this guy".
Which games do you like? None? Then either suggest something
*interesting*, make your own game, or bugger off.
--
Christos Dimitrakakis
Jim Aikin
"Rob Steggles" <robert.insert...@talk21.com> wrote in message
news:3f56f13f$0$22122$79c1...@nan-newsreader-03.noos.net...
> Just homing in on one aspect here...."believable characters".
What makes a character believable or emotionally engaging has nothing to do
with interactivity. Any decent book on fiction-writing will provide useful
techniques.
The trick is to implement them in an interactive character without making
the character _less_ believable and emotionally engaging. The easiest way to
do that may be to get the damn character on and off of the movie set
quickly! Any character who hangs around is going to land with a dull thud,
emotionally speaking, because the text is going to get repetitive and the
interactivity is going to pall.
--JA
Desi
it and I've met no problems so far. I just have to trick out every
single NPC with about 50 different things to say.
David Thornley
Michael <bilgepu...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>thor...@visi.com (David Thornley) wrote in message news:<3f574b22$0$175$a186...@newsreader.visi.com>...
>> Dostoyevski's, then I would suggest that you will not like IF,
>> and may as well leave.
>
>Isn't that kind of a defeatist attitude? I would rather see authors
>strive towards fixing this trend (which, I think, they are) than just
>shrug my shoulders and settle for Zork clones.
I don't see it as a defeatist attitude, but the fact is that static
fiction authors have a heck of a lot more control over their characters
than IF authors, and so are able to engage in subtleties that the
average PC is going to stomp all over. It's a matter of tradeoffs,
going on a scale from a novel through IF-on-rails through standard
IF through a simulationist environment.
If somebody greatly values things like story and characters, which
are difficult to do in IF, and doesn't value things like settings,
which are much easier to do, then perhaps that person shouldn't
play IF.
I do appreciate that people are doing better and better. AFAICT, the
last major thing added to TADS 3 was greatly improved NPC library
support, to remove much of the mechanical difficulties with doing
something like "Galatea" (not that it will enable everybody to write
as well as Emily Short, of course). However, there will continue
to be tradeoffs, and if somebody's going to complain that there are
tradeoffs I'd just as soon see that person find something he or she
likes and stop complaining.
Drakore
> If you have a good story, believable characters and good puzzles, you
don't
> need surreal or fantastical settings.
[...]
Reality is as thin as paper and betrays with all its cracks its imitative
character. The function of literature is not to describe the paper, but what
can be glimpsed through the cracks.
If you continue your anti-fantasy crusade, you shall soon notice that the
study of reality is as sterile and pointless as the excitement produced by
pornography. Strange as it may sound, the stories of the moon minister and
the talking statue are closer to The Truth than that of a drifter robbing a
bank in Texas. The drifter is merely a disguise behind which hide unknown
forms of life.
Seebs
David Thornley <thor...@visi.com> wrote:
>I don't see it as a defeatist attitude, but the fact is that static
>fiction authors have a heck of a lot more control over their characters
>than IF authors, and so are able to engage in subtleties that the
>average PC is going to stomp all over.
Exactly. Jeeves' subtle understatement and pointed wit lose most of their
impact in an adventure game.
> JEEVES, TELL ME ABOUT THE MACGUFFIN
"I'm afraid not, sir."
> KILL JEEVES WITH AXE
-s
--
Copyright 2003, all wrongs reversed. Peter Seebach / se...@plethora.net
http://www.seebs.net/log/ - YA blog. http://www.seebs.net/ - homepage.
C/Unix wizard, pro-commerce radical, spam fighter. Boycott Spamazon!
Consulting, computers, web hosting, and shell access: http://www.plethora.net/
SimonW
>If you have a good story, believable characters and good puzzles, you don't
>need surreal or fantastical settings.
>
>Take three games that received a lot of attention and good reviews:
>Varicella, Savoir Fair and Galatea. Now, take away their contrived
>strangeness and self-indulgent surrealism and what you're left with is a
>pretty inane story.
>
>Bathroom fixtures and office buildings aren't all that fun, but Moon
>Ministers and talking statues can get tiresome too.
>
>
>
When you are creating a game, the IF world is your world.
You create what you want and how you want it.
The concept of IF allows you to do this.
I say 'write your game as *YOU* want!'.
I would feel more annoyed if I wrote a game and found no one liked it
because I used everyone's ideas and theories, rather than my own.
The danger, when we follow everyone's ideas is we may loose
originality in IF, and at the end of it all if no one plays your game
or it gets bad reviews as long as you're happy and set out wanted you
wanted to achieve, so what, world domination can come later!
Rob Steggles
"Seebs" <se...@plethora.net> wrote in message
news:3f57aceb$0$1099$3c09...@news.plethora.net...
>> Exactly. Jeeves' subtle understatement and pointed wit lose most of
their
> impact in an adventure game.
> > JEEVES, TELL ME ABOUT THE MACGUFFIN
> "I'm afraid not, sir."
> > KILL JEEVES WITH AXE
I know I've quoted this before, but I couldn't resist giving it another
airing, just to show that Plum had indeed anticipated the fateful day when
Jeeves may be offered a position in a work of IF. It's taken from the
master's introduction to The World of Jeeves, 1967:
"One great advantage in being a historian to a man like Jeeves is that his
mere personality prevents one selling one's artistic soul for gold. In
recent years I have had lucrative offers for his services from theatrical
managers, motion-picture magnates, the proprietors of one or two widely
advertised commodities, and even the editor of the comic supplement of an
American newspaper, who wanted him for a "comic strip". But, tempting though
the terms were, it only needed Jeeves deprecating cough and his murmured "I
would scarcely advocate it, sir," to put the jack under my better nature.
Jeeves knows his place, and it is between the covers of a book."
Rob Steggles
PS given the agbove, I wonder how askjeeves got permission to use the name?
Joe Mason
> On Thu, 4 Sep 2003, Dr. Acula wrote:
>
>> Modern IF seems to cater to the needs of people who enjoy Ed Wood
>> movies. It's almost as if the people who write and play IF today hadn't
>> evolved emotionally since the late eighties. I find that surprising,
>> since most people who are into IF nowadays - especially the trendsetters
>> - must be well in their thirties by now.
>
> I thought we weren't supposed to feed trolls, people?
I will note that I didn't see the original post, which means it was
probably Jacek Pudlo, since I'm one of the few people that seems to have
him reliably killfiled in all his multiple identities.
He seems to have started an interesting thread despite himself, though.
Joe
Rexx Magnus
> "One great advantage in being a historian to a man like Jeeves is that
> his mere personality prevents one selling one's artistic soul for gold.
> In recent years I have had lucrative offers for his services from
> theatrical managers, motion-picture magnates, the proprietors of one or
> two widely advertised commodities, and even the editor of the comic
> supplement of an American newspaper, who wanted him for a "comic strip".
> But, tempting though the terms were, it only needed Jeeves deprecating
> cough and his murmured "I would scarcely advocate it, sir," to put the
> jack under my better nature. Jeeves knows his place, and it is between
> the covers of a book."
>
> Rob Steggles
I've read that elsewhere before, yet I can't think for the life of me if
it was in one of Jasper Fforde's books, or somewhere more 'authentic'.
--
UO & AC Herbal - http://www.rexx.co.uk/herbal
To email me, visit the site.
Adam Biltcliffe
says...
> And do you feel that the IF community is suffering from a really strong
> trend of everyone putting moon ministers and talking statutes in their
> games?
I am very glad that this post was made after the Comp intent-to-enter
deadline.
adam
dreamfarmer
> I don't think it's just you - the novelty and discovery impulse are at the
> root of this IF thing IMHO.
Or the immersion factor, or neat toys.
> OK I understand your tastes, and I guess they reflect the majority of
> former/curretn IF players and authors (including myself to a degree) but I
> was really trying to find out what you think others might like?
> Specifically, others that are part of the mainstream. I'm not looking for
> the definitive answer, just some opinions/an open debate.
Here's an extremely biased view: mainstream fiction is either humor
(which rarely shies from fantasy if it gets the job done-- see The
Simpsons) or angst.
What mainstream fiction /really/ offers, though, is characterization,
which angst often substitutes for.
> For example, like them or not I'd say mainstream includes things like
> <deliberately selects a load of worldwide US shows and stuff > The
> Simpsons, Friends, Frasier, <insert random famous cop drama - Hill
> Street?>, <insert medical drama - ER?> <insert random courtroom drama -
> perry mason?>, <insert random soap - Dallas>,< insert random Disney
> Classic - Jungle Book>, <insert random kids programme - Sesame Street>. I
> can see that elements of all of these could be used in IF or as a basis for
> constructing story and characters - I just don't see a lot of that sort of
> thing being done and I'm interested to know why 'cos I think that's where th
> e money is....
For the record, I disagree that's where the money is. Or rather,
that's the only place where the money is-- look at the many successful
shows on television based on the idea that the world isn't quite the
place we think it is (Angel, Buffy, Charmed, Sabrina) and the science
fiction shows, and so on.
People aren't doing it 'cause it's not what interests them, and
there's no waiting market to snatch it up. Ask Orson Scott Card or
Stephen King the same question-- fundamentally they're writing what
they want to write because that's what they're good at. And they're
good at it because they're writing what they want to write.
And let's face it, to a limited extent, genre is a shelving convention
and a marketing choice. A work like Galatea is completely palatable as
mainstream fiction; I've seen weirder stuff on the library and video
rental store shelves. Pytho's Mask? Excellent mainstream YA fiction.
The ideas behind the marketing choice need to be sound, but that
marketing choice isn't based on how closely it mimics reality, believe
me.
That being said, a lot of people do prefer to write and read 'genre
fiction'-- that is, f/sf/h fiction, which I'll use instead. Why do
they write it? Because it's what they spend their time thinking about,
like all writers. Nobody says, "I think I'll add a unicorn in because
I want to write fantasy." The unicorn just shows up, part and parcel
of the story.
Why is there more overlap with f/sf/h fans than with fans of other
kinds of stories? I'm not sure there is. I think it's just a label
people have slapped on because the people involved in it like to read,
are comfortable with computers, and like new horizons. And I think IF
authors shy away from the sticky problem of the complex
characterization needed to tell stories omore likely to be classifised
as a different 'genre', due to hard and tedious implementation issues.
But honestly, you might as well call many games 'adventure' genre. If
you look at, for example, YA fiction, it's just as meaningful.
--Chrysoula
Dan Shiovitz
Note, however, the followup in the later edition where he confesses to
a certain bending of principle and willingness to be persuaded.
>Rob Steggles
>
>PS given the agbove, I wonder how askjeeves got permission to use the name?
They didn't -- they claimed 'Jeeves' was a general term for a butler
(putting aside the point that Jeeves is a valet) and didn't license
anything. That said, I think they eventually made some sort of
goodwill donation to Wodehouse's estate.
--
Dan Shiovitz :: d...@cs.wisc.edu :: http://www.drizzle.com/~dans
"He settled down to dictate a letter to the Consolidated Nailfile and
Eyebrow Tweezer Corporation of Scranton, Pa., which would make them
realize that life is stern and earnest and Nailfile and Eyebrow Tweezer
Corporations are not put in this world for pleasure alone." -PGW
Rob Steggles
"dreamfarmer" <exst...@msn.com> wrote in message
news:a839f13.03090...@posting.google.com...
> For the record, I disagree that's where the money is. Or rather,
> that's the only place where the money is-- look at the many successful
> shows on television based on the idea that the world isn't quite the
> place we think it is (Angel, Buffy, Charmed, Sabrina) and the science
> fiction shows, and so on.
Agree it ain't the *only* place, just where most of it is. Perfectly
acceptable salaries to be had writing 'cult' classics too, especially as
they move close and closer to mainstream (have become mainstream in some
cases?)
> People aren't doing it 'cause it's not what interests them, and
> there's no waiting market to snatch it up. Ask Orson Scott Card or
> Stephen King the same question-- fundamentally they're writing what
> they want to write because that's what they're good at. And they're
> good at it because they're writing what they want to write.
Every artist needs to follow their muse...
>
> And let's face it, to a limited extent, genre is a shelving convention
> and a marketing choice. A work like Galatea is completely palatable as
> mainstream fiction; I've seen weirder stuff on the library and video
> rental store shelves. Pytho's Mask? Excellent mainstream YA fiction.
> The ideas behind the marketing choice need to be sound, but that
> marketing choice isn't based on how closely it mimics reality, believe
> me.
Yes, it is a marketing choice and you make a good point that a mainstream
audience may pick up and play Galatea if (a) the market existed and (b) they
knew about it: this is the sort of thing I'm interested in, ie where is (a)?
what do I need to satisfy that audience? how do I get to it?.
But I feel I now should either put up or shut up so I'm going to shut up
while I attempt to put up. It may never work out and I may disappear
without trace, but what the hell, at least I'll have had a go...
Rob Steggles
Staffan V
> For example, like them or not I'd say mainstream includes things like
> <deliberately selects a load of worldwide US shows and stuff > The
> Simpsons, Friends, Frasier, >
Comedy is hard, especially in IF.
<insert random famous cop drama - Hill Street?>,
Been done as a game, but it was more of an action/simulation, but we
have the Police Quest series as an example of that genre.
> <insert random courtroom drama -> perry mason?>,
Perry Mason has been done in 1985 by Telarium Corporation in "The Case
of the Mandarin Murder".
> <insert random soap - Dallas>,
Been done in "The Dallas Quest" from Datasoft, Inc.
> < insert random Disney Classic - Jungle Book>,
And I thought it was Kippling... Anyway Hodder & Stoughton Ltd did
Peter Pan, but I think it was based on the book rather than Disney's
bastardisation of it.
> <insert random kids programme - Sesame Street>.
That's fantasy!
> I can see that elements of all of these could be used in IF or as a basis for
> constructing story and characters - I just don't see a lot of that sort of
> thing being done and I'm interested to know why 'cos I think that's where th
> e money is....
Feel free to do so! The "problem" is that people write what they anjoy
rater than what may sell.
Michael
> In article <3f57a80e$0$167$a186...@newsreader.visi.com>,
> David Thornley <thor...@visi.com> wrote:
> >I don't see it as a defeatist attitude, but the fact is that static
> >fiction authors have a heck of a lot more control over their characters
> >than IF authors, and so are able to engage in subtleties that the
> >average PC is going to stomp all over.
>
> Exactly. Jeeves' subtle understatement and pointed wit lose most of their
> impact in an adventure game.
> > JEEVES, TELL ME ABOUT THE MACGUFFIN
> "I'm afraid not, sir."
> > KILL JEEVES WITH AXE
>
> -s
I don't think so, if it's written well. For instance, an alternate
reply for Jeeves: "With a small pleading glance to heaven, Jeeves
dryly replies, 'I'm afraid not, sir.'" There are many different
techniques that go a long way towards making an NPC believable, and if
the NPCs ARE believable, if the story is good enough, then the player
should be drawn into the game, experiencing what the PC experiences.
At that point, the player may very well consider the moral
implications of murdering Jeeves and not try to do so.
I'm not saying that IF authors will ever achieve the level of NPC
control that static fiction does; if they did, their works wouldn't be
interactive. I am saying that those subtleties that David mentioned
can very well be achieved with IF today. Things like NPC reactions to
PC actions and NPC-initiated conversations can and do allow NPCs to be
a believable part of a juicy story instead of just another piece of
scenery. As far as the PC not noticing these subtleties, the same
thing can happen with a book; you get a reader with a short attention
span reading Tolkien, and they're going to throw it out the window.
> >However, there will continue
> >to be tradeoffs, and if somebody's going to complain that there are
> >tradeoffs I'd just as soon see that person find something he or she
> >likes and stop complaining.
Of course. But those tradeoffs do not have to include a complete lack
of story and engaging NPC interaction.
Michael
David Thornley
Michael <bilgepu...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>se...@plethora.net (Seebs) wrote in message news:<3f57aceb$0$1099$3c09...@news.plethora.net>...
>> In article <3f57a80e$0$167$a186...@newsreader.visi.com>,
>> David Thornley <thor...@visi.com> wrote:
>> >I don't see it as a defeatist attitude, but the fact is that static
>> >fiction authors have a heck of a lot more control over their characters
>> >than IF authors, and so are able to engage in subtleties that the
>> >average PC is going to stomp all over.
>>
>> Exactly. Jeeves' subtle understatement and pointed wit lose most of their
>> impact in an adventure game.
>> > JEEVES, TELL ME ABOUT THE MACGUFFIN
>> "I'm afraid not, sir."
>> > KILL JEEVES WITH AXE
>>
>reply for Jeeves: "With a small pleading glance to heaven, Jeeves
>dryly replies, 'I'm afraid not, sir.'" There are many different
>techniques that go a long way towards making an NPC believable,
Oh, certainly.
Now, under what circumstances does Jeeves give a small pleading
glance, a slightly larger pleading glance, or even no glance at
all? The author of static fiction can do this easily, since he
or she knows exactly what Jeeves is responding to (and can, in
effect, special-case everything).
and if
>the NPCs ARE believable, if the story is good enough, then the player
>should be drawn into the game, experiencing what the PC experiences.
>At that point, the player may very well consider the moral
>implications of murdering Jeeves and not try to do so.
>
Right. There are quite a few NPCs that one would feel great qualms
over killing or watching die (and a few that I'd relish killing).
>I'm not saying that IF authors will ever achieve the level of NPC
>control that static fiction does; if they did, their works wouldn't be
>interactive.
Then we are not in disagreement.
I am saying that those subtleties that David mentioned
>can very well be achieved with IF today.
OK, I admit it: I used something like exaggeration as a literary
device (there's got to be a technical name for it, but I can't think
of one right now).
>scenery. As far as the PC not noticing these subtleties, the same
>thing can happen with a book; you get a reader with a short attention
>span reading Tolkien, and they're going to throw it out the window.
>
Well, yes, but the reader can't (deliberately or accidentally)
manipulate the situation so that Samwise acts in an odd way that
Tolkien didn't intend.
>> >However, there will continue
>> >to be tradeoffs, and if somebody's going to complain that there are
>> >tradeoffs I'd just as soon see that person find something he or she
>> >likes and stop complaining.
>
>Of course. But those tradeoffs do not have to include a complete lack
>of story and engaging NPC interaction.
>
True, but if somebody demands a very strong story and very strong
characters, they'll be happier reading a good book and not posting
here.
Charles A. Smith
news:slrnblfg6...@gate.notcharles.ca...
Yes indeed. If this is a troll, then bring on the trolls!
Ah... one good troll is enough, thank you.
Chuck
Adam Thornton
Joe Mason <j...@notcharles.ca> wrote:
>I will note that I didn't see the original post, which means it was
>probably Jacek Pudlo, since I'm one of the few people that seems to have
>him reliably killfiled in all his multiple identities.
Can you share your secrets?
Adam
Adam Thornton
Just the sort of thing a dog-fearing Caballist would say.
Adam
Atharvan Pradeep
> Can you share your secrets?
Add the following line in your scorefile for slrn:
[*]
Score: =-9999
NNTP-Posting-Host: 192.168.1.4
Steve Mading
: Chris Molloy Wischer
:> I guess there are levels of reality. At one extreme, there would be the
:> games like "Explore My Campus And Meet My Tutors And Tie A Pencil To Joe's
:> Glasses To Make Him Say The Thing He Always Says" and on the other there
:> would be the games that have no grounding in reality at all, taking place
: in
:> a universe where the laws of physics hold differently.
:>
:> And in between there are all the other games, be they set in historic
: Paris
:> populated with fictional characters, or set in outer space, or set in what
:> seems like a fantasy world but actually turns out to be Earth in the near
:> future, or whatever. Makes me wonder what definition of "Real World" Dr.
:> Acula is using, and how that corresponds to the definition that Emily
: Short
:> may have meant.
: Let's take "Hell Hath No Fury" by Charles Williams. The book is set in a
: small town in the rural South. The climate is hot and sultry. That's the
: setting. The remaining 99% is story. There are no Grave Robbers from Outer
: Space or Moon Ministers or talking statues. Instead there's a well-written
: dialog, three-dimensional characters and a twisty intrigue. It's not
: jam-packed with laser guns and mutant monsters either. It's no masterpiece,
: but it's a good book dealing with mature themes.
Your point seems to hinge on the premise that if Grave Robbers from
Outer Space exist, or Moon Ministers exist, or talking statues exist,
that they must preclude a good story. Poppycock. Fantasy and Sci-fi
*can be* a fertile ground for a quality work of fiction (Babylon 5 being
a good example), or a bad work of fiction (Plan 9 from outer space
being a good example).
: Modern IF seems to cater to the needs of people who enjoy Ed Wood movies.
Steve Mading
: If you have a good story, believable characters and good puzzles, you don't
: need surreal or fantastical settings.
: Take three games that received a lot of attention and good reviews:
: Varicella, Savoir Fair and Galatea. Now, take away their contrived
: strangeness and self-indulgent surrealism and what you're left with is a
: pretty inane story.
: Bathroom fixtures and office buildings aren't all that fun, but Moon
: Ministers and talking statues can get tiresome too.
To answer the question in your subject line, the reason people avoid
the real world for IF is that with a real world setting the player
tends to notice more of the things that aren't implemented. Let's say
you have a magic orb item in a fantasy game. The player doesn't often
think there's anything wrong with the fact that you can't open, scry,
hold aloft, read, drag, or imbue the orb. But if you have a normal
real-world item, like an automobile, the user will notice if the game
doesn't know how to open, repair, siphon, paint, lock, unlock,
get under, jack up, or wash that car.
With real-world interaction, the player knows that the objects should
be able to do more things than the game will allow, and that the world
should have more "rooms" than it does, and that people should act
more "natural" than they seem to, and so on.
Joe Mason
Uh-oh, I don't think I can.
I just checked my killfile, and it doesn't have what I was expecting in
it. I altered it a little and didn't keep a record of why. So the
explanation would be long and tangled.
I've turned off my killfile for a while, so that if I shows up again
I'll be able to match the data against what I have stored and remind
myself how it works.
Joe
Joe Mason
> To answer the question in your subject line, the reason people avoid
> the real world for IF is that with a real world setting the player
> tends to notice more of the things that aren't implemented. Let's say
> you have a magic orb item in a fantasy game. The player doesn't often
> think there's anything wrong with the fact that you can't open, scry,
> hold aloft, read, drag, or imbue the orb. But if you have a normal
> real-world item, like an automobile, the user will notice if the game
> doesn't know how to open, repair, siphon, paint, lock, unlock,
> get under, jack up, or wash that car.
>
> With real-world interaction, the player knows that the objects should
> be able to do more things than the game will allow, and that the world
> should have more "rooms" than it does, and that people should act
> more "natural" than they seem to, and so on.
Hmm, that's something I hadn't considered before. I think it might be
true in some cases, but I can certainly think of real-world games where
I didn't have any problems with the modelling.
One that that does stand out is computers. A computer that responds
abstractly to things like "USE COMPUTER" always draws attention to the
fact that it's a prop, and one that implements "CLICK ON MENU" and such
draws attention to the fact that it's still not as detailed as a real
computer. I don't think I've seen a PC-style computer that hasn't stuck
out.
Joe
David Thornley
Steve Mading <mad...@baladi.bmrb.wisc.edu> wrote:
>
>To answer the question in your subject line, the reason people avoid
>the real world for IF is that with a real world setting the player
>tends to notice more of the things that aren't implemented.
First time I noticed this was when getting stuck for a while in
Infocom's "Deadline". I decided to try something police-y, and
started searching the house. I found that a bedroom had something
called a bed that was an amorphous undescribed lump, and maybe an
end table in a similar state, and nothing else, and that really
ruined the mood for me.
ems...@mindspring.com
> "Dr. Acula" <edw...@wood.com> wrote in message
> news:U5E5b.26843$dP1....@newsc.telia.net...
> > Chris Molloy Wischer
> >
> > > Who said that it was a good thing to avoid setting a game in the real
> > world?
> >
> > Emily Short does. She considers setting your game in the real world the
> > cardinal sin of IF design.
>
> where does she say that? I couldn't find it on her home page. Setting a
> game in the real world does not sound like a cardinal sin to me. Difficult
> maybe, if your goal is simulation, but not a cardinal sin surely?
I didn't say it, and I don't think it. I wrote a
set-in-the-real-world game (Best of Three); it wasn't very good, but
the problems with it were not, I think, inherent to its setting. They
had more to do with bad game design and pacing, and failure of the
writing to communicate what I wanted to communicate.
I think the complaint, inasmuch as it has any factual basis, is a
misrepresentation of what I say here:
http://emshort.home.mindspring.com/Comp2002Reviews.html
...though if you read carefully, you'll note that I don't argue
against real-world settings, and do specifically recommend historical
ones.
I think that failing to put any imaginative *effort* into your setting
will result in something that is boring to explore -- but just as much
effort goes into imagining a good real world setting as a fantastic
one. What I was railing against in that (somewhat opinionated) essay
was the Generic setting, where all the furniture is exactly what you
expect, and it's all described without narrative flair. You have
living rooms with typical sofas and typical coffee tables; you have
offices with the usual desks and the usual swivel chairs; you have
bedrooms with dull beds and dull dressers; everything feels like a
showroom of the Sears furniture department, and -- because of its
generic quality -- it feels *unreal*. I defy you to find a house
lived in by a sane human being that doesn't have some distinguishing
marks of personality: photographs of friends, souvenirs of travel,
conversation pieces, art, books or magazines, things tidily arranged
or messily strewn about. A religious icon over the fireplace, a
stress-relief ball next to the computer, a porcelain unicorn,
wallpaper with orange and green stripes, a dog bed, some
eucalyptus-scented candles, a three-thousand-dollar leather massage
recliner, a beanbag chair from the Salvation Army. *Something.* A
few well-chosen items can convey more psychological depth than a
warehouse of furnishings about which you can see nothing special.
I had a boyfriend who lined up his pencils with military precision
parallel to the edge of his desk. Why that didn't warn me off, I
don't know. I was younger then.
----
As for the question of why setting matters when you could be doing
Plot and Characterization, I stick with my long-held belief that, in
IF, setting is one of your best methods of presenting plot and
character.
Probably the central thing about IF that distinguishes from other
means of interactive storytelling (hypertext, CYOA, Myst-alikes) is
that there is a world model represented in the underlying code, and
that there are conventional methods of experiencing that world model.
You can walk around, and you can examine things. Different IF works
have different sets of supported verbs, but the movement and the
examination, the concepts of an environment and its components, are
found in all but the most experimental IF.
And well-chosen items of setting can tell you a great deal about the
people who inhabit (or used to inhabit) the environment. Think of the
number of establishing shots in movies that just pan over locations in
order to tell you something about the character you're about to see.
Or think of the evidence of the inhabitants in the dorm rooms in
Christminster; the absent girlfriend in Nothing More, Nothing Less;
the family in Common Ground. It's hard, in IF, to present evidence of
people's internal states. A lot of the possibilities used by film or
written literature -- internal monologues, voiceovers, montages
representing long periods of time, etc. -- don't work so well in IF.
The second-person narration doesn't lend itself (barring an unusual or
surreal presentation) to telling the player what someone else is
thinking; long time lapses are hard to do except with cut scenes and
artificial transitions.
What you *can* do is present the player with tangible evidence of
processes too internal, too abstract, or too long-term to present
interactively. A year of bad financial planning can be condensed into
a stack of collection notices on a kitchen table. One of my favorite
passages of Anchorhead is where the PC investigates a room where an
NPC has been and discovers some things about what he's been up to. A
novel or movie might have simply shown that NPC's actions through
third-person narrative; the work of IF reveals what he has done, and
what he's been thinking about, by displaying the aftermath. You can
pack similar kinds of information into conversation with NPCs, but it
tends to be harder to code and take more work for the player to
discover, and I'm not convinced that the result is always superior.
Once you've revealed the situation to the PC, you may allow him the
freedom to do something at the crisis point. But the setup can't be
entirely mutable, or you get a different story. One excellent way to
present a background interactively, but not let the player *change*
the background, is to let him discover it through exploration. If you
let him be physically present and active during all the events that
lead up to your story's chief crisis, then you have to
a) restrain him from doing anything important to prevent the crisis
from occurring;
b) write a variety of branches to account for his actions, all of
which lead to the crisis anyway; or
c) write a variety of branches some of which lead to no crisis (and no
plot [and aren't interesting {which sucks}]).
If you look at it, a number of IF games with strong storylines are
structured with an exploratory segment (often fairly dependent on
setting) followed by a crisis-and-action segment. Spider and Web: you
spend part of the story figuring out what has happened, and then the
last part taking action at the crisis point. Anchorhead: same thing.
Fallacy of Dawn: same thing. It isn't the *only* way to write IF with
a strong story -- a railroaded game will whisk you through the whole
plot, taking the "restrain the player" tactic instead. There aren't
so many examples of b and c out there in the world, largely because it
takes a masochistic author to try b, and a not-very-wise one to do c.
So I guess I would say that if you don't want to do storytelling at
least some of which depends on a physical setting and the description
of things in it, IF (as most of us currently understand the term)
isn't the medium for you. It's not that you can't code NPCs or that
you can't code events; but settings -- rooms and the objects in them
-- are what the medium deals in, the way literature deals in sentences
on a page. In order to invent something that doesn't rely on them,
you'd have to reinvent IF itself.
Michael Bechard
> In article <e984b78f.0309...@posting.google.com>,
> Michael <bilgepu...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>se...@plethora.net (Seebs) wrote in message news:<3f57aceb$0$1099$3c09...@news.plethora.net>...
>>
>>reply for Jeeves: "With a small pleading glance to heaven, Jeeves
>>dryly replies, 'I'm afraid not, sir.'" There are many different
>>techniques that go a long way towards making an NPC believable,
>
>
> Oh, certainly.
>
> Now, under what circumstances does Jeeves give a small pleading
> glance, a slightly larger pleading glance, or even no glance at
> all? The author of static fiction can do this easily, since he
> or she knows exactly what Jeeves is responding to (and can, in
> effect, special-case everything).
>
I like to think of IF authorship, with respect to realistic NPCs/any
other drastically complex object, as a kind of magic act. It's all about
fooling the player into thinking that they're interacting with this NPC
that can react uniquely, like a real person would, to any given
situation. The *perceived* complexity of the NPC lends to the player's
immersion in the author's constructed envirnment. In reality, though,
the author simply is using various tricks (like a random reaction
describer, in the instance of our example for Jeeves) to create the
illusion of complexity. It's not a perfect approach, and it does break
down at certain points, but for most cases, it may be quite adequate.
>
>>can very well be achieved with IF today.
>
>
> OK, I admit it: I used something like exaggeration as a literary
> device (there's got to be a technical name for it, but I can't think
> of one right now).
>
Fair enough...
>
>>scenery. As far as the PC not noticing these subtleties, the same
>>thing can happen with a book; you get a reader with a short attention
>>span reading Tolkien, and they're going to throw it out the window.
>>
>
> Well, yes, but the reader can't (deliberately or accidentally)
> manipulate the situation so that Samwise acts in an odd way that
> Tolkien didn't intend.
>
This is kind of (*kind of*) a separate issue of author intent vs. player
flexibility. The original issue I replied to was, I think, whether or
not good stories and believable characters can/should be expected from
IF. If the author acquiesces to a certain amount of railroading, then it
is my belief that yes, you can have a great story and NPCs in IF. The
tricky point is that little adjective, "certain."
>
>>>>However, there will continue
>>>>to be tradeoffs, and if somebody's going to complain that there are
>>>>tradeoffs I'd just as soon see that person find something he or she
>>>>likes and stop complaining.
>>
>>Of course. But those tradeoffs do not have to include a complete lack
>>of story and engaging NPC interaction.
>>
>
> True, but if somebody demands a very strong story and very strong
> characters, they'll be happier reading a good book and not posting
> here.
>
..and I guess that's where we fundamentally disagree. I notice that you
wrote "..good book." I can argue that a likewise "good" piece of IF can
(and maybe should) have a very strong story and very strong characters;
that it is that very distinction that (in my opinion) dictates the
likelihood of strong characters and story in a book OR IF.
Michael
A.P. Hill
will be released without your assistance or concepts of clutter.
A.P. Hill
David Thornley
Desi <patmcr...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>Who said it was a bad idea to set a game in the real world? I'm doing
>it and I've met no problems so far. I just have to trick out every
>single NPC with about 50 different things to say.
I have no idea who said it was a bad idea, or if anybody ever
actually said it in public.
The type of world really doesn't matter, provided that the author
has a clear image of that world and can put it across. There is
no fundamental difference here between a sofa and a magic wand
as objects: if the author gives a feeling of reality, that is
good; if the author leaves them generic, that is bad.
Since you are obviously putting a lot of work into your NPCs, that's
good. If the chairs and telephones also have some distinguishing
feature to emphasize their reality, your setting should be excellent.
David Thornley
Michael Bechard <not...@nothing.com> wrote:
>David Thornley wrote:
>> In article <e984b78f.0309...@posting.google.com>,
>> Michael <bilgepu...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>> Now, under what circumstances does Jeeves give a small pleading
>> glance, a slightly larger pleading glance, or even no glance at
>> all? The author of static fiction can do this easily, since he
>> or she knows exactly what Jeeves is responding to (and can, in
>> effect, special-case everything).
>
>I like to think of IF authorship, with respect to realistic NPCs/any
>other drastically complex object, as a kind of magic act.
I think that's an excellent description.
It's all about
>fooling the player into thinking that they're interacting with this NPC
>that can react uniquely, like a real person would, to any given
>situation.
Right. However, the NPC will react out of character at times in IF,
since we have no way of writing Turing-test quality NPCs. That is
not a problem with static fiction (at least, not when the author has
a developed character personality).
The *perceived* complexity of the NPC lends to the player's
>immersion in the author's constructed envirnment. In reality, though,
>the author simply is using various tricks (like a random reaction
>describer, in the instance of our example for Jeeves) to create the
>illusion of complexity. It's not a perfect approach, and it does break
>down at certain points, but for most cases, it may be quite adequate.
>
Right. It is very often quite adequate, but it does break down.
We seem to be agreeing.
>> Well, yes, but the reader can't (deliberately or accidentally)
>> manipulate the situation so that Samwise acts in an odd way that
>> Tolkien didn't intend.
>
>This is kind of (*kind of*) a separate issue of author intent vs. player
>flexibility.
No, it's a matter of author control vs. player flexibility. It is
not possible to define characters as well in IF as in static fiction.
The original issue I replied to was, I think, whether or
>not good stories and believable characters can/should be expected from
>IF.
I have apparently been unclear. I have seen plenty of good stories
and believable characters in IF. However, for the same amount of
writing effort, it is not possible to have as good a story or as
believable characters as in static fiction.
If the author acquiesces to a certain amount of railroading, then it
>is my belief that yes, you can have a great story and NPCs in IF. The
>tricky point is that little adjective, "certain."
>
A friend of mine, an excellent role-playing GM, said that he liked
to give out enough experience points to give the illusion of advancement.
Similarly, an IF author will often try to give the illusion of
interactivity, and it can work very well (as in "Photopia").
However, the tricky point here is that there are great stories and
really great stories and NPCs.
>>>Of course. But those tradeoffs do not have to include a complete lack
>>>of story and engaging NPC interaction.
>>
>> True, but if somebody demands a very strong story and very strong
>> characters, they'll be happier reading a good book and not posting
>> here.
>
>..and I guess that's where we fundamentally disagree. I notice that you
>wrote "..good book." I can argue that a likewise "good" piece of IF can
>(and maybe should) have a very strong story and very strong characters;
>that it is that very distinction that (in my opinion) dictates the
>likelihood of strong characters and story in a book OR IF.
>
Excellent characterization in a book is going to beat excellent
characterization in IF every time. The same with stories.
If one insists on the very best of both (like the "Dr. Acula"
apparently does), one should read excellent books rather than
play excellent IF. If one is content to sacrifice a bit of
characterization and story in favor of (say) fascinating settings
or interactivity, then IF becomes much more attractive.
Dr. Acula
> Your point seems to hinge on the premise that if Grave Robbers from
> Outer Space exist, or Moon Ministers exist, or talking statues exist,
> that they must preclude a good story. Poppycock.
Is Steinbeck a lesser author than Tolkien because there are no talking trees
or pointed hats in East of Eden?
> Fantasy and Sci-fi
> *can be* a fertile ground for a quality work of fiction (Babylon 5 being
> a good example), or a bad work of fiction (Plan 9 from outer space
> being a good example).
Babylon 5 is a mediocre soap opera that tries to hide its banality behind a
disguise of excessive makeup and not so special special effects. You'd get a
better result if you send the cast of Dallas into orbit, at least Larry
Hagman was a good actor.
The problem with escapism is that the world you're escaping into often
proves just as dull and tedious as the one you're leaving behind. Sure, the
pointed hats and the moon ministers can keep up the pretences of strangeness
and originality for a while, but as soon as you look beyond the fantastical
setting and start to explore the characters and the story per se, you'll see
that they have no depth. It's like a cardboard cut-out of a movie star at
the local mall, for a second or so you fall for the cheap illusion. "Wow!
Nicole Kidman, here in Rome, Oregon!". But that smile is just too perfect
and there's a little too much gleam in the eye. The fantastical setting is
like a small town with a big name, it promises too much.
Harry
the world a better place by saying:
>Steve Mading
>
>> Your point seems to hinge on the premise that if Grave Robbers from
>> Outer Space exist, or Moon Ministers exist, or talking statues exist,
>> that they must preclude a good story. Poppycock.
>
>Is Steinbeck a lesser author than Tolkien because there are no talking trees
>or pointed hats in East of Eden?
>
Yes. Of course. What a silly question.
The lack of (or resentment against) pointed hats and talking trees is
for me definitive proof that an author is not worth reading. I notice
a bias against pointed hats and talking trees in your post. Which once
again proves my point.
Harry
-------------------------------------
"Nostalgia isn't what it used to be."
http://www.haha.demon.nl
(To send e-mail, remove SPAMBLOCK from address)
Joe Mason
> In article <bjal17$5ng$1...@news.fsf.net>, Adam Thornton wrote:
>> In article <slrnblfg6...@gate.notcharles.ca>,
>> Joe Mason <j...@notcharles.ca> wrote:
>>>I will note that I didn't see the original post, which means it was
>>>probably Jacek Pudlo, since I'm one of the few people that seems to have
>>>him reliably killfiled in all his multiple identities.
>>
>> Can you share your secrets?
>
> Uh-oh, I don't think I can.
>
> I just checked my killfile, and it doesn't have what I was expecting in
> it. I altered it a little and didn't keep a record of why. So the
> explanation would be long and tangled.
All right, I've sorted out my killfile. Here's how to get rid of Jacek
Pudlo/Dr. Acula/Aaron Krochmal/whatever he's calling himself now:
Get a newsreader that can killfile based on the NNTP-Posting-Host
header. I use "slrn". Then filter out "NNTP-Posting-Host:
212.181.163.49".
Joe
John W. Kennedy
> Steve Mading
>
>
>>Your point seems to hinge on the premise that if Grave Robbers from
>>Outer Space exist, or Moon Ministers exist, or talking statues exist,
>>that they must preclude a good story. Poppycock.
>
>
> Is Steinbeck a lesser author than Tolkien because there are no talking trees
> or pointed hats in East of Eden?
Well, since that imitation of an argument pretty much demonstrates all
by itself that you're a moron, I won't even have to reply to your
bullshit about "Babylon 5".
--
John W. Kennedy
"You can, if you wish, class all science-fiction
together; but it is about as perceptive as classing the
works of Ballantyne, Conrad and W. W. Jacobs together
as the 'sea-story' and then criticizing _that_."
-- C. S. Lewis. "An Experiment in Criticism"
Charles A. Smith
news:bjbarh$l1i$3...@news.doit.wisc.edu...
.> To answer the question in your subject line, the reason people avoid
> the real world for IF is that with a real world setting the player
> tends to notice more of the things that aren't implemented. Let's say
> you have a magic orb item in a fantasy game. The player doesn't often
> think there's anything wrong with the fact that you can't open, scry,
> hold aloft, read, drag, or imbue the orb. But if you have a normal
> real-world item, like an automobile, the user will notice if the game
> doesn't know how to open, repair, siphon, paint, lock, unlock,
> get under, jack up, or wash that car.
Yes, and if you did take the time (a considerable amount perhaps) to program
all these actions, then some will criticize your story because they couldn't
take the tires off the car and roll them down the street.
How much is "enough" when you expand interactivity with the environment to
include actions that have nothing to do with the central plot? If I mention
a radio in my story, I think I should make it possible for the player to
turn it on and "listen" to the channel it's tuned to. But should the player
be able to listen to other channels when those actions are not relevant to
the central plot?
> With real-world interaction, the player knows that the objects should
> be able to do more things than the game will allow, and that the world
> should have more "rooms" than it does, and that people should act
> more "natural" than they seem to, and so on.
>
I agree with your point. For example, the story I am creating provides an
opportunity for the player to visit a town. Several buildings (homes and
public places) will provide some opportunity for interaction. But the town
is larger than the houses and public places that I will program. So I have
to refer to the fact that other neighborhoods exist but cannot be reached by
the player. Any thoughts about how to achieve this and still maintain an
immersion in the story?
So... if I mention a refrigerator, maybe it's reasonable to accommodate a
player who wants to open it. I'm less interested in worrying about the
player who wants to lick it.
Chuck
Eytan Zweig
"Dr. Acula" <ac...@newedu.uk> wrote in message
news:Cuq6b.27290$dP1....@newsc.telia.net...
> Steve Mading
>
> > Your point seems to hinge on the premise that if Grave Robbers from
> > Outer Space exist, or Moon Ministers exist, or talking statues exist,
> > that they must preclude a good story. Poppycock.
>
> Is Steinbeck a lesser author than Tolkien because there are no talking
trees
> or pointed hats in East of Eden?
Is Tolkien a lesser author than Steinbeck because there are talking trees
and pointed hats in Lord of the Rings?
I think it's quite clear that you have a strong distaste for non-realistic
fiction. That, of course, is a valid view, and one I highly respect. It is
not, however, the majority opinion - it definitely seems to be the case
that most IF readership - or at least most the IF critical apparatus -
does enjoy the kind of fiction you deride. The positive reviews and
attention that you mention in the post starting this thread are proof of
such. I'm not sure whether you feel that your views are slighted by the
fact that many people disagree, or whether you feel that most people need
to conform to your tastes - but neither of these claims is in any way
justifiable.
If you feel that your view of these works is underrepresented, the best
thing to do would be to write reviews of your own. If you feel that the
kind of IF works that you want to see is underrepresented, either write
ones yourself or find like-minded people and convince them to write it. I
don't see what is to be achieved by simply adopting a patronizing tone
towards those who either write or enjoy works which don't appeal to your
taste.
Eytan
Aaron Krochmal
> Ludicrous. I have faith in most authors that games of awesome quality
> will be released without your assistance or concepts of clutter.
Amissville is a truly original work. It's a monument to all those who
ever tried to create something memorable and meaningful and failed
miserably every step of the way. It's the tragic hymn of modern IF,
the sad tune of all those people who waste their lives making crap.
Only their failure isn't as obvious, which makes their efforts even
less memorable.
David Thornley
Dr. Acula <ac...@newedu.uk> wrote:
>Steve Mading
>
>> Your point seems to hinge on the premise that if Grave Robbers from
>> Outer Space exist, or Moon Ministers exist, or talking statues exist,
>> that they must preclude a good story. Poppycock.
>
>Is Steinbeck a lesser author than Tolkien because there are no talking trees
>or pointed hats in East of Eden?
>
is relevant to the thread.
>> Fantasy and Sci-fi
>> *can be* a fertile ground for a quality work of fiction (Babylon 5 being
>> a good example), or a bad work of fiction (Plan 9 from outer space
>> being a good example).
>
>Babylon 5 is a mediocre soap opera that tries to hide its banality behind a
>disguise of excessive makeup and not so special special effects. You'd get a
>better result if you send the cast of Dallas into orbit, at least Larry
>Hagman was a good actor.
>
Do you know one thing Babylon 5 had that put it head and shoulders above
most TV shows I've watched?
Moral ambiguity.
In most TV shows I've watched, it's fairly clear what is Right and what
is Wrong, and characters do one or the other with regard to their
nature, beliefs, and perception.
In the second regular-season episode of Babylon 5, "Soul Hunter",
a Soul Hunter came to Babylon 5. He had with him a collection of souls
taken from great men and women and whatever at the point of death,
and he talked to them.
He believed that the souls would simply vanish if not kept, and others
believed that the Soul Hunters were imprisoning souls and preventing
them from going on to their destiny (or next step, or whatever).
In the last scene of the episode, we see Delenn either freeing or
killing the souls, depending on whatever you happen to believe about
Soul Hunters.
Is she doing the right thing? I never found any indication in the
rest of Babylon 5.
If you think Dallas is superior to this, then you either have a very
different idea of "superior" or you have no more knowledge of what
you condemn than you usually display.
>The problem with escapism is that the world you're escaping into often
>proves just as dull and tedious as the one you're leaving behind.
There is a certain element of novelty, which allows more exploration.
Sure, the
>pointed hats and the moon ministers can keep up the pretences of strangeness
>and originality for a while,
Pointy hats and moon ministers are irrelevant. There's plenty of
bad science fiction and fantasy in which the setting is conventional
and largely irrelevant to the story. The relevant thing about the
pointy hats in Lord of the Rings is the nature and purpose of the
wizards, or Istari, and how they relate to the rest of Middle-Earth.
The Moon Minister in "Pytho's Mask" certainly doesn't make the game
good himself, but is part of a world in which the story can take place.
That particular story could not take place in a strictly realistic
world, and neither could at least one of the characters, which
should suggest that limiting settings also limits the stories and
characters that are possible.
but as soon as you look beyond the fantastical
>setting and start to explore the characters and the story per se, you'll see
>that they have no depth.
If you would actually read some good science fiction or fantasy, and
accept them for what they are, you might change your mind. I will agree
that much fantasy and science fiction that has been written lacks
characterization and story, and will point out that that is as true of
fiction set in realistic settings. There's no real difference.
>and there's a little too much gleam in the eye. The fantastical setting is
>like a small town with a big name, it promises too much.
>
It promises *whom* too much?
Is it your opinion that fantasy and science fiction should be the
best literature around, and fail to deliver on that promise, and
is that what has embittered you to them? Otherwise, I am at a loss
to understand what fantasy and science fiction promise that they
cannot fulfil.
Dr. Acula
> Well, since that imitation of an argument pretty much demonstrates all
> by itself that you're a moron, I won't even have to reply to your
> bullshit about "Babylon 5".
Well, that was actually a question, not an argument. If you ever get curious
what these words mean, feel free to consult a dictionary or ask an adult.
Look John, I assure you that it wasn't my intention to belittle your
favorite tv-show. When I wrote those things about Babylon 5, I didn't
realise that I could hurt the feelings of some of the younger members of
this group. If you enjoy watching the show, and your parents don't mind, I
won't think any lesser of you.
So stop sulking and put a smile on your face!
No hard feelings, I hope. :)
Boluc Papuccuoglu
>Chris Molloy Wischer
>
>> I guess there are levels of reality. At one extreme, there would be the
>> games like "Explore My Campus And Meet My Tutors And Tie A Pencil To Joe's
>> Glasses To Make Him Say The Thing He Always Says" and on the other there
>> would be the games that have no grounding in reality at all, taking place
>in
>> a universe where the laws of physics hold differently.
>>
>> And in between there are all the other games, be they set in historic
>Paris
>> populated with fictional characters, or set in outer space, or set in what
>> seems like a fantasy world but actually turns out to be Earth in the near
>> future, or whatever. Makes me wonder what definition of "Real World" Dr.
>> Acula is using, and how that corresponds to the definition that Emily
>Short
>> may have meant.
>
>Let's take "Hell Hath No Fury" by Charles Williams. The book is set in a
>small town in the rural South. The climate is hot and sultry. That's the
>setting. The remaining 99% is story. There are no Grave Robbers from Outer
>Space or Moon Ministers or talking statues. Instead there's a well-written
>dialog, three-dimensional characters and a twisty intrigue. It's not
>jam-packed with laser guns and mutant monsters either. It's no masterpiece,
>but it's a good book dealing with mature themes.
>
>Modern IF seems to cater to the needs of people who enjoy Ed Wood movies.
>It's almost as if the people who write and play IF today hadn't evolved
>emotionally since the late eighties. I find that surprising, since most
>people who are into IF nowadays - especially the trendsetters - must be well
>in their thirties by now.
>
>
>
I may be feeding the trolls here, but here goes...
Actually, you will find that since the eighties the acceptance of the
Science-Fiction/Fantasy/Horror genre by the general public has
expanded dramatically. Look at the most popular movies of the past two
years: Lord of the Rings, Matrix, Harry Potter, various comic book
conversions. The same is true with television shows. For the written
word, we all know how rich J.K. Rowling has become, so terms like
"spells", "wizards", "trolls" (he he) are now common knowledge,
whereas in the eighties most people would not have a clue as to what
they meant. Video gaming (not IF) is now VERY widespread, it is
considered mainstream entertainment, and you will find that a small
percentage of games have a "real world" setting. So your argument is
patently false.
Peter Gambles
...
>The second-person narration doesn't lend itself (barring an unusual or
>surreal presentation) to telling the player what someone else is
>thinking; long time lapses are hard to do except with cut scenes and
>artificial transitions.
Are there any (good) IF games which use first or third person narration? I've
tried adapting TADS to third person (examine desk\. 'Charlie saw a book on the
desk'....). I can't claim the game was any good, but technically it seemed
feasible, if involving an almost complete rewrite of adv.t. First person
sounds an interesting possibility, once the player accepted certain
conventions.
Peter Gambles
PeterG
aka Peter Gambles
Oxford
UK
e-mail peter....@admin.ox.ac.uk
Boluc Papuccuoglu
Gambles) wrote:
>
Not exactly recent, but there is Gnome Ranger and Ingrid's Back by
Level 9. Come to think of it, so is Lancelot. Not so sure about
Scapeghost.
David Thornley
Peter Gambles <peter....@admin.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
>In article <a69830de.03090...@posting.google.com>, ems...@mindspring.com (ems...@mindspring.com) wrote:
>...
>>The second-person narration doesn't lend itself (barring an unusual or
>>surreal presentation) to telling the player what someone else is
>>thinking; long time lapses are hard to do except with cut scenes and
>>artificial transitions.
>
>Are there any (good) IF games which use first or third person narration? I've
>tried adapting TADS to third person (examine desk\. 'Charlie saw a book on the
>desk'....). I can't claim the game was any good, but technically it seemed
>feasible, if involving an almost complete rewrite of adv.t. First person
>sounds an interesting possibility, once the player accepted certain
>conventions.
>
been a few bad games using third person, but the only one that I
remember as not being definitely bad was Nick Montfort's winchest.z8.
Shadow Wolf
news:bjk393$he8$1...@news.ox.ac.uk:
> In article <a69830de.03090...@posting.google.com>,
> ems...@mindspring.com (ems...@mindspring.com) wrote: ...
>>The second-person narration doesn't lend itself (barring an unusual or
>>surreal presentation) to telling the player what someone else is
>>thinking; long time lapses are hard to do except with cut scenes and
>>artificial transitions.
>
> Are there any (good) IF games which use first or third person
> narration? I've tried adapting TADS to third person (examine desk\.
> 'Charlie saw a book on the desk'....). I can't claim the game was any
> good, but technically it seemed feasible, if involving an almost
> complete rewrite of adv.t. First person sounds an interesting
> possibility, once the player accepted certain conventions.
It shouldn't require a rewrite of adv.t -- it's just a matter of modifying
basicMe to change the fmtYou and other format strings for that object. All
of the messages in adv.t use the %You% special formatting.
--
Shadow Wolf
shadow_wolf1 at hotpop dot com
Stories at http://www.asstr.org/~Shadow_Wolf
AIF at http://www.geocities.com/shadowolf3400
ems...@mindspring.com
> In article <a69830de.03090...@posting.google.com>, ems...@mindspring.com (ems...@mindspring.com) wrote:
> ...
> >The second-person narration doesn't lend itself (barring an unusual or
> >surreal presentation) to telling the player what someone else is
> >thinking; long time lapses are hard to do except with cut scenes and
> >artificial transitions.
>
> Are there any (good) IF games which use first or third person narration? I've
> tried adapting TADS to third person (examine desk\. 'Charlie saw a book on the
> desk'....). I can't claim the game was any good, but technically it seemed
> feasible, if involving an almost complete rewrite of adv.t. First person
> sounds an interesting possibility, once the player accepted certain
> conventions.
Fallacy of Dawn and Muse both use the first person, generally (I
think) to good effect. Beetmonger's Journal uses the third person in
some sections, and I thought it worked fairly well; Kallisti uses the
third person and I thought it was ghastly, but that's more in the
context of the rest of the game being ghastly too. Somehow in
Kallisti I had the impression that the PC was one of those obnoxious
people who might talk about himself in the third person, so we were
still hearing the narration from his perspective, but it was really
affected. This fit perfectly with his general persona, and made me
want to kick him in the butt.
Fallacy strikes me as probably the best argument for considering
something other than second-person narration in IF. The protagonist
has such a distinctive voice and set of reactions that it would have
been difficult (I think) to impose this on the player without it
seeming like an awkward fit. At the same time, it plays naturally
enough that I didn't *think* very hard about the fact that it was
being told in the first person.
I have yet to see a third-person IF game where I felt the
third-person-ness added something (positive) that could not have been
done any other way. Usually I find myself wondering what my
relationship to the protagonist is and why I'm in a position to give
him orders. Presumably it could be done, but I don't remember seeing
it yet.
-- Emily
John W. Kennedy
> Well, that was actually a question, not an argument.
That's either a lie or a clumsy and hypocritical sophistry. Steve M
remarked that the existence of bad SF doesn't preclude the existence of
good SF. Your response was to assume that he had said that all
literature that is not SF is bad. That's such crap that doesn't even
deserve to be called a "straw man".
> If you ever get curious
> what these words mean, feel free to consult a dictionary or ask an adult.
> Look John, I assure you that it wasn't my intention to belittle your
> favorite tv-show. When I wrote those things about Babylon 5, I didn't
> realise that I could hurt the feelings of some of the younger members of
> this group. If you enjoy watching the show, and your parents don't mind, I
> won't think any lesser of you.
Sorry, but I have a rehearsal of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" coming up
tonight, and I'm trying to find enough spare time to finish collating
the Folger Library copy of the 1728 Dublin edition of Lewis Theobald's
"Double Falshood; or, The Distrest Lovers" (a rehash of the since-lost
"Cardenio" by Shakespeare and Fletcher) with the various London texts
(which I have already collated and published on the Web), so I don't
have time to reply at length to someone whose parochial canons of taste
exclude 90% of world literature prior to the late 18th century or so.
What's your problem with "Babylon 5"? that it doesn't observe the Unities?
Michael Coyne
> What's your problem with "Babylon 5"? that it doesn't observe the Unities?
Goodness, another Nicholas Nickleby fan. I love the Curdles.
"Hamlet! Pooh! Ridiculous! Hamlet is gone, perfectly gone!"
Michael
Stark Springs
>
> I have yet to see a third-person IF game where I felt the
> third-person-ness added something (positive) that could not have been
> done any other way. Usually I find myself wondering what my
> relationship to the protagonist is and why I'm in a position to give
> him orders. Presumably it could be done, but I don't remember seeing
> it yet.
>
between the player and the PC, possibly with multiple PCs you can
order around and you can somehow see the scene through an external
source.
Think "Suspended", where instead of "seeing" through the robots'
sensors, you have cameras all over the ship/station/whatever. Or a
guardian angel that has to get several charges out of trouble, while
seeing everything from above.
Arguably, these PCs will become in fact NPCs with one PC as an
abstract entity. Just a thought.
Thanks,
Stark
Adam Thornton
Joe Mason <j...@notcharles.ca> wrote:
>All right, I've sorted out my killfile. Here's how to get rid of Jacek
>Pudlo/Dr. Acula/Aaron Krochmal/whatever he's calling himself now:
>
>Get a newsreader that can killfile based on the NNTP-Posting-Host
>header. I use "slrn". Then filter out "NNTP-Posting-Host:
>212.181.163.49".
Got it. Thanks.
Adam
Steve Mading
: Steve Mading
:> Your point seems to hinge on the premise that if Grave Robbers from
:> Outer Space exist, or Moon Ministers exist, or talking statues exist,
:> that they must preclude a good story. Poppycock.
: Is Steinbeck a lesser author than Tolkien because there are no talking trees
: or pointed hats in East of Eden?
No. (I do think Steinbeck is a lesser author, but that's
because I find his pessimism dull and pedestrian. It has
nothing to do with the presence or lack of talking trees and
pointed hats.)
If someone makes the logical statement:
X does not preclude Y.
That is not identical to the statement:
Y requires X.
This basic lesson in rudimentary logic should not have been necessary.
:> Fantasy and Sci-fi
:> *can be* a fertile ground for a quality work of fiction (Babylon 5 being
:> a good example), or a bad work of fiction (Plan 9 from outer space
:> being a good example).
: Babylon 5 is a mediocre soap opera that tries to hide its banality behind a
: disguise of excessive makeup and not so special special effects. You'd get a
: better result if you send the cast of Dallas into orbit, at least Larry
: Hagman was a good actor.
: The problem with escapism is that the world you're escaping into often
: proves just as dull and tedious as the one you're leaving behind. Sure, the
: pointed hats and the moon ministers can keep up the pretences of strangeness
: and originality for a while, but as soon as you look beyond the fantastical
: setting and start to explore the characters and the story per se, you'll see
: that they have no depth. It's like a cardboard cut-out of a movie star at
: the local mall, for a second or so you fall for the cheap illusion. "Wow!
: Nicole Kidman, here in Rome, Oregon!". But that smile is just too perfect
: and there's a little too much gleam in the eye. The fantastical setting is
: like a small town with a big name, it promises too much.
I stick by my original statement. You are predjudiced against anything
that has an unusual setting. You assume (falsely) that it is
impossible to have BOTH an unusual setting and deep characters.
(Note, "deep" doesn't have to mean "dark, broody, and so depressing
that I don't give a crap what happens to them.")