Second Person

Emily Short

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Feb 5, 2007, 4:20:03 PM2/5/07

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Some RAIFers may be interested in a new book from MIT Press, Second
Person:

http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=11000

Second Person is about role-playing and story in games and playable
media, with articles on RPGs, collectible card games, board games, and
computer games including IF. Contributors include Steve Meretzky (on
"Planetfall"), Nick Montfort (on the player character in IF), Jeremy
Douglass (on "Shade"), G. Kevin Wilson (on adapting stories to game
formats), Chris Crawford (on Deikto), and Michael Mateas and Andrew
Stern (on "Facade").

(Disclaimer: I also contributed a very short bit on "Savoir-Faire".)

I've only just gotten my contributor copy, so haven't finished reading
it, but a number of the articles not about IF still touch on relevant
topics: writing games that generate dynamic stories, translating
conventional fictions into game form, capturing literary genre
conventions in new media.

James Jolley

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Feb 5, 2007, 4:24:11 PM2/5/07

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Hi Emily,

It would be great to get hold of it in some sort of accessible format.
This is the kind of good reference book i'd personally use.

Also, I hope we don't have the IF Theory book be in just print form. I'd
be prepared to pay directly for a text only version of it when it
becomes available.

In article <1170710403.7...@v33g2000cwv.googlegroups.com>,
ems...@mindspring.com says...

--
All the best

-James-

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Andrew Plotkin

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Feb 5, 2007, 4:38:42 PM2/5/07

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I just grabbed a copy myself (by walking into the MIT Press bookstore
in Cambridge -- sadly, subjects don't get free copies like
contributors do. :) I've only barely looked over the table of
contents.

There is a *lot* of great stuff in here. It reprints three of the
Hogshead Press "New Style" mini-RPGs. (Puppetland, Bestial Acts, Baron
Munchausen). It has Greg Costikyan, Rebecca Borgstrom, Jordan Mechner,
and Paul Czege. It has the guy who did that _Life in the Garden_
shufflable story deck. It has, in short, a frightening percentage of
the narrative experiments over the past decade which made me say "Oh
my god that's the COOLEST THING EVER".

--Z

--
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*
It's a nice distinction to tell American soldiers (and Iraqis) to die in
Iraq for the sake of democracy (ignoring the question of whether it's
*working*) and then whine that "The Constitution is not a suicide pact."

Victor Gijsbers

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Feb 6, 2007, 12:05:11 PM2/6/07

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Andrew Plotkin schreef:

This looks very good indeed!

> There is a *lot* of great stuff in here. It reprints three of the
> Hogshead Press "New Style" mini-RPGs. (Puppetland, Bestial Acts, Baron
> Munchausen).

James Wallis of Hogshead Press told me that Bestial Acts was never
published by them, and the other two are partly rewritten and thus not
straight republishingings.
(http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=19575546&postID=117075416992672040)

Regards,
Victor

Andrew Plotkin

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Feb 6, 2007, 1:05:14 PM2/6/07

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Aha. Thanks for the correction.

--Z

--
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*

Making a saint out of Reagan is sad. Making an idol out of Nixon ("If the
President does it then it's legal") is contemptible.

Emily Short

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Feb 7, 2007, 7:53:41 AM2/7/07

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Emily Short wrote:
> I've only just gotten my contributor copy, so haven't finished reading
> it,

...but now I have. Conclusion: yup, still very cool.

I've written more about the contents that are IF-relevant here,
though:

http://emshort.wordpress.com/writing-if/books-and-other-resources/second-person/