City of IF

[Key]

I've just posted the next installment of the history of the City here.

Comments welcome, as always.

[ethereal_fauna]

Reading this history has been almost as fun as playing the storygames, at least for me, and I continue to await each new installment with a delicious anticipation.

I enjoyed the description of your idea, and the emphasis that a storygame is "a story guided by a human author." So often games lose that human factor, including those games where the players interact with characters that are in turn created and guided by other players. The other character is viewed as an enemy or an ally in-game, but seldom as another person, and it is often just as easy to abandon or kill another's character with little regard to the player on the other end of the line. Consideration is seldom spared for the authors or developers of the game, and the initial or continuing vision they had.

Not so with the storygame, which is uniquely author dependent as well as player dependent throughout play, from beginning to end. Players enjoy immersion in the story and the role they take, and may interact not only within context of the storyline, but also retain the option of interacting with other players of the same character in a more substantial way by offering consenting or dissenting opinions, suggestions, and perspectives.

Presentation of your theory logically incorporates those seven treasures and five dragons you explained in the first installment. I fear that the City of IF has spoiled me, and that I will inevitably compare any other roleplaying experiences I have to my pleasurable times spent strolling along these city streets, and those experiences will lack the essential qualities I have come to associate with successful and fulfilling play.

Technicalities:
Quote: I and others have spent the last four years...(order of words: when connecting I, we, me, or us with another noun or pronoun, place it after the other noun or pronoun. To emphasize the character I, place the action or consequence directly with it, as in: I have spent the last four years, as well as other writers, applying...)

Posting suggestions and voting on a character's actions is a way of storytelling. (posting and voting are ways)

2. Lost in the Wilderness: The Many Paths of Interactive Storytelling
(this should link to /about_2.htm instead of /about_3.htm)

[Smee]

Fauna summarised it nicely. :)

I look forward most keenly to the next installment, which promises to fill in some of the final holes in my knowledge of the early days of IF, which sadly I missed.

These five chapters make a nice addition to the website, and a great background read for interested newbies finding the site for the first time - especially those struggling to see the purpose/aim of storygaming.

A brief point - are links going to be available to these posts from the main website? I certainly think they are worthy of being found immediately on arrival, or maybe incorporated into the FAQ as a 'Want to know more' kinda link.

Happy Writing, :)

[The Powers That Be]

SchoolMarm! wrote: I shall take my leave of you now, my children. But I shall return. And I know that someday you will appreciate all that I have done for you.

*pokes head into room, looks around nervously*

Is she gone?

'Cause I was hoping we could talk about, you know, Key's City of IF Story.

Another interesting chapter, Key. I have many thoughts and comments, but it's late and I'm tired, so I'll just make one, regarding scalability. Two of the three activities you compare storygaming to (voting and contributing to charities) cannot by any stretch be considered things that people do for entertainment (the third, singing in a chorus, qualifies, but is generally fairly limited in the scale it can achieve). Storygaming will never, I think, be something that people do out of a sense of civic duty, so I think those are poor comparisons.

More thoughts to follow.

By the way, does anyone know if SchoolMarm! is single? No reason, just curious...

[Key]

At the risk of having a conversation in a burning house, I'll respond...

The Powers That Be wrote: Two of the three activities you compare storygaming to (voting and contributing to charities) cannot by any stretch be considered things that people do for entertainment (the third, singing in a chorus, qualifies, but is generally fairly limited in the scale it can achieve). Storygaming will never, I think, be something that people do out of a sense of civic duty, so I think those are poor comparisons.

I compared storygaming to voting only to answer the question of whether storygame players would feel like they're participating in the story even though their influence over it is only a single vote. My point was that in political elections, which have the same restriction, people do feel like they are participating. So I can imagine that it would work the same in storygaming.

Naturally, what people are participating in is different in the two cases. Storygame players are participating in a story, so they do it out of fun. Voters are participating in politics, so they do it out of civic duty. But both have a sense of agency not because their individual vote makes a difference, but because they're part of a process which makes a difference.