Here’s the second story, a little late, but I think much better because of the time I took to actually revise it. Again the basic idea came from /r/WritingPrompts, but I fleshed it out more. This has been a fun experience, and I look forward to doing a bit more in-depth editing and revising of my own work on longer pieces in the future.
Continue reading “They Come Again (NaNoWriMo 2020 Story 2)”Perfect Shot (NaNoWriMo 2020 Story 1)
Although I’m not doing a complete take of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) this year, I still wanted to put in some concerted effort writing some pieces that weren’t blog posts or text adventures. So, I’ve committed to writing at least 2 short stories this month, a medium I find beautiful and incredibly tricky to nail down.
This first one is particularly short, only about 3 pages if printed, and the idea comes from a post on /r/WritingPrompts.
Continue reading “Perfect Shot (NaNoWriMo 2020 Story 1)”Text Adventures Part 3: The Mechanics
Text adventures are, almost by necessity, designed to railroad the player into doing something without it being obvious or annoying. Any mechanics introduced should be a natural extension to the world the player discovers, provide sufficient freedom so they don’t feel like a funnel, yet guide the player in the correct direction. In the text adventures I’ve listen to played on the Cortex/Upgrade crossover episodes, I’ve noticed that mechanics often act as hints. They are like bumpers on a wall (which may kill you, but you can make a different decision the next time.)
All these realizations have come after thinking carefully through the mechanics and puzzles I wrote which were clearly bad (and the few which were actually good), and trying to figure out what precisely caused them to have the effect on the players they did. It’s often me not paying attention to my good sense and the feedback of testers. More frequently it’s me trying to subdue the text adventure genre until it allows me to try and tell a story, rather than building a story that works within a framework.
Directly, most of my text adventure failures have come from a single mechanic undermining any positive decisions I made.
Continue reading “Text Adventures Part 3: The Mechanics”Text Adventures Part 2: The Idea
I want each text adventure I write to have a unique flavor. Mechanics aside, the story behind it should be fresh, typically built from a single idea, and the more I write the more my mind recognizes these singular bits of inspiration. One thought or phrase is typically enough for me to build a world from: sitting down with a thought, then branching out from the initial point in whatever way my mind flows. I’m going to discuss how this process worked for each of the four text adventures I’ve written and released so far, and try to dissect what I learned in the process. In the next post, I’ll focus more on the thought process (or lack thereof) that went into developing some of the game mechanics around these ideas.
Continue reading “Text Adventures Part 2: The Idea”Text Adventures Part 1: Why I Write Them
I’ve written several in-person text adventures modeled after Parsely games over the past couple of years. Through persistent effort, I’ve managed to improve them and recently began to notice a particular style develop. Since I’m finally pleased with where they are headed, I figured I would document my journey in writing them: Why I write them, how I find ideas, how I develop those ideas, and the actual mechanisms of making a document as reference. This whole set of posts will probably be four parts over the next month. So we start off at the beginning: Why did I start writing these, and why am I still writing these?
Continue reading “Text Adventures Part 1: Why I Write Them”Tommyball Princess
I really enjoy the Unmade Podcast with Brady Haran and Tim Hein. They generate some wonderful ideas, and the fact that it’s two old friends hanging out reminds me of the conversations (and podcasts) I have with my own friends.
One particular bit that has been ongoing in special episodes is Tommyball. It’s a fictional sport with no clear rules (it’s essentially Calvinball), and in these special episodes it’s Brady interviewing Tim, who plays the role of a conceited former player, and current commentator, of Tommyball. The most recent episode has Tim reading the audiobook of his recently released autobiography.
Tickled by this general idea, I decided I would write my own few chapters of a biography for Tim. It was a fun evening making it, and I figured it would be good to post here. You can download the PDF below.
The Last Question RPG
I mentioned in my previous post about creativity during quarantine that I was working on writing a new game. I’ve been interested in trying to write something that moved away from text adventures and went into open-world RPGs. I’ve been inspired both by the Republic Commandos game run by Mikhail on an episode of OHAC (and in-person during college), as well as the Campaign Podcast he recently got me into.
Continue reading “The Last Question RPG”Creative Quarantine
Maybe artists and writers of centuries past had it right, that isolation and odd situations gives a creative surge. Being cooped up at home more than usual has led me to seek out more novelty, and with that has come a desire to create that novelty myself. Over the past weekend I messed around more with Garageband on my iPad, and wrote a small RPG (which I’ll post about once I play it this weekend.)
Having a hectic schedule due to work has also caused things to move around in my head. I’ve lost my routine for a while, and though I’m eager to reestablish it this upcoming week, having things shaken up has given me a lot to think about. Of course, implicit in all this is that I’m in a privileged position that allows me to take advantage of the current situation, and other people are not so lucky. But I am still happy to count the creative outcomes of this situation among my blessings.