Weblit addiction: Eikasia

So a friend of mine is the author for the weblit, Eikasia.

It's a serial fantasy story updated every friday. And it's good. The characters are fresh, the world is interesting, there's action, there's romance...

You should read it.

Here's the synopsis from the site:

Nyx is an Ailuran, a feline shapeshifter, who chooses to live on the outskirts of life. Elmiryn is an unconventional warrior who seeks revenge. Both are cursed. When circumstance places them together to fight an enemy whose very existence is in question, they find uncommon allies, life-threatening adventures, and cerebral danger waiting.

Yes. Cerebral danger. You read that right.

Give the story a chance. I ended up binging the entire thing in a couple nights, I liked it so much. If you do too, be sure to become a fan of it on Facebook.

Interactive Fiction attempt #2 - Campus Arcana

I have an idea for a story I'd like to write one day. At first it was going to be a novel, but then I found Inform 7 and attempted to make it into an Interactive Fiction. This did not go well.

Now that I'm back on track for making progress with my life, I've decided to actually sit down and finish a damn game. For too long I've been telling people I'm "working on my portfolio," without much to show for it outside of networking.

Time to kill two birds with one boulder.

Rever, my pet storyworld, needs some loving. I need to do some hardcore worldbuilding. My plan is to release a tragic Interactive Fiction, where you step into the end of the world. 'The Fall' is the apocalypse that removes the Gods from play, as well as laying waste to the planet. In Campus Arcana, the player is a student studying for a test in a library when it happens. And they're doomed.

I'm aiming to make players want to be curious about the world, and to look for answers as to why the world is ending. If I like how Campus Arcana rolls out, I'd more than likely write other viewpoints - so players can piece together clues from different experiences.

Inform 7 lets me make a game without really learning a programming language. I'm not opposed to it, but right now I really want to have something I can say I Finished. That, and I'm still getting my writing to a worthy ability. Having to describe a lot of things you don't normally think about, while also attempting to guide a player, is a good exercise.

I just hope I can avoid playing Blue Lacuna until I finish, because I think it would absorb my life.

Subjective Space

Expanding on what was written at the Artful Gamer on the subject, I wanted to bring up the difficulty of manipulating a player's perception of a spatial environment. It's a bit of a ramble, as I'm just now getting back into the hang of this writing thing.

The first thing that comes to mind is how effective straight up text can be at describing a scene. Right now I'm writing an Interactive Fiction, and it's very apparent how a game needs to balance pacing and information in order to give the player the best experience. In such a personal medium like Interactive Fiction, the player automatically fills in a lot of holes with their own imagination. At least for me, this is akin to how pixelated graphics can still portray emotion and style. They only represent spatial positioning in the game, and allow for the player's subjective description to stay on the surface of their thoughts.

Generally when something interesting is happening, there's a lot involved with it. Hearing a muffled 'whomph' come from outside can be somewhat alarming, but not as alarming as witnessing the van exploding with your own eyes. The fireball, the shrapnel, the bystanders being knocked back – these details all add to the severity of the scene. If we add more detail like limbs, car alarms, and a visual overlay of concussive feedback the situation turns towards distaste and even annoyance. It may be an extreme example, but I believe it illustrates the kind of balancing I'm referring to.

'Efficiently detailed.' That's the phrase. Underwhelmed vs Overloaded.

Faceless in Post Apocalyptic Fantasy

Much of my now scarce free time is spent participating in or even running table-top RPGs. In fact, as I write this, I have my newest character sitting in my lap while I wait for a new campaign to begin.

This array of different situations has given me a frustrating irritation when it comes to running my single online game, Rever. Using Maptools is great, allowing for dice macros and gridmaps to be shared amongst players. As it turns out, this was the only campaign which actually used gridmaps. As a gamemaster, I have had a growing hunch that my game wasn't really as fun as it should be.

I asked a player of mine a couple questions to try and get an answer to this hunch.

A week later, I realized why her favorite session was her favorite session.

I've been feeling obligated to use the gridmap software - to my own detriment. The best game sessions were when I never used the thing aside from showing a region map.

Next Sunday will be a test to see if this is in fact a correct deduction or if perhaps it's more of the faceless table that's causing a problem. I think I'm going to turn the map into a top-down view of a table and see how that goes...