A Comedy of Error Messages is Wodehouse-style comedy — social comedy, romantic entanglements, plenty of misunderstandings — only reimagined for a world where Jeeves is a computer.
A Comedy of Error Messages is Wodehouse-style comedy — social comedy, romantic entanglements, plenty of misunderstandings — only reimagined for a world where Jeeves is a computer.
Continue reading “IF Comp 2011: The Elfen Maiden / A Comedy of Error Messages”
Last night, per Dan Fabulich’s recommendation, I checked out the Seattle story games meetup and played through a game each of Shock and Fiasco. Shock is about exploring social issues (whichever ones the participants choose) in the context of a science fictional future; Fiasco is about emulating the wacky, everything-goes-wrong misadventure plots typical of Coen Brothers movies. I’d heard about Fiasco before from Stephen Granade (here’s a play report of his as well as an academia-themed playset he wrote). Both were a lot of fun and went in rather goofy, unexpected directions.
Our particular play group went back and forth between actually role-playing scenes out and doing quick narration, and was really cooperative in terms of trying to get interesting, narratively satisfying outcomes for the story. Quite a few times, one player had the opportunity to help or oppose another player’s character and made the decision based on what would generate the most aesthetically effective scene. That was a lot of fun — the spirit of collaborating towards a common (if not always clearly perceived) outcome is a standout feature of this kind of play. Our group seemed to tend towards the tragic or bittersweet, preferring outcomes that were mixed success and failure for our characters.
Bhaloidam is a tabletop storytelling platform by Corvus Elrod. It’s designed to help people trade off control of a shared story, tracking the ebb and flow of Will (the ability to affect the world) and Ego (the ability to withstand incoming changes) as well as styles of interaction with the game universe.
That’s a broad enough description that it may be challenging to guess what it means in practice. Fortunately, the Bhaloidam website goes into a lot of detail, complete with some sample play sessions and imagined story worlds. I particularly recommend the discussion of how Bhaloidam might be used for a Cthulhu game and the sample play session for a story about three siblings gathered at the death of a parent.
Cursed is an epic fantasy story. It’s substantial, on the longer side of comp games, with several possible paths through the narrative.
How Suzy Got Her Powers is a super-brief origin story for a super hero.
How Suzy Got Her Powers is a super-brief origin story for a super hero.
The Myothian Falcon is a neo-noir detective story set in “New Chicago” on a distant planet some centuries in the future. It is long — I didn’t complete it in the two hours available, or even really come close, judging from the walkthrough.
The Myothian Falcon is a neo-noir detective story set in “New Chicago” on a distant planet some centuries in the future. It is long — I didn’t complete it in two hours, or even really come close, judging from how much further the walkthrough went.
Emily Short's Interactive Storytelling 