Trying something a bit different

First go trying some Tarot reading! Approaching this as a way of reflecting more on my life / circumstances / what I want to do. Also I have a soft spot for playing cards. The Tarot deck I’m using is designed by Night Circus author (and artist) Erin Morgenstern. I think this is something I’ll keep returning to from time to time for contemplation and inspiration.

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Interactive fiction and me, and IFComp 2022 launches

I’ve played and enjoyed traditional parser text adventure games since my first go in December 1980. My dad had borrowed an Apple II over Christmas, and one of the very first things I tried on it was Colossal Cave Adventure. Complete and utter instantaneous love. Oh and for computers too! I was only 8 then, but it’s not surprising I went on to study a computer science degree a decade later.

Growing up in Britain in the 1980s there was a vibrant home based computer coding scene, as youngsters tried to write games to emulate those they could buy, typically on cassette. Not just video games, but many text adventure games were coded. I never released anything commercially then, but was designing games from just a couple of years after that first Apple II try, coding in BASIC. In fact the book I had out on loan most often from Hawick public library was a book about programming text adventure games on the TRS-80 computer.

At university my love affair with text adventures continued. I played and coded in a multiplayer text based LPMUD game. And this was just the time that Graham Nelson was engineering Inform, allowing people to write their own Infocom style text adventures. His game Curses was a joy then. This era also saw the start of the IFComp, the annual competition for text adventure games, or as they were often called then interactive fiction. And this has continued ever since. Interactive fiction has since evolved to include different styles of game, including web based and choice. But remains a joy. I have also enjoyed writing and releasing my own games in Inform 7, as much as my health allows.

Anyway the original main point of this post was to say that the games for this year’s IFComp are out and available to play. Judges need only play and rate a minimum of 5 games for your votes to count. And judging runs through until mid November. 71 interactive fiction games I think this year, a mix of traditional parser text adventure games and web/choice ones. I playtested some of this year’s entries, which I enjoyed immensely. Looking forward to trying some of the others!

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Post-mortem for my Spring Thing IF parser game “Napier’s Cache” set in 1590s Scotland

In the 1590s my 12xg-grandfather Sir Robert Logan of Restalrig hired mathematician and occult practitioner John “Logarithms” Napier to hunt for hidden treasure in Fast Castle in Berwickshire.

I wrote a text adventure based on this true story, filling in the gaps in the record creatively, and entered it into the Spring Thing 2020 interactive fiction competition.

Today I wrote up some thoughts about the development of the game.

The game is freely available online to play via browser or download.

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Stopping Call of Cthulhu online roleplaying due to progressive neurological disease

I’ve been playing tabletop Call of Cthulhu roleplaying (RPG) games for 13 years. Played in my case by web forum postings, meaning I can post when I’m able to, and play with people all around the world. The online asynchronous forum method of playing has been very practical for me with my neurological illness which would rule out face to face gaming or anything requiring longer periods of attention at a time. In the main games I’ve played we work through adventures and scenarios that combine Doctor Who with Lovecraftian horror. Tabletop roleplaying is a sort of communal improvisation / shared storytelling / puzzle solving experience. Each character takes on a different character, and acts out that role, responding to the situations posed to them by the Keeper who runs the game. It’s a somewhat difficult process to describe, but a fun pastime, and a dynamic form of storytelling and game playing. Past scenarios in our linked campaign have included battling ghouls in the 1930s British Museum, aliens on future Pluto, encountering fishy folk in 1980s Dunwich in Suffolk, exploring late republican Rome, and now the latest installment set in Blitz-hit wartime London.

I love playing these games, and have got a lot of pleasure out of them. Our Keeper, who runs the games, has written and designed some excellent scenarios which are great fun to play through. The game is a combination of description, player decisions and chance. The latter is usually handled with dice rolls, normally digital in our case, and we have had some shocking luck along the way. Which can upend plots spectacularly, but makes the game unpredictable and exciting to play.

My character is a schoolteacher from 1950s Scotland, and one of the original characters in the series of linked Doctor Who games. She’s a companion of the Time Lord character, and so travelled to all these times and places. It’s amazing that she survived some of the things she ran into, not least given how bad her dice rolls have often been, but it’s been a marvellous journey.

Sadly it is soon coming to an end, although exactly how I will leave is not yet finalised. I have significant dementia like problems from my progressive neurological disease primary cerebral vasculitis, and these have worsened over the last few years, even while the disease has been more stable in other ways. I simply can’t keep up with game plots any more, not having a clue what has happened before plot-wise, either recently, or further back. I forget things constantly day to day, even hour to hour, and frequently minute to minute. It poses enough of a challenge when trying to follow plots in books, never mind trying to follow the plot in a long-running RPG game. I’ve tried to keep on playing, knowing that I am one of the few original players left in the game now, but it’s simply not viable.

So yes, sad to leave, but many happy memories, at least those I can just about recall. All the games are currently still online for me to reread, and enjoy again, marvelling at everything I’ve forgotten since.

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