New to IF - where to go for help/walkthroughs?

After recently playing the video game Untold Stories which was mostly in the style of a text adventure I went to seek out more games like it and game across Interactive Fiction and the Z-Interpreter machines. So I’ve been enjoying Vespers as my first adventure but I’m stuck on the first night after I’ve settled the visiting girl and the event with the brothers and the tower. I know I need to get the brothers to sleep in order to search them and progress to the following morning to progress the story but I cannot get the story to progress past the brothers ‘preparing for bed’. I’ve been through all rooms several times and tried everything I can think of so I guess I’m really stumped. If I go to sleep in my own bed I get killed and the game ends - is this because I have already been quite evil and this is my punishment - to progress no further? Can anyone advise how to progress the story or is there a site that provides guides/walkthoughs to these stories? Any help much appreciated.

Also if anyone has any recommendations or links to any other good stories - open minded about the genre just new to all this and don’t know where else to start…

Thanks

Check out IFDB - http://ifdb.tads.org/

That’s usually where you’ll find newly published and older IF.

Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be a walkthrough linked.

You might want to try reading the public playthrough on ClubFloyd - http://www.allthingsjacq.com/cfscript/vimeswork/intfic_clubfloyd_20120325.html

IFWiki ifwiki.org/ will sometimes have a solution linked if one has been published. However I don’t see one for Vespers, and can’t find one on the web with some cursory searching–so I’d second Hanon’s recommendation of the ClubFloyd transcript.

If you don’t want a direct spoiler, you can always ask here for help! Some games develop entire help threads, like Counterfeit Monkey and Hadean Lands (both of which I’d highly recommend).

Some InvisiClues-style help:

“Your bed calls to you from the side of the room. Her song is sweet, but it sings of treachery.” In other words, this is not a safe place…consider what just happened to Brother Matteo.

It might be wise to ensure your safety before you fall asleep.

There are two ways to do this.

One way is hinted by the stained glass windows.

“An assassin approaches from the darkness, but a shroud of light reveals him to Saint Drausinus. He is safe.”

PRAY TO SAINT DRAUSINUS.

The other way is more mundane.

Simply push your desk in front of the door.

Then you can sleep in peace.

Vespers also has built-in hints. You can ask for HELP at any time during the game to see them.

(Oh also, the first of those solutions might not work…if it fails, you’ll know why. The second should always be available.)

Thanks so much for all the replies guys, I really appreciate it. It’s great to know there is an active community for these stories, I think I’m going to get in to these in big way! Right, I’m off to see if I can progress the story further… Thanks again.

CASA solutionarchive.com/ also has a pretty extensive solutions archive especially for older systems… Highly recommended as a possible future reference for more classic IF/Text Adventures…