Anders
September 13, 2014, 1:17pm
1
…is an interactive fabulist’s most useful talent and most common nightmare.
But seriously, how many “rooms” can you describe before your interactive fabula starts resembling a Robbe-Grillet novel?
MTW
(Marshal Tenner Winter)
September 13, 2014, 1:40pm
2
Anders:
…is an interactive fabulist’s most useful talent and most common nightmare.
But seriously, how many “rooms” can you describe before your interactive fabula starts resembling a Robbe-Grillet novel?
Ok. No idea what a “fabula” is, but I looked up Alain Robbe-Grillet and found this:
His writing style has been described as “realist” or “phenomenological” (in the Heideggerian sense) or “a theory of pure surface.” Methodical, geometric, and often repetitive descriptions of objects replace (though often reveal) the psychology and interiority of the character. The reader must slowly piece together the story and the emotional experience of jealousy, for example, in the repetition of descriptions, the attention to odd details, and the breaks in repetitions, a method that resembles the experience of psychoanalysis in which the deeper unconscious meanings are contained in the flow and disruptions of free associations. Timelines and plots are fractured, and the resulting novel resembles the literary equivalent of a cubist painting. Yet his work is ultimately characterized by its ability to mean many things to many different people.
And I think an IF that does this would be very interesting.
Draconis
(Daniel Stelzer)
September 13, 2014, 2:34pm
3
@MTW : fabula is Latin for “narrative”, borrowed into English to describe the ideas used to build a story.
@Anders : I would say it depends on the genre. Works with more fantastic settings tend to have more diverse room descriptions (“Adventure” being the ur-example here, with all sorts of environments mashed together without rhyme or reason), whereas those set in more realistic environments tend to be more repetitive (as in real life there often isn’t much to distinguish one generic hallway from another).
MTW
(Marshal Tenner Winter)
September 13, 2014, 2:41pm
4
Thanks! My favorite dictionary site didn’t help.
MTW:
Anders:
…is an interactive fabulist’s most useful talent and most common nightmare.
But seriously, how many “rooms” can you describe before your interactive fabula starts resembling a Robbe-Grillet novel?
Ok. No idea what a “fabula” is, but I looked up Alain Robbe-Grillet and found this:
His writing style has been described as “realist” or “phenomenological” (in the Heideggerian sense) or “a theory of pure surface.” Methodical, geometric, and often repetitive descriptions of objects replace (though often reveal) the psychology and interiority of the character. The reader must slowly piece together the story and the emotional experience of jealousy, for example, in the repetition of descriptions, the attention to odd details, and the breaks in repetitions, a method that resembles the experience of psychoanalysis in which the deeper unconscious meanings are contained in the flow and disruptions of free associations. Timelines and plots are fractured, and the resulting novel resembles the literary equivalent of a cubist painting. Yet his work is ultimately characterized by its ability to mean many things to many different people.
And I think an IF that does this would be very interesting.
The House at the End of Rosewood Street kind of made me feel like this.
zarf
(Andrew Plotkin)
September 13, 2014, 11:45pm
7
Ideally, every room has a reason to exist in the game, and the reasons provide enough distinctiveness to keep them clear in the player’s mind. This is equally true for large and small games. …Ideally.
Luthien
(Lúthien)
September 13, 2014, 11:50pm
8
This http://planetpudlo.wordpress.com/2014/08/21/some-reviews/ is the only reference to “interactive fabula” I was able to find that has anything to do with interactive fiction. So no, it’s not a common phrase.