intfiction.org

At PAX East this past weekend, there were several demonstrations of a game (or perhaps more accurately a game system) called Parsely. It is essentially, as the thread title says, a kind of text adventure with a human parser. The person running the game has a sheet with a map and information about what is in each room, how various things work, the consequences of various actions -- basically, the game code. The players give commands, and the game-runner interprets them based on the given information and expands on that as they see fit. I'm not sure I'm explaining this very well, but it was a really interesting combination of standard IF conventions and the kind of flexibility that a typical machine parser can never quite achieve.

I attended all the demonstrations and was sufficiently charmed by them that I picked up a couple of Parsely modules, and I'd love to try running them with a bunch of players who are familiar with the conventions of the medium. I was thinking of maybe doing it on the MUD, sort of Club Floyd style but without the need for Floyd himself (and at a different time, of course). What do you guys think? Is anyone interested?

if CET isn't a problem: i'd be interested.

Like Dungeons and Dragons, you mean? Just less focused on stats and combat?

Parseley with a small group would basically be Text Adventure: The RPG, yes. Single PC controlled by many players, IF-like conventions about things like maps and inventory, and you have to give simple, parser-like commands to the GM.

I took part in Parseley at PAX East 2010, and was pretty mixed about it. I think the essential format has the potential to be pretty cool; I'm just not very interested in the sorts of games that have been made with it.

For the interested I found this (free) PDF of Deathtrap Dungeon in what I believe is a parsely-style format: http://www.scribd.com/doc/41057924/Deathtrap-Dungeon.

I found it here.