Sorry, palladmial, I wasn’t trying to talk over you. Any help would be appreciated on this.
Okay, I guess I’m going a little bloodthirsty. My contribution will be horror / high fantasy. Here’s a first draft that I wrote pretty fast, so it’s not exactly great, but I think it sets the stage.
Note: This is just a draft, I don’t want this added to the source – just wanted to show where I’m going by showing the first draft of the intro.
[spoiler][The player picks up a coin in the forest. Each turn, the world it comes from begins to seep into the forest. If the player drops the coin, the forest is returned to the state it was in before.]
You hold the coin in your hands and turn it over. The silver surface of it glows beneath the sunlight. Then you notice the dried patch of blood on it. The blood flakes off in your hand as you hold the coin.
On the coin is the head of a regal looking man, gazing upward with eyes eternally open. As you gaze at the face, the wind picks up around you, growing suddenly chill. You imagine whispers beneath its howling cadence, whispered words spoken in a language foreign to anything you’ve ever heard. The wind moans, and then suddenly whips into savage fury, whipping at your body and beating against your ear drums with its sudden rage.
Your breath is taken by the furious assault, and you shake from the cold. Yet, you can’t take your eyes off the coin. The eyes of the man impressed on it rolls toward you, and the mouth gapes open, seeming to give the savage wind voice. As you watch, the dried stain of blood grows wet and sticky beneath your fingers, dripping from the neck of the visage on the coin.
The wind slams into you with greater fury, almost lifting you from your feet. You stumble to your hands and knees, hands in the grass that was green a moment before, but is now brown and dead. Yet your fingers, now slick with blood, are glued to the coin.
“Treachery…”
The word is whispered on the wind, which grows steadily calmer. You look up and see a dark silhouette standing above you.
“Traveler, I have sent this coin, stained with my blood, across planes of existence, and eons of time. It came to you, not by luck, but by fate.” The voice speaks with the same foreign tongue that you heard moments before, but somehow, the words reach you.
[i]"My kingdom was a beacon, standing before the growing darkness. It fell, due to the machinations of greed, the thirst for power. My trust made me blind, now my eyes never close.
Please… help us. Find the one who slew me. Save my son, for he will die if you do not act. And if he dies, the doom of my kingdom is sealed, and one more candle before the dark winks out."[/i]
As the spirit speaks, dark clouds form in the sky above. The shadows in the forest lengthen, and the smell of putrefaction reaches you. You catch glimpses of loping movement in the forest, bestial forms, alien to anything you’ve ever seen on earth. The trees creak in the chill wind, the lush green now gone, their branches now skeletal claws that reach toward the darkening sky.
[i]"If you do not have the courage, drop the coin. Another traveler may come. I cannot lose hope. I wait in darkness, the chill of the dagger’s bite still burning across my throat. This anguish feeds my will. I’ve waited for what seems like eternity. I can wait until this world dies, and then I will move to another, seeking a champion.
However, if you do have the courage, then close your eyes. When you open them again, you will not be in your world, but in mine."[/i][/spoiler]
Very nice intro!
This is actually a good Idea. Lets go with it.
Lets try to end it by around the first of the year. However, I am going to keep it up so if someone later decides to change it, they still can. Any problems with that.
Excellent! Thanks. I’ll post a story file soon, maybe get some of the game play done this weekend.
This would be nice, but this is the Holidays and people are busy. I would like to see 2-3 more stories added to this, I would love to see more. And, I could go for more game play length with this idea – 1/2 hour might be too sparse. So, I guess we’ll see who else signs up, and if people get done on time. The deadline doesn’t matter, it’s a nice goal to shoot for.
I’ll commit to helping hurry this along, but to anyone out there in IF land, if you want to join this project and can get things done quick, sign up! (If you want to just join the project, sign up, too. No pressure.)
One more suggestion – no matter what deadline we go with, once the story is tied up, and everyone agrees its done, its done and released. You could always do another one of these later, get different authors, continue the plot or not, make it a sequel or not. I don’t think this should be ongoing once the plot is tied up. I’d keep this story tight.
I can’t keep my mouth shut. Okay, I know the point of this was to have no rules, but I would add one: the story can’t be based on or contain copyrighted material, just like any comp. I don’t care if there’s complete parodies or slapstick along with eldritch horror, but I really don’t want to see eldritch horror alongside Dragonball Z fan fiction. We have to keep this somewhat on the rails.
No worries. My idea was mainly if there was going to be one story, one world, then I would try not to add anything big, just clean up what everyone else has. But having multiple stories linked by an overall something, seems like a very interesting idea.
On the other hand, I also had an idea of my own for the New Year’s minicomp, so I want to spend most of my time on that. There was a mention of getting this game into the minicomp, wasn’t there?
Maybe I won’t spend so much time on this, unless I really run out of time. But I still want to contribute something early on. I guess I could be responsible and say, “Sorry, I can’t make commitments,” but egh. I’m already too excited about this; experiments like this don’t happen very often.
We don’t have to put this into any comp. This might actually pose a problem if we miss the minicomp deadline – if this game snowballs into something really great, and people want to put it into Spring Thing or IF Comp, for example, there’s the danger of competing against yourself in the comp, which I don’t like.
So, I think the intent would be to create a sort of short story collection by the IF community, with no time frame, that could be played as it goes on. For example, there’s early access games on Steam that are unfinished, but can be purchased and played. As long as the game compiles (and Masema is the editor of the collection) then we could have an ongoing game that could be downloaded and played.
One question for IF veterans or anyone who knows: if we do have a game that is constantly growing, would a save file from a previous version work with the new one, if there’s new game states, areas, functions, etc? I wouldn’t want to start over each time if we do release this to the public as an ongoing thing until its done.
Yes, that was the original intent.
I could probably fake something. It shouldn’t be too hard.
Okay, let’s roll with that. The game will be in a constant release state, with updates and versions for successful compiles. I would like to see an eventual end to the story, but maybe this will take off, and people won’t want it to end, like an ongoing series. This means everyone works at their own pace, and we can see how this can grow. I think this is the perfect blend of complete artistic freedom and collaboration. I really want to see where this goes.
One more thing, though – do you agree with the copyright rule? And if so, can you add that as the one rule into the ‘rules’ for the source text? If we have a ton of authors putting in some great stories, having fan fiction thrown in would be too much cognitive dissonance.
One aside to this: If someone wants to mention Zork, or put references or easter eggs from the old Infocom stories into their game, I’d say this would be fine. But anything that could get the game pulled at a later date, like using Dr. Who, or anime, or whatever, might be an issue.
Two more things. I think we’re going to need a new thread because I’ve cluttered this one up.
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Can I add RPG elements? This could be carried on to other stories.
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If people want to submit stories and don’t know I7 or want to learn it, then I’ll offer some programming time to get those stories into the world. So – Twine authors – if you want to be a part of this, come up with stories.
I never said what you could do. I only said what you cannot. And I’ll help combine the different versions into one.
Let’s make the rules here:
- No deleting other peoples contributions.
- Mark your contributions in Your OWN section.
- NO FAN FICTION. [size=150]I[/size] will delete any fan fiction I find.
- References to other works are allowed, as are parodies and satire, but no plagiarism.
Works for me! 
I am going to move those into the first post. That should be easy enough.
The rules sound good to me. Time to start writing!
Yeah! I’ve got a few things I’m definitely going to add, if it helps anyone:
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Magic, powers, etc. These could be carried over into other stories, or disabled. I’ll add all of the powers at the beginning of my file, with instructions on how to use them in your own, or disable them. These have to be unlocked through my story, though, and won’t work unless you get them there. Some magic won’t work in other dimensions, though, and will be particular to this one. Some will carry over, and this will be another toggle in the power.
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Limbs and a limb damage / vitality system.
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(Not yet) Some sort of combat system, but I think I’m going to focus on puzzles and magic to solve problems, rather than combat. The combat I’m going to have is going to be more puzzle-orientated. (I’m focusing on a combat system for Spring Thing, heavily, and have a lot to iron out. I may carry some basic things over.)