{"id":797,"date":"2011-03-07T19:04:38","date_gmt":"2011-03-08T00:04:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/joltcountry.com\/?p=797"},"modified":"2011-03-07T19:04:38","modified_gmt":"2011-03-08T00:04:38","slug":"the-if-theory-reader","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.joltcountry.com\/index.php\/features\/the-if-theory-reader","title":{"rendered":"The IF Theory Reader"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m trying to backfill a little bit, having been away from a computer for much of last week, trying to help orchestrate the revival of the Old Man Murray Wikipedia page from a cruddy mobile phone. One such event that happened to me was the release of the IF Theory Reader<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Edited by Kevin Jackson-Mead and J. Robinson Wheeler, the IF Theory book contains over 400 pages<\/i> of articles on the art and theory of making games in text. I wrote a piece on NPC (Non-Player Character) Dialogue. Here’s how my piece starts:<\/p>\n

The very first time I recall being completely smitten by NPC dialogue, I was a kid playing “Spellcasting 101: Sorcerers Get All The Girls.” The game depicted a group of role-playing college students engaged in a round of ‘Malls n’ Muggers.’ I had plenty of things I could do in the game at that point – classes to attend, spells to find, co-eds to maybe seduce once my parents had gone to bed and it wouldn’t be quite so weird – but I had my player character stay put in the dorm and just listen to this group of NPCs play a game with each other. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I wrote whoever I could find on my phone when the news dropped earlier this week, but I already received a comment, which I’ll post here, because the comment was in a private e-mail, and 2011 is all about transparency<\/i>. In between rounds of driving my dear friends away from my bulletin board<\/a>, Benjamin “Pinback” Parrish had this to say about non-player characters:<\/p>\n

The best NPCs I ever saw were in Infocom’s “Cutthroats”. Not because they had great dialogue, but because they would talk to you, and then tell you to meet them somewhere at a certain time, and then leave<\/i>, and then go do other things<\/i>, and then meet you on time<\/i>, but not a minute before. At that point, I’ll listen to what they have to say.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I have never played “Cutthroats,” never even started it. I have a boxed copy I bought from eBay years ago on a stand downstairs with some other games. I dated a girl who was a cutter many years ago, playing that game together probably would have saved the relationship. That and a spork.<\/p>\n

Er, anyway, you can check the entire IF Theory Reader out as a PDF here<\/a>, or buy a printed hardcopy. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m trying to backfill a little bit, having been away from a computer for much of last week, trying to help orchestrate the revival of the Old Man Murray Wikipedia page from a cruddy mobile phone. One such event that … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[341,342,343,340,8,344],"class_list":["post-797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interactive-fiction","tag-apologizing-to-flack","tag-cutthroats","tag-ebay","tag-if-theory-reader","tag-infocom","tag-spellcasting-101"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joltcountry.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joltcountry.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joltcountry.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joltcountry.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joltcountry.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=797"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.joltcountry.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/797\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":798,"href":"https:\/\/www.joltcountry.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/797\/revisions\/798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joltcountry.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joltcountry.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joltcountry.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}