Game Playing and World Building

What is this? Two reviews in one night? Blame my schedule. I blame it for everything, including, long story short, the two pounds of pasta with alfredo sauce in the fridge.

Below the cut: A review of The Blind House, by Maude Overton. Plot definitely discussed.
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The 12:54 to Asgard, by J Robinson Wheeler.

Today's Digression is on Trains:
There was, and there was not, and only secret government files know, but once there was a girl who took the train to work. One day, she got to the train, and two of the train cars had been gutted entirely; one was taken up by a strange magical box, and the other had nine soulless guards standing at pedestals. Then, given that the guards had removed many of the seats, the citizens crammed onto two cars where there used to be four, and arrived at work disgruntled.

And the men and women who took the 7:45 train starting taking other trains, because they were only implementing this on one set of cars, in hopes of implementing it on others, because apparently finding out if someone has a bomb while they're already on a train is logical in the Kingdom's infinite celestial wisdom. One day, the magic box, which detected sandwiches, and the guards, who didn't do much of anything, disappeared, like nothing had ever happened. The End.

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Game: Under, in Erebus, by Brian Rapp

This is the time of year I wish the comp wasn't in October. October is a busy month for me, and it's my first year back in school - in an accelerated program, at that - so I'm burning out a bit. I feel determined, though, and I'm on a roll. This next one isn't a long review, so no more preamble.

NB: Puzzle discussion unavoidable.
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Today's review, a bit delayed, is for Rogue of the Multiverse, by C.E.J. Pacian.

Today's digression has nothing to do with the game itself, but an observation I'm going to make instead: I haven't read one other review of any games yet. It's not that I don't want to, it's just that I don't like to read them before I've played them, of course, and I've been playing in drips and drabs. Today's game I finished two days ago, but I had a clinical shift over the weekend and a test this morning and....well, that's why I'm in the library now sounding productive, with all this typing, and actually writing up my review now. Starting Halloween weekend I get my weekend back at the expense of part of my week, so we'll see if that becomes more or less productive for the last 2-3 weeks that judging is still open.

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Of note, I did do a randomly generated list and so there won't be any order to these. I'm also going to try to be less quantitative and more qualitative in the written reviews this year. Near the end of both years last year I looked at my spreadsheet of scores and kept considering how much relativistic merit I wanted to use to twitch the scores - it's hard to say if, given a year's worth of games, any particular one tends to be more of a 5 or a 6. I acknowledge the possibilities of no 10s or 1s, and I'm not going to curve, per se, but in the intermediate games, I think reflection does help score it. Memorability is something to be assessed at least a few days later.

Okay, enough cut-tag fodder.

NB: I will definitely give away plot, but I will try not to give away puzzles. I'll say if I have to.

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Last Year's Scoring Schema turned out to be too complicated. I'll see if I can work out a new one. I was proud of myself for almost finishing all the games in 2008, kind of embarrassed about 2009, and this year?

This year I'm back in school full time. More than full time. In fact, I'm supposed to be up at 0530 tomorrow and it's 0030 now. I got about four hours last night. So I honestly do not know if I'll be able to pull this off BUT I am willing to try to schedule 2 hours to do this, five days a week. If I could figure out how to do this and jog at the same time, that would be a real accomplishment.

25 games this year = 50 max hours. It won't be 50 - some game will be 10 minutes, I'm certain of it; there's always a large proportion that are only around one hour. Perhaps I'll keep track of duration this year. (I still hold that FOR COMP, a two hour game is the max enjoyable one, especially this year for myself.)

Let's think about the schema for a moment.
1. Workability/technical acceptability is still something to be considered. 0, 1, 2 is all it should be: doesn't work, sort-of works, and works fine. That's all. .exes are going to get 1, because I just don't see the point.
2. That Writing scale should be simplified. An 11 point scale? What the hell was I thinking?
3. Special Issues in IF is something that should be considered - but on an individual basis. It's rare enough. Decoupling it from the writing means it could be conceptual or using the media differently. In a new schema, I'll put this below the writing/puzzles, being the meat/potato of IF; this is 'in addition' more than a required part.
4. Puzzles, again, should be considered separately. It's still not enough to win on puzzles alone.
5. Individual game adjustment points. This is where my opinion counts, although not for more than a point or two either way.

Last year I did this gigantic mathy spreadsheet thing, and then I realized I had to add one to almost all the games to get the scores to 'fit' better. Tomorrow I have a 12 hour shift. Tomorrow is not going to be day 1. Maybe tomorrow night I'll manage a schema and set up the spreadsheet. So I'm thinking first review hopefully Sunday morning.

Necronomicon - Parody and Prop.

The Necronomicon is a perfect example of how a few details can lead to an extremely useful plot device. The few details are that we know who wrote it and when (A. Alhazred, 8th c CE), and some history of the physical book. It is precisely because so few of the details are described that later authors, as well as contemporary ones, could ascribe almost anything to the text. It does have the potential to act as a deus ex machina by containing anything that would be useful to the plot, and its lack of specificity, as well as its suggestive and pronouncable name, compared to other fictional tomes his writing circle created, has arguably led to its becoming anemic. Everyone seems to be able to get their hands on a translation, both in stories, and, thanks to various occult publishers, in real life. The horror and Otherness is diminished by access.

I read 'The Festival' at lunch, as the compilation I grabbed this morning was missing 'Nyarlathotep.' Both stories mention sound. (A quick survey of 'At the Mountains of Madness' failed to reveal many references.) There appear to be two types of sound in Lovecraft's writing - sounds that portent madness or the great foreign Otherness, and a lack of sound that illustrates solitude.

The solitary scenes are emphasized by their lack of sound, and nearly always, 'deserted streets', or the lack of lights in windows. These serve to show isolation of the body. Sound then pierces the still air, which is effective in modern films and only slightly less so when the atmosphere has been built up to be quiet and alone. As most reading is also done in quiet places, this can be compounded within those persons who have the ability to have a strong focus on his or her task. (Strong focus, incidentally, is correlated with the ease by which a person may be hypnotized.) The sound is rarely the sound of crowds or of another human person breaking the spell of quiet, or solitude. The sound serves to transport the narrator over the lintel of silence into the Other, as it is an unidentifiable, horrible sound.

Flippant remark: I think Lovecraft would hate my favorite falafel place.

I haven't done Day 2 yet, since I've been cleaning my apartment, and right now I'm out of state at a friend's house. This is a trip - to Massachusetts, actually, which is fitting for a Lovecraft project - that I make every six months. I also rarely drive my car, so each of these trips is preceded by an oil change.

An older man asked me if I was making a sweater. I wasn't very far along, so that's understandable. I told him a lie. I did not admit I was making a creepy, woolen tentacle.

VNS Day 2
300 words or less on the connection between Lovecraft’s personal biases and the Otherness of his mythos.

To continue the ideas laid out previously, I propose that the two sides in many of Lovecraft’s stories consist of what is perceived to be quantitative, clinical and scientific human perspective in opposition to an insular, secretive, cryptic ‘other.’ This other can take the form of the limitless void; the depths of space, or the abyssal depths; it can also be sensed, by someone of Lovecraft’s time and inclinations, to be present in the ethnic enclaves of cities, of insular small towns such as in ‘The Rats in the Walls,’ or, to take it to an extreme, in non-Anglo cultures of any type.

It could also be argued that the perception - especially by someone in an anxious state - that oneself can be understood but cannot understand, due to language barriers or other cultural states that foster an ‘other’ identiy for the purposes of cultural cohesion - can create a sort of paranoia. Knowing in part consists of being able to quantify; anything innumerable or being perceived to be so - the rats, in this story, but consider anti-immigrant statements that speculate on either women who never leave the house or the number of people sharing housing. Lack of cultural knowledge further creates barriers to knowing, or to community, creating an ‘other’ not out in space, but on the other side of town.