Tag Archives: Second Person

Blow your own

Posted by under game design

The nominations for this year’s Origins Awards are out. Once again the system’s been changed: this year, instead of nominees, there are ‘semi-finalists’, ten to a category.

Gratifyingly, in the non-fiction publication group I have pieces in three of the semi-finalists: 40 Years of Gen Con (Atlas Games); Hobby Games: the 100 Best (Green Ronin); and Second Person: Role-Playing and Story in Games and Playable Media (the MIT Press).

I know this is a very self-aggrandising post, but now Humphrey Lyttelton’s dead there’s a shortage of good trumpet-blowers around.

Second Life for Second Person

Posted by under game design, narrative

A couple of years back I wrote an essay on games that create a story as part of the gameplay, which was published as part of the excellent collection Second Person: Role-Playing and Story in Games and Playable Media (ed. Pat Harrigan and Noah Wardrip-Fruin, MIT Press, 2007) which I have huckstered here before. The contents of the book are slowly migrating online (didn’t like the weather in the real world is my guess) and my piece has just gone live. You can read it here.

I’ll warn you now that much of it was written in a small hotel on Skye that turned out to be run by a man who had taught me history some twenty years earlier, sitting in the lounge after a tour of the Tallisker whisky distillery earlier in the day, in a tearing hurry to (a) meet the deadline and (b) to find somewhere with internet access that would let me plug a USB stick into their machine. It turns out the Scots aren’t big on giving foreigners access to their ports, not since they learned their lesson in 1072.

Nevertheless I think the piece holds up, and raises some interesting points about a neglected area of game design. I believe there’s a way to make comments on the MIT site though I couldn’t find it; have a poke around and if you can’t locate it then do come back here and we’ll chat in the comments.

Award of Court

Posted by under munchausen, narrative

I bang on about awards perhaps too much on this blog, but it’s not often I’m up for one. Or at least the excellent Second Person (ed. Harrigan and Wardrip-Fruin, MIT Press 2007), a book to which I contributed two pieces, is up for the Best Book gong in the Game Developer Frontline awards.

As the name suggests these are awarded by Game Developer magazine, and are a real set of industry shout-outs. No ‘Game of the Year’ here: instead the six categories are Engine, Book, Middleware, Programming/Production, Art and Audio. This means the people voting on the awards will be professionals who actually know something about the field, not the usual crew of twelve-year-olds who really like Halo and don’t see why it’s not eligible for best puzzle game, or the usual crew of industry old hands who really like their EA pensions and don’t see why EA isn’t eligible for best newcomer. In short, it’s an award that means something.

Meanwhile, if you’re looking for a Christmas present for a gaming mate who thinks hard about games and tends towards narrativism rather than ludology, you could do a lot worse than Second Person. And no, I’m not getting any royalties.

Second Person singular

Posted by under narrative

It’s official: I’ve had an RPG published by MIT Press.

My author copy of Second Person: Role-Playing and Story in Games and Playable Media (ed. Pat Harrigan and Noah Wardrip-Fruin) arrived today, and it’s a goodie. Four hundred pages of essays and discussions on all aspects of interactive narrative, story-telling and character in games and games design, written by a veritable B to Z of industry notables, from Ian Bogost to Eric Zimmerman.

Cover of Second Person from MIT

In between there’s the likes of George R. R. Martin, Kim Newman, Jordan Mechner, Chris Crawford and Steve Meretzky—and old muckers of mine like Greg Costikyan, John Tynes, Jonathan Tweet, Ken Hite and Rebecca Borgstrom. (In fact, harking back to the last post, there’s two Diana Jones winners in here, and five members of the DJA committee. Go us.)

I have two pieces in Second Person: a paper on a design methodology for games that create stories as part of their gameplay (e.g. Dark Cults, Once Upon a Time, The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen), and an abridged but playable reprint of the latter game. In fact there’s three RPGs in the book: Greg Costikyan’s Bestial Acts is also included, alongside John Tynes’ Puppetland which I had the honour of publishing as a New Style game, back in the Hogshead days. In fact John, Greg and I wrote the first three of the five New Style games. Excuse me if I grin like a Cheshire cat.

Before I saw the book I was a little afraid that its tone would be as dry as First Person (MIT, 2004) which is hard work for those of us who’ve been out of academia for twenty years, and that my piece would make me look like a yokel as a result. I’ve only dipped and skimmed so far, but it all looks accessible for those of us who don’t speak fluent academe, and with really meaty thought-provoking content. I seem to have more pages overall than anyone else in the book—it’s not just Munchausen‘s fault, my paper is one of the longest too—and I’m not yet convinced that I’ve avoided yokel status. But Second Person will still be taking pride of place on my Shelf of Smug for some time to come.

Second Person is probably the definitive work on the development and state of the art in narratology (plus some guff about games that make stories). If you take games seriously then you should at least check out the book’s website which… uh, doesn’t seem to be up yet. Okay, then you should definitely drop $40 on this handsome 400-page hardback. Amazon.co.uk has it for £20.50.

(List of contributors here; introduction as downloadable PDF here.)

So what have you been working on, James?

Posted by under roleplaying games, Spaaace

I’ve been working on quite a lot, thanks for asking.

My current major project is publicity for the forthcoming Crime Scene game for the Office of Criminal Justice Reform. I designed the game last year, and it’s due to go live in early March. Right now I am writing five blogs for five in-game characters, which interweave to create an ongoing narrative that sets up the game’s back-story. The blogs are here,
here,
here,
here
and here.

I’m working on a revised edition of my game The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen (Hogshead, 1998) as well as Dragon Warriors (Dave Morris/Oliver Johnson; Corgi, 1986), and the first edition of my much-delayed D&D-parody Frup, originally due to be released in 1995, for my new imprint Magnum Opus Press.

Those unable to wait for the revised, expanded Munchausen can find the original game reprinted in Second Person (MIT Press, 2007), along with a paper by me on story-making games, and much more good stuff on the subject of roleplay and storytelling in games.

Plus some stuff I can’t talk about yet.