Any interest in text adventuring, interactively fictional event?

[BigEd]

Just wondering, are there enough people interested in text adventures or interactive fiction to join in on some kind of regular get-together or challenge?

Could be anything on a scale from a fortnightly challenge to an on-forum collaborative play-through to an online session for playing or reviewing such things. Or something else. Ideas welcome.

Playing some of the lesser-known, or recently-found, or even recently-finished or works-in-progress might be of interest.

Picking something at random from everyone's top three choices might be another way to go.

If it were a forum thing there would need to a lot of rot13 going on.

(I'm posting this because I think there could be a quorum - I'd be happy to chair it or not to chair it, but would probably only join in the play if it was in some way collaborative. I don't quite have the discipline to solve anything myself.)

[tricky]

I used to enjoy playing with a friend, both day at the same Beeb.

How do/did others enjoy their adventures?

I don't play them anymore, but would certainly nose around if there was an adventure corner at a physical ABUG but probably not spend a whole evening watching.

[gfoot]

I enjoyed Twin Kingdom Valley but didn't play much else - even just something like a "book club" (or the High Score Challenge) where everyone spends a week or so all playing the same game, could be fun, then somehow sharing the highs and lows afterwards. Or something more elaborate, but I'm not sure what that would be!

[baz4096]

I haven't played through a text adventure since I was a kid. I'd be interested in trying the book club style individual approach, and perhaps a collective/cooperative play through either over on Discord or in a thread here. I tried a few Spectrum adventures when I was very young, but never had chance to try any on the Acorn platforms. Open to recommendations!

[BigEd]

I had a go back in the day with Philosopher's Quest, and also I think Snowball. Or was it Countdown to Doom? And I've seen one or other version of the original Adventure aka Colossal Adventure. But I've never, I think, finished a game.

There is the question of time, and investment of time:

Time and getting bogged down in a game are likely issues... For example...

I solved Moonbase Escape version 1 in about 4 hours, but didn't get the full score.

I wonder if some kind of hybrid could work: a pair of people working together to start a particular game, talking through what they are thinking, commentary in a comment stream from anyone watching, then after half an hour or so adjourn, allow everyone to have a go at continuing over the next week, and hear back from everyone the following week (or the next meeting, if that's perhaps 3 weeks away.) And a stardot thread to allow sharing of progress and obstacles and hints?

[Sophira]

I've been meaning to post in this thread for a while - sorry for the delay!

I think an online get-together for text adventuring is a great idea, personally. I'm not particularly great at text adventures myself.

I'm not good at organising though - in fact I'm terrible at it! I'm not sure I would be able to come up with many ideas, though when this was talked about in the Discord server, there were a few ideas floated around:

1. The first was for some kind of Zoom meeting with screen sharing. Personally, I don't use Zoom and would prefer using either Jitsi Meet (which is easier to use as I understand it, doesn't have any time limits, and you don't need to register for an account), or Discord's own voice/video chat. I think I'd prefer Discord because the default there is to not use webcams and I'd prefer to not use webcams in this case.

2. The second was that different people could take different roles - one person might maintain a map, another might share a BeebEm screen with the adventure on, and everyone else can watch and share ideas/hints/etc. I personally think this could be quite neat.

What does everyone else think?

[baz4096]

I like the idea of a "live" play through of these kind of games - and like Sophira, whilst I enjoy them, I'm not very good at them. Perhaps a collective approach would allow me to finally complete one... Platform doesn't bother me so much, I'm OK with all three Sophira proposed, however time is the limiting factor for me. The online ABUG meetings cover two out of three weeks, perhaps we could mesh with these and schedule a three-weekly online event?

[BigEd]

I'm thinking it only takes two or three people to give this a go and see what happens - pick an evening, or a weekend afternoon, and get onto jitsi!

Might be an idea to pick a specific game - or at least air your shortlists.

[8bitAG]

There is a whole section on this very forum dedicated to playing and writing text adventures... including several threads where people have been collaborating on games in the past. Plenty of people are out there still interested... They just don't really make the best subjects for videos. Because of the very stop-start, slow nature of playing them they work much better in blogs or in forum discussions.

For example, this isn't BBC-specific, but Jason Dyer is playing through "All the Adventures" as part of a blogging project. He's currently on a game called Ferret which has never been completed (iirc) and so his readers and the wider community are solving it together...
https://bluerenga.blog/tag/ferret/?order=ASC

(Jason's blog is superb, btw, and he has covered some Acorn adventures in the past, with many more to come as he progresses through the years.)

Many of the text adventures on here also collaborate on the CASA project at http://solutionarchive.com - which is a huge repository of maps, solutions, screenshots and game information for almost 10,000 text adventures.

[BigEd]

Ahem, oh yes, so there is!
8-bit acorn software: classic adventure games

(I'm not very aware of the forum structure here - I just read a lot of what's new.)

[KenLowe]

And there is also the excellent port of the Ozmoo z3 / z5 interpreter by SteveF, so we can now play the classic Infocom adventures on our humble beebs:

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=19975

[leenew]

May I humbly recommend my "The SIGMA Experiment"
Adventure?
5 short parts in the style of the classic Brian Howarth/Scott Adams adventures.
I think it would suit this "book club" setup perfectly!
Written to be fun...

https://bbcmicro.co.uk/game.php?id=3472
Lee

[8bitAG]

Ahem, oh yes, so there is!
8-bit acorn software: classic adventure games

(I'm not very aware of the forum structure here - I just read a lot of what's new.)

There's also another section for brand new adventures...
viewforum.php?f=65

...which the authors will always appreciate people giving a go.

[BigEd]

Over on discord, Baz has helpfully linked to
Absolute best adventures?

It did initially look like
Micro Adventure (aka Micro Puzzle)
might be the first candidate.

It would be nice to see local and recent games given a go, or even a play-test, and it's up to the people who convene to decide how they want to decide. The high score challenge works, I think, by collecting nominations and then making a random pick. If there's to be a long running series of sessions, it will eventually get around to everyone's favourite.

What I'd recommend is that the two or three people most instrumental and keen should pick a slot, announce it as a new thread, and see what happens - the format, whatever it is, can evolve, and the attendees will probably come and go from a pool of interested people.

[fuzzel]

I recommend Lee's Sigma Experiment. I've been playing for about half an hour, have solved a few puzzles and with much trepidation am about to go through the portal. Unfortunately, I appear to have very small hands so won't be carrying much through with me...

[leenew]

I recommend Lee's Sigma Experiment. I've been playing for about half an hour, have solved a few puzzles and with much trepidation am about to go through the portal. Unfortunately, I appear to have very small hands so won't be carrying much through with me...

Fuzzel? FUZZEL!!
Did you make it through?

[fuzzel]

I recommend Lee's Sigma Experiment. I've been playing for about half an hour, have solved a few puzzles and with much trepidation am about to go through the portal. Unfortunately, I appear to have very small hands so won't be carrying much through with me...

Fuzzel? FUZZEL!!
Did you make it through?

Indeed I did. However. There's just the small matter of a security guard who's a little bit taller and a good deal wider than me. I spent yesterday evening waiting patiently for Zelliger to show up but she didn't. Obviously things DIDN'T go according to plan...
Jolly good fun to be had here, so now I'm doing a serious bit of pondering over my next move. Don't need clues though, inspiration will come eventually.
EDIT - not sure why I'm assuming Zelliger is female, maybe the name sounds a bit like a certain actress called Renee.
EDIT2 - got past the guard.

[leenew]

I was just going to make a joke that contained a little clue, but I won't

[fuzzel]

I think I'm pretty close to the end now. That McDuff gets a raw deal in this game doesn't he? There's an alien creature who needs dealing with and I have several unused objects but I'm stumped. I think I'll write my email to Idesine about suggestions for the 2023 edition whilst I figure out my next move.

[leenew]

You can do it!
By the end (of part 5) you will feel like the Bruce-Willis-In-Die-Hard of adventuring

Lee

[fuzzel]

I hope by that you don't mean the affliction from which he's now suffering. My head is hurting already and I'm only 20% of the way through.

[leenew]

No, bless him. I mean you will feel like John McClane...