Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: neilg@fraser.sfu.ca (Neil K. Guy)
Subject: First Person adventure games?
Message-ID: <neilg.753649969@sfu.ca>
Sender: news@sfu.ca
Organization: Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C., Canada
Date: Thu, 18 Nov 1993 19:12:49 GMT
Lines: 42

 Hi!

 Anyone out there with opinions on having the text descriptions in
text adventures being in the first person instead of the traditional
second person? I was thinking of the normal text adventure dissonance
between issuing commands to the computer, which responds with what you
can see and such. So instead of:

>north
Large Chamber
You stand within the echoing darkness of a huge chamber. The high
ceiling is barely visible in the gloom, and you can hear the sound of
your bare feet slapping cold marble.

 you might get:

>north
Large Chamber
I'm standing within the echoing darkness of a huge chamber. I can
barely see the high ceiling through the gloom, and I can hear the
sound of my bare feet slapping cold marble.

 You'd thus be commanding this sort of roving presence in the game,
who reports back what he or she sees. The character could be
completely obedient or maybe partly autonomous. It could talk back,
for instance:

>down
There's no damn way I'm jumping into that pit of molten lava, buddy!

 Does anyone have any comments on this idea? I think it's interesting
and certainly makes a change from the traditional text IF style,
although I don't know if it would really fit the game I'm working on.
It would also solve that kind of weird dissonance between issuing
commands in the imperative and having responses in the second person.
Here you're just ordering the computer about! I suppose the second-
person thing really came from the original Adventure, which in turn
was influenced by role-playing games, wasn't it? The model of having
the game master or DM or whoever describe to the player what's up.
It's traditional but doesn't *have* to be like that.

 - Neil K. (n_k_guy@sfu.ca)
