The Event: A Collaborative Community Experiment

Game Development Writing and Content
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Mini Premise: I spectacularly suck at commitment. Relationships with partners, TV series, Novels and writing content all fall into the same category when I’m concerned - Forever Unfinished.

So, my beautiful brainwaves did thing: How about I write slices of lives centered around a story without having to commit to the actual story. Y’know, Janet preparing her toddler’s lunch when she hears about the story on the radio; Todd overhearing the story as he rushes past the water-cooler at the office because he was late for that all-important interview; Silent and Sorrow, the high-class, baddass, fatal female assassins casually bringing it up in conversation over lunch at a cafe ("… and he said something about what happened last week - did you hear about that?" “Oh yeah, wrote home to Momma about it. She’s worried for me, but I think I’ll be okay.”)

How far can I push it? How much interest about the unnamed, vague event can I generate? Probably at least some, I figure.

Actual Premise: My brain said, “Hey, you know, other authors might like to experiment as well. Maybe we can give them an opportunity to try this with us, and together we can make a big shebang about nothing in particular.”

So, how do you feel about writing a CS scene exploring the lives of those who might be affected by unnamed, vague event? I imagine most Stephen King short stories start out that way, and, I dunno, might be interesting. Collating different ideas, styles and tones of different authors would do well to show how far- (or near-)reaching the effects of the event may be, and how it might influence different cultures, genres, worlds…

And CS, in particular, might offer a unique opportunity to explore how the reader feels about their character’s livelihood, how quickly they attach to the grand narrative.

Worth giving it a go?

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Dude this sounds like itd be pretty awesome. So what’s your premise? Every chapter is told thru a different POV like how WWZ is?

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Yes. While I’m not familiar with WWZ, that does sound about right.

Every scene would have a different story to tell and have different stakes, but ultimately the player has to decide what happens to each character -

I imagine it would be a philosophical experiment, where the reader must consider the value of their character’s circumstances and what sacrifices they are willing to make for for what outcomes. Such a thing probably needs to be carefully written.

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Totally agree if u need me to contribute anything I’d be glad to help. By the way what is your “big event” that u talked about?

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That’s fantastic! I’ll come knocking on your door someday soon! :grin:

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So, you’re looking for short, self-contained scenes?

I’d certainly be interested, as long as it’s no more than a few thousand words each.

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And the army amasses…

Thank you for your interest. Your country will call upon you when the time comes. :grin::grin::grin:

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There are a few collaborative games here and there. I know I was very involved with “Starship Adventures” and “Lost in the Pages”. The first (which has a lot of “making of” type features) was brought together in a flurry of high energy work (in order to not lose momentum) and the second took literally years as it slowly, slowly ticked along.

itch.io is a great place to write short games, whether in CS or whatever, including game jams that help to focus to easily-distracted mind (and you can name your price).

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So @TimberWoolf what’s the main event for the story?

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Ooh, I dunno. I think the community can decide that.

Rest assured that we’ll get to that. I just don’t know exactly about a time-frame or procedure.

I do suppose it’s important to establish some ground rules around the event: Is it political, what year, what scale, etc…

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Well political wise I guess. And year probably modern times? As for scale city wide

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@TimberWoolf Any update on this one? I suspect quite a few of us will have spare time over the Christmas period, so it might be a good time to get the ball rolling.

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You make an excellent point, faithful Protagonist. I’ll try to get something set up as soon as possible.

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Awesome! :slightly_smiling_face:

What were you thinking in terms of the setting? The most popular genres around here seem to be fantasy and supernatural horror… so going for one of those might not be a bad shout if we want to encourage as many people as possible to take part?

I was also wondering whether it might be worth agreeing a few ground rules to make sure we’re all on the same page from the start. Perhaps something along the following lines, unless others feel differently?

  1. Once the game is complete, it gets submitted to Choice of Games for publication as a free Hosted Game.
  2. Submissions need to be received by a particular date for inclusion in the initial release (maybe by 31 January 2018?) Any submissions that are received later can be included in future updates.
  3. Don’t use a character someone else has written without their permission. For example, you need someone’s permission before killing a character that they’ve written.
  4. Don’t make any changes to a chapter that someone else has written without their permission (apart from maybe correcting typos).
  5. Chapters are added to the game file in Dashingdon as people submit them, so we can take inspiration from each other’s writing.
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The Event
A collaborative community experiment.

To contribute, write a self-contained story scene in ChoiceScript and be sure to include a title, synopsis and author name. Variables should be declared as ‘*temp’s in the scene, and the scene should pass both quicktest and randomtest.

The nature, date, location and effect of ‘The Event’ is not disclosed, but the following is known:
  • The Event happened recently, or is about to happen in the near future.
  • The Event is of political, medical, technological or environmental consequence.
  • The Event may or may not be supernatural in its nature.
  • The Event is not of global importance.
  • The Event will affect either a small-, inconsequential-, considerable-, or vast- amount of individuals.
  • The Event is either a benefit or detriment to those affected.

These are all up for discussion and are subject to change.

I do propose we start a thread dedicated to discussing this, with a link to the game.

I’m fairly happy to start the topic, host an instance of the game on Dashingdon, receive contributions and keep it updated.

If anybody else is keen to do any of these, let me know!

Anywho, I made this. I believe it’s editable:

Once we figure out who hosts the game and receives the .txt files, we can create the Topic.

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I’d like to join. I have lots of spare time during Christmas.

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I was thinking that too. Wholeheartedly agree.

I think that makes sense, but I’m not too sure. As I see it, initial release would be once we have enough scenes, after which it would be considered a WIP until we consider it ‘done’.

Agreed. Scenes should be self-contained. I was thinking it would be nice to have some persistence throughout the chapters, though (for example, if the player character lets the titular Sarah from my faux chapter die at the end, and a contributor decides that this should have an effect in their scene, that’s alright, right?

We shall trust this rule to be upheld - but then perhaps we should create some sort of peer contributor review before inclusion?

And before finalisation of the project - we can determine scene order.

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Welcome to the party!

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Any suggestions for playthrough word-count on a given scene?

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Somewhere around 2-10k words? I think it’s important that we’re flexible with word count. I haven’t written much in CS, so I’m not sure how many extra words the coding part will be at.