I would definitely be interested in a Game Jam, but I think I’d do a better job on the organisational side than actually competing.
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@Fantom’s game is still a thing, but there can be more than one collaborative project going at once. The current state of that is to divide it up by genres/sub-genres to create different worlds, so it’s definitely a different theme (if we go with one of the ideas you named.)
Because everyone working on that is only doing more than one chapter if they feel like it, I’m up for taking on something else. Shorter projects are more doable right now than wading back into my already-massive WIP.
Okay, a month for @LordIrish’s contest was maybe longer than we’re thinking, but I vote against two days. That is terrifying. Maybe 3-7? Otherwise these sound like good ideas.
72 then. 
72 would be my vote.
We should definitely do that in October. I’ll come up with something horrifying. 
(Though I guess if too many people are going to be burned out in November, that is a fair point. You could at least post then to ask about interest.)
I can at least help? I’m good with proofreading, if that’s mostly what you meant.
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Regarding the time frame, I know there’s comps that do sprint writing of like 72 hours, but those also usually only have to deal with writing and proofreading, whereas we would also have to do coding and bug testing. With that in mind, I’d suggest a format more like 72/48, where we have 72 hours to hammer out as much of a story as we can, and then 48 hours to put it to code.
I thought I should explain why 48 hours is a traditional game jam length.
It’s because 48 hours is an impossibly short amount of time to make a game in, even with a team. (Mechanics, interface, art, sound, writing, programming, tutorial, etc, etc.)
When you know you only have time, and it’s clearly not enough - it makes you spectacularly efficient. It’s an experience of having laser-like focus, cutting corners, pulling off miracles, and wondering how the heck you did it afterward.
How to win at game jams:
- Go
- Make a thing it doesn’t have to be good or finished
- Ok cool you won
The intfiction.org/IFMud game jam equivalent is 3 hours long. (See Ectocomp, which has run for 8 years, and SpeedIF, which has been going on in various forms since 1998). They tend heavily toward parser games, but there have been several choice-based speed games over the years, usually Twine. (I’ve entered both parser and choice-based.)
I tried to look for equivalent events in static fiction, to get an idea of their usual time limits, but my GoogleFu failed me. Short story speedwriting events must be out there, but I can’t find the rules for anything but NaNoWriMo.
To be clear, I’m not suggesting we go below 48 hours, because I don’t think that would make people happy. But 48 hours seems like a good length to me.
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@Sashira I agree, I think it could a lot of fun to play and work on, but perhaps the timing right now isn’t the best. I’ll do an interest check on it closer to October!
As for right now, I think @cvaneseltine makes a good point about the 48 hour time frame. As a serial procrastinator, I can attest to that.
Thank you for stating this.
I’d love to do a 3 hour one. 
(Yes I’m crazy.) But I suspect I’d be the only one engaged in that challenge if I did. If it was 3 hours, I could even do the creepy camp-side stories one. And wouldn’t that even be in the nature of those, all of us gathering around and telling our story-games anyway?
I think that people would be absolutely surprised at how much they could accomplish even in such a short space of time, when you’re pushing yourself to your limits and under pressure.
Me too. As long as we’re taking time zones into consideration so everyone gets the full time span and no one needs to be awake at weird hours (unless they want to).
Does anyone have any preferences of which August weekend we choose? Starting Friday the 3rd, 14th, 21st or 28th?
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I’d like to take part in this on some level. I am fairly good at Choicescript.
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I’d love to see a 1950s-style sci-fi or detective serial where everyone used the same character(s), but the different adventures were pretty much self-contained.
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A 1950s scifi would be badass!
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I’d definitely go for any length of time, and any date - I’d even do three hours, especially if I knew something (like the setting) in advance. Cvaneseltine has drawn forth my natural love of insanity. 
I like the idea of a set amount of time that applies to whatever timezone you’re in (particularly as I’m in Australia).
1950s scifi and/or detective serial sounds awesome! Like the protagonist is a PI, and every story is another case? That would be cool! If we agreed on stats in advance we could even link them all into a single game (with a few passing references to previous events, and with recurring characters).
I’d happily set something in New York or London. They’re such familiar cities in fiction that I think most of us could handle using them, or a close analogue of them.
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I should definitely be asleep right now, so if this sounds un-fun then just ignore it.
I really, really like the idea of using a Private Eye PC to link a series of case-based CS stories into a (mostly) coherent whole (I think that’s what HornHeadFan was suggesting).
We’d need: An agreed-upon setting, eg dingy combined office/apartment in 1950s New York (these gorgeous photos would be enough research, I reckon: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/1950s-new-york-photos-remind-us-its-still-the-greatest-city-on-earth_5519b7a7e4b02dc8de1d5760).
Someone to write the “first” case, setting name and gender/pronoun usage.
Agreement on stats (including magic - probably either none or a VERY simple system eg “Vampires exist but are kept secret”). I like the idea of the opposed stat of “Justice VS Mercy” so the PC can decide whether to forgive people or expose/kill them (and those who are forgiven can show up later, for both better - eg giving the PC a tip-off - or worse - committing a greater crime than the first). Plus sharpshooting, of course. And fisticuffs (less effective than sharpshooting, but useful when out of bullets). And of course money! Classic PI problem.
Agreement on rating: PG I’d imagine - shooting and fighting, but no explicit sex or graphic content.
To make a particularly nice tale, we could:
-Have a basic background eg the PC is an orphan with a twin sibling that breeds horses and wishes the PC would stop putting themself in harm’s way.
-have optional recurring villains.
-have a big bad that is hinted at in various ways, and then threatens to kill the twin sibling in the final tale - at which point certain stats come into play (saving or losing the sibling), and then the player decides whether or not their PI career is done - but either way, the siblings are at peace (possibly because one is dead). That climactic story could be written after all the rest, so that the writer who does it could try and draw as many strings together as possible in a satisfying way. Especially balancing stats so none are useless.
The writer of the final tale could be a semi-volunteer/semi-vote situation, where whoever’s willing to do it puts up their hand and the others vote for who they think would do the best job. Or whoever could be bothered could write an ending, and there could be a choice before that ending asking, “Which ending do you want to play?”
Those who wanted to be more collaborative could have recurring characters shared between games (baddies, snitches, potential love interests), or write a case together.
Romance writing would be tricky. It’d probably work if we stuck to (optional) flirtations before giving the PC an option for something deeper towards the end (maybe in the climax story, so the writer knows all the characters well).
It’d work best if we could all submit 1-paragraph outlines before the jam began, eg. “A gorgeous Irish woman asks you to get pics of her husband sleeping around, but it turns out the “husband” is her ex and she wanted to post awkward photos to newspapers in revenge. She pays well, and offers to double it when you confront her about her lies. You can choose money or morals, and can have a fling with her if you like. Her name is Susan and she hangs out at the Rockefeller Centre restaurant, so other players can run into her there. She has connections to wealthy people, and is hot.
Your justice/mercy stat is altered in either direction, and so is your money (the case costs $500 to pursue, and you gain nothing or $2000 depending on choices).” You see someone with a moustache give a waiter at the Rockefeller restaurant an envelope packed with money, but don’t have time to pursue it. (The moustache and waiter could be linked to a drug ring of some kind in a different story?)
Whatever suits fairygodfeather suits me.
I reckon I could handle playtesting and proofreading a connected story like that. We’d definitely need a new thread (or several) to work out the details (such as chronology).
I’d like the jam to be open to people who want to work alone as well as people who want to work together.
If everything has to fit together into one large story, even a frame story, that’s really more of a collaborative project (albeit one with very tight time restrictions) than an individual/team project.
When I think about inspiration or a theme, I’d prefer something very small - a single word, phrase, or image. Something that could spark a thousand different potential fires, rather than one large coordinated blaze.
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Now I feel like writing a medieval fantasy.
Maybe that should be the ending for a wizard…
@faewkless, inspiring another magic game wasn’t exactly the point of my post, but that just means I have crazy inspiration powers I can’t control yet and that’s cool too.
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It looks like at least three of us (myself, HornHeadFan, and Doctor) would happily do a linked 1950s PI story.
Oops, that’s not what Doctor said at all. A 50s scifi space adventure could work for all three of us maybe? So people could use the same planet as another writer, or hop from planet to planet (new story = new planet) having wacky adventures - anything from bounty hunting to surviving an alien attack. Would that work, @HornHeadFan? @Doctor? Anyone else?
Others could happily join the spaceship tales or not (but I do think that kind of collaboration needs outlines and stats in advance, so the theme would need to be announced in advance too).
Most people seem okay with a three-day jam on an August weekend, if I’m reading things right.
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@Felicity_Banks, That does sound rather bad in the art of ass… so yes. I don’t mind the PI game either, but… maybe it’s Duck Dodgers or maybe it’s Amazon Women on the Moon, but I really like scifi idea
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maybe yes. Depends on when I guess.
Since the beginning of August is only a week off, here’s a proposal based on the discussion we’ve had so far.
- The jam is 72 hours, Thursday 8/6 through Sunday 8/9
- FairyGodfeather picks a theme, since this jam was their idea
- People are able to work in groups, but can also work alone
- Theme gets announced Monday 8/3, so everyone has time to plan in advance (but no writing yet!)
- Starting time is Thursday evening, whatever that means for you (groups, please coordinate your start time)
- Once you start writing, your window has started, and you’re on your honor to stop writing and submit your results 72 hours later
- Stories are due Sunday night after you get done - upload them in a results thread
- Unfinished is okay, unpolished is okay - this is about showing off what you could accomplish in 72 hours, not about writing something perfect or publishable
- …but try to reach an end/the endings - make this short-story size, not novel size
Is this okay by everyone who wants to participate?
If not, what needs to change for it to be okay?
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Just one thing: what time zones are we using?