User:Thijshijsijsjss/Human Parser/Forked Dialogues/Session 1

FORKED DIALOGUES #1
Exploring interactive-fiction as a plurality

* Thursday December 12
* 11:00 - 13:00 
* WH 4th floor
* Snacks and drinks provided :) 

Reading CYOA books alone in your room, playing a text adventure behind your computer screen... Often, interactive fiction can be an individual experience. Forked Dialogues explores ways to make interactive fiction a collaborative, performative and plural experience.

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Hey! This Thursday I will be hosting a first *playtesting session*: Forked Dialogues #1 

In this session, we will do some game-adjacant activities in a small group (myself and ~3 others). While interactive fiction usually aims to increase agency, these activities will revolve around subtracting, subverting or sharing agency in play. It's going to be casual and fun!

Interested? Send me a DM! (also for questions)
Interested but can't make it? Still send me a DM! Then I will make sure to contact you for future sessions! :) As this session is with such a small group, I might try to do another session right after the first, if there's enough interest

Plans and Preparations

Now that Human Parser has had some time to marinate in my mind, I notice an itch for performativity. A playtesting session by itself could scratch that itch, maybe, but for this session I am particularly interested in different ways the CYOA structure can accomodate 'a plural experience'. I deliberately avoid the term 'multiplayer' here, which to me comes with preformed ideas of what the social dynamics between participants will look like. As a descriptor, it is game-centric, not a player-experience-centric. 'Plural', instead, seems to entail not just a plurality of participants, but also a plurality of activities and meanings. Therefore I hope it's able to better capture the wide idea of play these sessions can allow for.

Typically, interactive fiction aims to increase agency. However, in the light of this 'plural experience', I want to focus on activities in which this agency is disrupted or shared.

The (adapted) plan for the session:

1. Introductiory conversation and reading the Archival Oceans zine
   This is a zine I made with Anita last year, in reaction to our CYOA radio play The Hitchhiker's Guide to an Active Archive. With three editions, each associated with a different role, a short story is told about the difficulty of language. Gradually, the words of the other roles become unreadable. This presents an interesting dynamic when performing the story together. When is the other finished with their lines? Who will talk next?
   I think this will serve as a nice icebreaker to hear each other's voices and to introduce some themes of the session.
2. Playing The Hobbit (1982) together
   Playing a text-adventure together raises some questions: how will the typer behave? Will conversations emerge about what to do? Will it be less tedious to try out commands? More tedious? And many more. This game in particular poses a challenge for a group of players: it is time-based, every 30-or-so seconds, a wait command is automatically run. The group will need to handle this. I will provide the game's manual.
3. Playing my demo asymmetrically (the main playtest, I will be a spectator for this)
   I have made a small text-adventure that is meant to be played asymmetrically: only one player is allowed to see and interact with the screen, while not being allowed to see the manual the others are using. The demo contains a virtual copy of the testing location. Crucially, this demo is not solely virtual: halfway through, the manual-players will need to interact with the physical location (without being explicitly instructed to do so). At this point, the game will turn from a cooperative to a competitive one.
4. A feedback conversation (potentially aided by StoryCubes (a non-linear storytelling device in their own right))
   Though there is option for feedback after each activity, I want to end with a dedicated timeslot for feedback.

Reflections and Feedback

[still digesting and processing feedback...]