Zarf Updates

This has been in planning since the summer; the details unfortunately took a while to get solidified. But the web site is up now, or at least the web site is out, so check it out:

Interactive Fiction Month at Tufts University

Tufts (that's in Boston) is doing a whole series of IF-related events, organized by Tufts ACM, with the help of the People's Republic.

Here's the schedule, as it stands right now. (Note: please use the tinyurl version of these links, as the URL may change.)

GET LAMP Screening

• Wednesday, October 6th, 7:30 - 8:30 pm
• Tisch AV 304
• Maybe you've seen it at PAX, but that was months ago! The one-hour convention edition of GET LAMP, followed by discussion by Jason Scott (director), Nick Montfort (MIT), and Andrew Plotkin (me).

Nick Montfort on IF

• Thursday, October 14th, 2:50 - 4:00 pm
• Halligan 111A
• Nick Montfort discusses Curveship, his experimental interactive fiction system which is "designed to allow automatic narrative variation -- that is, computer-controlled, parametric changes in the way the story is told."

Collaborative IF Playing Event

• Thursday, October 21st, 7:30 pm until everyone's done having fun
• Center for Scientific Visualization, Anderson Hall -- the Viswall
• Flourish Klink and the PR-IF crew will present several IF games to play in groups. The game is up on a projector screen; somebody reads, somebody types, and everybody can shout out suggestions. We've done this a couple of times at MIT, and it's a lot of fun. (List of games to be announced.)

IF Writer's Workshop

• Wednesday, October 27th, 7:30 - 9:30 pm
• Mayer Campus Center -- the large conference room
• I (Andrew Plotkin) and the PR-IF crew will host an IF writer's workshop. Please bring a work in progress! (Any amount of progress, even just an opening room. Any IF platform.) We will try out each work for a few minutes, and then discuss how it plays.

Clara Fernández-Vara on Storytelling in Games

• Thursday, October 28st, 6:00 - 7:15 pm
• Halligan 111A
• Clara Fernández-Vara (GAMBIT Lab, MIT) gives a guest lecture for Ming Chow's Game Development class. It is open to the public. This is not specifically about IF, but about narrative in game design in general.