[Bookclub] LYG + JFW

[Stephen Granade <sgranade@login2.phy.duke.edu>]

This post is part of Lucian Smith's IF Bookclub. In it I will be
discussing John's Fire Witch, and doing so without the benefit of
spoiler space. For more information about the Bookclub, please see
http://www.textfire.com/bookclub/.

At some point in Lucian's bookclub interview of me, he asked what
games had influenced Losing Your Grip. I mentioned John's Fire
Witch. Ever watchful for more bookclub opportunities, Lucian asked me
to amplify on the connection for this month's bookclub.

On the surface, I think the similarities are obvious. Both are short,
tightly-plotted games more interested in puzzles than in story, with a
light-hearted take on their subjects.

Beyond these similarities, however, is a deeper one: both were written
in TADS.

And beyond that similarity lies the heart of how John's Fire Witch
influenced my writing of Losing Your Grip. Before I talk much about
that connection, I need to talk about when I played John's Fire Witch.

I played John's Fire Witch on my 1995 spring break vacation, shortly
after it had come out. For those of you keeping track, this was
pre-competition, pre-Plotkin, and very pre-Cadre. I had written one
publically-available game, the easily-forgettable Waystation.  TADS
2.2 had been out for a little while; having registered TADS 2.1 for
Waystation, I was wondering if I should upgrade. (Later I did.) Inform
1 had been released in 1993, but not many games of note had been
written with Inform. Brendon Wyber had released Theatre in 1994;
Christminster was going to be released in August of 1995, followed
shortly by Jigsaw.

My dad had a laptop, more for the novelty of having a portable word
processor than for anything else, and I loaded several pieces of IF on
it before we left on our vacation. I played the games off and on,
eventually solving The Golden Wombat of Destiny and the Sound of One
Hand Clapping.

Then I turned to John's Fire Witch, and I was amazed. For one thing,
this game was short! At the time, there weren't a lot of short games
to be had. (This was pre-competition, remember?) Our view of IF was
still shaped by Infocom, so people tended to release Infocom-sized
games. Besides, who would want to play a self-described snack-sized
game?

A lot of people, it turns out. But that wasn't what struck me the
most. What I marvelled at was how well the game was written.

It had a lot of detail. I remember being excited by how much detail
there was. If nothing else, John's Fire Witch taught me that detail
was important. It became my maxim: if it's important enough to mention
in a room description, it's important enough to give a description
to.

It also had tight puzzle design. Things fit together nicely, from the
teleportation card to the deadly sins puzzle. There wasn't a lot of
wasted space or effort, and I appreciated it.

This brings me to the deadly sins puzzle, the element of John's Fire
Witch which most influenced my planning of Losing Your Grip. The
deadly sins puzzle is arguably the best one in the game. It's
certainly the most memorable. You're told to collect the deadly sins,
but you can't find enough sins to complete the task. With only six
sins found, you had to think to give the bag to the devil, who would
become so prideful that you could then add him to your collection of
sins and get past him.

The solution to this puzzle is somewhat like the solution to being
stuck in the passageway in Andrew Plotkin's "Hunter, in Darkness" in
that you have to reach a point where you think you've failed, then
continue on anyway. The sins puzzle requires a lateral step in
thinking. When I was stuck on the puzzle, I was frustrated beyond
belief, but once I solved it, I felt a great sense of accomplishment.

More than that, though, the puzzle got me to thinking seriously about
how puzzles go together. I didn't have any of the Infocom collections
at the time; the last Infocom game I'd played had been in the
mid-80's, when I wasn't thinking much about how games went
together. Most of the amateur games I'd played hadn't been all that
great. (In my defense, I had yet to play Curses, or any of the
Adventions or Mike Roberts games.) And here was a game that helped me
codify what I liked in adventure game puzzles, and gave me the hope
that I could create similar puzzles in TADS. It was a heady feeling.

So that's the absolute true story of how John's Fire Witch influenced
Losing Your Grip.

Stephen


-- 
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