The End of Books (1992) | Hacker News Reader

The End of Books (1992)

nytimes.com

35 pointscmod6 comments

The mention of the Hypertext Hotel reminds me of "The Toothpaste Disaster" [1], a Lexicon [2] game which provided a great deal of inspiration for the XP reboot of the classic Paranoia [3] RPG system. Lexicon has more rules than what's described in the article, but still provides a good playground for the same kind of creative urge.

I'm not sure hypertext has really found its fictional style. For the most part, I'm not sure anyone is even really still trying. It'd be nice to know about anyone who is.

[1] http://paranoia.allenvarney.com/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexicon_%28game%29

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranoia_%28role-playing_game%...

Lexicon looks like a neat game, thanks for that.

Microscope: https://rpggeek.com/rpgitem/93970/microscope

If you haven't heard of this one, it has a similar concept, but you're not defining encyclopedia entries. You're laying out the history in chronological order and introducing events along the way to fill it in.

EDIT: You don't lay it out chronologically. You specify a start and end (rise of the new king and start of an empire, fall of the empire), then fill in the gaps. The effect is that there's a chronology of the world laid out for you to observe and build on. My original comment wasn't clear on this.

One well-known designer still producing text-based games is "Porpentine". Her work is mostly built using the Twine engine/platform/backend, which runs in a browser. (There is a seemingly active community around Twine; Porpentine is just the most well-known developer that I've run across.)

Some of her works are more what I'd think of as "interactive fiction" as opposed to "games", although they certainly serve to blur the line between the two genres.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porpentine_(game_designer)

I am particularly a fan of "Ultra Business Tycoon II": http://aliendovecote.com/uploads/twine/tycoon/crime.html

Utterly fascinating. Thanks.

Also, why the quotes around her name?

This really reminds me of the time when hypertext was a thing. Yes, you can argue that technically any web page with links is "hypertext", but they really meant something else in those days. Literary works with links that would let you read scenes from another character's perspective, and so on.

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