You're standing in a nondescript room.
There is a door opening to a hallway that vanishes in darkness to your left. Before you is a man staring at you with a bemused expression on his face.
What do you do?
You ask the man for directions.
"You want to know which way to go?" replies the man. "You tell me! You appear out of nowhere before my eyes and ask me?"
He gives you a rueful look. "You're the first person I've met here...the first human anyway." He raises his eyebrows emphatically. "Well, I don't know if it's what your looking for, but go down the hall, take a left, and knock on the door. She'll tell you what to do from there."
You're still in the room. What do you do?
You turn to your left and start down the hallway. The hallway is lit with fluorescent lights. The walls of the hallway are red, decorated in an ornate pattern of gold paint made of geometric shapes and letters you don't recognize.
You reach a point where you can't see the room you came from or the end of the hallway. What do you do?
You touch the wall.
Static fills your vision then is replaced by an image of a young woman sitting at a desk in a bedroom with her back to you. She's studying a three dimensional grid hovering above her desk made of a glowing material with many whorls, puckers, and folds distorting the grid. As you observe the young woman, the grid duplicates itself and both remain suspended above her desk.
The young woman turns her head to face you and regards you coldly. Without turning from you, she quickly pokes both grids with her index finger. Your vision fades to static once again, then fades to black.
...
You're standing in a nondescript room.
There is a door opening to a hallway that vanishes in darkness to your left. Before you is a man looking at you with a thoughtful expression on his face.
"Back so soon?" he says.
What do you do?
You turn to your left and start down the hallway. The hallway is lit with fluorescent lights. The walls of the hallway are red, decorated in an ornate pattern of gold paint made of geometric shapes and letters you don't recognize.
You reach a point where you can't see the room you came from or the end of the hallway. You find, lying still on the floor, a corpse. It looks exactly like you.
What do you do?
You continue down the hallway and reach it's end where it splits off to the left and right. You take a left and come quickly to a door. You knock and a woman answers from seemingly a few feet away, "What do you want?"
What do you ask her?
(* reply with the question you want to ask and a number between 1 and 100. I've written down the secret number and a code word ("donkey") so I can prove I didn't make it up after the fact. closest guess is the question that gets asked. you have until 1:00 UTC tomorrow to write in. *)
Since I received zero replies, I'll assume there is no more interest, so I'll conclude the game. thanks if you followed up to this point.
I started this on a whim, and didn't know where it was going initially. I have more of a plan now, but I think I'll try for next time.
if you did "play", or even if you were just watching, I'd appreciate feedback. thanks!
@2ck @lucifargundam
The free entry thing is probably more useful when you have got a fair amount of people participating, more chances on an actual response. And also when the story's indeed more fleshed out and people know what they want to do. And maybe this style on weekends only?
The advantage of the multiple choice one in social media is that people can glance at the story, think for a little bit, and then immediately give an answer. If they see freeform they're like 'Oh, I have to think a lot more.. mm, lemme get back to this later...' and then forget about it. I know that happened to me because I was way too busy, lol.
I can see daily on weekends. Maybe a much lower frequency on weekdays.
@lucifargundam
I was wondering if there was something like this. do you have a link or the account name?
I think a bot would be cool, but my goal was to adjust things in a way that I'm not nearly skilled enough to code up, plus the fun for me is the live interaction. a bot would be good for letting individual players have their own experience, though the fun of the medium is what we do in conversation with each other... maybe there's a way to combine these elements in a fun way... maybe just role play?
last thing to both of you: the poll ending does provide a notification, but I guess you wouldn't see the next post depending on when I finish it. do you think being sure to have the next one ready when the poll expires would be very useful or would just slowing the pace take care of it?
thanks!
@2ck @lucifargundam I think I've seen that bot around, it is a typical oldskool text adventure bot where you have to send comends like 'GO NORTH' and suchlike. I have no desire to interact with it though, I liked the more live and possibly impromptu stuff that you offered us.
I did use the poll notification's threaded connection to the next text. Maybe you could also reserve a specific hashtag for it in case people lose the thread somehow.
I guess being sure to have the next one ready when the poll expires helps a lot in keeping track so you can immediately click on the notification and go to the next post that way to continue the adventure.
@lucifargundam @trinsec good to know. I'm surprised y'all say it was too fast, since I actually thought it would be the opposite: is there a rate you think would be better? weekly? every three days? weekends only?
the free entry thing felt a bit dodgy. I still like the idea, but maybe it would be better later in the story as an outlet for taking a poke at some theories or to check in on some side characters? basically, where there's more background so you know what's an interesting question to ask.