If you'd like to jump right into reading something, I think Problem Sleuth is a good place to start, personally. But it's a pretty long read, so be sure to have the save game feature handy!
But before you jump into an adventure, a little background on the site would probably help. There are two key points to understand! They are:
1) MSPA stories exist in the format of "mock games", specifically text-based adventure games. You advance through the pages of the story by clicking links which sound like commands you would type in a text prompt to get a character to do something. Generally, the character will respond to that command on the following page.
2) MSPA stories are largely "reader-driven", in the sense that most of the text commands were supplied by readers through a suggestion box. I would select a command from the list, and then illustrate the result of the command.
When I say "largely reader driven", I mean this approach has undergone a lot of evolution from adventure to adventure, and continues to even now. I'll try to give a sense of what the process was for each adventure.
Jailbreak: This was the first adventure, one I started well before the MSPA site existed. I created it on a forum, where people would post suggestions in replies to the thread. My policy was to always take the first suggestion no matter what, which naturally lead to a very haphazard feel to the story's progression. I also experimented with "branching" the story at one point, splitting it into two paths. But then I quickly brought those two paths back together.
I left Jailbreak unfinished. And it's probably fine that way, as a sort of rambling, silly initial experiment with the storytelling format. I doubt I'll go back to finish it.
Bardquest: This was the first adventure I started after launching MSPA.com, back when I had the "choose your own adventure" format in mind for the site as the primary storying device, in addition to the reader-driven feature with a new on-site suggestion box. But the multiple paths turned out to be quite difficult for me to keep up with, and overall, probably pretty hard for readers to digest as well, especially with a longer story.
Mercifully, this one never made it that far. I chalk it up as an interesting failed experiment, and one that I surely won't go back to finish. After halting BQ, I left the site to gather dust for about six months, then started it up again with Problem Sleuth.
Problem Sleuth: By far the longest adventure, and only complete one to date. When I started, I revised the approach, completely scrapping the multiple paths concept except in a few minor instances. I also started being more selective with the suggestions, not necessarily always picking the first one in the box. This made for a more controlled style of action, allowing elements of planning and puzzle solving, while still creating a pretty whimsical feel to the adventure.
But I feel MSPA evolved in many more ways than that over the daunting span of Problem Sleuth (exactly one year, in fact). The nature of the parody drifted away from text-adventures exclusively to playing off many other sorts of gaming genres, like RPGs, fighting games, etc. The visual style progressed as well, as I started incorporating more and more animated frames and over the top battle sequences. And the reader-driven element shifted very gradually as well, especially as the story took on more readers.
When a story begins to get thousands of suggestions, paradoxically, it becomes much harder to call it truly "reader-driven". This is simply because there is so much available, the author can cherry-pick from what's there to suit whatever he might have in mind, whether he's deliberately planning ahead or not. But as it happened, I was planning ahead much more as the story neared its end, and I would tend to A) pick commands that suited what I had in mind, or B) just call a spade a spade and outright MAKE UP a command for an idea I had, which I did most often for many of the later attacks (like the Sleuth Diplomacy variations, Comb Raves, etc).
Toward the end, the suggestion box was mostly used as a go-to for the frivolous, funny tangential stuff, and rarely anything story-changing. I've come to view this as the only realistic practice for a site with this format, with this many readers. This practice carried over to the next adventure, right from the start.
Homestuck: The adventure I'm currently working on, with a pretty radically different approach from the way the previous adventures started, mostly in the sense that many elements are already preplanned. I don't know if I intended to make a big point of this as huge a paradigm shift for the site. It was more that I started getting ideas for the next adventure well before Problem Sleuth ended, and those ideas just kept cropping up. Much like with crafting the conclusion for Problem Sleuth, the planning just couldn't be helped!
So the use of user commands has been handled in a similar way, insofar as they contribute to a direction I want the story to go in, or to simply produce a humorous tangential effect (which can sometimes lead to story developments I don't anticipate anyway!) But the point is, the reader-driven aspect of MSPA is still in a state evolution, and truthfully is probably drifting away from being a very important factor in the way the story is structured.
It is manifesting in other interesting ways though. With HS I introduced the incorporation of music into the story, and the production of this music has been a collaborative effort among readers. Other ideas and resources like funny images, game mechanic concepts, etc, have made it into the story outside of the institutionalized structure of the suggestion box. I also picked the characters' names from reader input. There are lots of ways I will inject reader input into stories, and finding out how will be the fun part. But it will almost certainly never resemble the madcap charades of Jailbreak or early Problem Sleuth.
The bottom line is, the MSPA format always seems to be in a state of flux, and I will surely continue to bend my own rules in various ways. Honestly at this stage, I am less excited about the reader-driven aspect than I am about the format that has emerged and somewhat crystallized, which is: telling a story through the vehicle of a mock-game, complete with somewhat convincing and detailed mechanics, but without losing sight of it as a parody. That format has been augmented with the use of Flash animations and interactive pages, which is something I'm sure I'll keep exploring.
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Anyway, if you really are a new reader, I guess that was a lot to digest! But even if you're not a new reader, I'm sure you gleaned some insight from that.
Since I've momentarily stepped off the endless update carousel I figured I would refresh the layout a bit. My only objective here is to reduce the clutter somewhat. Some of the content I wiped out, particularly to the side, I'm sure I'll reintroduce in some more rational way a little later. I'll chip away at it. Site design is something I never get around to on account of its tedium and the fact that I'd rather use my energy drawing. And since I can't at the moment, well... I still almost didn't bother. But then I did bother.
This week long drought wasn't so much about taking a break from drawing as it was an extension of two simple facts - I was away from my computer, and being away from my computer makes updating impossible. That SPECIFIC machine, and not this one on which I type or any other, is essentially the physical embodiment of this website. Really if I could be updating while away I would be. This trip isn't about rest. That's for losers. The hiatus was and is a referendum on corporeality, and its usurious demands on the virtual. It appears, as I am learning, that I, the author of this website, am a corporeal thing, and it turns out my computer is corporeal as well. We can be separated into compartments completely isolated from one another, compartments often referred to by the natives as "locations". This blew my mind. The hiatus is also a referendum on culture shock.
Hey! How about some more updates soon? Ok. How about tomorrow evening? That will be after I get into this huge metal thing. After the metal thing makes LOTS AND LOTS of noise, I will step out, and when I do, my computer will be not as... hang on while I flip through my Glossary of the Corporeal. Man this thing is handy. Ah yes... "Far away."
And now that you have all been sufficiently nonplussed...
An album titled Alternia by the prolific and electric (prolifilectric) Toby "Radiation" Fox.
Yes, this is a solo album, meant to put music to the troll universe which has been taking shape recently. I believe you will find this album shall only further crystallize the atmosphere of this arc. It will do this because we say it will.
But there is some trivia here! Before I started act 5, Toby talked to me about working on an album like this, couched in the assumption that the troll story would never be examined in the detail it is presently, and that this album would only serve as a tonal exploration of a purely hypothetical adventure supplied by the imagination. Turns out he assumed incorrectly! Which only made the project that much more timely and apropos. In fact, the planet Alternia was named after the album, and not the other way around!
This is really good stuff. It should go without saying that Radiation's work is always among my personal TOP PIX. This is obvious, since I have leaned heavily on him for HS scoring. Leaned hard. Like he is a diner jukebox, and I am the coolest fucking dude you ever saw. I am seriously making the Fonz look like the Star Wars kid from that old meme. Thrashing around like a spaz with a mop handle in the garage of whatever the fuck family he lived with.
I don't know a goddamn thing about Happy Days, honestly.
I'll be skipping town from 7/20 to 7/27 just so you know. No updates for that week! Maybe you can spend that week catching up on the chores you've been neglecting on account of hammering the refresh button all the time.
I was originally thinking I'd try to have the troll thing finished up before this hiatus, but who am I kidding. Oh well. Steady as she goes.
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