winter: (fandom - lina inverse pimp)
Beth Winter ([personal profile] winter) wrote2011-05-05 10:07 pm
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The streets of Echo Bazaar

People who follow me on Twitter are intimately familiar with the fact I play Echo Bazaar. What can I say - tweeting about it gives me more actions :>

It's a fantastic Gothic Victorian Horror narrative adventure that goes on by the strength of its writing, to the point where I feel as excited to get at a new storylet as at a book by a favourite author. And for weeks now, my character (an individual of mysterious and indistinct gender, thank you very much) has been hyperventilating in the very presence of the Summerset Provost at the University of Fallen London, to the point where I went through endless repetitions of the University Term storylet sequence just to get a chance for my character to seduce him. The University book ends with an exceedingly long storylet in which choices I made before about what kind of person my character is, forced hir to do something drastic to the Provost this morning.

Those pages of text have stayed with me for the whole day. Damn, this is good writing. Meta-narrative. Something.

So, who else is playing?

[identity profile] amelia-petkova.livejournal.com 2011-05-05 09:20 pm (UTC)(link)
I went through endless repetitions of the University Term storylet sequence just to get a chance for my character to seduce him.

You just made my day. :)

[identity profile] zenicurean.livejournal.com 2011-05-05 11:02 pm (UTC)(link)
The Starveling Cat! The Starveling Cat! It knows what we think -- and we don't like that!

[identity profile] hawkwolf.livejournal.com 2011-05-05 11:23 pm (UTC)(link)
Oh, I love EB! It was my distraction of choice during NaNo and Yuletide this year. Then other things took over. I should start playing again.

Can I follow you on Twitter? I need more EB people

[identity profile] ruderal-species.livejournal.com 2011-05-06 12:43 am (UTC)(link)
I hadn't heard of this, but now I'll have to try it out (except I don't have twitter, so will have to try the FB version...)

[identity profile] arabwel.livejournal.com 2011-05-06 03:01 am (UTC)(link)
omg you slattern the provost is miiiiiiiine!!!! *ahem* right, trying to seduce the provost here too!

[identity profile] muffin-song.livejournal.com 2011-05-06 03:58 am (UTC)(link)
I'd actually recommend making a Twitter account, if only to sign into the game. The thing is that whenever you "echo" (something you need to do in order to boost your number of actions per day), it reflects on your social media site. And it may be better to do that on an Echo Bazaar-only Twitter account than on your Facebook.

In any case, it's a fabulous, very atmospheric game and I highly recommend it.

[identity profile] ruderal-species.livejournal.com 2011-05-06 03:27 pm (UTC)(link)
Yeah, I can see how you run out of actions quickly if you actually play for more than minute or two...

I've successfully avoided a Twitter acct for so long, though, that I think I'll wait and see if I truly get addicted to this before I do anything drastic. ;)

[identity profile] ruderal-species.livejournal.com 2011-05-06 03:27 pm (UTC)(link)
I picked individual of mysterious and indeterminate gender JUST because I liked the text about the squid in the character creation bit. ;)

[identity profile] ruderal-species.livejournal.com 2011-05-06 03:39 pm (UTC)(link)
Yeah, I saw that. :/

Is there anything that absolutely requires me to "Echo" things or is it just for more actions? It's one thing to be patient, it's another to be stuck. ;)

[identity profile] of-carabas.livejournal.com 2011-05-06 05:58 pm (UTC)(link)
...That is awesome. Thanks for the new addiction.

[identity profile] zenicurean.livejournal.com 2011-05-06 06:09 pm (UTC)(link)
Normally I'm incredibly nice to the cats, but lately I've been playing the occasional round of Pass the Cat, just to see if I can get one. I think it's something that you get when you're really unfortunate, though, so I think I'm exclusively driven by curiosity here. And the sheer awesomeness of maybe having one, of course.

There's a lot in that game one does just for the awesomeness (http://img848.imageshack.us/img848/5098/narrative.jpg), I find.

[identity profile] zenicurean.livejournal.com 2011-05-06 06:19 pm (UTC)(link)
Indeedy. I'm under the handle "Spidertamer".

Let's pass some cats!

[identity profile] dbalthasar.livejournal.com 2011-05-07 04:56 pm (UTC)(link)
I'm still trying to raise Watchful to a point where I can get meaningful access to the University.... The writing is just so good!

May I follow you? I'm willing to Pass Cats. :-)