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Nov ‘09 Blogs of the Round Table #bort1109 Updated 12-01
By Corvus | November 30, 2009
The structure of the Round Table is changing dramatically, at least for a time. After a trial run of three months or so, we’ll assess how things are going and retool if we need to. But for now–welcome to the new Blogs of the Round Table!
The Blogs of the Round Table is an open-contribution collection of essays based around a central literary design challenge. Each month a book is assigned and contributors are asked to design a game that reflects the core themes of the book. The challenge is not to merely design a game based on the plot of the book, but to imagine if the author had been a game designer. What sort of game would they produce to communicate their thoughts? Submissions are not limited to video games and may include board games, card games, ARGs, etc. But any video game designs should be intended for real-world systems–no hyper-intelligent AI or full-sensory systems please.
Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley is considered by many to be the first science fiction novel. That makes it the perfect title for our first month of the Literary Design Challenge BoRT. Many attempts to translate Frankenstein to other formats have fixated on the science of bringing the monster to life, but the book itself doesn’t focus on this aspect at all. Instead, it examines what it means to produce life and the impact that has on those who comes are directly and indirectly involved with the process.
Frankenstein is in the public domain and freely available on Project Gutenberg. And if your public library doesn’t have several copies that you can request, I’d be very surprised.
The process of participating in the BoRT has changed a bit, so read the following carefully!
You are welcome, encouraged even, to submit multiple posts to the BoRT. As a possible suggestion–you might write an initial post that examines the themes of the book you’d like to explore, a second about the central mechanic you’re thinking of using, and a third on the design itself. These posts do not need to be lengthy, highly-polished entries but can serve as more of a public design notebook. Please don’t feel you must submit multiple entries–it’s simply an official option now.
Rather than submit each individual post to me as you write it, please use the following tag on all your posts for the month’s BoRT: bort1109. When you’ve written your first post, submit the URI for the tag to me via email or the contact form here on the blog. On Wordpress blogs, the tag URI typically looks like this:
http://my.blog.com/tag/bort1109
or this:
http://my.blog.com/?tag=bort1109
Blogspot blogs tag URIs look like this:
http://myblog.blogspot.com/search/label/bort1109.
I will continue to tag individual contributions on Delicious and share them in Google Reader. I encourage participants with Twitter accounts to announce their posts on there with the hashtag #bort1109, as I will no longer tweet individual contributions on Twitter myself.
Sometime before the end of the month, I will be asking a two or three contributors to join me in a podcast to discuss the book and their approaches to the challenge. My goal is to publish the podcast before the month is over, so further contributions can be made based upon the content of the podcast.
Please, please, engage with other contributors throughout the month. One of the primary goals of the BoRT is to foster community and I believe that all of our ideas are strengthened when we engage with one another, supporting and challenging each others’ assumptions about what constitutes good design, asking questions about the role of games in our lives, etc. So please comment on other contributor’s posts when you have the time. I understand that it can be challenging to find the time to comment on individual BoRT entries and I’ve been bad about visiting sites myself. But we can use other mediums for our inter-post chatter as well–we can use and follow the twitter hashtag #bort1109, join the conversation in the IRC channel #GBConfab on Quakenet.org, or visit the BoRT1109 Public Wave (consider the wave to be an experimental option at this point).
So that’s the new BoRT format! Let me know what you think of it in the comments. I’ll be announcing December’s book mid-November. I have several possibilities in mind for December and January, but if this format is successful, we will implement a book-suggestion and poll feature for future months.
[UPDATE]
This month’s contributors are Bergsonian Critique, Alishowkati, and Mind’s Eye, and Ellen Wilde.
Tagged:Blogs of the Round Table, bort1109. | 5 Comments »
November 3rd, 2009 at 11:40 am
Frankenstein is also available to read via DailyLit (http://www.dailylit.com/books/frankenstein) in 84 parts (you can read more than one part a day if you want, they’re usually pretty short).
November 3rd, 2009 at 3:07 pm
I don’t think I’m going to participate.
November 5th, 2009 at 9:19 pm
I’m currently quite ocuppied, but I’ll see if I can come up with something before the month ends.
November 5th, 2009 at 9:22 pm
Did I say ocuppied? No no, I’m quite sure I said occupied.
November 6th, 2009 at 12:46 pm
Can we do a Young Frankenstein variant? Charades mini-game give him the sedagive!