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    1. "The Fae in the Bottle" by the Reverend William Holland (as constructed by GPT-2 Simple, additionally finetuned by the works of the Brothers Grimm)

      Special thanks to Max Woolf and Project Gutenburg for resources, and the Brothers Grimm for such inspiring material. The Fae in a Bottle By Reverend William Howland "Dear brother, thou seest the...

      Special thanks to Max Woolf and Project Gutenburg for resources, and the Brothers Grimm for such inspiring material.


      The Fae in a Bottle

      By Reverend William Howland

      "Dear brother, thou seest the water
      crystallizing, go and show it to the merchant. I will make him a
      little bottle of water of the same kind; put it in a corner, and
      not open it too quickly, until the reflection shall let him see it."

      The merchant, who was standing behind the glass, said, "If that is
      the case, I do not see why the name of the fountain should be
      changed." "Why not?" asked the merchant. "Because my name is
      Dummling." "Dummling, what is that?" "Is a rare and wonderful
      name; I do not know how it is to have it." "If you do not see why
      the name of the fountain should be changed," said the merchant, "I
      will pay you three thalers." "There! now I see what is in my head;
      I will pay you thaler, but you must wait until I come back."

      Then he disappeared behind the glass. The poor man was forced to go back
      on his begging; he had no more money but the three thalers which the
      merchant had given him. He had long ago left the village, and wandered far
      off, and when he came back, his brother had forgotten him, and thought,
      "Why should I travel farther? I have not seen my brother." Then he came to
      the town where his brother was again living. "Dear brother," said the
      brother, "how are you? How are you getting on?" "Oh," said the brother,
      "not well."

      "Then just come and eat thy bread."

      "That would be very good," said the brother, and went away.

      He walked a long time, and came to a great forest. Then he said to his brother,
      "Go and bring me with you to-morrow morning." "Nay," said the brother, "I
      can't go. I have heard so many lies and stolen things from my brother,
      and they have not served me very well, I see very well that they will
      do me no harm." Then he went to the gallows, and told them that there
      was a poor shivering, peering there from the window. "If you let me in,"
      said the brother, "I will do you a favour. In grey hairs you can see
      a piece of a horse's heart." So he went into the forest, and saw there
      how a greyhound which was his neighbour, was dead. Then he was sad,
      and made himself known to the brother. "Dear brother," said he,
      "how are you getting on? What hast thou been saying there about
      a piece of horse's heart?" "Ah," said the brother, "how can I say that
      on the gallows, when I have not a drop of blood on me!" Then he gave him
      the greyhound's heart, and had it put in his own. The brother felt for a
      while in his pocket, and then he said, "I have a small bottle of wine,
      and if thou art inclined to drink, thou shalt find the courage
      to hold thy tongue." "To what use is the bottle put," said the
      brother, "but to some end I should like to have a sip?" "To win the
      Rosen Cup," said the brother with great joy. "To me that is enough,"
      said the hare. "To thee alone, it is the most valuable thing that
      the world possesses," said the brother. "To me, it is my most valuable
      thing." "To me, it is my most valuable possession," said the hare. Then
      he turned himself around and went to the gallows. "To-day it was
      announced that the very gallows were to be, and to-morrow they were
      to be," said the brother. "I do not know to which I should place myself,"
      he replied, "but, to-morrow it will be to-morrow, and to-morrow
      I will go." Then he was led to the gallows, and was once more there
      in the place where he had formerly been. He again said to the greyhound,
      "I wish you were still standing there." "To-day it was announced that the
      very gallows were to be, and to-morrow they were to be." "I do not know to which I
      should place myself," said the hare. "To-morrow it will be to-morrow, and
      to-morrow I will go." Then he turned himself round and went to the gallows,
      and was once more there in the place where he had formerly been.

      "To-day it was announced that the very gall

      (E/N: The story stops here abruptly, as the author ran out available memory. I wouldn't like to enforce my interpretation of the story upon it, so I'm leaving it as written.)

      6 votes
    2. New Tricks For An Old Z-Machine, Part 3: A Renaissance Is Nigh

      From the article: For all that Curses entranced me, however, I never came close to completing it. At some point I’d get bogged down by its combinatorial explosion of puzzles and places, by its...

      From the article:

      For all that Curses entranced me, however, I never came close to completing it. At some point I’d get bogged down by its combinatorial explosion of puzzles and places, by its long chains of dependencies where a single missed or misplaced link would lock me out of victory without my realizing it, and I’d drift away to something else. Eventually, I just stopped coming back altogether.

      I was therefore curious and maybe even slightly trepiditious to revisit Curses for this article some two decades after I last attempted to play it. How would it hold up? The answer is, better than I feared but somewhat worse than I might have hoped.

      [...]

      [Curses] was designed, like his beloved Crowther and Woods Adventure, to be a place which you came back to again and again, exploring new nooks and crannies as the fancy took you. If you actually wanted to solve the thing… well, you’d probably need to get yourself a group for that.

      [...]

      All of which is to say that, even as it heralded a new era in interactive fiction which would prove every bit as exciting as what had come before, Curses became the last great public world implemented as a single-player text adventure.

      More

      5 votes
    3. Any good text adventures?

      I've been starting to play some interactive fiction and I was wondering if any of you have any suggestions for good games. So far I know about Zork and Anchorhead.

      10 votes