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    1. 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.

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      5 votes
    2. Remember, remember, the fifth of November, Gunpowder Treason and Plot...

      I see no reason why the gunpowder treason Should ever be forgot. Today is Bonfire Night or Guy Fawkes night, where we commemorate the 1605 plot by Guy Fawkes and a group of English Catholics who...

      I see no reason why the gunpowder treason Should ever be forgot.

      Today is Bonfire Night or Guy Fawkes night, where we commemorate the 1605 plot by Guy Fawkes and a group of English Catholics who planned on blowing up Parliament and King James I to set off a popular revolt and putting a Catholic Monarch on the throne.. We do that by burning an effigy of Guy Fawkes on a bonfire, eating black peas, treacle and parkin and terrorising pets everywhere by setting off fireworks.

      Unfortunately because of its proximity to Halloween and silly things like "safety" many of the traditional celebrations are dying out. Kids used to essentially beg for money by stuffing clothing and asking for "a penny for the Guy" which they'd use for sweets or fireworks. Locally made bonfires are also becoming rarer with most these days done by professional and regulated firework companies and organised by the council so it feels more like watching a show and less like getting together with your neighbours and family.

      Are you going to any events, hosting one, do you have any stories or questions about Bonfire night, do you have any traditions. Thoughts on fire works etc.

      Just a general Bonfire Night thread.

      18 votes