For Mon 5/9
Begin revising your vignettes. We will discuss the final project and revision strategies in class.
For Wed 5/4
Everyone must post their fourth and final story by 5:00 this evening. I will meet with Group B folks in individual conferences to discuss their stories.
For Mon 5/2
For Wed 4/27
Change of schedule here. Everyone must post their third story by 5:00 this evening. I will meet with Group A folks in individual conferences to discuss their stories.
For Mon 4/25
RPG session: You must post your second fiction piece of no more than 1000 words (a little wiggle room either way) to the wiki by class time (12:30 pm).
For Wed 4/20
Critique your group’s fiction, using the handout on fiction writing and workshops to assist you.
For Mon 4/18
You must post your first fiction piece of no more than 1000 words (a little wiggle room either way) to the wiki by class time (12:30 pm). If you submitted your work for today’s workshop session, you’re expected to revise it significantly based on the critiques you received.
Remember, you’re not doing reportage: you don’t need to account for everything that happened during your campaign session. In fact, it will often be best if you focus on a very small incident that your character would care deeply about.
Drop me an email if you have any questions.
For Wed 4/13
If you signed up for the workshop this week, post your work to the wiki (check email for instructions) by 5:00 on Tuesday.
Everyone should read and write down detailed comments for the members of your group who wrote stories. Again, your UWM email has a document detailing how you should prepare for your critique session.
For Mon 4/11
Continue reworking and refining your characters. Everything is open to change (except your inventories) until 12:30 PM Monday. Then your characters will be “fixed” in terms of their natures, demeanors, traits, and abilities.
Otherwise, be prepared to role-play on Monday! We’ll meet in our normal time and place before breaking off into our individual play groups.
For Wed 4/6
1) Read the “Character Q&A document” I sent out earlier today and pick out some choice questions to answer about your character, including the ones you answered today in class.
2) Go to the wiki, log in, and click on New Page. Choose the “Player-Character” template option and fill out all the blanks. The page name should be your character’s name, just like you did for NPCs.
For Mon 4/4
1. Refine your player-character based on your experiences role-playing on Wednesday. Feel free to change anything and everything about your character; personal history, abilities, attributes, concept, whatever. (Obviously you can’t change your character’s inventory though.)
2. Write about 500 words about your character’s experience in the trial run role-playing session. You won’t get terribly far with only 500 words so you might want to focus on a single moment or episode. Bring in as many details as possible, both about your character and the world. You can assume that the reader is somewhat familiar with the fictional, post-apocalyptic world. Post these to the course blog.
3. Your group leader needs to email me your group’s “mission of choice” for the role-playing campaign. Want to find a specific person? Locate a specific place? Acquire a certain number of items—such as 10 gallons of gas, or 5 laptop computers? It can be any of these or more. This is necessary so your GMs and I can place you on the map and have a general idea of where you’re going.
Here’s the link to the site we used for the trial run: http://eng236-beta.wikispaces.com
It should give you a good sense of how the GMs “see” the world that you’re exploring and how that ties into the people, places, and things you’ve made.
For Wed 3/30
1. Read through the lecture notes and handouts.
2. Finish a draft of your player-character.
For Mon 3/21, Wed 3/24, and Mon 3/28 – Enjoy Spring Break!
For Wed, 3/16
1) Continuing working on your NPCs
2) You should have finished your Items and Places at this point. If you have not, this should be your priority.
For Mon, 3/14
1) Begin working on your NPCs
2) Continue working on your Items and Places.
For Wed, 3/9
Continue working on your Items and Places.
For Mon, 3/7
1) Review your Items; edit your images to fit the 225 x 225 box if necessary and double-check your tags. Make sure that each entry is tagged with “Items” with an s.
2) On Monday we will move on to creating Places. We will talk about some of the wider social conditions of our created world, including various factions. Come to class with ideas!
For Wed, 3/2
1) Marvel that it is already March
2) Keep working on your Items. Please pay attention to your tags; each entry should be tagged “Items” (not the singular “item”) at the very least. Remember that tags help organize the site so resist the urge to be too cute. For example, don’t tag an Item with “foodstuffs” when you can enter the more commonly used “food.” We will be standardizing tags as we go in order to improve navigation, so do your best to tag appropriately from the beginning.
For Mon, 2/28
1) Catch up on your posts and comments on the stories, films, and game.
2) You will need to create ten (10) Items for our post-apocalyptic world next week. You will receive in your email a list of the items you will need to create; five (5) will be assigned, and the other five (5) will be up to you. Start thinking about what you might like to create!
For Wed, 2/23
1) Continue playing Fallout 3 and consider the different societies and economies you have encountered. While the Wasteland currency is the bottle cap, what else has value in this barter economy? For example, think about Moira in Megaton, or Eulogy Jones in Paradise Falls: in what kind of economies do they operate? And what about politics? The Brotherhood of Steel and the Enclave have different views on the future of the Capitol Wasteland. What are their political goals? How might their political plans impact someone like Lucas Simms?
2) If you signed up to respond to the gaming topic of “Politics, Economies, and Societies” read the Guidelines for Responses to Fallout 3: NPCs and Culture and post your response with the appropriate category and tags.
You should be commenting on all of your classmates responses. Remember to comment on two (2) story responses, one (1) film response, and two (2) game responses.
For Mon, 2/21
1). Take the second course survey to determine what our post-apocalyptic world will look like (not yet posted–I’ll email when it’s up). Log in using your UWM ID. The survey must be completed by class time Monday.
2). Go the course D2L site and read the Part II excerpt from Jesper Juul’s “Half-Real: Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds.” As you play Fallout 3, think about Juul’s work. If Fallout 3 is indeed half-real as Juul says, what does this game mean? For us as players? For us as fiction writers?
3). Continue playing Fallout 3 and discover at least ten (10) non-player characters (NPCs). Think about their personalities. How do you learn about NPCs in this game? How does an NPCs personal history impact their current situation? What are some NPCs motivations that you find compelling, troubling, or ridiculous?
Classroom discussion will wander, but we spend some of the time talking about NPCs. As always, keep Bogost’s “Rhetoric of Videogames” and the idea of procedural rhetoric in the forefront of your mind.
4). If you signed up to respond to the gaming topic of “NPCs,” read the Guidelines for Responses to Fallout 3: NPCs and Culture and post your response with the appropriate category and tags.
You should be commenting on all of your classmates responses. Remember to comment on two (2) story responses, one (1) film response, and two (2) game responses.
For Wed, 2/16
1). Take the course survey to determine what our post-apocalyptic world will look like. Log in using your UWM ID. The survey must be completed by class time Wednesday.
2). Go the course D2L site and read the Part I excerpt from Jesper Juul’s “Half-Real: Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds.” As you play Fallout 3, think about Juul’s work. How much of this fictional world is incomplete? How much is incoherent? Where do you think a short story or novel works better than the game? Where does the game have an advantage over print texts? How does watching a film compare?
3). Continue playing Fallout 3 and discover at least five (5) new locations.
Classroom discussion will wander, but we spend some of the time talking about various locations and cultural artifacts you’ve found in the Capital Wasteland. As always, keep Bogost’s “Rhetoric of Videogames” and the idea of procedural rhetoric in the forefront of your mind. Bogost says videogames make claims about the world. What claims do think the designers made (consciously or subconsciously) about our everyday world (i.e. not the fictional one)? What in-game options do the game designers offer you? What other kinds of options can you think of that the game doesn’t offer? What do these options suggest about the fictional world you’re about to explore? (For example, what do make of the juxtaposition of 1950′s style advertising in a world devastated by nuclear war? If a nuclear war happened tomorrow, what kind of cultural debris might our society leave behind for the scavengers, and what might that say about our values?)
4). If you signed up to respond to the gaming topic of “Places and Cultural Items,” read the Guidelines for Responses to Fallout 3: People and Items and post your response with the appropriate category and tags.
You should be commenting on all of your classmates responses. Remember to comment on two (2) story responses, one (1) film response, and two (2) game responses.
For Mon, 2/14
1). Play Fallout 3 and discover at least four (4) locations, not including Vault 101.
When completing the game’s introductory quests, take special note about how the game builds the fictional world. How much about the story do you know from the game’s physical packaging? From the instructional booklet? Where, when, and how do you, as a player character, begin to learn about the wider fictional world?
Throughout your gameplay experience, but especially during the character creation and customizing that happens in the introductory quests, keep Bogost’s “Rhetoric of Videogames” and the idea of procedural rhetoric in the forefront of your mind. Bogost says videogames make claims about the world. What claims do think the designers made (consciously or subconsciously) about our everyday world (i.e. not the fictional one)? What in-game options do the game designers offer you? What other kinds of options can you think of that the game doesn’t offer? What do these options suggest about the fictional world you’re about to explore? (For example, when choosing skills, the game doesn’t give the options to pick Cooking, Crochet, or Cartography; you can however choose from Big Guns, Small Guns, and Explosives. Given these options, what might this suggest about the fictional world of Fallout 3?)
2). If you signed up to respond to the gaming topic of “Player Characters and Venturing Out,” read the Guidelines for Responses to Fallout 3: People and Items and post your response with the appropriate category and tags.
You should be commenting on your classmates responses to the films now, but feel free to respond to the videogame posts as well.
For Wed, 2/9
- Watch the film Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (available on reserve at the library, or rent at your convenience)
- If you signed up to respond to this film, read the Guidelines for Responses and Comments to Stories and Films and post your response with the appropriate category and tags; you should also read the Rubric for Responses and Comments to understand how responses will be graded
- You should be commenting on your classmates responses now. Read the rubric document (above) and click on the “Leave a Comment” link at the foot of the response
- Read Ian Bogost’s “The Rhetoric of Video Games” (available via the link at the MIT Press journal website)
For Mon, 2/7
- Watch the film The Road (available on reserve at the library, or rent at your convenience)
- If you signed up to respond to this film, read the Guidelines for Responses and Comments to Stories and Films and post your response with the appropriate category and tags; you should also read the Rubric for Responses and Comments to understand how responses will be graded
- You should be commenting on your classmates responses now. Read the rubric document (above) and click on the “Leave a Comment” link at the foot of the response
For Wed, 2/2
- In Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse, read:
- “Dark, Dark Were the Tunnels,” by George R.R. Martin
- “Ginny Sweethips’ Flying Circus,” by Neal Barrett, Jr.
- “Episode Seven…” by John Langan
- If you signed up to respond to one of these stories, read the Guidelines for Responses and Comments to Stories and Films and post your response with the appropriate category and tags; you should also read the Rubric for Responses and Comments to understand how responses will be graded
- You should be commenting on your classmates responses now. Read the rubric document (above) and click on the “Leave a Comment” link at the foot of the response
For Mon, 1/31
- In Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse, read:
- “Never Despair,” by Jack McDevitt
- “A Song Before Sunset,” by David Grigg
- “Artie’s Angels,” by Catherine Wells
- If you signed up to respond to one of these stories, read the Guidelines for Responses and Comments to Stories and Films and post your response with the appropriate category and tags; you should also read the Rubric for Responses and Comments to understand how responses will be graded
- You may also begin commenting on your classmates responses. Read the rubric document (above) and click on the “Leave a Comment” link at the foot of the response
For Wed, 1/26
- Create a Gmail account if you don’t already have one
- Go to Google Docs and sign up for posting responses to:
- 1 film
- 2 gaming topics
- Sign on to the WordPress course website and manage your profile
- In Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse, read:
- ”Killers,” by Carol Emschwiller
- ”The End of the World as We Know It,” by Dale Bailey
- ”Still Life With Apocalypse” by Richard Kadrey
- If you signed up to respond to one of these stories, read the Guidelines for Responses and Comments to Stories and Films and post your response with the appropriate category and tags; you should also read the Rubric for Responses and Comments to understand how responses will be graded
- You may also begin commenting on your classmates responses. Read the rubric document (above) and click on the “Leave a Comment” link at the foot of the response
Before class on Mon, 1/24
- Read the Eng 236 Syllabus
- Take the course introductory survey
- Read Will Hindmarch’s “Storytelling Games as a Creative Medium”
(optional but strongly encouraged) - Obtain the course textbook, Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse
