Tekka Tools: My Life With Master

In the new TEKKA, I review Paul Czege's role-playing game, My Life With Master as a hypertext tool. That's a surprise, in a way: we normally think of tools as software programs like Flash and Tinderbox and Code Warrior, not as games. But I think this could indeed be a useful tool for writers looking for an exercise or a way to leap over a block:

If we sit down to play a solitaire game of My Life With Master, the framework poses a series of writing problems, inviting us to sketch each scene effectively and economically. The framework takes care of some details of plotting, letting us focus on how we reach the inevitable dénouement, and also forces us to braid together a variety of plot lines as individual minions pursue their individually tormented existences, now aiding a companion, now luring away or destroying those their fellow minions cherish.

Anja Rau picks up a thread by game designer Greg Costikyan, to ask whether closure is tragic:

So, is it tragic if an RPG (or, for that matter, a hyperfiction) ends? It should be old news that the absence of beginng and/or end automatically creates an "open text" as imagined by U. Eco. But is endlessness a tantamout to quality? Is closure tragic?

Sure, closure is a suspect quality. But I don't believe this is a problem, much less a tragic circumstance. In Lost In Translation, we always know that the central characters will go home and go on with their lives. This isn't a Charade or a Roman Holiday. We don't build suspense in that direction; instead, we know how it ends, and we want to find out how we get there.