Re: Phrontisterion IV?

[Chris Crawford <chriscrawford@wave.net>]

Omigod, it appears that I have committed a very serious blunder. I have sent
out two announcements for Phrontisterion, the first several months ago, and
the second about six weeks ago. The first went out to previous
Phrontisterion attendees (or so I thought) and the second went out to my
Erasmatazz mailing list. But if you didn't get one, Benja, then something
very serious went wrong. What's odd is that they were both addressed to
myself, with everybody else Bcc'd, and I did receive both. Here is the blurb
that I sent out to the Erasmatazz mailing list:

At last I have some interesting and useful news for you: the announcement of
Phrontisterion IV, the fourth conference on interactive storytelling. In the
last year, interest in the problem of interactive storytelling has been
spreading into a number of fields; we may well see some serious commercial
activity this year.

The topic for this yearıs conference is ³A Comparison of Nine Approaches to
Interactive Storytelling². Those nine approaches are:

Personality Modeling
Goal Driven Characters
Folktale assembly from parts in the Aarne-Thompson catalog
Plot generation 
story-driven games 
emergence from simulation
Will Wrightıs bizarre and brilliant ideas
Dramatic sublanguages
the Erasmatron

We will have presentations on each of these nine approaches, plus any more
that attendees suggest, with emphasis on comparing the strengths and
weaknesses of each strategy. At the end of the conference we will prepare a
joint document representing the groupıs conclusions regarding these
strategies.

The conference will be held on Saturday and Sunday, June 8 ­ 9. It will be
held at my home in the mountains near Ashland, Oregon. The setting there is
idyllic and conducive to deep reflection. The price will be $50 (my wife
refuses to do all the legwork this year, so Iım hiring a neighbor whoıs a
caterer). Attendance will be limited to 35 people, the largest group, I
think, that can confer productively under my chairmanship.

If you are interested in attending, please send me an email declaring
yourself as either 1) committed to attending or 2) interested in attending.
Obviously, sooner is better than later. Iıll keep you posted as I start
nailing down details. And please feel free to ask any questions or offer any
suggestions. A conference this small, with only one person running it, can
be quite flexible.

And as always, if you have grown tired of my endless chatter, simply advise
me of that fact and I shall scramble to remove your name from this mailing
list.

Chris Crawford 




My sincere apologies, Benja, for failing to get this to you. I'd appreciate
it if any other idrama readers would advise me as to whether they felt they
should have gotten an invitation, but did not.

Chris