Who We Are
We are a Boston collection of fans, players, and authors of Interactive Fiction. This includes:
- Old-style text adventures: “Twisty little maze of passages, all alike.” “Likely to be eaten by a grue.” Those games.
- Twine and other modern choice-based game systems.
- Visual novels.
- Academic and experimental hypertext.
- Gamebooks, such as the classic Choose Your Own Adventure series.
- Anything else that gets called “interactive fiction”.
Not surprisingly, we play and discuss all things interactive fiction, focusing on recent topics or developments in the community. We also demonstrate our own games or experiments in the area. Some past examples from our agenda include:
- Playing and critiquing various games submitted to the Interactive Fiction Competition at JayIsGames.
- Demonstrating a program that can create interactive excerpts from an IF game.
- Learning how an IF game is being used by a student to replicate the logic (or lack thereof) in dreams.
Finally, after all is said and done, we go out to eat and drink and socialize. And a few of us even create videos…
Our generous host, Nick Montfort, discusses Interactive Fiction.
Where We Meet
Much like the grue convention in Zork: The Underground Empire, we gather in a dark, secret location except that our location is illuminated and we’re open to the public. You can find us in “The Trope Tank”, aka the office of Nick Montfort, room 14N-233 in building 14 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. To help orient yourself, feel free to click on the map to the right.
When We Meet
Once a month; the day and date varies. It’s a little random, we admit it, so look at the calendar (to the right) or visit our Google forum and look for the announcement.
Code of Conduct
The People’s Republic of Interactive Fiction is dedicated to providing a harassment-free experience for everyone. See our Event Policy.
Contact Us
You can email us at info@pr-if.org; follow our Twitter account at @IFinBoston; or join our mailing list.