Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Fathers and Crows: Communication

Samuel de Champlain (known to the Huron -- or "Wendat" -- as "Chawain") speaks to the Huron through Étienne Brûlé, his interpreter:
He told the Savages that they were now subject to the Roy of France, at which they expressed great joy. Or, to relate the conversation more exactly:

Tell them that it's essential for them to be protected from the Hiroquois, because they make war badly and have no more freedom from error than children. Make that clear, boy! Tell them that the Roy loves them, and that if they regard him as a father and promise to obey him, then -- then he'll send armed Frenchmen to live here, and priests to instruct them in the Faith. (Thus Champlain, to his good subaltern, Monsieur Étienne Brûlé.)

Chawain says to you: You are great warriors. Our Big Stone in France desires to assist you in your wars and reap glory with you. Chawain asks you if you will permit the Iron People to live among you as your brothers. Chawain's friends are Sorcerers who will teach you to cast spells and make iron things. Is this well? (Thus tactful Brûlé, to the Wendat.)

We say to Chawain our brother: Our lodge is your lodge. We desire to learn the use of your guns. We desire to learn from your Sorcerers. Come live among us. Take our daughters in marriage. Learn from us to be hunters and strong bearers of burdens. Learn from us to shave off your foolish beards and to speak softly. You are welcome here. (Thus to Wendat, to Brûlé their nephew.)

The Huron reply to you: It is well. (Thus Brûlé, to Champlain.)

Champlain, who had been watching them narrowly, let his shoulders fall. He smiled; he laughed; he passed out hatchets and hatchets...
("Fathers and Crows," p.417-418)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Totally random query, but what are the 3-4 most enjoyable adventure games that you have played?

My experience is limited to something called ciagame.bas - a very nice detective story with neat hidden features like a mysterious room that shakes and rumbles when u push a button. Then silence. The door opens and voila! you are in a different floor! Then it hits you. You just used the ....!!

and leisure suit larry - fun to play, esp with the cute graphics but it has totally bizarre and illogical puzzles that no sane man would have figured out. :-)

Adam Thornton said...

I did have Leisure Suit Larry for my old PC, and I think I did manage to finish it without hints...the whole thing revolved around having enough money, so if you saved the game before you gambled, and then restored the game every time you lost, you could make a fortune. :)

But otherwise I was never very good at text adventures. I loved the IDEA of them, but for some reason I'd lost interest after a few hours, usually because I'd get hopelessly stuck "guessing the verb."

I did like "Leather Goddesses of Phobos" and "Hitch Hiker's Guide," and spent a lot of time writing my own adventures with AdventureWriter (so cool!) And I tinkered with the Scott Adams adventures a bit.

ciagame.bas I haven't heard of...was it for the C64?

Anonymous said...

Cool. Ciagame.bas is (as u can guess!) a gwbasic compatible basic program that really is a very cool adventure game. If you google for it, I do believe you will be able to snag a copy. I have played Larry only very recently. I played it mainly because it was a much whispered about, almost mythical game in my growing up years. :-0
Yet it really is nowhere GOOD as a piece of story telling. You brought up the save and gamble rinse-repeat point. That clearly breaks the 4th wall. Or how about the entire stupidy of getting married just because you NEED the rope the girl is going to tie u with to steal the spainish fly that you give to the girl in the lobby just so she can move away for you to press the button? How stupid and unrealistic can u get? :-)
Ciagame for the most part is truly immersive. It does crash at one point so you have to debug and fix the code once. And yeah, having the source code means that I cheated once or twice by looking for hints in the data strings. :-)