Limit Theory Forums

Yesterday, a Rick & Morty video that Silverware linked me to inspired me to create a new project. By now, you've already read the title. Some of you may already know what an "exquisite corpse" is, but for those of you that don't, permit me to explain.

Basically, in an "exquisite corpse", a series of people are asked to complete a drawing, story, animation, or other form of media without full knowledge of what came before - they may only see a sliver of the previous person's portion of the page, for instance, or perhaps are only allowed to hear the last few seconds of audio. Then you end up with things like this: It can get pretty bizarre, as you can imagine, even if the people involved are trying very hard to make a coherent image. That's why it's fun.


I spent part of the past couple days throwing together a page on my site that will allow us - the LT community, and anyone else that wants to join in - an opportunity to participate in a Limit Theory Community version of an exquisite corpse. Instead of drawing, this will be entirely text-based, in the form of a story vaguely related to Limit Theory. Each person will be allowed to see the previous 25% of what the person before them wrote, and must try to continue the story.

The rules are simple:

• Only one person can view the page (and write) at a time. Anyone else will get locked out until the previous person either finishes, or their time is up.
• You have 30 minutes, starting the moment you load the page.
• Do your very best to continue the previous person's vision for the story to the best of your ability.
• Do not try to "close" or "end" the story. Remember that someone else will take a turn after you.
• Do not be silly, stupid, random, or try to break things. Not only will it make me very sad and ruin my game, but you'll ruin it for everyone else, too.
• If you are stupid, silly, or random, the person after you will have the opportunity to erase your entry, effectively disqualifying you.
• You are only allowed ONE turn. After you click "submit", do not reload the page again. Close the tab and go, or you'll be locking other people out too.

Again, be aware that anyone viewing the link will lock everyone else out for 30 minutes, or until they submit a post - whichever is shorter. Dino's IRC bot Saoirse has already caused problems by trying to read the page title. Unfortunately I've only just learned php yesterday and don't yet have the skills to get around this.

After a week has passed, I'll post our finished story here for everyone to read!


The page is linked to from the landing page below:
The Limit Theory exquisite corpse project

Remember: If you can't figure out what the last person was going for, just try to go with what you have. As long as your text matches the text of theirs that you can see, you're golden!

The link is up! We've already had two successful posts, and everything is going great so far. Remember that you must hit a minimum of 750 characters for the submit button to show up.

Hrm.
Please note that this page is not mobile-friendly, as I cannot scroll.

Ah... I should try to fix that. I wasn't thinking about mobile users when I designed it. Designing sites for mobile sucks.

edit: should be fixed now.

Wow, that's a lot more fun than I expected^^
I wonder how the end result will look ;P

I bumped up the time limit from 15 minutes to 30, so people feel less pressured by it.

Also, in response to a small mishap I managed to produce:
Thank you very much.

There have still only been a few entries. I'm a little disappointed that not many people have tried it, but also curious as to why. Is it maybe a little too intimidating, or is it not interesting enough, or does it take too much time? Possibly something else? If there aren't enough entries, I could at least learn something from the experience.

A lot of gamers on the web are more left-brained (technical/logical) than they are right-brained (artistic/creative). That may be why you are running into problems getting enough people to participate. I'm not an artist by any means, nor am I a particularly creative writer, though I am a creative thinker (an idea person) and very left-brained. I wouldn't even know where to begin with something like this.

That's a good point. We do have a lot of creative people here, though. I'm sure you know of our monthly fan contest by now. I think a good part of it is that people don't know where to begin, like you said.

I don't see what's so hard about it... Y'all just read the last line of the previous entry and crack on

I think the big problem is that there just really isn't any interest. There weren't any more entries after the first two days.

I added to it.

Awesome! Thanks, Duck! I'm going to go ahead in a minute here and put it all together to post it.