Following their game plan (or walkthrough) for First Person, Pat Harrigan and Noah Wardrip-Fruin have brought their anthology Second Person: Role-Playing and Story in Games and Playable Media to the electronic book review (ebr) to bring the threads of discussion to life. Section One, Computational Fictions, has arrived at ebr and the subsequent sections will soon follow.

Together with Third Person, these two anthologies will form a trilogy of works from scholars, artists, and industry professionals on interactive narrative and drama forms. According to ebr,

The material in these volumes and on ebr represents a new level of dialogue between creators and critics about emerging forms of fictional and playable experience.

The ebr publication of the texts will not only open the book to readers across the Internet, but will also offer a site for continued conversation as readers respond to the texts through ripostes.

The essays previously published in the ebr “First Person” thread evoked (and provoked) responses from such central figures as N. Katherine Hayles, Henry Jenkins, and Stephanie Strickland.

The publication continues ebr‘s long-standing relationship with MIT press, and that press’ continued work toward public online discussion of its texts, as seen in the recent and ongoing vetting of Wardrip-Fruin’s Expressive Processing.

The Table of Contents of the Second Person release follows.

Second Person
Role-Playing and Story in Games and Playable Media
edited by Pat Harrigan and Noah Wardrip-Fruin

Section One: Tabletop Systems

Games, Storytelling, and Breaking the String
Greg Costikyan

On the Wild Cards Series
George R. R. Martin

From the Basement to the Basic Set
The Early Years of Dungeons & Dragons
Erik Mona

Narrative Structure and Creative Tension in Call of Cthulhu
Kenneth Hite

On “The Haunted House”
Keith Herber

On Character Creation in Everway
Jonathan Tweet

Storytelling Games as a Creative Medium
Will Hindmarch

Structure and Meaning in Role-Playing Game Design
Rebecca Borgstrom

My Life with Master: The Architecture of Protagonism
Paul Czege

Making Games That Make Stories
James Wallis

Creating a Meaning-Machine
The Deck of Stories Called Life in the Garden
Eric Zimmerman

Design Decisions and Concepts in Licensed Collectible Card Games
Eric Lang; Assisted by Pat Harrigan

One Story, Many Media
Kevin Wilson

On Mystery of the Abbey
Bruno Faidutti

On Life’s Lottery
Kim Newman

<strong>The goal of this project is to promote the study and production of literature in the age of new media.</strong>

For those already teaching courses in electronic literature, we aim to push its study and practice to new levels. For those who are simply curious, we offer simple (and complicated) ways to integrate electronic texts into the print-centered literature classroom.

Because our medium allows for collaboration, we encourage contributors and users to communicate with each other for the benefit of each other, our students, and the field.

Since we are just getting started, I’d invite people to contact me directly &lt;davinheckman [at] gmail.com&gt; and I will give you a login name and password so we can get to work…