DRAFT RULES August 27, 2001

The game is played by two or more players. Its subject/field of action is Walter Scott's romance fiction Ivanhoe.

The game is to "replay" Ivanhoe by rewriting the work within the parameters and rules established for the game. The object is to explore and elaborate the meanings of the materials that constitute Ivanhoe. It is in other words a game of literary criticism and appreciation, and perforce a game of cultural criticism as well. In contrast to the preponderant body (in several senses) of received literary exegesis, its critical method is procedural rather than expository.

The point of the game is for players to hypothesize and then extrapolate ideas about Ivanhoe within a performative and dynamic intellectual space. The point is not to develop readings or interpretations of Ivanhoe but to refashion and reshape its materials in ways that replicate the explanatory operations played out in the original story and in the material works that transmit the story to us. The game encourages and expects from the players a conscious and purposive involvement with Ivanhoe , and it constructs a controlled playing space occupied by various dynamic forces, both sympathetic and resistant

Parameters: The game of Ivanhoe is first of all a space of operations. The space is composed of two "fields" of possible action, one surrounding and encompassing the other. The inner field is the fictional world of Scott's romance, with its various incidents, characters, and descriptive or expository passages. The surrounding field is the existential and historical field of Ivanhoe -- i.e., a space defined and occupied by specific material forms of Scott's romance and any historical materials that relate to the work. (NOTE: The relation between these two fields is epitomized by the fact that certain of the game's materials and roles will be seen to occupy positions in both fields. So in Ivanhoe King Richard and his brother John are both fictional and historical characters; and Scott himself is both character ("the "narrator" and "The Author of 'Waverly'") as well as "real" person.)

Both fields are divided into upper and lower levels - the upper being the space immediately available to play and action, the lower being a space where materials are stored that have, for one reason or another, fallen out of the space of the action. It is a kind of textual unconscious. Materials from the lower spaces can re-emerge in the upper space under given circumstances. Both fields at both levels are regularly visited by random interventions that can affect the moves of the players.

The game is initiated when at least two persons agree to play the game. It "begins" when a person enters one or the other of the fields of the game and makes a specific move in that field. (NOTE: A crucial requirement - it's a rule that precedes all the other rules of the game - is that any person playing the game must do so by consciously and explicitly assuming a "role" in the game. This requirement goes deeply to the core of the critical philosophy underlying the game in general. So one might go in and begin playing "as" Rebecca, or "as" the narrator, etc. One cannot play the game simply as a "reader" unless one specifies who this reader is, i.e., unless the reader is also defined as a specific player/character, real or imaginary. One plays the game, in other words, much as one engages with life in a MOO.)

Finally, the "outer" field of the game is initially specified by a declaration about what scholars would call the "choice of text" for the game, i.e., the specific edition of Ivanhoe that is the game's initiating "vehicular form" carrying the fiction at the inner field. This text is actually supplied or available to the game players. (NOTE: In a sense the choice of this material text makes no "difference" since any text immediately implies the existence of the work's full textual history, i.e., implies the existence of every possible and every actual form of the text that ever was or ever might be imagined to be.)

Note on random interventions: these will be computer generated and will remain completely outside the control of the players.

CONDITIONS OF PLAY

Two or more players may agree to initiate a game.

The game terminates by agreement, or when only one player remains.

A player's first move is made in one of three possible textspaces. These spaces are called textspace1 (the inner space), textspace2 (the outer space), textspace3 (the double space occupied by roles of persons defined as inhabitants of both spaces).

RULES OF PLAY

1.0 Players must get their roles authorized before their play can begin.
1.01 Roles are authorized by agreement of the players, who signal their authorization by assenting to the role.
1.01.1 Agreement is achieved through dialogue among the players, with each player responding in turn (if they choose) to the remarks of the previous player(s).
1.02 Authorized roles and discussions about them are stored in the game's Historical Archive, which is a reference space in textspace2 normally inaccessible to any manipulation.
1.02.1 The Historical Archive can only be accessed by a random permission.
1.02.2 If the Historical Archive is altered in the course of any specific game, its original state is restored at the end of that game.

1.1 Players begin with the possibility of making three Peremptory Critical Challenges (PCC) addressable to another player.
1.1.01 A PCC may be addressed at any point to any other player (but not while a player is actually making a move).
1.1.02 If a PCC is sent to a player, the sender must be authorized to send the PCC, i.e., must be authorized to make moves in textspace2
1.1.03 The sender's authorization comes either from already having a role authorized to function in textspace2, or from making an Arbitrary Spatial Move (ASM, see below).
1.2.01 A PCC requires the addressed player to produce a critical gloss explaining his/her preceding move. (The requirement thus calls the addressed player to enter textspace2 if he/she is not already there.)
1.2.02 If a player is issued a PCC and has as yet no authorized role in textspace2 (or textspace3), that role must be invented and must be authorized before the player can continue.
1.2.03 If at this mid-game point a discussion ensues among the players about a PCC-induced new role, the discussion is carried on in textspace2 and is preserved as part of the action of textspace2.
1.2.04 Once a PCC-induced new role has been authorized, the player with this role, at his/her next turn, may freely choose to continue play in any space available to his/her authorized roles.
1.2 If a player has a textspace3 authorized role to begin with and is issued a PCC, he/she may respond either through his/her original textspace3 role or through a new role to be created and authorized at that point.

1.2 Players begin with the possibility of making three Arbitrary Spatial Moves (ASM) by which they can shift from one textspace to another and make a move in the new textspace.

2.01 Players make moves in turn.
2.02 Moves are all confined to the textspace of a player's preceding move

7.0 At the termination of a game, the games moves are stored in the Historical Archive.

Types of Random Intervention: cancellation of a move (it is relegated to the lower level of the space where it took place); call for a player to move again before the response move of another player; call for a player to lose a turn of play; call for a halt in play until the player moving adds some material (perhaps of a specified kind) to the outer space of the game; call for a player to switch moves to the other textspace; pass (which may or may not be used) to switch textspaces; call for a player's move to be limited in some specified way

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