True, the look can help.
But who has a visual image of King Arthur/Artus? But nonetheless he is well-known and liked. Amd what about the many book characters in the time before movies?
Weâve had artwork of Arthur for a thousand years or so? Some of it well known. Somebody will correct me if Iâm off base.
I think what Adamâs getting at (and I agree) has to do with appearance and our own contemporary experience of the iconic. Icon is often used to refer to religious artwork, I think our usage comes from that.
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I understand but I really DONâT WANT to picture myself the image of Stiffy. 
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Ha! I was just thinking about Stiffy. I think I would call him a very successful meme, which isnât very different from being an icon these daysâŚ
Iâm not saying there was no image of Artus, but many people have no mental image of Artus! Yes, visual recognition helps. But I still think, before there were movies, people had iconic characters, like Robin Hood, Merlin, HolmesâŚ
In this thread, we havenât come up with a ton of characters despite 50 years of IF. Someone suggested a lack of visual iconography as a possible reason. I think thatâs probably true personally. Along with self-insert characters and some other things like that.
Even if we all agree that visual elements donât matter, that doesnât explain the lack of widely agreed-upon IF stars or icons identified in this thread. In fact, it makes it confusing.
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Sorry, disagree doubly. That we didnât name many means tgere indeed are a few outstanding characters.
And I didnât claim thereâs no visual aspect or that thatâs uninportant. I think visual aspects help (I said that three times now). And an IF author can envoke images. And the readerâs mind automatically produces images. Think of Holmes being a tall man with a special hat and a pipe. Merlin being an old man with beard and robe. And so on.
An IF author can use visual components to create an image in the readerâs mind. That is not restricted to characters but includes items, lanscape and characterâs movement (think of a martial artistâs jump described like it were a comic or movie). But I think Grunk and others are iconic without needing that.
Sure! And I said that some other factors were involved, too. But I donât think youâre acknowledging the lack of general agreement or low numbers in this thread, which is making it difficult to discuss them even though they are real. You donât seem to agree, which is perfectly OK.
Iâll leave you to it, then.
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I think you are right on this. But do we really have no iconic characters? I mean, of course most ânormalâ people (mainstream movie/game consumers) donât know about IF or their characters, but does that mean that inside the IF-scene there canât be âstarsâ?
And thereâs always the option to write IF about characters from outside the IF (as long as they arenât too new and thereby copyrighted).
Late to the party but I would propose Poet, though a robot, from Suspended.
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One thing to notice is that probably due to the Aangfaaacaaap or whatever you call it, the most prolly icon characters are NPCs because they are usually the only ones actually described and with a unique personality.
Except Stiffy, I mean.
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The thing about Stiffy is that many authors have created new works involving him without feeling the need to ask the original author first. Itâs harder to see that happening with a character from an original work that has more respect, without overcoming the friction of okaying it with the original author.
(I know fanworks are a thing, but I feel like this community is small enough that people are more likely to ask first before lifting IF-original characters.)
(Oh, hey, stiffymakane.com hasnât been updated with 2023âs contribution to the oeuvre, nor indeed 2015âs. Who runs it, Sam?)
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I agree. Most of the iconic characters/âstarsâ mentioned outside of IF are either public domain or franchise characters with many adaptations and creations including them across time. IF is a niche medium of works made by individuals. If there were more cross-pollination of people picking up IF characters they like to carry on the âlegacyâ then maybe that would be star power. The only two I can think of there are Stiffy and the Magpie (from Alias the Magpie and The Magpie Takes the Train)
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I love well-characterized PCs (and NPCs). But one of the things that is great about IF is that because you are wearing the PCâs skin, you do tend to flesh the character out with yourself more than you do in other forms of narrative entertainment. There are many memorable characters in IF, but the ones that came to my mind werenât human: Grunk, the wizard-sniffing pig, the alien in Coloratura, Toby the dog. Thatâs not because theyâre better than human PCs; itâs because AlexAndra, The Magpie, the PC from Anchorhead⌠in my mind, all those were me.
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I have a feeling whichever way we turn the whole thing, there are no stars or icons the way weâd normally use those terms outside IF.
We could do things like vote on great characters within IF. But there are no characters where basically everyone who plays IF has heard of them and maybe has an opinion on them, even if theyâve had nothing to do with them or arenât even interested in them. Except maybe Stiffy Makane, who meets a certain definition of fame. I have a reaction to him and I havenât played any of those games â thatâs one way to detect fame. Floyd feels kind of iconic, but again, my guess is great swathes of IFfers havenât heard of him.
I assume this is because IF is not consistently mainstream, and because its technology has changed repeatedly in its history in ways that change everything about its audience and reception each time. I mean, novels are still what theyâve been for hundreds of years. Movies are what they were a hundred years ago. With IF, you go from Adventure to a fork of Scott Adams and Infocom and Wizard and the Princess, to Kingâs Quest in under a decade, to multiple forks again, and point and click. Eventually thereâs Inform and the Infocom way rejoins the fray, but starting again quite out of time. Then youâve got Twine (back to all text, but now clicking) and then⌠etc. Look at how different all these IFs look and feel and how theyâre experienced. Thatâs why my own feeling is nothingâs had a chance to cut across the whole lot to be however prominent I feel a star or icon should probably be, to me.
-Wade
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Last I know, Adam Thornton runs it; he told me last year that he plans to update the page, but it seems he didnât get a round TUIT around to it.
We could run a minicomp where everyone writes a game starring the same character and then declare that character to be public domain and urge people to use them as their protagonist in games where thatâs possible. 
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I like that idea. You could theme it around a character with just a name, a few traits, maybe a talent or occupation, and then see what scenarios and adventures people throw them in.
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This is incredibly interesting and fun. Letâs plant some seeds! Iâm in!
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Actually, SeedComp is already the perfect vehicle for this. A character bible, or a setting with some key characters detailed as part of it, works perfectly well as a seed, and (if Iâve read it correctly) the terms of SeedComp require the seeds to be released under a license which would allow anyone else who wants to to use them as a basis for further derivative works in the future.
Plus the planting round is right now!
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