A classic ingredient! This selection taps a vein running right back to the dawn of the medium. From Enchanter to Hadean Lands, world-altering scrolls are an IF staple.
As our esteemed host Otis T. Dog suggests, and as my fellow Apocalypse Horsemen continue to affirm, the ingredient lends itself automatically, almost inevitably, to a magical interpretation. Perhaps even more than the phrase “alters the world,” the word “scroll” has the flavor of magic embedded. Not a book or a page or a sheet, but a scroll. It is a wizardly word. The wind blows strongly in the direction of the fantasy genre.
But will our competitors sail with the wind, or against it? There are many ways, after all, to “alter the world.” The ways needn’t be magical! Couldn’t an archaeologist, for instance, discover an ancient scroll that “alters the world” by providing new context for some historical event? The Dead Sea Scrolls spring to mind. And that is just one example – the first to pop into my head! Love letters and diplomatic treaties, as Death has mentioned, are more non-magical possibilities.
Say, however, that our competitors do lean toward magic. There may be a temptation, and indeed there is a precedent – a precedent so large in the IF canon, it may be said to loom – to develop a magic system, of which the scroll contains some key in the form of a spell or a sigil or whatnot.
A devilishly tricky task – the systematization of magic! Like a joke that dies upon explanation, magic risks losing its magical spark when subjected too rigorously to rules-based parameters. A great many magical systems in fiction, in this judge’s admittedly subjective and perhaps faintly snobbish opinion, are not magical at all! They may call themselves magic, but they are not!
To spice a dish with true magic is no task for the faint-hearted. Easier, perhaps, to use the imitation stuff, especially when our competitors are under a time limit. I wouldn’t blame them for reaching, here and there, for this or that trope to provide easy “glue” for their games. Doubly so if they determine to tackle the daunting task of developing a system!
Comedy, I suspect, will provide the base. Magic must not always involve comedy, of course, but the two flavors are frequently paired in the world of interactive fiction. And our competitors have both already demonstrated a humorous approach to this challenge!
The ingredient is so flexible, however, that – much like magic itself – it could go anywhere. Even the sky is no limit! This is not one of those ingredients like, say, truffle oil, that would powerfully assert itself and dictate certain flavors in the dish. It’s an ingredient more like salt: universally applicable.
I have done my fair share of tinkering over the years!