{ "groups": [ { "id": "G01", "name": "The urge you cannot resist", "predicament": "Something in you keeps pulling towards the one act you know will ruin you, and resisting only makes it stronger.", "sentence": "A person in the grip of a compulsion wants to be free of the urge from the thing they are fixed on.", "actor": "person in the grip of a compulsion", "wants": "to be free of the urge", "counterpart": "the thing they are fixed on", "stories": [ 1, 6, 11, 19, 20 ], "story_titles": [ "The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherazade", "The Black Cat", "The Imp of the Perverse", "The Tell-Tale Heart", "Berenice" ], "standing": { "high": 6, "middle": 5, "low": 4 }, "stage": "high", "members": [ { "chunk": 30, "story": 1, "predicament": "Someone who has just talked her way out of danger cannot resist talking again, though nothing now requires it." }, { "chunk": 119, "story": 6, "predicament": "A man is driven by a perverse urge to do the very wrong he knows he must not, because he knows it." }, { "chunk": 189, "story": 11, "predicament": "Someone discovers in himself an urge to do a thing precisely because he knows he should not, and cannot resist it." }, { "chunk": 190, "story": 11, "predicament": "A speaker who wants to be liked feels an irresistible urge to provoke his listener, and gives in to it." }, { "chunk": 191, "story": 11, "predicament": "Someone facing the one urgent task their future depends on keeps putting it off for no reason until it is too late." }, { "chunk": 192, "story": 11, "predicament": "A person standing at the edge of a drop feels a terrible pull to jump, precisely because the thought is so horrifying." }, { "chunk": 337, "story": 19, "predicament": "A man seized by an irrational fixation on one feature of someone he loves resolves to destroy them to be rid of it." }, { "chunk": 338, "story": 19, "predicament": "A man plotting a senseless killing is extra kind by day and creeps to his victim's bedside each night, sure no one suspects." }, { "chunk": 341, "story": 19, "predicament": "A man on the brink of violence hears a sound he takes to be his victim's heart, and it drives him into fury." }, { "chunk": 342, "story": 19, "predicament": "A man driven to frenzy by a sound he cannot bear finally kills, afraid only that the neighbours will hear." }, { "chunk": 349, "story": 20, "predicament": "While someone close to him sinks into death-like trances, a man falls prey to a morbid fixation he cannot control." }, { "chunk": 350, "story": 20, "predicament": "A man describes losing himself for days in staring at trivial things, unable to pull his mind away." }, { "chunk": 351, "story": 20, "predicament": "A man insists his obsession is not idle dreaming but a grip that keeps dragging him back to one trivial thing." }, { "chunk": 352, "story": 20, "predicament": "A man with an obsessive mind feeds it with the very reading most likely to make it worse." }, { "chunk": 356, "story": 20, "predicament": "A man's obsessive mind fixes on one part of another person, and he comes to believe he must possess it." } ], "options": [ { "text": "Give in to it and have done.", "source": "scene:119", "moves": { "flags.gave_in": "set", "standing": "-", "nerve": "-" }, "in_group": true }, { "text": "Put it off another day, and another.", "source": "scene:191", "moves": { "reason": "-", "standing": "risk" }, "in_group": true }, { "text": "Sit with it and study it until it passes.", "source": "scene:350", "moves": { "reason": "+", "relationships.household": "-" }, "in_group": true }, { "text": "Step back from the edge, or let someone hold you back.", "source": "scene:192", "moves": { "nerve": "+", "relationships.confidant": "+" }, "in_group": true }, { "text": "Get rid of whatever sets it off.", "source": "scene:337", "moves": { "flags.violent": "set", "relationships.household": "-" }, "in_group": true } ] }, { "id": "G02", "name": "Safe, and about to give yourself away", "predicament": "You have got away with it, and the safer you feel, the stronger the urge to let it slip.", "sentence": "A person with a hidden crime wants to stay safe from people who suspect nothing.", "actor": "person with a hidden crime", "wants": "to stay safe", "counterpart": "people who suspect nothing", "stories": [ 6, 11, 18, 19 ], "story_titles": [ "The Black Cat", "The Imp of the Perverse", "William Wilson", "The Tell-Tale Heart" ], "standing": { "middle": 5, "high": 2, "low": 3 }, "stage": "middle", "members": [ { "chunk": 128, "story": 6, "predicament": "A murderer, freed at last from his tormentor, sleeps easily and believes the questions and searches are behind him." }, { "chunk": 129, "story": 6, "predicament": "A guilty man who has fooled every searcher cannot resist a boast, and points them straight at what he has hidden." }, { "chunk": 130, "story": 6, "predicament": "A murderer's hidden victim is revealed by the very thing he had forgotten, crying out from inside the tomb he made." }, { "chunk": 194, "story": 11, "predicament": "A man who has got away with a crime for years hears himself say aloud that he is safe, unless he confesses." }, { "chunk": 195, "story": 11, "predicament": "A man who knows he will betray his own secret tries to outrun the urge, and confesses to strangers in the street." }, { "chunk": 329, "story": 18, "predicament": "A cheat, at the moment of his triumph, is exposed in front of everyone by a stranger who knows exactly where to look." }, { "chunk": 330, "story": 18, "predicament": "A man exposed as a cheat is met not with rage but with silent contempt, and told to leave." }, { "chunk": 339, "story": 19, "predicament": "A stalker's victim wakes and sits listening in the dark, and the stalker must hold perfectly still for an hour." }, { "chunk": 344, "story": 19, "predicament": "A murderer who has satisfied the searchers boldly sits right over the hidden body, and begins to hear something." }, { "chunk": 345, "story": 19, "predicament": "A murderer who has fooled the searchers cannot bear a sound only he hears, and screams out his own confession." } ], "options": [ { "text": "Say nothing more and let them go.", "source": "archetype", "moves": { "nerve": "+" }, "in_group": null }, { "text": "Make one small boast, to show how safe you are.", "source": "scene:129", "moves": { "standing": "risk", "flags.exposed": "set" }, "in_group": true }, { "text": "Talk louder and faster to drown out what you hear.", "source": "scene:345", "moves": { "nerve": "-", "standing": "risk" }, "in_group": true }, { "text": "Run from the thought before it reaches your tongue.", "source": "scene:195", "moves": { "nerve": "-", "relationships.crowd": "-" }, "in_group": true }, { "text": "Confess it yourself and have it over.", "source": "filled", "moves": { "standing": "-", "flags.confessed": "set" }, "in_group": null } ] }, { "id": "G03", "name": "Hiding what you did, with the searchers on their way", "predicament": "You have hidden what you did, and the people who will look for it are on their way.", "sentence": "A person with something to hide wants it never to be found from the searchers.", "actor": "person with something to hide", "wants": "it never to be found", "counterpart": "the searchers", "stories": [ 3, 6, 11, 19 ], "story_titles": [ "Von Kempelen and His Discovery", "The Black Cat", "The Imp of the Perverse", "The Tell-Tale Heart" ], "standing": { "low": 2, "middle": 3 }, "stage": "middle", "members": [ { "chunk": 82, "story": 3, "predicament": "A man working in secret is caught in the act and tries to destroy the evidence of what he was doing." }, { "chunk": 126, "story": 6, "predicament": "A murderer calmly weighs every way of hiding what he has done, and settles on sealing the body inside a wall." }, { "chunk": 127, "story": 6, "predicament": "A man who has hidden a body with great care looks over his work and feels sure he is safe." }, { "chunk": 193, "story": 11, "predicament": "A man who planned a perfect crime and got away with it now sits condemned, and wants to explain why." }, { "chunk": 343, "story": 19, "predicament": "A murderer who has hidden every trace opens the door calmly to the officers who have come to investigate." } ], "options": [ { "text": "Hide it where no one would think to look.", "source": "scene:127", "moves": { "reason": "+", "flags.evidence_hidden": "set" }, "in_group": true }, { "text": "Destroy the evidence the moment you are caught.", "source": "scene:82", "moves": { "nerve": "+", "standing": "risk" }, "in_group": true }, { "text": "Open the door calmly and invite them to search.", "source": "scene:343", "moves": { "nerve": "+", "relationships.searchers": "+" }, "in_group": true }, { "text": "Plan it so that nothing can ever be traced.", "source": "scene:193", "moves": { "reason": "+", "money": "+" }, "in_group": true }, { "text": "Leave before they come.", "source": "filled", "moves": { "standing": "-", "flags.fled": "set" }, "in_group": null } ] }, { "id": "G04", "name": "Shut in the dark, and no one knows", "predicament": "You are shut in where no one knows to look, and help is only a few feet away.", "sentence": "A person sealed in wants to be found from the people just out of reach.", "actor": "person sealed in", "wants": "to be found", "counterpart": "the people just out of reach", "stories": [ 10, 14, 15 ], "story_titles": [ "The Cask of Amontillado", "The Pit and the Pendulum", "The Premature Burial" ], "standing": { "high": 1, "low": 2, "middle": 7 }, "stage": "middle", "members": [ { "chunk": 185, "story": 10, "predicament": "A man being buried alive begs his tormentor to call it all a joke, and the tormentor only echoes his words back." }, { "chunk": 226, "story": 14, "predicament": "A prisoner wakes in utter darkness and must work out, from memory alone, where he has been put and why." }, { "chunk": 227, "story": 14, "predicament": "A condemned man, alone in the dark, knows only that death is coming and cannot guess the manner or the hour." }, { "chunk": 248, "story": 15, "predicament": "A woman wakes inside a sealed tomb and beats on the door for help that never comes." }, { "chunk": 250, "story": 15, "predicament": "A man buried in haste struggles in his grave while people walk overhead, and only one stranger feels it." }, { "chunk": 251, "story": 15, "predicament": "A man rescued from a living grave describes hearing people overhead, unable to make them hear him." }, { "chunk": 253, "story": 15, "predicament": "A man pronounced dead stays aware of everything done to him, and cannot make anyone understand he is alive." }, { "chunk": 254, "story": 15, "predicament": "Someone dwells on the thought of being shut in the dark where loved ones would help if only they knew." }, { "chunk": 260, "story": 15, "predicament": "A man waking slowly from a death-like trance remembers where his worst fear says he might be." }, { "chunk": 261, "story": 15, "predicament": "A man wakes in darkness with his jaw bound and wood inches above his face, and knows he has been buried." } ], "options": [ { "text": "Beat on the door until someone hears.", "source": "scene:248", "moves": { "nerve": "+", "relationships.rescuers": "risk" }, "in_group": true }, { "text": "Force your way out by main strength.", "source": "scene:250", "moves": { "nerve": "+", "flags.escaped": "set" }, "in_group": true }, { "text": "Lie still and save your breath.", "source": "filled", "moves": { "reason": "+" }, "in_group": null }, { "text": "Beg the one who shut you in to call it a joke.", "source": "scene:185", "moves": { "relationships.captor": "risk", "nerve": "-" }, "in_group": true }, { "text": "Keep trying to make them understand you are alive.", "source": "scene:253", "moves": { "relationships.rescuers": "+" }, "in_group": true } ] }, { "id": "G05", "name": "The one you gave up for dead", "predicament": "Someone everyone gave up for dead may still be alive, and every hour you do nothing may be too late.", "sentence": "A mourner wants to have done right by the dead from the one taken for dead.", "actor": "mourner", "wants": "to have done right by the dead", "counterpart": "the one taken for dead", "stories": [ 5, 7, 15, 20 ], "story_titles": [ "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar", "The Fall of the House of Usher", "The Premature Burial", "Berenice" ], "standing": { "middle": 4, "high": 6 }, "stage": "high", "members": [ { "chunk": 111, "story": 5, "predicament": "Someone everyone had given up for dead speaks from beyond it, and tells them he is dead." }, { "chunk": 149, "story": 7, "predicament": "A man decides to keep a dead relative's body at home instead of burying it, and his guest does not object." }, { "chunk": 150, "story": 7, "predicament": "Two men carry a body into a sealed vault deep under the house, behind a door that grinds shut." }, { "chunk": 151, "story": 7, "predicament": "Men sealing a coffin notice the dead woman still looks faintly alive, and close it anyway." }, { "chunk": 160, "story": 7, "predicament": "A man confesses he has known for days that someone was buried alive, and was too afraid to say so." }, { "chunk": 161, "story": 7, "predicament": "A man who let someone be buried alive is confronted by her at the door, and the whole house comes down with them." }, { "chunk": 247, "story": 15, "predicament": "A husband opens a family tomb years after a burial and learns his wife was put there while still alive." }, { "chunk": 249, "story": 15, "predicament": "A rejected lover who digs up the woman he lost to another man finds her still alive, and wins her." }, { "chunk": 252, "story": 15, "predicament": "A man taken for dead is about to be cut open by doctors when he manages to rise and speak." }, { "chunk": 359, "story": 20, "predicament": "A man learns that in a blank he cannot remember he dug up someone buried alive and mutilated her." } ], "options": [ { "text": "Open it up and look.", "source": "scene:249", "moves": { "nerve": "+", "relationships.lost_one": "+" }, "in_group": true }, { "text": "Say what you heard, now, whatever they think of you.", "source": "filled", "moves": { "nerve": "+", "standing": "risk" }, "in_group": null }, { "text": "Keep silent and tell yourself you imagined it.", "source": "scene:160", "moves": { "nerve": "-", "relationships.lost_one": "-", "flags.let_them_lie": "set" }, "in_group": true }, { "text": "Close it up and walk away.", "source": "scene:151", "moves": { "relationships.lost_one": "-", "flags.let_them_lie": "set" }, "in_group": true }, { "text": "Fetch someone who knows the signs before you decide.", "source": "scene:252", "moves": { "relationships.physician": "+", "money": "-" }, "in_group": true } ] }, { "id": "G06", "name": "Death coming slowly, and one cool head", "predicament": "Death is coming closer step by step, and only a cool head and close watching might find a way out.", "sentence": "A trapped person wants to survive from what is closing in.", "actor": "trapped person", "wants": "to survive", "counterpart": "what is closing in", "stories": [ 2, 14 ], "story_titles": [ "A Descent into the Maelström", "The Pit and the Pendulum" ], "standing": { "low": 19 }, "stage": "low", "members": [ { "chunk": 64, "story": 2, "predicament": "A man's relief at finding a brother alive turns to horror when the brother tells him they are both doomed." }, { "chunk": 65, "story": 2, "predicament": "A man clings to a thin hope of survival, then scolds himself for hoping at all as the danger closes in." }, { "chunk": 66, "story": 2, "predicament": "A man discovers that the one thing he relied on for his timing failed him, and his margin of safety is gone." }, { "chunk": 67, "story": 2, "predicament": "A man who has given up all hope of surviving finds that despair leaves him calmer than fear ever did." }, { "chunk": 68, "story": 2, "predicament": "A doomed man, past fear, becomes curious about the very thing that is about to kill him." }, { "chunk": 70, "story": 2, "predicament": "A man who expected instant death opens his eyes to find himself still alive, deep inside the thing he feared." }, { "chunk": 71, "story": 2, "predicament": "A man suspended over his own doom takes in every detail of it, strangely steady in the middle of the terror." }, { "chunk": 72, "story": 2, "predicament": "A trapped man passing the time by watching what shares his fate notices a pattern that might matter." }, { "chunk": 73, "story": 2, "predicament": "A trapped man, by calm observation of his surroundings, works out a possible way to escape a certain death." }, { "chunk": 232, "story": 14, "predicament": "A prisoner, powerless over everything that matters, fixes his mind on a trivial puzzle to hold his terror off." }, { "chunk": 234, "story": 14, "predicament": "A man strapped down and kept thirsty notices something above him beginning to move, and cannot yet tell its purpose." }, { "chunk": 235, "story": 14, "predicament": "A bound man realises the slow motion above him is a blade coming down, while vermin crowd in on every side." }, { "chunk": 236, "story": 14, "predicament": "A helpless man watches his death come down on him inch by inch for days, swinging between frenzy and calm." }, { "chunk": 237, "story": 14, "predicament": "A man in the last extremity feels the first glimmer of a way out, and loses it before he can grasp it." }, { "chunk": 238, "story": 14, "predicament": "A man facing certain death clings to trivial thoughts to keep his mind from the one fact he cannot bear." }, { "chunk": 239, "story": 14, "predicament": "A man in the grip of despair grows suddenly calm, thinks clearly for the first time, and looks for a flaw in the trap." }, { "chunk": 240, "story": 14, "predicament": "A trapped man sees how to turn the very things tormenting him into the means of his escape." }, { "chunk": 241, "story": 14, "predicament": "A man must lie perfectly still under horror and pain long enough for his desperate plan to work." }, { "chunk": 244, "story": 14, "predicament": "A man is slowly forced towards the one fate he dreads most, with no way left to resist or escape." } ], "options": [ { "text": "Watch everything around you for a pattern you can use.", "source": "scene:73", "moves": { "reason": "+", "flags.found_way_out": "set" }, "in_group": true }, { "text": "Turn what torments you into the means of escape.", "source": "scene:240", "moves": { "reason": "+", "nerve": "+" }, "in_group": true }, { "text": "Lie perfectly still through the pain until it works.", "source": "scene:241", "moves": { "nerve": "+" }, "in_group": true }, { "text": "Struggle against it with everything you have.", "source": "scene:236", "moves": { "nerve": "-" }, "in_group": true }, { "text": "Give up hope, and find how calm it leaves you.", "source": "scene:67", "moves": { "nerve": "+", "reason": "+" }, "in_group": true } ] }, { "id": "G07", "name": "Nobody will believe what you saw", "predicament": "What you lived through sounds like madness, and the listener who matters will not believe a word of it.", "sentence": "A witness wants to be believed from a doubting listener.", "actor": "witness", "wants": "to be believed", "counterpart": "a doubting listener", "stories": [ 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 21 ], "story_titles": [ "The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherazade", "A Descent into the Maelström", "Mesmeric Revelation", "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar", "The Black Cat", "Eleonora" ], "standing": { "high": 9, "low": 2, "middle": 4 }, "stage": "high", "members": [ { "chunk": 38, "story": 1, "predicament": "A storyteller recounts something true but so strange that her listener, who holds her life, begins to doubt her." }, { "chunk": 39, "story": 1, "predicament": "A storyteller keeps describing true wonders while her listener grows more impatient and scornful with each one." }, { "chunk": 40, "story": 1, "predicament": "Someone telling the plain truth about the world sees each fact dismissed with growing contempt by the one judging her." }, { "chunk": 41, "story": 1, "predicament": "A speaker keeps piling up true but unlikely facts before a listener whose patience is visibly running out." }, { "chunk": 42, "story": 1, "predicament": "A storyteller tells true things that make experts look slow, and her listener greets each with another scornful exclamation." }, { "chunk": 43, "story": 1, "predicament": "A listener dismisses every true thing he is told, and believes the one fable he already read somewhere." }, { "chunk": 44, "story": 1, "predicament": "A storyteller describes ordinary modern machines as wonders, and her listener rejects each one as plain nonsense." }, { "chunk": 45, "story": 1, "predicament": "A speaker describes inventions of real power and consequence, and her listener laughs at every one of them." }, { "chunk": 46, "story": 1, "predicament": "A storyteller's true accounts of human skill are heard as lies by the one person whose opinion decides her fate." }, { "chunk": 50, "story": 2, "predicament": "A man aged overnight by one terrible ordeal brings a listener to the very spot to tell what happened." }, { "chunk": 75, "story": 2, "predicament": "A survivor of an ordeal returns so changed that his own companions do not know him, and nobody believes his story." }, { "chunk": 87, "story": 4, "predicament": "Someone who has witnessed something the world will scoff at resolves to report it plainly, whatever the doubters say." }, { "chunk": 101, "story": 5, "predicament": "A man whose private experiment has leaked out in garbled form must now tell the truth, knowing few will believe it." }, { "chunk": 115, "story": 6, "predicament": "A man facing death tomorrow wants to unburden himself of a story he knows everyone will call madness." }, { "chunk": 360, "story": 21, "predicament": "A man who has been called mad asks to be believed about his early life and doubted about what came after." } ], "options": [ { "text": "Tell it plainly, without comment, and let them judge.", "source": "scene:87", "moves": { "standing": "risk", "reason": "+" }, "in_group": true }, { "text": "Take them to the place and show them.", "source": "scene:50", "moves": { "relationships.listener": "+", "nerve": "+" }, "in_group": true }, { "text": "Keep adding proof until they must believe.", "source": "scene:45", "moves": { "relationships.listener": "-", "standing": "risk" }, "in_group": true }, { "text": "Stop before their patience runs out.", "source": "filled", "moves": { "relationships.listener": "+", "standing": "-" }, "in_group": null }, { "text": "Keep it to yourself.", "source": "archetype", "moves": { "flags.untold": "set" }, "in_group": null } ] }, { "id": "G08", "name": "The reminder that will not go away", "predicament": "Something keeps turning up to remind you of what you did, and you can neither face it nor get rid of it.", "sentence": "A guilty person wants peace from the reminder that will not go.", "actor": "guilty person", "wants": "peace", "counterpart": "the reminder that will not go", "stories": [ 6, 18, 20, 21 ], "story_titles": [ "The Black Cat", "William Wilson", "Berenice", "Eleonora" ], "standing": { "middle": 6, "high": 5 }, "stage": "middle", "members": [ { "chunk": 120, "story": 6, "predicament": "A man ruined by a disaster the very night of his crime finds a sign of that crime left where everyone can see." }, { "chunk": 121, "story": 6, "predicament": "A man explains away an uncanny reminder of his crime, but cannot rid his mind of it, and half-regrets what he did." }, { "chunk": 122, "story": 6, "predicament": "A guilty man finds a creature exactly like the one he destroyed, which attaches itself to him and follows him home." }, { "chunk": 123, "story": 6, "predicament": "A man is haunted by a constant companion that reminds him of his crime, and dreads it too much to strike." }, { "chunk": 124, "story": 6, "predicament": "A guilty man sees the sign of his coming punishment growing clearer every day on something that will not leave him." }, { "chunk": 319, "story": 18, "predicament": "A person keeps getting unwanted advice from someone who is always right, and comes to hate him for it." }, { "chunk": 324, "story": 18, "predicament": "A man caught in the middle of his worst behaviour hears his own name whispered in warning by someone just like him." }, { "chunk": 332, "story": 18, "predicament": "A man cannot escape someone who follows him everywhere and blocks every wrong he tries to do." }, { "chunk": 333, "story": 18, "predicament": "A man pursued for years by a masked figure who thwarts his every scheme knows perfectly well who it is." }, { "chunk": 358, "story": 20, "predicament": "A man wakes with a gap in his memory and the dreadful sense that he has done something terrible he cannot recall." }, { "chunk": 368, "story": 21, "predicament": "A man who swore lifelong faithfulness to someone dead falls in love again, and waits to learn what his broken vow will cost." } ], "options": [ { "text": "Explain it away.", "source": "scene:121", "moves": { "reason": "+", "flags.guilty_secret": "set" }, "in_group": true }, { "text": "Run from it, as far as you can go.", "source": "scene:332", "moves": { "money": "-", "standing": "-" }, "in_group": true }, { "text": "Try to destroy it.", "source": "scene:125", "moves": { "flags.violent": "set", "relationships.household": "-" }, "in_group": false }, { "text": "Listen to what it is telling you.", "source": "scene:319", "moves": { "standing": "+", "relationships.conscience": "+" }, "in_group": true }, { "text": "Drown it in drink.", "source": "scene:118", "moves": { "money": "-", "nerve": "-" }, "in_group": false } ] }, { "id": "G09", "name": "A rival who is your mirror", "predicament": "A rival matches you move for move, as if they knew your mind as well as you do.", "sentence": "A person used to winning wants to come out on top from a rival who mirrors them.", "actor": "person used to winning", "wants": "to come out on top", "counterpart": "a rival who mirrors them", "stories": [ 0, 18 ], "story_titles": [ "The Purloined Letter", "William Wilson" ], "standing": { "middle": 3, "high": 10 }, "stage": "high", "members": [ { "chunk": 12, "story": 0, "predicament": "A reasoner explains that beating an opponent depends on judging exactly how clever that particular opponent is." }, { "chunk": 13, "story": 0, "predicament": "A reasoner claims the way to read an opponent is to copy his face and wait to see what thoughts arise." }, { "chunk": 17, "story": 0, "predicament": "A man who knows his opponent's cunning reasons that the rival foresaw every search and arranged to be searched." }, { "chunk": 312, "story": 18, "predicament": "A boy used to ruling his companions meets the one rival who refuses to bow to him." }, { "chunk": 313, "story": 18, "predicament": "Someone is quietly but constantly thwarted by a rival no one else seems to notice, and secretly fears him." }, { "chunk": 314, "story": 18, "predicament": "Someone cannot decide whether he hates or admires the rival who shadows him, and cannot stay away from him." }, { "chunk": 315, "story": 18, "predicament": "Someone keeps trying to get the better of a rival who cannot be mocked, and stoops to attacking his one weakness." }, { "chunk": 316, "story": 18, "predicament": "A man is galled that someone else shares his name and his place, so that the two are always confused." }, { "chunk": 317, "story": 18, "predicament": "A man finds a rival copying his dress, manner and voice so exactly that he feels mocked by his own reflection." }, { "chunk": 318, "story": 18, "predicament": "A man is tormented by a mockery that only he can see, which makes it impossible to complain of it." }, { "chunk": 320, "story": 18, "predicament": "In the middle of a quarrel a man has the eerie feeling that he has known his rival since before memory began." }, { "chunk": 321, "story": 18, "predicament": "A man sneaking up on a rival to harm him sees the rival's sleeping face and flees in horror." }, { "chunk": 331, "story": 18, "predicament": "A disgraced man finds that the one who exposed him wore an exact copy of his own clothes, and flees." } ], "options": [ { "text": "Get inside their head: think exactly as they think.", "source": "scene:13", "moves": { "reason": "+" }, "in_group": true }, { "text": "Mock their one weakness.", "source": "scene:315", "moves": { "relationships.rival": "-", "standing": "-" }, "in_group": true }, { "text": "Act in public as if they are no match for you.", "source": "scene:313", "moves": { "standing": "+", "relationships.rival": "-" }, "in_group": true }, { "text": "Catch them off guard when they are unprotected.", "source": "scene:321", "moves": { "relationships.rival": "-", "nerve": "risk" }, "in_group": true }, { "text": "Admit they are your equal.", "source": "filled", "moves": { "relationships.rival": "+" }, "in_group": null } ] }, { "id": "G10", "name": "A revenge they cannot escape", "predicament": "Someone has wronged you once too often, and you want a revenge they cannot escape and will know came from you.", "sentence": "A wronged person wants revenge without risk from the one who wronged them.", "actor": "wronged person", "wants": "revenge without risk", "counterpart": "the one who wronged them", "stories": [ 0, 10, 18 ], "story_titles": [ "The Purloined Letter", "The Cask of Amontillado", "William Wilson" ], "standing": { "middle": 2, "high": 11 }, "stage": "high", "members": [ { "chunk": 24, "story": 0, "predicament": "A man turns the tables on a powerful schemer, leaving him to use a hold he no longer has and ruin himself." }, { "chunk": 25, "story": 0, "predicament": "A man who once promised to repay an old injury leaves his rival a quiet clue to who has outwitted him." }, { "chunk": 178, "story": 10, "predicament": "A man insulted by someone powerful vows a revenge that must be complete, unpunished, and known to its victim, and keeps smiling meanwhile." }, { "chunk": 179, "story": 10, "predicament": "An avenger lures his enemy by playing on his vanity, pretending he will ask a rival for the opinion instead." }, { "chunk": 180, "story": 10, "predicament": "An avenger leads his unsuspecting enemy deep into a hidden place, all the while pretending to urge him to turn back." }, { "chunk": 181, "story": 10, "predicament": "An avenger drinks to his victim's long life and states his own family's vow of vengeance to his face, unnoticed." }, { "chunk": 182, "story": 10, "predicament": "An avenger nearly gives himself away with a grim joke about his real purpose, and his victim laughs it off." }, { "chunk": 183, "story": 10, "predicament": "A man lured by his own vanity steps into a trap and finds himself chained before he understands what has happened." }, { "chunk": 184, "story": 10, "predicament": "An avenger slowly seals his enemy in alive, pausing to savour each sound of his victim's growing terror." }, { "chunk": 186, "story": 10, "predicament": "An avenger finishes his work with a sick heart he blames on the cold, and keeps his secret for half a century." }, { "chunk": 334, "story": 18, "predicament": "A man who has always yielded to the one who checks him resolves, in drink, to throw off that control for good." }, { "chunk": 335, "story": 18, "predicament": "A man about to do wrong is stopped once more by his double, and in fury drags him aside to finish it." }, { "chunk": 336, "story": 18, "predicament": "A man who kills the one who always restrained him finds that he has struck down his own reflection." } ], "options": [ { "text": "Keep smiling and wait for your moment.", "source": "scene:178", "moves": { "nerve": "+", "relationships.enemy": "+" }, "in_group": true }, { "text": "Lure them in through their vanity.", "source": "scene:179", "moves": { "reason": "+", "relationships.enemy": "risk" }, "in_group": true }, { "text": "Leave them a sign so they know it was you.", "source": "scene:25", "moves": { "standing": "+", "relationships.enemy": "-" }, "in_group": true }, { "text": "Have it out face to face, here and now.", "source": "scene:335", "moves": { "flags.violent": "set", "standing": "risk" }, "in_group": true }, { "text": "Let it go.", "source": "archetype", "moves": { "standing": "-", "relationships.enemy": "+" }, "in_group": null } ] }, { "id": "G11", "name": "Walled off from the danger outside", "predicament": "You have shut yourself away from a danger everyone else must face, and you are no longer sure the walls will hold.", "sentence": "A person behind walls wants to stay safe from the danger outside.", "actor": "person behind walls", "wants": "to stay safe", "counterpart": "the danger outside", "stories": [ 7, 9, 15 ], "story_titles": [ "The Fall of the House of Usher", "The Masque of the Red Death", "The Premature Burial" ], "standing": { "high": 10, "middle": 2 }, "stage": "high", "members": [ { "chunk": 141, "story": 7, "predicament": "A man is so ruled by fear that he expects to lose his life and reason to terror itself, and cannot leave his home." }, { "chunk": 167, "story": 9, "predicament": "A powerful man walls himself and his favourites off from a deadly danger, and leaves everyone outside to their fate." }, { "chunk": 168, "story": 9, "predicament": "People safely shut away from a catastrophe outside throw a lavish celebration while others die beyond the walls." }, { "chunk": 169, "story": 9, "predicament": "Revellers in a sealed retreat avoid one room whose look reminds them of the very thing they are hiding from." }, { "chunk": 170, "story": 9, "predicament": "People determined to enjoy themselves are stopped short every hour by a reminder of time running out, and laugh it off." }, { "chunk": 172, "story": 9, "predicament": "Revellers dance ever more wildly to forget what waits outside, but freeze each time the reminder sounds." }, { "chunk": 173, "story": 9, "predicament": "A crowd shut in for safety notices among them an uninvited stranger whom no one saw arrive." }, { "chunk": 174, "story": 9, "predicament": "A leader who shut out a danger sees it mocked openly inside his own walls, and orders the offender seized." }, { "chunk": 176, "story": 9, "predicament": "A leader, ashamed of his own fear, rushes alone at the thing everyone dreads, and it kills him where he stands." }, { "chunk": 177, "story": 9, "predicament": "People who believed their walls would keep a catastrophe out discover it was inside with them all along." }, { "chunk": 259, "story": 15, "predicament": "A man terrified of being buried alive stops trusting even his friends, and builds elaborate precautions against the fate." }, { "chunk": 262, "story": 15, "predicament": "A man realises that all his precautions were useless, because the thing he feared happened far from home among strangers." } ], "options": [ { "text": "Seal the gates and make merry inside.", "source": "scene:167", "moves": { "money": "-", "relationships.outside": "-", "flags.walled_in": "set" }, "in_group": true }, { "text": "Build every precaution you can think of.", "source": "scene:259", "moves": { "money": "-", "reason": "+" }, "in_group": true }, { "text": "Face the intruder yourself.", "source": "scene:176", "moves": { "nerve": "+", "standing": "risk" }, "in_group": true }, { "text": "Stop leaving the house at all.", "source": "scene:141", "moves": { "nerve": "-", "relationships.outside": "-" }, "in_group": true }, { "text": "Go out and live anyway.", "source": "scene:264", "moves": { "nerve": "+", "standing": "+" }, "in_group": false } ] }, { "id": "G12", "name": "A companion who may not be sane", "predicament": "Someone close to you speaks of a danger only they can sense, and you cannot tell whether it is real or madness.", "sentence": "A companion wants to know what is real from a friend who may be mad.", "actor": "companion", "wants": "to know what is real", "counterpart": "a friend who may be mad", "stories": [ 2, 7, 9, 13 ], "story_titles": [ "A Descent into the Maelström", "The Fall of the House of Usher", "The Masque of the Red Death", "The Assignation" ], "standing": { "low": 1, "high": 12 }, "stage": "high", "members": [ { "chunk": 51, "story": 2, "predicament": "A nervous visitor clings to the ground at a height while his guide lounges on the edge and urges him to look." }, { "chunk": 140, "story": 7, "predicament": "A man tells an old friend that he suffers from an inherited affliction, then insists in the same breath it will soon pass." }, { "chunk": 144, "story": 7, "predicament": "A companion is drawn deeper and deeper into a troubled friend's feverish art and cannot say why it frightens him." }, { "chunk": 145, "story": 7, "predicament": "A companion realises from a friend's own words that the friend knows his mind is giving way." }, { "chunk": 147, "story": 7, "predicament": "A friend insists, with growing conviction, that his home itself has shaped and doomed him, and you cannot tell if he is mad." }, { "chunk": 148, "story": 7, "predicament": "Two companions shut away together feed each other's morbid fancies with nothing but dark reading." }, { "chunk": 152, "story": 7, "predicament": "A man watches a friend who seems to be hiding some terrible secret, and feels the friend's terror beginning to take hold of him." }, { "chunk": 154, "story": 7, "predicament": "A frightened man is visited in the night by a friend whose wild excitement is more alarming than the storm outside." }, { "chunk": 155, "story": 7, "predicament": "Someone tries to calm a friend on the edge of madness by explaining away what frightens them both, and reading aloud." }, { "chunk": 158, "story": 7, "predicament": "A man hides his own terror to protect an unstable friend, and sees the friend is already staring at the door." }, { "chunk": 171, "story": 9, "predicament": "Followers of a lavish, eccentric leader assure themselves he is not mad, though outsiders might think otherwise." }, { "chunk": 214, "story": 13, "predicament": "A strange host laughs wildly, talks of dying laughing, then tells his guest how few have ever been admitted." }, { "chunk": 216, "story": 13, "predicament": "A visitor notices that his host keeps breaking off to listen, as though waiting for someone or something that never comes." } ], "options": [ { "text": "Explain it away, gently, to calm them.", "source": "scene:155", "moves": { "reason": "+", "relationships.friend": "+" }, "in_group": true }, { "text": "Hide your own fear so as not to feed theirs.", "source": "scene:158", "moves": { "nerve": "+" }, "in_group": true }, { "text": "Humour them and go along with it.", "source": "scene:171", "moves": { "relationships.friend": "+", "standing": "risk" }, "in_group": true }, { "text": "Take them at their word and look for yourself.", "source": "filled", "moves": { "nerve": "+", "relationships.friend": "+" }, "in_group": null }, { "text": "Leave while you still can.", "source": "archetype", "moves": { "relationships.friend": "-" }, "in_group": null } ] }, { "id": "G13", "name": "Sent for by a friend in a bad way", "predicament": "An old friend in a bad way has sent for you, and the person you find is not the one you remember.", "sentence": "A old friend wants to help from a friend who has changed.", "actor": "old friend", "wants": "to help", "counterpart": "a friend who has changed", "stories": [ 4, 5, 7, 13 ], "story_titles": [ "Mesmeric Revelation", "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar", "The Fall of the House of Usher", "The Assignation" ], "standing": { "middle": 2, "high": 5 }, "stage": "high", "members": [ { "chunk": 88, "story": 4, "predicament": "A practitioner called to the bedside of a dying patient finds him in great pain yet oddly at peace." }, { "chunk": 104, "story": 5, "predicament": "A man arrives at a friend's deathbed and is shocked by how far he has declined in only a few days." }, { "chunk": 133, "story": 7, "predicament": "Someone receives a desperate plea from a friend he has not seen for years, and cannot refuse to come." }, { "chunk": 139, "story": 7, "predicament": "A man meets a childhood friend after years apart and can barely recognise him, he has changed so terribly." }, { "chunk": 143, "story": 7, "predicament": "Someone trying to lift a friend out of despair realises that nothing he does can reach the darkness in that mind." }, { "chunk": 212, "story": 13, "predicament": "A visitor is shown into a room so dazzlingly rich that he cannot believe any private fortune could pay for it." }, { "chunk": 213, "story": 13, "predicament": "A visitor finds his host exhausted after a sleepless night in a room built only to dazzle and overwhelm." } ], "options": [ { "text": "Go at once, whatever the reason.", "source": "scene:133", "moves": { "relationships.friend": "+", "money": "-" }, "in_group": true }, { "text": "Keep them company and try to lift their spirits.", "source": "scene:143", "moves": { "relationships.friend": "+", "nerve": "-" }, "in_group": true }, { "text": "Talk to the people looking after them first.", "source": "scene:105", "moves": { "reason": "+", "relationships.physician": "+" }, "in_group": false }, { "text": "Do what they ask, though you have doubts.", "source": "scene:106", "moves": { "relationships.friend": "+", "flags.consented": "set" }, "in_group": false }, { "text": "Send your regrets and stay away.", "source": "archetype", "moves": { "relationships.friend": "-" }, "in_group": null } ] }, { "id": "G14", "name": "Experimenting on the dying", "predicament": "Someone who trusts you is dying, and you could use their last hours to learn what no one has ever learned.", "sentence": "A practitioner wants to learn what lies past death from a dying subject.", "actor": "practitioner", "wants": "to learn what lies past death", "counterpart": "a dying subject", "stories": [ 4, 5 ], "story_titles": [ "Mesmeric Revelation", "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar" ], "standing": { "middle": 14 }, "stage": "middle", "members": [ { "chunk": 89, "story": 4, "predicament": "A dying man who has never been able to believe in anything beyond death wants proof before the end." }, { "chunk": 90, "story": 4, "predicament": "A dying man asks a trusted practitioner to question him in a trance, hoping to bring back certainty from the edge." }, { "chunk": 91, "story": 4, "predicament": "A questioner at a dying man's bedside gets answers he did not expect and does not know what to ask next." }, { "chunk": 100, "story": 4, "predicament": "A practitioner wakes a patient from a trance and sees him die on the spot, and wonders whom he has been talking to." }, { "chunk": 102, "story": 5, "predicament": "An experimenter looks for a subject for a dangerous trial and settles on a dying friend who seems not to fear death." }, { "chunk": 103, "story": 5, "predicament": "A dying man agrees to let a friend experiment on him at the hour of his death, and sends word when it comes." }, { "chunk": 106, "story": 5, "predicament": "An experimenter delays a risky trial until he has a reliable witness, and the dying subject fears he has waited too long." }, { "chunk": 107, "story": 5, "predicament": "An experimenter keeps working on a man in his last agony, with the doctors' consent, to see what the trance can do." }, { "chunk": 108, "story": 5, "predicament": "An experimenter succeeds in suspending a dying man between life and death, and the watching doctors are captivated." }, { "chunk": 109, "story": 5, "predicament": "A dying man held in a trance begs the one controlling him not to wake him, but to let him die." }, { "chunk": 110, "story": 5, "predicament": "An experimenter ignores the doctors' wish to let a dying man rest and questions him once more, with dreadful results." }, { "chunk": 112, "story": 5, "predicament": "A man realises that he alone keeps a dead man tied to this world, and no one else can reach him." }, { "chunk": 113, "story": 5, "predicament": "People who have held someone in a state between life and death for months finally decide to try to end it." }, { "chunk": 114, "story": 5, "predicament": "A man in a state neither living nor dead begs to be released, and releasing him brings instant horror." } ], "options": [ { "text": "Go ahead, with their consent and a witness.", "source": "scene:106", "moves": { "reason": "+", "standing": "risk", "flags.experiment": "set" }, "in_group": true }, { "text": "Keep them where they are, between life and death, and see.", "source": "scene:113", "moves": { "standing": "risk", "relationships.subject": "-" }, "in_group": true }, { "text": "Let them go when they beg to die.", "source": "filled", "moves": { "relationships.subject": "+" }, "in_group": null }, { "text": "Ask one more question.", "source": "scene:110", "moves": { "reason": "+", "relationships.subject": "-" }, "in_group": true }, { "text": "Bring them back, whatever it costs.", "source": "scene:114", "moves": { "nerve": "+", "standing": "-" }, "in_group": true } ] }, { "id": "G15", "name": "At the mercy of someone without pity", "predicament": "Your life is in the hands of someone without pity, who may be watching to see how you take it.", "sentence": "A captive wants to live from a pitiless captor.", "actor": "captive", "wants": "to live", "counterpart": "a pitiless captor", "stories": [ 1, 8, 14 ], "story_titles": [ "The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherazade", "Silence — A Fable", "The Pit and the Pendulum" ], "standing": { "high": 8, "low": 7 }, "stage": "high", "members": [ { "chunk": 26, "story": 1, "predicament": "A ruler has made a vow to kill a new bride every morning, and everyone lives in fear of being chosen next." }, { "chunk": 28, "story": 1, "predicament": "A bride under sentence of death keeps herself alive by leaving her husband too curious to have her killed yet." }, { "chunk": 29, "story": 1, "predicament": "Someone living under a daily death sentence stays alive, night after night, only by keeping a dangerous listener entertained." }, { "chunk": 47, "story": 1, "predicament": "A speaker tells the plain wonders of the age to a listener who takes each one as proof she is lying." }, { "chunk": 163, "story": 8, "predicament": "A watcher hides and studies a solitary man who has fled mankind in weariness and wants only to be left alone." }, { "chunk": 164, "story": 8, "predicament": "A tormentor keeps testing a lonely man with fresh terrors, and each time the man trembles but will not leave." }, { "chunk": 165, "story": 8, "predicament": "A man who endured every storm and terror flees at last from utter silence, which he finds more frightening than any noise." }, { "chunk": 166, "story": 8, "predicament": "A listener is cursed by a mocking tormentor because he cannot share the tormentor's laughter at another's terror." }, { "chunk": 222, "story": 14, "predicament": "A prisoner hears the sentence of death passed by judges who show no pity, and feels every hope of help vanish." }, { "chunk": 228, "story": 14, "predicament": "A prisoner in total darkness tries to take the measure of his prison, and collapses before he can finish." }, { "chunk": 229, "story": 14, "predicament": "A captive finds that his jailers are keeping him alive, and keeps exploring his prison out of sheer curiosity." }, { "chunk": 230, "story": 14, "predicament": "A prisoner discovers by accident that one more step would have sent him into a deadly trap, and that he is watched." }, { "chunk": 231, "story": 14, "predicament": "A man who narrowly escapes the death planned for him is too broken now to face it or to end things himself." }, { "chunk": 242, "story": 14, "predicament": "A prisoner who has escaped one death realises he is being watched, and that his captors already have another ready." }, { "chunk": 243, "story": 14, "predicament": "A prisoner fleeing one horror towards the only refuge left looks into it and finds something even worse." } ], "options": [ { "text": "Keep them interested, one night at a time.", "source": "scene:28", "moves": { "reason": "+", "relationships.captor": "+" }, "in_group": true }, { "text": "Endure whatever comes and do not flinch.", "source": "scene:164", "moves": { "nerve": "+" }, "in_group": true }, { "text": "Learn every inch of where they have put you.", "source": "scene:229", "moves": { "reason": "+" }, "in_group": true }, { "text": "Break and run.", "source": "scene:165", "moves": { "nerve": "-", "flags.fled": "set" }, "in_group": true }, { "text": "Accept it with good grace.", "source": "scene:49", "moves": { "standing": "+", "nerve": "+" }, "in_group": false } ] }, { "id": "G16", "name": "A sound in the night", "predicament": "You are awake in the dark and hear something you cannot explain, and reasoning it away no longer works.", "sentence": "A person awake at night wants to be safe from whatever is making the sound.", "actor": "person awake at night", "wants": "to be safe", "counterpart": "whatever is making the sound", "stories": [ 7, 15, 19 ], "story_titles": [ "The Fall of the House of Usher", "The Premature Burial", "The Tell-Tale Heart" ], "standing": { "high": 3, "middle": 1, "low": 1 }, "stage": "high", "members": [ { "chunk": 153, "story": 7, "predicament": "A man lies awake in a strange house, hearing faint sounds he cannot place, and cannot reason himself out of dread." }, { "chunk": 156, "story": 7, "predicament": "A man reading aloud hears a sound in the house that echoes exactly what he has just read, and tells himself he imagined it." }, { "chunk": 157, "story": 7, "predicament": "A man hears, unmistakably this time, a sound in the house that should not be there, and no longer can dismiss it." }, { "chunk": 257, "story": 15, "predicament": "A man so haunted by the fear of being buried alive that he dreads falling asleep is tormented by it in dreams." }, { "chunk": 340, "story": 19, "predicament": "A man stands over his terrified victim, recognises the fear as his own, and pities him, yet goes on." } ], "options": [ { "text": "Tell yourself it is nothing, and read on.", "source": "scene:156", "moves": { "reason": "+", "nerve": "-" }, "in_group": true }, { "text": "Get up and pace until it passes.", "source": "scene:153", "moves": { "nerve": "+" }, "in_group": true }, { "text": "Sit up and listen, without moving.", "source": "scene:339", "moves": { "nerve": "-" }, "in_group": false }, { "text": "Go and see what it is.", "source": "filled", "moves": { "nerve": "+", "flags.faced_fear": "set" }, "in_group": null } ] }, { "id": "G17", "name": "A place that works on you", "predicament": "A place seems to be working on you, and the harder you reason against the feeling, the stronger it grows.", "sentence": "A newcomer to a place wants to shake off the feeling from the place itself.", "actor": "newcomer to a place", "wants": "to shake off the feeling", "counterpart": "the place itself", "stories": [ 2, 7, 12, 14 ], "story_titles": [ "A Descent into the Maelström", "The Fall of the House of Usher", "The Island of the Fay", "The Pit and the Pendulum" ], "standing": { "low": 2, "high": 5, "middle": 1 }, "stage": "high", "members": [ { "chunk": 52, "story": 2, "predicament": "A visitor looks down on a desolate and threatening stretch of water and senses that something unnatural is at work there." }, { "chunk": 132, "story": 7, "predicament": "A visitor arriving at an old house is gripped by a dread he cannot explain, and reasoning it away only deepens it." }, { "chunk": 135, "story": 7, "predicament": "A visitor feels his own fear feeding on itself, until he half-believes the place itself is breathing something poisonous." }, { "chunk": 136, "story": 7, "predicament": "A visitor notices that a house which looks whole is rotting from within, with a hairline crack running right through it." }, { "chunk": 137, "story": 7, "predicament": "A guest led through a gloomy house passes a household adviser whose shifty, uneasy look he cannot read." }, { "chunk": 138, "story": 7, "predicament": "A visitor enters a room so heavy with gloom that nothing in it seems to hold any life." }, { "chunk": 201, "story": 12, "predicament": "A dreamer sees the other half of a lovely place sunk in gloom, and imagines it as a place where gentle things waste away." }, { "chunk": 233, "story": 14, "predicament": "A captive finally sees his prison for what it is, a place built to terrify, with the one trap in the centre." } ], "options": [ { "text": "Look at it from another angle to break the spell.", "source": "scene:132", "moves": { "reason": "+", "nerve": "-" }, "in_group": true }, { "text": "Examine it closely for plain causes.", "source": "scene:136", "moves": { "reason": "+" }, "in_group": true }, { "text": "Turn round and leave.", "source": "archetype", "moves": { "nerve": "-", "standing": "-" }, "in_group": null }, { "text": "Go in anyway.", "source": "scene:137", "moves": { "nerve": "+", "flags.entered": "set" }, "in_group": true } ] }, { "id": "G18", "name": "Your companion breaks", "predicament": "At the worst moment the one person beside you breaks under the terror, and you must choose between saving them and yourself.", "sentence": "A survivor wants to live from a companion broken by fear.", "actor": "survivor", "wants": "to live", "counterpart": "a companion broken by fear", "stories": [ 2, 7 ], "story_titles": [ "A Descent into the Maelström", "The Fall of the House of Usher" ], "standing": { "low": 2, "high": 1 }, "stage": "low", "members": [ { "chunk": 69, "story": 2, "predicament": "A frightened relative, maddened by terror, tries to take the one hold that is keeping you alive." }, { "chunk": 74, "story": 2, "predicament": "A man who has found a way out cannot persuade a paralysed companion to follow, and must leave him behind." }, { "chunk": 159, "story": 7, "predicament": "A man turns to a friend for help at the height of a terror and finds him beyond reach, murmuring to himself." } ], "options": [ { "text": "Give them what they are fighting you for.", "source": "scene:69", "moves": { "relationships.companion": "+", "nerve": "+" }, "in_group": true }, { "text": "Show them your plan and beg them to follow.", "source": "scene:74", "moves": { "relationships.companion": "+" }, "in_group": true }, { "text": "Leave them to their fate.", "source": "scene:74", "moves": { "relationships.companion": "-", "flags.left_behind": "set" }, "in_group": true }, { "text": "Shake them back to their senses.", "source": "scene:159", "moves": { "nerve": "+", "relationships.companion": "risk" }, "in_group": true } ] }, { "id": "G19", "name": "Going to the bad", "predicament": "You can feel yourself turning into someone worse, and the people who depend on you feel it first.", "sentence": "A person going to the bad wants the next indulgence from those who depend on them.", "actor": "person going to the bad", "wants": "the next indulgence", "counterpart": "those who depend on them", "stories": [ 6, 18 ], "story_titles": [ "The Black Cat", "William Wilson" ], "standing": { "middle": 3, "high": 7 }, "stage": "high", "members": [ { "chunk": 117, "story": 6, "predicament": "A man feels drink souring his temper, and watches himself turn cruel to those who depend on him most." }, { "chunk": 118, "story": 6, "predicament": "A man in a drunken rage commits a cruelty that horrifies him when sober, and drinks again to forget it." }, { "chunk": 125, "story": 6, "predicament": "A man tormented beyond bearing lashes out in rage, and kills the person who tries to hold him back." }, { "chunk": 305, "story": 18, "predicament": "A man near death wants others to believe his downfall was forced on him by something he could not resist." }, { "chunk": 322, "story": 18, "predicament": "A man who fled something he could not explain persuades himself it was imagination, and loses himself in dissipation." }, { "chunk": 323, "story": 18, "predicament": "A man at the height of a drunken revel is suddenly called away by someone who will not wait." }, { "chunk": 325, "story": 18, "predicament": "A man shaken by a warning soon forgets it, and throws himself into even worse excesses with his family's money." }, { "chunk": 326, "story": 18, "predicament": "A wealthy young man secretly cheats his friends, safe because no one would suspect someone so open-handed." }, { "chunk": 327, "story": 18, "predicament": "A cheat carefully sets up a wealthy dupe, letting him win at first and arranging for the game to seem his idea." }, { "chunk": 328, "story": 18, "predicament": "A cheat finishes off his victim and learns too late that he has ruined him completely, in front of everyone." } ], "options": [ { "text": "Drink to forget what you did last night.", "source": "scene:118", "moves": { "money": "-", "relationships.household": "-" }, "in_group": true }, { "text": "Pay for it by cheating people who trust you.", "source": "scene:326", "moves": { "money": "+", "standing": "risk", "flags.cheat": "set" }, "in_group": true }, { "text": "Throw yourself into the next revel.", "source": "scene:322", "moves": { "money": "-", "standing": "+" }, "in_group": true }, { "text": "Stop while you still can.", "source": "filled", "moves": { "standing": "+", "relationships.household": "+" }, "in_group": null } ] }, { "id": "G20", "name": "A love you are not free to have", "predicament": "The one you love is bound to someone else or lost to death, and a promise still ties you to them.", "sentence": "A lover wants the one they cannot have from a love held by another, or by death.", "actor": "lover", "wants": "the one they cannot have", "counterpart": "a love held by another, or by death", "stories": [ 13, 21 ], "story_titles": [ "The Assignation", "Eleonora" ], "standing": { "high": 7, "middle": 2 }, "stage": "high", "members": [ { "chunk": 207, "story": 13, "predicament": "A wife in the middle of a catastrophe looks not at her child but towards the hiding place of someone else." }, { "chunk": 208, "story": 13, "predicament": "A hidden admirer, watching a woman's window, steps out at the moment of disaster and does what her husband would not." }, { "chunk": 209, "story": 13, "predicament": "A married woman, in the confusion after a rescue, secretly promises a meeting to the man who saved her child." }, { "chunk": 217, "story": 13, "predicament": "A visitor finds a tear-stained poem that reveals his host's lost love was married away to an older, wealthier man." }, { "chunk": 218, "story": 13, "predicament": "A visitor catches his host in a lie about his past, and learns the secret connection between him and a married woman." }, { "chunk": 219, "story": 13, "predicament": "A man gazes at the portrait of a woman he cannot have, then drinks deeply at the hour of their appointed meeting." }, { "chunk": 220, "story": 13, "predicament": "Two lovers kept apart by her marriage keep their secret appointment the only way left to them: by dying together." }, { "chunk": 365, "story": 21, "predicament": "A young man swears to a dying beloved that he will never love another, and calls down a curse if he does." }, { "chunk": 367, "story": 21, "predicament": "A bereaved man is still visited by signs of the one he lost, but cannot bear the emptiness and leaves." } ], "options": [ { "text": "Watch from hiding, and act when the moment comes.", "source": "scene:208", "moves": { "relationships.beloved": "+", "standing": "risk" }, "in_group": true }, { "text": "Make a secret appointment.", "source": "scene:209", "moves": { "relationships.beloved": "+", "relationships.spouse": "-", "flags.secret_affair": "set" }, "in_group": true }, { "text": "Swear never to love another.", "source": "scene:365", "moves": { "relationships.beloved": "+", "flags.vow": "set" }, "in_group": true }, { "text": "Break the vow and love again.", "source": "scene:368", "moves": { "relationships.new_love": "+", "flags.broke_vow": "set" }, "in_group": false }, { "text": "Keep the appointment, whatever it costs.", "source": "scene:220", "moves": { "flags.fatal": "set", "standing": "-" }, "in_group": true } ] }, { "id": "G21", "name": "Someone you love fading into a stranger", "predicament": "Someone you love is wasting away into a stranger, and you can neither stop it nor bear to watch.", "sentence": "A one who stays wants the person they knew back from a loved one who is fading.", "actor": "one who stays", "wants": "the person they knew back", "counterpart": "a loved one who is fading", "stories": [ 7, 20, 21 ], "story_titles": [ "The Fall of the House of Usher", "Berenice", "Eleonora" ], "standing": { "high": 5, "middle": 2 }, "stage": "high", "members": [ { "chunk": 142, "story": 7, "predicament": "A man's only remaining relative is dying of a strange wasting illness, and her death will leave him the last of his line." }, { "chunk": 348, "story": 20, "predicament": "A man watches the lively companion of his youth transformed by illness until he no longer knows who she is." }, { "chunk": 353, "story": 20, "predicament": "A man grieves normally for a loved one's ruin, while his sick mind fixes instead on the changes in her body." }, { "chunk": 354, "story": 20, "predicament": "A man who never loved someone proposes marriage out of pity, though her presence now makes him shudder." }, { "chunk": 355, "story": 20, "predicament": "A man looking at someone he has pledged to marry is seized by horror at one detail of her face." }, { "chunk": 364, "story": 21, "predicament": "A young woman in the first happiness of love becomes preoccupied with the certainty of her own early death." }, { "chunk": 366, "story": 21, "predicament": "A man left alone after a beloved's death watches all the joy drain slowly out of the place they shared." } ], "options": [ { "text": "Promise them whatever will ease their end.", "source": "scene:365", "moves": { "relationships.loved_one": "+", "flags.vow": "set" }, "in_group": false }, { "text": "Marry them out of pity.", "source": "scene:354", "moves": { "relationships.loved_one": "+", "standing": "risk" }, "in_group": true }, { "text": "Stay, and watch every change.", "source": "scene:348", "moves": { "nerve": "-", "relationships.loved_one": "+" }, "in_group": true }, { "text": "Leave the place that reminds you.", "source": "scene:367", "moves": { "relationships.loved_one": "-", "standing": "+" }, "in_group": false } ] }, { "id": "G22", "name": "A fortune everyone is watching", "predicament": "You have come into more money than anyone can account for, and everyone is watching to see what you do.", "sentence": "A suddenly rich person wants to use it their own way from the watching world.", "actor": "suddenly rich person", "wants": "to use it their own way", "counterpart": "the watching world", "stories": [ 3, 16 ], "story_titles": [ "Von Kempelen and His Discovery", "The Domain of Arnheim" ], "standing": { "low": 3, "high": 2 }, "stage": "low", "members": [ { "chunk": 81, "story": 3, "predicament": "A poor man who suddenly has money he refuses to account for is suspected of crime and followed to his hiding place." }, { "chunk": 85, "story": 3, "predicament": "A man holds a secret that could make him rich beyond measure, and the whole world is waiting for him to reveal it." }, { "chunk": 86, "story": 3, "predicament": "People who staked everything on the value of one thing learn that a stranger's secret may make it worthless overnight." }, { "chunk": 267, "story": 16, "predicament": "A young man comes into a fortune so vast and sudden that it may change him, and many tried to stop it." }, { "chunk": 268, "story": 16, "predicament": "Someone who suddenly has more money than anyone can imagine is watched by everyone to see what he will do." } ], "options": [ { "text": "Refuse to say where it came from.", "source": "scene:81", "moves": { "standing": "-", "flags.suspected": "set" }, "in_group": true }, { "text": "Hand part of it to your family.", "source": "scene:268", "moves": { "money": "-", "relationships.family": "+" }, "in_group": true }, { "text": "Put all of it into one private dream.", "source": "scene:269", "moves": { "money": "-", "standing": "risk" }, "in_group": false }, { "text": "Keep the secret of how until you choose to share it.", "source": "scene:85", "moves": { "money": "+", "reason": "+" }, "in_group": true } ] }, { "id": "G23", "name": "Hidden in plain sight", "predicament": "Something you must find has been hidden by someone cleverer than you, and all your careful searching has failed.", "sentence": "A searcher wants what was hidden from a cunning hider.", "actor": "searcher", "wants": "what was hidden", "counterpart": "a cunning hider", "stories": [ 0, 3 ], "story_titles": [ "The Purloined Letter", "Von Kempelen and His Discovery" ], "standing": { "middle": 12, "low": 2 }, "stage": "middle", "members": [ { "chunk": 4, "story": 0, "predicament": "An official must recover a stolen paper from a powerful man's house without ever letting that man suspect a search." }, { "chunk": 5, "story": 0, "predicament": "An official has searched a rival's house by night for months, driven by honour and a huge reward, and found nothing." }, { "chunk": 6, "story": 0, "predicament": "A searcher who has taken everything apart insists his methods cannot fail, and looks down on the man he is searching." }, { "chunk": 7, "story": 0, "predicament": "A searcher describes exhausting every conceivable hiding place with painstaking care, certain that nothing could have escaped him." }, { "chunk": 8, "story": 0, "predicament": "A searcher who has looked everywhere is told his only course is to look again, and knows it is hopeless." }, { "chunk": 9, "story": 0, "predicament": "An official who has failed again admits he would pay a fortune out of his own pocket to anyone who could help." }, { "chunk": 11, "story": 0, "predicament": "A clever man tells his companion that diligent searchers failed only because their methods did not suit the case." }, { "chunk": 14, "story": 0, "predicament": "Searchers fail because they only look where they themselves would hide a thing, and the one they seek thinks differently." }, { "chunk": 19, "story": 0, "predicament": "A reasoner concludes that the cleverest hiding place is in plain view, where no careful searcher would think to look." }, { "chunk": 20, "story": 0, "predicament": "A man calls on a rival under a pretext, hiding his searching eyes, and spots what he came for in plain sight." }, { "chunk": 21, "story": 0, "predicament": "A searcher sees an object made to look worthless and recognises it precisely because of how carefully it was disguised." }, { "chunk": 22, "story": 0, "predicament": "A man stages a disturbance outside so he can swap a rival's prize for a fake while the rival looks away." }, { "chunk": 83, "story": 3, "predicament": "Searchers find something hidden under a suspect's bed that they cannot shift, and badly misjudge what it is." }, { "chunk": 84, "story": 3, "predicament": "Men who hold a fortune in their hands carelessly dismiss it as junk, and learn their mistake only afterwards." } ], "options": [ { "text": "Search it all again, harder.", "source": "scene:8", "moves": { "money": "-" }, "in_group": true }, { "text": "Pay someone cleverer to find it.", "source": "scene:10", "moves": { "money": "-", "relationships.adviser": "+" }, "in_group": false }, { "text": "Think as the hider thinks, and look where it is too obvious to see.", "source": "scene:19", "moves": { "reason": "+" }, "in_group": true }, { "text": "Call on them with a pretext and look around.", "source": "scene:20", "moves": { "reason": "+", "relationships.hider": "risk" }, "in_group": true }, { "text": "Have them waylaid and searched.", "source": "scene:5", "moves": { "standing": "risk", "relationships.hider": "-" }, "in_group": true } ] }, { "id": "G24", "name": "A world of your own", "predicament": "You have the means to shut out the world and build a place entirely to your own design.", "sentence": "A dreamer with means wants a world of their own from the world outside.", "actor": "dreamer with means", "wants": "a world of their own", "counterpart": "the world outside", "stories": [ 12, 16, 21 ], "story_titles": [ "The Island of the Fay", "The Domain of Arnheim", "Eleonora" ], "standing": { "middle": 5, "high": 5 }, "stage": "middle", "members": [ { "chunk": 197, "story": 12, "predicament": "A solitary man insists that any human presence spoils a landscape, and would rather have nature entirely to himself." }, { "chunk": 199, "story": 12, "predicament": "A lone wanderer finds a hidden, dreamlike place far from anyone, and lies down to let it work on him." }, { "chunk": 269, "story": 16, "predicament": "A man with limitless means gives up on changing the world and turns his wealth towards his own private purposes." }, { "chunk": 270, "story": 16, "predicament": "A man of great gifts chooses to pursue beauty for its own sake and turn his back on ambition and fame." }, { "chunk": 278, "story": 16, "predicament": "A man pours his whole fortune into a single private vision and, unusually, finds the happiness he sought." }, { "chunk": 279, "story": 16, "predicament": "A man seeking a retreat from the world rejects total isolation, wanting solitude he can leave when he chooses." }, { "chunk": 280, "story": 16, "predicament": "A man choosing where to spend his life rejects a grand view, wanting a place that feels enclosed and secluded." }, { "chunk": 361, "story": 21, "predicament": "Two young people grow up entirely alone in a hidden place, knowing nothing of the world outside." }, { "chunk": 362, "story": 21, "predicament": "Two young people shut away from the world see the beauty of their hidden home as proof that they are blessed." }, { "chunk": 363, "story": 21, "predicament": "Two companions who grew up together fall in love, and their small enclosed world seems to transform around them." } ], "options": [ { "text": "Go as far from everyone as you can.", "source": "scene:279", "moves": { "relationships.outside": "-", "flags.withdrawn": "set" }, "in_group": true }, { "text": "Stay near enough to come back when you choose.", "source": "scene:279", "moves": { "relationships.outside": "+" }, "in_group": true }, { "text": "Pour everything you have into it.", "source": "scene:278", "moves": { "money": "-", "standing": "+" }, "in_group": true }, { "text": "Share it with one person only.", "source": "scene:361", "moves": { "relationships.companion": "+" }, "in_group": true } ] } ], "unassigned": [ 0, 1, 2, 3, 10, 15, 16, 18, 23, 27, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 48, 49, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 105, 116, 131, 134, 146, 162, 175, 187, 188, 196, 198, 200, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 210, 211, 215, 221, 223, 224, 225, 245, 246, 255, 256, 258, 263, 264, 265, 266, 271, 272, 273, 274, 275, 276, 277, 281, 282, 283, 284, 285, 286, 287, 288, 289, 290, 291, 292, 293, 294, 295, 296, 297, 298, 299, 300, 301, 302, 303, 304, 306, 307, 308, 309, 310, 311, 346, 347, 357 ] }