If you're setting a game during the Cuban Missile Crisis, look through a library. find out what people were wearing, what other issues were in the news, how houses were furnished, what cars were being driven. Especially include things which now seem foreign.
Graham NelsonI like to employ a form of repetition, in which the same elements recur but in different and unexpected ways. rather than being discarded as soon as they are understood or passed over.
Graham NelsonWriting a really general parser is a major but different undertaking, by far the hardest points being sensitivity to context and resolution of ambiguity.
Graham NelsonThis means keeping many trails open at once, inevitably requiring a fairly 'parallel' plot. This plot should be discovered rather than announced, so show, don't tell.
Graham Nelson