THE TILLAMORE TALES 1 part 2 Alright, not really part 2 of part 1, but part 2 of the idea file. I had just done some minor editing, saved the file as both ASCII and in Scribble format, and packed all the files in the archive I keep them in while wai- ting for someone to take up the project again, when I remembered a couple of things I had forgotten to mention (!). Loading and saving and formatting and packing/unpacking that big file takes a lot of time, so I decided to keep the new stuff in a separate file so I wouldn't have to work with the big one any more. One way of giving a player clues is to compare his situation with a clas- sic, and the story of Irving and Alice is obviously a kind of Romeo and Ju- liet story (even though they don't end up killing themselves). One rather feeble idea I had was to let someone refer to either Morley or Harfold as either a Montague or a Capulet (maybe both as both, just to pound it in). A more involved idea ended up in the totally absurd: William is walking through a garden when he spots a young woman who sits on a first floor balcony right above a large plate glass window (on the ground floor). She is reading a big book, presumably a Shakespeare collec- tion, when she spots William down in the garden, stands up, strikes a dramatic pose and declaims: "Romeo! Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo?" The player has a couple of options here (It doesn't really matter which one he chooses, he has already received the clue he came for). He can play along and say something like "It was my mother's idea", be a spoilsport and tell her she's got the wrong guy, his name is William, or answer with a line from the same scene, to wit: "But soft! What light through yonder window breaks?" This is the absurd option because it sets off an animation in which an elephant comes smashing through the plate glass window, stops to shake off the shards, looks at William and says something like "Well, I'll be! That's the first time anyone called me 'light'! I do have a soft butt, though - good thing I went through head first!", and walks away. I don't know who this particular young woman is, she could be one of the others who appear in other parts of the story. But she probably has some- thing to say about what just happened, and if she meets William later she will introduce him to her friend like this: "This is William Tillamore. Whatever you do, don't let him quote Shakespeare at you!" Some time later I was looking for something else when I came across MOV's letter file and started reading it. And guess what? I found an idea I can't see that I've mentioned here (or in file 1) yet. Actually it does not really tie into the plot so far (and it's possible that it may find a place in some other adventure!), but just to get it written down in English: All pets in Marystead are not as ordinary as cats and dogs (I haven't mentioned dogs yet? Just wait till you get started on part two!). The ba- ker's son keeps a tame skunk that he apparently wanted to name after the skunk in "Bambi", but he got the spelling wrong and called it Flour. The really unusual thing about Flour is (as William finds out when he starts prying) that he isn't really a skunk at all, but a painted black cat! After a bit more snooping around he discovers the following background story: The baker's son was once a shy, timid weakling who was frequently har- assed by other kids. His only true friend (outside the family, that is) was the - by then nameless - black cat who used to hang around the bakery (mostly to keep warm in winter at first, but later it made friends with the family and stayed around for other reasons (and other seasons...)). One day the cat accidentally knocked over a bag of flour and spilled it all over itself. The baker got angry and started shouting at the cat, who got so scared it jumped out through a window and landed in the tall grass behind the building. It had just been raining, and after the cat had run a couple of yards through the still-wet grass, most of the flour had been wiped off, leaving only a few white stripes on its back and tail. This unusual wet wiping also caused the cat's fur to stand up in a rather peculiar way in some places. Totally ignorant of the fact that it now bore a striking re- semblance to a much less popular animal (at least at some distance, in bad light and to someone who had never seen one "live" before), the cat went looking for its friend and found him surrounded by kids who weren't exactly playing tag. The sight of what appeared to be a skunk brought an end to that game as the other kids ran away as fast as they could, leaving whats- hisname... let's call him Barney - to discover the truth all by himself. [I called him Bjarne in the Norwegian first draft, and Barney is the nearest equivalent I can think of...] When he found that the other kids had much more respect for someone who wasn't afraid of a skunk, Barney got the idea of painting the cat with more permanent colours and even trimming its fur to make it look even more like a skunk. That way he could keep his former tormentors at respectful dis- tance by pretending that he had a tame skunk (but not so tame it wouldn't use its alleged natural talents against anyone who upset it or its master). It's possible that he took to calling the "skunk" Flour on purpose in sort of memory of its original "make-up". So how may this tie into the plot of 3T1 (or 2 or 3 or...)? Well, one possibility is that once William has discovered the truth, he may borrow Flour for something he needs a skunk for (Maybe there's a watchdog or some- thing that isn't afraid of anything - except for Flour. Perhaps he could use it to scare the receptionist with in part 2? So why do I put this here? I just thought of it, that's why!!). By the way, Barney also occasionally carries an atomizer filled with some kind of foul-smelling liquid that he some times uses to leave the impres- sion that Flour has sprayed someone, thereby strengthening the legend... A totally disjointed idea: The plot for part one involves horses, at least in flashbacks. If William finds a reason to go into a stable some- where (maybe to examine Alice's horse or something) something strange hap- pens the first time he enters: The horse next to the door leans forward and whispers something ("buzz buzz buzz") in his ear. William turns around to look at the horse and says "What??". Someone else (or the horse, depending on how weird you are!) says: "What's the matter, haven't you heard a ho(a)rse whisper before?" [Or maybe William explains his reaction to whoever is nearby by saying "I thought I heard a horse whisper!" Maybe the player could be offered a choice between "horse whisper" and "hoarse whis- per" and the other (human) character would react accordingly...] The above kind of reminded me of the crows (or whatever) in "Dumbo" who have a lot of fun with the concept of a flying elephant. "Did you ever see an elephant fly?" - "No, but I've seen a horse fly!" - "I've seen a house fly!" and so on, leading to a song about the time they saw a baseball bat or heard a diamond ring and so on. This in turn inspired me to combine the puns to a joke that can be used either in 3T or some other adventure or something: The hero hears a fly cough, and when he mentions this to someone else the other answers "Must be a hoarse fly then!" Another idea I was reminded of by looking through MOV's letter file - I did not originally think it up for this scenario, but just to put it some- where! I don't think it totally impossible that someone finds a way to in- tegrate this into the plot... For some obscure reason our hero needs to visit someone who doesn't just open his door for anyone. (Fisherman, per- haps?) I got the idea from a scene in "Simon the Sorcerer" where the hero knocks a door and it "says" "Knock knock", which of course made me think of "knock knock" jokes (henceforth KKJ's). The first time our friend tries the door, the conversation goes something like this (The unwilling host is on the inside of the door, so you may get the impression it's the door that's talking!): "Knock knock!" "Who's there?" "It's William!" "William who?" "William Tillamore." "What a lousy joke! Go away!" (Or maybe "Go home to your mother!" as a (sort of) play on the Norwegian meaning of the expression his name sounds like. (Maybe the reluctant host is Duke Anvil - it has already been es- tablished that he knows at least a little Norwegian... But he invited Wil- liam, so why won't he let him in?)) Anyway, William (or whoever it is) goes away, realising that he needs to learn a decent KKJ to get in. Fortunately he knows (if the player has done the right things earlier) someone who is expecting a visit from a comedian (?). All (?) he needs to do is to get there first, get rid of the resident somehow and take his place. Some time after he has locked the door from the inside and sat down to wait, there is a knock at the door and the following dialog... er... follows! "Knock knock!" "Who's there?" "It's Amos!" "Amos who?" "Amos Quito!" (=a mosquito) William has learned a new KKJ, now all he has to do is distract the "tea- cher" so he can get away undiscovered (?). Fortunately the punch line above is the perfect setup for another bit of weirdness: "Buzz off!" "Hey! Who's the comedian here?" "Well, it looks like it's me in here and you out there!" "Oh yeah? Come out and say that again!" "I can't." "Why not?" "Because if I came out there I wouldn't be in here, would I?" While the (would-be) visitior ponders this point, William sneaks out the back door and goes to see Fisherman (or Duke, or whoever...). This "knock at the door" business reminds me of a cartoon I saw once. This man is sitting in his living room, reading a ghost story or something equally spooky, when a plumber happens to walk past the window carrying a length of pipe with a (water) tap at the end. The joke is that the man looks up to see the tap passing right after he has read the line "Suddenly, there was a tap at the window..." Don't know how this may fit into the plot, if it fits at all... Some game mechanics ideas: If you read a lot of comics you may have noticed that some times the art- ist uses a special device to indicate that a character is looking at some- thing special. Right, I'm talking about the tradition (?) of drawing a dot- ted line (........) from the character's eye(s) to whatever he is looking at. One thing I suggested to MOV once was to use a similar device in 3T1 (and the sequels of course) when William is examining something. (A bit more original than having him walk over to the object!) I even made a small animation that shows how this would look like - if you haven't seen it yet, remind me to send it to you next time! The trouble with this effect is of course that it's a bit problematic to erase the line without keeping a copy of the whole screen in the back- ground! (If the line is made up of single dots rather than line segments it may be possible to simply copy the colours of the overwritten dots into an array and then erase the line by drawing dots in the original colours, but I'm not sure how visible this will be...) The look-at effect may also be used in a different function. If you've been playing graphic adventures for some time you will have discovered that one of the problems is finding small objects! Often you must run the poin- ter all over the screen to see if there's something there, and some games even require clicking on an object to acknowledge its presence, so you spend most of your time clicking on everything in sight! I once suggested including a help function to make life a bit easier (in this connection anyway!) for the adventurer. The idea is that by either pressing the Help key or clicking a special icon, the player gets all pre- sent objects pointed out to him. This could be done simply by flashing the bobs that represent the objects on and off a couple of times, but here's a more fun variant: When the player asks William to look for objects, he will turn to face the player, say "I spy with my little eye..." and start looking around (by turning his head). If there is nothing that can be handled there, he'll shrug and say "...nothing that isn't nailed down!" If, however, he finds something worthy of the player's attention, he will "eye-line" it, say what he sees, and perhaps point at it as well. (We'll need some more bobs with arms pointing in different directions for this... more work for the art- ist(s)!) [Oh, by the way, for those who don't know: The "I spy" bit is the opening line from an English game. (And that's "spy" meaning "see", it has nothing to do with secret agents!)] [Later addition: He could do as in the game and say just "something that starts with a (letter)" and then the player would have to check out the ob- ject to get its full name... or maybe not.] [Another idea I had for "flashing objects" was that rather than turn them off and on, make some clever use of the colour palette. The idea is to reserve half the palette for object colours and use the other half for sce- nery colours. This would make it possible to pick up an object in one lo- cation and drop it in another with a different palette without having it change colour. Of course this could limit the use of sprites... Another ef- fect of the palette splitting would be that it's possible to make all ob- jects flash by manipulating their part of the palette. It could also be possible to make objects stand out from the background by changing either the object colours or the background colours to grayscale. The problem with a split palette is of course that one can then only use a maximum of 16 colours (on an OCS Amiga ayway) for all the objects inthe whole game. Maybe the idea could be used in an AGA adventure... Well, that would rule out Amos as a programming language!] Some more game mechanics stuff: At one time we were discussing how the player could show that he had understood what's actually going on, and toyed with the idea of changing the player's task from actually solving the case to helping William solve it. After all this isn't exactly Clue, where you already know for sure that the victim has been murdered, and that one of the present suspects did it with one of the official weapons in one of the known rooms. In this game the player's actual task turns out to be com- pletely different from what you get the impression of in the beginning! So how does they player tell the program his solution without e.g. a multiple choice menu that would give half the game away? (e.g. "Choose one of the solutions below: --- 3) Alice is not really kidnapped, she has eloped with Irving!") My idea was to just let the player help William gather clues and then let the detective draw his own conclusions. I suggested altering the screen layout to include a closeup of William's head in the corner, and whenever he "got an idea" a light bulb comes on over his head. The player can then click on Willian to see what he's got to say. This evolved into a more ex- tended version of letting William "use his head" - click on it and select "Use" from the verb menu, and William will tell you what he thinks about the case (i.e. "use his head"). Click on his eyes and he will look around, click on his ears and he'll listen for sounds. I also suggested that if he's told to listen and doesn't hear anything he'll answer: "It's very... "very..." "very..." "very..." "very..." "very..." "quiet!" To return to the cinema for a while again (whew!), or maybe there's a theatre or something in town as well - anyway, at some point or other Wil- liam passes by the entrance and finds that according to the posters flanking the door, tonight's show is "The Fiend of the Fell". (Another Cats joke - remember Gus the Theatre Cat?) More loose ideas. At some point I started thinking about Lewis Carroll and tried putting some "Jabberwocky" references into the story. This is one of the things that don't really fit into the story as it is at the present, and will probably have to go if we run out of space/time. (It's also probably another dream/hallucination sequence... Could be part of the dream mentioned earlier?) Somewhere in the park is a signpost that at least at one time says "To the Wabe", and if William follows it (by pointing to it and clicking "Follow"?) he soon arrives at the Wabe (see "Through the Looking Glass" for an explanation of this and other strange words that follow) where he finds some small weird creatures sitting around the sundial. Short dialog: "Who are you?" "We are the Slithy Toves!" "Why aren't you gyreing (?) and gimbeling then?" "It isn't brillig yet!" If William catches the crook (?? see below) after meeting the toves, they will come running and start singing "Oh hast thou slain the Jabberwock" etc. ("See below" is here: This part was thought up at a rather early stage and may work better in one of the other stories which has a crook to be caught!) If William hangs around until the toves disappear, or he does something to make them go away, he will meet another Carroll character: Suddenly a man comes running out of the bushes, rings a bell and shouts: "Just the place for a Snark!", then quickly disappears again before the player has a chance to react. If the player stays around (or when he returns later) the Bellman (from "The Hunting of the Snark") will reappear, ring the bell again and repeat his previous statement. If William talks to him, he will just say "I have said it twice now; that alone should encourage the crew!" and pull another vanishing act. The third time, however, he will stay around and get involved in a rather nonsensical conversation. He does not say "What I tell you three times is true" - that's for the player to find out! In fact the whole point with the Bellman is that while most of what he says is utter nonsense, he has a ten- dency to repeat himself, and whatever he says three times is true! (It's possible that William won't understand this until he mentions it to the librarian.) [Later: It's possible that if William asks the Bellman for advice, he'll tell him to "Beware the Jabberwock..." etc.] I've been translating/rewriting from Magnus letter 7 for a while, and here are some more bits and pieces from that one: In the Bell & Anthem is a war veteran who is telling a story about a battle he was in (in WW 1) while the bartender is refilling his glass. The BT says "Say when!", and the WV retorts: "October 1916 of course - don't you know your history?" To return to what may be dream/hallucination sequences for a while: One idea I got about that time (letter 7) was to do a little cameo with one of Eric Schwartz's characters. No, I'm not talking about Flip or Clarisse or even Amy, but the little green fellow from "How to run into a wall"! It goes something like this: Wiliam rounds a corner and is surprised to suddenly find himself on a road edged with big rocks and not a house in sight. (The background for How... is actually a stock picture that was included with the animation program Moviesetter.) In the middle of the road is a small wall. While Wil- liam stands wondering what happened to the topography and what, if any- thing, to do about it, a small green fellow comes running from the right and runs straight past the wall. He swears a bit and walks back for another run. This time he hits the wall but knocks it over, and while he's trying to straighten it up, William asks him what the hell he is doing, and the SGF answers something like "I'm trying to find out How To Run Into A Wall! But if you keep disturbing me I won't get it right until 1989!" (Which is the year Eric released the animation!) After William tries to give him some advice (see below!), the SGF goes back for another run. This time he hits the wall and knocks himself out, just like in the original anim. William stands looking at his unconscious form for a few moments before he shrugs and exits after declaring "Oh well - everyone needs a hobby!" [May be an idea to persuade Eric to do the graphics for this part...] Looking through some older letters I find that I also had an idea for a simpler version: There is no wall there, and the SGF runs into William instead. When William frisks the unconscious creature he finds a copy of "How to run into a detective" by Eric Weiss! [Note: This version does not really require any new graphics as far as the SGF is concerned, but I don't think Eric likes having his work ripped off like that...] [A bit later] Found that the first version above was actually the last, and what idea William (or actually a different character in a later adven- ture) had. He noticed that the SGF tries to hit the wall while running at full tilt, and suggests that it would be easier if he slams on the brakes before he reaches the wall and sort of skids into it. (This works because it's the way Eric drew it!) Another interesting (?) couple of inhabitants it seems like I haven't mentioned in English yet: Two sisters are both born in the spring and named after their respective birth months. When they grew up, April became a plumber specialising in bathroom equipment, and May became a florist. The joke is what their respective shops are called... (Hint: They rhyme!) Music idea: April's doorbell plays a song from the movie "Bambi" which has the same title as (the name of) the shop. Jump, skip, bounce... At one point I toyed with the idea of making the intro in the form of a comic strip (saves a lot of RAM and disk space!), and here's a draft for the opening narrative: "Well, well - another day, another dullard. The old Unterwald¹ stood staring at me from the desk as usual, but for a change I was not staring back, and if I had my way I would never be staring at it again. The die had been cast, and albeit I had no clear conception of what the immediate fu- ture would bring, I was certain it did not involve typing. A few days be- fore..." (From here William goes into flashback and we learn what happened before he decided to become a detective.) ¹Footnote: Unterwald is German for Underwood, famous (?) typewriter brand. Or how about Overstone or something... Somewhere in town (or perhaps outside; maybe this should be in a later part) is an old abandoned building (see below). If William tries to enter it, he is addressed by a person in oldfashioned clothing: "You don't want to go in there!" "Why not?" "It's haunted!" "How do you know that?" "I'm the one who's doing it!" After which the stranger turns around and glides through the door without opening it... Or maybe William declares that he does not believe in ghosts, and the ghost (!) answers that "Nor did I - when I lived..." (It's possible that if William befriends (?) the ghost it may help him with some old information. {"below":} Maybe it's a Harfold and the en- counter happens in an abandoned part of the mansion?) [Later] I found some ideas for part 2 and went to edit that file instead, then I started looking through the old letters and found some more bits that belong here! I haven't mentioned this one before, have I? Juan H has a friend who just invented tagging. His name is Mick, so you could call him "Mick Tagger"... A stray idea that actually was conceived during the work with a later game (that probably won't be published either): The hero needs a balloon for something, and after a bit of searching he finds a box marked BALLOONS 100 R. Opening the box reveals that its content is indeed balloons, that 100 is their number and that R is the code for their colour - red. After helping himself to one of the balloons, the hero turns the box with the label against the wall and writes on the front: 99 RED BALLOONS. If the player tries to take another balloon, the hero protests that "That would ruin the pun!" ("99 red balloons" was the title of a song some years back.) Looking for something I am about to write about in a few lines, I found this dialog idea in one of my old letters to MOV. William has just met Pooshka Babooshka and started suspecting that there is something special about her relationship with her "tenants", so he asks if it's true "that you can talk to cats". She answers that "Everyone can talk to cats! The catch is that not all cats understand what you say. Even worse, only a few of those cats will talk back - and to my knowledge there is only one person who understands what those cats say!" (She is of course referring to herself with that last remark, but that does not become clear until later.) The following is roughly translated from that old letter (The first time I do it this way rather than retell ideas, except for lines that were writ- ten in English in the first place...). --------------------------------------------------------------------------- One idea I got at the same time as the ones above [in the letter], but forgot until now because I hadn't written it down... You seem interested in where I get my ideas, and in this case I got one during lunch hour while I was waiting for the mail and started thinking about how boring it must be to have a job that involves nothing but waiting for the mail while keeping an eye on people that come and go [most of them without stopping to say hello, just to include another Penny Lane reference...], then I got some ideas for how a person like this could provide some surmountable obstacles in a game. [Actually what William has to do here doesn't fit into the plot so far, I just put it here instead of some other file because it may involve Bingo.] Imagine that William (or some other hero?) has to get into an office building of some size (big enough that noone can know everyone who works there personally). The problem is that the guard won't let just anyone in, so our hero must find out what has to be done to get accepted. Fake (or steal) an ID card, perhaps? No, after observing a couple of arrivals Wil- liam realises that the security level isn't quite that high - people who enter the building don't have to show any ID at all, the guard just looks at them before he pushes a button or something to let them in. It soon be- comes clear that while an old guard may just know everyone in the building (at least their faces), it's a bit of a mystery how new guards handle it - or how old guards handle newcomers for that matter. Following a new guard who has just finished his shift, our hero ends up in a pub where he buys the guard a beer and gets involved in conversation. After some idle chitchat to lower his guard, our hero "happens" to mention the guard's job and says something about how difficult it must be to remem- ber all those faces. The guard confides that it's easier than is sounds - inside the guard room they've got pictures of everyone in the building, and whenever the guard sees an unfamiliar face, all he has to do is scan the pictures. And that's the only identity control they've got... Our hero's task in clear: All he needs to do to get into the building is to place a picture of himself in the guard room, and then try to enter when some other guard is on duty. (He can't do it with the guard he just learned the secret from, because he would recognise him and probably wonder why he asked him about the security procedures he ought to know about already!) One way of doing it is this: As suggested at the beginning, the guard is also responsible for receiving the mail, so our hero can just dress up as a postman (and somehow get hold of the day's mail to the company), and when he hands the mail to the guard he drops a couple of envelopes on the floor inside the guard room. While the guard bends over to pick up the letters William can lean in through the window and pin a picture on the board there. Another way involves (as I just said) Bingo the detective cat, which means it would have to happen in part one even though I haven't figured out how to fit it into the kidnapping plot yet... [Maybe it could be part of part three?] William simply asks his self-appointed assistant to "stray" into the guard room, and then he comes along a few minutes later to ask the guard if he has seen "his cat". While the guard is busy trying to catch Bingo, the coast is clear again... In any case the subplot has to involve three different guards: The one who tells William about the procedure, the one who doesn't see the picture being added to his collection, and the one who lets William in... (1 and 2 can't be the same because he would become suspicious if the stranger from the pub turned out to be identical with th postman, 2 and 3 have to be different because it would seem a bit strange that the postman also works in the building, and 1 and 3 has already been covered above. And of course there are similar objections with the cat plot.) Uhm... end "quote"! --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Another little dialog fragment from an early letter: William meets one of the other characters for the first time... "You're a detective, aren't you?" "How did you come to that conclusion?" "I read Punch!" (In other words, this character (Juan Husami?) thinks William looks like more a caricature of a detective than a real one!) Concerning the "come to that conclusion" bit, I once had an idea about William talking like a book (being a writer and having read a lot), but that may be a bit hard to implement unless we get a very good dialog wri- ter...) Looks like I haven't been thinking too hard about our detective friend of late, the current file date for this is February and now I'm going to change it to August! Anyway the idea I got a couple of days ago but forgot to make a note about so I forgot the whole idea until I remembered to make a note today... is how to work Mick Tagger (see above) into the plot and use him to give another Shakespeare hint/reference. Arriving at one of the millionaire mansions William finds that someone has been scribbling on the sign outside the door. (This may only be apparent if the player decides to examine the sign.) After some closer scrutiny the scribbles decipher as "CAPU" which may lead to all kinds of misunderstanding (Unless I got it all wrong, the word is Italian for boss or something and is frequently used about mafia bosses). However, if the player takes another look he will find that the letters aren't properly centered, suggesting that the inscription isn't complete, and if he asks Mick he will learn that the inventor of tagging intended to write CAPULET, but got interrupted. Apparently I made some changes here in September (according to the file date) but now it's December... Looked through my old letters again and came across another bunch of details I seem to have left out here. Somewhere in town is a fellow named Johnny who loves to tell stories, in fact he always opens a conversation with "Let me tell you a story!", so when people see him approaching they say "here comes Johnny Let-me-tell- you-a-story!" (a line from Dire Straits' Walk of life") [see below] Some- times they will tell him they have heard all his stories already, and he assures them this is a new one. "Yes, but we've heard that one before too!" [Just realised this reminds me of Trusty in "Lady and the Tramp" who always gets turned down when offering a story everyone has heard dozens of times before. At the end of the movie he meets the title characters' puppies who of course haven't heard ANY story before. It's the first time in ages he meets someone who hasn't heard his story, and then he finds he hasn't told it for so long that he has forgotten it!] Then the NEW idea I forgot yesterday while looking through the old ones but fortunately I had made a note that I found this morning... William's uncle's name is indeed (as suggested a couple of times earlier) Bob, and the wordplay (?) takes place when he first appears. To start with a short recap, William first goes to the police station to announce his intention to become one of them, but they just laugh at him. When his uncle comes out to see what's happening he starts asking a question but interrupts himself when he sees who the visitor is. "William?" "Hi, Uncle Bob!" Onew of the policemen says to William: "He's your uncle?" After William has answered in the affirmative, the policeman says to one of the others with a shrug: "He wants to be a policeman - and Bob's his uncle!" Okay, let's see you do it better then... [Below] After I wrote the above I got another chance to listen to "Walk of life" with the inner cover (with the lyrics printed on it) in my hand, and found that I had remembered the line wrong - it's "Here comes Johnny and he'll tell you a story". Well, then he doesn't have to say "let me..."! Maybe Johnny is a busker (either Spillane Tell or one of his colleagues) and the audience can comment his performance: "He's got the action!" "He's got the motion!" "Yeah, the boy can play!" Or if he finds a place in the winter chapter (part 3) he may give a hint about the hidden passages that seem supposed to be there, by saying some- thing to the effect that during the winter he plays "down in the tunnels trying to make it pay"! OR (or maybe "and"?) if he asks for requests the audience may say: "Do the song about the sweet loving woman!" "Do the song about the knife!" "Do the walk!" (Do the walk of life) This last batch of lines could also be a couple of choices offered the player to speak when the busker (or maybe the pianist) asks for a request. The first two will cause him to play different songs, the third will cause him to stand up and walk off the stage!