What makes good AIF?

Selected thoughts from AIF authors and players, as posted to AGX

Rap

a.g.xers:

It seems like the r*if folks always have "what makes good IF" threads
going.  Well, I started writing NewKid an email about HI/GNA, and
realized that many of my compliments would fit in a "what makes good
AIF" thread. So I decided to post it.

I've never written (A)IF, so I shouldn't presume to tell AIF authors
how to do their thing, but I thought it might be useful to talk about
what makes good AIF from the *player's* perspective. I thought current
or future authors might find it useful, since most of the time
responses to new games are or "how do I get troi to eat dinner?" or
"are there any more games coming out soon?" or "whre do I gt ths gme?".
Every once in a while, there's the nicer "great game", but that doesn't
really offer too many constructive suggestions.  And I'm a pretty
experienced player (sort of like the (other) Eddie Murphy character in
Bowfinger, whose "experience" in cinema includes renting lots of
movies). My goal would be that someone (who's a better organizer than
me) could take the thread resulting from this post and create some
AIF-specific required reading for perspective authors. Or that current
authors could benefit from the discussion. My other goal is to hear
myself talki---um, typing.

Most of my examples here are drawn from HI and GNA. I absolutely don't
want to start a favorite game thread here. I am sure people have
different opinions about which AIF is best, but I think most of us
agree that HI and GNA are pretty good examples of Good AIF (GAIF?).
And since I just replayed them I can comment easily. I really hope that
the other AIF authors won't think I'm saying their games lack these
or other good features. Also, I wrote only very minor spoilers, so even
those who haven't played these games (you should!) can read on.

<in my opinion>

(1) In general, Good AIF is Good IF. (Many have already said this.)
Which is why Mycophile's reading links are all links for writing good
IF.  Good AIF, like good IF, requires good writing (erotic and
otherwise), coding, spelling, planning.... Wow, no wonder I couldn't
possibly write AIF!

(2) Why AIF? Somewhat related, sex is much more exciting to me if
there's the buildup of solving puzzles to get it. Perhaps this just
shows that I'm a pervert. But if so, I don't think I'm the only one
around here. If the puzzles are minimal or supertrivial, IMO, the sex
is almost boring. Might as well read alt.sex.stories, where you'll find
as much or more sex without having to guess the verb.

(2) "Mechanics" of sex.  Yes, it will be a while before AIF sex
approaches Real Life Sex (tm), but every little step counts.

BBG took the tack of basically telling you what to do next ("Excitedly,
she puts her lips right next to yours") in order to insure game
continuity. I felt that was helping us a bit too much. OTOH, in games
like HI, it can sometimes be a bit frustrating forgetting exactly which
body parts you've done which things to.  (Unless NewKid was trying to
comment that Real Life Sex is actually like that :)

I also thought that giving each character in GNA a different "I'm not
ready to do that yet, [name]" response was a good detail.
Unfortunately, the more unique you try to make each character, the more
time it takes to write it. And unfortunately, we, the AIF audience
haven't been particularly patient.

(3) The sex. Good AIF had better have good A in it. (Or, more
generally, good T&A. ha ha.) I think one of the things that
distinguished GNA/HI was the sheer diversity of sexual situations (all
accomplished, btw, even though he stuck with pretty vanilla sex).  Good
AIF changes the *circumstances* of sex, not just which thing goes in
which other thing.  (This is of course one of the main things that
makes Real Life Sex interesting even when doing the same thing with the
same person---changing circumstances.) In short, quality in sex is IMO
more important than quantity (though let's be frank; quantity is
fun, too).

Interesting methods to make sex sexier as well as examples follow. Many
of them require good *writing* and imagination, although some also
require tough coding.

Mycophile

Equally important, if not more so, good AIF is good (or at least decent)
erotica.  Erotic writing, like AIF, revolves around characters.  One of the
biggest issues I'd like to see improved upon in AIF is character
development.  Many ordinary prose authors will use some method of sitting
down and sketching out a character in words, brainstorming for things like
motivations, interests, personal history, and personality.  Time spent
planning out a character, or really any story element, is NEVER wasted.  The
more time you spend planning before you write a scrap of code, or even think
much about the technical aspects of the game, the better your game will turn
out in the end.

[snip]

My problem with puzzles in AIF is that they're too lock-and-key and
repetitive, or they revolve around guess-the-verb.  Difficulty being, of
course, that we only meet these characters for a short while in the game and
it's hard to think of a realistic way to draw them into a sex scene that
doesn't involve some absurdly superficial artifice as motivation.  BJD did a
good job of pointing this out.

The only solution I see is to approach AIF as something more closely
resembling real life.  People in general don't have sex with complete or
near strangers nearly as often as they do with someone they already know or
have a relationship with (it just occurred to me that the exact same thing
is said about rape, but let's ignore that as mostly irrelevant).  This
presents, I think, a good challenge to AIF writers.  Introduce characters
that the player character already knows well from before the game started.
Give characters a history that matters, and many useful things will follow
from that, such as motivations and interplay between characters.

[snip]

I for one would prefer to see some sort of puzzles that are a bit more
"mature" in the sense that they involve knowing something about a
character's personality rather than just manipulating objects in an
oh-so-Zorklike way.  But puzzles simply involving sex are good too.  I
suppose that what I'm really after is a situation like the following: the
NPC is someone who would ordinarily be willing to have sex with the PC, but
perhaps isn't in the mood (something bothering you?) or doesn't want to do
precisely what the player does (in the elevator?  I don't think so,
honey...).  The player, through an understanding of the NPC's personality
and motivations, finds a way to motivate the character to participate in the
scene after all.  For the elevator example, perhaps it turns out that the
NPC is turned on by photographic porn.  The PC could show the NPC some
pictures of people having sex in an elevator, which would get the NPC all
hot and bothered about the idea.  Or, if the NPC was into three-ways, the PC
would have to find a third party to join in in order to make it happen.  You
get the picture.

Optimus

Dear Aifers,

Well, this is certainly an interesting thread. Just thought I'd make a
few points.

First off, it's nice to see that me own thoughts about AIF are mirrored
in these past few posts. In fact, much of why I wanted to write my own
AIF was to put into practice some of the concepts here :-

1) good writing
2) good erotica
3) a measure of believability
4) some measure of variability and freedom in actions

Unfortunately, I found it much easier said then done!! ;(

My original intention was to write a small piece of AIF based on the
original "A Night with Troi". I actually quite liked that one, because
of its above-average writing, and the way that the description of the
sex scenes did vary with the state of undress and ones' location. Of
course, there was nothing in terms of puzzles, but I personally think
that the Xtrek that came after them, while offering some great
puzzles, often had less interesting sex scenes.

So, here was I thinking that by using TADS, and incoporating the MMX
module, I could improve on the interactivity, as well as the variability
of the sex scenes.

I used Deanna Troi as the central figure in the story, partly to save me
from having to charecterise a completely new charecter. I also wanted to
give some reason for Deanna's sexual encounter with you, hence the whole
Mills-and-Boons/Imzadi introduction.

However, I soon found that all attempt at injecting realism and
variability into the programme a real impediment to my actual writing.
Perhaps I was trying to be too ambitious, but trying to juggle all the
various possibilities ( state of undress, state of arousal, state of
room ) meant that I often had to make the scenes a little too
non-specific, or else final description of the scene, taking into
account all the varibles, would not make sense - short of writing a
different scene for each permutation.

Which is why the better scenes in my story will be the ones where you
don't actually control the action, kinda like cut-scenes.

Also, after trying to expand the possible ways of making love to the
charecter ( eg lick, suck, finger, rub, etc ) I kinda realised that such
divisions actually did NOT make the game any more playable or the
writing any more realistic - problem being that you usually perform two
or more of these actions on any one part of the female's anatomy, so I
personally thought it would make more sense to write them all in the
same scene.

"So, I'm wondering what your opinion is, from the point of a programmer
and player. Do you think Moist-like interactivity is a better way to
simulate a sexual encounter, or would things be more satisfying with
cutscenes, ala the ones in GNA, HI, or in various Hentai games?"

Then why bother to release this game at all? Well, I have spent a lot of
time on it, to the detriment of my RL, so even if it is not well
received, it can at least be used as a starting point for discussion.
Also, the release is going to be a Beta, since I really don't know how
robust the game is, and whether there are any bugs that have escaped my
attention. Finally, I hope to include all the suggestion and comments
from the beta testing in my final version ( du-uh... isn't that what a
beta is for? ).

Lastly... I hesitate to call me piece a Game, since there is very little
puzzle-work in it. Can I call it an Adult Interactive Story instead? ;)

Newkid

I would add that good erotica is good writing. Just because your game
is about sex does not mean that it doesn't have to be a game, and a
good one. Just because your subject matter is pretty damn popular,
doesn't mean your writing is going to be popular. This is not easy,
btw. To write good IF of any kind, you must display skills with both
programming and prose writing. Most people CAN do this, despite the
arrogance of many authors and programmers alike. YOU can do this. Yes
YOU, the guy reading this post, wondering when they are going to get
around to posting that walkthrough of Stiffy McKane. Get TADS and get
to work. Let us see what you've done in a couple of months. But keep up
with this thread as you learn.
 
[snip]

In Ideal High School, I was trying to simulate the adolescent sexual
process, you know where the guy keeps trying to see what he can get
away with. I ought to give credit where it is due (and/or deflect the
blame), by mentioning I got the idea from PASSION PIT.

Anyway, I got carried away in GNA. As I've gone over it lately, I have
trouble with some of the scenes ( especially thw three-way ) myself,
and I WROTE the damn thing! I fell victim of one of the writer's seven
deadly sins, NEVER FALL IN LOVE WITH YOUR OWN WRITING. In GNA, I wrote
all sorts of sexual possibilities, and I wanted to make sure that the
player read them ALL, because they were SO AWESOME! I let myself forget

that the object of the game was to please everyone, not read every
word of my deathless prose. 

The next game will still have gateway actions and have the same basic
engine of Hi and GNA, if only because I want the player to at least
have the opportunity to read all my deathless prose, but also because
it provides an excuse for not just writing giant cut scenes. The idea
is to TRY (I make no promises) to use SOME of the BBG contextual hint
method to give the player an idea of what to try next.

[snip]

Circumstance is practically EVERYTHING. Sex is remarkably limited,
folks, unless you want to do an AIF Kama Sutra. You COULD code a room
with a woman and EVERY BODY PART for both of you. You could code every
put tab A into Slot B combination you could think of. You could waste
three years of your life doing it. (Five years if you count the time
you spend re-coding things everytime they come out with a new version
of TADS in the meantime) You can do a lot, but it is going to quickly
pale in the readers imagination. The comments below are very cogent:

> - Unique characters. NewKid has said he tries to give his characters
>   different driving factors. This makes sex with each one different,
>   even if the actual sexual actions are the same. Adding different
>   motivations for the sex itself---like blackmail (HI's Laura) or even
>   BJ Drifter's natural consequence of coed naked trampolining---adds
>   variety too. And did Rogue Cop include a seduction for ulterior
> motives?
>   RC's Tabitha also had more personality than many AIF women. And Muffy
>   even undergoes some Character Development (tm) in HI.

[snip]

I love voyeurism. I put it in all my games. Voyeurism is practically
essential to the main process in STX. (Yes damn it, STX sucks. But I
still like it. You should too. Go play it. NOW!) It also is well suited
to (A)IF. It makes for great puzzles. You can't just walk down the
street and see people having sex (unless you live in certain areas of
Miami....) You gotta do some work to get into a position to see. You
then see. You often then learn other things, or pick up useful items in
the process of getting into position to spy on others, or even get
caught and are propelled into a whole new storyline as a result.

[snip]

One of the things that I am doing a lot of in my next game are sex
scenes that invlove just going a little way. We often think of sex in
terms of baserunners in baseball (first base, etc.) Well, watch any
baseball game. Most baserunners (Cleveland Indians games excluded) are
left on base without getting home. Several characters will require at
least one or more initial scenes where the player will not be able to
go all the way. Those of you with any real life experience will
recognize the phenomena.
In the mean time, I look forward to the e-mails and posts from
frustrated players who are screaming about how they can get Doc
McGlinchy to ___________ in the bar booth, but they can't go any
further. They've been playing this scene alone for 37 straight hours
and just can't figure it out. HeeHee. I'm so evil.

[snip]

All this comes down to making sure the game has an actual STORY. (GNA's
story is pretty lame, but it is a story. The idea is to have SOMETHING
that the player is trying to do.)

Have fun, and be creative.

Kitten

IMHO: for AIF, meaningless sex is fine - just as meaningless aggression is
fine in a wargame. It kind of goes with the territory.

Truly meaningful sex would be even better, but we ain't gonna get that
unless this community can discover how to make a step-change in both writing
and coding techniques.

After all, what is the *real* difference between a woman who will screw you
if you find her riding whip (Mustard in XClue) and a woman who will screw
you if you feed her a pizza (as LW points out, paid for with money stolen
from her parents!), swim and watch a film with her, and give her a flower
(Erin in Dear Diary)?

Wotan-Anubis: Dear Diary is a great game, and highly enjoyable. But you may
be deluding yourself if you think Erin in Dear Diary is really less of a
robotic sex-doll than Erin in Gamma Gals. The initiation sequence is more
complex and time-consuming, but it's still just pushin' buttons. I do
believe, though, that every robotic sex-doll in AIF ought to have at least
one button that needs pushing before delivering the goods. The more the
better. We have come a certain way from the early games where most of the
NPCs would succumb to the classic seduction technique of  "x girl. fuck
girl." And we need to keep moving that way. So kudos, at the very least, for
making Erin harder to get than the average NPC.

Long term, it would be great if someone could write a game which modelled
the real-life process of falling in love with someone and mutually deciding
to have meaningful sex. The trouble is, most of the process would be
difficult to simulate in game format, and huge chunks of it would be either
tedious, or out of the player's control, or both. After all, the real-life
process is made up of all sorts of things, in themselves minor or
insignificant, highly idiosyncratic (what appeals to me about another human
being may not appeal to you, or to any randomly-chosen person in the street)
and fleeting. People appeal to us not just for what they do (the bit that
AIF can have a decent-ish stab at portraying), but also how they do it. And
also for things they don't do - it's not just in cliches that relationships
get strained by someone squeezing the toothpaste from the middle of the
tube. You can find someone totally unattractive until you catch them at
precisely *that* angle in *just* the proper light. A random, fugitive
expression or quirk of posture can melt your heart, but if you'd looked away
you would have missed it.

With the parsers we currently have (even TADS, which is impressively
versatile - can't speak of Inform, never tried to write in it), none of that
will be possible. Adrift certainly isn't sophisticated enough to model
"real-life" passion. For the moment, we are stuck with what we have. We have
to acknowledge that, in the state to which AIF has currently evolved, the
NPCs will inevitably still be "lock-key" puzzles, albeit - in the better
games - fairly complex and multi-step ones. The most we can do at this stage
is to try to make the locks and keys bear some tenuous narrative
relationship to a human situation. For example.....

In Dear Diary, the truly interesting puzzle IMO was working out that it
would be a good idea to give Erin a rose. Thereafter, the tedious business
of actually locating the rose and acquiring it was just mechanical and
uninvolving. Oddly, I disagree with others who say that the rose ought to
have been in the conservatory. NO. That would have led to the player
thinking of a rose as a key before identifying the lock (how to convey
affection to Erin). The fact that the rose is lurking unobtrusively in a
place whose overt raison d'etre is something else (just a convenient venue
to pay for the pizza, yeah? And everybody knows that in Adrift games
virtually every room has just one single purpose, yeah?) means that the
decision of what to do for Erin isn't too obvious.

Sadly, the other "human" decisions weren't so hard to arrive at. As LW
points out, the "dinner" idea gets handed to you on a plate (<vbg>), and the
actual mechanics of arranging the meal nearly made me put a fist through the
monitor. Deciding to watch that particular movie was fairly obvious,
especially if you'd caught the far-too-heavy hint on Erin's screensaver.

To conclude - it's all meaningless sex, but W-A is quite right in trying to
make it a little less automatic, and in trying to make the hoops you need to
jump through look a little bit more like a real-life seduction.

A.Bomire

OK. I guess I'll throw my 2 cents in....

We're all different, so we all like different things. Some people (as is 
obvious from the posts I read) like AIF like a porn movie. Cut to the chase, 
and let's get busy!  Some like it more drawn out, so you actually have to work 
at it, with some emotional or relationship overtones to it. I think Emy 
Discovers Life is the best example I've seen of this.

What about me?  I like it both ways. (Now stop that! You know what I mean!) 
Sometimes I'm in the mood for a good old fashion sex romp, sometimes I'm in 
the mood for something drawn out. I don't think you can beat the photography 
scenes with Wynne in Ideal High School for drawing out the sexual tension, and 
for plain old "walk-in and have sex" I think Rogue Cop takes the top prize.

As a fledgling author, I try to incorporate both into my games (the only one 
I've released so far is "Dexter Dixon....", but I'm in the midst of my second 
game right now). I designed Stella and Roxy as pretty one-dimensional women, 
but I tried to give Lily and Maia a little more in the way of emotional 
overtones. Claudia you had to work at the most, and I hope you got the most 
out of your interactions with her.

As some have pointed out, it is much easier to program a two-value logic into 
a game (He/She will or He/she won't have sex) than to try to incorporate much 
more complicated fuzzy logic (he/she might do this, but not that, and 
especially not if you've tried to do something else first before he/she was 
ready).

[scraping sound as soap box is pulled out]
I don't know if there is a need for a new language to incorporate AI. Having 
programmed for almost 20 years, the one thing I've learned is that you can get 
a computer to do just about anything, it's just a matter of how much time you 
want to spend on your results. Is it really worth it spending the time and 
energy developing a woman with whom you have to work just as hard to have sex 
with as you do with the real thing? After all, the whole idea is some level of 
escapism.
[scraping sound as soap box is put away]

* * *

[I]s there a way to quantify what is necessary to make a "great" game? 
I'm not sure there is. I think the best you can do is outline some of the 
things that make a game enjoyable, and then shoot for that. So, here goes 
my list:

One of the comments I received on my recent release, Backlot, really 
resonated with me. One of the players mentioned being able to go back and 
play the game again and again, and find something new. I think this is 
important. (BTW, I wasn't necessarily shooting for this, but I'm glad I was 
able to achieve it, at least for this player.) Moist certainly has this. So 
does Dear Brian and Cruise and a host of other games.

You should have solid believable characters, not walking/talking vaginas. 
Again, Dear Brian stands out in my mind as giving this, as do the other 
games I mentioned above.

Set your game in a good background. I don't mean it has to have a fantastic 
plot or involved situations, but it shouldn't have the feeling of taking 
place in a white-washed room with a bed in the corner, where you can 
practically hear the echoing of your footsteps as you move from room to 
room. I think the best game for this is Peril in the Skies. 

Oh yeah, good sex. It doesn't even have to be a sexual marathon where you 
try to nail 15 or 16 women in a single afternoon. I'm not saying that those 
type of games aren't great, I'm just saying that it isn't quantity, it's 
quality. Both is fantastic, but if I have to give up one I'd prefer it to 
be quantity. Also, try to offer a broad appeal (so to speak). Not every 
woman in your game has to have blond hair and a 38DDD chest.

At least, those are my thoughts.

Chris Cole

There's nothing wrong with games that just happen to have sex in them,
or games that are just about sex.

Personally, I play AIF for the sex. I prefer the games that are about
sex. I'm actually not a very big IF fan. I play IF games every once in
a while, but when I want to play a game, I'll play an x-box game or
card game or RPG or board game before I play an IF game. 

I play AIF because I want to have a little interactivity to my
literotica. I play it for the writing and situation rather than the
game, but if the game part is fun, then I won't complain.

This is why most of my games are thin on plot, and most have very few
puzzles.

I want the games I play to be hard enough that I can't just
automatically sleep with the NPCs, but not so hard that I have to go
through too much story or 6-part puzzles just to kiss a girl.

Those are my preferences. :)

DSX

I'm an amateur IF writer. A pretty bad one i might add, considering that
i've never finished anything. I keep gettin caught up in fleshing out single
rooms and features until i lose focus entirely. However, this also says
something about the sort of games i enjoy playing. In AIF, i think there's
but a handful of truly great games, and they're uniformly created by the
same group of highly talented authors. My absolute favorites so far are the
following:

NewKid - HI
This was my first experience with AIF that wasn't a) startrek related and b)
wasn't juvenile or childish. As with all erotica, poorly written AIF with no
good basis in reality (or even fantasy) is profoundly unsatisfying. Newkid
builds characters, carries them throughout the story, makes them all give to
the overall arc, and gives the player an impossible goal to reach. What is
satisfying about a prize given without effort? I compare AIF without
Newkid's focus on story to those lame tetris ripoffs you'll find in bad
arcades, where some chick drops her clothes as you drop lines. There simply
isn't any reason to pay attention. Newkid proved to me that the AIF scene
was worth checking out; sure there must be other authors with the same
deliberate skill? And sure enough

One Eyed Jack - SS I-III
These are some of my favorite IF games ever. Not as much because of the sex,
even though it is surprisingly well written, but because of the "fuck this,
what the hell" attitude that permeates the games. I enjoy playing as Sam
because he's a total shithead and proud of it. The SS series is an island of
refuge from all morality, and coupled with the skilled craft of OEJ, it
feels thoroughly liberating: A proper fantasy, which is for me what AIF is
about. Not only sexual, but also moral. I really do hope episode IV is
finished some day.

Loops of fury - BDO
Next to Chris' work, BDO is probably the only other ADRIFT game i've played
that felt like a solid game through and through. ADRIFT is a fantastic
system for making games, but its ease of use also brings in a lot of really
horrible writers. Some of the most painfully bad and embarassing AIF i have
ever seen are ADRIFT games, so coming across BDO was a breath of fresh air.
Well written sex, a well designed story arc, fun characters and overall a
very satisfying end. Someone kick Loops' ass and make him do more work!

Chris Cole - Gamma Gals
Easily Chris' best game. If anything can be said against Chris' work, it's
that he is obviously a greater fan of erotic fiction than he is of erotic
gaming. This is still the one game i have played by him that felt like a
proper game, and it's still one of the best AIF games out. Very impressive
work, with a strong story arc.

Adam Hendine - Peril skies
This game is breathtaking. Adam Hendine deserves incredible respect for this
one. Best AIF story ever, worth playing even without the sex scenes, which
is something you can't say for most games these days.

Choices - Dear Brian
I had some issues getting into this game at first. Partially because i felt
the whole gender swap thing more than a little obstructive to my enjoyment,
and couldn't find a way to circumvent it. However, once it's played through,
it becomes apparent what an onion of a game this really is. I'm always
impressed by authors that go to extremes to deliver optional content, and
Choices has always been on point in this regard. The best games reward
exploration and experimentation, and Dear brian truly delivers.

I think, like Choices, that AIF today has moved more toward erotic fiction
(and thus instant gratification) and away from the classic IF gameplay.
Typing variations of "fuck girl" four times doesn't qualify as gaming for
me, and though some might get a kick out of it, more often than not i just
kind of laugh, quit, and play something else. I'm daft enough to assume that
most people who enjoy IF enjoy it for the same reasons i do, so i've made up
a little list of things that really ruin an AIF game for me:

1) Bad spelling
For me, few things bust an illusion more than blatant grammatical errors.
Reading is to be unobstructive, and in the case of IF, it's also supposed to
be immersive. "Teh girl is hott" won't cut it :P ADRIFT has spell checking,
use it.

2) Vocalised moaning
This is like.. Erotic fiction 101:
"She moans" outranks  "OOAAAaaAAGhhhhH!!!"
Well written erotica talks to the imagination, not the eyes. If a character
moans, describe it, don't write it down in hilarious caps and exclamation
marks. Example:
<"That feels amazing" she moans, her lips soft against your ear>
The moan is a sound. Not a word. Please, stop writing it as if it is :P Give
my imagination some credit!

3) <You give her her credit card. "Thanks! Let's fuck!">
Give us some challenge, give her some personality. Didn't you learn in
highschool that fucking the school slut was a bad idea? It doesn't feel much
better in games either!

4) DON'T USE THE WORD "BOOBS" EVER
nuff said.

5) Incest
It works for some, but not for most. It's a sad fact that 8 out of 10 AIF
games today are about fucking your sister, and while some pull it off in a
humorous context (read choices, one eyed jack), most just fumble in the dark
and deliver.. things.. that are just not pleasant. Surely there must be
better ideas out there, no? There are TONS of unexplored settings!

6) Inexperienced writing
I don't really know how to say this in any other ways: If you haven't done
it yourself, please don't write about it. Of couse this doesn't include
fucking your sister ;P But any sexual act you are unfamiliar with, please
don't force it into your game just to have it there. An unrealistic
portrayal of a purely physical act can really hurt a fantasy. I have full
respect for Newkid's decision never to include anal sex in his games. He
doesn't approve of it, and he doesn't force it to please the player. If you
don't know how, don't describe it.

That's all i can think of at the moment. Hopefully i'm not just talking for
myself here but for you others too. I think AIF is one, if not THE best form
of written erotica in how it can involve the reader, and it's sad to see it
crumble into some random unconnected sex scenes with completely unrealistic
characters.

Cheers,

- Andreas