Thursday, June 16, 2011

What new technology is doing for gamebooks

The internet has been instrumental in making gamebooks prevalent again.  After a short search on the internet, I have found many ways in which interactive fiction has made itself prevalent.  This post is a summary of online gamebooks.  I will do a more in depth review of each method later on.

Tweet RPG


This twitter feed has made an innovative use of Twitter in order to create an online gamebook.  The rules for how to use Tweet RPG are here.  


Basically, TweetRPG offers you a choice.  You need to reply to the tweet with your decision.  After a set amount of time, the vote closes and the option which the most people voted for will be used.  This is a great use of twitter and a great way to make a gamebook.  At the moment, I'm investigating a farmhouse in a storm.  Absolutely nothing can go wrong with that.  


Choose your own adventure wiki


The wiki system has been used here to make some great online gamebooks where you can make your decision by clicking links.  Since it follows the wiki layout, anyone can make their own gamebook or even edit another gamebook making it possibly to co-write a gamebook with many other people.

Adventure Cow


This is similar to the Choose Your Own Adventure wiki in the sense that you can write and edit your own adventures.  It started off as a website but it is now being designed for mobile devices.  I have written a story for the site, called The Path to Greatness.

Fighting Fantasy Project


This is a website which has several great amateur Fighting Fantasy books in a format where you make decisions by clicking links.  The site also determines dice rolls for you.  Check out the gamebooks.  They are awesome.

Age of Fable


This website is similar to Fighting Fantasy Project with an excellent sandbox style game similar to Fabled Lands.

Worldweaver


This company is producing Fighting Fantasy books for the Kindle.  Unfortunately, they are only available in the US at the moment.

Gamerunes


This website has interactive fiction games in the medium of IM chat.  At the moment, you can play Soultracker: Day of the Supernaturals (also found on ww.ffproject.com) but there are more gamebooks in the pipeline.

Pirates and Traders


Pirates and Traders is a great Android app where you play the captain of a ship where you can decide to trade or be a pirate.  It also has some elements of interactive fiction where you meet someone in a tavern who gives you a job to do.  do you deliver the goods or take them for yourself?

Destiny Quest


Destiny Quest is a paper gamebook, but it makes a good use of the internet by having a forum and a place to download add on quests.

Gamebook Adventures


Gamebook Adventures have some great titles for the iPad and iPhone (and hopefully the Android in the near future.)  Since I do not own an 'i' device, I have not yet had the pleasure of playing the games, but they are getting rave reviews.  One of them has been written by Andrew Wright and another has been written by Jonathan Green. 

Gamebook writing programs  (look at the gamebook creation systems)


Writing a gamebook requires a lot of organisation in terms of getting the paragraphs to link up and then randomising them.  There are several gamebook programs at the moment.  My favourite one from the ones that I have tried is A.D.V.E.L.H.


"How to make a gamebook on a blog"


This is what someone put into google to search for my blog and it led me to think if you can write a gamebook on a blog.  I guess you could if you made a post for each paragraph and had links between them.  Thanks for that, whoever wrote that.

Yahoo Groups and forums (and more forums)

There are plenty of places to meet fellow gamebook lovers.  Just do some searches on the internet.

Demian's Gamebook Web page


This deserves a section all of its own as it is the most comprehensive collection of information and links regarding gamebooks EVER.

So there we are.  I'll be linking to this page from teh homepage in future.  I will also be looking at these media in more detail in later posts.  


EDIT - Lone Wolf


I know I alluded to Lone Wolf below, but it deserves a bigger slice of publicity than a link.  After all almost all of the Lone Wolf gamebooks are free to play online and download!  So if you want to be part of a huge epic quest where you save the world several times and battle dark gods then go to www.projectaon.org.


Blogs


There are several blogs on the bloosphere dedicated to gamebooks or by gamebook authors.  They are:

Jonathan Green, Author
Let's Play a gamebook
Fantasy Gamebook
The Lone Delver
The World of Gamebook Writing
Adventures and Shopping
Fabled Lands
Turn to 400
Fighting Fantasist
Titan - The Fighting Fantazine Blog
Trollish Delver


I have just noticed that I do not know of any Lone Wolf blogs.  Are there any?  Does anyone want to start one?


Once again, I meant this to be a short post, but as always, I have discovered many hidden depths to gamebooks and the interactive fiction that they have fathered.  My in depth posts on each of these media will keep me going for a while.  


Right - I originally promised to do one post a week as to not run out of ideas too quickly so I need to stop doing these impromptu posts, but I wanted to get the word out about all the great gamebook innovations that are going on.  


My next post will be on Sunday and it will be entitled Gamebooks for Dummies.  If anyone has any questions, please leave a comment, email me on sl1605@gmail.com or send me a message on twitter (http://twitter.com/#!/slloyd14).

7 comments:

  1. Thanks for all the tips!
    Gamebooks are experiencing something of a second spring at the moment, I think.
    IPod and other such media are great for gamebooks.
    Maybe you should have made a nte about Procect Aon too? But most gamebook/Lone Wolf fans would already be aware of that site.

    /Magnus the Magnificent

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  2. @Magnus - thanks for your comment. You are correct, I did criminally neglect Lone Wolf in my post which is a bad oversight considering Joe Dever has been extremely generous and allowed almost all of his books to be published online. I have included a note about Lone Wolf in my post now - please enjoy the books at www.projectaon.org.

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  3. thanks for the info!
    A lot to see in so little time!

    Ikaros

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  4. @Ikaros - I know what you mean. I really need a USB port on the side of my brain.

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  5. Interesting and. It important information is really beneficial for us. Thanks

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    ReplyDelete