Windhammer 2011 Submissions are open

Good day to you all!  Wayne Densley, the creator of the Chronicles of Arborell  has announced that the entries phase for the Windhammer competition is now open.  You can submit a gamebook of 100 paragraphs or fewer between now and September 7th.  For more details, go here.

Here is Wayne's message:

Arborell.com is proud to announce the commencement of the 2011 Windhammer Prize
for Short Gamebook Fiction. Entries are now being accepted for this fourth
annual competition and submissions will be taken until the 7th of September. The
Windhammer Prize is a competition that allows gamebook authors an opportunity to
showcase their works in a competitive environment and in doing so expose their
gamebooks to a large number of readers. The competition is particularly
interested in gamebooks that expand the boundaries of interactive gamebook
adventures and as an incentive to participation provides both cash prizes and
hosting for entries as a part of the arborell.com Gamebook Archive.

More information, including competition guidelines, timetable and prize details
on the Windhammer Prize can be found at
http://www.arborell.com/windhammer_prize_2011.html

Additional information on the sponsors of this competition, the Chronicles of
Arborell, can be found at http://www.arborell.com/

If you already have an entry for the prize it can be submitted through
entry@...

Any questions regarding the Windhammer Prize or the Chronicles of Arborell
interactive gamebook series can be forwarded through the email address provided
at Arborell.com

Regards
Wayne Densley
Chronicles of Arborell
Windhammer Prize for Short Gamebook Fiction
http://www.arborell.com

What's going down?

Ok, I admit, I said I would update weekly, but there has been a lot of fab new stuff this week, so I will blog the news today and then write about Fabled Lands on Sunday.

Competitions

Wayne Densley at the Chronicles of Arborell has released the guidelines for the 2011 Windhammer Prize.  

I love the Windhammer Prize for several reasons.  First of all, it helped reignite my love of gamebooks.  I entered the first one in 2008 because I had some spare time. However, after receiving feedback from readers, I realised that people are interested in gamebooks.  

I now believe that my first attempts at writing gamebooks were not good.  Determined to make my system fair, I forgot about description, cool items, characterisation and storyline.  Thanks to Windhammer, I got feedback on what I need to improve on as well as a good idea about what people like by reading the winning entries.  

I took their feedback on board and became determined to make sure my gamebooks were better, which led to Sharkbait's Revenge.  

All the previous entries are here   including my first two attempts at the competition.  

You have until September 7th to submit a 100 paragraph gamebook which is no longer than 40 pages.  I would love for as many people to enter as I always like reading these new gamebooks as they are always of high quality and innovative.  

The One page dungeon competition

I heard about this competition thanks to the Grognardia blog.  It looks really interesting and I'd like to give it a shot.  The guidelines for the competition, along with the previous entries, are here.

Gamebook releases

Catacombs of the Undercity is now available from iTunes (since when was it OK for names to not start with a capital letter?).  The book is written by Andrew Wright (whose names do start with capital letters), writer of the Fantasy Gamebook Blog.  Give the blog a good read and buy the app.

I have received my copy of Destiny Quest and look forward to getting stuck into it this weekend.  

Blogosphere stuff

Jonathan Green answers all the questions from his fans in a new vlog.

After having a twitter account for ages, I've decided to do some tweeting.  My Twitter page is

 http://twitter.com/#!/sl1605.

I'll see you on Sunday!  :).

What microadventures taught me - narrative is important

So now I'm more efficient with my paragraphs, but I still had a big problem with my early gamebooks. 



There was no narrative.

 Looking at my first adventure, War of Deities part 1, you will notice that most of the paragraphs are just descriptions of the room that you are in and the people in them.  This 400 paragraph book has 26000 words.

Moving over to my latest gamebook to date, Sharkbait's Revenge, we see that it is a 100 paragraph book with just under 22000 words.  And it has a shorter rules section.

When I started writing gamebooks, I just didn't write narrative.

And this orc is a 3rd level fighter
with a +1/+1 double sword and a
+2 amulet of natural armour. 

The way I originally approached writing gamebooks was the same as my approach the games - it was all about the numbers.  I didn't care what my sword looked like if it gave me a +2 bonus in combat.  I went for the 100 gold pieces and not the lovely description of the pile of treasure.  I was enjoying my experience immensely, but I just was not accessing the whole experience available to me.

 This was good at the time, but then when it came for me to write a gamebook, I completely missed those things out. 

I was too busy focusing on making the game system balanced.  I did not want impossible combats or instant deaths based on a die roll.  I think I did quite well (I hope), but my descriptions were scant and my characters were one dimensional.

This is the kind of feedback I got after my second entry to the Windhammer Prize for short gamebook fiction at Arborell when I entered City of the Dead.  The winner and the merit award prizes were more rules light and focused more on narrative.  Indeed, Kieran Coghlan's Waiting For the Light had nothing but an inventory list.  There wasn't even a background, but it is still great because of the narrative and the mystery of the book. 

I've just read Heart of Ice and there are some brilliant descriptions and characters in the book and this is why it is a contender for greatest gamebook of all time (don't we need a Fighting Fantazine type survey on this kind of thing already?)

A picture I took of the
Himalayan foothills.  I
would  think about how
to describe this lovely place.

So when I wrote microadventures, I fleshed them out with good descriptions of the area the hero was in.  I imagined the smells and the sights and how the hero might feel in that situation. 

An ancient Egytian scimitar.  Not just
another non descript method of dealing
2 stamina points of damage.

I went to museums and took pictures of artefacts that I could describe in my books.  I also made sure that all of my characters, even the bit part ones, had a defining characteristic.  I also thought of certain well known phrases or scenes which would give tons of information on the mood of the scene. 

For example, In my short book In the name of Love, I had a big 'NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!' when the soldier's lover was shot with a crossbow (number of Os may vary with each big 'NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!')

I would also read about actual historical events to get a feel for what it was actually like to be in a setting that matched the time I was in.  A couple of examples include a forensic account of a battle bought to my attention on the Fabled Lands blog and a link to an article about how human skulls were used as drinking vessels at an H.P. Lovecraft blog.

I have found www.tvtropes.org to be an invaluable tool for things like this.  However, be warned - I also found it highly addictive.

I wanted everything to be memorable.  And it had to be if all our readers were looking at would be the rules, the background and about 10 paragraphs.

This is what I now do - Sometims I feel like I am going over the top by drawing on well known tropes and cliches.  I also feel like I am being less original, but then readers need something to connect to. 

I don't want to go that far, but I need to have a balance of having enough familiar material to pull the readers in with enough original material to make my book a unique and entertaining experience.

Can you have too much description?  What do you think, Tolkien?

However, it seems that there can be too much description for some people.  I realised this from the comments on this post in Fantasy Gamebook that minimal description allows people to create their own narrative about their character. 

So then it goes down to how much is too much?  What should be in the book and what should be left for the reader to fill in?  Is there just one answer to this question? 

Next time, I'll be writing about the Fabled Lands setting in a lead up to my review of The War Torn Kingdom. 

Whoops - my finger slipped 

He's not a villain.  He's
more 'armless than most.

Get back in the book, Zagor.
It's not time yet.

You may have seen an article entitled 'Zagor - misunderstood hero?' in your feeds that has no link.  This is a future article that I intend to publish after I have written about Fabled Lands.  I was adding an image to the post and accidently hit publish rather than save.  I apologise for that.At the moment, my review of Fabled Lands is over four posts, so this article will be released in April.  That's something to look forward to. 

Speaking of accidental publishing, Murray will be publishing a playthrough of City of Thieves on his highly amusing Turn to 400 blog.  Keep an eye out for that.  

Lots to look forward to.  Have fun! 

All my gamebooks are now on this blog.

Hi all,

Just a quick note to say I've linked to all of my gamebooks on the sidebar of this blog.  Also, check out http://www.arborell.com/ - the site that hosts the Windhammer Gamebook Competition.

Enjoy the books!

News and links

Hi, I've been busy recently.  I've been planning more posts on gamebooks and buying gamebooks on Amazon, including familiar and unfamiliar Choose Your Own Adventure books.

I've also been reading gamebooks that I have had for ages but never tried.  For example, I am flicking through Duelmaster gamebooks 3, The Shattered Realm. 

I meant the plural - the duelmaster series is made up of four parts, each one consists of two gamebooks.  More is explained here on an encylapedic gamebook website, which I recommend:

http://www.gamebooks.org/show_series.php?id=124

The books seem very innovative.  One contains even numbers and the other contains odd numbers.  The aim is that two players battle each other with the books. 

In The Shattered Realm, the players take the roles of rulers of two countries that are going to war.  Each player picks from three rulers.  They are different by name, but each country's three rulers follow the same kind of description - one ruler is in charge of the army, one is a magic user and the other is a woman (really - that's her USP).

The plotis split into two halves.  The first halve involves travelling the land to recruit allies to your cause.  You have to sweet talk several rulers to provide soldiers to boost your army.  However, if you both decide to visit the same country at the same time, you may end up duelling your opponent. 

you would wonder how some of the other countries manage to not implode.  There is a country ruled by the priesthood of death.  There is also an anarchic city.  It makes you wonder what our moderate democracies are doing that is so wrong if a country ruled by a priesthood that has no problem with spreading disease and sacrificing babies is able to thrive.

The second half involves a battle, which I haven't taken part in because I haven't found someone to play against.  However, I enjoy the format and flavour of the books.  In the future, I will write a post about multiplayer gamebooks.  There are four Duelmasters, The Scarlet Sorcerer by Joe Dever and The Fellowship of Four (based on the heroquest boardgame - http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/699/heroquest).

Just as one competition ends, another begins.  http://www.adventurecow.com/ is holding a competion where you enter a 50 or 150 Choose Your Own Adventure gamebook using its program found on the website.  Check it out.  The deadline is December 15th.  I'm going to write for it as it fills the void left by the Windhammer Competition.

Which brings me to the competition - I won it!  I'm so pleased.  I have entered it for the 3 years and I feel I have improved a lot.  My first gamebooks were not very descriptive and quite linear - in fact, everything I didn't want my gamebooks to be.  However, I have taken the feedback provided from this group:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gamebooks/messages?o=1

and looked at what made the winners so successful.  I would like to thank everone who voted, provided feedback over the last few years and to Wayne Densley for providing a platform for me.  If it wasn't for this competition and Yahoo group, I wouldn't have written any gamebooks.  I have learnt a lot about gamebooks and writing because of it.

Look at his Arborell gamebooks online.

http://www.arborell.com/

One last website I would recommend is Litopia, a writers' community website:

http://litopia.com/

I have listened to several 'after dark' podcasts and found them entertaining and informative. 

I have ideas on other things to analyse in gamebooks and will be posting them soon.  Have a nice time!