Writing Gamebooks the Uncle Mac Way

 

All right, kids, gather 'round and park your butts. Uncle Mac is gonna talk your ear off for a bit.

Quite a few of you write gamebooks, or want to write them and are still figuring out the best way to do it. Word on the 'net is there are a number of softwares you can use to help navigate the labyrinthine process of piecing a gamebook together. I shall refrain from commenting on those, because I am what you might call a "cantankerous old coot" and prefer not to go out of my way to learn newfangled technologies if I don't find it absolutely necessary.

Writing screenplays, for example, required that I purchase special software to write in screenplay format easily. My word processor of choice is problematic enough without my having to jury-rig its default formatting to the anal retentive degree required by the film industry. So I broke down and bought Fade-In (not a plug, but kind of a plug).

My approach to writing gamebooks was different. I didn't bother getting any computerized aides because I found a way to write and organize gamebooks without them that suits me fine. And also because I prefer to do things the hard way, apparently.

Being a decent writer is a good start to writing a good gamebook. Natch. Most of you probably figured that out already. But it's best if you also have experience as a game designer. For simpler gamebooks like CYOA, it can help you better organize the book's structure and keep it engaging; for more advanced works ranging from Interplanetary Spy to Fighting Fantasy, it's essential if you want to design effective mechanics, puzzles, and games. In either case, it can help a lot with worldbuilding, too. You'd be surprised how much easier it is to world-build with a board game, video game, or tabletop RPG prototype than with a simple novel and a ream of research notes as long as your leg.

So far I'm wearing my Captain Obvious cape. You didn't come here to listen to me prattle about writing a chapter book. Writing a chapter book isn't all that hard. The tricky part is writing a chapter book with forking paths, and then mixing them up, all without losing track of which choices lead where.

I have seen a few useful ideas for structuring a gamebook on the 'net, but when I started out writing gamebooks I found their usefulness was pretty limited. The most common method I've seen is to map the book somehow, either with a diagram, or with index cards / sticky notes.

Ghetto Scribble Diagram Method

Plot Map for Dinah-Mite #2 and several painkillers.

At a glance, the diagram approach looks like it's more trouble than it's worth. I've found it does have its uses, however. Much like writing a synopsis before tackling a story in detail, a plot map like this can help get you started on a new gamebook project when you aren't quite sure where you're going. 

It is messy, however, due to the amount of erasing you'll end up doing whenever you re-plot a section, and I mostly recommend this method if you want a quick and dirty way to get the ball rolling.

Index Card / Sticky Note Method

The index card/sticky note method has its uses, too. Basically it's the same as the plot map technique, except it's easier to rearrange things and add new chapters. It has the added bonus of making it a lot easier to decide on chapter order: once you have all your paths sorted out, rearrange the cards into whatever order suits you and then number them.

The downsides here are 1) running out of space, which may require the purchase of a bulletin board dedicated to your gamebook projects; and 2) the page-organizing aspect only really works if you are going the CYOA route of one-page chapters, OR the Fighting Fantasy style gamebook with paragraph chapters rather than page chapters. If you want to write a basic gamebook with more involved narrative like Dragontales, the sticky notes won't help you with reorganizing pages.

Uncle Mac's Method

When I sat down to write the first Dinah-Mite gamebook, Holiday in Castle Quarantine, I quickly realized that the above techniques would only get me so far. I didn't want to write chapters as short as Which Way, nor as long as Dragontales; and I wanted a protagonist with a backstory rather than the generic "You" of CYOA. Essentially I wanted to write a maze-like adventure in the style of The Wizard of Oz, Harry Potter, and The Neverending Story, something that would stand on its own as a story or as a gamebook.

Both Holiday in Castle Quarantine and its upcoming sequel were written in two main drafts: the Chapter Draft and the Page Draft. Someone else probably writes their gamebooks the same way and has their own name for it, so I'll refrain from pretending I've invented something super unique and useful and worthy of accolades. I can only be so pretentious in one sitting.

Phase 1: The Chapter Draft

Let's assume for the sake of argument that I'm writing a Dinah-Mite story where Dinah has a misadventure in the American West. I start by writing the first chapter as if it were a linear novel, and I give the chapter a header that reads "Ch1." When I reach the first fork in the plot at the end of Ch1, instead of listing a page number, I list a chapter number.

If Dinah enters the saloon, turn to Ch2.

If she explores the train station first, turn to Ch5.

Nearly all of the chapters are only a few pages long, so now I start adding blank pages with appropriate chapter headers (Ch2, Ch3, Ch4, etc). As I add each new page, I write a one-sentence summary of what will happen in that chapter. This helps spark ideas for what happens next, if I haven't already started a plot map like the one pictured earlier.

If I don't know which chapter will come next, I'll use "ChX, ChY, ChZ" as placeholders. And if I think I might have a puzzle in a particular chapter, I'll list generic options that I can figure out later.

=========

Ch2

Dinah enters saloon full of surly, uncooperative customers who are angry that the player piano isn't working. She tries to get piano working to lighten the mood.

Solution A? Turn to Ch3.

Solution B? Turn to Ch4.

=========

Ch3

Dinah gets eaten by the player piano, but at least the music her dead body produces is catchy.

~ THE END ~ 

=========

Ch4

Everyone starts dancing. Dinah befriends saloon keeper.

~ Dinah gets the Poker Chips ~

Turn to ChX.

=========

Ch5

Dinah enters train station and meets lost hillbilly kid, who helps her if she doesn't anger him.

Choice A? Turn to Ch6.

Choice B? Turn to Ch7.

=========

Ch6

Dinah and hillbilly kid hit it off. He hooks her up with a horse to ride to the next town.

~ Dinah got the Work Horse ~

Turn to ChY.

=========

Ch7

Hillbilly kid tells Dinah to jump in a lake and won't talk to her anymore. Now has to find another way to reach her destination.

Turn to ChZ.

=========

Eventually I make my way through every possible idea for branching paths, coming up with games and puzzles on the fly (or creating placeholders). Once I know how many chapters I'm dealing with, I go back and write the chapters proper. When the entire book is written, and every chapter has been thoroughly edited and proofread, that leads into...

Phase 2: The Page Draft

So now I have all the chapters written in the order I came up with them, and they all have a chapter header designation. Now comes the tedious part: I rearrange all the chapters until they're thoroughly mixed up (preferably with a lot of space between sequential chapters).

I then go through the document and find every instance of the chapter headers listed thusly: Ch1, Ch2, Ch3, etc using the Find/Replace function, and replace them with their designated page number. So if Ch2 is on page 100, I Find/Replace all instances of "Turn to Ch2" with "Turn to Page 100."

Finally I go through every chapter and remove the "Ch" from the header, and probably add a cute bit of art around the chapter number to indicate which act of the book the reader is in.

==========

Some of you will no doubt find the Chapter Draft/Page Draft method standoffish. The disclaimer did mention that I like to do things the hard way. But I've found this method makes it easy to streamline cranking out chapter content. Also, by the time you're done putting it all together, it's already organized the way you want it, formatting and all. Relying on the sticky note method could lead to chapters occupying the wrong page numbers, forcing you to seek out the point where you went wrong and reorganize your chapters all over again.

Of course, the previously mentioned gamebook software probably makes all of this easier. If you don't want to bother experimenting with a new interface, though, give these methods a try and see if they gel with you a little better.

Time for bed. Uncle Mac out. Come visit anytime.

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! 

What microadventures taught me - don't be a waste of space - addendum

I've just thought of a few other ways of creating an intresting and immersive gamebook which challenges the player even if it is over a small number of paragraphs.  This is by turning random choices into decisions.

Most gamebooks have some ultimate aim in order for you to win (Fabled Lands is an exception.  You decide what your criteria for success are and there is no 'winning' end).

However, most of the time, you have no idea on how to achieve that aim and you do not receive any direction from the book.  It becomes a matter of random choices or trial and error.  And if your success or failure depends on random trial and error then losing is going to feel very grating.   

For example, in Temple of Terror, you are given the opportunity at the beginning of paying for passage on a barge to Port Blacksand or travelling by foot.  If you go by foot, you've lost.  Really.  There's an item that you need in Port Blacksand that you need in order to trade it later on for a vital item.  How were you supposed to know that?  You weren't.  You just read through the whole book, not knowing that your were going to die towards the end because of something you did right at the beginning.  You didn't enjoy spending all that time losing?  Suck it up, princess.

Now drop and give me 399
'cos you aint good enough
to get to 400.

I was being a bit harsh there, and so was the book.  So how can you turn seemingly random choices like that into informed decisions that stretch your abilities so that at least if you do win or lose, the responsibility is yours alone.  Victory will be sweeter because it was you who did it.

So how can we turn these seemingly random choices into informed decisions?

Maps

It comes in handy but
having a maze with a
map of it at the entrance
kind of defeats the point of it.

All those arbitrary decisions of 'East or west?' can be made less arbitrary if you have a map at the beginning of the book.  That way, you have some idea about where you need to go.  Want to go to a village?  Go south.  Want to go to a castle?  Go west.  It is also useful in Spectral Stalkers. 

Too many dungeon crawls have similar corridors and identical doors which give no indication of whether you will be successful by taking them.  In its most frustrating form, taking random doors can lead to sudden death paragraphs.  Not very enjoyable.

Of course you don't know exactly what will happen at the locations on the map, but having a map makes the decisions less random and of course, going to random places is fine if the success of the hero does not depend on it.

Have puzzles

This is the game from Curse of the Mummy. 
What's the winning move?

Having a puzzle on a paragraph means that you have to make a series of decisions on what the solution is.  This gets a lot of milage out of one paragraph. 

However, I have come across puzzles where I have had to work out the number of a paragraph, hit a brick wall and got very frustrated about it (I'm looking at you, Tower of Destruction)! 

To make it easier, it could be a multiple choice puzzle or, if it does involve finding out which paragraph to turn to, make the solution paragraph obvious so that I can flick through the book and work out where it is. 

The devil is in the detail

Either he's an imposter or he's still
bitter about that time you put dog
poo in his lunch.

Some choices that may seem random are not actually random if you look at the details in the text or in the illustrations.  For example in Siege of Sardath, you come across Sorrel, one of your best friends.  He taught you archery, tracking and how to respect the forest and you taught him swordplay (bit of a bum deal for him if you ask me) and the text tells you that he has a scar on his right eye as a testament to this (I've never scarred my right eye as a testament to my friendship with someone.  Obviously, I'm not a good friend). 

The illustration opposite goes with the paragraph.  Notice anything out of place?

Another example is in Andrew Wrights microadventure, Debacle at Dead Mans' Inn.  At the end of the book, you have to decide which of the villagers is a shape shifter.  You are given a brief description of each villager.  All I'm going to say is that you need to read the descriptions of the villagers before you see them then.

So there are some more ways on getting more milage out of gamebook paragraphs.  A lot of the above ideas will be needed to make micro adventures more substantial but they will also work for longer adventures too and this means that there will be more space for plot and more encounters.

If you have any other ways of making a short adventure more substantial, please post it in the comments box. 

Blog updates

I am really getting sucked into this blogging thing.  I have several posts written and ready to post, but I need to slow down.  I'm finding it very easy to just spend all of my time surfing the blogosphere and writing posts about gamebooks.  I'm loving it and I'm getting a lot out of it, but there is one small problem.

I'm not writing any gamebooks.

I need to make time to actually write some gamebooks, so I'm going to limit this blog to one post a week.  I aim to post on a Sunday morning (GMT) from now on.  My next post will be about narrative in microadventures and then I will be writing about Fabled Lands.  And then I will also write some more gamebooks.  The posts will be less frequent but they will be more regular. 

Thankyou all for all of your attention so far!  Please keep in touch and tell your friends about this blog! 

Have a lovely day.

 

What microadventures taught me - don't be a waste of space

Mark Rosewater (also known as MaRo).

First of all, I recommend you read this article and this article by Mark Rosewater, head designer of Magic the Gathering.  It is a useful guide on how to improve your creativity and is a great read, even if you know nothing about Magic the Gathering.  As I have said before, I will post a list of articles that Mark Rosewater has written on creativity and game design as many of his ideas are pertinent for gamebooks. 

Read those articles?  They're good, aren't they?  So why were they pertinent to gamebooks and microadventures?

It all goes back to Mark's view on restrictions.  Restrictions breed creativity.  And microadventures confirmed this.

I had just completed Shadowcaster part 1, a 533 paragraph abomination chock full of every idea I could fit in to the book and I couldn't carry on with the other two books.  I had made it too big and I could no longer be bothered to carry on with the Shadowcaster trilogy.

So I was sitting around, not too motivated to do anything gamebook related, when I downloaded the Fighting Fantasy official magazine (is it still going btw?).  In the magazine was a 25 paragraph adventure by Andrew Wright called 'In the Shade of the Pango Tree.'.  The paragraphs filled one page of A4 which they shared with a large illustration in the middle of the page.  I had a brainwave - writing one of these little pieces would be quick, simple and allow me to flex my creative muscles.  Andrew wrote two more of these adventures - Debacle at Dead Man's Inn and Into the Valley of Halos.  They can be found in this Yahoo Group. 

So I ended up writing ten microadventures.  However, the restriction of having only 25 or 50 paragraphs to use, made me call upon my creativity in order to squeeze more in to the adventure. 

The problem with having so few paragraphs is that the player will only have a few decisions before the adventure is over or they will havea very linear adventure.  It is a problem that the small Choose Your Own Adventure books had, as mentioned in this article.  The book would also not be very variable and its replayability factor would be very small.

However, there are several solutions to the problems which mean that you can pack a good storyline into a small 25 paragraph adventure.

Here they are:

1)  If there is an ability roll and the outcomes of success and/or failure are obvious then you do not need to turn to a new paragraph to read the outcome.

In most Fighting Fantasy books, when you test your luck, you usually have to turn to a new paragraph if you are lucky or another new paragraph if you are unlucky.  That's two new paragraphs for every test for luck, which is 8% of a 25 paragraph book.

However, if, for example, you have to test your luck to see if an arrow that someone firs hits you, then it will come as no surprise that if you are lucky, the arrow misses and if you are unlucky then the arrow hits you and you lose stamina.  This does not warrant two new paragraphs.  Just leave it one the current paragraph.

Also, if you have an ability roll and the result of one of the rolls is that nothing happens, then you only need to turn to a new paragraph for the result that involves something happening. 

For example, if you have to test your luck to see if you notice a secret door, then you can write 'Test your luck.  If you are lucky, turn to 11.  If you are unlucky, you carry on down to corridor until...'

This also applies to random die rolls to see if an event happens.  Fabled Lands is full of these and if you had to turn to a new paragraph for every random event that happens to you, then the books would have an extra 30 or so paragraphs.  These random events die rolls will also add variability to the book.  An example from The War Torn Kingdom:

 

Roll 1 or 2 A thief steals one item from you (your choice).

Roll 3 or 4 Nothing happens.

Roll 5 or 6 Find a manbeast's helmet.



The paragraph then  gives you a decision to make.  That is efficiency with paragraphs. 

2)  If you offer a decision with several options, then one of the options could involve staying on the paragraph.

For example, instead of writing 'To go north turn to 4.  To go south, turn to 8.', you could write 'If you wish to go north, turn to 4.  If you wish to go south, you follow the path...'.

This reduces the number of paragraphs you need to use by 1, which is 4% of a 25 paragraph gamebook.

3)  Have items that can be used independently of where the player is in the book

'Sure, the storm drake looks tough, but not after I've shot him with my blunderbuss and cut him a few times with my good old anti dragon magic sword.  And if it tries something, it has to get past my breastplate and my wyrmskin cloak.'

Stormslayer, Jonathan Green.

Since you have only 25 paragraphs, you can't write it like a Livingstone adventure where any old piece of junk gets a paragraph dedicated to how it manages to help you save the world (for example - a small wooden brick gets you access to a shop or certain villains are scared of a monkey or some powerful sorceress requires you to have small metal discs or certain shapes.). 

However, you can still have plenty of items which do not require a new paragraph every time you use them.

i)  Items that you can use to restore stamina at any paragraph except for one where you have a combat, such as provisions or potions of healing.

ii) Items that you can use when you are in combat such as a throwing dagger that you can use before the combat begins or a piece of armour that reduces damage on a die roll.

iii) Items that has an effect when certain events happen to you such as a fur cloak that allows you to ignore any damage from cold or a climbing kit that allows you to make climbing rolls easier.

These items can also offer more choices.  For example, the throwing dagger you use in combat may get lost when you use it so you have to decide whether you use it for the combat you are in or whether you should save it for later. 

3)  Have an encumbrance limit.

'Oooh, that's good.  I can get some spider silk.  Hang on.  I've got a dagger,

a talisman, the lucky bottle and a carpet.  What should I get rid of?!'

The Screaming Spectre, Dave Morris.

If you have a limit to the number of items you can carry, then every time you find a new item, you have a decision.  Is this going to be useful enough for me to use a slot on this?  I'm already full - is this item going to be more important than anything else I'm carrying?  Do I know how useful any of my current items are? 

4)  Go shopping

'I could by the boots of stealth and make use of the move

silently skill, but then I won't be able to afford a sword!'

Master of Chaos, Keith Martin

There's nothing that gives someone lots of decisions to make like a list of useful items with a price tag. 

The combinations become very large very quickly, expecially if you factor in an encumbrance limit and if you make sure that the player will not have enough money to buy everything. 

Having a list of things to buy may also affect other decisions a player makes.  If you give them an option of trying to get more money by doing something risky, then they need to decide if they can afford to buy what they need or if they need to take the risk to get more money and therefore more items. 



They're all very nice, but I really need
something that can take out a
mad sorcerer.



Or maybe they should save their money because it may come in handy later.  Or maybe they could sell something. 

You can put all of these decisions on one paragraph just by having a shop in your adventure.

5)  Give the player decisions in combat rather than just make it a die rolling exercise

'Should I thunderbolt this guy or cast fast hands?'

Legend of Zagor, Ian Livingstone.

Most combat systems use the idea of rounds.  If your character has different modes of attack, such as a choice of spells or the decision to attack in an aggressive manner or defensive manner, then each round becomes a decision. 

6)  Allow the character to be customised

'I'll definately need climbing, but should I go for disguise or combat?'

Moonrunner, Stephen Hand

You can give the player decisions to make before the game begins.  They can customise their character in several ways.

i)  Give them a choice of characters (Fabled Lands, The Fellowhip of Four, Duelmaster books or Legend of Zagor)

ii)  Give the player points to adjust their character's abilities (Night Dragon)

iii)  Give the player skills and/or spells to choose from (Lone Wolf, Citidel of Chaos, Moonrunner)

iv)  Give the player a choice of equipment and/or a shop to buy equipment from (Lone Wolf, Space Assassin)

7)  Give the player a choice of paragraphs in the background.

So instead of giving players the background and telling them to turn to 1, give them a choice.  This gives you one extra paragraph to play with. 

So there we are.  In my free download, Ten Short Fighting Fantasy Books and One Long One, you will be able to see me utilise all of these ideas in my micro adventures.  I would recommend anyone to do some - they are fun and quick.  If you do write one, I'd love to read them. 

Next time, I'll write about what micro adventures taught me in terms of narrative.

Until then...have fun!


NUEV3ZS5YBZR

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!