The good points of Coils of Hate part 2: The NPCs

NOTE: I wrote this post a long time ago and I've only just released it. Since then, Mark Smith generously gave me his permission to release a fan version I made which reboots the original book and (I hope) addresses the problems it had. You can get it from Drive Thru RPG for free!!!!!

Here is part 2 on the good points of Coils of Hate - its NPCs. This book does not try to keep your interest with strange monsters and combats. In fact, there are few monsters in the book (Hate, a giant spider and some constructs). Most of your interactions are with other humans, but Mark Smith and Dave Morris go even further with this idea. In most gamebooks, you seem to have no place in the society you interact with - everyone seems to have no connection to you. However, in The Coils of Hate, since you have lived in Godorno all your life, the authors have come up with a list of people, their relationship to you and their personalities. This adds a lot more dimension to the gamebook and atmosphere to the city. Here is a list of some NPCs and how they interact with you.

The Overlord: I want to see more of him. We all know he has an oppressive rule, mismanages the city and encourages oppression of the Judain to cover for his mistakes, but we never actually hear him speak or see him do anything besides sleep. I want to know his motivations more. I would love to hear him make a speech on his philosophy.

Lucie: Lucie is a very interesting character. She actually helps you once (when breaking you into the prison of Grond), but most of the time she is a hindrance who likes watching you fight over her (against Tyutchev) or steals your amulet or even gets you killed for the price on your head.

Tarkamandir: It's not often people who sell you things get much characterisation, but this one does. You have a few conversations with him which imply that you know each other well.

Tyutchev: Although your character doesn't know him, anyone who's read any other book set on Orb does. He's here. He's causing trouble. And you still can't kill him.

Melmelo: The leader of the Thieves' Guild. A pragmatist who wants hate killed because it's bad for business. The text tells you that his approach grates against your idealistic outlook, and you have the option of killing him, but it's better to put your idealism aside in this case and join forces with him against the common enemy.

Marmeluke: A friend of yours who seems perpetually jolly despite having to eat cats. He does seem to have a lot of lady friends, however, so maybe that's why. He's very helpful and helps you get into Grond, which has a necessary item to kill Hate and survive.

Ruth: Mainly there for the situation of how you treat a pregnant woman when saving her could put your life at risk.

Caiaphas: Puts you in your place very early on. He is one of the few reasonable people in a city full of fanatics and haters.

Tormil: The captain of the guard who has a very minor role, but he demonstrates the greed that some people can exhibit in a crisis as well as the fact that even people who commit evil acts have loved ones (in this case, his daughter).

The good points of Coils of Hate part 1: The hero

NOTE: I wrote this post a long time ago and I've only just released it. Since then, Mark Smith generously gave me his permission to release a fan version I made which reboots the original book and (I hope) addresses the problems it had. You can get it from Drive Thru RPG for free!!!!!

Coils of Hate is a gamebook in the Virtual Reality series written by Mark Smith. In the book, you are a member of the Judain community in the decadent city of Godorno. Your people are much hated upon and to make matters worse, about 5 sections into the book, the corrupt overlord of the city makes the hate official, banning Judain from the city unless they are slaves. You have to flee the city. When you return, things have really gone south. The overlord's men are hunting and killing Judain, there has been a plague and a giant purple creature is stalking the city, swallowing up people and undermining its foundations. For some reason, you are the only person who can stop all of this.

Now the book is maligned due to logic errors which cause a lot of frustration. Per Jorner has put in a lot of effort to catalogue them and Dave Morris has acknowledged that they need a lot of editing, but if you look past the logic errors, there is actually a lot of depth and great aspects to the book that surpass many other gamebooks.

The first aspect is the main character.

First of all, I would like to say that the character you play is an idiot. He (and, based on his relationship with Lucie, it is probably a he) does have some skills, but against the worst that Godorno has to offer, he is completely out of his depth. Want to fight Tyutchev? You'll probably die. What about go to some pub that thieves drink in? If you don't have streetwise, you'll get your throat cut. How about threatening or bribing a bunch of guards? You'll get peppered with crossbow bolts. Surely you can organise the resistance against the guards? No, they will also get peppered with crossbow bolts. How about tomb robbing? Can't harm the Jade guards. Killing the overlord? Failure is the only option. He doesn't even want a job, thinking that is beneath him.

Basically, it seems that the only thing you can succeed at is running away.

Now, I think the main character is an idiot, but I also think he is an extremely well fleshed out and written idiot with a depth that almost no other main character in a gamebook has.

He has a great can-do attitude: Despite only taking a few sections, your trip out of the city is vital at the beginning of the book - it gets you away from the city when things really go bad and crush the spirit of your people. You miss the plague and the initial attacks on the Judain. You also miss the first attacks by Hate. As a result of this, you are one of the few people in the city whose spirit hasn't been completely crushed, which means that you are ready to do whatever it takes to save your people. Due to the fact that everyone else is desperate, they actually listen to you.

He has friends and enemies: The character has people who know him and who he can drop in on. Now sometimes, these friends just pop out of nowhere, but they are introduced with familiarity. Tarkamandir, Caiaphas, Marmeluke and Lucie are exaples of the character's friends. The character knows Melmelo the thief and disapproves of him.

He has desires: He wants to make something of his life, which is what the introduction says, but not get a job. I'm putting this down to the arrogance of youth rather than the protagonist actually knowing that they will achieve something great. He must have a high opinion of himself when he is living in a broken down hovel yet somehow knows he is destined for greatness. He also desires Lucie. There are many points in the text where you can tell that the character is so besotted with Lucie that what is actually happening and what they are feeling are completely at odds.

He perceives things through an emotional lens: Most gamebooks simply describe the five senses to the reader, but this one demonstrates the characters thoughts and feelings. The book mixes the five senses and character perception well, so that you, as the reader can see that the character has a warped version of reality in places. This is most apparent when Lucie is involved. When she steals your amulet, your first thought is that she is being influenced by some supernatural creature, not the fact that she wants to sell it. There are also parts where there is a discrepancy between how skilled you think you are and how skilled you actually are. For example, in a section where you organise the resistance to take on the Overlord's men, you feel quite happy with your plan. And then the Overlord's men fire a bunch of crossbows at the resistance and completely curb stomp them. Oops.

So there we go. Here we have a main character who is really up against it. Their steps to being a hero is fraught with failure and sacrifice and yet, they are the only person who can do it as they haven't had their spirit completely crushed by oppression, plague of hate itself. They become a hero simply by just doing something.

I think this quote from Mark Twain sums up the hero perfectly:

"Only two things are required for success - confidence and ignorance."

3 rules I had to be reminded of when writing Asuria

Asuria Awakens, my addition to the Tin Man Games Orlandes series is still out in the App store. It was released on September 11th 2015, making it almost its anniversary.

I thought I would share some lessons I leant whilst writing it.

1)  Don't annoy the player.

There's a reason why this is number 1.  It doesn't matter how clever you're being, or how great you're writing is.  It's all for nothing if it annoys the player.  I had a section in Asuria where you get sucked into a maelstrom and pulled into a giant monster.  Now, throughout the book, I wanted to give an impression of hopelessness and that winning was impossible, so in this section, I offered two choices - row or swim.  however, both choices lead to you being sucked away.  There was no functional difference between them.  The reason I did this was to make the reader think that they had chosen the 'wrong' choice and make them feel like it was hopeless.  However, I then thought that if they went back, chose the other choice and realised that there was not difference, then they would have got annoyed.  So I got rid of that bit.

2)  If you need an item, make sure you have a chance to get it towards the point you need.

I'm referring to point 4 on the terrific article linked above.  I wanted Asuria to be a book where you did not have to complete a set path to win and it would be quite forgiving in terms of instant deaths.  So there is only 1 section where you need an item or die.  And when I wrote it, you had the chance to find 3 different items that would save you.  However, when I went back through it, I realised that these 3 items were all at the beginning of the book and that you could go through 2/3 of it with not chance of success only for you to die at the end.  It is for this reason that I included a new location towards the end with a new item to help (the bat amulet in case you're wondering)

3)  If you give the player an option to leave, don't just let it lead to an insta kill.

This is one thing Dave Morris, author of the Fantastic Heart of Ice, does not like about gamebooks, so when I realised that I had done it in Asuria, I immediately changed it.  I had two bits where you could leave Casporur and head back to Orlandes before you finish (one by land and one by sea) and they might be justifiable too (you might have found the simulacra you were looking for and you were charged with the safety of Orlandes, not Casporur after all).  However, since I didn't want this to happen, it was an instant death paragraph.  However, after the interview, I inserted a combat to both bits where the simulacra you fight warns you that you will be followed wherever you go as a not too subtle message to stick around.  After a warning like that, I feel absolved of guilt about anyone who ignores that warning and heads home anyway.

Honourable mention: Never have a combat where you have an offence of 1.

Combat in Tin Man Games works like this. You roll a number of dice equal to your offence. Your opponent rolls a number of dice equal to their defence. The winner is not the one with the highest total number, but the one whose highest die roll is higher than their opponent's highest die roll. If the attacker wins, they deal damage equal to the number of all the dice added together. Then it's the other combatant's turn. This means that if you have an offence of 1, you are rolling 1 die. Even against a defender with a defence of 1, the chance of hitting is not large and if you do hit, you deal 2-6 damage at most, which means it will take a while to kill your opponent. I did not want lots of busy time, so I made sure that your character always has a dagger with an offence of 2 and it is impossible to lose it. Also, I had unavoidable weapon upgrades so that I knew the player could keep up with their opponents.

You can get Asuria Awakens from the app store.

The creation process

I created SCRAWL as the easiest, quickest system to write a gamebook from.

However, I have discovered that making a system to enable something able to be done quick and easily is a long and difficult process.

Obviously, once the system is in place, then things will take off.

I got this idea from a book (it's title escapes me now) that talked about MacDonald's success. The book states that pretty much anyone could make a burger that is better than a MAcDonald's burger. However, the rub lies in making several burgers with the speed and consistency of MacDonald's burgers that are better than MacDonald's burgers. We couldn't do that. And that is why MacDonald's is a success. It is not in the quality of its burgers, but is ability to be able to cheaply set up a restaurant and easily train pretty much anyone to make their products.

This is my aim with SCRAWL.

I started writing a SCRAWL mini adventure and it took a lot longer than I thought it would because I didn't have a system in place. This was a blessing in disguise, because it made me realise that I needed something like a checklist to think as little as possible about the process and that to perfect it, I should start small.

So I did. I am currently on my first Small SCRAWL adventure, but I'm going to write more of them until I have the system sorted and then I will move onto bigger ones.

This reminded me of Ten short Fighting Fantasy books and one long one (I really wasn't very good at titles about 9 years ago!) which I had written specifically to hone my gamebook craft.

I did it by writing short gamebooks and then writing what I had learned from each one.

I think I need to do the same exercise with SCRAWL. Basically, even though it is my system, it already seems to have a life of its own and I need to get to know it better.

So there we go. My journey in writing gamebooks continues...

Nine years on

Hello all! I'm a bit late! My first ever post was on August 27th 2010, so I am slightly late for my anniversary (also, the saved file in here said eight years on as the title. Whoops...)

So what's been going on?

When I started the blog, I was unmarried, working as a teacher and didn't have an A level in physics.

Now none of those things apply to me. However, things have calmed down recently and what the last few months have taught me is that I really needed some time to focus on gamebook writing. You don't know what you've got until it's gone.

I am going to do my best to not make one of those blogs where there's a post every few months that says 'I'm still here, just been busy the last few months, but I'll really get on it now!' etc. etc.

I'm going to make posts, little and often, and schedule them so that there's a regular release. Optimistically, that would be once a week, but expect once a fortnight and you won't be disappointed. I think more than that and each post will turn into one explaining what I've been doing and why I haven't posted.

Wish me luck!

SCRAWL Ultimate edition out!

Hello all! Remember me? I don't think I do. Isn't this Peter Agapov's blog anyway? He writes loads of great analysis and has wonderful insights.

Well, I'm back...very briefly to tell you about SCRAWL Ultimate edition (available now, pay what you want)!

SCRAWL is a system I created in order to save time for both the player and the writer - abilities give you rerolls rather than bonuses (no maths! No tests that are too difficult or too easy!), spells only give rerolls to ability tests or emulate minor magical items (No spells completely ruining the game and making me consider them every time I write an adventure!) and lots of other reasons that makes it quick and easy to play.

The ultimate edition lets you create a character in about a minute then lets you drop them in the middle of a wilderness to explore a land, go to settlements and loot dungeons.

I put it on Drive Thru RPG this morning and I was touched to see the number of downloads it got, so I'm going to do some adventures to slot into SCRAWL in the future.

I hope I'll be back on a more regular basis. Peter has done a great job with his wonderful posts and I am infinitely grateful that he has kept this blog alive.

I have so much to write about though - Fighting Fantasy Fest, gamebook ideas, gamebook analysis.

See you soon, I hope!

Trap for Winners: a gamebook that turned into a computer game

Most of the time, I write about Gamebook Theory and I enjoy every single keystroke on that subject. However, this month, my post will be about a very good gamebook, which just recently became a computer game.

Let me first start with a little bit of gamebook history from the 1990s!

 After the fall of the Soviet Union, most of Eastern Europe suffered serious economic problems. In the winter of 1996/1997, Bulgaria's recession went even further and the country was hit by a few months of hyper-inflation. As a result, nobody could afford to buy a computer or a game console. These, otherwise unfortunate events, allowed the more affordable form of gaming - branching narrative literature - to become the kid's main choice for personal entertainment in that era and created a whole new generation of gamebook fans. In the midst of those events, a true legend emerged: the gamebook author Michael Mindcrime. According to his own words, after reading a gamebook for the first time, he though "This sucks! I can write a much better one". The rest is history. He became the most recognized, the most published and the most notorious gamebook author in Bulgaria.

You are probably thinking that Mindcrime doesn't sound like an Eastern-European name. You are correct. Back then, the consumers disregarded anything that was made in the Eastern Block, so many of the local authors were forced to use fake English names or western hemisphere sounding nicknames, if you prefer. His real name is Dimitar, but his family called him Misho. That is short for Mikhail, which in English is spelled as Michael. He came up with the last name of his pseudonym while working on his first gamebook. The whole time, he was listening to the album "Operation Mindcrime" by Queensrÿche. And there you go! Now the whole world knows how and why Dimitar Slaveykov became Michael Mindcrime.

"Trap for Winners" was his 22nd officially published gamebook. It saw the light of day sometime back in 1997 and it is one of his best works in the genre. For reasons I can't explain, I didn't get to read it back then, but everything else from that author was standing out from all other Bulgarian and English gamebooks I've ever seen. He is famous for perfectly balancing the difficulty in his gamebooks, for creating great informed choices and successfully integrating many logic puzzles and riddles in his adventures. The outcome in his games always depends on the player's choices and performance, not on blind guessing and pure chance.

So, when about an year ago, PrimeGames announced that they were about to make a computer game based on a Michael Mindcrime's book, I was absolutely ecstatic. I dug deep into my gamebook collection and there it was - the original, paper version of "Trap for Winners". I wasn't disappointed. It was a great read and I dare to say that the message it carries is more relevant nowadays than it was back when it was first realeased in 1997.

So, "Trap for Winners" puts the reader in the shoes of an undercover agent for the Department of Foreign Civilizations, who is dispatched to an enemy world. The adventure takes place sometime in the future when our home planet is trying to apply for membership in the Galactic Union of Advanced Civilizations.

After a devastating war with an alien race, Earth has emerged victorious and hastaken over  the hostile planet Dorya. As a part of Earth's Occupying Corps, the reader will have to investigate all the suspicious circumstances that have shaped the course of the war. He, playing as the undercover agent Steve Harrison, will have to balance between the pursuit of knowledge and securing the superiors' favor; between suppressing violent rebels and his own conscience. And what he'll discover just might change Earth's destiny forever.

See, even though, the book (published in 1997) precedes the War in the Middle East, many of the choices are similar to the problems the United States Military had to face there. The moral dilemmas of treating the enemy with respect or brutality are probably as old as the world. Also, should the locals, seemingly peaceful citizens, be treated as innocent people or handled with an iron fist? Would you be easy on the prisoners of war, let them rest and feed them well or would you rather push them to work harder in the prison camps? There are many choices like the ones above in "Trap for Winners". Neither one of them is entirely right or wrong. Depending on the reader, his preference and performance, there are three different victory endings available. Got you interested yet?

There are also many good things to be said about the computer adaptation by Prime Games too. First and most importantly, the translation from Bulgarian to English is excellent. Mindcrime was never famous for his literature, but his writing style is nevertheless pretty good. The translation and further editing allowed the quality of the text to be elevated at least one level up. It is easy to read, but not at all simplistic. The soundtrack is also very well selected. It helps the reader to unconsciously emerge into the world of the book. The gameplay is very intuitive. The few pictures in the game could have been done a little bit better and I wish there were more of those, but I also understand that this is one of the greatest expenses in the game design industry.

There is, however, one major difference between the gamebook and its adaptation for the personal computer and that is the minigame, which takes place during every mission on the planet Dorya. I've heard some complaints from fans that this addition to the original book distracts and takes the focus away from the actual story, but in my personal opinion, it is a well needed break from reading blocks of text. It took me a couple of failures to get the hang of it, but once mastered, I started enjoying these minigame missions.

Before I finish this post, I must say that Michael Mindcrime published a total of 30 gamebooks between the years of 1993 and 1999. Unfortunately for all his fans, he no longer writes interactive adventures. According to his own words, gamebooks can't provide enough income and he has moved on to other endeavors. However, 29 of his books remain unpublished in English, so I am hoping that the people at Prime Games would chose to translate and adapt many more of them in the near future.

In conclusion, I'd like to add that I've mentioned Michael Mindcrime, as an example of an outstanding gamebook designer, many times in my posts on Gamebook Theory, but never had a reference point to him for all my English speaking friends. I am going to be eternally grateful to Prime Games for translating his work into English and for making one of my childhood dreams - to play a computer game designed by Michael Mindcrime - a reality.

The game "Trap for Winners" is now available for purchase on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1038100/Trap_for_Winners/

Peter Agapov
Game Designer at AugmentedRealityAdventure.com
President and Chief Executive Officer of American Limo Naperville
Former Road Captain of Marine One at Operation "Welcome You Home"