Advice for gamebook writers (tangent from Deadline to Destruction Solution thread)

[JMISBEST]

I am working on a amateur Sequel to this, Vengeance At Midnight and Appointment With FEAR that is still in the very basic draft stage, but will have at least 1,005 paragraphs and sees The good Silver Crusader of our reality team up with the good Titanium Cyborg, good Crimson Dynamo, good Macro Brain and good Janus of 4 alternate realities against those 4 alternate realities evil, insane and ruthless Silver Crusader, each of which has 1 of the books 4 super-powers

Whose interested in giving a 1st time complete rookie some advise

[daredevil123]

JMISBEST - you want some advice? 1005 paragraphs is insane, especially if you haven't written any FFGs before. My first amateur adventure only had 25! Seriously, an FFG of that length is a monumental task and one which I don't think you'll be able to complete.

[a moderator]

I have to agree. Start with something more manageable - maybe a mini-adventure that could (with minor tweaking) be incorporated into a full-length epic later on.

[philsadler]

I can help a bit:

1.) The way the stats are generated for FF are a bit too far apart [7-12 for skill and luck and 14-24 for stamina]. So imagine the player is 9/9/18 and balance around that. It's not perfect but it's better than nothing.

2.) Very rarely have 2 fights in a row. Almost always put things like this: fight, conversation, trap, item, red herring, information, fight, riddle, encounter, death, essential item, useful item, fight etc.

3.) Not too many instant deaths, maybe 30 max for a 400 ref book, less if possible. Also try to make them memorable, gory, sinister, anything that will stick in the reader's mind. Space out your deaths on your map.

4.) Make a map.

5.) Fill in the map.

6.) Not too many (5-6?) essential items to collect (but quite a few useful, dangerous and red herrings are OK).

7.) Always end each reference with a choice.

8.) Avoid mazes?

9.) Keep enemy skill at 9 or less. Keep their stamina at 8 or less. You can have higher skill if you make the stamina lower. You can have higher stamina if you make the skill lower.

10.) Make fights interesting: enemies can damage skill/stamina/luck/initial values/can hit for more than 2 points/cam take less than 2 points when hit and so on.

[lordomnibok]

May 11, 2017 16:24:17 GMT daredevil123 said:

JMISBEST - you want some advice? 1005 paragraphs is insane, especially if you haven't written any FFGs before. My first amateur adventure only had 25! Seriously, an FFG of that length is a monumental task and one which I don't think you'll be able to complete.

I agree with DareDevil. 1000 (and 5?)is huge, so test the waters with a really small gamebook first; check out thealmightymudworm's great mini adventures. Greenspine & Philsadler's comments are also very good. The only thing I would add is; make sure you have a really well thought out and written up two to three page synopsis before you start, you won't regret it. And "mazes?" I get why you suggested against it Phil - many are done poorly & they can be really bad - but I think it is still possible to create an interesting maze if it is properly thought out and not just slapped in for no good reason - so I'd put that one in the subjective box.

[philsadler]

Two more that people told me on Facebook:

11.) Avoid Test Your Luck or Die situations (same goes for skill and stamina).

12.) Avoid 'roll a certain number and die' situations (A giant throws a boulder at you: roll a die, if you roll a 4 you are killed).

[Pete Byrdie]

May 12, 2017 19:55:40 GMT philsadler said:

Two more that people told me on Facebook:

11.) Avoid Test Your Luck or Die situations (same goes for skill and stamina).

12.) Avoid 'roll a certain number and die' situations (A giant throws a boulder at you: roll a die, if you roll a 4 you are killed).

Certainly too many die-and-die situations (I just made that phrase up. Get it? Roll a die and potentially die. Nevermind!) are annoying. But I don't mind them provided they're not too frequent, they serve as a punishment for making a bad choice (which is part of the learning, exploring experience of gamebooking), and they can be avoided. After all, every combat and attribute test is just a convoluted 'roll dice and potentially die' situation, just with modifiers to mitigate the risk.

[JMISBEST]

I was thinking of roughly 160 paragraphs devoted to breaking up their alliance by using a device to fake the powers of the 3 you don't have and cause trouble between them, another 160 paragraphs to build a alliance with the 4 alternate reality good guys, both done with codewords, another 160 paragraphs each or 640 paragraphs in total devoted to tracking down and catching the 4 alternate reality evil Silver Crusaders and another 45 or more, now looking more likely to be at least triple that, paragraphs devoted to inbetween stuff

[Pete Byrdie]

May 13, 2017 15:50:27 GMT JMISBEST said:

I was thinking of roughly 160 paragraphs devoted to breaking up their alliance by using a device to fake the powers of the 3 you don't have and cause trouble between them, another 160 paragraphs to build a alliance with the 4 alternate reality good guys, both done with codewords, another 160 paragraphs each or 640 paragraphs in total devoted to tracking down and catching the 4 alternate reality evil Silver Crusaders and another 45 or more, now looking more likely to be at least triple that, paragraphs devoted to inbetween stuff

This is an exciting idea but terrifyingly ambitious, especially if it's your first adventure. A friend of mine got a fair way through designing an adventure with the only complication being three possible player characters before begrudgingly scrapping the idea because writing a gamebook is complicated enough as it is, without making the process harder than it needs to be. Practice with something more simple than the comic book epic you have planned. If you find a 50 reference excursion through a forest, dungeon or city easy enough, your magnum opus has a greater chance of one day being finished.

[lordomnibok]

It is clear that the main advise here is to start smaller. But if you do decide to jump straight in at the deep end, just keep in mind some of the tips given in this thread. At the end of the day, we don't know your skill level so you might well just pull it off. Just be aware that it's going to take a long while to complete and it will require a lot of determination & stamina.

[a moderator]

May 13, 2017 15:03:29 GMT Pete Byrdie said:

May 12, 2017 19:55:40 GMT philsadler said:

Two more that people told me on Facebook:

11.) Avoid Test Your Luck or Die situations (same goes for skill and stamina).

12.) Avoid 'roll a certain number and die' situations (A giant throws a boulder at you: roll a die, if you roll a 4 you are killed).

Certainly too many die-and-die situations (I just made that phrase up. Get it? Roll a die and potentially die. Nevermind!) are annoying. But I don't mind them provided they're not too frequent, they serve as a punishment for making a bad choice (which is part of the learning, exploring experience of gamebooking), and they can be avoided. After all, every combat and attribute test is just a convoluted 'roll dice and potentially die' situation, just with modifiers to mitigate the risk.

I'd agree with this.

In a similar vein, I'd counsel against Test your Luck situations with really trivial consequences (like that bit in Phantoms of Fear where being Unlucky means losing 2 Stamina). Luck tends to be a lot harder to restore than Stamina, and having to waste a point on something of negligible significance is annoying and increases the likelihood of failing an important roll later on.

[JMISBEST]

Many years ago I had a idea for A Fighting Fantasy Book were you started in a remote part of a country, knew that you couldn't defeat the main villain without Super-natural aide, but didn't know it could only be found in a dungeon were the last foe was A Deamonic Foe as strong as the final foe of the book. Without that item you automatically lost the final battle, but could gain other items that, although useless without the main item, increased your chances of winning the final battle, but could gain allies to help you in this, earlier and later fights. The main item was The Banner of Undying Allegiance and summoned super-natural warriors, 3 other items were Hydra Fangs that summoned hydra/human hybrids, The Insectoid Crown that summoned gigantic insects and The Flame Wheel that summoned knights made entirely of flame, but regardless of how many items you gathered you would have at least a 1 in 6 chance of failure and regardless of how few you gathered you would, if you had the essential item, at least a 1 in 6 chance of success. How's it sound

[JMISBEST]

Many years ago I had a idea for A Fighting Fantasy Book were you started in a remote part of a country, knew that you couldn't defeat the main villain without Super-natural aide, but didn't know it could only be found in a dungeon were the last foe was A Deamonic Foe as strong as the final foe of the book. Without that item you automatically lost the final battle, but could gain other items that, although useless without the main item, increased your chances of winning the final battle, but could gain allies to help you in this, earlier and later fights. The main item was The Banner of Undying Allegiance that summoned super-natural warriors, 3 other items were Hydra Fangs that summoned hydra/human hybrids, The Insectoid Crown that summoned gigantic insects and The Flame Wheel that summoned knights made entirely of flame, but regardless of how many items you gathered you would have at least a 1 in 6 chance of failure and regardless of how few you gathered you would, if you had the essential item, have at least a 1 in 6 chance of success. How's it sound

[a moderator]

The plot stuff would depend on the execution. It has the potential wind up a generic narrow-path dungeon crawl, but if handled well, it could be good.

May 14, 2017 12:32:13 GMT JMISBEST said:

regardless of how many items you gathered you would have at least a 1 in 6 chance of failure

This bit gets a definite thumbs down.

[JMISBEST]

May 14, 2017 12:43:16 GMT a moderator said:

The plot stuff would depend on the execution. It has the potential wind up a generic narrow-path dungeon crawl, but if handled well, it could be good.

May 14, 2017 12:32:13 GMT JMISBEST said:

regardless of how many items you gathered you would have at least a 1 in 6 chance of failure

This bit gets a definite thumbs down.

But don't forget that it is sort of balanced out by the fact that no matter your force you still have at least a 1 in 6 chance of winning. The idea was that with the maximum of The Banner of Undying Allegiance and 4 of the other 6 items you lose on a roll of a 1 on 1D6 and even with only that banner you win on a roll of a 6 on 1D6

[a moderator]

If the whole thing comes down to a single die roll, that's a bad ending regardless of how likely/unlikely automatic death/victory may be.

[Pete Byrdie]

On the other hand, it's worth thinking about how you want people to approach an adventure you've written. You can be more playful writing a fan adventure than you can if you're selling a gamebook that people expect can be completed given enough exploration. I played a fan adventure a while ago which I enjoyed a great deal. However, it included having to roll a specific number on one die to have a chance of acquiring an essential object, and a perplexing moment where you're given a clue which is a number, then find yourself in a looping passageway from which you can only escape by turning to that number, sort of suggesting the hero knows he's a character in a gamebook type adventure. Your hero would never find himself lost in a maze, only to remember that he read a clue earlier which gave him the number 26, so he decides to turn to reference 26 and lo and behold escapes. I'd sling a bought gamebook out of the window for playing such tricks, but in a fan adventure they're just a bit of fun. I suppose what I'm saying is, be mindful of the opinions people give you as to what they expect to find in an adventure, but ultimately decide for yourself whether you want players to feel they're playing a gamebook or just a fan adventure. Personally, outside of combat, I'd never allow dice to determine whether a player succeeds. But it's your adventure, as long as it's fun to play, what's the harm?

[kieran]

In terms of the actual slog of writing, I would suggest once you have the whole thing planned out in rigorous detail, setting yourself a minimum number of sections to write a day. 5-7 is a good amount. I found anything higher than that and it felt too daunting so I actually ended up writing slower rather than faster. Of course, you can always write more than your minimum on any particular day if you like but don't do things like "I'll write 10 sections today so I can give myself a day off tomorrow" or even worse "I'll skip today then do 10 sections tomorrow". That's how projects end up abandoned.

If for some reason you can't do your minimum on a particular day, instead of doing double the next day, I would make yourself do a minimum of one extra section each day until you're caught up. Again that will seem less daunting but it will also mean you will avoid giving yourself days off.

[a moderator]

A minor thing, but one where it's easy to go wrong and confuse or annoy the readers: any time you're writing a section that can be reached from more than one other section, or have the hero use information or an item that could have been obtained in more than one place, check that what you write is valid for every viable route to the section.

[JMISBEST]

May 14, 2017 17:21:50 GMT a moderator said:

If the whole thing comes down to a single die roll, that's a bad ending regardless of how likely/unlikely automatic death/victory may be.

The chance of failure no matter how strong your army or chance of success no matter how weak your army was to represent the fact that both the countries ruler and the bad guys allies were gathering forces and that the 1 in 6 chance would represent those forces arriving just in time to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat for the side that won despite the odds, or in other words if you rolled the 6 needed to win despite the odds or the 1 need to lose despite the odds

[a moderator]

The in-story rationalisations are irrelevant. One of my biggest issues with the Lone Wolf series is that several of the books include unavoidable random chances of automatic character death. The instance of it that I hate most is in book 13, where it occurs right at the end of the adventure. And in most of them it's only a 1 in 10 chance of failure. Ending on a 'randomness says you die because reasons' with even worse odds is never going to appeal to me.

[lordomnibok]

May 21, 2017 20:07:24 GMT a moderator said:

The in-story rationalisations are irrelevant. One of my biggest issues with the Lone Wolf series is that several of the books include unavoidable random chances of automatic character death. The instance of it that I hate most is in book 13, where it occurs right at the end of the adventure. And in most of them it's only a 1 in 10 chance of failure. Ending on a 'randomness says you die because reasons' with even worse odds is never going to appeal to me.

I suppose the only argument against this is that any end of game boss fight is a potential roll wrong and die situation, but I know where you are coming from and I still agree with your statement. Out of curiosity, if there was an end of game dice roll of the type you loathe, but the risk of death could be totally avoided if you had a certain artifact, for instance, would you find that acceptable? I personally don't mind these type of non combat roll/potentially die situations as long as they are avoidable in some manner, but if there is no way to avoid or mitigate the threat, that is too harsh in my opinion also. Especially at the end of an adventure.

[kieran]

May 21, 2017 20:07:24 GMT a moderator said:

The in-story rationalisations are irrelevant. One of my biggest issues with the Lone Wolf series is that several of the books include unavoidable random chances of automatic character death. The instance of it that I hate most is in book 13, where it occurs right at the end of the adventure. And in most of them it's only a 1 in 10 chance of failure. Ending on a 'randomness says you die because reasons' with even worse odds is never going to appeal to me.

That's pretty much why I could never get into the Freeway Warrior series. the first book seems to have one of these "roll-and-die" moments every 5 seconds.

[a moderator]

May 22, 2017 1:04:58 GMT lordomnibok said:

Out of curiosity, if there was an end of game dice roll of the type you loathe, but the risk of death could be totally avoided if you had a certain artifact, for instance, would you find that acceptable? I personally don't mind these type of non combat roll/potentially die situations as long as they are avoidable in some manner, but if there is no way to avoid or mitigate the threat, that is too harsh in my opinion also. Especially at the end of an adventure.

Yes, it's the unavoidability of the roll that makes it such an issue. If the adventure included a way of bypassing the roll as a consequence of having taken a more challenging route, I'd be okay with it (unless the more challenging route turned out to be unreasonably harsh).

[JMISBEST]

Two questions

The 1st is as follows. For the benefit of a gamebook that is a version of Rings of Kether set in modern day Earth what is the rough value of high grade, very high quality cocaine weighing 2.54 tons

The 2nd is as follows. A friend has a idea for A 1,600 odd paragraph Lone Wolf Gamebook where our realities Lonewolf and Banedon team up with a alternate reality Gnaag and Vonotar, in whose reality The Darklords, Naar and their allies are the good guys, Kai, Isjir, Sommerlubd, The Kai Lords and their allies are the bad guys, Banedon was the traitor and Vassgonia was a evil nation that turned good during and after book 5 and the alliance will be against the evil Darklords of a 2nd alternate reality in which The Darklords won. My friend wants suggestions for 1st contact, proving the truth, making friends with each other and convincing the rulers of Sommerlund and countries it is allied to of the truth

[JMISBEST]

Jun 4, 2017 18:51:26 GMT JMISBEST said:

Two questions

The 1st is as follows. For the benefit of a gamebook that is a version of Rings of Kether set in modern day Earth what is the rough value of high grade, very high quality cocaine weighing 2.54 tons

The 2nd is as follows. A friend has a idea for A 1,600 odd paragraph Lone Wolf Gamebook where our realities Lonewolf and Banedon team up with a alternate reality Gnaag and Vonotar, in whose reality The Darklords, Naar and their allies are the good guys, Kai, Ishir, Sommerlund, The Kai Lords and their allies are the bad guys, Banedon was the traitor and Vassgonia was a evil nation that turned good during and after book 5 and the alliance will be against the evil Darklords of a 2nd alternate reality in which The Darklords won. My friend wants suggestions for 1st contact, proving the truth, making friends with each other and convincing the rulers of Sommerlund and countries it is allied to of the truth

Corrected my spelling mistakes. Sorry

[lordomnibok]

Jun 4, 2017 19:09:36 GMT JMISBEST said:

Jun 4, 2017 18:51:26 GMT JMISBEST said:

Two questions

The 1st is as follows... what is the rough value of high grade, very high quality cocaine weighing 2.54 tons

The 2nd is as follows... My friend wants suggestions for 1st contact, proving the truth, making friends with each other and convincing the rulers of Sommerlund and countries it is allied to of the truth

Sorry but this made me laugh. Regarding question one. Erm, what type of website do you think this is? Haha. If someone on here comes swiftly back with an answer for that one, I'm going to be worried about them. You could try PMing the author of the absolutely amazing Spectral Stalkers though, I think he might have been on 2.54 tons of the stuff when he wrote that one. Regarding question two: At work I teach my students the necessary skills so that they can bring their creative ideas to life, but the ideas themselves must come purely from them, otherwise it is not their work. I wish him luck on his mind-mapping journey.

[JMISBEST]

Sorry about any offense, none was meant. I was hoping that a past or present police officer that either works or worked in A Police Force's Drugs or Narcotics Squad might browse through this, see it and be able to help

[lordomnibok]

Jun 14, 2017 16:38:57 GMT JMISBEST said:

Sorry about any offense, none was meant. I was hoping that a past or present police officer that either works or worked in A Police Force's Drugs or Narcotics Squad might browse through this, see it and be able to help

I didn't take offence JM, it just seemed like a funny question. Good luck with your book, I hope it works out well.