What makes a good gamebook - Part Two: The Game of Narrative Choices

Hello everybody =) Thanks for being patient. After the positive responses to Part One of this article, I have wanted to take my time and make sure not to let you down with Part Two!


The goal today is, of course, to discuss the game side of a gamebook, and what makes a good game in a gamebook. When I read this article by the excellent  Raph Koster (author of "A Theory of Fun") I had a bit of an epiphany: I was thinking of discussing things like combat, inventory, game balance, etc--but the true essence of the "game" in any gamebook is not any of that stuff, it's the narrative choices you make.


A lot of gamebooks have other game mechanics layered in as well: inventory, combat, magic, you name it--but all gamebooks share the core mechanic of narrative choices. This is a "game" in Raph's terms, because the entire gamebook is a problem to solve. The solution is the "best" ending. The problem is finding your way there through the maze of narrative choices. For this to be fun, the choices along the way must be interesting, meaningful and relevant. The player should be provided with enough information to have a chance of success without having to brute-force the problem (using trial and error), but not so much that the solution is immediately obvious.


What I'll do today is go over some common errors, as well as some good types of choices that we often see in gamebooks. To get started, let's look over some of the flawed narrative choices that are frequently used:

The "Which Door" Choice: One common flaw, and one which is a particular pet peeve of mine, is not providing enough information on which to base your choices. This is commonly seen in the "which door do you go through," or "do you go East or West" type of decision. If you have no clues whatsoever what's behind either door, then you might as well flip a coin. There's no choice. Don't get me wrong: luck has it's place. Even this type of faux-choice can be called for if you want to inject some randomness, but it should never be mistaken for a choice.

The "Cake or Death" Choice: The flip side of that first error is giving too much information. If the player has enough information to be able to definitively determine which is the correct path, then he has too much information. If you're offered cake or death, there's not a choice, unless you're a suicidal maniac. Obviously, you want the cake! You should be able to figure it out, or at least make a good guess, with a close reading of the text, but it should not be clear and obvious, or why offer the choice at all?

The "Shell Game" Choice: A third flaw steps outside of the paradigm of either of the first two, and that's simply making the results of a choice unrelated to the options presented. Like the shell game con, you don't get what you think you're choosing. If you're choosing between apples and oranges, and you get cake with one and death with the other, then wtf? It takes all significance out of the choice for the player, because whatever thought process they went through in order to arrive at that choice is invalidated. 

The "Blah" Choice: Finally, I would like to assert that too thin a narrative is itself a game-design flaw (in addition to simply being a weak story.) The reason for this is that the central game mechanic of gamebooks is that of making choices based on narrative. The narrative gives you the terms of your choice. The narrative gives you your reward or penalty. If you don't care about the characters or the outcome of the story, you can't take much pleasure in getting to read the "best" ending.

There's some examples of bad uses of the narrative choice. Now, let's take a look at how narrative choices can be handled well. I'll go through a few good examples to provide contrast.

The "Apples or Oranges" Choice: It can feel very rewarding to pick between two options, both of which offer a benefit, but with benefits that are different enough so that one can't be quantifiably defined as better than the other. This is often seen in picking skills or powers during character creation (see Lone Wolf), or in having a certain amount of money to equip your character early in the game (see The Wizard of Tarnath Tor). This gives a lot of food for thought in guessing which will be most useful, and also gives the player a chance to start identifying with their character. Think of trying to choose between a rope or a better weapon.They are fundamentally different, but both could be useful, depending on what you run into.

The Tactical Choice: Following up from that one, another good choice is one that gives the player a chance to take advantage of skills or equipment they may have previously acquired. If the choice presented hints that one resource or another will be more useful down each path, then it ties into a prior choice made with the same character, allowing the player to exercise an overall strategy. Then, each time a player comes through on different play-throughs, they may make a different choice, based on how they've prepared themselves this time.

The "X or ?" Choice: Another good option is the choice between a known quantity and an unknown quantity. Do you want to brave the guards you know are at that door, or sneak down into the dark tunnel below, with no idea what might be down there? This gives you something to think about, yet there's also no clear right answer.

The Moral Choice: Last but not least is the moral, character choice. Will you kill the enemy you've defeated, or show mercy and let him go? Will you assume leadership of your city, or walk away? Will you keep the jewel of power, or destroy it? Your estranged brother apologizes, do you forgive him or hold him accountable? A character of questionable moral integrity offers their services; do you accept? In some senses, these are the most interesting choices, and the ones every gamebook should be striving for. Not only do they provide meaningful choices but they also help tell a great story, and give the player a chance to really get personally involved and invested in that story.

This list is hardly comprehensive, but it at least provides a starting place to begin discussing choice theory in the terms of gamebooks. There's just one more point I'd like to make before I leave you:

The Principle of Choice-Based Results: The results a player gets should always be determined by choice, not by raw luck. It's okay to provide choices that manipulate odds. It's okay to have the challenges a player is presented with be determined randomly. It's even okay if terrible luck can sink the player even if you make perfect choices. But it's important that at the end of the day, the results be primarily determined by player choices, not raw luck.


To phrase this another way, it should always be possible to succeed with good choices without requiring good luck as well. If you have to pass an arbitrary dice roll in order to have a chance of succeeding, the author has done something wrong. Players sit down to read a gamebook in order to solve a puzzle by reading the narrative to search for the best path, not to play, "let's roll dice and try to get above a 10!" Choices are at the heart of the game, and nothing should ever supplant their rightful place there.

Well, I think that has about summed up what I've got for today. Hopefully I've provided some food for thought, as far as how to best make use of narrative choices as the central game mechanic of any gamebook. I'm sure there are a lot of directions to go from here, not least of which is analysis of some of the systems provided by specific gamebook rule-sets. But this at least provides a place to start.

To borrow a phrase from Stuart, "Happy gamebooking!"

[Edit: I've made some changes to the formatting of this post to break it up and make it a bit more readable. Those followed with some edits to the content :P]


[Edit #2: Does anyone here know Blogger well enough to have any idea why those extra spaces between paragraphs are showing up randomly between some paragraphs? As far as I can tell, I have two "enters" between each set of paragraphs. I've tried again and again to get rid of them. I just can't figure it. Thanks!]