Back from the dead?

Wow... sorry it's been so long without posting! Life has been pretty crazy. I've started grad school and, well, legends speak of those who go down that path. They are never heard from again...

Anyway, I'm writing because the Windhammer Prize is mid-stream, and if somehow you've been living under a rock and haven't noticed, you should absolutely head on over there to check it out. There's 14 brilliant works of short interactive fiction, and if you read them before Oct 30, you can vote on your favorites!

Go. Go now: http://www.arborell.com/windhammer_prize.html

I've always enjoyed Windhammer because of the innovation it shows, and from what I've managed to glance at so far, this year is no exception. As my past blog posts show, I'm very interested in innovation in gamebooks, and I regret that I haven't taken the time to get more involved in some of the very cool discussions going on in the blogosphere this year about innovation in interactive fiction.

That said, I do hope that I'll be able to show some of my own ideas about innovation in interactive fiction in my own current works. More on that later.

Which leads me into a difficult explanation about a difficult decision...

As you have no doubt noticed, despite being a three-time Windhammer Merit Award winner, my name is not on the list of entrants. It wasn't easy for me to restrain myself from taking the time and energy to write up a new submission for this years contest, especially since I was bursting with ideas about what I could do. But at the end of the day, it just didn't make sense, for three reasons.

First, I feel like I've done my time. I've won a merit award the last three years running. If I were going to win first place, I would have done it by now. Winning another merit award would feel anticlimactic at this point. And if I didn't win at all, that would just be sad. At this point, it's time for me to step aside and make room for some of the other talented authors in this space.

Second, I've gotten what I needed to out of the contest. My successes in Windhammer have helped me get recognized by the community and landed me some truly incredible writing opportunities. What I needed from this contest was a leg up into the community, an opportunity to prove myself and gain some credibility. I've done that. Now, if I want to keep moving up, I have to follow through with the real-world writing opportunities that Windhammer has helped me get to.

Third, and possibly most important, now that I've been offered some incredible writing opportunities, I feel like I need to prioritize working on those. I'm working on two interactive novels and an android game, as well as some side projects of my own. All of these people are expecting me to produce, and though the time scales are flexible, I'm in grad school. I only have so much bandwidth to put toward this, and it's time for me to put my money where my mouth is and actually come out with some of this stuff. At this point, definitely more important to work toward completing professional projects rather than submitting yet another Windhammer entry, no matter how much I enjoy them.

On the plus side, I do feel very optimistic about the projects I'm working on. It's frustrating that they're moving more slowly than I would like, but now that the school year is in full swing, I'm definitely hitting my writing groove. Stay tuned.

I'm going to try and get this blog started regularly again, posting my thoughts about the Windhammer entries (once the voting is done!), more gamebook theory, and updates about interactive fiction products and authors, as well as information about my own works as they come along.

If you have anything you'd like me to post about, a project you're working on that you want to promote, or a recent release you'd like me to review, feel free to let me know!

On Altruism and Living a Good Life in a "First World" Country

A friend of mine asked on facebook recently if she should feel guilty about living well in a prosperous part of the world, when so many people around the globe (both local and distant) are suffering from hunger, poverty, and worse.

This isn't related to writing or Gamebooks (although there are exciting things going on on that front! I intend to follow the Windhammer prize, now that we've reached that time of the year again) but I feel that it's worth sharing.

For context, this friend is in training to be a flying trapeze artist. I know, right? XD


First, be aware that overall, violence, poverty and cruelty are on the decline worldwide. Yes, we hear about these horrible things happening every day all over the world, but compared to how things were 500 years ago, or 2000 years ago, or even 50 years ago, overall quality of life (by several measures) has increased dramatically, even if you only look at the poorest third of the population.

Second, self-sacrifice only goes so far. Specifically, I want to draw a distinction between altruism and martyrdom. Altruism is where you do something for others /because it makes you feel good to do it/. We all want, on some level, to be good for the world. It's not an unambiguously selfless act. It's rewarding. But that feel-good, arguably even selfish aspect to it is important because it keeps you going. If you sacrifice past what you can bear, then you can no longer help others. Be kind, and be good, but take care of yourself first. You have so much potential good for the world in you, whether it be creating something that didn't exist before, doing something beautiful to bring joy to others, or even just filling an important organizational role that helps keep our massive, complex society running. If you burn yourself out in the name of "good" you kill the goose that lays golden eggs.

Third, our system is actually pretty amazing in that (in general, and with exceptions--it's not perfect!) capitalism rewards people who provide something good that makes the world a better place. If your flying trapeze work brings something amazing into the hearts of people who watch you, they'll pay $15 bucks a pop or whatever to come watch it, and you get to survive and keep doing it. There's nothing to feel guilty about in this. You need training, a home, food, and some personal satisfaction in life in order to keep providing the service that you provide to the world.

Honestly, the best thing you can do for the world is specialize in what you love and excel at, and do that with all your heart. We're a community--no one person can do all the jobs. It's not your job to cure Aids, or solve the economy to raise daily-income rates around the world, or even provide some food and shelter to the local homeless dude (unless you make it your job, in which case do your best!) Someone else has dedicated their life to founding a nonprofit to support a homeless shelter that feeds and shelters people who need it. Trust that they will do their job. Your job is to become amazing at flying trapeze, so that when that manager at the homeless shelter is feeling depressed about the futility of it all, you can inspire them and remind them for a second what flying can feel like.

Find what you bring to the world, and do it well. That's a far greater gift that you can offer than selling all your possessions, giving the money to charity and dying in Alaska.

Writing Advice: R.A. Salvatore on Fight Scenes

I think I need to revisit what the purpose of this blog is. So far, I've been focusing on gamebooks, but there's only so much gamebook theory one can write. Besides which, as my own career branches into areas other than pure gamebooks, I'm finding that my areas of interest are broader than just that.

More on this later. I think I've got some ideas for where I can go with this blog. But in the meantime, I'd like to share something absolutely fascinating.

This post by Susan Morris of Shelfari is an interview with R.A. Salvatore on writing fight scenes. There's a lot of advice, theory, speculation and opinion floating around the internet on how to write a great fight scene, but this article takes it right out of the mouth of a master.

And what he says isn't always what you would expect.

I highly recommend this read, for anyone interested in writing great fight scenes in their own stories: http://blog.shelfari.com/my_weblog/2011/08/ra-salvatore-on-how-to-write-a-damn-good-fight-scene.html


Here's a couple of choice quotes...

"Fighting is more about your feet than anything. Balance, balance, balance. Now, after so many battle scenes, I find myself spending my preparation thinking about the battlefield itself. If these guys were fighting in a ring, I'd be writing pretty much the same movements every time. Put them on a rocky hillside, or in a tight cave, or against a monster that is decidedly not humanoid, and I've got the variety that keeps it interesting for me."

"I wish I had a better answer about which point of view to choose, but honestly, I just go with my gut. I'm a product of growing up with television; I love point of view shifts as long as they're clearly done. If I have six people fighting, you might get six different viewpoints. It's controlled chaos, you bet."

"Few actual fighters would ever do a spin in a fight, of course, fearing that they'd catch a sword between the shoulder blades. Drizzt does that spin move all the time. He's just that fast, and it is, after all, fantasy."

"Believe it or not, despite scores of fight scenes in dozens of books, the top ones are easy for me to rate. In third place..." (read the article to see his full list!)

"My best writing days are battle scene days, because when I get into it, I can't stop. Then again, my worst writing days are battle scene days, because if I don't have the energy, I simply cannot do it."


As I said, I found it a great read. Both more simple, and more intuitive than a lot of the advice on the internet would have you believe. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did :)

Why Include Randomness: Part 2

This is a thematic continuation of last week's post. To catch up, go read Part One.

Last week, I described one specific case in which using randomness adds some unpredictability to the outcome of your choices. This unpredictability can be a good thing; it forces the player to weigh their priorities against the possible outcomes before making a choice. This is interesting because it's what we do every day. We constantly, in real life, make choices, every hour of every day, and those choices affect the future. We make those choices by weighing probabilities, predictions, and priorities, and to do that in a game is fun.

That said, using randomness the way I specifically described it that time isn't necessarily that common. The most common types of randomness we see in gamebooks have to do with testing skills, if those skills are recorded numerically, or in combat--which is effectively another version of testing character skills. In this mechanic, the additive element comes in the preparation--picking which skills your character will excel in--instead of in the event of the challenge.  By the time you're testing to leap across a chasm, it's too late to make any choices that affect the outcome (other than perhaps finding another way to go...) But the existence of that chasm leap late in the game makes the choice meaningful which you made earlier about where to allocate your skills. Without the existence of the chasm leap scene, the number of points you put into Chasm Leaping becomes irrelevant.

Let's take a look at Destiny Quest, because it's a great example of this type of mechanic. In Destiny Quest, you run around, completing quests by testing (successfully) against your character's skills. As a reward, you acquire items which increase those skills, thus making you capable of completing the next quest.

In Destiny Quest, by the time you get to combat, you've already done all you can do. You've laid your bet, you've played your hand, and now all you can do is sit there and roll and hope.

Despite this, it is not a system without choice. It's simply a system where the choice is all front-loaded into the character development stage of the game. In Destiny Quest, the game remains fun because character development is an ongoing process. Every time you complete a quest, you get a reward. Often, this forces you to choose between two items which modify your character's abilities in different ways. Right there--that is the moment of player interaction. Which item do you keep, and which do you destroy?

The scenes of combat themselves are essentially very boring. For those of us who don't find rolling dice to be inherently exciting, there is nothing to do. You simply must carry through the busywork to find out whether the character build choices you made earlier will pay off or not.

But without that interaction-less moment later (combat) which tests your character build, then the choices you made during the build phase would be meaningless.

All that said, there still remains two possibilities, a skill test that involves randomness vs. a skill test that doesn't. Instead of having a Chasm Leaping skill rated 1-10 and a Killing Goblins skill rated 1-10, you could simply have each of those be a binary trait. You either have it or you don't.

In that model, when presenting the reader with a chasm, the game would ask, "Do you have the Chasm Leaping skill? y/n" and the player would either be able to jump it or not. None of this, "roll and add your skill and try to be difficuly number x, y or z."

This model has the advantage of being simpler, and in a gamebook, that often makes it worth it to go that route. But it doesn't allow for as much real choice. If you know for a fact you will be able to jump any chasm, there's no reason not to go for it every time. If you've got about a 20% chance of horrible painful death if you jump a chasm, there's now an interesting choice. Is it worth the risk? If you're running for your life, probably. But if you're out for your morning constitutional, then probably not.  Each time you run into a chasm, your mind will instantly start evaluating whether it's worth it or not. Sometimes it'll be easy, but there's still a real choice, and when it's not easy, it becomes a good game experience. And as with last week's example, this choice retains its replay value compared to a situation where there's no luck involved.

Why include Randomness?

A few weeks ago, Dave Morris raised an interesting question on his blog, "Does interactive fiction need randomness?"

One of the things I like about Dave is that he's always at the forefront of gamebooks (a term I'm using generically for our type of interactive fiction, as the term "interactive fiction" has been claimed by a slightly different genre). Dave pushes the limits of the field, questioning assumptions and imagining the genre not as it is, but as it could be. I admire this a lot, but it doesn't mean I always agree with him on each of the particulars ;)

In this case, I would like to make a defense of randomness in interactive fiction. I won't argue that every gamebook should have a random element. Like ice cream, sometimes you want one flavor and sometimes another. Sometimes one person has the flavor they prefer, and they aren't interested in any other. What I do want to argue is that randomness can be additive, and here's why:  unpredictable results create interesting choices.

A while back, I wrote about the types of choices that one finds in gamebooks. To sum up the main points... A) The core game mechanic in a gamebook (regardless of the presence or absence of other rules) is the sequence of narrative choices the player makes. B) It is very important that those choices be interesting in order for a gamebook to be fun. C) For a choice to be interesting, the player has to have enough information to make an educated guess, but not so much information that the best option is obvious.

In short, to give the reader an interesting choice, the author must reveal some information, but also conceal some information.

Think of the classic "Which Door" choice: the reader is presented with something along the lines of, "at the end of the tunnel are two identical doors. Do you open the one on the left, or the one on the right?" What the reader doesn't know is that one of these doors leads to instant death, while the other leads to tasty cake! This sort of crap may have been what dudes were into in the 70's and 80's, but by today's standards, no part of that is a good game experience. If you lose, it feels arbitrary and abrupt. But even if you make the right choice, it's not like you can take any credit for it. Success isn't satisfying if you didn't earn it.

On the other extreme, what if you knew right off the bat what was behind each door? This is, literally, the classic, "Cake or Death" choice. This is also a complete flop as a game experience, because the answer is obvious (unless you're some sort of death-seeking masochist, in which case I think you have better things to worry about than the quality of a gamebook.)

The point is, any situation in which the player has complete knowledge of the results of their choice will eliminate the existence of the choice. A choice has to do with predicting results. If you know the results with 100% certainty, the preferable choice will always be apparent. Even if all options lead equally to success or failure, then there is still no choice to be made, because the direction you choose is irrelevant to the results.

This is where randomness comes in. Randomness introduces a fog of war to the scene. Even if the player could read ahead and see all the future paragraph sections, if there is an element of randomness, the outcome is no longer certain.

Of course, information can also be concealed narratively. This is an excellent way of solving the problem, which gamebooks should always use. The only caveat is that it has no replay value.

If you take those two doors and draw a symbol of cake on one and a symbol of death on the other, then the player has an interesting choice. Is the dungeon being honest, or lying to him? Perhaps something has come up earlier to lead him to trust, or mistrust, the signs in this dungeon. The player has to think about it, predict a result, and make a choice. But once the player has read through that scene once, the next time he comes down that hallway with Character McHammenheimer the Second, the player immediately knows what's behind the door--there's no choice any longer.

Contrast this to taking the cake and death, and putting them both behind one door, but there's only a 10% chance of death, and a 90% chance of cake. Or you can go through the other door and continue on your day without taking the risk.

Whoa... now you have a choice. Just how tasty does that cake look? Is it worth a 10% chance of immediate death? Mmm... it looks pretty tasty, but immediate death?

Best of all, this remains an interesting choice, no matter how many times the player reads through the game.


Afterword: I do not think that cake is a very good reward, nor death a very good punishment. Obviously these should both be replaced with positive results that do not rely on virtual taste buds, and negative results that do not instantly kick the player out of your game. You do want people to be playing your game, right? So why did you just boot them out again? How to design positive consequences that are meaningful without being gamebreaking, and negative consequences that are meaningful without being crippling is a different topic entirely.

New Fighting Fantazine is out!

I just want to make a quick post to point out that the 11th edition of the gamebook e-magazine "Fighting Fantazine" has recently come out.

What's especially cool about this one is that it includes an all-new, original 219 section gamebook by Stuart Lloyd called Ascent to Darkness.

Go check it out! I know I will :)

Legend - a playthrough

Hi folks, I know what you're thinking. Two blog posts in one day? Madness!

Well, the last wasn't really on-topic, so you get a freebie. Here's a journal of not one, but two play-throughs of Legend, by Endmaster. Endmaster's story-oriented work on the Storygames website is some of my favorite gamebook material out there, but Legend is more game-oriented. I'm curious to see how it plays out.

Without further ado...


Part I

I started out rolling incredibly well for my stats, with spectacular double 6s for stamina, and an excellent 5 for mind. Then, in an ironic twist, I rolled a 1 for my luck.

Sadly, so far the game part is uninspiring... before even getting to the end of the first page I'm already zoning out. The deeper I get into gamebooks, the less patience I have for long-winded rules.

Nevertheless, after a few false starts I manage to push through them to the point where I get to pick a class. Being masochistic, I decided to start with the mage. This makes Skill, i.e. my fighting stat, which was already not great, now even worse in exciting new ways. I am so going to die...

While poking around the small town where I start, I run into Brenda, who I've apparently had a crush on since I was a kid. Naturally, now seems like the right time to confess to her, at which point she promptly informs me she recently started dating some musclehead named Klint. Uh-oh... here he comes now.

Well then! I guess I get to try out these combat rules earlier than I anticipated. The way it works is, whenever I start a combat I can cast a spell to do damage before going into regular combat. It does 4 by default, but by making my spell test harder (a Mind check--roll under on 2 dice) I can do more damage.

In this case, the fight isn't to the death; all I need to do is knock him below 10 stamina to win, which is pretty easy to do with one powerful blast from my magic finger. Maybe the mage wasn't a bad choice after all!

With Klint flat on his ass, Brenda falls into my arms, and we kiss passionately enough that my alignment goes up by three. After some undisclosed amount of time, however, like the gentleman I am, I dump her to return to my adventuring.

I think I'm a callow jackass... nonetheless, the story didn't give me any other choice, and this way I get to take a lock of Brenda's hair on my journeys!

On the road to the next big city, I naturally get ambushed by orcs. My Flame Finger makes short work of one of them (that good roll on my initial Mind stat is paying off here) and while the other runs away, I loot the body to find a map to the orc cave.

What are we waiting for? I can't just leave orc caves lying around the countryside where they might hurt someone!

At the grim-totem bedecked entrance, I stroll on in and pick a path at random. Lo! It takes me directly to the throne room, where one ugly badass and his two guards await.

This is my first time bringing the wizard to a real fight, and some crunching numbers quickly informs me the odds are not in my favor. Heavily.

I decide to take a risk on casting the most powerful spell I think is feasible, because unless I do my butt is toast anyway. Alas, I fail the spellcasting check by 1 point (8 when I needed a 7) and the spell misfires injuring me, whereupon the three uglies proceed to teach me the meaning of pain.

Well, that was quick. Howsabout we try again with a warrior, then, shall we?


Part II

Alright, I've rolled up a new character. We'll call him Bregg Brawnbones. He's named after his muscles. I had the good fortune to roll max on Skill, and even though my Stamina roll wasn't great, with the warrior bonus it's still higher than would even have been possible for my mage. My mind... well, let's just say Bregg isn't known for his "thinking." I rolled low and it went down from there.

On the plus side, I got my father's sword, which gives me a bonus in battle. And I feel this strange urge to start repeating these words, almost as if they were a holy phrase, "I like swords."

As before, I see Brenda in the market, but she's still grieving over the disappearance of my brother, and it would be crass to impose upon her now, so I move on to see what sort of things they have for sale. I also hear there are some promising ruins outside of town which fade dramatically from the forefront of your mind as soon as you talk to a certain young lady.

I pick up some rope and a lantern, and head out to those ruins, before a certain blonde charmer gets anywhere near me.

The ruins are satisfyingly creepy, especially when a secret door lets me descend to the lower levels, where there are probably monsters. I am not disappoint. A skeleton quickly looms at me from the shadows, which I make short work of with my great brawn and fancy sword. And hey, since I have a lantern, I'm not even at a penalty due to darkness!

Pushing on into darkness and waving my sword threateningly, the darkness obligingly yields up to me two doors and swears that's all it had in its pockets. One leads to some sort of wierd blue crystal which I decide to investigate later. The other yields up some gold (aww, good dungeon! You get a pat on the head) and then kicks me out. (Fuck you, dungeon!)

Apparently no blue crystal for me.

Whelp, onward toward the big city! My business in the starter town is complete. Looks like orcs are still troubling the road. This time, there is very little subtletly to my response, and I make short, bloody work of the weaklings.

It is time to avenge my fallen brother, the mage-who-remained-unnamed. This time, though, I'm exploring the rest of the goddam cavern first.

In the first room I find an ogre, who I have an epic battle with. Just before I kill him, he manages to wing me once, giving me my first injury. "It's just a flesh wound!"

After that I brutally murder him and take his gold and jewels. Ah, the life of an adventurer is grand. After that I find some sort of wierd intelligent goblin. Mutant. I kill him before he can look up from his books and take his gold too. My purse is starting to get heavy!

His desk is littered with vials of liquid in strange colors and other mysterious things. Knowing that I'm not smart, I almost decide to leave well enough alone, but being not smart, I instead drink the nearest vial of the strange-colored stuff.

Lucky! Turns out it's a healing potion, and there's three more where that came from. I'll take that stamina back, thank you very much :)

Okay, now I'm really going to... dammit, what's this red stuff? Curiousity gets the better of me, but when I drink a bit I can discern no effect. I stuff them into my bag anyway and glare at the purple vials. Oh well, in for a penny in for a pound, down it goes...

Ack! See, I KNEW drinking strange liquids in mysterious dungeons wasn't a good idea! My corpse is gloating.

Yep, that last one was a fatal poison. Should have gotten out while I had the chance.

Ah well, we shall leave Bregg choking on his own idiocy in the dirt, and returrn to more civilized worlds where we suffer nothing for our failures except a prematurely aborted game.

Someday I shall most likely return to this world. I'd like to get past the first adventure. But that day will not be today, and those adventures may or may not be chronicled here.

If you would like to try your hand at Legend, check it out for free, here: http://www.infinite-story.com/story/room.php?id=28071

Just don't drink the purple vial!