Adult Choose Your Own Adventure Books

Whatever · Post by **Whatever** » Tue Sep 03, 2013 9:30 pm

angelfromanotherpin wrote:
It's a solo adventure and you can't keep people from cheating, so just acknowledging that players can win or lose fights at their whim is kind of a neat touch.
It's not a bad thought, though my instinct in that case would be to put some sort of a cost on declared victory, even if it's just flavor text like breaking a finger and worrying that it won't heal right. If I had my druthers, I'd probably get into stuff like 'winning fights can fuck you up more than losing them – or just running,' and 'what sort of a person is this kind of murder-machine.' But that probably doesn't belong in D&D-flavor Finality.

Well, in my example, both options ultimately get you into the dungeon (ogre is the jailer, and has the keys to the cells). The "cost" of winning is that you don't get to take the other path. Maybe you get locked up with Ugly Pete and have to work together to trick the ogre and break out, so he gives you a hint that he wouldn't mention if you just show up with the keys and release him. But if you just show up, you have enough time to search around and find the secret chamber with a map in it. Or whatever.

I definitely agree that choices should either both be bad or both be good (unless there's a specific plot reason for a good/bad choice), but I like the good/good choices better as a default.

PoliteNewb · Post by **PoliteNewb** » Tue Sep 03, 2013 11:29 pm

K wrote:Am I the only one who read the Lone Wolf books? Those were the highest quality versions of the choose-your-adventure-style books.

I loved those damn things. Still have my collection, which my son is reading/playing.
I found that the late Kai/early Magnakai ones were the best, IMO. Once you had some decent chops, but before things went too crazy-go-nuts. I think book 6 was pretty much the sweet spot.

JigokuBosatsu wrote:Lone Wolf was good, if a bit repetitive. The spinoff Greystar was much better.

I only recall the first Greystar book in detail, but disagree. Even as a starting character, I felt like Lone Wolf had more heroic narrative...in Greystar I always felt like I was playing a putz, albeit one who could do magic.

JigokuBosatsu · Post by **JigokuBosatsu** » Tue Sep 03, 2013 11:37 pm

Fair enough. I think it was the putziness, the "OMG A GIRL IS TALKING TO ME, I HOPE SHE LIEKS MAGIC" that was cool about Greystar. Plus he had sweet Flock of Seagulls hair.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Wed Sep 04, 2013 12:28 am

Can I just say that I fully approve of the direction this thread has gone.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Wed Sep 04, 2013 2:26 am

The "choose whether you win or lose" has been done before, to great effect. There was a series of Australian CYOA books, of which I have read/played two. Some examples of the school one were:

"...you see the thug who gave you trouble earlier, and there's no-one else around. Do you want a nice ending, or are you a glutton for punishment?"
A) He explains that the issue with wanting your locker is that he keeps a plant and the locker is opposite a window. You become friends and you go to his house (not noticing the bloodied chainsaw behind the door...)
B) He leaps out with an army of thugs, armed with cricket bats, iron bars, flick-knives, flamethrowers, nuclear bombs and an ice cream. It takes several weeks to identify the body.

"Having made the deal, your locker is now full to the brim with chocolate. Is it still there at the end of the day?"
A) Yes: it was a hot day, so now a pool of melted chocolate has flooded out, all over the floor. You do the sensible thing, handing out straws and saying "Lunch is on me, guys."
B) No: it was all confiscated by police, and you see the supplier being taken away in cuffs.

It works particularly well for comedy purposes, and let's just state it: comedy is the best mode for CYOA books.

K · Post by K » Wed Sep 04, 2013 3:07 am

PoliteNewb wrote:
K wrote:Am I the only one who read the Lone Wolf books? Those were the highest quality versions of the choose-your-adventure-style books.
I loved those damn things. Still have my collection, which my son is reading/playing.
I found that the late Kai/early Magnakai ones were the best, IMO. Once you had some decent chops, but before things went too crazy-go-nuts. I think book 6 was pretty much the sweet spot.

If anyone ever gets bored at work or school or something, all of the books are online for free now. There is also a lot of the source material and stuff.

I stopped at book 13, but I did read all four of the Grey Star books. I liked them because they jumped right into the crazy instead of waiting eight books like in the Lone Wolf series.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Wed Sep 04, 2013 6:19 am

While I agree that, for example, one of the "easy" ways to get to the Myconid patch where the bodies are dumped would be to get in a fight and lose so that the bad guys dump you in the Myconid patch, sometimes losing a fight should just make you die. I mean, you just made a choice to lose a sword fight. That seems like a pretty good place to have a "you died and you're an idiot" event. And those are classic CYOA thingies.

-Username17

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Wed Sep 04, 2013 7:13 am

Hence the earlier reference to the weird Australian ones, where sometimes losing (or sometimes winning) actually is Game Over, but you still basically have the choice which happens. Which is a lot fairer than "you wake up and see a bear, it kills you, game over".

Whatever · Post by **Whatever** » Wed Sep 04, 2013 3:36 pm

That's fair. As long as it fits with the nature of the choice and it's obvious what the actual effects of your two choices will be, I'm cool with having one choice result in game over. This raises the interesting question of how many "bad ends" we want. At least a couple per storyline seems reasonable, but that's already 6+.

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Wed Sep 04, 2013 4:35 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:In one of them a powerful item was stolen from the armory and you are supposed to track it down. Good end is that you either use the item yourself and turn into a rakshasa, or return the item to the armory and get a steady and well paying job.

The lich casts a spell of dreadful power, attempting to consume your soul!

Did you turn into a rakshasa? If so, turn to page 53 (you laugh as the spell does nothing and backhand that boney punk into his own phylactery)

Just watch out for crossbows, I guess.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Wed Sep 04, 2013 5:02 pm

Okay, so Nam Orphanmaker was just an asspull, but does anybody want to suggest a proper premise for this book? (Also, do we want to start a new thread for drafting it?)

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Wed Sep 04, 2013 7:01 pm

I think Nam Orphanmaker is definitely your name. Character generation should be simple. After all, every character option you have is a page citation that has to show up at least once. My suggestion would be that you have three "class" choices. You can be an Assassin (starting with some poisons and having a cloak of shadows ability), an Enchanter (starting with a magic sword and some other stuff and an identify ability), or a Ranger (starting with some tracking skills and some healing magic).

I don't see any benefit in assigning points to stats or buying things off lists.

-Username17

JigokuBosatsu · Post by **JigokuBosatsu** » Wed Sep 04, 2013 9:12 pm

I think that's a good proposal.

My question is... what kind of tone is this book going to have? Gygaxian sadism? Wide-eyed retro idealism? Chemical fire death wishes?

fectin · Post by **fectin** » Thu Sep 05, 2013 3:22 am

On that note, should class play heavily into what options you can choose?

For example, with the ogre, your choices could be "escape", "lose", and "win (if you are a ranger)", then in another location you could have an option to sneak in as the assassin. Enchanter, in this example, could have to lose to get into the dungeon, but could be the rockstar in other encounters.

JigokuBosatsu · Post by **JigokuBosatsu** » Mon Sep 09, 2013 3:47 pm

At board game night I mentioned this idea and everyone thought it was marvelous.

Also, has anyone played Betrayal At House On Haunted Hill? I have never been so entertained by a board game, and not just because I was drunk and my character turned into a Lovecraftian monstrosity that devoured the rest of the party.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Mon Sep 09, 2013 10:02 pm

Betrayal is certainly good for several play throughs. Some of the scenarios aren't very balanced, but as long as they stay fresh it's actually OK if sometimes one side or the other has a massive advantage.

How many total entries are we looking at? A standard Fighting Fantasy has 400. Actual CYOA books are super short (120 pages or less) and have an entry per page. I would think that modern word processing and printing being what it is, it would be trivial to make one a bit longer - probably putting multiple entries on one page.

There are tools available like inklewriter, but I'm not sure that it could be as effective and visceral as index cards, corkboard, and string.

-Username17

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Mon Sep 09, 2013 10:11 pm

I'm for 400. It's a nice, round number.

JigokuBosatsu · Post by **JigokuBosatsu** » Mon Sep 09, 2013 10:12 pm

The work is non-trivial, I realize, but I'd rather it be the size of one of the Sorcery! books if we're going to put any sort of work into it.

Darth Rabbitt · Post by **Darth Rabbitt** » Mon Sep 09, 2013 11:44 pm

400 sections is definitely workable even if we want to do the whole "three quests" thing; see Scorpion Swamp.

That being said, I'm willing to write for this project regardless of the number of sections/pages/whatever that we come up with.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Tue Sep 10, 2013 11:07 am

I have taken the liberty of starting two threads over in the gaming area for the Finality CYOA, under the working title "Orphanmaker." (That's not necessarily the final name, it's just a placeholder.)

Orphanmaker Writing is where we hash out mechanics, plot trees, etc.

Orphanmaker Draft is where we write actual entries. Right now it has some placeholder beginning/background/intro text.