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My latest interactive fiction effort, The Annwn Simulation 1985, is playable and — I think — complete. It was a blast to work on, and the Failbetter people/community have been awesome.

The post below is in two parts: the tale of the development process, and then some collected notes.

The Making

There I was, two-thirds of the way through draft one of a novel. And then I get the email that Failbetter had opened their dev tools. How could I resist?  I figured I’d cobble something together and use it to flesh out the world-building. Just a fun exercise to attack the universe of the novel in a different way.

Fast-forward many hours. Far more hours than I had planned on. But once the process began, I couldn’t simply end it. What was meant to be a diversion had developed into a stand-alone piece with its own structure.

October 15th — The tools are released.

November 14th — My game is ready for playtesting.

One of the cool things about a Storynexus game is that you build a world, and then put stories in it. (As opposed to, say, the Choice of Games stuff I’ve done. One is not better than the other, of course; they are two very different ways to tell interactive stories.) In the Annwn game, I knew I would be adding some more content as it came to me. I had built out a few main storylines, but still wanted to give people who were interested in the Bard option some more to do. But that would come later.

Well, the two friends who gave me feedback both said they played bards. Oops.

So, back to development. It was at this point that I took a closer look at the content design patterns listed in the Failbetter wiki. And the freakout began. All of my storylines followed the Venture model, the simplest content design format. People said they were having fun with the whole grind-a-stat-and-come-back thing, but the wiki had several examples of other ways to make a story interactive. Sure, I had worked in a few moral forks, but the actual gameplay was pretty repetitive and grindy.

December 4th, 12:30AM — A reworked main storyline. New questlines. Revised questlines to add variety of play. Polishing.

It wasn’t as bad as I had originally feared, once I took a closer look. A few of the existing questlines lent themselves to different design formats very readily. I just needed to have a better understanding of what structures have been proven to work.

And now I’ve taken it as far as I plan to. For now. <ominous lightning>

 

Notes. WARNING – SPOILERS

Why am I putting my notes here, you ask? Well, this blog is for me too, right?

The Main questline (Jackyl) is a Grandfather Clock. Hour hand is a simple chain (ending in a flavor choice). Minute hand varies.

The first two hours take place mainly in Arrell, and are meant to introduce the world and let people play around with the various options/skills/character types.

Hour 1: The Loremaster quest. A simple chain.

Tick 1: First contact from the enemy. This kicks off the main mystery of the game — why does this complete stranger want me to stay out of Annwn?

Hour 2: Fully-Armed quest. This is sort of a Midnight Staircase, in that the player must choose from various grind options to get the cash needed to outfit herself.

Tick 2: Second contact from the enemy.

Midpoint. Player character starts to pursue the enemy. Action mode.

Hour 3: The Curl and Lock quest. A Beggar’s Banquet (pyramid form), where in many cases the toll can be avoided if the player has played some of the other content, as in the Road With Many Faces. See Other Quests below.

Tick 3: How to get to Jackyl revealed.

Hour 4: Getting fairy gold. In order to purchase the key item, the PC must raise some funds. There are many ways to do this, and no single best way. See Fairy Gold Quests below.

Tick 4: Key item (magic girdle) acquired.

Final hour: Confrontation, mystery solved, and decision made. This is a single card.

Tick 5: End Game.

 

Fairy Gold Quests.

Juicer and Keeper Questlines. These are the primary ventures. A decision is made early on as to which career to pursue. After the Becoming quests in Arrell, the Annwn quests end in moral forks which return various amounts of fairy gold.

 Gladsome Beast. A Hydra.

The Concert Season: A Carousel, in which one of the options for the final tier gives fairy gold.

Other Quests:

The Arcade. A venture which can make becoming a juicer easier.

Zaxxon. Venture. Adds options to later quests.

The Cottingwoods: Inverted pyramid — as your research advances, the more options there are to pursue. Adds options to other quests.

Cartogromancy: Venture. Adds options to other quests.

The Private Concert. A Midnight Staircase with a possible End Game.

Stats:

12 questlines, plus one main quest.

122 functional storylets

74 qualities

 

Fallen London. It’s good, and you should go check it.

One city.
A thousand choices.

Discover a dark and hilarious Gothic underworld where your actions affect everything from the fate of the British Empire to the price of your soul. Dance with devils. Seduce an artist. Wrestle tigers. Converse with cats. Plot a revolution. All in your coffee break. And did we mention it’s free?

Welcome. Delicious friend.

The stories are fantastic, the style is unique, etc etc. It’s one of the touchstones of contemporary interactive fiction.

And they’ve released their development tools. So anybody can make one now. Woot!

I’ve started building a game based in the world of my current work in progress. Storylines unrelated to the book, of course, but fleshing out the world a bit. Further updates as events warrant.

Allow me to present to you a timeline:

• Sep 1986 – The comic book Watchmen debuts.
• Aug 1996 – The novel Game of Thrones is published.
• Feb 2006 – The comic book Mouse Guard debuts.
• Mar 2009 – The movie Watchmen is released.
• Apr 2011 – HBO’s Game of Thrones series begins.
• Sep 2012 – I read Mouse Guard, and am surprised to find the phrases, “we’re not stuck in here with you, you’re stuck in here with us” and “winter is coming” so flagrantly stolen.

Oh wait. Back in ’06, only hardcore nerdlingers like myself would recognize either of those phrases. And we’d probably just accept them as nods to two pillars of their respective genres. Now they stick out, and seem almost tawdry. Lesson learned.

Oh, and go read Mouse Guard. It’s good.

 

 

I hit the midpoint of the new novel this weekend. The part where the protagonist stops reacting to things and starts doing things, based on the novel structure I’m trying out this time around.

From here on out, she goes from passive bystander to active ass-kicker, changing the world into what she wants it to be. Trying to, at least. I call it the “fuck this” moment, and marked it with Robin breaking a monitor with the heel of her new Docs. It was a sudden, violent overreaction, but felt sooooo good.

I’m hoping this will get the typing hydraulics pumping a bit more smoothly. No more hemming, and certainly no more hawing. Now, how precisely she and her buddies are going to pull off their appointed task, especially considering the very unfair odds, I’m not sure. I’m not sure if it’s going to happen at all. But I have a decent concept of how they’re going to try, so we’ll just stick to that.

No, seriously. What would you do with your life if you knew your healthcare was covered? Would finally put the desk job behind you and live off ramen until your creative and intellectual endeavors started paying enough to live, safe in the knowledge that if you got a cavity you wouldn’t have to go into ludicrous amounts of debt?

All around the US, people unshackled from the workaday world will dedicate themselves to the furtherment of humanity! The starving artist will have enough time and security to become the successful one! Works of staggering beauty and intellect which would never have been realized will be added to the sum total of Mankind’s Work! It will be as it was in Atlantis!

Sounds very romantic, and I don’t mean that in a snide way. I have zero information on whether the arts have burgeoned in Massachusetts. But we can hope, right?

I’ve reached the half-half-way point in the first draft of my latest novel project. The hook has hooked, the world has been built, the stakes have been made clear, and the protagonist has been made interesting. The first major plot-point just went down, changing the protag’s world forever and presenting a new set of risks and stakes (“I’ll come with you to Alderaan. There’s nothing more for me here.”)

OK, none of that has happened. That’s what’s supposed to happen, though, and the framework is there. Feel the power of Revision!

It’s just such a massive task. Write out several tens of thousands of words, knowing that they’re crap and hoping you’ll tear them all apart later to make them good. Especially with my habit of catching an hour of writing when I can, this is going to take forever. Spirit flags.

I’m finding that if I think about this project as fan fiction, it’s easier for me keep my spirits up. I have limitless energy for piecing together the bits of other people’s work — would the child of a firebender and a sandbender be a glassbender? — and applying that same level of nerd intensity to my own little built world makes climbing that mountain seem a little easier.

Here’s a review of Syrian Folktales by Muna Imady, a pleasant little book I received as part of the Library Thing Early Reviewers program.

 

Imady has successfully accomplished what we all say we should do: get a hold of the story-tellers and write this stuff down. Riddles, songs, and recipes from the various governorates of Syria flesh out the folklore collection, making this volume more of an introduction to a culture than simply a book of stories. The tales themselves are presented in a sparse form, perfect for the scholar.

I guess a lot of people didn’t dig this movie. I cannot be counted among them. That being stated, a few tweaks could have made this movie much clearer and more accessible.

Oh, yeah. Spoiler warning.

#1 – There’s a mole at the top level of the British Secret Service. Let’s all whisper about it.

This is a big deal. Worlds at risk. If you want me to give a damn about this, made it more evident why this is a problem.

#2 – Mark Strong as French teacher? Yeah, not a flashback.

In a story rife with flashbacks, showing a dude who just got shot gadding about England in a camper seems like… you know… the past. Confusing.

#3 – Smiley’s great triumph/tragedy is his devotion to and adoration of his wife. No, seriously. What, you didn’t get that from the loving look he gave her in that one flashback? Or in the half-sentence in the let’s-get-plowed-on-johnny-red-and-tell-stories scene?

Come on now. Yes, I imagine writing a taciturn character is a challenge. Yes, a few hints were dropped. Yes, I was watching closely. Give me a bit more here. Why do I care about this Smiley guy?

Stakes, clarity, and an engaging protagonist. These are some writing basics. Depart from them at your peril.