Five Things I've Learned From The Windhammer Prize (Part 2)

Cover of AEsheba: Greek Africa
(Blake, Mentzer & O'Hare, 1987),
by David Cherry. Nothing to do with
 Sea of Madness, except the same vibe.

Continuing on from where we left off, here are three more things I did differently this time when writing Sea of Madness.

3. Write Big
Describing his work for Fighting Fantasy, Stephen Hand once said:

One thing I myself had learned from the excellent Lone Wolf books was something I call, "writing big". Look at these two paragraphs:

1
"The Orc scowls menacingly then reaches for his club. You will have to defend yourself:
Orc        Skill: 7        Stamina: 7"

2
"The bodies of the slain lie strewn across the battlefield, your position is hopeless. Realising you have no choice but to pull back and rally your forces, you turn only to see... Something bars your way. You try to face it but it eludes your stare. Your assailant is an Forgotten Shade and you will need every ounce of courage to overcome it:
Shade    Skill: 7        Stamina: 7"

Paragraph 1 is very typical of your average gamebook. Events feel isolated, low key and a bit flat. Paragraph 2 is written big. It is over the top (some would say too long, verbose and melodramatic), but feels more exciting and satisfying. Structurally both paragraphs are exactly the same - there is a fight with a 7/7 creature - but contextually, they are worlds apart. We decided to write big, so every challenge (even when minor) had character. An event would be: the most evil, the most important, the most tricky, the most melodramatic, the most underhand. Every element would be part of an epic whole. I felt that there was no reason not to rise to this creative challenge, to try and create something dramatic and unique. (Hand, 1999)

So by borrowing Stephen Hand's idea of "writing big", I wanted to make every encounter in Sea of Madness feel epic in scope, as you are playing a powerful hero at large in an extensive game world. Everything that happens to you, even (or perhaps especially) your demise, should be over the top.

One problem with this approach is that it can get a bit tiring to read at times, so for a sandbox adventure like Sea of Madness it is doubly important to try and keep the paragraphs brief but evocative, so as not to bore the reader. Also, a good thesaurus is all but essential for using alternative words. Finally, although Stephen Hand alludes to it without actually mentioning it, this approach is a bit camp, with tongue planted in cheek through varying degrees of force. This is possibly the most difficult aspect to get right. I tend to try and write gamebooks on two levels: the straight, fantasy escapist theme, and the more hidden parody or satire level, where you are essentially affectionately spoofing the whole genre.

RAMPAGE! for example is an extremely obvious parody, riffing on a pseudo-Allansian theme. Sea of Madness was a bit more subtle, though the subtitle "Like the Odyssey but shorter" should be one clue, while other pointers include Star Wars quotes, Fighting Fantasy gamebook titles, and a whole bunch of related stuff crammed in with a crowbar. Feedback from Sea of Madness would suggest the spoof aspect sailed over some heads however, and in fact caused problems because there was an expectation that the adventure would be similar to the Odyssey but, aside from ripping off a few obvious tropes, the gamebook was more a mash-up of faux-Hellenic Bronze Age mayhem and classic pulp fantasy/swords & sorcery/swords & sandals. Basically though, I had a lot of fun writing it!

4. Rules, rules, rules
Given you are writing a gamebook, developing a clear and cohesive set of rules is an absolute must. The two main choices are to borrow an existing rules set, like Fighting Fantasy or Virtual Reality (which is what Per Jorner did with The Bone Dogs), or develop your own. For the former, it makes things easier to write for a familiar system, but opens your work up for comparison against the original material. For the latter, you get more creative control, but you have to ensure your system is balanced, playable, and fun, as well as logically and fully integrated into your gamebook.

For Hills of Phoros I created a 2d6 system that was simply far too complicated for the gamebook, and when I had to strip bits out to fit for length, it started to look rather patchy in other areas. For RAMPAGE! I simplified it to a 1d6 system which worked much better, and I re-skinned this system for Sea of Madness with some additional rules. One common piece of feedback is that rules are still a bit long, though clear. However, I do say in the rules section that you can pick a starting character and begin straight away, referring only to the rules when needed. I think it's also important to add some optional rules at the end, to allow the player to customise the adventure if they so wish.

5. Art of Schmooze
You want lots of people to read your adventure, and you also want lots of people to vote for your adventure as being one of the best. That's not going to happen if you simply let your adventure's PDF file hang off the Windhammer website and expect its natural brilliance to shine through. You need to get people interested in your gamebook, so they will read it, enjoy it, and vote for it!

For my previous entries I just sort of threw them out there, put a few posts on some gamebook groups and hoped it would be enough. As an approach it becomes too poorly focused and too generalistic. For Sea of Madness I tried to get specific groups of like-minded people interested. For example, I messaged all my old gaming buddies on Facebook, passed on links to my Bangkok snooker comrade, and shared details with a shadowy cabal of writers for whom I had done some editing work. This sort of tightly focussed approach to soliciting feedback and votes possibly works better than the more open-ended appeal to interested readers.

In fact, by deliberately targetting non-gamebook fans, not only are you potentially generating votes for your Windhammer Prize competition entry, but you are also stimulating an interest in the other entries and in gamebook fiction in general. If we want to revive gamebook fiction in the future (and there's certainly plenty of evidence we are currently surfing the wave of a mini-revival at present), this sort of approach is going to become more and more important, especiallly as we look at paradigm-changing formats such as tablet devices, online content, and smart phones.

References

Blake, R. J., Mentzer, F., & O'Hare, J. (1987). AEsheba: Greek Africa. Lake Geneva, WI: New Infinities Productions, Inc.

Hand, S. (3/10/1999). Personal communciation with Mark J. Popp, available here: http://www.ffproject.com/download/MJPOPP.ZIP (Thanks to Andy Spruce) 

Five Things I've Learned From The Windhammer Prize (Part 1)

One of the interesting things about the Windhammer Prize for Short Gamebook Fiction is that Wayne Densley keeps the voting tallies secret. This is understandable for what is essentially a niche competition, as if the winning tally was known, competitors may think "Ah, I only need X votes!" and aim to amass the required number of votes rather than devote themselves to their gamebook entry.

While this hidden tally introduces a degree of mystery to the proceedings, it also makes analysing the results, in the form of a voting spread, virtually impossible. However, given that I won this year after several previous years of failure, I thought I'd share a few things I did differently this year that may have contributed to a much improved final placing. I have no way of knowing how much, if any, these changes affected my winning tally, but taken as a whole there surely must be some sort of cumulative effect.

1. Feedback
If you're lucky, you should get a decent amount of feedback on your adventure, post-competition. While recognizing that each person's feedback represents just one person's opinion (which you may or may not agree with), study it carefully. Considering the feedback as a whole, sift it for general trends, as these will identify what worked and what you need to improve.

Plenty of feedback from my first competition entry, Hills of Phoros, indicated that aimless wandering as per Fabled Lands, was tedious in a small adventure, as was excessive grind-time. Also, if you're using a certain style of character generation system, such as points-buying, implement it across the board. Based on this feedback, I added a bit more story to the still sandbox-influenced RAMPAGE! and Sea of Madness, as well as a complete points-buy system for creating characters if you did not wish to use the provided starting characters. 

2. Maximum Performance
The Windhammer Prize has stated limits of 100 sections or 40 pages of A4. You should try and aim for both limits as one hundred sections is not a large amount with which to tell a multiple choice story, while 40 pages allows you around 20,000 words, or 200 words a section on average. That's a decent chunk of text, nearly half a NaNoMo entry, and will require an effective time budget to ensure your typed word count per day is ticking over nicely. While sacrificing the art of story-telling at the cold altar of mathematics may seem harsh, the reality of writing a gamebook is that you are creating a complex puzzle that requires a degree of rigourousness unknown to most short stories or novellas. Break out the calculator!

Hills of Phoros sprawled so badly I had to cut huge chunks of rules and sections to cram it into the competition limits, and this had a big effect on the final product. Conversely, RAMPAGE! was a featherlight affair set at half the competition requirements (50 sections) and probably suffered from brevity compared to the excellence and expansivenes of other entries, such as The Bone Dogs. Sea of Madness was planned exceedingly tightly, though parts still got cut. Still, it was a much more cohesive gamebook than its predecessors.

I'll present the final three things tomorrow. 

Adrift on the Sea of Madness...

Wow! When not battling word-heavy assignments or rising Bangkok floodwaters, I received the most welcome news that my Sea of Madness adventure has won Wayne Densley's 2011 Windhammer Prize for short gamebook fiction! Cue celebratory beers here at Fantasy Gamebook HQ where we are ever-increasingly surrounded by a deluge of stench-laden black klong-water.

As I talked about before, this year's Windhammer competition saw a lot of high quality entries and everyone who entered deserves a congratulatory pat on the back. There was also a record number of adventure downloads and votes, so thanks also to all you readers and voters who were able to enjoy a glut of interesting and adventurous gamebook fiction.

In a bid to resurrect this blog now that I've completed my studies for this semester, I plan on following this post with a series of similarly-themed entries:

• Talking about all the entries in this year's Windhammer Prize, to give you an idea of the quality and variety that was present.
• Looking at five things that helped Sea of Madness win this year, when previous attempts like Hills of Phoros or RAMPAGE! had failed.
• Exploring the planning process behind Sea of Madness as a counter-point to the Adventure Game series I write for Fighting Fantazine on DIY gamebook adventures.
• Finally, DestinyQuest the review is nearly done!

Onwards and upwards, away from the floods...

Fabled Lands Role-Playing Game (Part 3)

Returning to our heroes Shagar and Jarna, we find them on a mission to slay the ratmen of the sewers of Yellowport. They stand before an abandoned well in West Port, the poor quarter of the city. Apparently, the well is a gateway to the sewers below, but there is no ladder or other means of descent. Shagar ties his rope to a crossbeam and tests it for strength and secureness. It seems sound, so, with him leading the way, they clamber down the rope and into the depths...

[Climbing down into the sewers requires a Thievery roll at Difficulty 9, plus 2 for using rope. Shagar rolls 7 plus 1 for Thievery and 2 for the rope equals 10, which beats the Difficulty of 9. He makes it to the bottom of the well unscathed. Jarna rolls 7, plus 7 for Thievery and 2 for the rope for a total of 16. She clambers down the rope a good deal quicker and more dextrously than her comrade]

'Show off!' says Shagar, on seeing her rapid descent. They find themselves in a square chamber almost knee-deep in indescribable refuse that gives off an appalling stench. There are four exits, though only the northern one looks big enough for them to venture into. Jarna lights her lantern, and also pulls out a parchment and a stick of charcoal. Shagar readies his sword and shield, and they head north, into a maze of passageways, stopping often to map the various corridors that peel off and away into the darkness. There is the steady drip of water from above and the occasional skittering of rats, but little else in the way of noise...

Sometime later they are advancing cautiously down a damp tunnel festooned with cobwebs. Jarna has stashed her map in her belt and carries her wand in her other hand. The cobwebs begin to get thicker and thicker, and they bump into the husk-like corpse of a ratman, shrouded in webs and hanging suspended from the ceiling. 'I don't like this one bit,' mutters Shagar as they both hear the sound of something moving towards them through the webs. 'Get ready!' Suddenly the biggest spider either of them had ever seen skitters towards them, envenomed fans gleaming in the lanternlight!


By Russ Nicholson (from Cities of Gold and Glory)

 [Combat begins! Strike orders are rolled: Shagar 8, Jarna 10, and the Giant Spider 7. Jarna goes first. She has 2 Action Points and uses 1 to Cast Pacify. This has a Difficulty of 11. Jarna rolls 9 plus Magic 7 and 1 for her wand, for a total of 17. The spider immediately stops attacking and remains quiet. Shagar decides to squeeze past it and check its lair. He spends 1 Action Point moving into the spider's lair and another searching through the remains of its victims. The spider does nothing for its turn, and will continue to do nothing for five more turns or unless attacked. The first Combat Round has ended.

Jarna continues watching over the spider while Shagar searches. The Difficulty of the search is set to 10. Shagar rolls 7 plus 4 for his Scouting, and succeeds! He finds a bag with eighty Shards, and a shortsword and shield of excellent manufacture and untarnished by being in the sewers. For the third Combat Round he gathers up the loot, and goes back to Jarna. There is a brief debate about whether they should kill the spider, but in the end they decide to leave this part of the sewers. The Giant Spider, still Pacified, watches them go with glittering eyes...]

From this brief example of play we can see that the Fabled Lands Roleplaying Game is a fast and action-packed experience. Things happen quickly, thanks largely to the simplicity of the core Difficulty test mechanic, as taken from the gamebooks themselves. At the same time, there are plenty of customizable options for character generations, as with Jarna above, who can get immediately involved in the action. I may be biased, but I think it's a great game in its own right, as well as a much-needed addition to the Fabled Lands world!

This finishes this short series of reviews, though I'll likely be returning to talk about the Fabled Lands RPG from time to time, and possibly continuing the further adventures of Shagar and Jarna...

You can purchase the Fabled Lands RPG here, and find out more here.

Why I Hate Studying

I hate studying and the best ever articulation as to why the whole process of studying is a painful waste of both time and brain cells can be found in the first ever Red Dwarf novel:

[Rimmer] found the process of revising so gruellingly unpleasant, so galling, so noxious, that, like most people faced with tasks they find hateful, he devised more and more elaborate ways of not doing it in a 'doing it' kind of way.

In fact, it was now possible for Rimmer to revise solidly for three months and not learn anything at all.

The first week of study, he would always devote to the construction of a revision timetable. At school Rimmer was always at his happiest colouring in geography maps: under his loving hand, the ice-fields of Europa would be shaded a delicate blue, the subterranean silica deposits of Ganymede would be rendered, centimetre by painstaking centimetre, a bright and powerful yellow, and the regions of frozen methane on Pluto slowly became a luscious, inviting green. Up until the age of thirteen, he was constantly head of the class in geography. After this point, it became necessary to know and understand the subject, and Rimmer's marks plunged to the murky depths of 'F' for fail.

He brought his love of cartography to the making of revision timetables. Weeks of patient effort would be spent planning, designing and creating a revision schedule which, when finished, were minor works of art.

Every hour of every day was subdivided into different study periods, each labelled in his lovely, tiny copperplate hand; then painted over in watercolours, a different colour for each subject, the colours gradually becoming bolder and more urgent shades as the exam time approached. The effect was if a myriad tiny rainbows had splintered and sprinkled across the poster-sized sheet of creamwove card.

The only problem was this: because the timetables often took seven or eight weeks, and sometimes more, to complete, by the time Rimmer had finished them the exam was almost on him. He'd then have to cram three months of astronavigation revision into a single week. Gripped by an almost deranging panic, he'd then decide to sacrifice the first two days of that final week to the making of another timetable. This time for someone who had to pack three months of revision into five days.

Because five days now had to accomodate three months' work, the first thing that had to go was sleep. To prepare for an unrelenting twenty-four hours a day sleep-free schedule, Rimmer would spend the whole of the first remaining day in bed - to be extra, ultra fresh, so he would be able to squeeze three whole months of revision into four short days.

Within an hour of getting up the next morning, he would feel explicably exhausted, and start early on his supply of Go-Double-Plus caffeine tablets. By lunchtime he'd overdose, and have to make the journey down to the ship's medical unit for a sedative to help him calm down. The sedative usually sent him off to sleep, and he'd wake up the following morning with only three days left, and an anxiety that was so crippling he could scarcely move. A month of revision to be crammed into each day.

At this point he would start smoking. A lifelong non-smoker, he'd become a forty-a-day man. He'd spend the whole day pacing up and down his room, smoking three or four cigarettes at a time, stopping occasionally to stare at the titles in his bookcase, not knowing which one to read first, and popping twice the recommended dosage of dog-worming tablets, which he erroneously believed to contain amphetamine.

Realizing he was getting nowhere, he'd try to get rid of his soul-bending tension by treating himself to an evening in one of Red Dwarf's quieter bars. There he would sit, in the plastic oak-beamed 'Happy Astro' pub, nursing a small beer, grimly trying to be light-hearted and totally relaxed. Two small beers and three hours of stomach-knotting relaxation later, he would go back to his bunk and spend half the night awake, praying to a God he didn't believe in for a miracle that couldn't happen.

Two days to go, and ravaged by the combination of anxiety, nicotine, caffeine tablets, alcohol he wasn't used to, dog-worming pills, and overall exhaustion, he would sleep in till mid-afternoon.

After a long scream, he would rationalize that the day was a total write-off, and the rest of the afternoon would be spent shopping for the three best alarm clocks money could buy. This would often take five or six hours, and he would arrive back at his sleeping quarters exhausted, but knowing he was fully prepared for the final day's revision before his exam.

Waking at four-thirty in the morning, after exercising, showering and breakfasting, he would sit down to prepare a final, final revision timetable, which would condense three months of revision into twelve short hours. This done, he would give up and go back to bed. Maybe he didn't know a single thing about astronavigation, but at least he'd be fresh for the exam the next day.

Which is why Rimmer failed exams. (Grant & Naylor, 1989, pp. 63-65)

I don't do anything like this for my own studies but it never fails to amuse. Happy revising!

References

Grant, R., & Naylor, D. (1989). Red Dwarf: Infinity welcomes careful drivers. London: Penguin.


  

Lost in Bangkok...

Apologies for the complete lack of updates but I've been totally snowed under flooded (via the Bangkok monsoon), with real-life tedium like work and study, and much more fun stuff like trying to get my entry in for Wayne Densley's 2011 Windhammer Prize for Short Gamebook Fiction. 

There's eight entries this year in Wayne's competition, which is the most in its four year history, and they all look very interesting! I plan on talking a bit more about them later, particularly once the entries are published online, but for now it's good to see some familiar faces among the entrants, such as 2010 Windhammer Prize Winner Stuart Lloyd, two-time Merit Award winner (and author of GA4 Revenant Rising) Kieran Coghlan, Merit Award winner and Fighting Fan-tales writer Zachary Carango, and regular Fighting Fantasy Project guestbook contributor Dark. A strong field indeed!

Two other things I need to get done ASAP and hopefully in the next week or two, are:

• Finish off my review on the Fabled Lands Roleplaying Game.
• Finally get a review up on Michael Ward's first DestinyQuest book!

Until then!

Fabled Lands Role-Playing Game (Part 2)

Returning to the Fabled Lands Role-playing Game, and a summary of our newly-created character:

Shagar of Sokara (30yo Male 1st Rank Warrior)

Charisma: 4 
Combat: 5
Intelligence: 3
Magic: 1
Muscle: 4
Sanctity: 2
Scouting: 4
Thievery: 1

Stamina: 11

Armour and Weapons: Sword (Combat +2), Shield (Defence +1) and Chain mail armour (Defence +3)

Other Gear: Dagger (Combat +0) in boot, Lantern, Rope, Water flask

Money: 165 Shards

Powers: Blademaster, Lore (Warfare)

Additional Notes: Shagar is a pox-scarred lesser noble of Sokara whose family has fallen upon hard times following the overthrow of King Corin VII by General Grieve Marlock. He has become a hiresword and mercenary as a result, and his large frame and mop of unruly ginger hair are a common sight in dingy taverns and on corpse-strewn battlefields across eastern Harkuna. A helpful companion to his friends in need, Shagar is also prone to keeping secrets and not entirely trustworthy. But then again, who can you trust in these perilous times?

Shagar's updated profile above includes new errata allowing him to start with 1000 Shards to spend, plus his 100 Shards for being a Noble. This manifests as an upgrade from Leather to Chain mail armour, plus an extra Dagger in his boot.

I'm not entirely convinced of Shagar's ability to brave the dangers of the Fabled Lands alone, so I create a partner in crime for him, as below:

Jarna Jewelspider (24yo Female 1st Rank Mage)

Charisma: 5
Combat: 2
Intelligence: 4
Magic: 7
Muscle: 2
Sanctity: 1
Scouting: 3
Thievery: 7

Stamina: 10

Armour and Weapons: Staff (Combat +1), Dagger (Combat +0)

Other Gear: Potion of Healing, Amber Wand (Magic +1), Lantern, Water Flask, Parchment 

Money: 24 Shards, 2 Pares

Powers: Sorcery (Enchantment), Craft (Magic)

Additional Notes: Jarna was discovered as a baby, bobbing up and down in a crib floating on the waters of the Grimm River estuary. Her elfin frame, silver hair and sparkling green eyes have led some to suspect she may be a changeling from the faerie shee of the Curstmoor. However, Jarna prefers cities to rustic sylvan settings, and has arrived in Yellowport intent on seeing if the rumours of ancient Uttakin ruins beneath the city are true. Her second chosen name refers to the intricate inscriptions carved into her amber wand. Jarna is a brave companion, but an impulsive one...

In the final part of this series we'll catch up with our heroes as they explore the Lair of the Ratmen! Stay tuned for mayhem!

"Guildmaster Vernon is surprisingly eager to see you. He is a hugely fat and bejewelled merchant, and he tells you that a group of ratmen have made a base in the sewers beneath the city. They come out at night to raid the warehouses and homes of the merchants of Yellowport..."