Your opinions

[NEON725]

I'm looking for opinions on what is the best way to do my story.

To do this I want to know how many of you like to do things like writing down stats on a piece of paper, then answering prompts on these numbers later.

I would also like to know your opinion on questions like "Did you get the power cell from the military bot earlier?"

[NEON725]

...

Game book... I like that title.

Both of those points make perfect sense, but there's not much fun in reading your own book. You already know what the outcomes are for every choice that's made, so where's the fun?

I don't know about the rest of you, but I write books for the readers, so I need to know their opinion.

Oh, and speaking of the godmode players, I plan to make deathtraps for them.

"You rolled a seven? Really? Liar..." and the gigantic hand of god comes down and smushes you like a bug. - excerpt from my book.

[NEON725]

I thought of that, but only the intelligent people will attempt it. It will weed out the newbies at least. After they attempt this, I will simply lead them on a wild goose chase that extends past 256 choices, which disables the back button.

Then I will kill them. And laugh.

[apotheosis]

I managed to do escape artist without questions, at least the first three difficulty levels. It just takes a lot of patience.

[End Master]

Classic story is best for here, mainly because that’s the way this site was designed. The writing comes first before any “gamelike” elements. Nice and simple.

Stories with no stats, but just occasional questions are sort of alright and it’s probably the easiest way to add a little complexity to the story. Perhaps even a simple asking of rolling a dice or flipping a coin to make a choice is alright as well.

If you’re going for stats/RPG then most people are probably just going to God Mode it and assume they defeated the monsters, passed the tests, etc. by moving on ahead to the story. Of course you wouldn’t really know if peeps are cheating. Who knows maybe some do take the time and play it the right way. The important thing to remember is you still should have some sort of story there, which makes this way the most time consuming because you’re concentrating on the writing AND the “mechanics.”

If you want automated things that keep track of stuff like inventory/stats/etc…well you’d have to go to our hated enemi…I mean our fine associates at CYS. They got an advanced editor set up for that sort of thing.

[Usoki]

I don't even need to use the back button- I prefer to open multiple tabs.

And, as far as...how did you put it, "questions" go... I hate asking the reader- of course they're going to lie. They're going to pick the option that suits them best, so there really isn't a point in asking. You can try and ignore that, or you can override it all together.

Instead of asking "Do you still have the key?", the story just knows whether or not you have them. I create duplicate rooms, one group of rooms where you have the key, and an identical group of rooms where you don't have the key. I find that it works better that way.

[Hi! My name is: Katie]

The technique you use isn't anywhere near as important as the quality of the story. Ask questions, include stats, etc. Just make it a good story. Personally when I read a story I don't keep track of any numbers.

Currently where you appear on the lists is determined by your rating. Lots of people rate things around here based on random personal ideals. If it is too hard, or you attempt to punish or discourage others from reading it. It is likely they will punish in turn you with a poor rating which may not reflect the true quality of your work.

Good luck!
~Katie

[End Master]

What kind of story is this going to be anyway? Sci Fi? Fantasy?

[donteatpoop]

I don't like stats, especially if I have to keep track of them. But I'll still read what you write and make choices at random if it's a 'roll the die' situation. Good luck with it.

[Locke]

Game-type stories that require written-down stats are great if you like that sort of thing (I don't, personally) but the majority of your audience here at IS are not gamers. CYS is a similar site with more of a gamer audience, and better tools to support game story design; work in that genre will likely go over better there. As far as your questions go ("Did you retrieve the power cell?" etc) they're fine if the story as a whole is of decent quality. If it isn't, I suppose they won't make much difference anyway. If you're interested in having a truly streamlined and well-crafted story, though (or if you just want to prevent "cheating") you can avoid the questions altogether. Simply make the story diverge around where you'd pick up the power cell. In one branch of the story, your choices lead you to pick it up; in the other, they do not. Events in each branch will thus follow naturally and be entirely contained within the story, without any "artificial" input from the reader disrupting the immersive experience. This is a lot of extra work, but worth it in my opinion.