[FinalityCYOA]Orphanmaker Writing

[Ancient History]

So, this is the thread where we argue and hash shit out, and then the Draft thread is where we add completed entries.

Draft Thread
[/edit]

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039
The weakest critter in the place is a scrawny, older human with the slack, greyish skin and thinning hair that suggest chronic malnutrition and disease. He's an easy mark, and no one stops you as you close the distance between the two of you in two long strides; your fist is a blur of movement and he doesn't even have time to register the attack before your punch hits his throat. A moment later, the human is on the floor, and the appraising gazes look at you in a new light - contempt for your rank bullying, but muddled with respect for callousness and ferocity. It will do.

If you bid 4-6, turn to 041. Otherwise, turn to 065.

041
At your feet, the choking wheeze you thought was the human trying to breathe turns into a deathrattle, and you look down to see his head sitting at an obscene angle, like a chicken ready for the pot. You have over-estimated the force in your blow, crushing your victim's trachea and shattering his frail neck bones. As his dying eyes film over, the crowd of fellow prisoners start whispering, all eyes on you.

Turn to 101.

060
The Kobold child lopes through the darkness, crawling into an alley that you would describe as more of a “gap” than a street. If you hadn't seen someone enter, it wouldn't have occurred to you that there could be a path. Refuse has accumulated in drifts like snow, and unsavory vermin crawl about and through the piles. You pick your way across what you are going to generously assume is soil, and do your best to make as little noise as possible. As the Kobold's trail continues, you note that the ceiling becomes lower, and you must stoop to avoid scalp splinters. After several twists and turns, though probably no more than a couple of blocks of linear distance, the alley opens onto something similar to a public square, or perhaps a large room. A rusty pipe protrudes from the ceiling and water drips into a stone box used as a cistern.

The Kobold shifts past the public fountain analog and heads down another alley lined with buildings made of what appears to be driftwood. After just a few paces you arrive at a hole in the wall illuminated by a torch and guarded by a towering ogre. According to a piece of grimy parchment stuck to the wall, you have approached:

The Weasel Holes!
Tonight Only!
Havelok vs. Regdar!
Dire Weasels!
Viscous Dogs!
Brutal Combat!
Free Drink!!
1 Silver Note!!

You're not familiar with the headliners and rather suspect that the poster is missing an “i” but you do hear some kind of commotion and see flickering lights coming from the hole.

If you wish to enter the Weasel Holes, you may pay 1 silver note to the Ogre bouncer and turn to 094.

If you are presently invisible, or wish to cast a spell to become so, you may enter the Weasel Holes for free, and still turn to 094.

If you wish to leave, turn to 099

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086
The young Kobold opens his mouth and lolls his tongue in apparent surprise. “Yip!” he says. “Mister, if you got business with Der'renya, this is too big for little me.” The... child turns to leave, but pants out “Unless you can make it worth my while...?” The child seems prepared to lope away or accept a bribe at a moment's notice.

If you wish to get the information from the Kobold child, pay 3 silver notes or use a Telepathy spell and turn to 082. If you have Etiquette or Barter (or use a Charm spell), the information can be had for 1 silver note.
If you wish to follow the Kobold, and you have Track or cast an Invisibility spell, go 060.

If you allow the Kobold to leave, turn to 099.
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Current Entries:
039 (parent 033)
041 (parent 039)
060 (parent 071)
086 (parent 071)

Entries to be written:
014 (parent 008)
022 (parent 033)
030 (parent 009)
031 (parent 011)
032 (parent 059)
035 (parent 009)
037 (parent 034)
044 (parent 048)
049 (parent 020)
050 (parent 015)
055 (parent 020)
056 (parent 059)
060 (parent 071)
061 (parent 074)
066 (parent 042/074/Special)
069 (parent 033)
077 (parent 83)
086 (parent 071)
091 (parent 059)
099 (parent 071)
111 (parent 078)

Entries already written:
001
002
003
004
005
006
007
008
009
010
011
012
015
016
020
023
033
034
040
042
048
059
071
074
076
078
083

[DSMatticus]

So, I'm really liking Way of the Tiger's skill system. Having "Awesome At ____" tags is cool in a way having a slightly higher skill roll is not, and being able to trust in your "Awesome At ____" tags to give you what's on the packaging (whether that's good or bad for a given situation) is really empowering in a way only throwing dice at things is not. It's also only eight skills, and that seems like an easy number to work in a few times each.

So far, the class system looks like physical dude/magical dude/hybrid dude, and you could totally extend that right into the skills and do 4 physical/4 magical, where the assassin gets 2/1, enchanter gets 1/2, and ranger gets... 1/1 +1 free pick? That makes the ranger feel really samey, and I don't care much for it. Sooo... alternative: everyone picks one from each of the two categories. Asassins and enchanters both get a reserve pick in their preferred category they can resolve at any point during play (a good mercenary always has another trick hidden up his sleeve), but rangers get a free pick from either category, which makes them actually feel like the versatile hybrid they are supposed to represent. It's a little meta, but I think you could sell it.

[Ancient History]

Well, if we have a magic system (which it looks like we will), then each class will also have different spell options. So Ranger gets healing/white magic.

[Username17]

In general, I think you should just succeed at any skill or spell you bought. Rolling a die and losing at a game book is pointless, because the player is just going to flip back to where they just were and try again.

As for spells, they should clearly be in the form of prepared spells that are expended as charges. You select some spells at the beginning (and may get some later on), and you can use them up at points in the story. That really, Scorpion Swamp has about the right idea.

-Username17

[Ancient History]

Okay, so no magic points. Works for me, one less thing to keep track of.

[Whatever]

If we have eight skills, we can divide those into one unique skill for each class, plus five generalist skills. Each class can then give its unique skill, two fixed general skills, and one general skill of your choice (plus different starting gear). Something like this:

Skills:
Poison Foes
Heal Wounds
Dispel Magic
Pick Locks
Follow Tracks
Conceal Self
Persuade Others
Identify Magic

Assassins start with Poison Foes, Pick Locks, and Conceal Self, plus their choice of Follow Tracks, Persuade Others, and Identify Magic.

Rangers start with Heal Wounds, Follow Tracks, and Conceal Self, plus their choice of Pick Locks, Persuade Others, and Identify Magic.

Enchanters start with Dispel Magic, Identify Magic, and Persuade Others, plus their choice of Pick Locks, Follow Tracks, and Conceal Self.


Edit: nine skills would allow each class to have their own pair of generalist skills, plus one of the other four. Not sure if that would improve the replay value, or not.

Also, we might need to change some of those skills if we're also giving people one-use spells (which we probably should do). Dispel Magic and Heal Wounds feel more spell-ish than skill-ish.

[Grek]

So is this going to be a Way of the Tiger style thing with a plot and a branching story tree, or a Fabled Lands style thing where it you can revisit places you've already been and dick around with side-quests indefinitely?

E: Incidentally, I should totally make a Let's Play Fabled Lands thread In The Trenches.

[Ancient History]

Little of both. I think it's useful to have some loop-locations, but we need a forward-moving plot. I don't want to get too hung up in the details of that until we get the skills and mechanics sorted out.

[Grek]

Alright. Mechanics:
30 sounds like a reasonable number for HP. But I think if you're going to have attributes at all, then at a minimum you need Combat Skill, Magic Skill and Stealth Skill.

"1d10, roll Skill or lower" is not a very good base mechanic. I mean, for one it doesn't account for difficulty at all. I strongly recomend going with 1d10+Skill vs. a TN, or even opposed rolls.

Spells can and should be bought with points. Spending X points gets you X uses, and you start with 13 points. A basic spell list could be:
Assassin: Poison Use, Lock Picks, Smoke Bombs, Archery and Sleight of Hand.
Enchanter: Elementalism, Demonology, Telepathy, Illusions and Divination.
Ranger: Healing, Divination, Archery, Animal Lore and Trapping.

I'm not sure that you need or want skills that don't have limited uses.

[Ancient History]

Grek: My only concern about those spells is that they're...well, not spells. They're just Cool Things To Do. More like skills, really.

As far as basic mechanics can go, I'm still open. I like roll d10-check-vs-skill because it is simple and requires only a single die roll. Combat can proceed as I-roll-my-die-to-see-if-I-hit (or escape) and NPC-rolls-its-die-to-see-if-it-hits. But we can do a variable TN (skill + d10 equal or higher).

[Username17]

In terms of skills, I would say that each character should have one fixed skill, and a variable number of optional skills. In addition, characters get a number of spells. This number does not have to be the same for each class, and probably shouldn't be.

So for example, the Ranger and Assassin could have their fixed skill and two general skills, while the Enchanter gets their fixed skill and one general skill. But the Ranger and Assassin get two spells to select, while the enchanter gets five.

So if you wanted, you could actually have each of the skills one time in three play throughs.

-Username17

[Whatever]

Oh, giving the Enchanter fewer skills and more spells makes much more sense. And I guess giving people their choice of all the general skills makes more sense--it allows more variety in per-class replays and lets people try the same approach with multiple characters, if they want.

How many decision points do we get with 400 entries? Skills should matter roughly 2-3x as often as spells (but spells can also just be one-shot skill uses like Invisibility or Charm). It seems like we'd have room for everything, but each decision point will need a lot of branching options if you can use multiple skills/spells on it.

[JigokuBosatsu]

I personally love d10s, but I know Frank's feet will object and there's always the availability problem. Should we consider putting in a "page corner randomizer" or the like, or switch to d6?

[Ancient History]

Well, we can include a random number table which is equivocal to a d10:

[JigokuBosatsu]

It should be reskinned as Vanoiman's Puissant Crystal of Fate or something.

[Username17]

I really honestly don't think we need dice at all. But if we were to have dice, I would suggest rolling 2 or 3 d6s and adding them together.

The advantage of using dice of course is that we can have skills come up repeatedly in a "you get +2 on this roll" or "you don't suffer as much stamina loss" or whatever. Those sorts of things allow for "real differences" without actually telling people that they can't complete the mission because they deviated from the one true path for their skill list.

Anyway: the skills don't have to be "equally broad" or anything, they simply have to have roughly equal opportunity to appear in the narrative as a seed for a branch in the plot. As such, we could literally have "Basket Weaving" as one of the five general skills, and that would be fine as long as there were a couple of basketry challenges available in the game.

So the Assassin skill is probably "Poison Use". Having it lets you bypass some encounters and also allows you to play detective in the Myconid circle. The Ranger skill is "Tracking", and having it lets you identify culprits and go to confrontations with people who have left the scene. The Enchanter skill is probably "Appraise", and having it lets you avoid a couple of traps and get some extra usable magic doohickies during the adventure.

The other five could be literally anything. My suggestion would be:

• Etiquette (gives you some more favorable social encounters).
• Animal Handling (gives you some more favorable encounters involving monstrous beasts).
• Lock Picking (lets you bypass key challenges and some traps).
• Administration (gives you info dumps when interacting with several organizations, such as the Bank).
• Basket Weaving (shows up bizarrely often, as sort of an in-joke thing)

Meanwhile, the spells would be:

• Invisibility
• Charm (duplicates having Etiquette, but is one-use. May also be used to stop some fights and go to a social encounter).
• Heal (gives you back some of your lost Stamina).
• Lightning Bolt (blows up some combat encounters).
• Summon Badger (gives you a pokemon that does various stuff).
• Hold Portal (can be used to stop some guard encounters, and can also make you win against a demon gate and stuff).
• Dread Curse (use it to win certain combats, or use it for hilarious effect at various other parts of the adventure).

We could also put in some other spells that don't get used. Or some other spells that do.

-Username17

[Username17]

dp

[Maxus]

"Hold portal"
">You now have the portal in your hand. What do you do with it?"
"Pocket portal"
">Never know when one of those will be handy."

">The river flows through the lush reeds."
"Weave reed basket"
">A passing merchant is struck by your craftsmanship and offers you 50 gold and the Ten-Sided Ruby of the Salamanders."
"Dread Curse Merchant"
">As he rides off, the Sword of the Dawn Merchant falls out of his donkey's pack."

[Ancient History]

Honestly, I was thinking of only using the die mechanic for combat and random events, with everything else being pass-if-you-have-the-spell-or-skill. I want to avoid a Luck attribute.

[/edit]The alternate option being, of course, not having a die mechanic at all. Combat would thus be longer with different maneuvers resulting in straight success or failure, but we'd eliminate the need for a die. We can still include "Flip a coin" for luck rolls.

[virgil]

My preference is if dice are involved, then it needs an interesting solitaire minigame.

[Shatner]

For random numbers, you might want to steal a page out of Zach Weiner's book, of SMBC comics fame, and print random numbers on the bottom of each page.

Player needs a random number, they flip to a random page. You can even weight the distribution if you want, so that there is only 1 "2" and 1 "12" for every 6 "7"s, if you wanted to emulate rolling 2d6.

No tables. No need for dice, or coins. Just random page and... "5". Done.

[Vebyast]

Ooh, this looks interesting. I'm on board.

I had a few of the Lone Wolf gamebooks and played them pretty well, enough that I could reliably choose squares with better rolls. So I don't think that that's quite "equivalent". But now I'm wondering if it's possible to put together a pencil-and-paper PRNG that's fast enough, small enough, and simple enough to do in your head. Maybe build the game around d2s, d4s, d8s, and d16s and use a linear feedback shift register?

Meanwhile, the spells would be:

I notice that there are more spells that avoid/end combat encounters than there are skills that avoid/end combat encounters. Should that be the case? Spells are limited-use, but flexible; lightning bolt will blow up any encounter you want to use it on. Skills are unlimited-use, but inflexible; you can't use Etiquette except when you can talk to the other party. It probably doesn't matter if encounters are going to be only a very small part of the game, but I don't think I've seen any discussion about that.

[Username17]

For ease of explanation, your "magic" should be a series of potions that you have brewed. That way we have an easy explanation for why you don't get magic back when you rest (no brewing materials at the inn).

So rather than have a lightning bolt spell, you have an "exploding potion" that when you throw at something, explodes. You can also use it to blast a hole in the side of the bank vault.

-Username17

[JigokuBosatsu]

Good ol' Thunder Elixir, works every time.

[Ancient History]

Okay, a rough draft for classes, skills, and spells is now in the first post. Read, discuss, debate, and we'll fix it and then move on.