treave
Arcane
- Joined
- Jul 6, 2008
- Messages
- 11,370
Bringing over some concepts I've been thinking about for experimenting with CYOAs here:
1. Rewind:
Stars a refined version of the rewind mechanism I've adopted for the game overs in another LP. You get to vote to repick your choice at every update, but every time you do so, the world turns ever so slightly towards a more insane reality, and at times choices don't turn out the way you expect even with your limited foresight of the future. The setting is undecided, but likely to be a mix of modern-day + some Lovecraftian influence.
2.Generations:
Generation dynamics; we can go the easy way, and have subsequent chapters focusing on the child and grandchild, or we can roll with alternating updates, jumping between each of the generations. Which is quite tricky to pull off with a CYOA for the C&C without massive railroading, and I'd be interested in seeing if anyone has any bright ideas on that part. Setting will probably be a hundred years war of some sort; not the Hundred Years' War, unless there's great demand for that particular setting.
3. Tower:
A dungeon crawl up a mysterious, hundred kilometer high monolith that appeared mysteriously one day in 21st century Earth. More traditional, less gimmickry. What I'm going to do, though, is to generate a party of seven with personalities, skills, ambitions and backstories based on choices. Then we vote for a main, and finally we run the CYOA and see how each character plays off the other. Should a character die, we vote for the next one to be the main, and continue moving through it until we reach the top or the party is wiped.
4. Superhero:
What it says on the cover. Corporate-sponsored, reality TV style. Could be combined with Rewind and still work.
5. Multiplayer:
This idea reverses the Tower concept and places pre-created characters in the hands of multiple players. The characters have been kidnapped and wake up amnesiac in a deserted experimental facility, and have to work together to escape. They find that they have been implanted with some form of technology that allows them uncontrolled telepathy, meaning that whatever they think will be broadcasted to each other. This means choices for each of the characters will all be public, as are the discussions leading up to it. As a group sometimes they will be required to make a single choice together, at other times each will be given separate choices on how to react to a situation, depending on the character they have.
6. Dice-Roll
7. Succession
I plan for this thread to spawn relatively short proof-of-concept CYOAs that can be run by anyone as long as they have an idea and the inclination to write about it. There's nothing stopping anyone from taking (and synthesizing) the ideas that will be listed here and going with a full CYOA of their own if they want to, either, so feel free to contribute your own narrative mechanics.
***
RPGCodex CYOA Round-Robin Index
1. The Adventures of Baron Von Schwartznatter
2. A Murder, Two Degenerates and a Madman
3. Beyond the Call of Duty
4. Word on the Street of the Strangest Things Ever
5. The Maiden Expedition, Without Maidens
1. Rewind:
Stars a refined version of the rewind mechanism I've adopted for the game overs in another LP. You get to vote to repick your choice at every update, but every time you do so, the world turns ever so slightly towards a more insane reality, and at times choices don't turn out the way you expect even with your limited foresight of the future. The setting is undecided, but likely to be a mix of modern-day + some Lovecraftian influence.
2.Generations:
Generation dynamics; we can go the easy way, and have subsequent chapters focusing on the child and grandchild, or we can roll with alternating updates, jumping between each of the generations. Which is quite tricky to pull off with a CYOA for the C&C without massive railroading, and I'd be interested in seeing if anyone has any bright ideas on that part. Setting will probably be a hundred years war of some sort; not the Hundred Years' War, unless there's great demand for that particular setting.
3. Tower:
A dungeon crawl up a mysterious, hundred kilometer high monolith that appeared mysteriously one day in 21st century Earth. More traditional, less gimmickry. What I'm going to do, though, is to generate a party of seven with personalities, skills, ambitions and backstories based on choices. Then we vote for a main, and finally we run the CYOA and see how each character plays off the other. Should a character die, we vote for the next one to be the main, and continue moving through it until we reach the top or the party is wiped.
4. Superhero:
What it says on the cover. Corporate-sponsored, reality TV style. Could be combined with Rewind and still work.
5. Multiplayer:
This idea reverses the Tower concept and places pre-created characters in the hands of multiple players. The characters have been kidnapped and wake up amnesiac in a deserted experimental facility, and have to work together to escape. They find that they have been implanted with some form of technology that allows them uncontrolled telepathy, meaning that whatever they think will be broadcasted to each other. This means choices for each of the characters will all be public, as are the discussions leading up to it. As a group sometimes they will be required to make a single choice together, at other times each will be given separate choices on how to react to a situation, depending on the character they have.
6. Dice-Roll
The Brazilian Slaughter said:Actually, I was thinking of making like a 4chan WH40k quest I saw once - People suggest something and thrown a single dice, say, 20 or 100. I was thinking largest dice wins, except if somebody rolls a 1 or 100 first, which would override the other dice and end in CRITICAL FAILURE or CRITICAL SUCESS. Perhaps some other numbers would get special results, but I need to think on them (in that quest I saw, the special numbers were the numbers of the Chaos Gods, so 66, 77, 88 and 99 gave bonuses from the gods).
7. Succession
Like in those "continue the story" forum games, each update is written by a different author following the previous one and based on the choices voted in it.
I plan for this thread to spawn relatively short proof-of-concept CYOAs that can be run by anyone as long as they have an idea and the inclination to write about it. There's nothing stopping anyone from taking (and synthesizing) the ideas that will be listed here and going with a full CYOA of their own if they want to, either, so feel free to contribute your own narrative mechanics.
***
RPGCodex CYOA Round-Robin Index
1. The Adventures of Baron Von Schwartznatter
2. A Murder, Two Degenerates and a Madman
3. Beyond the Call of Duty
4. Word on the Street of the Strangest Things Ever
5. The Maiden Expedition, Without Maidens