Gamebook store

Tuesday 30 October 2018

Fright Tonight


Fright Tonight is an interactive audio drama that I've written for Amazon Echo. It's pretty ground-breaking, too, even if I have to say it myself. I needed a model of interactivity that would allow the listener to influence the characters in the story while still being surprised by what happens. So the way I've done that is --

No, I can't just tell you. You have to play it for yourself. Trust me when I say that Fright Tonight is much more than a game. It's a compelling and completely innovative form of audio entertainment which is destined to be as talked-about as Orson Welles's 1938 Halloween broadcast of War of the Worlds, only this time without the traffic jams and the shot-up water towers.
Experience an interactive ghost story set in Heskill Hall, England's most haunted stately home, where a great tragedy took place decades ago. Now the cynical radio host of the niche horror show “Fright Tonight” might just get the show of his life, as the crew gets ready to record their live Halloween special at nightfall in the deserted manor house...
Oh, and it's free too. Just dim the lights (easy if you have your Echo hooked up) and say, "Alexa, start Fright Tonight."

There are already some fun adventure games for Alexa -- such as The Magic Door, which is effectively an audio walking sim -- but Fright Tonight is nothing like that.. The style of interaction doesn’t require the listener to be a “game player” as such, meaning that they can be gripped by the narrative. I admire The Magic Door, but it’s the equivalent of a ghost train ride at a funfair, whereas Fright Tonight is genuine interactive drama. The developers are Mythmaker Media. Remember the name, as I'm hoping to do a whole lot more projects with them.

Who is the target audience? An interesting question, that, whenever you attempt something new. The appeal of something like Fright Tonight is certainly not limited to readers of Choose Your Own Adventure or to people who’d play a traditional adventure or CRPG videogame. While I’m sure I’ll pick up lots of listeners/players who would play, say, Layers of Fear or >observer_ , I'm aiming to appeal to lean-back audiences who just like a good scary story. So I see the typical audience being the entire family, from kids up to grandparents, and including lots of people who would never normally play a game.

Who knows, this could be the big comeback for audio drama. I hope so. As my dad always used to say, the great thing about radio is the pictures are better.

Friday 19 October 2018

By the light of the night it'll all seem all right

A few weeks ago I got a call from Amazon to talk about the Halloween releases for Alexa. They’d seen my Frankenstein app and wondered if it could be turned into an interactive audio story.

I’d already talked to a few audiobook companies about that. Frankenstein is tailor-made for audio. It’s narrated by Victor Frankenstein, whose confidant and advisor you are, and written “to the moment” (ie in the present continuous tense). And I’ve been banging on about audio adventure games since I worked at Eidos in the mid-90s. So Amazon’s suggestion was perfect, except…

It’s over 150,000 words. That’s about twenty hours of audio. I’d have to edit all the text, it would need to be cast, recorded, have sound effects added, coded – and all that within five weeks, assuming one month was enough for testing.

So naturally I said I’d do it. Not only that, I’d recently talked to a company called Mythmaker Media about working on an interactive audio project, so how about hooking them in?

“We already have a developer in mind for Frankenstein,” the Amazon guy said, “but why don’t I talk to Mythmaker anyway? Maybe there’s another project you can do with them.”

A few days later, that one got the green light too. Now, as well as editing Frankenstein, I had to write an interactive audio drama from scratch. Only seven thousand words, but it had to be scary (Halloween, remember) and it had be a completely innovative model of interactive storytelling. (Otherwise why do it?)

Skype chirruped again. “What about your gamebook Crypt of the Vampire? That could be an Alexa app, couldn’t it? Can you get that ready for Halloween?”

I said yes on the basis that you can’t have too many irons in the fire; something always goes wrong. And a few days later the Frankenstein developer, having run the numbers for actors’ fees and studio time, asked if it would work with synthesized speech.

“Not really. Victor has to come across as impassioned, driven, stressed, increasingly desperate… But look, the story is in six parts. The second part is different from the others. It’s the monster’s story told in second person, so you are the monster. That might just work with synthesized speech. And it’s just thirty thousand words, so I’d have time to edit it and add markup. Pauses, interjections, that kind of thing.”

They lost interest. Not to worry, as I still had the drama with Mythmaker Media (that’s called “Fright Tonight”) and the gamebook, by now retitled “The Vampire’s Lair” because it’s snappier. Or bitier.


For The Vampire’s Lair I’ve teamed up with a programmer called Kevin Glick. We decided to strip out all the game-heavy mechanics: hit points, skill rolls, things like that. It’s audio, after all, though in fact there’s a Fire Tablet option with some toothsome graphics by Leo Hartas. The way it works now, you play until you die, and you can then either buy another life and keep going, or you can restart from the beginning. (And, yes, of course it’s possible to play right through to the end without having to buy a single life.)

So I hauled out a copy of Crypt of the Vampire, my first ever gamebook from way back in 1984, and embarked on what I thought would be a simple editing job. But no plan survives contact with the enemy, as they say, the enemy in this case being reality. Too much of Crypt was a dungeon bash when what Kevin and I needed was a haunted house adventure. Too many encounters depended on dice rolls. All of that needed to be rewritten. Also, it needed to be scary. Fun-scary, you understand, like pumpkin lanterns and spray-can cobwebs. The orcs had to go.

Luckily I wrote “Fright Tonight” first, because plunging into the flowchart for Crypt and completely rewriting about half of the book would have burned out my creative psyche for weeks. But I got it done, and the result should be soon available on Amazon as an Alexa Skill. (Yeah, don’t blame me; that’s what they call them.) Just say, “Alexa, enter The Vampire’s Lair,” and get ready for some agreeable chills.

Friday 12 October 2018

Jackanory for gamers



It's strange to find yourself a fan of something that's based on your own work, but I'm completely addicted to Guy Sclanders' gripping weekly playthroughs of Fabled Lands.

It's not just self-indulgence; the bits I enjoy most are Guy's unexpected characterizations (Sean Connery as Estragon the wizard, for instance) and his hilarious asides. Every show has several laugh-out-loud moments, which is more than you can say for a lot of TV comedy these days.

If you haven't yet had the pleasure, start from the beginning and be prepared to lose a few evenings to unbridled fun. Some of the episodes can be hard to find on YouTube, so here are the links:
And these bonus episodes, which were originally run live with the audience making the decisions (and, not always so successfully, rolling the dice...)

And how about that interactive adventure sheet by Michiel Helvensteijn, incorporating Anton Natarov's nifty online dice-rolling app?

Friday 5 October 2018

“The Climate of a Foreign Logic” (scenario)



If you tried out last year's Victorian roleplaying scenario “Murder Your Darlings” then you might like to give this much simpler and more traditional adventure a go. It’s also set  in Oxford but a few years earlier, in 1884. Incidentally, in our campaign there is no magic as such, as it’s a science-fictional universe which has room for Cthulhu, time travel and even Victor Frankenstein, but not sorcery. All the same, psionic abilities are real (if rare) and are usually accepted as magic by those who possess them.

Teddy Trittfield has recently gone up to Magdalen College, Oxford, to read Literae Humaniores. Teddy has always been a dutiful child and a hard worker, but in his first term he has not been in touch with his parents and reports suggest that his studies are slipping. His mother (who could be one of the player-characters) is worried that Teddy is neglecting his studies, running up some whopping debts, and falling under the spell of some pretty unsavoury types.

On investigation, it soon turns out Teddy has fallen in with a group of friends who have a dining club called the Procrusteans. They are:
  • James Orpington-Soames (Christ Church, English)
  • The Hon Reginald Wincanton (Christ Church, History)
  • Count Konradin (“Konnie”) von Hegel und Vasserkind (Magdalen, postgrad Music)
  • Basil Hinge (Keble, Chemistry)
The Procrusteans at Christ Church are in the circle of the senior History tutor, Sir Nicholas Tollens, who is said to be a member of a club called the Five-Sided Table (motto: Tuta petant alii – “let others seek security”) itself a remnant of the once-notorious Hell Fire Club.

Sir Nicholas has a fellow Five-Sider staying with him, the Spanish spiritualist Jose Lunares.

Sir Nicholas’s coachman is Jollyback and his valet is Chifton. They have some handy skills and can find a half dozen ruffians if needed.
If the player-characters visit Telbeck & Sons in the High Street, who supply hunting equipment to Sir Nicholas, then a bribe of a few pounds will reveal that Sir Nicholas has his bullets engraved with a special symbol. An Occultism roll identifies this as a Satanic rune.

They might also want to buy some firearms of their own:

If the characters search Teddy’s room they will find a burnt scrap of paper in the hearth with part of the Lord’s Prayer written backwards.

Other notable NPCs
The President of Magdalen is Dr Frederick Bulley (73 years old, distinguished, tall, white-haired; quite infirm now).
Teddy’s tutor at Magdalen is Dr William Cove.
The Senior Dean of Arts is Dr Waverly Bamfield.
The Dean of Divinity is the Rev Dr John Joyce.
The Head Porter is Dannock.
The SCR Butler is Carndyce.

What’s going on
Lt-General Augustus Pitt Rivers is relocating his famous collection of obscure ethnographic artefacts to the University Museum. The majority of the collection will not be moved until an new annexe is built to the Musuem in two years’ time, but a few items are already on display. Sir Nicholas and Jose Lunares have a plan to break in, get the mask of Saaga the Devil Doctor, and perform a ritual that will make them both immortal.

To complete the ritual, they intend to sacrifice Teddy, whom the Procrusteans have had doing a bunch of initiation tasks that are actually components of an old spell. So far he's completed the first two of these. The recital of the Lord's Prayer will take place on the final day of Michaelmas term:
  • Taking the sacrament while wearing an inverted crucifix
  • Climbing the Martyrs’ Memorial to put kindling around their feet
  • Reciting the Lord’s Prayer backwards on Advent Sunday
Teddy is important to the ritual because he has some Haida blood – his great-great-grandfather had a child by a native woman in British Columbia in the 1770s. The ritual is actually irrelevant, as is Teddy’s ancestry, but Lunares and the others believe these to be important components of a spell. The truth (at least in our campaign) is that it is all a psionic effect and the mask and Satanic elements are just window-dressing.

“Spells” (psionic effects) to which Lunares has access:

  • To enrage dogs and turn them upon their masters.
  • To call a fog: 10 yards visibility in which Lunares has a lantern that shines clearly (a mental effect, but one that covers a very wide area).
  • To cause people to become drowsy (WL roll) or, if asleep, to remain so.
  • To incite paranoia (EQ or argue with friends, to the death if EQ failed again).
  • To foresee elements of the future by means of automatic writing.

What the players might do to stymie the ritual:

  • Prevent Teddy being abducted. The Five-Siders will use Basil Hinge instead. The ritual can still go ahead but less successfully.
  • Prevent Teddy doing the third task. The ritual can still go ahead but less successfully.
  • Save Teddy before the sacrifice. The ritual will feed off Lunares’s own essence.

Fully successful ritual:
Both Sir Nicholas and Jose Lunares become immortals. Saaga’s spirit (actually an aspect of Lunares’s own personality) “awakens” in the mask which will float in the air.

Less successful ritual:
Saaga’s spirit (see above) will be available for the Five-Siders to consult and get a “spell” from once each new moon.

Using Lunares’s own essence:
Lunares dies horribly and Sir Nicholas, driven quite mad, insists that he is the reincarnated Saaga.


Background: the year is 1884
The British prime minister is William Gladstone
The American president is Chester A Arthur
The Poet Laureate is Lord Tennyson (until this year just plain Alfred Tennyson)

What you might be talking about:

The electric street lighting starting to appear in London
The first automobiles (early models reaching 10 mph)
Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show now touring the USA
The eruption of Krakatoa last year (still said to be affecting the weather)
The ongoing siege of Khartoum by the Mad Mahdi
The invention of the machine gun (not yet in production)
The opening of the first Underground stations (parts of the Metropolitan & District lines)
The first commercially available fountain pens (1884’s iPod?)
Scotland Yard’s dismissal of the concept of fingerprinting identification
The patenting of linotype earlier this year
Construction of the Cresta Run
Laying of the cornerstone of the Statue of Liberty
The architecture of Gaudi
The banking crisis that is threatening an economic depression
The terrorist attack by the Irish Republican Brigade on Scotland Yard

What you might be reading:

Stevenson (Treasure Island)
Twain (Huckleberry Finn)
Edwin Abbott Abbott (Flatland)
Tolstoy (The Death of Ivan Ilyich)
Das Kapital volume two in early pre-publication pamphlet form
Works by Wilkie Collins, Ambrose Bierce, Jules Verne, Mrs Oliphant, Henry James

Where you might be seen of an evening:

Plays by Oscar Wilde (just starting his career) and Ibsen
Operas by Gilbert & Sullivan (at the height of their success) or Puccini
Concert works by Bruckner and Wolf

What you might be whistling:

“Oh my darling Clementine”

Who you might know:

George Bernard Shaw, 28 years old, unsuccessful novelist (a Fabian)
Oscar Wilde, 30 years old
Richard Burton, explorer, 63 years old but mysteriously left London 12 years ago for Trieste
Lewis Carroll, 52 years old, still resident at Christ Church but no longer teaching
Richard D’Oyly Carte, impresario, 40 years old
Henry Irving, actor, 46 years old.
Sir William Kelvin, scientist, 60 years old
Rudyard Kipling, journalist, 19 years old
Arthur Machen, editor and private tutor, 21 years old
Robert Louis Stevenson, author, 34 years old
Bram Stoker, literary critic, 39 years old
Ellen Terry, actress, 37 years old
Beatrice Potter, sociologist and Fabian, 26 years old
Charles Booth, sociologist, 44 years old, currently compiling London Labour & the London Poor
Lieutenant-General Augustus Pitt Rivers, ethnologist and collector, 57 years old
Thomas Neumark-Jones, occultist, 43 years old

Naturally these or other prominent figures would need to be paid for as Contacts.


WEALTH

Average                      -10 points
You have a job and are dependent on it for living expenses. Income £100 a year.

Comfortable               no points
You have lodgings in a respectable part of town (if that’s where you want to be) and income of £200 a year.

Wealthy                      10 points
You have a townhouse or pleasant home out-of-town and the use of your club. Income £400 a year.

Very Wealthy             20 points
You have a country estate and a townhouse, each with its own staff, plus a coachman and valet who travel with you. Income £1000 a year.



You can live quite well on £400 a year (roughly £60,000 in today’s terms). 

Adventure seed 

The following incident has nothing to do with this scenario, but is a real newspaper report from 1884 that might provide the seed for a follow-up adventure:


Aftermath

Lastly a few notes about how it panned out in our game. Lord Eidolon (Tim Savin) opened the luggage of one of the other characters, Teddy's father, and was affected by a paranoia rune left there by Lunares. This was a powerful hypnotic influence that caused him to distrust the others, which of course soon led to nobody trusting anybody very much. Sensing trouble, Henry Morton Stanley (Paul Gilham) moved from the Randolph Hotel to the Eastgate. That saved him when Eidolon burst into the Randolph lounge and opened fire with a shotgun, crippling a couple of characters before leaping through the window and disappearing into the fog. A city-wide manhunt ensued. The others learned that Eidolon could be cured by burning the rune and giving him the ashes to drink mixed in wine, but that if he failed to do so by midnight the paranoia would be permanent. (Merely a matter of belief, of course, not real magic, but it was the only way to break the hypnotic suggestion.) There seemed little hope of catching him before midnight, or of convincing the police to let them in with a goblet of wine if he was apprehended. As for the fate of Eidolon himself, my write-up of the session ends with this note of finality: "Even his dog now fears him."