We've talked here before about whether gamebooks need dice, and what place there is for randomness in interactive stories. Paweł and I thought a lot about this for our upcoming Cthulhu gamebook, Whispers Beyond The Stars, and here we are talking about it. I'll just add there's a week to go on the crowdfunding campaign for the book, and the advantage of being an early backer is you can reserve a full-colour hardcover edition rather than waiting for the paperback.
Why need dice when Cthulhu can roll them for you?
ReplyDeleteWhat could possibly go wrong?
DeleteI think you're spot on, Dave - in a TTRPG, the dice are interesting because they give you something to react to, they make the outcome unpredictable. A book can't really react to that.
ReplyDeleteI do wonder how many people actually use the dice in gamebooks, rather than just using their preferred outcome.
Making it about choices is much more interesting. I guess part of the problem is that you need to make sure those choices have distinct outcomes, rather than just reskinning same one (you can talk your way past the guard if you chose Charisma; intimidate him if you chose Strength; sneak past him if you chose Stealth - they all end up in the same place). How do you make those moment-by-moment choices have interesting consequences?
How do you allow the player/reader to weigh up the potential outcomes of their choices before choosing?
That also opens up the possibility of some really challenging choices, Ray. In the Critical IF books, everything's based on skills, so if you have Roguery you'll probably opt to try sneaking past, if you have Close Combat you'll fight the guard, and so on. But sometimes the situation might work against your best skills -- maybe it's a very well-lit area with lots of security cameras -- so you have to fall back on an approach you're not ideally suited for. And then the choices you make really become crucial.
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