Following on from the flowchart for Fabled Lands book 8 that we looked at last time, here are the flowcharts for the Vulcanverse series. They're purposely zoomed-out to avoid spoilers, though you might glean some tantalizing clues from the close-up on one codeword in The Pillars of the Sky. The whole series is more than 6000 sections, but if you've got a hankering for an awfully big adventure then choose any of the books and dive on in.
These flowcharts make for some really pretty patterns! I'm curious, what software did you use for these? Is it some proprietary in-house tool, or is it something available to the public? After reading many gamebooks (yours included) and feeling inspired, I've been thinking of trying my hand at writing one of my own, and I've been wondering what kinds of tools established authors typically use these days to keep track of how all the sections link together.
ReplyDeleteI used a tool written to my spec by Claude Fable, but there are lots of gamebook-planning software options out there. (When I'm actually writing the books I use pen and paper. It's only for checking them later on during the editing process that I'd turn my hand-drawn flowcharts into something pretty and functional.)
DeleteI feel like Greek theme is too overdone in gamebooks and board games. Still, I have to comment on how huge this gamebook series is. The blood Sword series already felt epic with 300k words, and had took me months to finish since I like to look at all the possible routes. This feels humongous. Personally though I think the open world setting is better done in gamebook and board game hybrids. Like a few of the games I played such as Sleeping Gods Primeval Peril, Witchbound, Sleeping God's Distant Skies, Legacy of Dragonholt or Lands of Galyzr where you have an open world map and you spend time travelling to locations on the map and then reading from the sections in the book corresponding to the entry on the map. I think this type of open world prevents the player from getting the feeling of being lost. There also seems to be some upcoming board games which is using this format such as the 12 Sins of Heracles, Lands of Evershade and Story of Many. That said, I do prefer Gamebooks better when it comes to more linear storytelling with choices. In the meantime, I am going to go play some of my other boardgame gamebook hybrids, heck I even purchased one recently called Hexplore it Vol 2 with the open world gamebook called Fall of the Ancients. And you can actually play it as a dragon with the expansion. How cool is that? Anyways, I look forward to playing Cthulhu 2050 Whispers Beyond the Stars when it comes out in physical format. :)
DeleteI certainly think the Ancient Greek theme is often done badly in games and other media too. Too often they go by movies they've seen rather than going back to the sources, which are always weirder and stranger than anything Hollywood could dream up. Medieval games suffer from the same problem.
DeleteI hear you about gamebook/boardgame hybrids. That's where Jamie and I got the original inspiration for open-world gamebooks, specifically from Eric Goldberg's Tales of the Arabian Nights. If I ever get around to Shadow King I'm thinking it would work better as a boardgame -- or maybe as a PC game.
Interesting name. Is shadow king about you roleplaying as some dark lord? I love roleplaying as anti heros in video games.
DeleteYou don't play as a dark lord, but you certainly aren't playing a character who could be called a hero. It's a concept I've been thinking about for years -- first as a videogame, later as a TV script, and now as either a gamebook or boardgame or both.
DeleteI see, thanks for sharing. I've heard nothing but amazing things about Claude Fable! The concern I have with the low tech pen & paper approach is what happens if I need to renumber sections later on? Say I decide I'm going to need 400 sections. I could have a list of free sections and just cross them out one by one as I go, and draw out the flowchart by hand. But then I might find out that I really need 600 sections. Could be a pain to re-label and shuffle them all around, plus human error could easily creep in if keeping track by hand. Feels like that's the sort of thing a digital tool could be better at keeping track of, freeing up the author to concentrate on the story and game mechanics rather than the administrative bookkeeping.
ReplyDeleteAs I'm writing I number sections as things like Monoliths-001, Monoliths-002, etc. Then when the book is finished I relabel and randomize. That used to be a bit laborious done by hand, but Claude wrote me a macro in Word that handles it all and also hyperlinks the sections if I want.
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