Audio Game Book

[FNH]

I'm working with a friend on a "Game Book" along the lines of the Fighting Fantasy or Choose Your Own Adventure type of thing.

My friend suggested it might be fun to turn it into an audio project.

Does anyone have any experience of an Audio-Game-Book, or any suggestions for creating one?

[Joern]

Funny that you mention it: I fooled around over the weekend with the same idea.

I recorded some "parts" from a Choose Your Own Adventure book and linked the "decisions" between them via HTML.
Can't publish it, of course, since it's not a public domain book, but it got me hooked on the idea on writing one myself.

I really think it's a great idea!

[sjmarky]

Sounds interesting. Can you give a little ore info about what it might be, structure, etc.? Sounds a little bit like a visual novel, which I haven't done but know a bit about.

[Timothy Ferguson]

I'm working with a friend on a "Game Book" along the lines of the Fighting Fantasy or Choose Your Own Adventure type of thing.

My friend suggested it might be fun to turn it into an audio project.

Does anyone have any experience of an Audio-Game-Book, or any suggestions for creating one?

It seems very simple: just use the track numbers in the place of page numbers.

I have considered it for some of the roleplaying writing I do, but the games I write are too non-linear. Choose your own adventure, with its "Do you do X or Y (but nothing else) suit this quite well.

The very earliest choose-style book was written by some odd French dudes in the 19th century, and has only 6 pages: the point was to show you could say "Choose, then turn to page X" which was considered revolutionary.

[Joern]

The very earliest choose-style book was written by some odd French dudes in the 19th century, and has only 6 pages: the point was to show you could say "Choose, then turn to page X" which was considered revolutionary.

You wouldn't happen to know the title, do you? I would very much like to read that.

Timothy: How far along are you with your game book? Seems like a difficult thing to write...do you map the decisions out early and fill them with text later, or do you make up the decisions as you go along?

[Timothy Ferguson]

The very earliest choose-style book was written by some odd French dudes in the 19th century, and has only 6 pages: the point was to show you could say "Choose, then turn to page X" which was considered revolutionary.

You wouldn't happen to know the title, do you? I would very much like to read that.

Timothy: How far along are you with your game book? Seems like a difficult thing to write...do you map the decisions out early and fill them with text later, or do you make up the decisions as you go along?

I'm on a mailing list where I can ask for that title. I'll get back to you.

I don't write game books, per se, I write roleplaying game sourcebooks. The problem with (most) RPG works for doing an audiobook is that the decisions the players have are not as simple as in a Choose Your Own Adventure book. In a Choose your own adventure book, you just say "If you do X, go to track 2, if you do Y, go to track 8". In an RPG, players want more flexibility than that.

I'm not certain of the writing style, but I'd suggest that its easier to do the correct decision line first, and then extrapolate out the failing lines. Warlock of Firetop Mountain (the first Fighting Fantasy gamebook) was written, and submitted, but then reworked for 6 months to make it more complex, so I preume the designed the core story, and then went back and gave it side branches. The play instruction in FF was always "take the less risky path" so I'm guessing they wrote that story first.

There are some books which have multiple victorious paths. The Choose Your Own Adventure book "Mystery of Chimney Rock" for example, can be won on multiple outcomes. Indeed, one of the win paths is only about 4 moves long. In that case, since iuts a horror themed book, I'd suggest its easier to write a heap of spooky endings, and then write the paths to those endings. That;s just how I'd do it, though.

A FF gamebook had 300 chapters, toward the end, so you'll need to check a host is happy with hosting lots of tiny files.

(You'll also need to decide if the book has a dice mechanic, like the FF series, or if its pure choice, like Give Yourself Goosebumps, Choose Your Own Adventure, or Decide Your Destiny.)

[Joern]

Since I wrote my first reply to this thread, I actually wrote down a couple of paragraphs for a Choose Your Own Adventure type of story I plan to make into an audio book game.

I work as a web developer, so I was thinking about incorporating some more complex game mechanics (like an inventory or a dice system or whatever), but I really like the basic approach of the CYOA books.

As for writing it, I found it to be quite cool to just write until I see the possibility to make the "player" choose, than decide on a path myself and write this one next, leaving a note to complete the other branch later.
This way I can always open my project and continue writing the branch that I feel most like doing.

The problem with the 300 different audio files could turn out to be a problem, but most half-decent hosts should be able to handle it quite fine.
You could always fall bock on a third-party service like Dropbox, if the need arises.

Cheers,
Jörn

[Timothy Ferguson]

Joern, that first book was called "Un Conte A Votre Facon".

More information a dozen slides into this, or you can goodle it and play a web page version.

http://www.slideshare.net/JamesWallis/a-thing-of-beauty-is-a-stout-green-toy-presentation