How to Write a FF Adventure: Part IX

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PART IX

And with the 400-reference standard already set, it was inevitably going to be difficult to judge how much to write. Here the real secret was to write the beginning of the adventure first – say the first three or four encounters – and then move on to the end. After the beginning and end had been written, then the middle could always be expanded or contracted to fit the 400-reference goal. There was another reason I preferred to write the ending at the beginning of the project. The climax had to be the most impressive part of the adventure. This is standard stuff with novels. But if the end was going to be written as the publishers’ deadline approached, there would have been a strong urge to write it quickly just to make the deadline. And that would have been a poor climax to a reader's adventure. So I avoided this by writing the ending at the beginning. If it was going to be necessary to write quickly to meet the deadline, it might as well be something from the middle of the adventure, which many readers would never get to anyway!

Jon: I wrote all of my original Gamebooks by hand, and then re-numbered the paragraphs before typing them up on an old Amstrad word processor as they would appear in print (one of those with the white/cream text on a black screen). For the 'Bloodbones' re-write I used Word and would probably do so again, should the opportunity to write more Gamebooks arise. Devising encounters depends a great deal on the setting and ideas arise from the soup of sources I have absorbed over the years (films, books, history, etc). When I wrote my adventures I was looking to create approximately 20 encounters, covering approximately 20 paragraphs each, hence 400 paragraphs in total. As several readers have commented in the past, my adventures have a habit of making the player visit almost every location to experience the 'cool' encounter I had created. With ten years hindsight I think this is a fair criticism. If I were to write a completely new adventure I would look to change this, a good example is the forthcoming 'Bloodbones'.

HOW DO YOU PLAYTEST THE ADVENTURE?

One of the many challenges you will face as a Gamebook writer is how to overcome the urge to create as many choices as possible in each encounter. With 400 paragraphs you are quite obviously limited on the number of paragraph choices that you can provide a player at every turn, so careful planning needs to be taken to provide the most obvious and also the most interesting choices that will become available. A good rule when writing each encounter is to write the initial choices several ways, and then play-through these to determine which are the most interesting for the reader.

Steve: After the text had been written, the numerical references had to be randomised. Ian and I had two approaches to this. Probably his way was better. He used to have a sheet with the numbers 1-400 written down. As he wrote a reference he would pick a number from the sheet and cross it off. So when all 400 numbers had been allocated, the book was finished! I used an alphanumeric system. Each of the (let’s say) 30 main encounters was given a number from 1-30. When I came to write the encounter up, all the sub-paragraphs were given letters. Perhaps 15A was the start of an encounter with the Ganjees. From this there would be various options and each option was given another letter, perhaps 15B, C or D. There were further sub- paragraphs from these, and sometimes I’d find I was numbering a paragraph as ‘25C (iii) a’. Very confusing to an outsider, I’m sure. But I knew what was going on. I liked this method because whilst the book was being written I could always tell at a glance where a reference came from (“If it’s 15-something it’s from the Ganjees” etc). But the downside was that I’d have to go through and re-number everything at a later stage. Plus I didn’t have any instant total of the references I’d written. In the end this resulted in me abandoning the 400-reference standard. Only Warlock, Citadel and House of Hell had exactly 400.

My re-numbering process was the most tedious part of writing the book. I used two sheets of paper, one with the numbers 1-400 on and the other with a listing of all my alphanumeric references. It was then necessary to go through and replace each alphanumeric reference with a 1-400 reference. All the time this was being done you had to bear in mind that the paragraphs to be illustrated had to be spaced equally apart, otherwise you might have two illustrated paragraphs on the same page of the book. And once the final codes had been allocated, there was maybe a week’s work in checking and re-checking all the numbered references matched up properly. Finally, after months of work, the manuscript would be ready to be delivered to the publishers. But in between delivery and publication there was more work to do. In those days, the author’s typewritten manuscript would be re-typed by a typesetter, resulting in long pages of text known as ‘galleys’ that had to be checked for typos and numbering errors. Finally ‘page proofs’ would arrive – all the text and the illustrations set out ready to paste up into the final pages as they would appear in the book.

Jon: By trying to ensure that there is a balance in the book between opportunities to recover points for the player's various attributes along with the chances to lose them. I know I have been criticised in the past for having too many powerful enemies but in the books there are plenty of opportunities to gain items or abilities which can lend you an advantage. However, I think I have achieved this most successfully in 'Bloodbones'.

I hope you find the article useful and use the information to construct some fun amateur adventures. Email your thoughts and ideas about the article: at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it