On Blogging | Author Skills | Fiction

A New CYOA Story-slash-Game

A publication news update, plus the pre-launch of ‘Medium Adventure League’ ⚔️

If you have already read or contributed to Choose Your Own Adventure — Collaboration, thank you! I’ve had a blast editing the publication so far, and I hope it will go from strength to strength in the coming months.

Now, it’s time for a quick update on how things are progressing, and to launch a super-exciting new project on the publication!

Publication Update

It’s a long time since I posted an update (June 2022, apparently!)… but you will probably have seen many a story appearing since then — sometimes several in one day.

The more sharp-eyed among you may also have seen the refreshed home page and the updated author guidelines.

The home page now has tabs particular story arcs, as well as one for stories about the publication (such as this one).

Looking more closely, you might see that there is only a tab for the most active/extensive story arcs. It is already obvious that we won’t fit in tabs for all of the current stories, and their number is only going to grow over time. So, only the most active ones will get a tab and be featured on the home page — hopefully that makes sense!

(But having said that, any of the older stories could be given a new lease of life at any moment!)

The most active three stories in recent weeks have been:

• The Castle of Shadows, which is now pretty massive, and more or less complete.
• The Hero of Pendown, which is moving along steadily, at times into very weird/funny/whacky territory.
• Cheating Death, which is a drabble-based (100-word stories) arc, and has had wonderful and at times pretty dark contributions from multiple authors.

Of course, we love and value all of our choose your own adventure (CYOA) story arcs, and if you want to add to any of the ones that remain incomplete, you can join as an author anytime! Just leave a comment here, or on the launch story.

Onto a new and exciting project. As suggested in the title, we will shortly launch a new “choose your own” story-slash-game on this publication.

Introducing:

Medium Adventure League ⚔️

Any CYOA story is already interactive, but this storyline will take this to the next level, turning stories into a game, with dice.

It will owe a lot to LitRPG novels in style, and could be considered a bit like a 1-player roleplaying game.

As a contrast, let’s consider the structure of a standard CYOA story, like most of the ones in this publication. Each has a chapter 1 that provides two or more options, then each option either provides further options or leads to a dead end, as follows (X = the end/death):

Medium Adventure League will be different. Here, there will be certain hub pages, such as an Adventurers’ Guild, a shop or market, training opportunities, and so on.

From these central points, the character will be able to choose to try out one quest at a time (Q1, Q2, etc). This is shown below (old school pen-and paper sketch time!):

So if you are at the Adventurers’ Guild headquarters, you pick a quest, do it, then return to the same place.

You can also choose to do training, visit a shop for supplies, sleep and heal your wounds, etc. This way, your character gradually gets stronger, developing their skills and building up loot and equipment.

And the “reader-player” will keep track of all of this using a character sheet (basically just a blank page in your notebook).

Of course, this remains a collaboration. So after the core section is launched, any author can jump in and write a new quest, a new training sequence, etc.

When is this happening?

So far, Medium Adventure League comprises a bunch of stories in my drafts folder! It seemed to make sense to get everything ready, and drop it all more or less at once.

If all goes to plan, you should see the first stories come out over the next week, or thereabouts.

Expanding the game

It might occur to you that the most views/reads will go to the authors who write those first ‘core’ chapters such as the guild and shop (we will also need a rulebook chapter, and a ‘you’re dead’ sequence…)

However, we will try to share these core chapters around among the interested current authors.

In addition, these are only the core of the start of the game. As it grows, new levels can open up!

After all, a beginner character needs easy quests. As they get stronger, they will want harder challenges! 🐉

Therefore, at some point, someone (it could be you) will need to write a new ‘guild headquarters’ story… or more than one!

There could also be more than one ‘story start’ that leads to the same point, as shown below, again sharing the reads around:

All in all, I think this has potential to be a lot of fun. I hope you join in and write a quest or two — perhaps more! And if you’re rather just play the game, that’s fine too. ⚔️

Thanks again for your interest in and support of Choose Your Own Adventures — Collaboration. I’m tagging people below who are currently listed as writers or editors:

Sieran Lane Jann Christoph von der Pütten Olivia Reed Jonathon Sawyer Bradan Writes Stories C.A. Jaymes FJCMontenegro Ira Robinson Jenny Starr✨ Kathy K Linden Schneider Logan Silkwood Maaja Wentz Naleen Mitchell Novus Grey Rayne Sanning Samuel Kenneth Kauffman Michele Maize (The Sober Vegan Yogi).

You all rock!

And finally, a quick shout-out to our three partner publications:

• The Dystopian Project for dystopian and post-apocalyptic fiction.
• The Kraken Lore for fantasy fiction.
• Web Novel Reviews, for reviews of Medium web-novels in any genre.

Before you go, you can find more of my articles about blogging here, as well as guidance on creative writing right here. And avoid missing a chapter, quest or story start by getting all my posts direct to your inbox! 🧠 🌟