Saint Valentine's Game Jam starts now!

[poison_mara]

Welcome ladies, gentlemen 'n gentlepeople! it 's time ta dance ‘n roar with da new swin’. Maybe 'ave some cocktails in da nearby drum. Find love, scandal or take on some shells ta yer pump in a bloody valentine.

Saint Valentine's Jam Trailer

Yes, the theme is the 1920s style and flair. It doesn’t have to be historically accurate. Fantasy and all genres are allowed I will write a retro sci-fi story similar to the first sci-fi movies. All art deco and mafia-style will be welcome.

RULES

1. A GAME WITH IMPACTFUL CHOICES THAT AFFECTS THE STORY
   2.LIGHTLY BASED ON THE THEME AND HAVE SOME LOVE REFERENCE
   3.MADE IN A INTERACTIVE LANGUAGE (choicescript, cys page, ren’py…)

Further info about the 20's

I made a wall of text description video about the time
Saint Valentine's Jam Glamour and Jazz - YouTube
This is a good documentary about the time period and with good images
Roaring 20s Video - YouTube

Jam material posters

Weekly interviews

! Jim Datillo

Saint Valentine's Game Jam starts now! - #11 by poison_mara

Deadline 13th FEB 12:00 pm Eastern Time

Now, tima ta write those masterpieces before da Crash comes, fellas!

[brushmen]

I’m open to collaboration(s)! I can’t really write for this but I can code your writing into ChoiceScript or Twine SugarCube format. Reasonable scope please, but if it’s in the expected Choose-Your-Own-Adventure style (as opposed to multimedia-heavy RPG), I should be able to work on multiple projects too. (private message me if interested in a try)

@poison_mara the last slide in the text-wall video could stay up a little longer before the video ends.

Good luck, everyone.

[poison_mara]

Thanks for the feedback. And yes teams are allowed. So I hope you end in a team with someone!

[CC_Hill]

Welcome back with another one @poison_mara can’t wait to start a romance story with a twist

[poison_mara]

Glad to have you on board!

[Jackpot1776]

Is there a length cap or requirement?

[poison_mara]

No, there is no cap. Always it has choices impact on the storyline, in doesn’t matter the size.

[Wannabe_Human]

This sounds like it’ll be a lot of fun! Looking forward to participating!

[Luiza]

Mara what have you done… I have so much work to do but now all I can think about is a 1920’s heist caper…

[poison_mara]

You have more than 2 months and I am sure you can do a brilliant game that after the Jam can be expanded to a publish game. There is no minimum word requirement. And the 20s are so good as a theme that allows any kind of game from a version of Mars with flapper goddess to a tragedy of someone who lost everything a certain Thursday meanwhile sees others fallen from the scrappers.

[poison_mara]

Since today Each Sunday, I will be posting an interview with an Interactive fiction writer Today as the first writer we Have @JimD Author of Zombie Exodus and Zombie Exodus Safe Haven.

Jim Datillo's Interview

One of the main doubts that may arise is how to create characters and how to present them dynamically and profoundly, but that, at the same time, leave room for the player to create their own relationships and opinions about them- In my opinion Jim Datillo, He is one of the best writers in this field together with his coder skills, to create deep systems that reach various parts of his games that include millions of words …

Now you will tell me, Mama Mara, we are far from reaching that level. And I agree, we are not, but Jim started more modestly, 8 years ago with the first Zombie Exodus. And that is what I want to focus this interview on, how he then designed his stories and characters and how he has evolved up to this moment when Jim is working for a project linked to A World of Darkness.

Question 1 : Many years have passed, Jim, how did you start planning Zombie Exodus? Has

the way of planning your projects changed a lot?

Normally I sketch out a rough outline of how I want each chapter to go, the major events, and what happens to various characters. I keep to this outline loosely, because as I write I tend to come up with new ideas. I like to remain flexible as I write so I can change things if needed.

Question 2: What do you advise us, beginners, to do to better plan our characters and

stories? Any program to help us?

I don’t use any programs aside from a basic notetaking document and spreadsheet. When I am not writing, I jot down ideas for characters, different motivations they may have, and unique traits that explore some aspect of the world. Just like with the plot, I tend not to be too rigid with characters so I can change them if it suits the plot.

Question 3 : About the code, do you prepare it before or after writing the text of the scene?

How has your way of coding changed?

I code as I write. Doing both at the same time reveals issues I may have down the road. For example, If I want to write a large battle scene, I will think of all the choices I want to offer to the player. At this point I can estimate how long it will take to finish writing and coding that part of the game. If it seems like it will take too long or if it will create too much hidden content, I can easily see it right that without wasting time later.

Question 4: As a writer under Cog you are used to being under the pressure of deadlines,

How do you plan and organize that factor to meet deadlines?

by writing every day. I rarely take days off. It’s just like exercising or any routine, you need to plan out a certain number of hours per day and be disciplined enough to commit to it. Recently I have missed some deadlines, not because I’m failing to keep my schedule but because I’m writing more content to finish up certain storylines. It’s definitely hard to balance my time these days, and I wish I had planned things differently. Even after writing for ten years, I still make mistakes.

Question 5: How do you prepare to set realistic characters, in fantasy or science fiction

worlds? And what do you think is more advisable for us to learn to create them?

No matter what genre you write in, you need to adhere to basic elements of character development. You need to give them a backstory that’s realistic for the setting and give motivations and flaws they will reveal in the story. If you’re writing a zombie apocalypse story and you introduce a character who is good in every skill, you need to give them a reason for being in that story, in that place, at that time. You need to make them flawed enough to be at risk were to have conflict with the main character. You need to give them a motivation that makes sense in the story.

Question 6: Now let’s move on to the stats. You create the plot of your projects before the

playable mechanics. Or do you first create the Stats and other mechanisms of the game? Has

That has changed since your first game?

I generally create an outline and then create stats. I usually start off with a few stats and add them as the game develops. Even when a game is nearly complete, I will go back and add stats, which is a grueling process. However I think it is necessary to see where a game is going before you finalize the mechanics of the game. When I first started writing gains, I did not include a lot of stats and tracked everything through binary variables (true/false). Now I use fairmath, which is a popular tool in Choicescript. I highly recommend using fairmath. Once you get a fair understanding of why you need to use it and how to use it, you will develop better games.

Question 7: Your most popular games are episodic; however, your two Cog games are

single-volume games. Do you change the way you design your project based on that concept?

I definitely have to change my style of writing based on whether the game is one-shot or a series. When I write a single, one-shot game, I have to tie up all loose ends by the ending. In a game like Zombie Exodus, if I don’t get to something in Part 3, I still have room to address it later on. Also, you need to think about the development of the main character and how it happens over a longer period of time. This is the most difficult part of writing. I have to make Part 2 as exciting as Part 5.

Question 8: You have worked for several companies with various coding systems. Do you change your approach depending on the engine, or is the process always the same?

I approach story and characters the same, but the type of coding and features offered by the company impact the way I can tell that story and present characters.

Question 9: Myself and many novice writers suffer from stress and uncertainty when we have

to show something publicly. Have you ever been through that? If so, how are you able to cope

it?

If you are going to get into the world of writing or any other creative art, you’re going to have to deal with criticism, both positive and negative. When I first started writing and posting my work for review, I enjoyed the positive feedback for the single time I read it, but the negative criticism stuck with me for a long long time. I began to doubt myself and question whether or not I should be writing. It was especially bad when other writers and editors attacked me and pulled apart my writing with in-depth analysis. The thing that pulled me through eventually was dissecting the criticisms, improving my writing, and trying again. Criticism fades over time. People judge you by the latest piece of work you produce. So even if I fail at writing something, I always have the ability to start over and put something else out there for feedback.

Question 10: Do you have any advice for the jam participants?

Enjoy what you’re writing, work hard, put away distractions while you are writing, and commit to writing on a schedule. Use this jam as an opportunity to share your writing and interact with your readers.

[CC_Hill]

That’s a great interview @poison_mara it’s good to see that even published and experienced writers can also have doubts but find ways to overcome them. It’s also great to read about their writing process.

Keep on the good work.

[poison_mara]

THat is the reason of the interview see through the eyes of people who has overcome writing challenges, and use their advices to improve.

[malinryden]

Not going to be a part of the jam, but I certainly will be here for the interviews! Such useful information!

[poison_mara]

This week’s interview is @Havenstone writer of the ambitious Choice of Rebels saga.

INTERVIEW WITH HAVENSTONE

Havenstone is perhaps one of the authors creating one of the most epic sagas in the world of Interactive fiction with almost a decade preparing and designing his intricate and magnificent universe In the Choice of Rebels saga. From new species with their own genesis and biology to a culture and economy based on blood magic and the slavery of the majority of the population. The beta of the first volume has been one of the most complicated both in terms of mechanics and development of the forum.

Question 1: How and when did you start designing this universe? What methods do you use to create and order the huge lore you create?

I started designing it in 2011, just after I read Choice of the Dragon and decided I needed to write my own CoG. Back in the late '90s and early '00s I had run a lengthy D&D campaign around the theme of a slave revolt against an evil fantasy empire, and decided to take the broad plot arc of Rebels from that game. But I carried over almost none of that gameworld’s lore; I didn’t want to use its orientalist tropes, its elves-dwarves-and-dragons Tolkien borrowings, its D&D-esque version of blood magic, or its nine cosmic threats held back by nine talismans (too many MacGuffins, and a distraction from the more interesting political themes). So the Rebels gameworld was written starting more or less from scratch.

I didn’t try to write all the lore from the outset in 2011! The game concept gave me my starting point: an evil empire that harvests the blood of its slave caste to fuel its tech/magic. The empire justifies this by pointing to the threats along its borders. I drew the basic world map with that in mind, also knowing that most people would be reading this game on a mobile, not able to see the map – so let’s just have one province in each of the cardinal directions, and a major threat also roughly corresponding to those directions, as that might be easier for readers to mentally keep track of.

Because the story started in the periphery of one province, I also knew I didn’t have to come up with everything all at once, but would have some chance to “discover” the world as I wrote it, along with the reader/main character.

The first advice I’d give anyone in game writing is to read nonfiction on topics you enjoy thinking about, and weave the real-world dynamics that you find interesting into your game – that can help you escape the trap of just repeating features from other fictional universes. I had decided the empire would draw heavily on Greek culture, so when I started deciding how the magic system would work, I thought of what I knew about Aristotle’s science and the concept of telos. I did a little more reading and research to help me develop a fantasy system with a tinge (not a lot!) of real-world philosophy. And as I’ve read history, philosophy, and politics books over the past decade, I’ve always kept one eye on what might fit well as part of the gameworld. That has helped me put more and more flesh on the bones of the original concept.

As for ordering the lore, I keep notebooks and a couple of spreadsheets with gameworld details. I’m also grateful for a fan community with some folks who have a close interest in the lore; they’ve been generous with ideas, and can also catch me if I miss something or introduce an inconsistency.

Question 2: I have noticed that for us, amateurs, it is difficult to focus and know how to weave lore into a story and know how to measure the amount of lore that we present to readers. How do you balance that? What advice would you give us?

Yes, avoiding the dreaded “loredump”! Well, the first thing I’d say is that you’ll never make everyone happy, and my approach certainly hasn’t – I have no shortage of app reviews telling me that I should have rolled out the lore differently. But for what it’s worth, my own approach could be summed up as:

• In general, only roll out lore details when they’re story-relevant (or shortly before they become so), so as to not overwhelm the reader with too much information up front.
• For core gameworld concepts that are going to be fundamental to the story–e.g. Theurges, helots, Kryptasts in Rebels –start using them early. Don’t interrupt the flow of the story with a definition, but give context clues so people can understand more or less what kind of thing you’re talking about, and their interest is piqued to find out more. ( Rebels also highlights the option to go read the lore codex for readers who don’t enjoy figuring out a world from context clues.)
• For lore points where you as the author intend to have some (hopefully) awesome plot point hang on them later in the story, find a natural way to mention them in the story earlier on. I hope that in Rebels Sarcifer and the Laconniers are examples of this.
• Very lightly scatter other lore details in the story, even when they’re not plot-relevant, to give a sense of the scope and complexity of the world. One of the pleasures of fantasy (for me, anyway) is the sense that the world is bigger and weirder than just the bit that you happen to be looking at.

That’s what I’ve tried to do, anyways – readers of Choice of Rebels can decide for themselves how well I’ve succeeded!

Question 3: Your beta has taken many years and many changes in history before the release of the first volume. For many of us, maintaining focus and a productive beta is very difficult. Could you tell us about how you remember the process and give us some advice on how to handle betas?

Like most of us, I’m not doing this as a job. So yes, developing it takes a long time. I decided to develop the game publicly from an early point, and was lucky enough to find a core group of people who liked it enough to keep engaging and offering feedback. That has been energizing and encouraging.

In terms of focus, you might do better to ask other CoG writers who have carefully outlined their entire game from the beginning and held it to e.g. 250,000 words. Choice of Rebels is the kind of big sprawling story I enjoy reading, and when I’ve thought of something I liked (or a reader has suggested something I liked), I’ve generally gone ahead and added it, as long as it didn’t take too much time.

But the people who read your draft will always have lots of ideas on where things could go. Try to be clear from the outset that you can’t take on everyone’s feedback; you need to have a good enough grasp on what is and isn’t a good fit with your story concept. Don’t be afraid to say no, friendly but firm, when a reader is pushing an idea you don’t agree with.

Question 4: Now let’s move on to the stats. Do you create the plot of your projects before the playable mechanics? Or do you first create the Stats and other mechanisms of the game? How did you create the surviving the winter mission?

I developed the game’s core stats with the very large-scale game plot in mind. The game is about tearing down an old political order and rebuilding a new one – what could the main character use for that? That’s how nationalism, religion, and ruthlessness (and their opposites) ended up as core stats. It was also easy to see how there could be fun stories with having a character who led the rebellion as a great general, an archmage, or a charismatic leader – so I added those as skill stats.

I start writing each chapter with a general idea of the mechanics for what the player is trying to accomplish in that chapter, but then develop the specifics as I go. Surviving the winter was originally very different; I wrote a much less flexible story, with less choice in the order of events. Several readers fed back that they were confused about how the income from their raids was linked to whether or not they were starving.

So after completing one version of it that was more “storymode,” I decided to bite the bullet and offer a week-by-week survival game where players could choose to do most things on any week of their choice. I coded a basic framework for that – a start-of-week story, choosing your raids (with the raids themselves as separate blocks of code) and an end-of-week assessment of who was alive, dead, sick, etc. It took a lot of playing through it to get it right, and again, plenty of reviewers would disagree that I did get it right in the end… but I got to a point where I was enjoying how it read, and enough of my beta readers were also satisfied that I could call it a day.

Question 5: What do you advise us, beginners, to do to better plan our characters and stories? Any program to help us?

I do some limited planning, and a whole lot of discovering as I write. Try to know the key motivations of your characters, and think of situations where those motivations bring them into conflict. Then as you write out those conflicts and the plot, look for interesting moments that you can flesh out into something more.

Question 6: Myself and many novice writers suffer from stress and uncertainty when we have to show something publicly. Have you ever been through that? If so, how are you able to cope with it?

It’s always hard when you first show something you’ve been working on to a public audience. I often find it easier to share first with a few trusted friends who will give useful feedback to improve it, catch mistakes I’ve missed, and help give me confidence that some people like it, before it goes out to the whole world!

I also try to remember from the outset that not everyone is going to like what I write, and that’s OK. People like different things! The question I ask myself when I get public criticism is Is this person reacting to something I did on purpose, because it’s what I like to read – or because doing it differently would take too much time that I’d rather put into keeping the story moving forward? If the answer is yes, then I don’t take the criticism to heart (or try not to!). I write for myself first, and I know that won’t make everyone else satisfied. On the other hand, if the person has identified something that I agree could be improved, then I try to take it positively and make the change.

Question 7: Do you have any advice for the jam participants?

Try to find something to write about that you think is incredibly cool and fun, to give yourself the energy to keep going through the inevitable slow-downs and moments of writer’s block.

[poison_mara]

This week’s interview is @malinryden writer of the fallen hero saga.

Interview with Malin Ryden

Malin Ryder is the author of one of the most popular hosted games, Fallen Hero, a game focused on the feelings and deep inner life of the main character who has a tumultuous past that has left many scars, most of them psychological. In a universe that is full of heroes and villains, but terribly realistic and pessimistic.
Question 1: Your game takes the bold perspective, for a Hosted game, of giving the PC a detailed past and a series of physical and emotional scars. How have you balanced that by giving the player the freedom to create their character and identify with them?

We are all complex individuals. If you think back to yourself, you have a set background. Relationships that already exists. Strong personality traits. And yet, there is no guarantee that you will react the same to similar stimuli every time. You might have a bad day and get snappy; you might be in a good mood and do something you usually would have put off as being too hard. The person you will be in ten years will be grounded in who you are today, but there are so many paths you could walk.

I had a firm idea in mind for who the character Sidestep was and is. But, within that idea, there are possible variations. There are three things you need to keep in mind when working with a more realized character:

• Fixed points. These are traits/events/emotions that are necessary for the plot to function. Sidestep will always have a positive past with Ortega. They were a vigilante, but they have decided to become the villain. They went through the traumatizing events of the Heartbreak incident. Anathema was their friend. These are things in which I allow no deviation because they are needed for the story to progress.

• Player style. These are things that, though I might have a strong opinion of what my Sidestep would be/do, the plot won’t be derailed if people play it differently. These are the stats; if you are daring or cautious will affect play, not plot. The same goes for friendship levels; if you are arrogant and monologues or tries to stay in the shadow is just flavor. This is where the player can make their character their own.

• But why, though? By answering this question, I let the players adjust the fixed points to their individual Sidesteps. Sure, you had a positive relationship with Ortega in the past, but were you allies? Best friends? Flirting? Did you have a secret crush? Everyone went through the Heartbreak incident, but what part scarred you the most? Everyone has to turn villain, but what kind will you be? Will you be ruthless or emphatic? Will you be infamous or a nobody?

In short, if you have a fully realized character you want to put into interactive fiction, make sure to pinpoint which parts are needed for the story not to derail and which are the ones where you can allow player input. Also, remember that you can’t please everyone and that headcanons exist for a reason.

Question 2: One of the details that stands out the most in your story is that there are characters with a past relationship, both with the protagonist and with each other. How do you design and plan those relationships and add to them, the fact that the player can radically change them?

I answered some of that in question one, but let me expand on it a bit more.

When it comes to changing personal relationships, I don’t plan; I very much let the story take me where it wants to go. I know all the characters involved well, they all have their arcs within the story, and they could be the main character if I just shifted the perspective. Knowing that I let myself have fun and see what happens. That is my reward for writing this thing: to have fun with them.
There are many things in the interpersonal relationships I never planned on that happened just because I was sitting writing dialog, and it made sense. The smaller things are not an issue, but every time there is a possibility of a significant shift, I need to double-check that it will work on a longer timescale.

Some characters are easier; Ortega is stubborn and pushy and will keep coming back even if Sidestep is an ass. I can allow more antagonism there because I know I won’t have difficulty finding reasons why Ortega would go back and try again. Argent, however, not so much. There I need to be careful to avoid certain situations that could lead to story-breaking outcomes.
In short, the personal relationships are not planned, I have a starting point, and then I am letting myself have fun and explore as I write.

Question 3: I have noticed that for us, amateurs, it is difficult to focus and know-how to weave lore into a story and know how to measure the amount of lore that we present to readers. In your case, it is even more difficult due to the peculiar way you introduce the PC past. How do you balance that? What advice would you give us?

In part, this is a personal taste thing. Some people love lore, lore dumps, and intricately carved worlds. Some get bored by it. There is no single way of doing this, but speaking for myself, I have a few guidelines:

• If you need a big lore dump, get it over fast, and make it skippable on second runs. I used that in Rebirth. I couldn’t think of an easy way of integrating world history at the start, but I also wanted it there to get people in on the ground floor. Was this the best way to do it? Probably not. I was still very much grounded in the novel and would probably do it differently today.

• If your lore does not affect the situation at hand, it doesn’t need to be there.

• If you want your cool lore in the game, make up a situation where it becomes relevant.

• Setting the mood is a relevant reason for lore, but remember that it needs to be short, snappy, and engaging. Pratchet is good at that.

• Remember that lore and worldview are influenced by characters and their viewpoints. Let people have different opinions, avoid the Author Truth.

• Don’t be afraid of mysteries. The players don’t need to know everything, not even about their own characters. Speculation is fun.

• If you have mysteries, make sure that there are enough clues and hints that people will go “duh!” when they find out, not “huh?”. You want the reveal to be grounded in the text that came before, not a complete left turn put there only to surprise people.

Question 4: Now let’s move on to the stats. Do you create the plot before the playable mechanics? Or do you first create the Stats and other mechanisms of the game?

In Fallen Hero, it was very much the plot before the mechanics because all the stats and mechanics are there to help make for an immersive and interactive experience. That being said, this is very much interactive fiction and not a stat-based challenge game.
There is no right way to do this; it depends on whether you see what you are making as more of a game or a story.

Question 5: What do you advise us, beginners, to do to better plan our characters and stories? Any program to help us?

Something that you are comfortable with and feels low stakes. I use shitty notebooks for first drafts because that lets me be more creative and not have to worry about things being perfect. I’ve experimented with mind maps and various programs to plan, but it doesn’t work for me. It might for you.

Use whatever takes the least effort to get you started. You want as few barriers between you and creativity as possible.

Question 6: Do you have any advice for the jam participants?
I do indeed!

• Think small. No matter how tiny your idea is, it will balloon once you start the story, and if you start out ambitious, chances are you will never get to the exciting parts.

• Thinking small doesn’t need to be small in scope. If you want a story about saving the world from a necromantic overlord, just start the story one breath before the showdown, like just when the heroes broke out of the dungeon where he captured them or right when they sneak into his lair to stop the evil ritual. Any needed background can be presented in dialog or small flashbacks.

• Don’t forget your mood! That is what I feel is lacking in many things. What is the mood you are trying to evoke for the story? Is it race against time desperation? Or maybe sweet nostalgia? Or depressed paranoia? Power fantasy revenge? Settling on a mood can help you focus your work, both stats, and relationships.

• Make the main character the most interesting character of the story. And, related to that, if you have a side character that you find a lot more interesting, maybe that one should be the main character instead.

[poison_mara]

This week we have a very special Guest, @EndMaster one of most popular and rated IF writers and with dozens of great works mostly on https://chooseyourstory.com/Member/?Username=EndMaster I recommend check out his work, with a fair warning as he writes controversial and mature content; so, please, read the description of the game before play it to avoid being triggered.

Endmaster's Interview

Question 1: Do you first create your characters and then design the lore and storyline, or is it the other way around?

There’s no set way. Most of the time I create at least some of the characters along with the storyline and lore first, and then more characters, storyline paths and lore as needed later.

I usually have at least some of the major paths and endings already in mind, along with various major events, but with branching stories, there’s always things that pop up that I need to make up as I go along.

Question 2: What do you advise us, beginners, to do to better plan our characters and stories? Any program to help us?

Start small and do some basic outlining of the story before everything else. You can get overwhelmed if you don’t organize and attempt something too large if you haven’t done it before.

I’m sure there are programs to help with organizing, though I’ve never used any.

I tend to just keep extensive notes on everything on Word documents. Keep track of major characters, places, events, etc. Along with major paths I need to work on and choice branches I still need to finish.

Question 3: There is a fine line between well-created evil characters with a deep and credible personality of flat and edgy evil characters who have no real reason for how they act. What do you recommend to create good villains?

As with any character (good or evil) you just have to design motives and personality for them. Always found that memorable dialog helps with villains, though I like to write a lot of dialog in general.

It still sort of depends on the story you’re going for. There are times you really don’t need a complex villain because it isn’t necessary and just want one that gets on with the baby killing, not brooding about how she didn’t get enough hugs as a child.

Of course if you do have a shallower villain, the main thing you still have to focus on is to at least make her entertaining. Have her juggling the babies or something before she throws them against the wall. Amusing stuff like that.

But going back to the deeper villains, I tend to write a lot of villain protagonists so of course those are going to have more personality to them since they’re what the reader is playing as.

The question then becomes how to go about writing a good antagonist rather than traditional villain. The same method applies, which is to design them according to their own motives and flesh out their personalities as you would with any major character and stay consistent. You just have a lot more range with it since these can be the noble type looking to stomp out your brand of villainy or they might be worse than you are.

I’ve found that when writing a villain protagonist, it’s best to just go all the way with it.

Most of the time when an “evil choice” is given in a game, it’s an after thought. It’s sort of just there as an option as if to tick off a box. (Like romances) Sometimes it doesn’t even make that much of a difference, other times there is no real path so much as its just killing everyone in sight. Which while that can be fun, that’s not necessarily the brand of evil you were trying to go for.

If you just avoid any type of noble or heroic pretenses whatsoever there’s less dilution and you can focus more on what’s important. (Evil stuff)

Of course this isn’t to say your villain protagonist can’t still do nice things within the story. No reason to kick a puppy if that isn’t the way the story is going.

Question 4: Most of your stories do not have stats or a lot of code. There is a reason for that?

That’s mainly due to starting out on Infinite Story, which didn’t really have anything in the way of coding. Everything was pretty basic. Sort of the reason why I laughed when there was a contest being held there and everyone on here was freaking out about not having any coding stuff available.

Even when I moved over to ChooseYourStory I still write stories the same way I did over there even though there is tons more options now.

In any case, I toyed with making a more “gamey” story once which had stats, inventory and such similar to an old Fighting Fantasy book and I found it to be an unfun slog to finish. Don’t really need any coding if you’re not bothering with more gamey elements, not to mention coding is just too boring and unfun for me to bother with.

I want to get on with just writing my story and seeing it through from beginning to multiple endings not messing about with coding. So about the most coding I’ll ever do is stuff like bolding or italic tags.

Question 5: Myself and many novice writers suffer from stress and uncertainty when we have to show something publicly. Have you ever been through that? If so, how are you able to cope it?

Not really. I’ve never cared enough mainly because I’m never writing with an audience primarily in mind, I’m writing mainly for myself.

Anything I write is something that I would want to read and play through, so if it’s pleasing to me, then that’s all that matters. I’m not really worrying about what others think of it, if I did that, then I’d never write anything. If someone else likes it, fine. If they don’t that’s fine too.

Besides, really angry negative reviews are funny.

Question 6: Do you have any advice for the jam participants?

Just follow your vision and focus until your finish writing something you’re pleased with.

[EndMaster]

Glad to have helped with your interview project.

[poison_mara]

Thanks for the help to you and all authors for bringing a new perspective for readers

[armadillidium]

I don’t think I’ll have time to join this one, but with that setting I can see something funny come out of this like a President Disaster-esque game, except with gangsters. It probably won’t fit in the rules because it’s a bunch of one-off events, but scenarios can be made so left field that things are absurd. Public Enemy Simulator, anyone? Run a booze empire, shoot your enemies, steal their girls?