The Wayhaven Chronicles: Book One (WIP)

Your first case as Detective is forcing you to open your eyes to a world bigger than you thought. But, maybe it is better to keep them closed. Knowing too much doesn’t help anyone sleep at night!

Seems the supernatural didn’t get the memo that nothing exciting ever happens in the little town of Wayhaven.


Hi everyone! :slight_smile:

I’m new here as a writer, but have been a long time lurker of the forums and an avid fan of interactive fiction and CoG games (hosted and otherwise).

I’m not new to this kind of writing, as I make visual novels (finished projects- The Lady’s Choice, Diving in Deep). And, though I am still working on visual novel projects, I really wanted to try my hand at interactive fiction.

The Wayhaven Chronicles is a series of books I have had in my head for over 10 years. The characters, setting, and stories are all quite well-formed by now! But, there always felt like there was something missing before, so when I came across interactive fiction it just all pieced together.

It will be a series of books, focused on characters, relationships, and romance, especially romance (I am a romance writer at heart!), where the relationships develop throughout the books. I’m hoping it all feels much more of a natural progression, where you can become involved deeply in the world and characters.

Each book will have a new supernatural entity to overcome, and the plot will focus on finding out how to defeat them and then how the MC and group go about putting your decided plan into action. The first book is mainly about being introduced to the world and characters and deciding the type of character you want to play.
The stories aren’t mysteries, as I’m not a mystery writer :smiley: But, more action and suspense.

Features

  • Relationships that develop over the course of the books
  • Four romance options, with romances that develop and continue over the series (genders change dependant upon MC sexuality choice)
  • A variety of choices from fun to story-changing, that develop your MC and have varying effects on the story and characters
  • An interesting cast of NPCs, of which you can also build friendship or professional relationships with
  • Choose name, gender, sexuality, and appearance!

The full demo is now released!- Link removed

I’m still kind of playing around with stats and variables (what I want visible, what I want hidden, etc), deciding what I want for certain, so I’ll post more up when I am a bit more grounded in my decisions. Though, it’s likely to change here and there all the way throughout the writing process.

(You can play as a male or female, but I am a female writer- I’m hoping not to make the MC feel too female-focused, but sometimes I don’t notice when I do. So, feedback on that would be appreciated!)

Bit more in depth info:

  • The romance options are all vampires- mainly because it’s a big plot point that comes into play throughout all books.
  • You play as a human, no special powers or anything- but, there will become something special about you… dundundun :smiley:
  • I am hoping to put in a love-triangle between two of the RO’s (Nate/Nat and Adam/Ava) and the MC- it’s something that was going to feature in the original book series (when I was going to write it as novels), and I’d like to include it. You don’t have to have the love triangle- it will just be there if people would like to.

So, I thought I might go into a bit more detail about how the romances are gonna go down in this series if you’re interested

If you’ve played Dragon Age: Inquisition, it’ll be something like that. You’ll flirt with them, decide on who you like, then at some point you’ll be given the choice to ‘commit’ to that person. Not necessarily commit to a relationship, just make a decision about who you are going to romance. Then, from then on, the options will be about how you want the relationship to go, rather than deciding who to romance. For example, Mason/Morgan’s romance can be handled in quite dramatically different ways, or a middle ground- but, I couldn’t do that if I wasn’t sure that the MC wanted to pursue the romance with Mason/Morgan in the first place.

The reason I’m doing it this way is because the romances are SO heavily linked to the plots throughout the series of books. It’s the only way I will be able to code it so as I stay sane :smiley:

There will be points throughout the books where you can break up with your current RO and start a romance with someone else, or get back together later. (This is the plan for the moment, anyway!).

I want the romances and relationships throughout the series to feel natural and fluid, and this is the only way I will be able to manage that.


This is my first IF, so I really hope you guys enjoy what I’ve got so far!

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Welcome to the community as a non-lurker - I’ll be happy to provide feedback once I sample the story.

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Thank you so much for the welcome! I hope you enjoy the story. I was really nervous about posting it, but sometimes you just got to bite the bullet and do it, right? :smiley:

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Welcome looking forward to trying your demo. Your vampires don’t sparkle right? :joy:

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Oh, cute vampire guys eh, I’ll be sure to give this one a try.

And the mc isn’t a doormat right?

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Yes. the community is very supportive here.

I believe you will find a home if you desire it for your interactive story-line.

I’m looking forward to playing this!

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The first thing I do when I saw a newly made post is to click the OP’s profpic and compare their join date with mine.

When I saw yours… I was like “Dang newbie already has a WIP. What about me” :rage::sweat_drops:

Anyway, since you lurk the forum that long, welcome!

Count me in

Yeah let’s not bring back bad memories of bad books/movies :sob:

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@avidreader - Thank you for the welcome! My vampires don’t sparkle- though the temptation to have a sparkly vampire NPC at some point in the future is quite immense :smiley:

@idonotlikeusernames - Hopefully they’ll be cute vampire guys (one is pretty grumpy…) But yeah, the MC shouldn’t be a doormat, well, not unless you want them to be!

@Gower - Thank you so much! I hope you like it. I’m still so nervous to put it out into the public.

@Szaal - Yeah, I only just joined, but have been hanging around the forum for a looong time :smiley: I’ve been working on my WIP for a while now too, which is why it was ready to go as soon as I joined. I figured now was as good a time as any!

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Welcome to the forums!

I’ve added in links to your existing games. (Feel free to add them to your profile too.)

We actually count visual novels as a form of interactive fiction here, so you could say you’ve already done interactive fiction, just with some nice looking pictures!

Your project sounds really good.

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Thank you so much for the welcome, and for adding those links! (I knew I could only add a certain number of links as a newbie, so left them out.)

It is exciting to join the community and start having a go at a different type of interactive fiction. It certainly gives more room to explore choice options without art and things :smiley:

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Well hey that was quite a lot of fun! Now that bit at the end there left me quite a bit surprised! I loved how you really showed and not tell us instead! I always get put off whenever an author jus dumps exposition in the first chapter. :sob:

The choices available are fine as is.I find that some COGs like to offer us a plethora of choicws of which we do not know the extent of or care abour. Or too little that we are unable to personalize our MCs.

I am very interested to see how the story will unfold and am looking forward to it!

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I loved The Lady’s Choice so I’m very excited to see you here!

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Love the demo looking forward to more :grinning:

I read Diving In Deep some time ago and really enjoyed it. Delighted to see you on the CoG forums, and with a WiP no less! I look forward to reading it as soon as I have a few spare moments.

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“Bobby Marks,” I say through gritted teeth. “Why am I not surprised to find you here?”

Bobby, being the only journalist in the small town leaps on any kind of gossip she can- whether it be true or not. This is probably the closest to real news she’s ever had.

I think Bobby is a strange name for a woman.

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Feedback time:

Most everything story-related is well on its way to being top-notched. An interesting intro done in a way that advances the story and the character creation - bravo.

Mechanics, I’m not sure how your systems are built as of now but it seems light on the normative “stat_chart” stats. It will be interesting to see how they are developed and used.

Formatting will need to be changed up; a lot of the readers will be using their phones and devices. The current page-breaks are few and will mean a lot of scrolling and text blocks for these members of your intended audience.

Overall a great first submission and I am looking forward to reading more.

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Its a nickname for Roberta

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Oh I love this so much! It’s great!

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