Combining the CCG and the choose-your-own-adventure book

Is the tome multiplayer as well? I guess I'm trying to figure out how two players can compete in a choose-your-own-adventure setting.

Some-what of a holy grail of mine *dons armour* :D

I agree if the book is combined with the cards it should be ring-bound.

and, i for one, will be awaiting the long-winded version, very, very interested in how this unfolds!

Fantastic

The combination of CCG and "Choose Your Own Adventure" book sounds really cool. And I'm not just saying that because I was a fan of both when I was a kid (read. kid = yesterday). The book would definately have to be spiral-bound, but from a design stand point (I have a BS in graphic design), I would love to see the book made to look like some really ancient, leatherbound tome. Something suitably majestic and awe-inspiring to match the tone of your sample scenario.

And no offence, but I think that the pages would look strange if the paragraphs were seperated by a playing card sized space. It would also force the book to have a large number of pages, depending on the number of cards/scenarios and the physical size of the page. I would much rather see the paragraphs indented more than usual, and the cards placed in the margins of the pages. You could alternate the locations of the cards on the page, like left, right, left so people don't get confused about which card goes with whick paragraph. Or (and this is pure genius if I do say so myself...) you could incorporate the card into the written paragraph. Like those illuminated letters in old midevial books. Tie the artwork into the paragraph somehow so that the card and text really fit together nicely.

I'll be the devils advocate here. I think the idea is original, and I always like the enthusiasim that goes with a new idea. But I genuinely think the idea is not good from a market standpoint.

I'm no market expert and will never claim to be, but I just don't see people buying this. They'd have to construct a deck, which requires buying cards. Then they'd have to buy a book (or a 'tome' as you called it) just to play their cards. Then their cards are restricted by the book in how they can be used. You're losing the initial idea of a CCG - freedom to do what you want. In a CCG you can choose what cards you want to play and you can choose the style of game you want to play. Nothing is restricted and there's no real 'timeline' to follow. As as for a choose-your-own adventure, this has too much 'stuff' added to it to really appeal to those book readers. They just want to read the book, they don't want to fight a battle with another person to decide what page to go to next.

I think the idea loses everything that's good about a CCG and loses everything that's good about a choose-your-own adventure. The idea does both of these good, but not great. It's not focused.

You might be able to pull it off, but I'd be surprised. I think it needs alot of work. It needs something new, not something borrowed and then joined with another borrowed idea.

I hope I wasn't too critical. But that's the way I see it. Hope that helps.

RD

I also have a problem to see both type of game match perfectly in the setting you are currently in. Consider that normally CCG include some deck customization, so I found it hard to imagine how they could be used for the story.

On my point of view, the best implentation would be :

Card : Strictly used for military combat result. But a dice roll could also do the same

Book : Ask user for decision and some cards can add themselves to your deck according to your decision.

It reminds me Ogre Battle 64 where some paths could make some people join your army.

But your story has to be more than "I invade this country" else a simple war game would do the job better. Maybe more focus on the diplomatic relations and event. Maybe, if both player are playing together, each player has his book, and when making their decision and looking for another paragraph, they take the answer of the other player and their answer to find the paragraph. Increasing the possible outcome but complexifying the story creation.

For example :

You have 3 choice

If you made choice A and player made choice A goto XX, choice B goto XX or choice C goto XX.
If you made choice B ...
If you made choice C ...

But the other player do not tell exactly what the choice mean. He just say "I made choice A".

But the idea of combining both games could be interesting. Maybe not with a "collectible" but more with a "Customizable" card game. The fact that the book can give you of make you leave cards is cool. Because another player that play the book could pick the cards you have droped.

Is there a technical way to make the card hold in the book conveniently. Magnet and velcro is not really well suited. Maybe some material that attract statics.

This sounds like a pretty neat idea! Other games that come to mind that you should look at include the CCG "Allegiance" (which I learned about from one of Tom Vasel's interviews), Tales of the Arabian Nights, and Blood Royale.

First things first:

If this is your goal, it's your goal, but it seems to me that embarking on a game design that's this ambitious doesn't need the additional baggage of a marketing model weighing it down. At this point, I really think you should just stick to trying to figure out how to make a great game, then worrying about how to make money off of it.

If you want to package this goal in terms that will be more conducive to your design process, say "to allow for expansion of the game by addition of new events (eg, a Barbarian invasion, a crusade) or factions".

On to the game itself. If you've read my thread on "narrative mechanics", you know that I was trying to do something vaguely similar. The rough idea of what I was going for was to have a the "game state" tracked by the pieces, the board, and tokens and counters, and to have the players interact with the game state via the paragraph book. (eg, I open the door to the Laboratory. It is current Night, and I am Alone. Go to paragraph 243). The key was that there would be a set of Event cards that, while revealed in semi-random order, would shape the storyline by directing which paragraph you'd look at. So it wouldn't exactly have been a choose-your-own-adventure, in the sense that once you end up in one "track" in the book, you follow it to one end or the other. Instead, the goal was to have the events in the book be somewhat interchangable, but to have their importance or details be reflective of the overall state of the game. Additionaly, I was going to give each character his own paragraph book, so that an event would be different depending on the character that uncovered it. Clearly, this was ambitious, and I haven't gotten too far with it yet for lack of time, although I do have some thoughts on how to proceed. A real snag was how to handle the forking of the narrative depending on the choices made without the size of the book becoming absurdly big, AND how to simultaneously allow for a lot of replay.

I have a different game I'm working on now with SiskNY that is more of a deduction game, and it sort of has a "paragraph book" but really, the paragraph book is a set of clues, and you interact with the board elements to earn the ability to look at certain clues. So in that sense, the game book is fully omniscient -- it knows the entire unfolding of the story. So, I'll need a separate "track" for each playing to enable high replay. My original idea would have been only "partially omniscient" -- the idea was that the story would have been shaped by the order in which the event cards are revealed, but obviously this could be broadly variable.

So, on to your game. You gave a sample entry:

I have to point out that this is not a choose your own adventure-style entry. This is an event card. And an event card is, in game terms, a special set of rules that apply only while the card is active. In that sense, your tome is really nothing more or less than a huge extension of the rulebook. And that's fine, but could you not achieve exactly the same effect with a deck of event cards?

I guess the one advantage of a paragraph book is that you can make the events more fleshed out, and that's probably a good thing. But I think to really justify the use of the Tome, you need to ensure that the story "progresses" in some way that is specifically enabled by the Tome so that the separate events cohere in a way that they wouldn't if they were simply revealed as random event card draws. BUT, at the same time, you have to ensure high replay by making sure that there are a lot of different progressions possible so that the game feels different every time.

I think you have a good idea, and I'd be interested to hear more about it!

Good luck,

Jeff

Interesting idea! I do have several points of skeptisism though.

The joy of the choose your own adventure books , or the Ian livingstone RPG books came mainly from two things, Replayability, and Solo play. And you are discarding both of those aspects.

If I am with my friends this isn't the type of game that I would care to play. I want to interact with my friends, not with a book. However as a solo game I think this sounds fun.

Something strikes me as odd combining a big scale war/diplomacy game with a fixed narrative. It is a bold idea, and highly original certainly. But the joy I draw from those big scale political/war games is the ability to effect your own destiny without imposed narrative rails. Imagine you were playing Twilight Imperium, and you finally took the center planet after a long fought war, and then someone reads a paragraph that hands the planet over to someone else. A neat aspect of these games is that they create their own narrative without the need for flavor text.

Somehow I don't think I would be satisfied with a game where a friend and I play for an hour, reading along and enjoying the story, and the only effect that we had on it was who controlled the iron mines, or got to marry the princess.

I just can't help but think that this idea would mesh better with the cliched dungeon crawl of the choose your own adventures or yore. These allow many of the aspects that you discuss on your page. But opens up the possibilities of, exploration, a mutable ending, replayability. But the world doesn't need another dungeon crawl :)

As far as components go, it would be nice if every Tome/Expansion/etc came with its own preconstructed deck. Sort of like blue moon. And as you continued to play through Books you could add those cards to your deck and customise it further.

Replayability is a big factor for the CCG aspect of your game as well. As much of the fun is tuning your deck to try to do better next time.

I don't want to sound completely negative, but you have been nice enough to offer constructive critisism to me.

I think that you have hit on something, as the paragraph based book game and the Customisable card game are an interesting mix that should make for an exciting game.

"Mechanism
The Tome is a choose-your-own-adventure style paragraph hopping book which details key events in the game world and defines how players can influence the outcome, and the results for each outcome.

Okay, that makes sense. You'd need to have several primary plot-lines available for each mode (by "mode", I'm guessing that players can choose their method of influencing the game-world; ie, war, corporate influence, political maneuvering, terrorism, et cetera) so that the game has replay value, yes?

"Story Cards acompany the Tome and may be won and lost by players depending on event outcomes."

I'm with you so far.

"Players aim to maximise their profits or minimise their losses by intelligently anticipating and reacting to reacting to events rather than determining the main course of event themselves. However the tome provides multiple story arcs depending on major event outcomes so as to retain a sense of participation."

So when the earthquake strikes California, there could be a series of repurcussions that are influenced by player hands, but if nothing in their hand is applicable, the Tome tells them where to go?

TOME sez: Corporate (negative): Investments in this area are FUBAR. Beg for government subsidizing to prevent bankruptcy, turn to page 500.
If you have a Political Favor, turn to page 550.

TOME sez: Terrorist (positive): Chaos amid the populace makes movement and resource acquisition easy. Advance plans to attack forward by 1 phase and turn to page 12.
If you have a plan currently in execution, turn to page 402.

Is that more or less correct?

"Players have their own faction specific, event-independant decks which they can construct before the game, and which provide a means of influencing event outcomes, when combined with story cards.

This is the 'short' version of my idea. I'd love to hear what people think before posting the detailed version..."

Sounds interesting. That Tome is gonna be huge, ja?

Awsome idea! Unfortunatelly I have to agree with Steiner - in the form you describe here it would not work. And as you've stated; it would be too easy to cheat.

Therefore I don't think that a tome is the correct idea (although it is very cool, visually). What if, instead of a tome, it would be a subscribable online service. Each player has a given ID, both ID's and passwords are necessary to confirm a game outcome. So Andy and Bert play the first scenario. Then they get to check the net, login each on their own (could be from the same computer, first one has to login then the other) and report the outcome of the battle. They then both get new storyline input, each tailored to their faction:

Andy: "Lord Kask seethed. He knew he should never have married that Swemmish shrew..." Lose 6 florins etc.

Bert: "Lord Rogs had burried his beloved daughter in Ogumian blood and had the gold to show for it. And yet it didn't feel satisfying. He... "
A) goes after Kask's head.
B) allies with Lord Zompf of Luria then goes after Kask's head.
C) sends assasins after Kask.

This would be more work to produce and the computer would have to keep track of what cards each player has as to not generate outcomes that require cards a player does not posses. It would also be hard to demonstrate for a potential publisher. But once made I think it has the potential to generate a truly fanatic following, fanatic enough to make Magic players pale - and perhaps even match Magic's revenues.