Using paragraph-hopping as a game mechanic

I followed the thread "Combining the CCG and the choose-your-own-adventure book" (by RecultantGeneral) with great interest because I considered using paragraph-hopping adventure-creation as a game mechanic myself for some time. That discussion however quickly went into the direction that was pretty much orthogonal to my goals:

This game is not really designed to be replayed

and then it ended on a sad note

I think that paragraph-hopping story-creating is a great game mechanic because it provides such strong theme and pulls the players into the stories as the game unfolds. But, unlike ReluctantGeneral, I was trying to create a highly-replayable, euro-style game that could be finished in 1-2 hours. I never thought of adding a CCG aspect either.

The key to achieving this is, in my view, to have each player "own" one character, and an adventure book that contains adventures for only that character. But I allow ALL players to influence the adventures of ALL characters, both their own and everyone else's. This way, as you are driving your character towards the victory, other players supply the twists and turns to your character's adventures, keeping th gameplay interesting even when playing with a well-known adventure book.

The interaction between different character's stories is be done by characters aquiring certain "powers" at certian moments in their adventures, so that these powers can be used to affect other characters (at the player's discretion).

Anyway, here are my current design notes for this game ((c) 2006 Andrei Burago, of course :)) -- please read if you are interested, it's longish:

Game pieces

- A deck of "power" cards.
○ Each card represents a certain power (skill, connection…). There are about 10 powers altogether. A candidate set: "royal favor", "wealth", "love", "anger", "poison", "prowess", "weather", "underworld" (pirates/robbers), "divine intervention", and the plain old "luck".

- An "adventure book" for each player.
○ The book consists of 30-50 pages and represents the possible adventures of one character. One page is labeled as a victory page.
○ Each page is structured as follows:
§ Some flavor text and illustration describing a chapter of this character's adventures
§ Possible "events", in form of: what can happen (text and page number to hop to) tagged with a triggering condition, expressed in terms of certain power (s) to be used. There should be 3-5 possible events per page on average. Higher level of certain power is represented by multiple cards to be used; that is, you would require only one weather card to create a thunderstorm event, but many more to trigger a powerful hurricane event.
§ In addition, a page or event may specify extra rules and/or actions that should be followed while the character is on this page or when the event is triggered.
§ Examples of what can be specified include: powers the character intrinsically possesses while on this page (e.g. if this page describes your adventures as a captain of a pirate ship, your character possesses the "pirate" power.), powers your character may not use while on this page, or conditions on their use (e.g. if you are imprisoned, you can only use your powers on yourself), or powers your character gains after an event (that represents acquiring wealth, skills or connections), etc. There are a lot of possibilities here to add variety to characters and game play.
○ Example of a page in the character book:
§ You are a merchant sailing back home with a cargo of valuable spices. What can happen next:
□ a) [1×luck] The weather and winds are in your favor and you arrive home safely [receive 3×wealth power cards from the deck and add them to your hand; reshuffle the deck. Go to page 20],
□ b) [3×weather] a mighty hurricane hits your ship, and you are shipwrecked [go to page: 40], or
□ c) [1×pirates] you are attacked by pirates [go to page 60].
(On page 60, you are fighting with those pirates.)
○ Each page should roughly indicate how close you are to the victory, either in "level number" (1-10) or some color coding or such. Events should act intuitively: an unfavorable event should generally decrease the level, and a favorable one should increase it.
○ Some notes on character book construction:
§ The adventures in the book are to be structured in such way that even a series of most unfortunate events gradually leads to victory, but in a much lengthier path. That is, there should be virtually no "loops" that lead to the same page, and if such loops exist, they should be in general favorable and bring your character additional powers.
§ The shortest path to victory should be, probably, around 10 pages long, while the longest should take as many as 30 or more, with an average of 20 pages (for keeping the game length in check).
§ Different characters should, of course, be "balanced" in the way of how easy it is to achieve victory when playing them; but their adventures; powers they need to succeed and powers they gain, should vary for interesting game play.

Game rules

1. Each player opens their character book on page 1.
2. The deck of power cards is shuffled and put in the middle of the table. Each player draws a hand of <5> random power cards. Choose who goes first; the play proceeds clockwise around the table.
3. On each turn, a player can do one of two things:
a. Draw <2> power cards; this immediately ends this player's turn.
b. Play one or more power cards from your hand in front of yourself and/or some other player(s). When you play a power card or a combination of power cards that triggers an event for your or some other player's character, follow the instructions in that character's adventure book, and then open the book on the newly specified page. Discard the power cards after use.
c. When playing the powers, you should not be violating conditions on the current page of your character's book (if any).
d. You cannot trigger more than one event per player, per turn.
e. If the current page in your character book says your character possesses a certain power intrinsically, you do not need to have that card in your hand to play it; it is assumed to be at your disposal at this moment.
4. The first player to display the victory page in their character's adventure book wins the game.