Lone Wolf Reborn: Episode 8

In case you've missed past episodes, see these links...
Lone Wolf: Reborn - Episodes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

Turning the Prince's white horse southwards, you kick your heels into the flanks and leave the battle, and the dying Prince, far behind you. You ride for hours before coming to rest beneath a tree, where you stop and eat a Meal (mark 1 meal off).

Upon resuming your journey, you travel for several more miles before reaching a junction where the trail leads east and west. The sign has been hacked down, but looking at your map, you determine you must travel east to get to the capital, so you follow the road in that direction.

You have ridden about three miles when, in the distance, you spot the unmistakable silhouette of five large Doomwolves. Riding on their backs are Giaks. They seem to be going on ahead to where the path leads down into an open meadow. Suddenly, one of the Giaks leaves the others and begins to ride back along the path towards you.

If you wish to hide in the undergrowth and let him pass, turn to 176.

If you wish to fight him, turn to 340.

[Short entry this time, but this seems like a relevant decision to put to the group. After eating that last Meal, we are now out of food. It's only been two paragraph sections without combat, so we've regained 2 Endurance, but we're still rather injured (18 out of 24 Endurance.) Hiding might be safer, but this Giak might have plot. What do you think? And... save point this time is 32.]

Lone Wolf Reborn: Episode 7

Off to a great start folks. Here I am, less than a week in, and already behind a day. Thank you, thank you. I'll be here all week.

Hey, better late than never, right?

In case you've missed past episodes, see these links...
Lone Wolf: Reborn - Episodes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

Chasing the sounds of battle, you burst into a clearing, where a fierce battle rages across a stone bridge. At the heart of the bridge, Prince Pelathar battles a massive, ugly Gourgaz in an epic clash. Pelethar thrusts, drawing blood from the Gourgaz--but with his sword extended, he does not see the Gourgaz's massive, black axe rising above him.

You cry out a warning, but it is too late! The Gourgaz slams his axe down, and the Prince only barely ducks aside to avoid the worst of it! Blood sprouts from his shoulder, and the Prince is down!

You rush forward, racing between the thinning ranks of the Prince's men. Just as the Gourgaz raises his axe for the finishing blow, you dart in and catch that deadly blow on your sword. Sparks fly, and the Gourgaz looks up to see who challenges it now. When it sees your face, its tongue darts out and its lips pull back in a deadly grin that shows all its teeth.

You must fight to the death!

[Okay, we have Weapon Skill 19, and the Gourgaz has Weapon Skill 20. We have some skills that *can* help in combat, but none that currently *do*. We're still wielding an axe, so don't get the bonus from our specialization with broadswords. And Mindshield won't help this time, because he doesn't have any mental attacks. Here goes!]

Round 1: You lunge in, hoping for a quick kill, and you score a deep wound--but the Gourgaz punishes you with a blow from his axe before you can get back out. Neither of you came out ahead in that exchange, but the monster is bigger than you. If it comes to a battle of attrition, you're going to lose. You'll have to do better than that. (-4 STA each)

Round 2: Fighting more cautiously, you still can't keep the Gourgaz off you. But now it's your turn to make him pay--while you take a glancing blow, you cut a deep, bleeding wound into the beast's side. You half-grin, but you know the fight is long yet. (-6 to him, -3 to you.)

Round 3: As the blood gets flowing, you find your pace. Your old training comes back to you, and you see how predictable the Gourgaz' movements are. With a surge of confidence, you swing your blade in an eloquent movement to trick the monster into thinking he has an opening. He falls for the bait! Your blade bites deep, while you take no more than a scratch. (-9 to him, -1 to you.)

Round 4: The Gourgaz is bleeding heavily, and for just a second, you relax your guard, thinking the fight almost over. But the beast lunges for you with startling speed, his strength undiminished by his injuries! You barely fend him off with a counteroffensive. The two of you trade wounds, blow for blow, then part back again, each of you panting heavily. You know this fight will test your skill to its limit--and your limit is growing frighteningly close. (-4 each)

Round 5: Narrowing your eyes, you sharpen your mind. There is no more room for mistakes. The Gourgaz lets out a roar of battle, the elation of combat thrilling in its voice. It grips its axe and charges. You see its motions play out in your mind. You grip your sword, lower yourself and race forward to meet its charge. Blood puffs from its snout with each breath. Time seems to slow. The axe descends, and you can see every notch on its blade--a blade that carries a promise, an offer, of your death. Politely, you decline the offer, ducking slightly lower so that the axe whistles harmlessly past your head. Using the strength from your bunched knees, you push up, spinning your body to swing with all your force. Your own axe meets the Gourgaz's midsection with enough power that you almost don't feel the resistance. You complete your spin, seeing bits of monstrous scale, bone and intestine spraying away. (-10 to him, -0 to you)

When you complete your step, you look back over your shoulder to see the Gourgaz, now split almost in two by your blow, shuddering to its death at the center of the bridge. A ripple goes through the Darlord's creatures as they see their leader follow, and they fall back to the trees with cries of rage and panic.

The Prince's white-armored men move up to form a shield wall around their fallen leader. You kneel by the Prince, and immediately see that he does not have much time left. He clasps your hand, but you cannot help but notice the pool of blood beneath him spreading, even as he tries to speak.

The dying Prince looks up into your eyes and says, ‘Kai Lord, you must take a message to my father. The enemy is too strong, we cannot hold him. The King must seek that which is in Durenor or all is lost. Take my horse and ride for the capital. May the luck of the gods ride with you.’

Sadly, you incline your head and promise that you will do so.

TO BE CONTINUED...

[No choice this time. Didn't want to keep going when the scene is clearly over. We ended on page 82 after a difficult fight. We're down to 16 STA, back up to 18 after the death scene with the Prince, due to Healing. More tomorrow!]

Lone Wolf Reborn: Episode 6

I put this game on hold during April while I did the April A-Z, but now I'm ready to pick it up again. And since I'm running out of ideas on Gamebook Theory, this may be my primary staple of the blog for a while. (With other random thoughts on writing, stories or games thrown in once in a while as well.)

As it's been a while, I'll give you...

The Story Thus Far: Our hero, Silent Wolf, was out gathering wood as punishment for misbehavior when his monastery was attacked by agents of the Darklords. After a millenia-long absence, the Darklords have returned in strength, attacking towns and strongholds all across the land in a massive surprise attack. But their first and greatest blow was against the Kai Monastery, home to their ancient enemies.

As the last of the Kai Lords, YOU must brave perils and monsters to journey to the capital city and warn the king. YOU may be the land's only hope...


In case you've missed past episodes, see these links...
Lone Wolf: Reborn - Episodes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Upon seeing the stream of refugees on the road, you decide that it would be too dangerous to expose yourself there. You fade back into the trees and continue your journey on foot through the wilderness.

After some hours passing under the trees, using your survival skills to find your way south, something catches your attention. Looking more closely at a large boulder nearby, you see two legs sticking out from behind it.

You are about to move on, when your Sixth Sense warns you [Sixth Sense Skill Used] that this person is loyal soldier of the King. He is wounded, and he needs help. You rush to his side, to find the soldier lying next to his spear and shield in the mud.

On the shield is the painting of a white pegasus—the Prince of Sommerlund’s emblem. He is one of the Prince’s soldiers, and he is only just conscious. His uniform is badly torn, and you can see that he has a deep wound in his left arm. As you move nearer, his eyes flicker open. ‘Heal me, my Lord,’ he begs. ‘I can barely feel my arm.’

You quickly apply what Healing skill you posses [Healing Skill Used].

Placing one hand on his forehead and the other on his wounded arm, you feel the warmth of your healing powers leave your body and give strength to the injured man.

He thanks you weakly, introducing himself as Trimis. Then remembrance comes back into his eyes, and he grips your arm, saying, "Prince Pelethar! Kai Lord, my prince is under attack, to the south. A great force of the Darklord's creatures are attacking him near the bridge of Alema. I was carried by a Kraan to this place, and dropped to die. You must help him!"

As you make the man comfortable and prepare to continue on your way, you dwell upon your options. If the Prince is under attack by a large force of the Darklord's creatures, it could be very dangerous to get involved. How much difference could you really make? And yet, can you leave him to his fate in good conscience?

What is more important, saving the Prince, or making sure to complete your mission to reach the King? As you journey on to the south, you hear sounds of battle near Alema bridge. What will you do?

If you wish to follow the sound, turn to 97.

If you would rather continue south, turn to 6.

[Save Point: 264. We are fully recovered from our Wounds, thanks to the Healing Skill. And our combat skill is quite good. But as I recall, this is a very tough fight, if we choose to take it. What do you think?]

Storytelling Festival!

First of all, thanks to all the wonderful people who stopped by due to April A-Z! I had a wonderful time participating (even if I didn't make it all the way through!)

From here on forward, I would like to get active again with the blog. I would like to plan on posting three times per week at this point, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Most of these posts will be fairly simple things. At this time, these posts will consist primarily of continuing my way through the Lone Wolf adventures. But once in a while, instead of (or in addition to) the story posts, I will also write other thoughts or announcements about events.

In this case, I just want to share with you about the Ojai Storytelling Festival, which I attended this weekend. It was a beautiful weekend, with some amazingly talented people. Kevin Kling is a genius; I recommend his book "the dog says how." It will have you laughing out loud within a few pages. And then on the verge of tears a few pages beyond that--then back to laughter.

I was blown away by the masterful performance of the Chameleons. I've never seen mime-work that I enjoyed so much before. They combined the physical art of miming with a sophisticated storytelling technique to sweep the audience away.

My other favorite was the great storyteller Baba Jamal Koram, who just has such an amazing presence and connection with the audience. You feel as if he could be your own grandfather, using folklore to tell you about yourself and your people. I'm not black. There's not a single soul from Africa in my ancestry. We came over on the Mayflower. But Baba Jamal's words gave me that tradition. He gave me those stories and made them my own. Thank you Baba Jamal.

Storytelling is something I've always had an interest in. It's something I love, and a skill I hope to develop myself. This is about the fourth Ojai Storytelling Festival I've been to, and I think, after this one, I might be about ready to start trying it myself. Wish me luck!

P: Passing on the rest of April A-Z

It is with great regret that I must announce that I will be withdrawing from the rest of the April A-Z blogging challenge. I simply have too many other things going on, and I'm not finding it easy to write short, simply posts just for the sake of meeting the blog challenge requirements.

I am happy to say, however, that some excellent posts came out of this challenge. For any passerby who come this way, feel free to check out the links below for some of my proudest posts from April.

I've also been tackling a personal challenge to write a novel in one month. Here are my thoughts on novel-writing before and after this attempt.

Before: Basics of Writing

After: On Writing Novels

My primary interest and area of experience thus far is in writing gamebooks, not novels. Here are some posts for you gamebookers out there:

If you've never read a gamebook

How to Write a Gamebook

An original short gamebook, Mars 2112, to demonstrate what the genre is all about.

A post summarizing some of my thoughts on Gamebook Theory

And, last but not least, some silly Literary Jokes I made up.

If you like what you see and you want more gamebook goodness, allow me to refer you over to Stuart Lloyd's fine site on gamebooks, where he is doing a month chock-full of interviews with gamebook authors, illustrators and producers, along with many excellent articles about gamebooks (including an interview with me!). Of course, chances are good you came here from there, so this may be an unnecessary recommendation ;)

Next year, if I try this A-Z challenge again, I'm going to plan out in advance what the topic of each post will be, rather than trying to make it up as I go along. Lessons learned.

Thanks for dropping by, and rest assured, there will be more blogging goodness coming up. We will now return to our regularly scheduled programming.

O: On Writing a Novel

Writing a novel is hard.


I set a goal for myself, in April, to take a stab at writing a novel in a month. (Yeah, like that was going to happen.) But while I haven't been able to complete it, the important thing for my purposes was using that as incentive to start it. I designed the challenge so that even if I didn't meet the goal, I would still be in a good position. And I am.

Here are some of the lessons I've learned from my first attempt to write a novel.

1) Plan, plan, plan: One of the problems I ran into in this case was not enough planning. Don't get me wrong, I spent a month planning and wrote a detailed initial outline. But after that, because of the time constraints, I never set aside more time for brainstorming. I felt like any time I sat down to write, I had to produce word count, or I would fall behind.

That is ultimately a failing strategy. The important thing isn't the word count, it's the thought that goes into the word count. In my experience here, what I found was not that I produced something awful, but that as the underlying thought behind the story dried up, eventually I just couldn't write at all.

At the end of the day, your story has two values, Thought, and Word Count. The higher you can get the ratio of Thought/Word Count the better. I don't know if, for my purposes, I'll use word count as a benchmark again. It directs my attention and energy to the wrong place.

2) Character Growth: One of the things I found missing was character growth for my protagonist. The outline I drew up looks very good on paper, but as you go through, exploring the reality of the story, you find things out that you didn't realize before. What I need to do, at this point, is take a step back and think about her story, where she came from, and where she's going. That's going to require some re-writing; and that's not compatible with pounding out the most rapid word count I can.

3) Villain Depth: Another thing I discovered as I went along is that my villain has all the depth of a lily pad on dry ground. This is another opportunity for re-thinking and re-writing. It *can* work to have a villain with "evil" drives, such as wanting to dominate and control other people, but I had nothing to him except that. As a friend pointed out, nobody thinks of themselves as evil. In order to make a villain more than a 2D caricature, you need to get inside their head and understand how they see themselves. If I want my villain to be "evil," by any sane standard, that begs the question... how does he justify it in his own mind? A good answer to that could turn a comic villain into a deeply interesting human being.

4) Time to Germinate: Another thing I realized is that sometimes, you can't just sit down and make this stuff up. I knew when I ran into points where something was missing. But it wasn't coming to me, and I couldn't force it to. I tried going on anyway, and felt very dissatisfied with the result. The only thing I can assume at this point is that my inner creative cauldron just needs more time to simmer.

So, these are the obstacles I ran into. I don't know if they'll be relevant in all situations, but if you find yourself in a similar situation, blocked in a novel, maybe this could be a helpful checklist, to see if any of these are the roadblocks you're facing.

Looking back on this challenge to myself, I think it was a ringing success. Though I didn't meet my stated goal (100,000 words in one month,) I knew at the start that I might not, and that would be okay, because I would probably learn valuable lessons along the way. And that's exactly what's happened. I'm one step closer to writing my first novel, and that first novel will probably be a little better for having done this exercise.

N: Names

It's been said that you can tell the quality of a fantasy story by the quality of the names of the people and places within. Tolkien, for example, has some of the most evocative names on record today, and his books are still the gold standard by which other fantasy stories are measured against. By contrast, I once joined a DnD game for a single session, and was handed a paladin named "Sherman." Not even making this up. He was named after the tank.

Of course, picking good names for your characters is always a challenge, whether you're writing in fantasy, or in any other genre. Writer's methods range from the laissez-faire to the deeply thoughtful. Some people don't name their characters until everything else is done. Another school of thought holds that names should be symbolically significant, or contain within them tricky allusions to other relevant works or philosophies.

For myself, I sometimes feel that the best names I come up with are not created after long and careful consideration, but come to me when I get my mind into 'the zone,' that magical place where you have your feet in the dream world, and your hands on the keyboard, and the world comes to life for a little while.

What's your theory? How do you come up with names for your characters? Any names you are particularly proud of? A technique you would like to share?