What’s going on here then?

The year is 1824, and on the cobblestone streets of Edinburgh, an extraordinary tale of triumph and disaster is about to unfold. Fetch The Engines is a cross between a historical novel and a computer game, revealing the forgotten story of an inspirational real-life hero… and his fight to save a city from the flames.

Fetch The Engines is in its early stages. Right now, this blog is mainly of interest to people writing worlds in StoryNexus, the software platform it uses. Just want to play the game? Have a look here.

 

Why I chose StoryNexus

Since I put out the first draft of Fetch The Engines‘ first chapter, a surprisingly large number of people have asked me the following question.  “Why did you do it in StoryNexus?  The story you’ve written is essentially Choose Your Own Adventure, so wasn’t it an odd choice of platform?”

My stock reply to that question is: you’ve only seen 20% of what I’m planning to write.  And the first 20% is designed to gently ease non-gamers into the StoryNexus world, so it’ll make a lot more sense once you’ve seen Chapter Two.  But, actually, I’m dissembling when I say that, because I’d still have chosen StoryNexus even if the whole thing was going to be in the style of Chapter One.  In this post, I’ll try to explain why.

 

Flawed designs and lessons learned

Over the last couple of days, I’ve been tweaking Chapter One of Fetch The Engines, addressing the comments arising from the first round of playtesting.  Some of the changes I made were simple ones – fixing mistakes, or tidying up clumsy wording.  But a few were more subtle, and go to the heart of good StoryNexus design.

In this post, I’ll outline the most valuable lessons I’ve learned while tweaking Chapter One.  If you’re developing your own world in StoryNexus, perhaps you’ll find something of use here.

 

What a fortnight of playtesting looks like

It’s been a couple of weeks since I opened Chapter One of Fetch The Engines up for playtesting, and in that time about 30 people have kindly offered their comments – mostly through an online survey at the end.  This weekend I’m settling down to address the majority of their remarks, and I thought it might be fun to share what a fortnight of playtesters’ prodding actually looks like.

 

The power of the well-chosen word

In the early stages of a StoryNexus world, one of the most important design decisions is the choice of “major qualities”.  Major qualities measure your character’s development and progress; they don’t necessarily define who you are, but they do define what you can do.  Classic major qualities would be things like “Strength” and “Charisma”, but – hurrah! – most StoryNexus authors have chosen more novel ones.

In this blog post, I’ll talk about how I picked Fetch The Engines’ major qualities, and explain why the whole game now hangs on a single well-chosen word.

 

First things first

It’s my first post to this new blog!  Before I dive in, a couple of administrative announcements…

This blog is mainly meant for people who are writing stories (or games) using a tool called StoryNexus.  However, if you’re interested in non-traditional storytelling in general, you might well find things here of relevance.  If that’s you, this quick glossary will help you get up to speed on what StoryNexus is all about.

Also, this blog will make a lot more sense if you’ve actually played Fetch The Engines.  Here’s how to do that.

Oh, and I should write something about myself!  Let’s see: I’m 36, I live in Edinburgh in Scotland, and I’m halfway between being a writer and an engineer.  I’ve done a lot of technical writing in my career up to now, and I’m also (stand by for an unexpected swerve) a theatre critic, with a particular interest in immersive or interactive performances.  Fetch The Engines is my first real interactive work, though I’ve been playing around with the technologies for years.

This blog is just a personal reflection of lessons I’ve learned in the process, offered in the vague hope they might prove useful to others.