Gamebook: Caverns of None Shall Pass

I took a break from OHR for a few months to write a gamebook. It's called The Caverns of None Shall Pass. It takes place in a fantastic far future where the planet Urth has been mutated by a series of apocalyptic cataclysms.

You will create a character by choosing from 5 races and developing 5 skills. The book's structure is randomized to encourage replayability. The game system uses a single 6-sided die.

If you don't know what a gamebook is, imagine a Choose Your Own Adventure book combined with Dungeons & Dragons and you should get an idea.

The book is also illustrated by yours truly.

Take a look and tell me what you think. Notify me of any errors or typos. You can read more information and download the PDF on my blog: http://andihagen.wordpress.com/2013/07/24/the-caverns-of-none-shall-pass/

I finally got a chance to look at this. Cool stuff! Here are my suggestions:

- Add a character sheet to the PDF. It gives the player a more visual way of organizing things and helps as a reference.
- I'd retool the item selection part of character creation into a starting story scenario. This would streamline the selection a bit, since it's kind of awkward currently to say "gain a point of stamina or take three items."
- There are various typos throughout the book; it could use some proofreading.
- At a glance, I'm not sure any other species' scenario-specific benefits outweigh the Puremen's 2-point skill bonus, but I'd have to play more to be sure.
- If you make it to Sanctuary with more than 1 Stamina, you essentially automatically win. You should be forced to keep rolling the Combat check until you succeed, if that's the route you picked.
- With a skill cap of 5, you have a 1-in-6 chance of failing any skill check. This means that even if you test a maxed skill in each scenario, you only have about a 50% chance of surviving eight scenarios*. This is a bit simplistic -- it doesn't consider items or racial bonuses, and it assumes you only take one check per scenario and you lose 1 Stamina if you fail. The actual game is generally more nuanced than this, but I feel like the game would be more fair if the skill cap were raised to 6.

*If you take Medicine, your odds rise to about 75% -- still not great for a best-case scenario.

Anyway, that's my feedback; take it or leave it. I like the flavor and illustrations, and hopefully I'll be able to spend a little more time with this soon.

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Mega Tact v1.1
Super Penguin Chef
Wizard Blocks

I played this a few times, once as a Beastman who died almost instantly, a Deadman who died about halfway, and the third time I completed it as a Plantman. I enjoyed the idea a lot and applaud the effort. I'm sure there are typos, but I didn't catch any.

Some thoughts of mine:

The setting is great, it kind of reminded me of Tales of the Dying Earth by Jack Vance, it was quite unique.

Your descriptions are fantastic as always and there was a good mix of humor that didn't detract from the atmosphere. This helped keep the game interesting.

For the most part I think the system is really well thought out and executed nicely.

Some criticisms:


I also wonder the same as Mogri whether or not the benefits from any of the races could outweigh 2 extra points as pureman.

Some of the encounters start 3/4 the way through a page or part of the way through a page, I would have just started it at the top of the next page for clarity's sake.


I appreciate the style of the pictures, they're pretty psychadelic! But I do feel that often I can't tell what's going on in them, and sometimes I don't feel like they properly depict the scene that's been set up with the text. While it doesn't detract from the atmosphere at all, I felt if done a little more deftly it could have actually added a lot.

I could have stood to see some more illustration too. In 56 pages there are 4 small illustrations and the title page. I would have liked to see a nice big illustration of what Sanctuary looks like. It would have felt like a nice reward for succeeding.

All in all, very cool.

Thanks for your feedback. It was very informative. I appreciate both of you taking the time to read the book, complete it, and think critically about it. Your effort is much appreciated.



Good idea. Will do.



This idea is intriguing. What did you have in mind by a "story scenario"?



I've debated this a lot myself. There are 7 opportunities to use each race's abilities throughout the book. However, those only appear if you make the right die rolls under the right circumstances. I believe it is pretty balanced, but it's hard to to say for sure. Further investigation is needed.



Perfect. I will implement this.



There are lot of choices and racial abilities that skip whole sections with little effort. Also, many of the sections require you to fail multiple skill tests before you actually lose stamina. I'm not sure your assessment of the odds is accurate.



I considered this, but I decided otherwise in order to make the document shorter. Maybe I will reconsider though.



I could have stood to see some more illustration too. In 56 pages there are 4 small illustrations and the title page. I would have liked to see a nice big illustration of what Sanctuary looks like. It would have felt like a nice reward for succeeding.[/quote]

I agree. I'm not a very good or very fast illustrator. Perhaps I could add a couple more...

As it stands, the game consists of eight randomized scenes. You could have one static introductory scene that looks something like this:



Obviously the flavor is kind of dumb, but this is the sort of thing I mean. It also lets you give a stronger introduction to the game (flavor-wise) before throwing the player into the random scenes.



Probably not.

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Mega Tact v1.1
Super Penguin Chef
Wizard Blocks

I understand now. This idea is great. I will be making several changes to this book in the next few weeks, but this is the one I am most excited about.

So I was curious about the balance issues in regards to the pureman with the other races, so I flipped through this and jotted down when I came across one of the other races special abilities.

Certain races seemed to stand out a bit more as being better:

The Beastman can skip 3 different encounters.

The Bugman has the ability to skip through 6 different encounters, and 2 of these immediately without the need to make any other choice.

The Plantman has the ability to skip 4 encounters.

The Deadman can skip 5 encounters, but is given 3 different chances in 2 certain scenarios to do so, making those ones pretty certain.

This doesn't take into account some scenarios where there is a smaller chance to make it through unscathed, because it is a bit hard to gauge whether that is "obvious" or not (sometimes it is, and sometimes it isn't necessarily.)

This also doesn't count the end game scenarios.

There is also a chance to have your race switched or taken away entirely, unless you are pureman.

I'm not sure if any of this information is useful, but knowing this I feel like the beastman and plantman need something else, and I would either choose deadman, bugman, or pureman.

Thanks for your detailed observations. What you say is close to the truth, although fixing the problem can be pretty complex.

Each race gets 7 opportunities to use its abilities (6 in Encounters 1-18 and 1 in the Final Encounter). This still isn't all that balanced because some races' choices are more obvious. For instance, the Bugman often gets to bypass an Encounter almost immediately where the Plantman might have to make a few choices before it gets the opportunity to utilize its power.

However, all things considered, there are at least an equal number of chances. I'm sure of this fact because I kept track of it very carefully while writing the Encounters.

Likewise, (disregarding the Final Encounter) each skill is used an equal number of times.

I should point out that I was counting the amount of times each skill let you skip an encounter. There are certain uses which I did not count (for example, there is a scenario involving the merchant which is entirely optional) and certain others where using your skill let you miss one scenario but did not lead you out of the encounter. Also I'm sure I missed one or two.

Anyways things like that are super hard to balance, I point it out hoping it will be of some use, but all in all I had fun and was inspired by your book.

I see what you mean now. Although, the task of balancing this is pretty daunting. Let me contemplate it and I might come up with an idea.