Admittably, Ulysses, converting gamebooks to long fiction would make for dull reading, however the same could be said in reverse. Novels about tortured pianists realising that their love of music has seperated them from the people they love would end up as:

You find yourself in a restaurant with your estranged wife. There is a piano in the corner and a menu on your lap. To play your wife her favourite turn on teh piano, turn to 7. To play the piece you are working on, turn to 52. To order garlic bread turn to 19. Finally to ask her if she would escuse you and allow you to go to the bathroom, turn to 81.

Not really gripping stuff.

The point I'm making is that long fiction and gamebooks can't swap places (Gamebooks becoming fiction and vice versa). Also, while your mention that long fiction requires more dialogue is true, this is in some ways a benefit. A story purely built of action dialogue would be harder than one with action, speech and description.

Finally , plot changes are easier in long fiction. For example, compare 'Lord of the Rings' and 'Crypt of the Sorcerer', if, upon finishing, Tolkein decided to rewrite the end (eg: Frodo and Sam travel to Gondor, send an army led by Gandalf and Aragorn to tear open the Black Gates. They then enter Mordor and, accopanied by the army, destroy the Ring) he could simply remove the original ending and replace it. If Ian Livingstone decided to change 'Crypt' however (eg: Instead of needing 5,000,000 items you randomly found, you need all your companions in certain conditions) he would basically need to re-write the whole book, removing all the 'pick-up-able' items which were now useless, and replacing them with something else.

Oh, and on the sandwich subject:

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Ulysses Ai
Tue Aug 19 23:15:21 2008
Planet Of The Spiders

Amirali:
What are sandwiches for in PotS?

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Gaetano:
I have written or am writing some long fiction stories (all on hold while I get this gamebook nostalgia out of my system). I think writing good long fiction is harder because the demand for quality of plot becomes higher, as well as for things like dialogue. Gamebooks have an inherent 'hook' because they are interactive, so the plot doesn't have to be quite as good. Imagine if the average gamebook was written up as a read-only story...

"...Xarglot proceeded through the maze and came upon a junction of corridors, offering him the choice of north, south, east and west. Xarglot chose to go west. Yet he had not gone far when he came to a door in the wall. Should I open it, or keep going? he mused. He decided to open the door, and go inside. Suddenly he was under attack from a zombie gargoyle! But luckily, Xarglot had procured a Gem of Warding from that wizard he saved from the grumpy tree-demon in the forest, and was able to drive the monster away! The zombie gargoyle had been guarding a treasure box. Do I open the box, or just leave? Xarglot wondered..."

Exciting Stuff.

duffmeister
Tue Aug 19 21:14:31 2008
Planet Of The Spiders

Depends on your definition of what's 'long,' are we talking 1,000 page epics or anything larger than a postage stamp? Personally, I've written some gamebook-length fiction in past and find gamebook writing harder. First there's the multiple storylines required for gamebooks, then rules, stats, continuity (i.e: if opening the red door or the blue door eventually leads to room X, the references in room X cannot specifically mention either door) and the fact that writng rules, stats and suchlike can be quite dull, making gamebook writing more tiring.

Still, gamebooks have a few bonuses. Being more action based, you can get away with less description and character depth...which can, I supose, also be a flaw...

Anyway, I feel like I'm whining, I'm just saying, Gamebooks are harder to write, in answer... at least, that's how I feel.

Darn, this is getting kind of meandering now. I feel like I'm concluding a conclusion about the conclusion of my conclusion. Either I finish here, in which case this stuff is kind of pointless, or I ramble till I get a conclusion, by which point it won't be worth it...

Oh, what the heck, I'm finishing here. Sayonara all!

Gaetano
Tue Aug 19 20:03:04 2008
Planet Of The Spiders

Thank you Amirali. I'm about 2/3 of the way done. I'm kind of anal retentive with spelling errors, so I keep checking, but I've got a sneaking suspicion some will still slip through. I'm also doing some last minute tweaks with mechanical issues to try and make the challenge level about right.

Have any of the writers here (or anyone, for that matter) who's tried to write a gamebook also written any long fiction? My impression is that writing a gamebook is more difficult than standard fiction, due to all of the story threads that need to remain consistent. But perhaps not- any thoughts?

Amirali
Tue Aug 19 05:49:36 2008
Planet Of The Spiders

Ulyssess:

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Gaetono, I thoroughly enjoyed "House of Horror" several years back. I'm eagerly anticipating your upcoming new book.

Kee Tue Aug 19 04:50:51 2008 General Chat	How you make online versions of gamebooks....like, a program or something maybe?
	I convert the gamebook into a particular format - mostly a mixture of HTML and a simple language I made up for the purpose. I have written a programme which can process this information. Each time you do anything in one of the gamebooks, this programme runs on the web server and generates an HTML page.

Kee Mon Aug 18 11:30:19 2008 General Chat	What system do you use to post gamebooks online?
	Are you asking how I make online versions of the gamebooks, or how an author should go about getting their gamebook on the site?

Amirali
Mon Aug 18 05:01:56 2008
Planet Of The Spiders

Planet Of The Spiders :

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Overall, it was terrific :D. Looking forward to the next installment making it to this site eventually.

Ulysses Ai
Mon Aug 18 00:52:26 2008
Planet Of The Spiders

Hi Amirali

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Amirali
Sun Aug 17 17:33:12 2008
Planet Of The Spiders

Ulyssess, I enjoyed Planet of the Spiders, as well as the parent-bot adventure. PoTS seemed easier, which was a bit of a relief. Out of curiosity, is there more than one good ending besides

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Andrew Wright
Sun Aug 17 13:29:23 2008
General Chat

Not right now, though I do have some plans for some...

duffmeister
Sat Aug 16 13:20:17 2008
General Chat

Oh, and Andrew W. are you writing any other Gamebooks?

duffmeister
Sat Aug 16 13:19:16 2008
General Chat

How come 'rebels of the Dark Chasms' and 'Midnight Deep' don't exist on the Downloads Page?

The purpose of this site is to host the online game, the gamebook archive is really a secondary aspect that I have kind of drifted into, and I do not feel too much of a drive to make it more comprehensive. At the time I adapted Rebels Of The Dark Chasms and Midnight Deep, I may not even have had a downloads page, certainly I did not specifically ask permission from either author to host their gamebooks in the original format. I could ask now, and I'm sure they'd both be OK with it, but that would involve me doing something.

Although... I do sort of have Rebels Of The Dark Chasms on the site as it is zipped up with the rest of the old fightingfantasy.com website.

Jordan Wed Aug 13 19:17:43 2008 Riders Of The Storm	I did have my browser open where things went wrong, and gigured out how to fix it. I do have a question, though. I defeated the night demon, but it took me back to a bit after the beginning. Is it supposed to do this?
	I think it's a side-effect of your 'fix'. If you email me a copy of the URL as it was before you fixed it, I may be able to sort it out for you.

Jordan
Wed Aug 13 04:10:05 2008
Riders Of The Storm

Andy,

Is there any way you can send me step by step instructions on how to accomplish this? If not allowed to post them on here, my email address is jordan.lynch@merseymail.com. Thanks.

I don't know how to do this myself, it would also depend on which browser you use.

What I will say is that in an absolutely ideal world you would still have your browser open at the point where things went wrong. Then you could save your position (bookmark / add to favourites), email me the URL and wait for me to fix the problem (or for it to go away by itself) whereupon you could resume the game.

I just checked and found I was able to use an endurance potion without anything bad happening, so I'm not sure what the problem is at the moment. Sorry about that.

Andy (Just some random guy )
Wed Aug 13 03:56:15 2008
Riders Of The Storm

Use your history to go back to the page before and save it with favourites

Jordan
Tue Aug 12 21:11:27 2008
Riders Of The Storm

Andy (The admin of the site)

I've gotten to the

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and tried to use an endurance potion to heal myself. It gave me an error can't open file message. Is there anyway to continue where I left off, or do I have to restart the damn thing over?

Phil Sadler
Tue Aug 12 09:48:19 2008
Riders Of The Storm

I'm afraid you can not turn back and the only way to stop it is to complete the book.

If you are finding things too difficult at this point then you may like to download and try out the text version. This version is certainly easier because it allows you to use luck in combat, and this will help you conserve stamina for later.

Jordan
Mon Aug 11 22:23:22 2008
Riders Of The Storm

Phil,

If you have to face it everytime, is there anyway of turning back, or disrupting

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