I am getting back into creative writing after spending the last year doing other things. I've recently re-started my CHYOA: Whispering Wind. https://chyoa.com/story/Whispering-Wind.51951 I was wondering if anyone wants to take a shot at co-authoring or writing a branch? The basic idea behind the CHYOA is that readers can suggest for the main character(s) do something in the comments and it's up to a) a dice roll to see if it is likely to happen and b) author interest in fleshing that idea out. There's a rules page that outlines more, but I've tried to make the story collaborative in nature. The current setting for it is moderated. I want to make sure that whatever is posted is more than a placeholder and is actually readable: basic English and sentence structure. I have three protagonists currently; all of whom I'm willing to share more authorship about. I like to write stories about empowerment through corruption (of some form), but none of the threads have dedicated them to anything in particular yet. The Isabella plot I have in mind is to take a Midwestern Christian girl and have her "find God in sex". The Aisha storyline is a modern woman, oppressed by her rich father breaking away and doing whatever she needs to become self-sufficient. The most recent one is a little different: Nicolette is a high school senior who just turned 18, has a crippling porn addiction, but is too shy to act on her urges. The outline I have for Nicolette is to lose her shyness and embrace her slutty nature, but with the caveat of romance. My biggest concern is keeping the story near the front page to make sure enough readers will read the story and offer suggestions.
That is nice dream, but lot of stories are just placeholders and tolerated by admins because proper structure and readable english isn't required by rules.
Would it be like a game where there are cards with 6 options, 3 are good things that can happen to the player and 3 are bad, and the player rolls a 6 sided die, and whatever the number is, that's the option that happens?
I suppose. I don't mind if people want tomake drafts and whatnot, but I hate opening a promising thread and finding an empty page staring back at me. Do you have any suggestions?
The idea in WW is options that might not be determinate: Does X finger herself in class? are subject to chance. If you wanted to write a thread based on your idea, I would support it in WW for sure. I think it sounds interesting. My mode of representing options is based off RPG games like DnD. The author works like an old school Dungeon Master who the players (readers) cannot see and rolls on their behalf. Based on how unlikely the option is, the author assigns a DC: difficult class (this is represented by a number larger than 1). For my example I'll say 73. Next, the writer rolls a D100 dice, adds any pertinent modifiers, such as: X has a fetish for exhibitionism (+10 to any roll involving exhibitionism) or X has a libido modifier of +5. The d100 dicd can be rolled ny googling roll a d100. My version looks like this: DC: 73 D100 = 34 + 10 + 5 = failure. Result: X does not masturbate
Remember that by and large readers will want to see sexy stuff. You don't want to have too many instances where the story is clearly leading up to sex... and then computer says no and no(thing) fucking happens. It's a huge let-down. On the other hand, you also don't want all rolls to just blindly succeed. I've read stories where the author just kept on succeeding at rolls with 10-30% odds, over, and over, and over, far beyond what the rules of probability could reasonably sustain. At that point, the suspension of disbelief is thoroughly broken, making the whole die rolling thing meaningless. It's a pretty tight balance act!
You are correct, King! When I developed the idea in my head, I envisioned that exact same problem. I dunno if you ever played DnD before or BG3 with Karmic dice turned off, but you can certainly have stretches of success and stretches of failure. After thinking about my own motivations for writing, it became much less about the reader and more about forcing myself to write creatively. In the most recent 2 chapters, I've had 2 failures to 6 successes. And the successes have by and large been high DC's and even higher rolls. I suspect that if the dice suddenly cool when there's been 3–5 chapters of such high success rates, it will create a suspension of disbelief, if I don't write around it. I see it as my task to interpret the dice and still make it sexy and fun to read. One of the changes I made moving from my previous two threads to this one is having a “mandatory” minimum 2,000 word chapter. Before, I had a “mandatory” maximum of 1500 words. Previously, some advice I had gotten was I wrote in too long a format for CHYOA, so I challenged myself to cap it. I found that constraint too harsh on my writing style, especially when it came to sex scenes; it just felt like repetitive build up with no climax. With an increased word limit, I feel like I can still add in sexy stuff around bad dice rolls. Someone wants MC to snap a nude selfie. Roll is crappy. MC doesn't take a nude selfie, but she still grapples with her desire.
Sounds good! I also just had an idea while reading your post: one way to avoid the "failure = no sex in my sex story" issue is to roll not for sex or no sex, but sex A or sex B. Maybe your protagonist with her +35 Sluttiness stat won't give the stranger the full 3 hole treatment within 2 minutes of meeting him, but she could at least give him a quick handjob. Or two. That way, there's at least some payoff, keeping the structure of the story intact without forcing you to always succeed.
I have a couple of dice-based stories I contribute to, based on hacks of Apocalypse World. My approach on a dice roll failure is sometimes a "sorry, no", sometimes a sexy disaster, or sometimes the main character not getting what they want, but witnessing a hot scene they wish they could be part of. My frequent dice-resolved stories are @SwampThing 's Slut World and my own Lusty Magical Academy (though contributors can choose or create a different academy)
