A site for all things narrative related! This includes examples of my writing, various Game Design ideas, thoughts and practise, as well as information around the development of the Text Adventure Chapters; a semi-improvised DnD/Choose-your-own adventure game I created & GM'd, which we're now in the process of adapting into an Audio Drama!
Game Narrative Substack | The Text Adventure Carrd | The Text Adventure Twitter |
Be sure to check all the above for even more!
Tales of the Torn Veil (Liveplay/Actualplay D&D & Homebrew Weekly Game)
A Somewhat Homebrewed D&D Campaign played live on stream weekly! Set in the world of the Text Adventure Chapters, Yssifrae, which you can learn more about in the next section, or join us on Wednesdays to see more!
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Experience- Creator, DM, Artist, Composer, VA + Various other DM wrangles!
The Text Adventure Chapters (Game/TTRPG)
A D&D/ Choose-Your-Own Adventure Campaign. Played through text, brought to life via an Audio Drama!
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Experience- Creator, GM, Designer/Writer
The Text Adventure has been a personal passion project spanning the last 4 or so years. Inspired by games like King's Quest and old-school text adventures (as the name suggests!), as well as Fantasy full of levity and thrill alike, it started as a fun almost parody on Facebook messenger between friends. Since then, has spiralled into a vast, deep world brimming with stories and characters, with two main Campaigns (chapters) and an ongoing homebrew DnD 5e Campaign exploring a different region of the world.
Each of the main campaigns was played 1-on-1 with friends via text based chat, the players getting opportunities to choose responses to certain events via a provided list of options- though this eventually became far more flexible, allowing a more DnD style experience of suggesting actions & responses, and rolling a dice to determine their success. Both players for the first two campaigns began their stories in the exact same way: approaching a weary tavern, looking for somewhere to stay, and have since ended up in incredibly different places- and realms- to boot.
The plots were incredibly loose and mostly improvised, often with a simple structure to best allow for the players' actions to influence and mould the world and events around them. Equally, there was enough structure planned to allow for an easier time in determining how and where the players' actions would sway the story; plus, it allowed for the players' stories to overlap for added interest.
The Third Campaign is a solo Dnd 5e homebrew adventure, using many of the pre-existing Dnd elements, but adapting various skills & origins to fit the world of the story. This has involved a far deeper level of development & planning, as compared to a text based format, improvising becomes a more instant necessity, and so understanding the ever evolving and developing world, events and influence of the player needs to be available effectively at all times. I've thankfully began more deeply developing the world through a continuously expanding World Anvil page, using my skills in art, voice acting and composing to help bring the world of Yssifrae to life.
Interactive Twitter Experience
As the audio editing process for the audio series is an ongoing task and as a marketing/interest aid, I decided to allow further audience interaction and influence over the world by beginning the Twitter Interactive Adventure. The thread, which began early in 2022 asks viewers to vote on which path to take in a slightly more traditional Choose-your-own story format. I wrote about the challenges and concept at length over here, but effectively it's been a challenge in improvisation, adapting to various audience votes (which are frequently ties) and creating a character for the audience to embody, allowing there to be some direction in the choices offered, but without disabling immersion and the more cipher focused benefits that definitely help for such a broad audience; people are free to project themselves, the choices they'd wish to make or the character they believe them to be without the story and twitter limitations suffering for it.
They also ultimately decided on who the character was from the very same format of twitter polls (which I also wrote about here!). My teenage days of buzzfeed 'Which character from XYZ are you?' taught me that for me, the worst of those quizzes were the obvious ones. Of COURSE if you labelled Tifa as your favourite Final Fantasy party member, you'd be a point closer to being assigned Cloud as your outcome, or similarly choosing Lasagna as your favourite food would give you Garfield as 'The fictional cat you embody.'
With that in mind, I designed the character questions to be slightly more open and adaptable- though some would naturally err towards more obvious or conclusive outcomes (i.e. sprinkling in magic related questions to determine the D&D-esque class and/or occupation), but some of the more blatant seeming backstory related options would more dictate the general traits of the character.
Choosing between the kind of weapon the character might use, for example, not only aided with figuring out an occupation- if any- but the general movement, poise, and attitude of the character. A clean cutting weapon would naturally suggest a sword, dagger, scythe...something simple, nimble and not messy. You're likely dealing with someone trained or honed at a parallel skill, potentially someone honourable for not smashing their enemies to bits with a greathammer or explosives. Choosing no weapon could cover many bases too: fist fighting, magic, telekenesis, or even a prosthetic leg adapted to include a spur. The breadth is nigh on endless, and in partnership with the other questions gave an immense amount of choice for a character that ultimately is still mostly reliant on audience input for their arc, development and actions.
The actual results compared to a couple of other potential explorations from my blog post on the subject.
You can also head to this thread to check out the story so far and join in!
The first Audio edition of the story that's been created so far!