Looking at some design elements common to Open-world Gamebooks.
Keeping Track in Open-World Gamebooks
I'm currently filling out some of the codewords for my Briar gamebook. They all begin with B so words such as bacon, butterscotch, blather, burning and bugbear are all in the running.
Tickboxes and codewords are two tools that I first encountered in Fabled Lands.
They are an essential part of open-world gamebooks to regular what you've done and how things in one place affect others.
Keyword Codes
Keywords (or Codes / Codewords) are usually used when something happens that has ramifications in other locations or books. If you have the codeword Bounty for a bounty on your head, this might trigger passages where people hunt you down, there's a bounty notice on a board or someone offers you a way to remove the bounty.
Titles (such as Noted Troublemaker or Guildmaster of Pies) and other text awards are just another type of Keyword.
Name of codewords can give hints to the quest or event they're related to.
Codewords can be implemented a few ways.
- Fabled Lands, VulcanVerse and Steam Highwayman are all Open-world series with multiple books. Each book in the series uses codes starting with the same letter of the alphabet. You might get Bashful and Bisect in Cities of Gold & Glory, Nautilus and Namesake in Houses of the Dead or Childless and Corrupt in The Reeking Metropolis
- The Legendary Kingdoms use codes with letters (for the book) and numbers. So A32 or A12 might come from the first book, and C2 or C25 from the Third book. It doesn't use tickboxes, so these codes are also used in place of those for LK. However, the codes don't have any indication of the quest / event they're used for.
- Portsrood Forest uses people's names as codewords. Which may make them easier or harder to remember, depending on how you are with names.
- Many branching-narrative gamebooks use keywords, such as ones written by Dave Morris, Jonathan Green and Samuel Isaacson.
- Even some more recent Fighting Fantasy have started using codewords as an alternative to checking equipment or passage numbers as clues. Night of the Necromancer and Storm of Crystals are two.
Tickboxes
Tickboxes are used to determine if a one-time event has happened or not. It might be the first time you go to a passage, on a certain condition, or ticked for some other reason. It's a local check, only relevant to that passage.
Tickboxes can also used as trackers or to trigger a certain event. In the War-Torn Kingdom an event is triggered the 4th time you enter a certain city. Each time you enter you tick a series of tickboxes, triggering the event on the 4th. In Steam Highwayman, when you ambush travellers at certain locations you'll mark a tickbox to show the alertness of constables in that area. When you've go enough, you'll trigger a chase with the constables.
In the more recent VulcanVerse titles, Dave Morris has been playing around with some double and triple tickbox variations. Often triggering different events depending on the number now ticked.
My Codewords and Tickboxes
I think tickboxes can be overused so I'm taking care to ask if I need a particular tickbox or codeword. Or whether there's an easy way to alter the design to not use it anymore.
I do like matching the names of codes to the quest or situation. So Bacon for hunting a boar, or Bandits for trouble with a group of bandits. I'm also using some keywords (starting with S-) to track conditions across multiple books, such as Starving, Strained, Slander and Succour.
I'm also looking at things close to codewords such as titles, which are really a form of Codeword. Steam Highwayman makes uses of them with terms such as Friend of Samuel Jones or Wanted by the Constables.
In my Briar adventure I'm experimenting with Deeds, Communities and Friendships. You might Defeat the Badger Hunter, be from the Community of Padbarton and be a Friend of Shuck.
Finishing Up
It doesn't get much more niche that the technical details of the open-world books of the small gamebook hobby.
Hope you enjoyed!
