Scrapped Ideas and Maps

While designing my choose your own adventure story, I went through many different initial ideas and settings in which to base my narrative, each time, I found that there was some flaw with them that would make them either too difficult, or too boring to write. I still, however, mapped them out and wrote brief synopses for them as though they were three act structures.

Idea 1, a detective story set in 1980's Berlin.

This setting was inspired by my trips to the city of Berlin, one I find fascinating and full of possibility when it comes to writing narratives. The city has such an interesting history that many kinds of narrative could be written within it.

A brief synopsis is; An American national is found floating dead, in the middle of the Spree river, between east and west Berlin. The FBI send out one of their specialist homicide agents in an effort to solve the crime that involves one of their citizens. The story is focused on this Agent's tale, and his struggles with overcoming cultural differences and a language barrier in order to reach his goal and solve the case.

A more detailed synopsis is as follows.

Act 1
Tim O'Brien, is on a plane from the United States to Germany, he is sat on the plane next to a West German woman, during the opening scene we learn a little about Tim's character through his interaction with his fellow passenger. Tim then lands in Berlin and is met by the partner the German authorities have assigned to help him in this case, Andreas Schilling. Schilling is initially disaproving of the American, as it is revealed O'Brien barely speaks a word of German, and Schilling grudges his role as an interpreter for what he considers a a brash American. What initially seems an open and shut case of a woman falling into a river and drowning is blown open by the discovery from an autopsy that she had been poisoned by a well known communist developed nerve agent and that she had been killed in the eastern, Russian controlled sector of Berlin.

Notes - Tim and Andreas begin as grudging allies, with neither of them really that fond of the other, however exposure to each other forms a bond between them of mutual respect and comradeship. We known little about the woman found in the Spree during act one other than that she was an American citizen that died in the river Spree. Most of the first act is focused on the relationship between Tim and Andreas.

Act 2
The pair of detectives plan to get into the eastern part of the city to better carry out their investigation, but they are blocked completely by east German authorities, they face many obstacles relating to political pressure during this and are strictly told by both the US ambassadorial staff and the West German police not to continue their investigations in East Berlin. The first culmination of this act is when Tim and Andreas are able to get into the eastern sector, (via a number of methods that are choices for the player to take). They manage to move through the east unimpeded for a time, with Tim's natural skills as a detective beginning to make headway with the investigation and Andrea's help with this being invaluable. Eventually they are captured, due to Tim's inability to speak German, when questioned by some of the DDR's Stasi agents. They are then put into a holding cell and told they will never leave as no one on their side knows where they have gone, and also because they were expressly forbidden to take this course of action. They manage to escape the holding cells with the help of a mysterious woman, who turns out to have been a CIA Agent, she reveals to them that the woman found in the Spree was also an American spy whom she had been working with. She gives the pair a hint at where they can find some substantial evidence and sends them on their way to the Stasi headquarters.

Act 3
The pair arrive at the headquarters near Alexanderplatz, and infiltrate the Stasi building using (player choice) subterfuge. The pair find what they are looking for and leave, although on the way out, an alarm sounds and the pair have to fight their way out of east Berlin (there is a chance here, for Andreas to die). On return to the west, Tim takes his evidence to his superiors who tell him that they can never reveal what he found out, as it would cause too large an international incident (this is the denouement, things are the same as they were at the beginning). The final scene is of time being on the aeroplane back to the US, with the same woman from the start sat next to him, she asks him in German "did you find what you were looking for?" the final image is of understanding in Tim's eyes as he knew what she was asking. 
 
Notes - there are choices for the ending, I find it to be more poignant if Andreas dies as his budding friendship with Tim is one of the main focuses on the story


Idea 2- A choose your own adventure set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe.

I am very familiar with the setting of the 40k universe, having read books set there since I was a teenager, there are many, many ways one can make a choose your own adventure in this setting and it has tabletop rules that could be scaled down to work in a paper RPG format. When mapping out the Idea, i found that it had by far, the most possibilites within the map compared to any of my other story ideas.

Brief Synopsis
A planet is in open rebellion against the Imperium of Man, Space Marines of the Angels Obsidiae chapter are sent in to help with the pacification. We find out during the story that the insidious forces of Chaos are responsible for the rebellions and our protagonist must defeat them (or join them).

Act 1-
Your character is a member of a team of Space Marines, sent in to assist the other Imperial Forces with the pacification. During the first act, not much other than exposition occurs, (although almost every interaction with the planet's population has a choice for the player to make). The player is attacked by many civillians and has the choice to dispatch them or just try to pacify them without casualties. The end of the act, we find out that Chaos Space Marines of the Word Bearers legion are responsible for all the troubles.

Act 2-
Act two is full of choices and the story branches off into many divergent paths here. The "good" path involves the player trying to find a way to stop the mind control of the civilians by the Chaos Sorcerors whilst fighting the forces of the dark gods at every turn. The end of the act sees a mighty chaos lord confront the team of space Marines, killing their sergeant the marine the player controls takes charge of the squad and continues.

The second "neutral" path has the player just killing the civilians if they attack them and fighting Chaos like in the good path. Daemons are summoned and the player's squad is killed to a man, leaving him by himself.

The "evil" path has the player abandoning his team after the incessant whispering of Chaos corrupts them into joining its cause. The player has options to follow Chaos in two different ways, one following the god of war and death, and thus gaining an attack buff, and the other following the chaos gods undivided, giving them a buff to their armour. The culmination of the evil act 2, has the player being hunted by his former battle-brothers, depending on how the player chose to follow chaos, they have the options of helping the Word Bearers legion or just killing in the name of their patron god of war and murder.

Act 3-
Good Path; The team successfully scuppers the Word Bearers plans in a climatic battle between the players dwindling squad and the Chaos Lord who killed their former sergeant. The final conclusion is the player being promoted to full sergeant status on return to their captain.

Neutral Path; The player fights alone through the skeleton of the city left behind by his brothers, he stays on the planet, forced to roam the broken wastes forever, thought killed in action by his chapter.

Evil Path: The player helps unite the forces of Chaos in order to defeat the Imperial forces on the planet. Using his new found dark powers, the marine duels with his former captain, either defeating him and gaining the favour of the gods for all eternity or being crushed at his hand and seeing all he has worked for turn to ash.

My main focus when writing this was to come up with some interesting combat mechanics, based on the 40k tabletop system as well as the scope of choices that you can have in a 40k inspired setting. I like it as it mirrors some of the choices one can make in video games with a morality system, having an almost completely different experience depending on which path is taken.

Scrapped Idea 3- Stupid Fantasy Parody

I like the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett, it mercilessly plays around with tropes from the fantasy genre in a humorous way. I thought I could do something like this with a choose your own adventure, but found out that my comedy writing leaves a lot to be desired. I wanted to make every in the setting as generic as possible whilst still having a way to incorporate player choice. The map for this one leaves a lot to be desired as I haven' come up with nearly as much player choice for this setting, and was thus scrapped. I wanted to have some unnecessary loops in this project that would be frustrating for the player, to simulate the experience of some of the old text adventures

I kind of wrote the narrative by ear, and added parts to the map as and when I thought of them, as such, the map and narrative appears a lot more linear than the rest of my ideas. I managed to write about 8 pages for this until I realised what I was doing wasn't good enough and scrapped the idea.