Frame Work

I am still working on Project WOTAN. I am gradually cleaning up what is already there code-wise while managing to (albeit slowly) implement features. Last week I managed to add in the basic functionality for administering pages of a gamebook. A lot of the page's functionality is not yet written, however.

The main reason is that last week the greater part of my time was spent, aside from cleaning-up code debt and some unfortunate back-tracking, on creating a simple way to catch user errors. The sad thing about that is that I likely spent too much time on it considering it will have to be heavily modified for the live game and is largely for my own benefit at this point. Oh well!

The good news is that I am preparing to work on the other core Book modules and I hope to burn through those in a relatively quick manner. What are the modules that will all work together to make a Book a gamebook? The heirarchy is something like this:

Book

The Book is the main module that ties together all the others. A book is a self-contained adventure that, while using all the basic concepts of a WOTAN game, will allow for a wide variety of customization. In other words and for example, a character can have skills in one book that may not be present in another. Or a character may have an item only available from a certain book.

Care has been taken to ensure, however, that a character will be able to keep certain items, powers, money, et al and move them between books. It is conceivable that some books in a series may require it, as in a case where an item picked up in book 2 of the series may be needed to complete an objective in book 5 (this is just an example).

Page

Page is the main module (sub-module, I suppose) for the Book. After all, what is a book without pages?

These will be what is thought of when you as an end user think about the game. Like Book ahead of it, Page ties directly into the other Book modules, and is rather bland without them. Though one could create a WOTAN website without the benefit of the other modules, though one would end up with something that is more interactive fiction than gamebook. More like Choose Your Own Adventure and less like Lone Wolf.

Power

Power is the module that controls and defines what powers a character has in a book. These can be anything the book author likes, essentially. You can have three powers in a book or 30. These will form the basis for the extremely basic conflict resolution system that is still quite close to what I envisioned last year. The most notable difference, however, is that the book's author will be able to control what type of die is used in the book: currently including d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, d20 and d100. But as of now dice pools are still in.

Powers will also be only loosely coupled to the book, as with all the Book's modules aside from Page. Meaning if your character plays book X and acquires the lock-picking skill, he will carry that into subsequent books (even if they have no use for that power). As with the example above about carrying items through books in order to solve extended puzzles or unlock special content, the same can be said of powers. Perhaps in a given series only Book 2 makes use of lock-picking, but book 5 has a special locked door that can be picked with the skill - if you happen to have it.

Background

Backgrounds are a little pieces of character information that one earns in the course of adventuring. They could almost be thought of as "achievements" in the gaming sense, but hopefully not asinine. Getting a background will earn your character a bit of flavor text (i.e. "Couch Potato" or "Savior of Planet Lesbos") as well as a power modification (from previous example, -3 Stamina or +2 Sexiness). These will also be carried from one book to the next.

Item

Items are what they sound like, and if you have even a passing familiarity with RPGs then I need say no more. One thing, however, I am very much considering is disallowing the creation of "magical" items in the game entirely. That is to say, there won't be any amulets of +1 intelligence or swords of +1 damage.

The reasoning for such a decision is twofold: 1) I would like to encourage deep customization of the actual character itself rather than character equipment in a sense for personal philosophical reasons, and 2) (the main reason)  it will make creating the Item module that much faster. However, me being me and not wholly different from your typical RPG nerd, power-modifying  items will more than likely have a home  in WOTAN.

Treasure

Treasure is anything that can be used as currency. Basically, I just like the way the word treasure sounds as opposed to money or currency. Wealth will be important both as a gauge for "success" at the game, but also to use at npc merchants. Typical RPG fare.

A notable thing about both Treasure and Items: they will have physical weight. Rather than use a common gamebook convention (also shared by video games like Diablo and Torchlight) and limit carried items by an arbitrary number of spaces in the virtual backpack, I plan on using the more PnP-like convention of limiting items carried by their weight.

While this also makes for a bit more coding, another trade-off is that I will have to have at least one character power created by default for all gamebooks. However, considering hit points will also likely be needed in 99% of the books written with WOTAN, I think combining weight-possible and hit points into one mandatory power will not be terribly limiting to authors. It also introduces more strategy in the sense that the more damage you take the less you can carry.

Movement

I also have planned at least one other super-power (so to speak), that will be mandatory in all books: Movement. Movement points are spent to move between pages of the book, and will be a fixed number to all players that regenerate over time as they are spent. Why do this?

This will limit players from spending all their time on the site in one big burst. I certainly hope that the site will interesting enough for people to want to crack out on it for hours at a time. That would be worth more than anything else, I think, but I also do not think it is a likely eventuality though I hope for the best. However, if a WOTAN site were to get some sort of Slashdot effect and everyone thought it was Web Christ and couldn't get enough - then having movement points in place could play a significant part in keep site traffic reasonable.

Another reason is purely as a money-maker. While I don't aim to try and "get rich" from any WOTAN site, sites do cost money to run and right now this is pretty much all I do, work-wise. So every little bit counts.  But rather than merely troll for donations, offering increased Movement points or regeneration rates will offer those who would probably donate otherwise something in return for their kindness. Of course, this also begs the question of whether or not I will be able to actually produce something people will want to pay for. I also plan on offering free movement bonuses in the usual fashion, i.e. in exchange for referrals or by converting in-game currency into points.

But again, I stay hopeful since I will be using my own desire to play the game as gauge for quality control. If I think it sucks, then it will either need to change or die. If I love it, then there are bound to be others out their on the tubes who will love it also.