Parallel Dimensions: Understanding CYOAs
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"Truth is stranger than fiction; fiction has to make sense."
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Traditional Interactive Fiction on the computer is "parsed" IF; the user input 
consists of free text. In book form, Choose-Your-Own-Adventures, CYOAs, are 
common. A great variety has been published, covering different genres like 
fantasy, science fiction, or horror. The workings of those interactive books are 
relatively simply; the playing reader is presented with enumerated bits of text. 
After each text, several choices and their numbers are offered, leading to more 
bits of text, and more choices.
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Controlling complexity
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What sounds like a straight-forward concept can be quite time consuming to 
write. If every station would offer only the minimum of two different paths to 
follow, and each path would lead to a unique station, the author would have to 
create several thousand stations -- just to offer a dozen to the player.
 
The first rule-of-thumb: Find a way to have cross-paths, circles, and 
bottle-necks. Ultimately the information design to your basic CYOA compares to 
an internet website, where stations are pages, and choices are links, building a 
network structure of referenced information. 
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Meaningful choices
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A crucial point is that every choice made should become an integral part of the 
continued story, or the reader will feel cheated. Different choices should all 
"work" in some way, resulting in a second rule: Don't offer meaningless choices. 
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Control over the linear flow of the narrative is stronger than in parsed, 
digital IF, since the number of different player behaviors from within each 
single context is limited. In return the player expects more traditional 
story-telling, as opposed to a simple action-reaction scheme. (Most true in CYOA 
books; instead of typing "open drawer", one has to go through some minor hassle 
to get to the next part.) 
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The open box
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Parsed IF resembles building one's own ladder to climb. The trick is to make 
every step work, and finding the right tools. The narrative path itself can be 
rather linear; even when one may have to run in every possible direction to find 
hammer and nails. 
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A CYOA will throw all the tools at the player's feet at any given position. The 
approach can be more like steering a canoe through a river. Instead of a wall to 
climb over, the obstacle is the irreversible decision of the past.
Of course, a CYOA is spiced up by a puzzle that lets one run in circles until a 
solution is found -- but more often that not, good morals outwin being smart. 
(And then sometimes, it can be thrilling to literally play evil, and see how 
things work out.) 
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What if?
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In real life, we often ask ourselves; what if ... I would have done this, 
instead of that? As real life goes, we will never know. But CYOAs yield the 
power of fiction. The author takes on the role of fate, offering a life of 
multiple realities, handing out answers. 
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As much as clever puzzles are the core of parsed IF; giving meaningful reactions 
to such player characteristics as moral, personal style, perseverance, 
willingness to take risks, is the core of choice-based IF. 
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Philipp Lenssen, author of the Quest Markup Language for digital CYOAs