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But surely as my adventure is not going to get used in the magazine, a doc file is not needed. If you do need a doc file, I would rather send it to you directly.

Thanks, I'm really glad you liked it.

Yep, I fully agree that D&D has often been over complicated. Before I stated writing solo adventures I did spend years coming up with fast roleplay game rules for one off sessions when the regular GM could not make it.

I have tried to balance the stats. Strength I figured was the weakest but in playtesting even characters with +1 in it did better than I thought they would. The Luck stat was a last addition and missed out on most of the playtesting. Originally you just got a fixed three rerolls. More tweaking and playtesting is probably in order.

Yes, it is annoying when you keep missing and bouncing between the same few sections, although not so annoying that I did not enjoy playtesting. It is the reason I have the combat paragraphs so close together so that you don't have to go far. If space had not been an issue, there would have been a different set of paragraphs for each encounter and thus greater variation to the experience.

I do keep wondering if I should remind people that after one encounter they are no longer facing the direction they were before it, as they had to turn to face the guards.

While it is purely cosmetic and I hope no one would rate your adventure less favourably as a result, I think the issue of the lack of space between the numbers could be easily fixed without it taking you over four pages.

All you would need to do is to move the section numbers to the side of the sections, rather than having them above them. That way the space previously occupied by the number would provide spacing.

As it is though, the tight layout is not having any negative impact on how easy it is to play the gamr.

Incidentally I like the cover photo.

Brilliant and after fixing the issues mentioned by Scott, it would probably be worth mentioning you have done so in a comment, although it probably has already occurred to you to do this 

Xercies, considering we've had a late entry well after the deadline, you would be fully entitled to upload a revised version of your game with the number errors corrected.

Some of the others have recently uploaded revised versions of their games, including myself just now, so you would not be alone in doing this.

Well I see you have it sorted now

You've certainly come up with something novel and quite fiendish.

If you haven't messaged Simon about getting your game into the Gamebook Jam, along with sending him a copy of the game, it might be an idea to do so.

Two survivors. Food rationing never became an issue. Lots of deaths due to shortages of initial medical supplies.

Yours is very impressive. I'm continuing to be amazed by the diversity of the entries so far.  I have played through three of them to their conclusions and part way through one  of the two which looks like it might take hours.

A nice and quick dive straight in kind of game.

I am surprised by how completely different they all are so far both from each other and the one I'm still busy improving.

I agree that 4 pages is a good size, especially after finding out there is enough room to fit 2,600 words. Others have managed more.

I suspect there are a lot of people would struggle with only 4 pages to write a gamebook in. I've also found in the past adventures I have written have ended up anticlimactic and that problem is so much easier to fix when you can just write more bits, rather than working out how to revise or rewrite what is already there. 

I haven't submitted mine yet, as I keep coming up with improvements. Like yours, it can be completed in half an hour.

It will be interesting to see how different the adventures not yet submitted will be from each other.

I played it last night. It is my favourite out of the 3 submitted so far.

It is actually surprising how completely different the three adventures are so far both from each other and from mine. Yours is the closest to mine in that we both have combat but mine is a different genre, does not have the visual element yours has but has something else instead.

I am glad you have managed to get yours sorted.

While I have sent someone a copy of mine, it is now an old copy, as I have added quite a few improvements. At the moment I can't think of anything more which needs doing to mine, but then that was what I was thinking this time yesterday and then I had ideas and ended up adding four more sections, one of which were to correct a minor error.

I hope so as well. I keep hitting the point where I can't think of anything which needs doing to my adventure but then I proofread it or playtest it and something jumps out at me, demanding to be added or changed.

I have resisted the temptation to look at yours so far, despite how intrigued by it I am and I've just seen a second one has been submitted.

Just curious to know how everyone is getting on with the adventure's they are writing.

I'm glad you are having fun and getting there. I have another adventure I started last month, currently on hold, which feels very much by the seat of my pants, as I am not sure where I am going with it.

Some of the formatting I have done to make better use of the space has been very time consuming. I have kept my original spacing between the lines within the paragraphs and yes, it is pretty much similar to the spacing we have in these messages. I really would not want to shrink that and am not sure how much it would be possible to do so before it made the text less easy to read.

I agree the spacing could be useful for bigger works. I am use to the size limit being determined by word count, with the publisher doing the formatting but with the Gamebook Zine it is by number of pages and I would like to try submitting a longer adventure to it outside of this competition.

The mechanics and another indulgence combined with them have used up over a page and a half for me!

I find dialogue hugely expensive on word count and presumably space as well so have mostly avoided it this time but with some ideas that is not an option. I would love to try the challenge of doing a 4 page gamebook with lots of dialogue in though. I would want dice mechanics as well though.

In the home menu in microsoft word there is a submenu for line and paragraph spacing. It includes the option of removing the space above a paragraph or below it or both. I suspect that will cut down on lots of wasted space for you.

Simon's comment was that we cannot go below font size 10 simply because it would become hard to read otherwise. He, himself looks to have used tricks to reduce the spacing in the adventures of his in issue 1 of the Gamebook Zine.

Yes, there is an absolutely huge amount of space going to waste between the numbered sections. 

I reckon you can seriously get away with reducing the space between them. I've used both the  "remove space after paragraph" function" and I have also formatted the hard returns between the numbered sections by reducing the "font size" of the hard returns there.

Doing this has not in the slightest had any negative impact on how clear the adventure is to read and I am on 2,372 words and still have wiggle room as a result. My gaps between the numbered sections are now 7mm wide, compared to the full 1cm they were previously!

I have actually been fairly indulgent with my spacing in some places. Where I instruct the player to make a stat roll, I have the which section to turn to according to the result they rolled, after a small space, which I could have deleted. It just looks nicer. If I have a big idea which requires a lot more room, I will delete those spaces if I feel it is worth it.

I full agree that knowing how to use formatting to make the best use of the space is a huge advantage.

Best of luck with it all and I hope you are having fun.

I am glad you have got it sorted. And yep, with your idea not needing any game mechanics, there's little point in bothering with them. What I am working on is very  game mechanic dominated but then I like fiddling and experimenting with game mechanics. 

Monday I came up with a few new ideas, which I worked on adding during my lunch break, only to find the larger of them took me over 4 pages :-( I proceeded to rip something else out but then on getting home from work, I discovered that by adjusting the line spacing, I had room for everything. It was just amazing how much difference it made. 

There was a return which had somehow sneaked into my header, resulting in an extra line, which I deleted, and I removed the extra spaces between my titles and the text below them and above the "The End" bits. None of these changes appeared to have any detrimental effects.

Oh and the bit I was going to rip out I discovered Tuesday morning how to make considerably better so I am so glad I have been able to keep it. 

I find it incredible that I have managed to get 2,200 words into 4 pages, using a standard size 10 font. So just bear in mind that if you do find you can't initially fit your idea into four pages, it might only take a few layout changes to fix.

It sounds like you might be quicker just taking guidance what Simon did to set up a document in the Open office equivalent of word.

So your name in the header, right aligned

Narrow margins.

Select the double columns options but highlight your main title and select single column for that.

Font size 10 for your writing

In word, when you hit return, it tends to add extra space between the previous line and the new line. If Open Office does that, there maybe function to remove the extra space, which could be useful.

I suspect the only difficulty with a gamebook, compared to a text based computer game is worrying over whether certain numbered entries are too close to each other so that there is the risk the reader will accidentally see where one or more of the choices before them might lead. Getting them all an ideal distance away from each other tends to be fiddly but from what I have seen I don't think everyone worries about this.

I tend to try and have them all at least 5 entries away from each other so if paragraph 25 has two choices at the end of it, one of those choices might be at 30 and the other might be at 19. Typically I usually end up having to number a new entry something like 35a to squeeze it in between 35 and 36 then use the search function to renumber everything so 35a becomes 36 and 36 becomes 37 etc.

My only familiarity with the text base adventure is from this site where you can input your gamebook adventures and have the turning to different entries and the dice rolling all automated.

I hope you will be able to at some point finish the previous gamebook you started. I guess it depends on how much it is a priority for you with the other projects you  have on the go.

I think the problems I tend to run into with my early drafts, which can take me a long time to fix, is having weak beginnings and endings and the adventure ending up anticlimactic. Hopefully I can avoid all of them.

I am also never sure how difficult to make them. I tend to aim for something which will kill me a third of the time during playtesting but of course I have the advantage over anyone else playing it, as I know exactly where to go.

I have no experience of past gamejams so don't know how they work. I did talk to Simon about it yesterday on the Gamebook Zine Facebook page and he seemed very relaxed about it but I am thinking it might be fair if I submit my adventure early so that I will have had the same time working on it. 

When I have a solid idea, I like to start writing as soon as possible and while I often hit first draft stage in a week or so I have always spent months if not years getting adventures to the point where I am happy with them, compared to the time we have.

Not being able to submit my adventure in the competition would not have been the end of the world. I have enjoyed the writing I have done on it so far and I have never won any creative writing competitions in the past. My previous success with solo adventures has always been where there has been no competition at all. They are after all something a lot of people would not even attempt to write.

That's certainly the earliest we can submit what we've written but I didn't notice anything saying there was a limit to how early I could start writing. If we are suppose to wait till the start of next month and I've effectively disqualified myself then I will withdraw from the competition.

Thanks. Those margins are wonderfully narrow. It looks like I might have room to add quite a bit more to the first draft I have got written.

I have been wondering whether artwork should be consideration.

I'm definitely creating my own system. That way I can ensure the best fit to what I want to do. It is also nice to have that freedom, rather than being obliged to use an established system associated with the intended recipient of the adventure. 

Before the Gamebook zine started up, I was looking at writing a adventure for the Fantasy Fanzine but I really was not fussed about having to use a system like the Fighting Fantasy one and was wondering how far I could get away with deviating from the standard rules.

I am participating solo. I didn't realise there was even a thing about people taking part in teams. I am sure taking part as a team is great for sharing the workload and being able to bounce ideas, but when you have clear ideas about what you definitely want to, there would be the risk of having to compromise over them.

I have only had one creative collaboration work well, where it was not accepted that either the other person or myself was in charge. They came up with the overall idea, which would not have happened without them, but I did over 90% of the writing. Even then there was some disagreements on how the adventure was to end, which was resolved by the other person finding they no longer had the time to put into the project.