Monthly Archives: August 2011

CYOA structure: Educational

Posted on August 28, 2011 by Sam Kabo Ashwell

When something appeals to children, it’s only a matter of time before someone tries to appropriate it for educational purposes. A great deal of childrens’ CYOA attempts, in a fairly haphazard way, to reinforce moral principles or deliver Educational Facts; … Continue reading →

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CYOA structure: IF

Posted on August 24, 2011 by Sam Kabo Ashwell

IF has always had a rather mixed relationship with CYOA. Part of this, certainly, is about audience expectations: IF’s conception, like mainstream CYOA’s, lay in storytelling to children. But IF was incubated in a college environment, and since then has … Continue reading →

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CYOA structure: Spin-offs

Posted on August 20, 2011 by Sam Kabo Ashwell

Stateless CYOA is a ready-to-hand kind of medium; playing it is self-explanatory and has a negligible learning curve, and the appeal of influencing the course of a story is instantly understandable to anybody who consumes fiction. Because it’s delivered in … Continue reading →

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CYOA Structure: CYO-RPG

Posted on August 17, 2011 by Sam Kabo Ashwell

Eternal Quest. See QUEST, ETERNAL. … Quest, Eternal. See ETERNAL QUEST. — Diana Wynne Jones, The Tough Guide to Fantasyland CYOA had a quite separate origin from modern RPGs, predating them in terms of invention though not as a commercial form. But they were both … Continue reading →

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CYOA structures: more Packard

Posted on August 10, 2011 by Sam Kabo Ashwell

Nothing quite so entertaining this time around, I’m afraid; just a couple more Edward Packard books, selected for their potentially-oddball status. (As per request, I’m including clickthroughs to larger versions of the structure diagrams, and I’m phasing out the light-orange … Continue reading →

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CYOA structure: Tween Romance

Posted on August 7, 2011 by Sam Kabo Ashwell

Choose Your Own Adventure books (the series, not the medium) typically had the same kind of hero: a white American pre-teen, somewhat gender-ambiguous but tending towards male-default, engaged upon some variant of a Boy’s Adventure. This wasn’t totally inflexible — … Continue reading →

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CYOA structure: The Cave of Time

Posted on August 5, 2011 by Sam Kabo Ashwell

I’ve been thinking a fair bit about CYOA structure and its effects, and I thought it’d be useful to plot out some structures of existing works. It was just going to be some diagrams and a few notes, but it … Continue reading →

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