Choose Your Own Adventure: Multiple Characters

[Trevortni]

I've been thinking about doing a Choose Your Own Adventure forum game, and someone suggested (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?383020-Choose-Your-Own-Adventure-Urban-Fantasy-Edition&p=18986494#post18985417) posting in here any ideas I have for custom rules. There really is only one particular custom rule that I'm considering, and this is because the concept requires multiple characters, while still having the forum vote on actions.

The game begins with 3-4 pets in a D&D-type settings whose master leaves them unexpectedly, and they are trying to find him. I'm not sure how playing the characters off of each other will really work in practice, but as far as decisions for actions the characters take, I'm thinking that each person who votes for actions will only get to vote for what one of the characters does.

This does lead into some logistical issues; for example, what if I don't have enough people interested in the game? I might have to allow them to vote for a primary and a secondary character, only using the secondary votes if nobody votes for the character as a primary. The first few posts will probably get around that, at least, as I intend to give everybody identical choices at first to help set up the characters and the setting; but after that, it would probably be a good idea to have a plan for what to do "if".

Does anybody have any insight into doing things like this? Any gotchas that I might not be seeing? For that matter, is anybody interested in jumping in when I start it out?

Edit: Also, I'm pondering the advisability of restricting players to one primary (and presumably secondary) character vs. just letting them pick which character they find more interesting at any given point.

[Amechra]

Here's how someone ran The Blood Sword, a series of five gamebooks where you played up to 4 people. (http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?460647-Let-s-Play-Blood-Sword-I-The-Battlepits-of-Krarth)

[The Walrus]

I've never ran a game like this myself before, but I have read a lot of 'suggestion games' before, which should be similar enough to CYOAs that some of the same ideas carry over. In most of these sorts of games I've read, readers can propose actions for as many different characters as they wish. If the game involves teamwork between characters, it's especially helpful to be able to do so. (In theory you could try to convince other people to vote the coordinating actions for the characters you didn't vote for, but I think this would be unlikely to work in practice.)

Another note: Most of the games I've read with multiple controllable characters usually introduce them one at a time. This might help to make things more manageable in the beginning.

Of course, you could always experiment and do things differently than the typical game, but the game would probably flow quicker if you allowed voting for multiple characters. Generally though, I'd say that you should get enough participants to run fluently if the quality of the writing is good enough.

If you want more advice, you might try asking on the MS Paint Adventures forums (http://mspaforums.com/forum.php), which have a lot of suggestion games in the Forum Adventures section. In particular you might read the page of advice they have there for running games (http://mspaforums.com/showthread.php?32013-MSPAFA-Tips-and-Guidelines-%28Read-Me%21-Updated-8-20-%29).