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Seriously, I hate it. But it doesn't seem like any other tense will allow the immediacy and urgency needed for the choices in a choose your own adventure-type setting. Should I just end my hopes of using past tense and convert everything in my story to present tense? Or am I making too big a deal out of it? I have noticed that every story I've read so far uses second person present tense. I'm supposing past tense is frowned upon? Any advice?

I mean present tense, second person is traditional for choice based and interactive fiction, but there's no actual rule against using anything else. Present does add that immediacy so I've come to prefer it when I write, but it's one of those things that comes down to the needs of the individual story and what you yourself are most comfortable with.

There have been some past tense games here on CYS. I didn't think they really lost anything being presented that way.