8 Goals to achieve. Roll a die 28 times, each time you can assign the number you rolled to a free number slot beside one of the goals. If there is no free slot beside a goal, you have to put the number somewhere else. If you click to assign the number to a goal, but the number can not go there, then you waste the number, and move on to the next roll.

Once all 28 die rolls are made, and all numbers are assigned, the game adds up the values of each number you have assigned, to find your score. So, for "Two of a Kind" you would get twelve points for two 6's, and only two points for two 1's.

Goals to achieve:      Examples:

1. Single Score             (4)
2. Two of a Kind           (5, 5)
3. Two Pair                  (3, 3, 6, 6)
4. Three of a Kind         (4, 4, 4)
5. Four in a Row           (2, 3, 4, 5)
6. Four of a Kind           (3, 3, 3, 3)
7. Five in a row            (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
8. BLITZ!                     (3, 3, 3, 3, 3)

The best possible score gives you 148 points. That consists of all 6's, except for the four in a row, and the five in a row.

At the time of this publication, my high score was only 87 out of 148. See if you can beat me! Go for a high score!

In the near future, a totalitarian government has taken control, and rebel forces seek to overthrow the government and liberate the people. You are a rebel, who has been captured by the government. Will you survive your interrogation? Will you manage to escape and join up with your rebel friends once more?

A short story to grant a few minutes diversion :)

You woke up, and nearly went off a cliff. It was not a good start to the day. Add to that amnesia, a foreign land, and people who want to kill you for some reason. You want to remember everything, but they want you to forget. Your memories just might kill you.

This story takes the player to Europe, in a tale involving murder, deception and intrigue. Can you work out who you are, and who you can trust?

Light Space - a dimension outside of our own, a layer of existance beyond what we can see, touch or feel. Equipped with a Light Space Jump Drive (LSJD), a starship can leap into and out of this extra-dimension in an instant, appearing in another star system many light years away.

However, a successful jump requires detailed computations to avoid something going wrong. A few times each year, somewhere across explored space, a star ship will make a Light Space Jump and simply vanish without a trace. Sometimes ships appear, exploding into millions of pieces as they emerge from Light Space. However, the chances of such an accident are too small to bother most travellers.

A routine Light Space Jump is about to go terribly wrong for a starship's crew - and one of them is YOU!

Danger and sudden changes to your surroundings await you at every turn, and you never know what lies beyond each door in each time, and what actions will kill you in the blink of an eye...

Readers leaving comments: As I've said before, I like hearing comments from people, whether good or bad. Feel free to say you love this, or hate this, or to leave constructive criticisms - that's what comments are for :)

*UPDATED 22 Oct 07 - When someone dies - they stay dead. Continuity problems fixed :)

It is the distant future. The Sol Federation is a central, slowly expanding empire, spreading forth from the Earth. Out in the far reaches, frontier worlds have banded together to form their own pocket empires, desiring independance and living harsh frontier lives on desolate worlds.

In the early years, the Sol Federation provided food and material support to frontier realms, but that has changed. Now they will only offer support if such realms join the Federation. Rather than give up their independance, many frontiersman have become pirate raiders, entering the borders of Federation space to steal supplies from outposts and borderworlds.

On the planet Mesarius V, the Armed Forces of the Sol Federation (AFSF) keep constant vigil against raiding forces. As the pilot of a Mechanised Assault Unit (M.A.U.), a twenty ton walking war machine, you are one of the defenders of Mesarius V. It is your duty to engage raiders who land on the planet surface, and to help drive them back to the frontiers empty handed.

However, a threat of a different nature is approaching your world, and for a change, it may be more than you, and the entire armed forces of Mesarius V, can handle...

(This is possibly an 'introduction story' for a series, depending on how much people like it.)

The Object v2 - Known Bugs have been Fixed

You are one of the scientists examining an Object. The research is a joint government/military project, and you and your collegues have no idea where the Object came from. Your only orders are to examine it and find out what it is, and what it does. Each day you perform repetative tests on it, such as zapping it with lasers or bathing it in gamma radiation, but the Object just sits there doing nothing. Then one day, something wierd begins to happen.

This is my first published ChooseYourStory story. I just had a story idea and thought I would add some interactivity to it, though there isn't much interaction in this, so it's pretty linear. However, there are three spots in the game where you could die.

-26th April 2007-
Hi everyone! For those who have played the previous version of this web story-game, there have been a few minor changes. The story is the same, I've simply updated the text to remove errors, correct some grammar, fix spelling mistakes, etc. I've made the demo a little bit shorter as well - no point in giving everything away in the demo!

For those who don't know, this is a demo, consisting of aproximately the first half of my paperback gamebook novel, "Ulysses: The Pegasi Incident", published via www.lulu.com. (That's a big demo for a book!) This first book in my new sci-fi series should be available for purchase late June or early July 2007. For more information, please visit www.pjtgamebooks.com.

BACKGROUND:
The Federation of Worlds contains six different species' home worlds, with hundreds of colonies, space stations and outposts. The FSS Ulysses is a multi-role human starship designed to carry out mission such as scientific exploration, diplomatic duties, emergency evacuations, and the like.

A distress call has been recieved at Starbase 14 from Pegasi Station. All the humans there have fallen mysteriously ill, and the starship F.S.S. Ulysses has been dispatched to examine the situation, and hopefully develop a cure before the humans die. So far, the non-humans (aliens) at the space station all seem to be fine, and the Admiralty is worried that someone might have created a virus that targets humans only - and could therefore be a threat to the entire race! The Ulysses is around 24 hours away from the space station, but is the closest ship, and responds to the distress call with all due haste. They hope that when they arrive, the humans will still be alive...

In this story-game, you are not a particular character. Instead, as events happen, you determine how different characters respond to what is taking place, or solve problems they encounter. By your choices, YOU will be determining how the crew handles the situations they are faced with, and ultimately, whether they succeed or fail.

A Tale Of Chian

Conquered Empire

(c) 2007 Paul J. Turner

A fantasy gamebook with an ancient asian era flavour.

A BARBARIAN UPON THE THRONE

   The barbarian warlord, Durang Gor, rampaged through the outer provinces of Chian, before turning his sights on the Earthen Throne. Storming the Imperial Palace, he slew Emperor Hsunai, and claimed the lands of Chian as his own.
   Life under Emperor Durang Gor was hard, with steadily rising taxes, and incredibly harsh penalties for anything he considered a breach of his ever-changing laws. The new Emperor's ruthless relatives replaced the native Chianan magistrates of the provinces, and anyone even suspected of having served the late Emperor Hsunai was hunted down and executed.
   Eighteen years passed, with rebels striking out from hidden camps against the barbarian soldiers of Durang Gor. The new Emperor's armies quickly eliminated such outlaws when they were found.
   In the farming community of Liwon Creek, soldiers track down a man who was a Doh-fuhn officer in Emperor Hsunai's disbanded army. The officer, Lu'bahn, accepts his death calmly, ensuring that no one else in the village is harmed.
   However, his son Meng does not understand the lesson his father was trying to teach him through his death. Instead, driven by thoughts of revenge, Meng will hone his fighting skills, and set off on a path that will pit him, and everyone he holds dear, against the forces of Durang Gor.

Features:

Assign starting points to 24 skills, such as Punch, Kick, Long Blade, Poleaxe, and energy arts, such as Spirit Thrust, Spirit Pull, and Spirit Absorb.

This gamebook doesn't play from a First Person perspective, but allows you to see events happening in a number of different people's lives, as well as the main character. When the story moves away from the main character, you can't control what happens, but learn more of the story. Think of it as a movie 'cut scene' in a computer game. Then it returns to the main character for you to continue. The first few chapters are not very interactive, mostly introducing the story setting and characters, then it becomes more interactive.

Be careful of the choices you make, as they may lead to easier paths through the story - or they may throw you into increasingly difficult scenes. Also a warning: Succeeding at using a skill is not always a good thing. All it means is that you were able to perform the action you chose - however, you have to live with the consequences of choosing that action! So, choose your actions wisely! Some paths lead to dead ends, so you may need to explore the story paths through the game to find your way to the end. You gain points for how far along the main story you get.

This story is rated "M" for Mature Audiences. It contains violence.

All artwork (c) 2007 Paul J. Turner, inspired by my favourite martial arts movies.

(Pronounciation: "Chian" - the first sound in China, the last sound in Japan.)

The galaxy is a big place, and it would be impossible for a single governing organisation to keep track of everything going on in it.

Far-flung colonies, asteroid mines, orbital shopping centres, industrial space stations, exotic high tech cities, sky-skimming gas collectors... there's so much out there that when trouble rears up, someone needs to be able to step in and sort things out: someone with the authority to do whatever it takes to resolve any disputes and return citizens to their lives of peace.

That 'someone' are the Guardians - peacekeepers, lawmakers, judge and jury... and when warlords, criminals and dissidents refuse to listen: executioner.

Jaden Ryce is a Guardian, and with her Deputies and her starship - the Skyhawk, she will do whatever it takes to maintain the peace. And if someone dares ask her just who she thinks she is, she has but four words:

'I AM THE LAW!'

Hi guys, does anyone know the answer to this?

I'm temporarily coauthor on a story. The story is Advanced, with scripting and stuff.

The thing is - when I went to edit the story, for me as coauthor, the editor is in Basic mode. Scripting disabled, etc. If I go and change the editor features, to enable all the advanced scripting and variables and stuff, I'm worried it might override the original author's content. Can someone tell me if I (as coauthor) change the editor features, will it simply make the scripts visible for me now, or will it override them and erase them?

Thanks for any help.

(Got to agree with Morgan R) Lois McMaster Bujold's 'Miles Vorkosigan' series of books. I've got them all, and I think only about two of the books in the series were a bit 'meh', but loved all the rest! Most of them are stand-alone novels, but with ongoing character development that spans across the series.

Some more fav's:

I read the Hunger Games trilogy recently, and actually thought it was pretty good. Still haven't seen the movie.

Across the Nightingale Floor and series by  Lean Hearn. Got to love samurai / ninja / drama stories!

Any books by David Gemmell with Skilgannon or Waylander in them. (the books get better the further into the series' you get) Waylander is basically an assassin who goes and murders the King, causing the whole land to fall apart and get invaded. He then becomes the only person skilled enough to right his wrong, and save the land from destruction. Most of David Gemmell's books are set in the same world, but in different eras with different characters.

"Waylander", "Waylander II", "A Hero in the Shadows"

Skilgannon's books I think are: "White Wolf" and "The Swords of Night and Day" 

If you built a time machine, and went back in time to try and change something:

Would you simply cease to exist, because time travel is impossible?

Or would you simply alter history - and create a new timeline of existence based on your new actions?

Or would anything you do in the past happen, because it has always happened, because you were already a part of history without knowing it, and you can't change history - but something would keep happening to ensure you didn't alter established events?

Or... perhaps you have another idea?

There's a group in the US called 'end of time ministries' or something like that. Guy in charge predicted the end of the world, and took donations to help spread the word. It didn't happen, so he 're-evaluated' and picked a new date. More donations. Didn't happen, so he joined in on the 21st of December date. It still didn't happen.

He apologized and said he would no longer try and work out when the end of the world would happen. However, he made something like 90 million dollars in donations before 'retiring' from it!

thanks for the links!

Learned some new stuff in there. I quite like the idea of interactive text options showing when you click on an inventory object. I might see if I can use that to implement a 'pop up' character sheet, so that the player's character icon is displayed at the bottom, and clicking on it pops up the list of their hp, skills and abilities. Could be a neat way to display that stuff whenever the player wants to see it!

Thanks!

Just another quick one (sorry, haven't been on here for ages. I'm forgetting everything!)

What's the correct formatting of referring to the text of a link. For example, is $LINKTEXT1 the correct way of saying 'the text of link 1' ?

I was just playing around with making the background dark grey, and the text white, like games in the old Infocom text adventure days, but I was wondering - is there a way to set the color of the page title text? When a page is displayed, it says the page title as a heading at the top of the page, in black text. Can I make that heading white somehow?

"Windows Defender" and "Win 7 Defender" are two different things. The "Windows Defender" in Control Panel in Windows, is Microsoft's default anti-virus program, which is installed along with Windows, and when you update service packs, and so forth, it usually gets re-installed and reactivated if you have manually turned it off at any stage.

"Win 7 Defender" though, is a fake program by people pretending to be selling an 'upgraded' version of Microsoft's antivirus program, so if it is called "Win 7 Defender", then it is a fake virus program.

Hi guys! I love reading comments on storygames, and I appreciate all the feedback people give me on my stories, whether they liked it or not, and I love reading what people say about other people's stories - but this is just a quick tip for people for when they are leaving comments:

When you're reading a novel, not a lot of us would turn to the last pages and read how it all ends. In the same way, when you go to read a storygame on this site, part of the fun is not knowing what is going to end up happening until you play it. Please don't go leaving comments like "I (hated/loved) the ending, where (describe the end of the story to everyone who hasn't played the game yet, revealing any twists or things that took place along the way)" unless it is absolutely necessary when leaving your opinions.

So basically, say what you like or hate about a story, but try not to give it all away.