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Hello, I'm Marathon, and I am currently doing some paper graphing for my story, "Out in the Cold," a horror adventure storygame about a man and his dog fighting both the elements, isolation, and a strange Yeti-like cryptid monster. This monster has allegedly been doing some damage (structural damage, pet disappearances) to a small village miles outside of the main protagonist's (Keating's) cabin home, and it's up to him to solve the mystery of the beast.

One of the key components of the game is researching the monster (who is later established to exist) and discovering weak points that could kill it. This means that the player will be building things out of supplies found throughout the storygame. 

I would like to condense the building segments to a specific place, i.e a workbench in the protagonist's home. This way, the player can leave the home for supplies and information to progress the story, and come home to assemble the items to create a new useful item. Items assembled don't necessarily have to be weapons, but also quest items.

An example would be:

WORKBENCH

Keating clears some space of his workbench and lays out his supplies.

• Rusty Pole
• Railroad Spike
• String
• Old Book 

 (Newpage) WORKBENCH (Rusty Pole)

Keating extracts the rusty pole from his tattered backpack. Observing it, it would make quite an effective baton, but another component could make this a highly lethal weapon on Cryptid X.

• Railroad Spike 

(Newpage) WORKBENCH (Spiked Pole) 

Using a bit of force, Keating lines up the spike on the pole. With the force of a hammer blow, he drives the spike into the pole, giving it a more lethal edge.

(NEWITEM: Spiked Pole)

So I'm asking you experts what's the best way to do this "item combination" gimmick? I'm sure there are games that have you combine two items to produce a new one. Is there any way I can make "item combination" in one place?

 

Thank you!

I believe what you're asking for would be better asked in the Advanced Editor Forum. The Writing Workshop is more for the story portion of storygames.

Even with the little I've heard about this storygame, I'm already intrigued. I love the idea of doing research to gather info on the creature before trying to find it. I'll be looking forward to this.

@madglee or @whoever
I think Tara is right and this probably belongs in the Advanced Editor Forum.

Okay, so set those things to 1 USE. Then, have it so that when they use the item on the workbench page, it takes them to the respective item's page. Then, whatevre item you use on THAT page, should take you to a third page, where the new weapon should be available. 

If you can compress all that into one paragraph, then I'll see what I can do for you. 

Sounds like a very interesting storygame. There is a relatively easy way of doing this all on one page.

You'll be using link restrictions. What you do is make a link on the page (Workbench page) for each combination and make it so the link doesn't appear/is unclickable unless the player has the required items. If the link appears, the player can click the link and be brought to the page where they combined the items.

In my opinion you should have description/hints about how they can use the individual items in the item description rather than on a page.

If you want to know how to do this just ask. I'm not sure how well versed you are with the system so far.

Alternatively you can make it so the links dont just appear if you have the required items, and you have to actually combine them, but that'd be a bit tougher to do.