Forums » Newbie Central » Read Thread

Hello people,
The Name's Dio, I found this lovely living library for easy to find and free CYS. I host an interactive CYS reading online with my Venture Crew (Kinda like Boyscouts) and it is a little difficult finding an interesting storygame that is "appropriate enough" for a Venture Crew. Any suggestions?

Anything in the Family Friendly Category.

I actually just realized that most of the games there have female protagonists. Little boys ain't got time for those.

I'm honestly not sure if we have anything currently that would be ideal for reading out loud as a group activity or keeping a fast pace between the choices and all. But putting something simple in the 5k word count range together could be done over a weekend.

Welcome!

What's the age range on these kids?

We do have a new "family friendly" category but the quality is a little spotty right now, although we're hoping to expand it as people find the time to write more. We do have teachers bring their classes by pretty often, but they're typically more interested in having the kids practice writing their own games.

If these are older kids I'd suggest Dreamtruder just off the top of my head, which reads a lot like a YA novel. Or something from the Homo Perfect us series which at a time was wildly popular with younger site members. But even with games that are fine as far as content goes, they may be a little verbose for reading outloud.

I guess I might as well mention also that's there's a pretty extensive sci fi text game I started playing through for the forum (here) recently, it might actually be ideal for something like this. (And can be made available as an .exe if you don't want to mess around with installing the program needed to run it. )

Oh gosh I'm dumb.

Not sure how I forgot that we have this new Harry Potter thing now: Link!

Hi I'm new here too :)

Hey there! Funnily enough, I'm also part of a venture crew. Some people already recommended dreamtruder, that's certainly a good one. Dungeon stompage is quite fun, but it does rely heavily on the mechanics and I'm not sure how good it would be for group reading. I haven't read "Dead Man Walking" in a while so I don't remember how appropriate it is, but that seems like it would be a good choice for group reading. Similarly, I haven't read "Hastings, 1066: Aftermath" in a while so I don't remember if it's appropriate or not, but that one is similarly good.

The problem with recommendations is that there's always "what's good for kids to read" which we have a lot of (Dead Man Walking, Price of Freedom, and various others I didn't bother to recommend...) but that can be very different from "what's safe for a non-parent adult to introduce them to". And all of that of course a different beast from what works best as a group activity thing being read aloud.

Creatures of the Snow is great for instance but it's more like reading them a YA novel, which I don't think is what is what he's looking for.

Oh, I hadn't thought of the parents thing. Though you have to be at least 14 to join a venture crew, so the parents will probably be less concerned than if they were cub-scout/boy-scout age. Dio, maybe if the parents are concerned you could run some of the stories by the parents before sharing it with the crew?

I've run similar activities with my crew, only we didn't use any outside source, it was just me or someone else making up a story (often some form of dungeon-crawling) and having the players play characters that react to it. Depending on how large your group is (5-7 is best for those), and depending on how interested the crew members are, that could provide a more flexible alternative.

Cool, that's why I was wondering about the ages. That gives a lot more freedom then.

I'd definitely recommend Price of Freedom then. (Link.)

It's about a kid and their little brother sold into slavery in ancient Greece to be trained as gladiators. Violence obviously, but nothing gratuitous so if these are teens it's all pretty tame compared to anything else they're reading or watching.

If you want short, light, and completely silly, Go Get the Mail. There's not much story there, just some silliness.

For more story and theme, you could try Spy Mission. That one can be quite a bit longer to read out loud.

For a short, but fun-filled adventure that can be read over and over again, there's A UFO at School.

For a light-hearted story with a few puzzles, there's Alien Abduction and The Emperor's Zoo.

Or, for a more classic CYOA feel, you might look at Survivors or even Cryogenic Failure.

Good luck and have fun!

I'm noticing a theme here...