=For End Master's Manifest Destiny contest=

When Alexsis starts trying to steal your favorite seat in the school cafeteria, things get serious.  The pair of you decide to resolve this dispute in combat:  a game of capture the flag.  Can you beat your nemesis in a game of capture the flag, and reclaim what is rightfully yours?

This story is a short cave-of-time style game with seven possible victory endings.  Happy flag-hunting!

As humanity begins to leave their corner of the galaxy for the first time, they encounter previously uncontacted alien races.  As one of earth's leading diplomats, you will play a key role in shaping the future of your species in this unfamiliar world.

A mostly cave-of-time style story with limited rebranching in a few places, and five victory endings.

Winner of End Master's Culture Clash Contest

When a thunderbird attacks you while you search for the missing Professor Keirz, you crash-land on a plateau near the legendary ruins of a ruined Anzaran city.  You must make use of the resources around you to repair your damaged flyer, find your missing friend, and unlock the secrets of the ancient Anzaran temple.

An open-map item-based puzzle game with one good victory ending, and one great victory ending.  Good luck exploring the ancient Anzaran plateau!

For End Master's Manifest Destiny Contest

Discover the dungeon's secrets, fight deadly monsters, learn magical spells, and more in this traditional dungeon crawl adventure!  Can you survive the dangers of the legendary Crag?

An open-map dungeon exploration game using player stats and items, with eleven victory epilogues, as indicated by the first two digits of your score.

Thanks to Nightwatch for the fantastic cover art!

An unexpected supernatural disaster leaves you and your your younger cousins adrift in a strange sea full of mythical creatures and beings. Can you and your cousins escape, or will you succumb to the deadly sea?

Currently, this is a short cave-of-time style game with three victory endings. It is complete in its current form, consisting of the first of many planned "episodes" for the game.  It will eventually be expanded into an episodic gauntlet-style game.

Your score indicates which ending you reached.  0 for a death ending, and a score of 1, 2, or 3 corresponds to one the game's victory endings.

Play this short interactive storygame to learn what traditional RPG class best fits your style and personality!

Possible results include: Fighter, ranger, rogue, mage, cleric, bard, paladin, and inventor.

Dang, didn't see! Props for that too!

Props to Sherbert for fighting the good fight!

Based on your story's description, I think it's extremely unlikely to be popular on this site. People tend to prefer adventure stories with speculative elements, and there is not much of an audience for poetry, or for the subject matter you are interested in.

That said, I think forcing yourself to abandon or alter your ideas to cater to an audience you're unfamiliar with isn't a good idea. The usual advice is to write something YOU care about, and then hopefully it finds an audience that can appreciate it. If you force yourself to write a story you're not actually interested in, it will turn out dull and lifeless.

You can choose to either stick to your original idea and accept that it probably won't be a good fit for this site's culture. Or you can give up and pick an entirely different idea molded to suit the nature of your audience. Or you can do some combination of the two. There's no wrong answer here, just whatever works best for you.

I think they key question you should be asking yourself is "Is it more important to me that I enjoy the writing process, or that I receive praise when my work is completed?" Once you've got your priorities straight there, the path forward should be obvious. Again, no wrong answer.

If you want a better idea of what site culture and popular stories are like, I recommend reading top-rated stories, and backreading several of the forum threads. This post includes a list of common CYS storytelling trends.

No matter what you decide, I would caution you that this site can be very blunt with its feedback, and if you choose to publish, you need to be prepared to receive a lot of honest criticism. Read some of the reviews on the site to get a sense for the general tone of feedback.

Not sure what's wrong with your code, but you can have it do the same thing by having nested if statements. I always do that instead of using And/or on this site.

Not an authority--but my impression is that if your story is explicitly connected to a property you didn't create, it's fanfiction. So if you mention that it's set in a specific RPG world in the game's description, it would be fanfic.

If your plot and characters are original, and the setting is generic enough that people won't be able to tell offhand where you originally set it, you could easily just edit out that name drop and call it an original story and that would be fine. Just because it was originally conceived of as fanfiction, doesn't mean it's permenantly shackled to that idea. But if you want to maintain a connection to the source material, it's fanfiction.

I think it's probably fine to say "inspired by x" in the description and have it not be fanfic, but that's a borderline case.

If you were trying to publish this game, I'd advise doing some research on copyright law, since the magazine you published your original story in probably owns the rights to it. But since you're just posting it for free on the internet, this is a non issue.

Yeah love em. Used to run convoluted week-long mafia games at summer camp. Those murder mystery group games are fun too.

Done

Congrats Mystic! Congrats everyone!

If you're doing a strict epistolary format with written letters only, I think the plot would most likely lend itself to some kind of history/fantasy politics intrigue game. Mainly because if you set in the present day or future, you raise all kinds of questions about why aren't these people texting or emailing or calling each other on the phone. (Though you COULD tell a story in the present day using emails/texts or similar/)

I say politics for the following reasons:

1. If the characters are various important political figures, it explains why they're seperated by distance, and why they have the time to write so many letters.
2. The epistolary format allows only for 2 characters having a one-on-one conversation at a time--no group conversations, action sequences, etc. Since it's a storygame, you have a single player character, so every interaction in this game is a private one-on-one conversation with that one character. To me, this indicates subterfuge and deceit. If everyone's on the same page, restricting them to private conversations is boring and pointless. If everyone is lying and wildly misinforming each other, this instead becomes an asset. It's also a great opportunity for humor.
3. All the action needs to happen in "dialogue" in this kind of story. A political intrigue story is easier to fit to this requirement than most. It would allow a single character's words to have greater impact.
4. Someone operating exclusively through their words to others strikes me as a good opportunity to write a manipulator character, controlling the flow of information. This obviously lends itself well to politics

Examples: Scheme for political gain, assassination plot (orchestrated by narrator, or uncovered by narrator), sending out military instructions from a distance, doing research into a mystery by getting in contact with various people, etc.

If you're not strict about "letters only," you could expand to things like scribe-written meeting notes, inventory assessments, interviews, scientific research, journals, recipes, secret codes, etc. The sky's the limit.

If you're going to do this, I strongly encourage you to take advantage of the format in some way. Don't just tell a story that happens to be told through letters. Tell a story that could ONLY be told through letters.

Narrator voice is going to be EXTREMELY important in this game. You'll need to pick someone distinct, likeable, and widely appealing to your audience. Since whole pages are going to be written in this voice, you don't really have the option of creating a bland narrator and hoping the rest of the story does the work.

Good luck! Epistolatory style can be a lot of fun.

Off the top of my head, Kansas, Billy Joel, ELP, Moody Blues, Queen, the Eagles, and similar things. My music taste comes 100% from what other people had on in the room while I was there lol. I've been told a couple times I have boomer taste in music.