You know the story and have probably seen the film; now you can experience what the disaster was really like for those who were there.

Authors Note: This story is about 90% historically accurate, every event and spoken word occurred in identical or similar form, though to prevent this becoming a comedy I had to change some of the speech (things like "I say old man, that is frightfully sporting" has become "That is very decent of you"). On the bright side you should not find Jack and Rose running around in this story :)

Jesse James was a lad that killed many a man / he robbed the Glendale train / he stole from the rich and he gave to the poor / he had a hand and a heart and a brain.

It was on a Saturday night and the moon was shining bright / they robbed the Glendale train / and people did say over many miles away / it was those outlaws Frank and Jesse James!

Now the people held their breath when they heard of Jesse's death / and wondered how he'd ever come to fall / Robert Ford, it was a fact, he shot Jesse in the back / While Jesse hung a picture on the wall...

In this story your name is Bill Grey and you are an outlaw, one of a desperate gang who have chosen to live outside the law. By robbing Yankee banks you can make more money in one day than you could make in ten years of work but at the cost that thousands of lawmen and law-abiding citizens everywhere will hunt you relentlessly, not stopping until you are brought to justice Dead or Alive! By surviving deadly gunfights and eluding pursuit with the help of your fellow outlaws your objective is to escape with your ill-gotten gains and live a life of luxury!

Author's Note: This is a little gift to the site to make up for the fact that The CYS Challenge isn't even a quarter finished yet and Magellan 5 is still in the planning stage. As always with my Edutainment stories it's about 90% true but events have been edited or simplified to make the story flow more easily and be more enjoyable. Incidentally my personal feelings about Jesse James and his companions is that history has been incredibly kind to men who shot defenseless people, stole the money of their countrymen and kept it all for themselves but the things he and others like Billy the Kid, John Dillinger et al did are so remarkable it's hard to keep from admiring their pure nerve :)

They were dueling Doolin-Dalton / High or low it was the same / Easy money and faithless women / Red eye whiskey for the pain.

Go down Bill Dalton, it must be God's will / Two brothers lying dead in Coffeyville / Two voices call you from where they stood / Lay down your law books now, they're no damn good.

Better keep on moving Doolin-Dalton / Till your shadow sets you free / If you're fast and if you're lucky / you will never see that hanging tree.

With a pistol in each hand, your horse's hooves drumming beneath you, the incessant bangs and whizzes of gunshots all around you, the shouts of angry men and the screams of the injured and dying ringing in your ears you roam the towns, plains and wilderness of the American Old West with your fellow outlaws: the daring Dalton boys, the King of the Oklahoma Outlaws Bill Doolin and all the other members of The Wild Bunch.

Your mission is to get rich or die trying and if you are very clever and very lucky you might just live to enjoy your ill-gotten gains; if not... a weather-beaten cross in a dusty cemetery and your rusting pistol in a 21st century museum next to an old black and white photo of a bullet-riddled body will be your fate!

Author's Note: Following the (for me) surprisingly positive feedback on The James Gang I've decided to write the next story I had planned in that series, putting The CYS Challenge and Magellan 5 on hold for now. With a new cast of larger-than-life characters, more epic gunfights and daring robberies like it's predecessor this is the sort of story too unbelievable for fiction and absolutely incredible for being true! I sincerely hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it :)

In this story game you become a commander from ancient times, leading your brave warriors into the greatest battles of history! Your decisions will determine whether you and your men live or die as you fight with and against the greatest and worst commanders the world has ever known! Let the fight begin!

Author's Note: This is basically a test story-game to see if I can figure out the mechanics of this site well enough to deliver a respectable war simulation...

Can you be the first man to reach the summit of Mount Everest?

Authors Note: My last Edutainment game, I promise! It is Fantasy, Modern Adventure and Puzzles all summer now :D

Susan Knox returns to solve another mystery! Travelling to the beautiful yet mysterious Island of Han in the heart of the South China Sea the young detective faces another challenge: solving the mysteries surrounding a five-year-old "suicide" amidst rumours of pirate gold. Playable as a stand-alone adventure, the reader must use all their intelligence and logic if they are to uncover the secrets that lie amidst the tangled web of massacres, insanity, skeletons, pirate treasure and, at their heart, a promising life cut tragically short, that make up the history of Han Island. Good Luck!

Rule 1: Unless your story is at least 100 pages long you shouldn't divide it into parts and pay some attention to choosing the correct Maturity, Difficulty and Tags for your story.

As I happen to be on holiday for the first time in about 900 years I've managed to write a little story game offering some examples I've brainstormed or seen recently in badly-written stories of how not to write. Like it's older cousin, The Land of Bad Writing, this story uses examples of bad writing as a way of showing how not to write and I don't have any one story in mind particularly in writing this, just practitioners of bad writing in general.

I've decided to base this story on Pokemon for no other reason than the fact Fan Fiction requires less creativity than most other styles of writing and because Pokemon reminds me of when I was a little Will11 and I, my ten brothers (all coincidently called Will as well) and my nine sisters (the Wilmas 1 to 9) would gather behind the nuclear waste and anthrax testing facility in the woods outside our little trailer park called Asbetos to trade black market Pokemon cards for Plutonium with a mixture of Gypsies, Elves and the Dutch... basically I'm writing about Pokemon because I'm feeling a little Nostalgic today :D

(Rule 1.5: Don't write lengthy and pointless descriptions offering fake autobiographies to your readers).

"Jack the Ripper is dead / Jack the Ripper is dead / He's lying on his bed / Bleeding through his head / Jack the Ripper is dead" - A Victorian Children's Skipping Rope Song.

Death stalks the fog-shrouded streets of London as prostitutes are killed and mutilated in the darkness of the night... As a Private Detective working alongside Scotland Yard you will be faced with the most challenging adversary of your career, a man who's very name has become a byword for terror: Jack the Ripper. Are you smart enough to catch him?

BEWARE: This game is 200+ pages long and will take about 30-60 minutes to read through. Do not read if operating heavy machinery, juggling chainsaws or entertaining small children.

Author's Note: This story will require some thinking and the reader might want to make notes, though with a bit of cleverness and logic readers should be able to correctly identify the real Ripper. About 95% of the information in this story is historically accurate.  Finally as you'd probably guess a story about hunting someone who killed and mutilated prostitutes is not a feel-good family comedy, if you are under 13 I don't recommend that you read this. Certainly do not google "Jack the Ripper victims" if you suffer from nightmares :D

For hundreds of years your people have lived on The Three Islands completely surrounded by a vast impenetrable reef. Scientific advances and large amounts of gunpowder has finally allowed your people to breach this reef in two places, making accessible for the first time a vast unexplored world beyond your country's borders. The ten greatest sea captains of The Three Islands have been summoned by the King to take part in a great race: to be the first to sail around an unexplored world!
You are one of these Captains and an exciting adventure into the unknown awaits you!

Author's Note: My first foray into Fantasy for teenage readers! Inspired by the incredible first voyage around the world by Ferdinand Magellan if this story isn't universally detested it will be the first of a five-part series of adventures! I hope you enjoy it and as always, thank you for taking the time to read the semi-literate scribbles I like to call my writing :)

The Great Reef has been breached and your people are pouring out into a vast new world: a world of opportunities, adventure... and danger.

Explorers and traders establishing new colonies on the islands discovered by you and your fellow sea-farers have come into conflict with warlike and deadly Natives and blood has been shed. In response Queen Anne-Marie has assembled a vast War Fleet to sail out to meet with these Natives and establish land ownership by diplomacy or force. As a member of this great expedition you will travel once more into an unknown and dangerous world in the greatest undertaking in your people's history... do you have what it takes?

Author's Note: This story can be read by itself but useful background information is provided by reading Magellan 1: Race into the Great Unknown first. In an effort to try to respond to the feedback of readers I have specifically tried to create a greater interaction between the strong-willed and unique personalities of you and your fellow Captains and also changed the main character's name from Cleo to Leo to make him more... manly. I hope you enjoy reading this :)

As you country continue to expand beyond the borders of the Great Reef into the largely unknown world of Magellan worrying news arrives: Tobias Cuthrew, the greatest sailor your people have known, has vanished while on a voyage of exploration into the West. Once more your hard-hearted monarch Queen Anne-Marie demands your services, this time to lead an expedition to find your missing comrade. But is there more to this mission that meets the eye?

Author's Note: As always thank you to everyone who takes the time to read my stories and a larger thank you to the CYOA community at large for giving me a reason to write them in the first place :) I have specifically tried to make this story less linear than the last, with four main story branches.

Betrayed by your Queen and hunted by her allies the situation looks bleak for you and your small band of allies. But opposition to tyranny takes many forms and from small beginnings and a few great ideas is it possible you could gain the weapons you need to defeat your enemies while simultaneously protecting your defenseless allies from the vengeance of your foes? Requiring all your ingenuity you are about to embark on the greatest fight of your career!

Author's Note: This fourth installment of the series is a bit longer and more difficult than its predecessors but it ties up quite a few loose threads ready for a big finish in Magellan 5. Thanks for everyone's feedback and support so far! Please be aware teenage readers and those of a low maturity this story is a bit more X Rated than earlier stories in the series as the relationship between Leo and Naomi is... improving :). Homophobes should probably steer clear of this story too :)

In this story-game you become a member of the Donner Party.
The Donner Party were a group of about 90 men, women and children who tried traveling to their new homes in California by an unfamiliar route across the Salt Lake Desert of Utah and the Sierra Nevada Mountains but met with enough misfortunes and suffering to kill half the group and leave the remainder scarred for the rest of their lives...

You knew you should not have eaten and drank so much on Christmas Day, a troubled sleep leads to a nightmare where you find yourself trapped in the worst place imaginable: The Land of Bad Writing! Will you ever escape?

Authors Note: I should point out I have assumed about twenty different author's voices to give the worst examples of bad writing as possible as a guide of how not to write. If you want to know what my usual style is like message me or read my other story-games. It is also worth pointing out this story-game isn't aimed at anyone's stories in particular but practitioners of bad writing in general.

You are a Victorian Adventurer, a man who explores dangerous places and does dangerous things for the thrill of it. Following your recent expeditions in Africa you have been invited to the island of Marco, recently claimed by the British Government. Landing in the port of Victoria on the east side of the island you soon learn why you are there: a party of fifty men led by a certain Captain Donovan have vanished on an exploration expedition into the unknown jungle interior.
Your assignment is to find him and learn what has befallen his men, though you will be lucky if you too do not vanish from sight and knowledge beneath those deadly trees...

Author's Note: As this is the first story game I will have posted I am only posting half of it while I get used to the scripting etc. If it is not universally despised I will post the sequel Donovan's Curse (2) as soon as I have written it.

You are a Victorian Adventurer, a man who explores dangerous places and does dangerous things for the thrill of it. Following a month of searching the deadly island of Marco you have found the remnants of the lost expedition of Captain William Donovan, a renegade officer who seems to enjoy his role as adopted chief of the local Yantu Natives. You and your men now find yourself at the mercy of these dangerous and war-loving warriors... ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author's Note: This is the sequel to The Lost Expedition (1), the first story-game I wrote on this site over two years ago, and my entry into the January 2017 Wilderness themed competition. I think everything I've done in these Lost Expedition stories I've done bigger and better in the Magellan stories but I'm glad Bucky's competition has given me the motivation to finish this little two-part adventure. To get the most out of this story I recommend you read The Lost Expedition (1), first, though this can be read as a stand-alone adventure.

You are an amateur detective plunged into the heart of the 1920's Oklahoma oil boom, where one by one native Osage men and women are being brutally murdered. As more and more are slain you find yourself increasingly alone in a desperate world of shadows, unsure who to trust, not even knowing if you will be the next to fall... This is a remarkable and true story of murder, conspiracy, and insatiable greed. Do you dare to experience the Reign of Terror?

(If you enjoy this storygame and wish to know more of the true life history, I recommend David Grann's book Killers of the Flower Moon.)