Dear Reader,
Thank you for taking time out of your day to read my in progress novel, The Cost of Crows, a high fantasy, murder mystery, choose your own adventure story.
Before you begin, I would like to address a few things that you may find helpful and/or good to know to have the best possible experience with this story.
HOW TO PLAY/READ:
There are 3 kinds of choices in this book. Let me break them down for you.
The first kind of choice in The Cost of Crows is the traditional choose your own adventure story choice that is exclusive. You pick one option as opposed to another and it will affect the outcome of the ending of your story. Those look like this-
[WHAT DO YOU SAY?]
[YES] Accept the mission (Go to 2)
[I HAVE MY OWN PROBLEMS] Decline the mission (Go to 3)
These show a simple line of dialogue or action followed by a clarification on what they mean followed by the appropriate section heading to turn to. As this book is written in a non-linear fashion, it is important to navigate the book using the table of contents rather than clicking Next Section as doing so will alter the continuity of the story and likely make it confusing. The numbers at the end of these descriptions will always reference the respective scene headings in the table of contents.
The second kind of choices in this book are flavor choices that will ask you how you respond to a situation, but don't affect the ending outcomes. They're for flavor and to help readers introduce a bit of personality into their character for different read-throughs. They will look like this-
FLAVOR CHOICES:
[YOUR RESPONSE: PICK ONE]
[A] *Clasp her forearm for a warrior's handshake* "Always."
[B] *Cross your arms with a smirk* "Sure, why not?"
[C] *Laugh* "Thanks, but is it really being the best when no one else is available?
[D] *Sigh* "I'm going to regret this, won't I?"
Finally, the last bit of choice in this story is not technically choice, but rather chance. Using a 20 sided die (D20) or a random number generator set to a maximum integer of 20, you will be asked to generate a random value and compare it to one of two ranges of numbers. Whichever range of numbers your roll produces will determine which section to turn to. Those will look like this-
CLIMBING CHALLENGE!
Roll a D20
[7-20] go to 36
[1-6] go to 35
In this example, rolling or generating a 7 or higher has you advance to section 36 and rolling a 6 or lower has you advance to section 35.
NOTE
This book/game is designed to operate under the principle that chance creates stakes and risk for the reader to make it a more exciting experience overall. That said, this story is yours and should you desire to read more preferable endings than whatever you rolled, you are more than welcome to do so. However, I will reiterate that doing so will remove some of the stakes for the reader and deflate some of the excitement for the story. Letting the rolls guide your journey is designed to be a feature, not a punishment, and I have spent many hours balancing the rolls to be challenging, but not brutal.
Ultimately, there's nothing wrong with choosing to negate the games of chance in the story, but if you are up to the challenge, I highly encourage readers to read on Honour mode and play the dice as they roll.
3 ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS:
1) This story has been completely outlined and is currently IN PROCESS of being written. If you would like to be updated on when major additions are made to the script, please sign up for my mailing list below and double check your spam folder if you don't see it appear in your inbox:
2) As this book is organized in a non-linear fashion, for best results, navigate to new chapters using the table of contents rather than clicking the next section button at the bottom of each section. Eventually I will create links that take you directly to the appropriate page, but either way, avoid using the next section button for navigation or the story will likely not make sense.
3) Consider reading Act I multiple times to take different paths and experience things you may have missed before in previous read throughs.
FINALLY
I appreciate your patience with the logistics of this process as well as your interest as I develop this story into everything I know it can be. For everyone who has read a piece of my work, I am grateful for your time and support and am enthusiastically pursuing getting more of this story into your hands (or at least to your glowing digital rectangles).
With all that said, it is my passion and my pleasure to present to you The Cost of Crows.
Thanks again and please enjoy.
- Clocks
[DID THAT MAKE SENSE?]
[YES] Begin reading (Go to 1)
[NO] Reread Section (Go to top of page)
