I have been workshopping various designs for the game with friends and family. I have discovered a problem. Call it "Drew's Law".

Essentially: Story Telling and Interaction are different experiences that don't mix well. As my friend Drew tells me: If you have a story, tell the story. If you are letting people run around in a sandbox, let them run around in a sandbox.

I've developed that into a metaphor about amusement rides.

A Roller Coaster is one type of amusement ride. Your senses are overwhelmed by a combination of heights and speed and G-forces. But you are basically a rider, with zero control over anything.

A Bumper car is a different type of amusement ride. It's slow. But unlike the Roller coaster, you have have a steering wheel and an accellerator. You can crash into things. On purpose. You are also playing off of the interactions of the other drivers.

I am at a point with the story of Iliad 07 where I have to figure out if I'm building a Roller Coaster or a Bumper Car.

For a Roller Coaster, I'm really better off just writing a single narrative, in print or ebook form. As the author I can guide the audience through the craziest set of events I can imagine. They get on, they read through. My distribution channel becomes dead simple, too. Though, if I want repeat customers, I'm going to have to build another ride.

For a Bumper Car, I need to abandon all attempts to tell a coherent story. I leave the ingredients for a plot in pieces for the player to run into. If they string together the events into something they enjoy, GREAT! If not, provide enough minigames and other distraction that the audience feels like they got their money's worth.

For now I'm thinking a Rollar Coaster is the better way to go. Perhaps there are a few choices, but most of the experience is story telling. To that end, my work is reduced to actually slinging content into a tool like iBook Author.

And with that, I wish to present to you, "The Iliad 07 Chronicles, Volume 1, Version 0.0":

And if you find this effort worthwhile, nothing keeps my attention on a project quite like kind words and monetary donations. Primarily the donations. I have a patreon site for this project:

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Iliad-07-v0.0.epub