There’s nothing important to the plot of The Thirteenth Vessel here. I’m just taking the opportunity to discuss and explain some of the choices and design aspects I considered while developing this book.
KEEPING IT SIMPLE
In terms of “mechanics” and systems, gamebooks range from basic to complicated. These days the complexity of a gamebook can rival many tabletop role-playing games. Some of them actually are solo adventures for existing role-playing systems.
I made the choice for this book (and the sequels I’m developing) to simplify the accounting. My aim was to keep as much of the game as possible inside the book, for the sake of smooth play and immersion.
Rolling dice, making calculations, and performing bookkeeping duties with a pencil and character sheet all happen outside of the book and reading experience and sacrifice immersion in the story.
These things, in my humble opinion, are also a pain in the ass and reduce one’s ability to play a gamebook in many locations. I’ve used a code word system to track state changes, but I’ve otherwise elected to have as little visible “mechanics” and fiddling with dice or other stuff as possible.
I don’t think this defines The Thirteenth Vessel as basic. I know there are people who believe that dice and character statistics and a combat system are essential to define a piece of interactive fiction as a gamebook and evaluate the sophistication and depth of them based on how frequently you’re rolling dice and updating your character sheet.
I’m not one of those people. There’s a similar spectrum in the tabletop roleplaying world, with some people embracing the systems and tactics side and others favouring the narrative and character development of “Theatre of the Mind” play styles. Both are valid, and people should choose the game that suits their preference. It doesn’t invalidate the other option.
My choice to focus on immersion and keep the numbers to a minimum is suited to the genre. I’m not sure cosmic horror works as well when you tell a player that the mysterious awe-inspiring embodiment of terror they’re facing has 38 Hit Points and takes 2 damage when you roll a 9 or higher with two dice.
If you encounter a ghastly and mind-bending apparition and what you’re thinking about is what rule technicality you can exploit to optimize your position, I’ve failed in my mission. That stuff works well in tactical wargaming, but it has no place in any kind of horror.
NO DICE
Another reason I’ve dispensed with dice rolling is that I’m trying to eliminate random and arbitrary outcomes. To me, the tactical aspect isn’t fulfilled by rolling good numbers. It’s by making better strategic choices.
Gamebook enthusiasts know how crappy it is when you’re invited to go left or right and, without any other evidence to make an informed choice from, you’re told “Wrong way. Now you’re dead.” It feels unfair, and it makes the winning outcomes feel unearned.
It might be hard to see under all the fake mechanical bullshit of most systems, but dice rolling is just as arbitrary, random, and unfair. Personally I would hate to make it all the way to the climactic scene of an adventure only to be told “Dice says 1. Game Over. Sorry.” I think that kind of result isn’t your fault, and I won’t blame you at all for ignoring it.
Victoria Hancox says in the intro to her excellent horror gamebook “Nightshift” that she hasn’t used dice because she knows we’d only cheat. I loved that and agreed with almost all of it. My only dissent is that I don’t consider it cheating. Whether you live or die, win or lose, shouldn’t depend on something as irrelevant and dumb as what a dice roll says.
Because I didn’t use a dice-based combat system, you don’t have to put the book down and play a dice-based minigame. If you die or lose, I don’t want it to happen outside of the book like that. I want every ending, win or lose, to happen inside the book and say “The End.” Finishing the game outside the book playing some random combat minigame is dumb, and I won’t have it happening to a qualified OTS agent. Not on my shift.
CHOICES AND AGENCY
My decisions have all been influenced by something game design legend Sid Meier said. He defined a game as a series of interesting strategic choices.
Or something like that. I’m paraphrasing. But the game is all about choices to me. It’s not doing what a random number generator tells you to. The holy grail of contemporary games, especially role-playing games, is player agency. There will always be restraints and restrictions imposed by the needs of narrative, but I’ll always give you the opportunity to make meaningful choices where possible. Because that’s what playing is.
But that touches on a couple of interesting aspects of both the genre and the format. One of the things that makes Cosmic Horror work, the part of it that makes it scary, is the lack of agency available to protagonists.
In the best works of H.P. Lovecraft, Robert Chambers, Algernon Blackwood, William Hope Hodgson, Arthur Machen, Laird Barron, John Langan, Caitlin R. Kiernan and countless others (if you think cosmic horror was invented by and mostly limited to H.P. Lovecraft, I’ve got wonderful news for you), the source of the horror is unimaginably vast and incomprehensible, and the scary aspect for the protagonist is how insignificant, powerless, and vulnerable they are.
In other words, there’s usually no agency, or sense of agency, available to the protagonists. How can we possibly represent that while running a fair game and giving the player the choices they need? That’s been one of my main challenges. I hope I’ve addressed it adequately.
In the world of tabletop roleplaying, you’ll most likely see conversations about player agency referring to how the narrative works. Games will be described as “sandbox,’ referring to unstructured open worlds in which the player can decide what they want to do and which challenges they choose to engage with, or “on rails,” which refers to a story that is predetermined and choices are so limited that they steer players against their will to a foregone conclusion.
Gamers frame it as either an unstructured world in which the players drive and the GM (Game Master, Dungeon Master, or Referee) is merely a passenger or one in which the GM drives and the players are just passengers.
This is a binary assessment that’s not helpful. These games are supposed to be a dialog between the players and the world-builder. The beauty of roleplaying games is that nobody should be sidelined.
In the current scene, where player agency is enshrined and held above everything else, players act genuinely perplexed at the shortage of Game Masters. Why would it be surprising that the person who usually has to make the greatest investment in effort, time, and money is treated like they shouldn’t even participate in the game?
I’m not joking. In many modern games the Game Master isn’t even allowed to roll dice, with the players rolling the dice for the non-player characters as well as themselves. If the Game Master tries to introduce a hint of a plot element, players accuse them of suppressing their agency.
This feels petulant. Maybe because I’m old. I started playing TTRPGs before “Sandbox” talk became the gold standard, and maybe that’s why I don’t enjoy it.
I look forward to participating in a cleverly structured story that’s designed to give me a great experience. To me, playing “Sandbox” feels like playing a series of aimless side quests and minigames. It feels like every encounter and interaction is random or generated on the fly and that we players are just floating around, collecting stuff with no end goal or point. It feels like when the choice is handed over, it becomes meaningless.
The goal is still a structured environment with a plot that can accommodate meaningful choices. That’s also the aim of a gamebook. Gamebooks used to be location-based “dungeon crawl” style adventures, but these days there are also “open world” gamebooks, which are more pleasing to those who like the sandbox style.
I’m not one of them, but mostly I don’t think Sandbox works for cosmic horror. Open world is suited to fantasy genres where players might want to hang out and look for opportunities to adventure, like mercenaries seeking jobs. It doesn’t work for investigation, race-against-time thrillers, or horror.
This book is plotted and designed. I have a trilogy in mind, and I’m quite proud of the structure. I’m not interested in Open World. There are many ways to finish this book. Choice still matters.
INFLUENCES
Nothing is created in a vacuum, and this book is no exception. I mentioned many writers of cosmic horror, but there are also movies like John Carpenter’s “In The Mouth of Madness” and David Cronenberg’s “Videodrome” (to which the phrase “new flesh” in this book is a reference), as well as TV shows like the first season of “True Detective” that inspired the feelings I sought while working on this book.
There are also other games. If you play tabletop roleplaying games, you’ll see the undeniable influences of TTRPGs like Call of Cthulhu, Delta Green, The Esoterrorists, and Kult: Divinity Lost. The very idea of the OTS agency recalls the Delta Green agency or the Ordo Veritas in The Esoterrorists. I don’t shy from that. The OTS isn’t a copy, but it is my submission to genre tradition.
Music was important for the right mood, too. That’s true when I write and Leigh says the same about when he draws. We had lots of conversations about music when we worked on this. He’s a big Rowland S. Howard fan and listened to Howard’s Teenage Snuff Film album when he composed the graphics.
I like lots of music but while I was writing this I mostly listened to Morphine, whose music is perfect for when you want to feel like you’re in a David Lynch movie, and the electronic psychedelia of Future Sound of London, particularly the Dead Cities album. I also listened to my own music.
With my own project, Alternate Parallel Reality, I produced music that might have been used in an indie horror movie. In 2012 I got email from a fan in Mexico who asked if they could use one of my tracks in a horror movie. I have no idea whether the film ever got made but I’d love to see the result if it did.
I put together a playlist of some of my own creepiest music which I had on rotation while I wrote this. And I’ve put it on the internet as a proposed listening companion while you read/play The Thirteenth Vessel. You can find it by looking for “The Thirteenth Vessel: a Listening Companion” by Alternate Parallel Reality on Bandcamp. It’s free if you’re interested.
NO PUZZLES
I love the idea of puzzles in gamebooks, but I haven’t enjoyed the execution so far. Puzzles and brain teasers can be great fun, but they can also bring a gamebook to a grinding halt. I’ve played some in which the puzzle stumped me, and there was no way to keep playing if I couldn’t arrive at the answer they needed.
That made for a book I only read half of and couldn’t complete. I don’t have any fondness for a book I had to put down and walk away from, no matter how interesting it might have been until that point. I got no value or closure from that experience and vowed never to put that shit in my own work.
Now we live in an internet age. I’ve been able to research the answers online. Am I satisfied now? Not even close. Every time I’ve looked up the answers, I’ve thought “That’s dumb.” I’d never have arrived at their solution, which is more telling of the author’s peculiar thought processes than any process of deduction.
I’d like to work a puzzle or two into upcoming books, but I need to work out a way that solving them isn’t essential to completing the book. And if it’s not, what is the value in solving the puzzle? Also, knowing that one can just search for answers online now might take the point out of the exercise,
DAMNED STATISTICS
Something else that’s become a bit of a standard in the gamebook community is the use of statistics to indicate character attributes. Rolling dice to establish Strength and Health and Luck, etc., which are used in combat systems and skill tests in books is common, and many consider it a minimum requirement to call something a gamebook.
I have not done that here. Again, I have no idea why we wouldn’t cheat or disregard an unfavourable roll. Most of the time the skills are established by dice rolls, so they don’t indicate anything about your skill as a player. Why wouldn’t we just assume that as an agent you’re operating at maximum capacity?
Some of these attributes require active updating through games, like tracking your current health. I have to admit, this kind of mechanic would make the game design a lot easier for me. I’d be able to inflict a cost instead of what I’m currently doing for encounters, which is establishing a win or loss on the spot… in some cases there might be a lasting effect, which we indicate with a code word.
Even though it would have been an easier option from my end, I think that tracking health points might remove some of the immersion for you. It’s not just a pain to be updating records all the time, but quantifying “hit points” or having a tangible health bar makes it feel more like a video game than a cinematic experience, which is what I’m aiming for.
SANITY
Speaking of character stats, let’s address a significant elephant in the room. We discussed the Hit Point mechanism which tracks health and signifies death when the total hits zero. Another trope common to games in the horror genre is the tracking of Sanity points.
The idea is that disturbing and distressing experiences inflict a loss of sanity points, and when that total gets to zero, the character “goes insane” and becomes dysfunctional in the same way as when the health gets depleted.
The point tracking mechanism is a blunt instrument. There’s absolutely no difference between a character who has 50 Hit points and the character who is down to their last. They move the same and don’t exhibit any impairment. The types of wounds don’t get taken into consideration, as it’s all one amorphous total.
And this is absolutely fine. It’s one-dimensional and lacks nuance, but it’s only a game. Dungeons and Dragons doesn’t aspire to be a realistic injury simulator. I doubt anyone would enjoy it more if it did that. This is fine. But let’s not apply something this reductive and clumsy to mental health.
Friends of mine with mental health issues find the sanity tracking mechanic offensive and wrong. I’m inclined to agree with them. It’s embarrassing to pitch them a game with this kind of concept in it, so I’m not putting it in my own.
DIFFICULTY
As I write this, I’m about to hand a draft copy of the manuscript to a team of playtesters. This makes me nervous in many ways and for many reasons, but one of my biggest concerns is what I’m going to do with any feedback about the difficulty level.
Players like stats and numbers to roll dice against because it creates the illusion of depth and strategy, but gamebook writers like these systems for an entirely different reason. The numbered stats are a really easy way to change the difficulty of the game.
It’s too easy? Simple. Assign some bigger numbers to the monsters. Change the Luck Roll from an 8 to a 10. Give the player fewer Hit Points to start with. The game is too hard? Same solution. Make the villain inflict 2 points of damage instead of 4. You get the idea.
I don’t yet know what I’m going to have to do if I haven’t gotten the difficulty level of this book right, but I’m convinced it’ll take nothing less than completely rewriting sections. I haven‘t done myself any favours by removing all of those numbers and dice rolls.
This is fine. I know what I’m doing, and this is what I signed up for. But it’s worth noting that the more simple the system appears, the more complex it can be to create.
CHARACTER
Whether you’re male, female, non-binary, or other, I’ve endeavored to make the protagonist of this book someone you can comfortably inhabit. I haven’t given the player a name, assigned any statistics, or assumed a gender. I’ve tried to make my use of pronouns neutral, and I’m not imposing any sexual preferences on the player.
I hope I’ve gotten this right, and I apologize if I haven’t. I want you to be able to take ownership of your character without any distracting bullshit. Please hit me up with feedback if there’s anything I can do or use to improve on this aspect in the next two books.
WORLDBUILDING
The Thirteenth Vessel is designed as the first volume of a trilogy, with the second and third volumes intended to reveal a lot more about how this world works, how the OTS operates, and the true nature of the supernatural threats. I’m pretty excited about it.
To me, this is where gamebook depth and sophistication come from. The continuity and progression in the Lone Wolf gamebooks, or the Way of the Tiger gamebooks, are the gold standard. It’s in the character development, the relationships, the expansion of the world, and the deepening of the plot. In my opinion, it doesn’t come from how many dice rolls or calculations are made.
One of my considerations, one of the drivers where I aim to make my own gamebooks significant, is in the relationships with the other characters. In this book we’ve been introduced to Claire and Walter and Lucas and Director Hassan, among others. We’ve aligned ourselves to one of them, their worldview, and their approach to solving things.
In coming books we’ll be meeting a whole panoply of characters and potential relationships. Trust will be one of the big themes.
If you consider a gamebook and what you can do to contribute to advancing the platform and genre, there are several kinds of possible innovations. You might imagine a more advanced and strategic combat system. You might invent a new genre.
DestinyQuest books worked out how to get that video game feeling in a book. Fabled Lands introduced an open-world style of play. New Tokyo 2130 is a monster cyberpunk release that plays across 6 massive books and comes with a bunch of accessories and physical supplements. There are other games that work with the technology in our phones, like QR scanners and ways of getting multimedia worked into them. Some gamebooks are built for two players to battle in.
There are amazing new developments in gamebooks. What I wanted to concentrate on was the role of non-player characters (NPCs). They feature in tabletop roleplaying games, but they’ve only ever had a minor role in gamebooks. Typically as exposition devices, to impart knowledge, or to battle.
In tabletop games the players know they’re the only actual people in the world, and this can lead to abominable behavior. Grand Theft Auto players know what I mean. What they do is kind of psychotic, but it’s not unimaginable when they think they’re the only actual people in the world. It’s solipsism. There’s no quicker way to lose interest and investment in a world than to think you’re the only conscious person in it.
In gamebooks there are no other players or game masters to inject personality or humanizing qualities in the non-player characters. I loved the early Fighting Fantasy gamebooks but still struggled with the undeniable feeling that I’m the only actual person in the world, that anyone I’d interact with is basically a simulation.
I’m not sure I’ve fixed it entirely, but that’s my “angle” if you want the short version of what I’m trying to do to make my own books relevant. As I said, I’m expecting this to become more significant in future books.
Uncanny Agency Gamebooks 