The Gamebook of Dungeon Tropes

[maetl]

I hit a wall with my original plan to make an adventure/sea voyage/journey/road novel with locations scraped from Wikipedia (#57). I still may attempt to tackle this at some point, but in the meantime, I wanted to do something I could actually finish.

This one started largely by accident, and I thought it would be quick and fun, but unfortunately took a lot longer than I anticipated.

The gamebook is based on slicing up lists of 1980s fantasy tropes. It’s divided into sections, each representing a room in a generated maze, and each containing some combination of generated dungeon tropes.

I was originally considering generating a Twine document out of this, but I think I prefer the references to dice rolling and having to turn to different sections of the book manually.

Code

See: https://github.com/maetl/nanogenmo2015

Examples

• https://github.com/maetl/nanogenmo2015/blob/master/examples/draft-1.md
• https://github.com/maetl/nanogenmo2015/blob/master/examples/draft-2.md
• https://github.com/maetl/nanogenmo2015/blob/master/examples/draft-3.md

Calyx

If anyone is interested, I also made a spin-off library for writing generative template grammars in Ruby. The gamebook linked here is the first major piece of work that uses it.

• https://github.com/maetl/calyx
• https://rubygems.org/gems/calyx

[tra38]

I like how the boss is not actually there in the lair, suggesting that you are exploring a post-apocalyptic society.

[maetl]

I like how the boss is not actually there

Well spotted. I did write the stub code to add that section in at a predetermined location, but it’s currently switched off. I kind of like the idea that where you end up is completely different than where you start, although leaving it out might be a bit incoherent—so I may add it back (or switch it randomly).