Seattle Interactive Fiction Meetup - July 19, 2015 Cheat Your Own Adventure: The Witches of Dragon Mountain Based on the rules found at http://www.allthingsjacq.com/miscellaneous/CheatYourOwnAdventure.pdf Game design by Shane Mclean, with the Pompey Crew Design Team, playtested at London RPG Meet & Indiecon '12 Session Participants: Jacqueline Ashwell, Sam Kabo Ashwell, Jason Ermer, and Benjamin Sokal You grew up on the base of Dragon Mountain, amongst its babbling brooks and deep forests. Today you've decided to climb the mountain and face the witches. But first, let's learn more about you. 1. You grew up a simple sheep herder... 2. You put on something more appropriate... 3. You aren't the first person in your family to climb Dragon Mountain... Selected Choice: 3 - You aren't the first person in your family to climb Dragon Mountain. Your older sister climbed Dragon Mountain three years ago and hasn't been heard from since. Dad's never been the same. That was also the same year that all of the sheep died! Things have been bad. But you've packed your bag of supplies and you're ready to infiltrate the witches in the hope of finding your sister. What's in your bag? 1. You packed for the most awesome party ever... 2. You just packed PB&Js... 3. You packed what you thought to be the most appropriate witch's gear... Selected Choice: 3 - You packed what you thought to be the most appropriate witch's gear. Sadly, you failed to secure the safety mechanism on the wand in the bottom of your bag. It went off, resulting in a giant fire ball, which left you... dead. [FAIL] Oops. Let's go back and choose 2 - You just packed peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. You love PB&Js! You could eat them forever. You think about the lovely delicious sandwiches as you climb the mountain. Soon you encounter a scree slope. How do you cross it? 1. With gleeful abandon, thinking about sandwiches... 2. With intense concentration... 3. By casting a spell... Selected Choice: 3 - You decide to cross the scree slope by casting a spell. You've totally got this. Levitate Self is not even witch-level stuff. You've been doing this spell with friends since you were seven years old. Waving your hands to your sides you scatter spell components along the ground, making a note to come get them later. A blue sheen surrounds you and you fly across. Tempted to go up the whole way by levitating, you decide it's more about the journey than the destination. You walk for awhile, but that sucks so you go back to flying. A couple of hours later you realize flying may have disadvantages. From a sawtooth ridge on Dragon Mountain a nefarious wyvern emerges! You are consistent in size with the pegasi they normally prey upon! Oh NOES! What do you do?? 1. Offer it a PB&J sandwich! 2. Try to charm it... 3. Play dead. Selected Choice: 2 - Deciding to charm the beast, you cast your charm spell. A bit more difficult than levitation, but you're sustained by PB&J so you have enough concentration to make it work. The wyvern seems to understand that it's being controlled but can't stop you! You make a mental note that when the charm wears off, it probably won't be good to be nearby without precautions. What will you do with the wyvern now? 1. Send it flying back down the mountain... 2. Make the sign of the horns. JOYRIDE! 3. You force it to fly into the mountainside... Selected Choice: 2 - You make the sign of the horns with both hands and spring between the wyverns' ears. You apply your mental control and send it spinning around the mountains in a wild joyride. It's hard to control, though, and you nearly wipe out a few times. You fly close to a snowfield, and its wings brush the surface. Controlling such an ornery beast takes up a lot of your mental reserves. You've never spent so much magic in a single day before. You get sluggish. This is crap timing, while you're low altitude and going a few hundred miles per hour. You look deep within yourself and draw upon a figure who has always inspired you... 1. Lord Dimwitt Flathead 2. Helga, the Witch of the Great Plains 3. Gorthax the Pious Selected Choice: 3 - You focus on Gorthax the Pious, a figure who has always inspired you. Unfortunately, kind though the local cleric was to you in your youth, he was never a very good pilot. Your joyride ends in a splash of wyvern scales and innards. THE END [FAIL] Oops. Let's go back and choose 2 - You focus on Helga, the Witch of the Great Plains, the witch who inspired you to infiltrate her enemies on Dragon Mountain. You cannot fail her, you tell yourself! And with the magical reserve you have left you send the wyvern into the mountain just after you roll of its wings. You're so close to the witches now, the only problem being that the ice is cracking underneath you! In front of you are the witches, and behind you perhaps another way exists to reach them. 1. You are light on your feet! You can beeline it straight for the witches' camp! 2. Your mother was a princess of the Ice Elves... 3. You picked up the mithril-woven rope off your end table back home... Selected Choice: 1 - You are light on your feet! You make the dexterity roll and skip effortlessly across the cracking ice. You end up square in the middle of the witches' camp. You immediately crouch behind a tree stump, unsure of whether or not you've been spotted. 1. You attempt to create a disguise in order to pass as a witch... 2. You offer them tea & PB&Js to placate them... 3. You try to create a distraction... Selected Choice: 2 - "GOOD AFTERNOON!" you shout as you merrily hop out from behind the tree stump. The witches all turn to you, training their wands at your nose. "Don't cast on me! I bring you good tidings, tea, and sammiches." With this, you reveal your magical bottomless bag of PB&Js. The witches, having been on this craggy mountain for centuries, are unaware of the exotic taste of these sandwiches. They spare your life and take a taste. What happens next? 1. It turns out Holga has a peanut allergy... 2. Your love of extra peanut butter renders all the witches temporarily mute... 3. It turns out that the jam, which your father makes with winklepound berries fermented in the noonday sun, is a potent hallucinogen... Selected Choice: 3 - Your father's love of jamcrafting has always exceeded his familiarity with local flora. It was always an adventure, growing up, finding out the results of each of his conconctions on your bowels and mind. Turns out, winklepound berries have a lot of alarming triangle icons next to them in the field guidebooks. You and the entire coven are drawn through into the Dreaming Place. This is *your* territory, that you've visited many times through ill-conceived cooking experiences. Only here will you be able to take on the witches and come out on top. Surreal symbols swirl around you! The witches, unfamiliar with the terrain, call on the power of their Unified Coven Magic. You must act quickly! 1. You use the symbols to form a giant mammoth that tramples them... 2. You use the symbols to cast them into the Endless Void... 3. You summon your spirit guide of the Dreaming Place... Selected Choice: 2 - You decide to use the symbols to cast them into the endless void. So close! You summon the gateway properly, and the witches standing in front of it seem like prime targets, however all of that peanut butter has weighed them down and their Unified Coven Magic (TM) closes the gateway. They decide to make sheep herder sandwiches with you instead, since the PB&J didn't work out so well. You were delicious. [FAIL] Oops. Let's go back and choose 3 - You telepathically reach out to Smuckers, your spirit guide, a physical embodiment of sweetness. The flavor, that is - not the emotional feeling of sweetness. Anyway, Smuckers' sticky tendrils ensnare the witches and they all clump together in a gooey, gelatinous mass. Congratulations! A winner is you! Watch for a sequel, where all the other loose plot threads will be drawn together neatly.