Chains of Command is a choose your own adventure story I wrote about 20 years ago. I’ve dug it up from my closet and started to implement it in Twine. It’s very derivative of Star Trek, a star alliance, a planet that wants to join, rumours of slave trade in the capital etc etc.

I’m currently using Twine 2.0 with Harlowe, because I honestly thought it would cover what I needed from the toolset, but I’m considering updating to sugarcube, primarily because I have skill checks.

I’m a bit reluctant though because I’ve written 120 entries and I have about 50 more to go, so going back and changing them would be time consuming.

I think what I find most difficult to resist is to improve the design. I have 20 years of additional experience, and without a doubt I can tell that my fledgling attempts at design are good but they can definitely be improved. It would probably be odd otherwise. It’s like seeing old drawings. There’s something there, a line, a use of colour that foreshadows coming skills but they’re not there yet.

I’m using Chains of Command as a test bed for my Murder Mysteries game. All the pieces I learn for Chains, I will need for Murder Mysteries, although for Murder Mysteries I’m sort of building an engine made of macros more than I’m writing adventures.

I digress. I haven’t really made anything in quite this way for a long time. I enjoy it. Maybe my brain is returning to a normal state. Whatever counts for normal these days.

All this because of an Unreal course that made sense.