Extend-A-Story Instructions for Beginning Players

Extend-A-Story

Instructions for Beginning Players

So you want to play the game? That is certainly possible. The game is not complicated, and it's not really neccesary to read these instructions, but they do clue you into the basics of what's going on. Once you feel comfortable with the basics, you can move on to creating some episodes of your own. Once you've got that, go try out some of the advanced features.

What is it?

Extend-A-Story is like a choose your own adventure game, with a twist. Conventional choose your own adventure games are written by one person, with a definite central plot, a starting point and several stop points.
Extend-A-Story is not written by one person. It is more of a shared story, written by several people - the other players of the game. There is one starting point, but from there the story diverges according to the desires of the players writing it. Eventually you will reach a portion of the story that has not been created yet. At that point, you can continue the story with your own episode for others to enjoy.

How to Play

You start the story off in episode 1. Each episode is a point in the story that describes what is happening and presents the reader with some options. An episode doesn't neccessarily represent a location in the story, but could describe some event. Every episode is numbered. The episode number and it's title are always present at the top of every story page.
The text description is a narrative explaining what is happening, or what just happened in the story. The options following the narrative are links to other episodes. You select which path you want to follow by selecting one of the options. One choice may be to add your own option. This is an advanced feature, and can be ignored. Sometimes an option will lead to an episode that hasn't been created yet.
Every episode will permit you to go back to the previous episode. Some episodes will have the author's signature on them. Every episode lists the date and time it was created. Some episodes will have linking or extending enabled. Those are both advanced features, and can be ignored.