haha, matt w, I totally did confuse the two of you, sorry about that XD
Going dormant on this board for a year or two does stuff to your memory. Not that I don’t like what I’ve seen of your work so far.
Thanks for explaining.
I think the number of people here who are really against most choice-based games is very small, and other forum members do speak up when that vocal minority gets too harsh/loud. There are others who simply tend to enjoy parser-based games more than choice-based (on average), without thereby automatically wanting to reduce CYOAs to second-class citizenship. All the IF comps and awards are inclusive, and (some discussions notwithstanding) if one looks at the placement of choice-based games there, I don’t think the picture bears out the existence of an anti-CYOA bias: CYOAs were winners in Introcomp 2011 & 2012 and in Spring Thing 2013, placed 3rd in the IF Comp 2011, constituted 9 out of the top 15 games in the IF Comp 2013 (okay, not the top 5, but still), 2nd in Ectocomp 2013, won several XYZZY awards in 2012 and are very well represented among the finalists for the XYZZies 2013.
(I’ll grant that the set of comp/award voters probably does not coincide completely with the set of members of this forum, so the voting results are not necessarily a perfect representation of forum preferences - but there is bound to be a large overlap.)
Regarding the gamebook topic, I’m not sure. On the one hand, I tend to agree with Peter - why fragment the discussion, when we can already talk about this freely? On the other hand, Carolyn has a good point about explicitly showing that such topics would be welcome here.
If a gamebook section were to be added, then (as some already said) I think it wouldn’t be necessary to give it a directory of its own. Announcements and discussions about playing gamebooks would fit in the respective existing boards in the “Playing” directory. If necessary, one could amend the descriptions of those boards to “If you’ve completed a game or gamebook […]” and “Discussion on playing IF and on specific games and gamebooks.”, respectively. Gamebook comps could obviously be announced under “Competitions”. So the only thing to add would be a “Gamebooks” board (or rather, as others said, a board comprising “Choice-based games and gamebooks”) in the “Authoring” directory.
Of course, there’d be the risk of it staying/becoming a lonely ghost subforum (cue tumbleweeds 
).
I think there are quite a few more games with systematic puzzles than are captured in that search (as is the way of IFDB tags). Here’s some I can think of offhand.
Earl Grey: The removing/adding letter mechanisms seems like a system, even if it’s strongly gated and doesn’t allow for a .
Ad Verbum: The restricted command rooms.
Faithful Companion: The ghost behaves systematically, and most of the puzzles concern how to get around/exploit that (I say “most” because there’s one that’s kind of special cased).
Lock and Key: I think? The interface was cumbersome enough that I only tried it once (this is a case where the limitations of the parser interface are really getting in the way of the world mechanic, because Top Down Heroes did something similar with a click-and-drag interface and it was much more accessible).
A New Life: At least some of the puzzles (getting items across a certain barrier) seemed to admit of systematic solutions.
Calm: There was the whole agitation/motivation system, and I think some other puzzles depended on the bulk of items. (This is one particular variety of systematicity that is easily done in many choice-based systems.)
Delightful Wallpaper: The first half is one big systematic puzzle, isn’t it? I never got far into it.
Changes: I get the impression there were a lot of set-piece puzzles, but they were embedded in a system of the animals moving about. $*@(@! fox.
Death of Schlig: “fox” s/b “guard.” Sometimes “systematic” becomes “fiddly.”
Under, In Erebus: Wordplay wordplay wordplay and a couple other systems too.
There’s another one that I had just thought of but that’s completely slipped my mind. Well, the middle section of An Act of Misdirection probably counts too.
Anyway, this may be compulsive nitpicking. I agree with you that parser IF doesn’t use systematic puzzles as much as it might, and that they are great, and that it would be great to have choice-based systems that made it easier to model a world in a way that was amenable to allow for systems. Quality-heavy systems such as ChoiceScript and Undum make at least some kinds of system possible but the power and variety of systems that you can do in Inform 7 (and TADS, I’m sure) seem like they’d be harder to mock up in I7.
Relevant picture below the spoiler.
To the original post, I agree with David Whyld and Carolyn;* it’d probably be good to take an “Build it and they may come” attitude rather than “If they come, we’ll build it.” Would there be much harm to having areas on the board that wound up undersubscribed? I’m not the one who’d be doing the work to set it up, I guess, but it might be nice to have a home here for discussion of these systems even if they also have homes elsewhere.
*Edit for clarification: The reason this originally said “I think?” was because I was posting on preview and couldn’t remember who else had said this.
I absolutely think it’s worth having a choice-based category here. I really dislike the idea of ‘gamebooks’ as a word for it - to me that means a very specific subset of CYOA, typically print, with a focus on F/SF adventure stories. Unless that’s what’s intended?
(I admit to being a nomenclature grouch in general - I get particularly itchy about Twine enthusiasts using ‘Twine’ when they mean ‘any computer choice-based system’. And I do not have a suitable alternative.)
I don’t think we need to worry about ghost boards, really. I mean, the first page of Looking For Collaborators currently goes right back to November 2012. 
You think correctly.
snip Cool, and you’re right. I tagged up a few more of those (though some I haven’t played).
It might be possible to put a choice-y hat on I7 games, though. Some people have done so already. So that’s something I think about.
Also, I think Hallowmoor’s puzzles are a good example of a Twine game with some systematic mechanics, particularly when it comes to
jumping bodies, then avoiding the other body
Also, for the record, I think it’s totally legitimate for people to not enjoy choice-based games. They’re a sufficiently distinct form from parser that liking one and not the other is completely understandable on aesthetic grounds, rather than being some kind of mean-spirited prejudice.
(Constantly ranting about how they’re terrible, or trying to get them excluded from things, that’s another matter.)
Yes, choice-based/hyperlink front-ends to I7 glulx games would definitely be one way to do this.
No apology is necessary, as I deliberately used somewhat provocative phrasing to get my point across (not always the best approach, granted). I have indeed witnessed how some of your more persistent trolls are properly dealt with, and I accept that the vast majority of regular contributors are neither outwardly hostile nor especially closed-minded on the subject of what exactly constitutes “interactive fiction”.
Above all, I accept that intfiction.org was founded by, and for, developers and players of traditional IF, and - as is only fitting - it has remained largely true to its roots.
What it hasn’t done is also moved and grown with the times, to actively welcome and embrace new forms of interactive fiction. There is an aura here - intentional or not - of clinging to purist values, and of sniffing disdainfully at anything that doesn’t quite conform to that viewpoint. It’s partly the attitude of certain folk (past or present - you decide, it’s your community) and partly just how the forum is still laid out even after all these years, emphasizing as it does Parser-based systems. Just one forum category labeled ‘Choice-based Games’ or similar (which would neatly encompass everything from Twine to Gamebooks) would go a long, long towards negating this impression, and actually seem inviting.
Accepting that other forms of interactive fiction exist, and being open to discussing them, is not the same as actually welcoming them.
All the intfiction.org community has to decide is whether or not it really wants to do that.
Historical note: a few months ago the question of a Twine forum directory came up. I passed the question on through Twitter (I have at least a few people from the Twine world following me) but got very little response, and that mixed.
Then Chris Klimas launched a web forum specifically for Twine users (twinery.org/forum/) and that got immediate use.
So, yes, it is good to be welcoming. But this web site doesn’t have to encompass the IF world – the IF world doesn’t necessarily want that.
For what it’s worth, while I agree with Zarf’s point, I think this also speaks to the relative outcomes of “Should we make a thing?” versus “I made a thing, and here it is.”
Granted.
As an unrelated point: design discussions about gamebooks (or choice game models) go on the “General Game Design” board, same as design discussions about parser games.
Inform and TADS are split out as technical forums – places for programming questions to pile up that are of interest only to users of those tools. I like to think that design discussions are of interest to everybody.
PS to a previous discussion: the systematic game I couldn’t think of was Flight of the Hummingbird, which I’ve tagged.
Arguably also Coloratura, now that I think about it. Okay, this is a not-totally-tiny subset of parser IF. (But I would still love to see more, in assorted formats.)
(I know that feeling. Though in my case, it’s been the use of the term “AGS games”.)
No, gamebook is the most generic word I know of, used for all choice-based interactive books, including the CYOA books as a subset, and digital app gamebooks. CYOA is if nothing else a bad name because of if being an actively used trademark.
Anyway it is definitely the word used in that community.
I would go back to “text-adventures” for the thing previously known as IF, except I’m not into it for mindless adventuring and treasure hunting.
perhaps we should open up a forum entry for “orthodox heavily puzzled and explorative parser-based stories”
I don’t think opening such a sub-section would increase the discussion (or creation) of such things, and the same is probably true for the actual topic of the thread, or graphical adventure games (which is the kind that I’m trying to make) or whatever. The best you can do for making that happen is to be supporting of the games that you like. (Without attacking other kinds, as that behaviour tends to reduce the value that people place in your opinion - at least that’s how I think.)