I played the computer game Black & White for one month during high school.
If you read that title and think of the Pokémon franchise, you’re off by almost a decade. This Black & White was not an RPG about trapping and fighting creatures but a simulation of divine power. Players assume the mantle of a deity ruling over several islands, interacting with the world via disembodied hand. To progress, players earn belief points from the people living on the island, with increased faith facilitating expansion and infrastructural sophistication.
Black & White was the first video game I played that featured a moral alignment mechanic. If I acted kindly and performed positive miracles, my worshipers built colorful shrines in my honor; if I wrecked their homes and flung dissenters into the ocean, they feared and reviled me. Each approach significantly impacted gameplay, so I tried to be benevolent initially, but Black & White sat apart from my usual fast-twitch sports gaming genre. Impatience inevitably won out. I sent my monstrous mandrill minion to crush those opposing me within three days.
For such a clever concept, I grew bored of the game quickly. According to its Wikipedia entry, Black & White pitted players against a monstrous second god, Nemesis, bent on world domination, but I never got that far. Too busy swapping out creatures and oscillating between temperaments, I barely engaged with the core story. Maybe if the game had evoked omnipotence, I would have, but I felt less in command of the world than larger than it. More King Kong than kingdom of heaven.
Still, I thought about Black & White a lot these last few weeks. That’s because, for the first time, I stumbled into the gameplay experience I’d sought from the game. It came, I discovered, not from playing any game but from creating one…sort of.
In 2018, the other Mathletes coaches tasked me with organizing the Math Steeplechase, our de facto championship event. Featuring eight distinct problem-solving activities, the Steeplechase mixes the paper-and-pencil math contests we typically take with hands-on, collaborative activities. There are dice games, simulated desert crossings, and even some construction challenges. Staged in a vast outdoor space, the event offers mathematically inclined minds a lightly competitive change-of-pace contest.
When I inherited the coordinator’s role, I immediately supplemented the standard activities. The Steeplechase had previously operated on a relatively tight four-year cycle, with every graduating class doing roughly the same 32 events, but I introduced additional variety, refreshing classic events, designing new performance-based ones, and always including something entirely out of left field.
In 2021, when the pandemic forced the event into a remote form, I transformed photos of my messy living room into a point-and-click scavenger hunt. In 2022, V and I turned the classroom into a rudimentary escape room. Last year, Ethan retooled a mutual favorite board game, Five Minute Dungeon, into a team-based challenge, just as I did in 2019 with a card game called The Mind.
In preparing for this year’s event, I had two concepts set for Steeplechase debuts. One was the performance-based Billy Mays, an activity tasking teams with pitching math concepts with the obnoxious energy of those iconic OxiClean ads. While that event went swimmingly (and pretty hilariously), my other idea was decidedly weirder and far more ambitious:
A wholly original Choose Your Own Adventure novel.
If you’ve never read a Give Yourself Goosebumps book or played Depression Quest, here’s the central mechanic of the interactive fiction genre I had in mind: every sequence ends in an array of choices. At one juncture, you might choose between following a mysterious stranger or slipping into a bookstore, with each option sending you down a distinct narrative arc. Although these harken back to library visits during elementary school for me, Netflix played with this concept in the late 2010s as well: if you watched Black Mirror: Bandersnatch or the Unbreakable Kimmie Schmidt movie, you’ve played cinematic versions.
Challenging myself to write an entire interactive novel during a stressful stretch of the year wasn’t my brightest moment, but designing and writing engaged me from the start. My story would center on a running gag from the math competitions we hosted—one of our co-presidents, Raf, inviting Olivia Rodrigo to assorted school dances—and Raf + Olivia 4ever would feature other inside jokes as well. As a general guiding principle, I would craft the piece as an homage to those Give Yourself Goosebumps stories where supernatural and extraterrestrial danger lurked in the shadows of every choice. By pairing that juvenile zaniness with high school melodrama, I hoped teams would enjoy exploring even amidst a timed competition.
Compared to a traditional novel, the actual writing here would champion simplicity. Meant to be consumed quickly, scenes would be punchy paths from A to B. Elaborate prose doesn’t make great interactive narratives; clever story craft does. Readers respond to the choices they get to make far more than how those choices read off the page.
But therein lies the problem: crafting choices. Unlike traditional fiction, where even the most flashback-filled novel still clings to a forward thrust, interactive fiction forfeits that through-line; everything branches out by design. Character development isn’t permanent when paths lead in disparate directions, and what a scene follows—and, likewise, doesn’t—is vital. There’s so much to keep track of that I initially found the whole project dizzying.
Eventually, I found my flow. I began to work sequentially within story segments, writing singular pathways to completion before looping back to complete adjacent threads. I grew more ambitious as I got deeper into the story, crisscrossing between the four principal paths at times while guiding readers back into specific plot beats over and over. Writing a story like this might best be described as writing several similar stories simultaneously. None is particularly long, but there sure are a lot of them.
My favorite part of the exercise came while writing the final sections. One included the optimal, 100-point ending where Raf and Olivia dance at Senior Ball, while the other contained my favorite ending, which I won’t spoil except to say it’s worth 94 points. It was here that I became fluent in the language of interactive fiction because it was here that I felt most like a god.
The power I wielded in the story often left me grinning. I could end a safe, benign path in an aggressive alien or entrap those who know Raf by concluding realistic paths with chaotic destruction. Randomness would govern most results, but I reveled in my power to sneak in some soapboxing wherever I deemed appropriate.
Likewise, I also seized on chances to delay readers. There’s one digression involving a beverage, for instance, that bounces into a silly non-sequitur before jumping right back out, but several times, I wrote choices that eliminated one option only to force a choice between the others. Boiling the task down, I realized then that my creation sometimes plays like a maze. With every stroke, my pen placed literary walls or openings in turn.
More interestingly, when I wrote the path that eventually leads Olivia into Raf’s life, I caught myself creating what I’d best describe as a current. I knew where Raf needed to go to complete the story, but I refused to telegraph it. Employing fictionalized versions of Raf’s teammates and teachers to do my bidding, I offered reasonable, optimistic outs that led to positive places but drew readers away from the best ones. At one point, I wrote five or six consecutive scenes dragging him away from his destiny and plopping him back onto a track leading to Mediocreville. I loved it.
I know the real Raf pretty well, which made this project fun and feasible. Within each story strand, I tried to imagine how he might respond to such unexpected stimuli as a malevolent freshman or a rampaging gremlin. I’m not sure how successful I was—for his safety, I hope we never find out how he’d respond—but I’d guess I did pretty well. He enjoyed the novel, after all.
This familiarity proved to be a two-sided coin, though. With giddy cackles, I repeatedly walked this fictional version of a person I care about in real life into catastrophe. I didn’t feel any guilt—I knew I was making it up—but there was a discomfort: I alone knew how close fictional Raf was to glory, yet I used my narratorial omnipotence for sabotage, leaving him vulnerable to narrative feints. Honestly, it sometimes felt almost cruel.
Last Saturday, I watched several squads work through Raf + Olivia 4ever. I caught a few as they reached the ideal ending to max out their points, but I saw far more teams racing between decisions and going nowhere. This should have been amusing proof of my thoughtful crafting, but instead, it felt excruciating! I agonized while watching one group overlook the ideal path for six whole minutes, never once considering the optimal alternative. I’d made my diversions too tempting to ignore.
Although thirteen of the seventeen groups successfully guided Raf and Olivia to Senior Ball in their allotted 35 minutes, four did not. One group got trapped in a sinister game against a cult; another found my favorite ending but squandered too many minutes to achieve the ultimate victory. Watching a few of those groups, I just shook my head: so many were so close to the excellent ending they sought, but they had no idea whether they were moving in the right direction. They couldn’t tell.
Unsettling though it is, that really shouldn’t have surprised me. We constantly navigate the world without knowing if we’re playing the game correctly. We never know if we’re in the vicinity of a good ending.
That’s how life works, after all.
*****
Back in November, with my first draft of The Gray Valley still two weeks from completion, I wrote an essay about Abby’s old bean bag chair.
Centered on the possibly misremembered contents inside that chair, “Frog Monkey” addressed my post-pandemic inability to embrace being at school. Time on campus buried me alive; leaving delivered sweet, sweet oxygen. Whereas I once spent more than twelve hours daily at school, every Mathletes meeting bleeding into a starry night or greasy dinner, the clock’s ticking began rupturing my eardrums in 2021. COVID let me transform my body, learn to cook, and write prolifically because it freed me from that classroom. I discovered just how much I could do with a few extra hours to myself.
Still, I missed losing myself in a conversation and enjoying the company of good people. The question was: did that version of me still exist? I ended my piece on an optimistic note: maybe, like the frog casing Raf drew out from Abby’s monkey, that part of me remained somewhere inside, waiting to be extricated. It didn’t feel that way—even those light, uplifting conversations with Raf, Sophia, and Alvin couldn’t drown out the clock—but I looked at that beanbag chair as a beacon of hope. Maybe one day, like that hidden frog, the old me might see the light of day again.
Entering December giddy from my manuscript, I aimed to chart a better course. I would do what I could to facilitate Frog-me’s return to HL-5. Mind you, this was an invisible goal—my outward actions while at school rarely betrayed how I felt—but it was a goal. December would be a month of embracing that old mindset and emphasizing connection and kindness.
That’s not how it went.
Most years, my December centers on final exams. Because Calculus BC runs during the second and fourth quarters of the school year, I always have those classes during the relentless stressor of college applications. Adding essay writing, where-to-apply decision-making, and the existential dread of laying shaky foundations for uncertain futures to already intense academic schedules, many students suffer intense burnout after Thanksgiving. When I watched this happen in 2013, I barely grasped the problem, but I decided to do something about it anyway: I sat down with a student and wrote a new final exam.
Instead of populating it with improper integrals and logistic growth differential equations, Nick and I filled the assessment with games and reflection. This was an AVID-inspired day, to be sure: the culminating component, an activity involving gratitude and yarn, I ported directly from my AVID class. Having already expended so much of themselves, I would nourish them with an uplifting experience rather than several dozen more math problems.
All told, the transformed final was a hit that first year. My class eagerly dove into every activity, resulting in a bonding experience with a group I’d never thought to try that with. After a moving finale with the yarn—an activity that changed how I saw my 28 students and myself—I could tell I’d done a good thing. I assumed I’d just found my annual semester one final for Calculus BC.
I had. Although only 2016’s ever came close to the emotional power of that first one, every one offered concrete proof of my compassion and affection for those students. There were years when I couldn’t offer it, but the “Challenge Day Final” became an annual tradition and memorable staple of my class.
With my renewed vigor toward feeling at home in the classroom, my plan for finals naturally centered on this activity. I wanted 2023 to champion connection; what better way existed? Although I finished writing a mathematical alternative—something I do every year to ensure I never choose my final for work-shirking reasons—one week earlier, I had no intention of administering it.
Except I did. I did give a challenging Calculus exam on finals day.
Several factors pushed me toward that decision, but the largest impetus for change came two days before. On the Monday night of finals week, I decided to go with the social-emotional final. Of course, I didn’t tell my classes that—they need to practice study budgeting before college—but a student I know well loudly and publicly did, confronting me during lunch and proclaiming that there was no final. An older peer had betrayed the confidence I always requested from classes, spoiling what was meant to be a surprise, but then that current student boxed me into a corner. I had no choice anymore. I called the Calculus final I’d written in from the bullpen.
In the wake of that moment, I stewed. There I was, trying to rekindle this old version of me, and a student I knew well had forced me to abandon a central tenet of that absent guy. When I sent a private message to that student later, explaining how rude and inappropriate their confrontation had been, I didn’t even read their surely contrite reply. I never have. Even months after my anger melted into reluctant forgiveness, I still carried bitterness.
When I reread “Frog Monkey” in preparation for the tier list, I remember shaking my head with resignation. That old version of me had never felt further away.
It wasn’t meant to be, I thought.
*****
If you play Raf + Olivia 4ever—and I hope you do—I should tell you there’s a secret ending.
Maybe secret is the wrong word: I telegraph it pretty hard. Because I didn’t know where Steeplechase teams might go first, I sought to dissuade them from pursuing it unless they had finished. Why? The secret ending is almost ten times the length of every other potential conclusion. It’s also worth the fewest points. There’s no optimal reading of my interactive novel that touches that off-shoot.
I will resist spoiling things, so I’ll keep this brief. All the other conclusions follow fictional Raf and his fictional teammates through outlandish ordeals, but this one talks about the real Raf and the real people involved in Mathletes. It also addresses my prevailing lesson from authoring Raf + Olivia 4ever: none of us is privy to where our paths lead.
I won’t say anymore. If you want the complete newsletter experience for this week, you’ll have to choose the wrong door. The link to the novel will be at the end.
What I will say is this. Thanks to a late AP Calculus exam date, I had only four days with the BC classes left when they closed their free response booklets on Monday, May 13th. Most years, my classes would do silly, loosely mathematical projects to wrap up their years, but four days is too few for meaningful work, especially with other classes demanding extensive work. Although my classes ultimately did complete projects, each class collaborated and divided one up into chunks film-able during our class period. I assumed editing responsibility, too.
In my original plan for the week, though, I left room on Friday for a familiar activity: the yarn activity from the abandoned final, where students pass yarn while complimenting and thanking their classmates. Initially, I hesitated to use the activity. A part of me wanted to wash my hands of the episode entirely; revisiting that moment of disappointment struck me as the wrong choice. Still, I figured the activity suited the occasion. It wouldn’t be like the final, but nothing would.
As it turned out, I was right: the yarn activity didn’t play like it did when implemented with the final.
It was better. Infinitely, impossibly, incredibly better.
Whereas I typically deploy it as a palate cleanser after a stressful scholastic stretch, placing the yarn activity only hours from the end of high school magnified its power. Students shared profoundly and generously. Both classes cycled through every student and more in an hour, and their messages were substantial. A few collapsed into close friends’ arms, while many inspired tears—on both sides of the exchange. There were incredible apologies, callbacks to kindergarten play dates, and references to my favorite moments from the year. I didn’t get to thank everyone individually as I did in 2016, but I got to say so much to so many people, honoring microwave camaraderie, Pokémon Go enthusiasm, hand-drawn butterflies, and everything in between. These were intimate yearbook messages spoken out loud under the glow of purple Christmas lights.
Each class ended with photos, tearful hugs, and grand proclamations of appreciation spoken with almost religious sincerity. It was my favorite day as a teacher ever. Yes, ever. I couldn’t have scripted a more perfect ending—for them or for me.
*****
Because the yarn activities filled whole blocks and yearbook signing cannibalized the other, I got zero work done most of that day. This induced a bit of stress: the Steeplechase was the next morning. Although Raf + Olivia 4ever was ready to go, I had fourteen other stations to assemble once the classroom settled around 4:30.
Hours of work remained ahead of me, but I couldn’t get help from the three who stayed since Raf, Sophia, and Alvin would all be competing in the Steeplechase. A familiar sensation of being trapped bubbled to the surface. I wanted to go home and needed sleep in the worst way, but I couldn’t go. Flustered, I found myself spiraling between classrooms, supply cabinets, and the printer, attempting to manage everything.
At one point, I felt my brain overload. I shut down: instead of making progress, I leaned against the doorframe and just listened to the three of them talking. One of them noticed me and roped me into the conversation. I don’t remember what we talked about except that it was pleasant.
They insisted on helping, so I asked them to tape physical grids on the ground for an event. Those squares disclosed nothing about the problems, and their work outside left me an empty classroom to assemble bags without them seeing anything.
After their second trip back for tape, Raf ran to pick up food while the rest of us continued in our roles. Minutes before Raf walked in with a bag from In-N-Out, Alvin, and Sophia returned, and I had the finish station assembled. Our collective timing aligned perfectly.
Over food, we talked. Graduation, yarn, Steeplechase, Sour Patch Oreos—everything and nothing. The burgers settled my churning stomach, and the conversation slowed my heart rate back to normal. Pretzeled into a desk, I should have been uncomfortable, but instead, I felt calm. Everything was finished. We could just be.
I don’t remember who pointed out the clock first. Maybe it was me.
“It’s 7:30,” someone said.
Assorted “whoas” passed between us.
“I’ve been here twelve hours,” I said. “I haven’t done that for a long time.”
Even on the evening before a significant event, twelve hours marks far too many to spend at work. Although there’s no one to blame but me—I could’ve chosen a simple event over writing Raf + Olivia 4ever and finished a week earlier—no work day should demand more than half a day be spent on site. That’s unreasonable.
But there I was, in a classroom partially lit by the setting sun, eating dinner from a paper bag and talking about Mathletes and emotion. I didn’t once think “Frog-me’s back”, but of course, I didn’t. I was too busy talking and laughing with Sophia, Raf, and Alvin. There was no time or call for self-awareness.
I’ll tell you when I did realize it. At 7:42, after finishing our food and loading the wagon, we took a photo in front of the clock. When the first photo caught three of our faces in strange expressions, I set the camera back up and patiently waited for the camera to shutter twice more.
After hugs and final checks, we exited around 7:50. As we did, Raf said five words that have stuck in my head ever since. They echoed through the Steeplechase, they echoed while I edited our Hawk Eye news tribute, and they echoed throughout my seven hours preparing for the Mathletes Banquet.
“This is the good ending,” he said.
And it was. At no point did it feel like it, but when we reached the door, I could see a purple 100 POINTS in size 96 font behind him.
*****
If you reach 100 points in Raf + Olivia 4ever, I hope you’ll thrill like the teams did. I captured Sophia’s team on film as they did; in slow motion, you can watch her teammates bend their knees to load up for joyous jumps. For the rest of the day, I heard those moments through the L-building’s walls. Those three digits marked victory. As soon as they appeared, all knew their odd choices had led them to the right place.
That’s how it works in Raf + Olivia 4ever. In gaudy, overlarge lettering, I, the author, tell you when you’ve succeeded. I prefer other endings (including the secret one), but that doesn’t detract from the explicit gift of an enumerated performance.
But that isn’t life. Although both Life and Choose Your Own Adventure books offer choices, only the latter tells you when you’ve chosen correctly. Those of us living outside interactive fiction must interpret the clues for ourselves.
“This is the good ending,” Raf said at the door, and I knew instantly he was correct. Not because a score appeared in chalk on the cement but because of how I felt right then.
It was almost 8:00 pm, and I was still at school and due back twelve hours later. This was too much time at work, but I knew Raf was correct for one reason and one reason only.
For the first time since March 2020, standing in the doorway to HL-5, I lingered. I didn’t want to leave.
Ribbit ribbit
If you want to try playing my interactive novel, please visit www.rafplusolivia4ever.com. If you play, please leave a comment letting me know if you reach either the 100-point ending or the secret one.
As for the school year officially ending on Friday, I’m beat. There were ups and downs this week, but many more of the former than the latter. I’m unsure what I will write about next week, but there’s a chance it’s one more piece about the last week of school. We’ll see.
For the moment, I’m going to call it an early night and sleep. That’s what I need most right now.
Thank you for reading. Really.
You’re right about the endings; the point is having fun, not scoring points. I’d like to think any ending can feel like a 100 pointer, which I think is my thesis here; staying super later and having undone my intended final weren’t ideal, but they landed in great places.
I sincerely think that the person who derailed my final plan thought it was all a prank, not some sincerely felt operation. I played it that way the first years but moved to a more genuine introduction where I spoke about what I saw that motivated the initial change. I’ve forgiven the person for what happened, but even with the power of hindsight, I’ll still be bothered because the past students DID know the purpose but still chose to undermine it. Still: it all worked. The yarn activity is far better at the end, and the sort of emotional kindness I once needed the final to convey now gets extended throughout the year between Therapy Thursday, Questions of the Day, garden visits, and everything else. I do wish it had been my choice to pivot, but I can’t argue with where it ended.
If June 15th is your line for June Day, we can make sure it falls after June 15th. As for the team, yes, we’re losing a huge group—eighteen seniors received cords!—but the group returning is awesome and really close to one another. We’re light on upperclassmen but three made all-county teams, and the now-sophomore group is twelve-deep with skilled, interesting contributors. I’m excited for them to assume even larger roles.
Thanks for reading and commenting! If your finals are close, I hope they go smoothly!
Ah, choose your own adventure novels… making those branches line up is a monumental task. I played the Steeplechase one twice and first got the 76 point ending, then the 95 point ending, so I didn’t do as terrible as I thought. I’ve never been good with those games where there’s only one true ending, I have to admit, especially if the true ending usurps the other ending to provide sequel crumbs (looking slightly at Resident Evil 2 here) because it seems to detract from the meaning of the other endings. If someone get a joke ending they like, they shouldn’t feel bad that they can’t get the true ending - there’s an ending for everyone, and sometimes the endings add to each other while other times they cause destructive interference. In this case though, I really liked the multiple choices and endings you put because they all felt realistic and unique, and it was a joy to click through the scenarios.
Now, I also heard about the stuff that happened in December, and I’m frankly quite shocked that students would do that. It feels like there’s a lot of audacity there that I didn’t see on my own class to that extent. I’m really sorry someone would do that to you. It sounds like they thought they were going to try and get one up on you, which is never a nice thing to do, and it really must have hurt to have a student treat you that way.
Anyways, I’m glad Steeplechase went well this year. It seems that so many people are leaving, and I hope the core spirit of the club can remain even as the good vibe originators are riding off into the distance of a sunset tinted happy ending, for now. Hopefully there are still plans for a June day, though I need that day in June to be after June 15th!!
Good luck with summer ahead. I don’t know much but I bet Raf and the gang will hang around with you a bit before he goes off to the East Coast. I’d also like to hang out and talk at least once this summer outside of June Day. May the future be bright and rich with conversation.