Steve Cook
The World of Giant’s Reach
Proud humans live side by side with giant, intelligent animals. The cat-riding Gyb; the fierce boar-soldiers of the Sanglier; even the Church of the Chimera compete over yellowdust, the chemical that grants animals size and sentience. But supplies of this vital substance are always short, and tainted by blood…
I have written several short stories and a novel in the world of Giant's Reach, blending science fiction with fantasy. I am pleased to be able to share two of those stories with you, right now. Feathered Death, previously published in Broadswords and Blasters 2, and Uplifted, an introductory novelette set in the country of Meria.
Short Story Collections
I'm delighted to be able to share these three short story collections with you. These stories span fantasy, science-fiction, steampunk, and horror, and are available now from the Amazon Kindle store.
Cover artwork by Dave Andrews.
Table-Top Roleplaying Games
I have been designing and running tabletop roleplaying experiences for over fifteen years, often crafting my own unique worlds for my players.
Each of these, played with different groups over varying amounts of time, was built around my personal philosophy: that TTRPGs are collaborative storytelling, that the story won’t stand still for anything, and that there are consequences to every action.
As part of designing these campaigns, I create custom locations, monsters, items and maps. The artwork below of 'Ethel' is a character concept developed alongside a player (art John Aggs). The map was designed and generated by me in Wonderdraft mapmaking software to support gameplay. The other two images here are samples taken from two published works, available on the DM’s Guild: Fire Giant Forge, a standalone encounter for players of 5th level, and Ten Towers, a source book with ten level-adjusted adventures.
Most recently, I have been involved in developing the campaign setting of Altheya for High Rollers, the UK’s most-watched Twitch longplay D&D stream. Working alongside DM Mara Hulmes, I have created several entries in the upcoming 'Altheya Campaign Guide', published by Role & Play Press.
Example Item Descriptions
These are some examples of magical items created in the style of TTRPGs, most notably Dungeons and Dragons. In each case, I aimed to create item descriptions that were interesting and hinted at a wider world, while also keeping to a limited amount of space.
The Hum
The Hum is a branching dialogue game with a twenty minute playtime, best described as “cosy horror”. It imagines a friendship between two young people growing up in a world where everyone starts hearing a sound, the same sound, all the time; what effects would this have on the world as time passes, and on those living through this experience?
The game features a dozen unique endings, and has a summary screen at the end, encouraging replayability. It’s written in the Sugarcube2 story format, and uses custom images throughout.
The images below showcase some of the back-end, two in-game screenshots, and part of the code. With this game, I wanted to create something that was more story-driven and complex, with many different variables and possible endings. Player choice is important, as how they interact with their childhood friend directly influences many endings and in-game interactions.
Play The Hum
You Are Two Cats
“You Are Two Cats” is a branching dialogue game I created as a side project. It allowed me to play with Twine, a platform with a variety of story types, and to learn a little CSS and Javascript. I made use of the Trialogue story format, a messenger-style story format.
The core mechanic is the pizza order with other conversational dialogue trees being a bonus. Two of the images in the gallery show the decision matrix behind the game. Where possible, I tried to have branching elements that still tied back in to the core mechanic, steering the player through the game to a satisfactory ending, while still allowing for players to make their own choices.
Since the stated aim is to buy a pizza, many of the conversation chains link back to that process, but there are some nonstandard endings. This project was a chance to demonstrate both my ability to construct realistic dialogue and design a game process that was enjoyable, relatively short, and accessible. Artwork for the project was commissioned from Susan Cook.
Play the game
Murder Matches
“I can’t say that I’ll miss him, but I wouldn’t want him dead…” Colonel Harold Redmond is dead, stabbed in his apartment, and the ancient and valuable Lo-Uphet diamond stolen… but who is to blame?
An interactive murder-mystery story developed in partnership with illustrator Nana Li. Each matchbox contained a witness statement filled with clues and puzzles. Only by reading all eight, and cross-examining the evidence, could the identity of the killer be revealed and the location of the missing diamond be discovered.
This was an immensely fun project to work on; such characterful illustrations immediately gave them individual voices, but space was limited to get the required information across. The result was a tiny but dense experience that could be approached in a number of different ways. It was designed for, and sold at, Thought Bubble Comic Art Festival in 2014.
Published Fiction
Avast, Ye Airships
Edited by Rie Sheridan Rose
The Clockwork Dragon
Buy on Amazon
Cogs In Time 3
Edited by Catherine Stovall
The Brass Line
Buy on Amazon
Edited by Dwight Hurst
First Prize winner of the first issue short story competition:
Belina
Download Belina (PDF)
Broadswords and Blasters
Edited by Matthew Gomez and Cameron Mount
Feathered Death
Buy on Amazon
Hi, I'm Steve!
I’m an author, storyteller, and game developer living in the UK. I've been writing both short and long-form fiction alongside storytelling in role-playing games for nearly twenty years. I write across a variety of genres, including fantasy, science fiction, horror, and steampunk. In 2015, I won first prize in the Amygdala eZine Short Story competition and was featured in their first issue.
Through tabletop roleplaying games, primarily D&D, I have created collaborative narratives that are both far-reaching and reactive in nature. This has enabled me to look at other ways of telling stories such as through interactive branching games.
Fifteen years of teaching to an outstanding level at both a primary and secondary level have given me a skillset that includes a great deal of experience in public speaking, breaking ideas down into structured concepts, and working as part of an extremely varied team.