Bridge Building

It's pretty late at night, but I will try to keep the items in my "reserve tank" intelligible.

At present, this is what I have nailed down:

I've thought about doing something else just because I'm so invested in the genre already, but I can't really find any other genre I enjoy quite so much, so fantasy it is.

I'm thinking of the old standby of amnesia, so I can start off in the middle of the story and branch back in several directions, as opposed to a linear non-linear story, if that makes any sense.

I'm flip-flopping on including a battle system, and how to implement that.

Since I'm not specifically aiming this at little kids I'm going to feel free to be a little more graphic in my descriptions of thing.

I want to have a story that is more modern in its sensibilities, in that instead of a painful 'Game Over' where you have to start from the beginning, your death flows naturally into the story and you can continue; or you lose, but don't necessarily die. Let's be honest: everyone who's ever read a Choose Your Own just flipped back to the page before that and made a different choice

Update:

Mulling it over while tossing and turning before sleep, and again while showering, eating breakfast, etc. I pretty much agree with the reserve tank stuff. I'm feeling a little better about employing the cliche of amnesia-- cliches are cliches because they're incredibly useful, the trick is just using them properly and not abusing them.

I was going to go with a completely decision-based combat system (Turn to page 57 to try to trip the gremlin!), but I've been researching a lot of Dungeons and Dragons related stuff so I may feel confident enough to put some sort of dice-based system in.