Interactive books are becoming increasingly diverse. Whereas most stories used to be limited to choices and a few possible plot developments, today’s readers expect much more. They want to explore the world, level up their characters, find rare items, defeat powerful opponents, and feel genuine progress throughout the story. It’s precisely these mechanics that make gameplay more engaging and significantly boost the desire to return to the book again.
That’s why the Forgeon editor now features a full-fledged turn-based combat system. Authors can create their own enemies, customize their behavior, add rewards for victory, use hero attributes, and link battles directly to the story. All of this works inside the editor and requires no programming knowledge. You can create your first battle in just a few minutes, then use it as the foundation for a whole RPG system within your story.
What the New Combat System Is
The Forgeon combat system lets you transform an ordinary page of an interactive book into a full turn-based battle. When the hero encounters an enemy, the story smoothly transitions into combat mode. The reader sees the enemy’s image, their health pool, their own character’s stats, and available actions. After each chosen move, the round’s outcome is calculated, HP is updated, and the next turn begins. Everything happens naturally and remains part of the narrative, never turning into a separate mini-game.
The main goal of this mechanic is to deepen interactive books. Instead of just choosing the next page, the reader begins to make tactical decisions. Should they risk launching a powerful attack? Is it better to defend and endure a strong blow? Or would retreating to preserve the hero for future events be safer? These kinds of moments make the story more emotional and let the reader feel their choices truly impact what happens.
What the Author Gains
The new RPG mechanic opens up a wide range of possibilities for creating interactive stories of almost any genre. It fits not only classic fantasy but also science fiction, post-apocalyptic tales, adventures, horror, and even detective stories—where instead of a usual fight, you can stage a confrontation with a criminal or a tense standoff with a dangerous adversary.
The author can create their own mobs with unique images, names, health pools, and base damage. Each enemy has customizable attack phases that are randomly selected during each round. This means a single opponent won’t keep repeating the same moves, and every battle will differ slightly from the last.
Besides the enemies themselves, the hero can be fully customized. The system supports attack power, defense, healing, fleeing from battle, RPG stats, and the influence of equipment on the final values. If your book already uses a system of items, stats, and gear, those can automatically participate in battles without needing to build a separate mechanic.
Another important feature is the rewards system. After defeating an enemy, the player can receive guaranteed or random items, resources, gold, or any other game objects created by the author. This allows gradual character development, opening new possibilities, and motivating the reader to explore every branch of the story.
What Battle Looks Like to the Reader
Imagine the hero exploring an ancient castle in search of a powerful artifact. After opening a heavy door, a dungeon guardian appears before them. Instead of a normal text page, a battle begins. The screen displays the opponent, their current health, and a description of the action they plan to take this round.
Now it’s the reader’s turn to decide. They can perform a normal attack, focus on defense, use a special move, heal themselves, or attempt to flee. After the choice, the system calculates the outcome of both sides’ actions, updates health values, and immediately moves on to the next round. The fight continues until victory, defeat, or a successful escape, after which the narrative automatically returns to its usual flow and proceeds according to the battle’s result.
This seamless integration makes battles feel like a natural part of the story. The reader doesn’t have to switch between different modes or separate mini-games—everything happens within the interactive book.
How to Create Your First Battle
Setting up the combat system begins in the book editor. Just open the “Combat System” section and activate it. After that, three main areas become available: creating mobs, configuring the hero, and managing player turns. All work with the new mechanic is focused right here.
The first step is usually creating an enemy. For each mob, you enter a name, image, health pool, and base damage. Then you move on to setting up attack phases. Each phase has its own name, chance of occurrence, and damage multiplier. For example, an enemy might use regular strikes more often, occasionally unleash a strong attack, and sometimes skip a turn to prepare for the next move. Thanks to this random selection, every battle is less predictable and feels more dynamic.
Next, you configure the hero. Here you determine how attack power and defense will be calculated: whether to use fixed values or existing RPG stats from the book. If the story already has weapons, armor, and character progression, these will directly affect the hero’s combat effectiveness. You can also enable health regeneration, add healing items, and set up consequences for fleeing battle.
After this, you define the actions available to the reader each round. By default, Forgeon offers standard moves like attack, defend, counterattack, and critical strike. However, the author can completely change their parameters or create custom abilities. For example, you might add a flaming sword strike, magical spell, powerful shot, or any other unique skill. These actions can be set to unlock only after obtaining certain items, reaching specific levels, or fulfilling plot conditions.
The final step is tying the battle into the story. In the editor, simply select the appropriate answer option, open the RPG system menu, and assign the created mob. Forgeon will automatically generate the battle page, then you just specify where the story should continue after victory or escape. This makes battles easy to integrate into an existing plot without manually setting up numerous pages.
Tips for Creating Engaging Battles
When creating your first battles, avoid making enemies too powerful right away. It’s much more interesting to gradually introduce the reader to the mechanic, starting with simple foes and small rewards. This approach helps better feel the balance and makes character development more noticeable over time.
Varied attacks also play an important role. If the enemy always acts the same way, the fight quickly becomes predictable. Several different phases with varying chances make each battle more intense and force the player to adapt to the situation.
Don’t forget about rewards. Even a small item after victory can significantly boost interest in exploring the world. Over time, you can create unique bosses, rare equipment, special abilities, and entire chains of battles that influence the story’s progression.
New Possibilities for Interactive Book Authors
The turn-based combat system significantly expands the possibilities for creating interactive books in Forgeon. Now authors can combine plot, RPG stats, items, inventory, equipment, and dynamic battles into a single gaming system. All of this works inside one editor, without programming and without using external tools.
If you’ve long wanted to add true RPG battles, boss fights, random enemy encounters, or a reward system to your interactive book, now you can do it in just a few minutes. Try creating your first mob, add it to the plot, and see how much more lively and captivating your story becomes.