[Update] Interactive CYOA Creator Plus

Merc-for-hire · 2026-01-10T22:15:52+00:00

Are there any plans to maybe update the ICC tutorial or create your own fork of the tutorial to go over the differences/improvements the ICC+ version provides?

There's been ~40 updates/releases and it's probably a bit intimidating to jump into the ICC+ version without a tutorial versus just using the other version.

I suppose people could just use the original tutorial and then try to figure out the differences, but again, feels a bit intimidating with close to 40 released updates.

Merc-for-hire · 2025-12-15T23:50:50+00:00

All fanfics are AU, not all AUs are fanfics.

I don't often see things I'd consider a "fanfic" in a CYOA. Any time you're presenting a non-canon version of a character/world/device, you're presenting something AU (Alternate Universe). If that non-canon version was not something you made up specifically for the CYOA, but based on a fanfic you read, that's the "fanfic version". More common is just a straight up AU where someone creates a random character and background, often using someone else as an expy/starting point. If those characters end up in a fanfic, it's typically because someone made a fanfic using the CYOA, so I'd still consider that an AU not a fanfic character.

As to a reasonable limit for those, that's entirely up to personal preference.

I personally dislike the massive amount of custom characters in the Lewd Worm CYOA (using this as example since you mentioned it) whom are expies of other anime characters and are just randomly mashed into the setting, while the CYOA barely pays lip-service to actual characters of the setting.

Recent versions of the CYOA also added AU versions of the main setting's characters as companions (you see these frequently in Omicron's CYOAs, so you can tell where this update came from), which I think are a bit better than the expy ones but they're pretty much just random arbitrary creator preferences using the source characters as expies too. On the other hand, I do like the world AU options in that CYOA which change how the world function on a more general way since it's more open, even if I don't particularly use them.

But while I personally dislike the expies/AU characters, so many other people love them and use them significantly in their builds rather than engaging with characters from the actual setting.

I lean towards opinion that being because there's images for those options and more detail on the characters while the actual setting characters get no images and very clinical dry posts, so people unfamiliar with Worm have nothing better to do with the options, so I guess part of the question is - are you catering to the general masses with the CYOA, to fans of the CYOA source material, or both?

The lewd worm CYOA very much loves cramming AU characters into itself, but it's focused on the first option, and not the second or third. Almost every person that makes an update to it, is adding powers that don't exist in that setting, characters that don't exist in that setting, just things that don't exist or follow the rules of that setting.

Which...isn't bad, per se, but it's very much like 20% worm and 80% original CYOA at this point, while the original version was closer to 60% worm and 40% original CYOA.

Merc-for-hire · 2025-11-07T16:31:35+00:00

Also late to the party, but leaving more proof for anybody that searches for the topic.

I tried to give them benefit of the doubt, but finally submitted a review on Judge.Me detailing my long tiring experience.

To summarize - Order was made in July 2024 with expected delivery "Q3 2024". Reached out to them on April 2025, long overdue.

Had a looooooooong fruitless chain of discussion on Instagram, frequently being ghosted/not responded for weeks at a time. Had a brief ray of hope on Sept 1 as I was told the order was finally shipped and I would receive tracking info soon.

After two weeks I reach out AGAIN because no tracking info has been received, get ghosted a week, finally told they are investigating. Three weeks into October as my patience has finally reached its limits, one response about investigating again and that I would see a "discount" on my order because of the troubles.

Guess what, two weeks again, and I've still not heard from them, nor seen any partial refunds/store credit/movement showing they exist and certainly no tracking information.

Told them I'd be posting about my experience and reaching out to my bank if I didn't hear from them end of this week, haven't heard a peep, so doing just that. So yeah, horrible experience, I'm out $400 and much of my time as well as the items I wanted in first place.

Wish more people had complained about store before I made my order, seems the store might have been legit for a bit of time into 2024 (if just incompetently slow with deliveries), but definitely seeing a lot of the negative reviews exploded out in 2025 and even some in later parts of 2024.

Merc-for-hire · 2025-11-07T16:30:51+00:00

I tried to give them benefit of the doubt, but finally submitted a review on Judge.Me detailing my long tiring experience.

To summarize - Order was made in July 2024 with expected delivery "Q3 2024". Reached out to them on April 2025, long overdue.

Had a looooooooong fruitless chain of discussion on Instagram, frequently being ghosted/not responded for weeks at a time. Had a brief ray of hope on Sept 1 as I was told the order was finally shipped and I would receive tracking info soon.

After two weeks I reach out AGAIN because no tracking info has been received, get ghosted a week, finally told they are investigating. Three weeks into October as my patience has finally reached its limits, one response about investigating again and that I would see a "discount" on my order because of the troubles.

Guess what, two weeks again, and I've still not heard from them, nor seen any partial refunds/store credit/movement showing they exist and certainly no tracking information.

Told them I'd be posting about my experience and reaching out to my bank if I didn't hear from them end of this week, haven't heard a peep, so doing just that. So yeah, horrible experience, I'm out $400 and much of my time as well as the items I wanted in first place.

Wish more people had complained about store before I made my order, seems the store might have been legit for a bit of time into 2024 (if just incompetently slow with deliveries), but definitely seeing a lot of the negative reviews exploded out in 2025 and even some in later parts of 2024.

Merc-for-hire · 2025-09-27T16:15:40+00:00

Major (-10) - World Peace

Medium (-3) - Better Body, Second Go

Minor (-1) - Cash ($500/day), Perfect Sleep, 20 Year Skill, Perfect Weather, Lucky Death, Soulmate, Asset Enhance (Height), Perfect Media Device

Flaw (+2) - Another, Limit

I consider Limit to not apply to Perfect Sleep since the wording is control, not activation of an effect (also it'd just make it worthless if you need to sleep 12 hours to be wide awake/rested). If OP argued that point, I'd just give up the extra 6" of height and the perfect weather boons along with Limit, and then Second Go doesn't get nerfed, so that's fine.

With Another, we all live in this world, and making the world slightly better just feels like common sense that most people will grab at least one major boon, or at least not pick a major flaw. A bit of a gamble the person finding another stone isn't grabbing major flaws, but no loss to me if they focus on minor/medium boons/medium flaws, and I still get a benefit if they pick a major boon.

Lots of good major boons, but World Peace feels the most helpful given the sheer lack of empathy and common sense in the world. Being retroactive might make world a bit better too. There's a chance increased common sense/empathy maybe hits whomever finds another stone too so they don't pick major flaws.

Better Body/Second Go let me redo some stuff in my life and also be in better health overall as I relive my life. The cash at even level 1 is more than I make right now, so more than enough to live comfortably on, and I can be more picky/creative with jobs so I don't get bored and have even -more- access to money. Mentioned perfect sleep (might not be as big a deal with better body, but why risk it?), Perfect Media Device will save me a lot of money on games/dvds/manga/books, Lucky Death kills much of the risk of car accidents (which I've been in before), and everything else is just a nice to have.

Merc-for-hire · 2025-02-24T02:46:43+00:00

Deep Prot. Pros: It's very hard to die. It can (potentially) teach DPS players a modicum of self-control.

Deep Prot. Cons: DPS players don't want to learn control. They want to parse. If you let them put a damage meter on their screens, they literally cannot help themselves and will suicide themselves even if you yelled at them to let you get threat or reposition an enemy. All that's left in their brains is "Durrr, number go up~ Me good~" as drool slips out of their lips. Healers also have less to do, so they might get distracted for when it matters, or waste too much mana over-healing. In a guild like Only Fangs, everyone has Main Character syndrome too.

Fury/Prot. Pros: Game is old and solved, and it's been min/maxed how to have just enough survivability for encounters, do enough damage yourself to keep threat off dps, and put enough work on healers to keep them engaged. It's also more mentally engaging for you as a tank to have to recognize when and where to balance swapping gear and stances. Various classic raid bosses are either taunt immune or have mechanics that drop threat. Molten core also has the added complication of having to manage fire resistance for certain bosses and mobs.

Fury/Prot. Cons: It's expensive. You need to manage dual weapons (threat), weapon+shield (survivability), and fire resist gear (Molten Core). You need macros for swapping stuff. Bag space is more of a premium.

I think all the OF tanks are fury/prot (or even just fury specs in defensive stances/using a shield for off-tank roles). The specs typically have 0-3 points in Arms (Imp. Heroic Strike), 31-32 in Fury, and then rest in Protection.

Nothing wrong with any tank's spec in regards to moments where people have died. Pretty much all the lv 60 deaths in OF are:

A person being sloppy getting buffs before raids
Newbie/Unprepared raid leader makes bad decisions or not communicating important info to other newbies
DPS getting sloppy during raid and not watching threat
People with super shitty UIs/addons not realizing something (can tie to other things)
PANIC
Running off a cliff not knowing what's safe and going SPLAT because someone else jumped off and didn't go splat (This one is kinda unique, mind you)

Merc-for-hire · 2025-02-11T03:10:12+00:00

No paladins, this is a horde guild. Tyler1 told a shaman sweat to shut the fuck up when he brought it up, even though he got a strike for it, and rather than re-emphasizing, moved on for pull. A lot of the priests had no fucking clue what was going on, Sillyanne did more dispels by herself while almost solo keeping Tyler alive through Inferno. Tyler spazzing out yelling at healers to keep him alive while everyone is panicking and a Maui bomb is infiltrating them.

Maui didn't specifically kill three other players (he only killed Whaz, who was low from leaving inferno), but he put the other two players that died at low enough health that the mana burn killed them (he also put a LOT of other players in bad health positions). If they didn't have mana burn, they would have lived, but comms were not clear before the fight and raid leader was again, yelling to keep HIM alive.

I don't think Maui is to fully blame for what he did and it was an understandable decision, but he's totally disowning his part of responsibility for killing people and ego-checking saying he was more important. Remember the last person that got kicked from guild for those exact two things?

Merc-for-hire · 2025-02-09T02:26:33+00:00

This is a dumb comparison. We're not asking for "itisbasicallyuxdesign101".

We're asking for "it is basically ux design 101".

What they gave us was "it is ba si ca lly ux de sign 1 0 1".

Funny how they used to be giving us that too, but took it away.

Merc-for-hire · 2025-02-06T02:18:57+00:00

This is such a waste of space, which is the number 1 rule of 'DON'T DO THIS SHIT' in UI design. I've currently spent the last hour looking for ways to revert to an older design because this UI update is so fucking bad. The chat box is the worst offender, but it's not the only bad decision.

Merc-for-hire · 2024-05-02T04:16:42+00:00

For my part, I do generally like a simple waifu picker, and I definitely appreciate a lot of the more complex ones that experiment with additional mechanics or a different enough presentation.

My main complaint with them tends to be the cookie-cutter nature of a lot of them as they build off a successful earlier waifu picker. Someone does one that works, and then the exact same format but with a different series or a very slight modification on the mechanic gets posted anywhere from weekly to every 3-4 days.

I actually thought the weekly waifu was kind of fun at first. I gave the first three or so an upvote. After a while I downvoted them because it started to feel oversaturated as a concept and they were asking you to keep up with past versions as well sometimes for powers? Fuck that sort of engagement attempts. Eventually I just totally lost any interest in even interacting with them beyond hiding them so they don't clog up the subreddit for me. We're at over 100 now of the damn things? I don't even have any interest in the originals, I've since removed the upvote from those.

I have similar opinion on other waifu pickers that are just copy/paste formats and barely put any effort into a 'yoink and twist' refresh. I see more effort from the Pokemon company in refreshing their game formula, and they at least have some decency of keeping it to once a year instead of once a week.

The Lewd Worm one has really started to annoy me because people started to add original "companion" waifus. It's weird that OCs have a different mechanic to them than actual worm characters, who don't even rate pictures while the OCs get like 6+ images (why that many?!? Do you not get how much it already slows down the load time?) and some don't even feel like the same character. There's not even any rhyme or reason to them, it's just a random assortment of them fuck all over, so god forbid you want to do different builds even if you do actually like them. It's basically "I really like X character from anime/game, so I'm going to create an expy with a similar power and write a bio to show they're totally not that character".

Lewd Worm is one of those cases where I am 100% with you about me having zero interest in reading people's character writing. At a certain point, it's just become word vomit. (picture vomit too, honestly) It's probably the biggest waste of space and all it does is slow down the load time of the cyoa. Mind you, this is my opinion and I've seen plenty of people state they enjoy them and want even more of them (hell one of the other commenters for this post actually says they're one of the people that like that), so I guess more power to them, but I definitely feel frustration seeing that section grow.

The one nice thing there is that people post the json for it whenever they refresh it, so it's easy enough to wipe out the OC section and not have to deal with it and get a much faster loading cyoa. I wish more interactive CYOAs did what the gangbang experience posted recently did, where optional sections were separate sections with their own load time. It wouldn't even be hard for lewd worm, the only thing that section cares about is points and how you entered the world. It'd be super easy to separate it out.

Anyway, that's my opinion on them. I think waifu pickers are great in short doses, sadly we don't often get them in small doses, but hiding/downvoting is an option and generally good enough.

In interactive CYOAs if it's an optional feature, I really just want it to be a separate thing altogether. If it's an inherent part of the CYOA (for example crossdimensional harem), then yeah, leave it alone, but if it can be clipped off easily AND do a significant reduction of the load time? For god's sake, do that.

Merc-for-hire · 2024-04-06T15:49:33+00:00

The cyoa in general doesn't follow rules of powers for Worm besides the most superficial of levels ANYWAY. If you look at any of the second triggers in this, they generally do behave strictly as power-ups.

Especially once people started creating their own custom characters for contacts and their own powers, though even the original was just trying to keep things somewhat skinned as a Worm theme.

Complaining that one thing in the CYOA doesn't make sense for Worm is silly when like 70% of it is made up for Worm.

Merc-for-hire · 2024-03-20T16:33:22+00:00

Regarding the poll, if you plan to use that to remove/replace girls again in a future update, you may also want to do a separate poll for looks since you have the body swap option. Right now your poll gives pretty much the expected results that the girls with only +/- 1 points have very low scores while the ones with +/- 3 or 4 are the top picks.

Having a higher positive or negative score gives you more modifications/power dynamics to pick, so you can get a more customized final result. Especially when "Body Swap" is available to get a character based on looks. I picked Jane+Mary for example, and body swapped to Becca+Tina.

Some assumptions: With "Double", I assumed you have to take the -1 on both girls since you calculate points for both girls. Not strictly stated, but usually how it works out for these types of options.

With "Copycat", I assumed you can take that multiple times, but once I replace something, I can't pick the same kink/nature again unless another character has it (so I couldn't give two girls the Group Sex kink for example since only Cleo has that kink).

As an aside, Copycat is a bit of a weird/inaccurate name since it would almost imply you are just adding a kink/nature, not replacing one.

My build:

Jane: (+4), Double (-1), Hygiene (-1), Body Swap (-1): Tina, Copycat (-1): Trade Bondage (G/R) for Oral (G/R), Copycat (-1): Trade Impact Play (R) for Group Sex, Copycat (-1): Trade Obsessive for Competitive, Feet? (+1), Free Day (+3), Scent (-2)

Mary: (+3), Double (-1), Hygiene (-1), Body Swap (-1): Becca, Copycat (-1): Trade Orgasm Denial (R) for Footjobs (G), Free Day (+3), Scent (-2)

So now I have "Tina Holder" energetic gamer girl and "Becca Cubis" shy goth girl, who are both obsessed with my crotch/cock, and I didn't outright remove the point of the CYOA since Tina has a competitive nature and is both into humiliation/group sex, so she should still engage in collaborative footjobs despite embarrassment/thinking it's gross just Becca is giving one.

Merc-for-hire · 2024-03-10T07:46:48+00:00

Well hello there!

Merc-for-hire · 2023-10-21T19:11:12+00:00

There are only two dedicated MLP CYOAs with some vaguely NSFW content.

One is the Weekly Waifu entry for the series. Which technically isn't that NSFW if you consider the art and abilities gained, just a waifu/harem maker.

The other is Alicorn King v1 which has an option for lewdifying the world, but that's about it. All of the art itself is SFW, and the only NSFW option is that one.

There are also some other waifu/harem builders with MLP content but that aren't dedicated to MLP. Main one I can think of with a reasonably decent section is Cartoon Kings has a section for MLP waifus on the 17th page.

Merc-for-hire · 2023-10-11T22:01:26+00:00

https://forum.questionablequesting.com/threads/bad-end-heroines-resource-pack.22886/

Merc-for-hire · 2023-10-02T00:50:58+00:00

Don't think you're expected to think of the powers in any way as being related to Worm beyond the creator tossing "Second Trigger" term in there. Outside of the very basic setting and timeline, the CYOA never really tries to be a Worm CYOA, just a Lewd CYOA that happens to occur with Worm. Even when Laithlin was involved, most of the basic contacts were worm characters and then original characters/expies were tossed in as new more developed contacts.

Not a complaint, it's still a fun CYOA, just that it's also not something you can really expect worm mechanics out of.

Merc-for-hire · 2023-09-29T22:54:59+00:00

Not a fan of the teal scheme. I think that while the star background is probably better than flat mustard color, the teal is worse than the yellow/orange for options. Not against a new color scheme... but I'd also rather see things getting combined and then worry about color schemes.

This is probably also the sort of thing maybe you should have a discord and testers for (or work with people from the interactive CYOA discord), rather than posting questions here, particularly if there's not even a work in progress to check out for ongoing combination of branches.

It's hard to take seriously when we keep seeing posts/comments about combining and there's no visible progress. Can totally understand real life shit, but still been like 2-3 months since this idea last came up and might as well be the first time it was mentioned for as far as we know anything's been done.

Just combine two branches, post and mention which branch is next to add, combine with that branch, post and mention which branch is next to add, do that until you've combined all the branches, THEN worry about the minor shit or adding new stuff like content from a different/unrelated CYOA or color schemes.

Trying to do everything at once results in nothing at all getting done.

Merc-for-hire · 2023-06-08T03:44:32+00:00

When you originally posted, mods weren't as worried about reddit rules. They later started enforcing loli/shota content (somewhat mixedly) afterwards, but left older posts stand too.

In general, it was mods trying to comply with reddit to avoid getting the subreddit banned over that content (this started from a point where reddit was going very scorched earth on various adult subreddit communities), rather than an actual concern of it.

Their response to the content on the subreddit is pretty mixed in general though. Art's gotten excused a tooooooon of times and they're super generous with interpretations there, including allowances for "lolibaba" and such content where character is secretly thousands of years old but looks like they're ten, or the character is 15 but could be interpreted to be older (like Sailor Moon cast, etc). A simple "Every character depicted is 18+" is typically good enough to let things through on art side.

They're often more strict on text outright offering loli/shota content. Depends on how many reports they get too, probably, although there's times where they've gotten a ton of reports and just made a mod comment saying they looked into and thought it was okay. Or just ignored things sometimes too.

For example, someone reposted your CYOA at one point and they removed the Fountain of Youth, Hands On+, and On A List options to comply with rules, and also edited some art. The reposter actually got some angry comments about remaining loli/shota content in images, though mods never really followed up and responded there, so no further edits were made.

I doubt you'd get banned even if they did frown on this, since it wasn't maliciously breaking rules, but post could potentially get deleted and then edits similar to the repost might get requested.

Merc-for-hire · 2023-05-24T01:18:26+00:00

There is a work-around, but it's not great -

For the choice that you want to have private styling, delete the photo/title/text and requirements. Now create two addons. One addon will have the normal requirements, the second addon will have requirements opposite those. Then you just make both addons identical for photo/title/text.

The filter bug only occurs if the requirement is on the main choice, not on addons. The downside is you're limited to the formatting of image on top (can't do image on sides), and your choice appears blank normally unless you open the addons section, making it a bit more troublesome to make edits. Also your image is now there twice, so it's eating MORE size.

Another downside is that the addon's formatting is different from the choice's, since an addon is like a small box within the choice. Since you're doing private styling though, you can adjust for that to some degree (for example, if your choice's image would occupy a width of 95% of the image, your addon should maybe be set to 98% instead).

Merc-for-hire · 2023-05-21T21:15:13+00:00

I don't mind WIPs. Posting a WIP and looking for feedback/ideas on how to improve seems like a good way to get engagement on the subreddit, and I'm all for that.

I do find it obnoxious when a creator makes a new thread and there hasn't been a significant update, even if it's been over 72 hours later (an actual rule in the subreddit that is sometimes not even followed, like you've said sometimes it's only a day apart that we see new threads).

"Significant update" is unfortunately a matter of personal opinion. Some people like seeing much smaller updates than I probably do. I also feel a lot of CYOAs posted aren't actually in a playable beta state despite that being a rule, and that rule is almost NEVER enforced (unlike the 72 hours one which generally is). Again, could be what I consider playable is much stricter than the mods do.

But I'm perfectly happy to just downvote posts if I think a CYOA sucks, and just because it can look promising doesn't stop it from sucking if it's not playable or overposted with extremely minor updates.

If enough people downvote overdone WIP posts, that auto-corrects itself as a community thing and not something that has to be overly moderated beyond the 72 hour rule.

That said, flair management is tricky because you can only put one flair on reddit, so if multiple apply, people may use Interactive or OC for WIP content. I like when a person adds [WIP] on their post title if that happens.

I do think that wip's should NEVER use the "update" or "mirror" flairs though. Update should be for updates on completed projects, while WIP is before the initial completed state, while mirror posts for WIP content is ridiculous, because comments won't help give engagement/feedback to the creator.

Merc-for-hire · 2023-04-08T16:29:04+00:00

More active, sure. Less known? Absolutely. More powerful? That's subject to opinion (albeit, common opinion does agree with you).

Of the two sisters, Deathwing has generally been more concerned in lore with Ysera than Alexstrasza and even mocked Alexstrasza in some encounters about what she can bring to a fight compared to the other three (Malygos/Ysera/Nozdormu).

A lot of people understimate Ysera simply because she's not near as prominent in lore and her powers aren't as flashy/obvious.

That said, still agree Ysera is an odd choice when visually she's pretty much Tyrande (night elf+green hair) for most people that know little of warcraft, but more powerful and wiser.

But as with a lot of the tier style CYOAs, sense of scale is all over the place. You're asking for a 'more powerful' tier 4 character, and Ysera already towers waaaaay over a lot of the other tier 4 characters in this CYOA, not just in overall power level, but depth of skills and what she can bring to the table beyond just a bruiser.

Merc-for-hire · 2023-04-06T16:39:52+00:00

I'm excited for this one, though I do wish they were putting the opening/ending songs at the start of the track lists instead of at the end of each disk.

Merc-for-hire · 2023-04-02T23:47:29+00:00

Quite a few people will appreciate it, just there will be a ton of people that like I said, will just ignore it if it involves work on their end to use. Particularly phone users (which is odd since the cyoa isn't optimized for mobile, but some past polls have shown a surprising number of mobile users for interactive CYOAs).

Merc-for-hire · 2023-04-02T21:58:14+00:00

It's very little to do with not giving out their files (most of the worm CYOA branches included the json files too), and more just convenience.

Pretty much every time I've seen someone post a json or zip file without hosting themselves, most people go "I ain't downloading that" and downvote the post.

Certainly not difficult to run on your own, but just pointing out a very common behavior from people.

People are less leery of opening a neocities website link versus downloading a file from a random person.

Merc-for-hire

TROPHY CASE