Orphan Episodes Index

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Orphan Episodes
Available orphans as of 06/30/2003
Taken orphans as of 09/30/2008

An "orphan episode" is one whose parent episode does not contain a link to it. For example, episode 1006 has options pointing to three child episodes 15659, 15660 and 15661 -- but it also has four "orphans", 6790, 6791, 6792 and 6793. Once you're in an orphan episode, you can jump to its parent by clicking on the "Go back" link (if the orphan has been completed) or the "Cancel" link (if it hasn't). There is no way, however, to link from the parent to the orphan.

Early on, I think that most orphans were created by either a) people who started to add a new episode but then aborted it, without properly using the "cancel" feature, or b) system errors that caused episode creation to die in mid-process, after the children had already been created. In February 1999, when MarkT rewrote the Addventure software to "clean up" unused children, there was a sharp drop-off in the number of orphans created. Since February 1999, orphans are usually only created when MarkT deletes an episode for one reason or another.

Why bother with orphan episodes? Well, they present an opportunity to take a storyline off in a direction not given by any of the existing options. What if you don't like any of the options? What if the option you want has already been taken? If the episode you want to extend has orphans, then you can use one and effectively add your own option to the parent!

The disadvantage to writing an orphan episode is that it will be difficult for readers to find. Orphans will never appear in a Tree View, and cannot be linked to from their actual parent episode. Of course, if you make the orphan linkable, then you could write a later episode that links back to your orphan. The only other way for readers to stumble across your episode, once it stops appearing in the "Recent Episodes" lists, is to find it on one of the Index pages.

NOW updated with orphans through the end of June 2003.

Orphan episodes which have already been completed

Orphans of episodes 0-999
Orphans of episodes 1000-1999
Orphans of episodes 2000-2999
Orphans of episodes 3000-3999
Orphans of episodes 4000-4999
Orphans of episodes 5000-5999
Orphans of episodes 6000-6999
Orphans of episodes 7000-7999
Orphans of episodes 8000-8999
Orphans of episodes 9000-9999