Favorite Choose your own adventure/game books

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shades of eternity
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Joined: Wed Aug 07, 2019 10:12 am

Favorite Choose your own adventure/game books

Post by shades of eternity »

Turning the early 80's there was a series of books where you not only turned to different sections but also rolled dice to fight conflicts.

So asking if anybody has read any and if so, which are their favorites?
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Emmett
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Re: Favorite Choose your own adventure/game books

Post by Emmett »

I read plenty of them but never really had an emotional connection to them. I found them to be an amusing but transient experience. I know that a lot of people found them to be formative so I'm not knocking them, they just didn't seem significant to me.

I think I had trouble with imagining any one experience as "real" because you can close the book and start over or just go back and choose a different option. I think there's something fundamental about immutability that defines how I see something as real or not. Not that the books were real in any sense but are the choices real when they can be undone.

Maybe if I invested more in the process and made myself not cheat I'd have a different view. I think I found the choices that lead to good or bad outcomes either arbitrary or obvious in a lot of the books so they didn't excite me. I think I wanted clues in the page to figure out what the right answer was but if they were there they were too simple. Then again, if they were too hard I probably would have cheated and looked ahead so the books weren't going to get a fair shake from me.

That's probably more opinion than anybody wants so I'll stop now.
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GMGERRYMANDER
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Re: Favorite Choose your own adventure/game books

Post by GMGERRYMANDER »

I actually wrote a few when I worked as writer and editor for Dark City Games. (Orcs of the High Mountains is still available, though it has been seriously rewritten since the original we gave awaty at Gen Con. And Little Black Book is no longer available.)

I enjoyed playing the TFT and T&T games back in the day. Some of the early books from Dark City Games are what got me to work for them . My favorite was the Island of Last Spells. It had a nice, opening village encounter where the heroes could gain rumors, some fun gear, and a few, non-vital but still free skills. (Like riding and animal handling).

In the main adventure, it had some interesting encounters and a few fun beasties, plus two different set-piece combats that allowed the reader/players to use tactics and non combat skills alongside hack and blast.

Plus, you got a ton of free spells for your spellcasters, which allowed them more versatility as the game went on.

Whenever I got a gamebook like this, I would play it. Then get one of my friends to play it. Then we would get a third friend to "GM it" for us and a few others to see how it changed each time. (This was also how I quality-controlled new books when I was editor...as long as the publisher gave me more than three days between manuscript submission and print day...)

Playing gamebooks and looking at the mechanics of programmed adventures taught me a lot about both writing and running other adventures, because programmed adventures have to be written with specific details up front, but also not make too many assumptions about the characters.
shades of eternity
Posts: 59
Joined: Wed Aug 07, 2019 10:12 am

Re: Favorite Choose your own adventure/game books

Post by shades of eternity »

k will answer mine

Grailquest

Surprisingly Gory
Surprisingly Funny
Surprisingly British. :)
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