Fight Fantasy, Choose Your Own Adventure, etc.

[panton41]

Another thread got me remembering the hours of my youth I spent reading the "Choose Your Own Adventure" books (we'd fight over the good ones in my elementary school) got me realizing that they were the beginning of my "roleplaying" career. Of course two different Steve Jacksons got their start writing the Fighting Fantasy series. Which kind of brings me to a roleplaying question and just a bit of general chatter: How many people here got their hobbiest interest (or professional start) in roleplaying from these books (besides the obvious) and what were your favorites?

Mine where probably:

CYOA #8 Escape
CYOA #61 Beyond Escape
CYOA Super Adventure #1 Journey to the Year 3000


For what it's worth, I've even seen adult versions of these books, one of which was based on Cold War armor tactics. I've also come to realize that the Internet and various web technologies could really make this kind of story really fun, like Javascript for randomization, bookmarks (for "cheating") and also to prevent said "cheating", HTML5 audio/video tags to add multimedia, etc.

[zorg]

I had child variants of those books years before I started out with roleplaying (via MERP). I only got my fingers on the classics after I was already hooked on RPing, though.

My personal favourites were Deathtrap Dungeon and Warlock of Firetop Mountain, for some reason. Both had an unfortunate influence on my GMing at the time, which was as DF as they come. We used to implement rules variants, and custom characters, which was pretty fun.

Today, I sometimes play around with Choice of the Dragon on my ipod.

[GrimGent]

Fabled Lands was a bit of a johnny-come-lately among gamebooks since it wasn't published before the mid-nineties, but the free-roaming nature of the series made it a favourite of mine at the time. I hear that it's now about to be reprinted and converted into an RPG, but there's also a convenient electronic version available here.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by ciaran_skye

For what it's worth, I've even seen adult versions of these books, one of which was based on Cold War armor tactics. I've also come to realize that the Internet and various web technologies could really make this kind of story really fun, like Javascript for randomization, bookmarks (for "cheating") and also to prevent said "cheating", HTML5 audio/video tags to add multimedia, etc.

The Lone Wolf games are all playable online.

[Gizensha]

Originally Posted by ciaran_skye

Another thread got me remembering the hours of my youth I spent reading the "Choose Your Own Adventure" books (we'd fight over the good ones in my elementary school) got me realizing that they were the beginning of my "roleplaying" career. Of course two different Steve Jacksons got their start writing the Fighting Fantasy series. Which kind of brings me to a roleplaying question and just a bit of general chatter: How many people here got their hobbiest interest (or professional start) in roleplaying from these books (besides the obvious) and what were your favorites?

Mine where probably:

CYOA #8 Escape
CYOA #61 Beyond Escape
CYOA Super Adventure #1 Journey to the Year 3000

As a child I think my favourite was the first Sonic the Hedgehog adventure gamebook, though the Star Wars ones were decent. Rereading the sonic one as an adult (Yeah, still have that) and I found it... Well, actually, it was surprisingly witty. I note that the other Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone have found yet anothert avenue to republish, though they're doing some new ones that seem to be about three times the length of the originals, I dunno if that's due to ~3x the amount of sections or due to ~3x the length of each section... Though as an adult I'm more fond of the medium than any specific titles within it.

For what it's worth, I've even seen adult versions of these books, one of which was based on Cold War armor tactics. I've also come to realize that the Internet and various web technologies could really make this kind of story really fun, like Javascript for randomization, bookmarks (for "cheating") and also to prevent said "cheating", HTML5 audio/video tags to add multimedia, etc.

Yes, and you're not the first person to realise that - When published in HTML I believe they're commonly called Hypertext Fiction. Depending on who wrote it will cause various features to be implemented or not, but at there simplest they are identical to CYOA books - I think the most interesting feature I've seen in hypertext fiction that isn't in pulped tree stuff is pieces where the readers are also the authors - Get to a section that hasn't been written yet? Write your own. Some also allow you to write your own options as well. (Though, they tend to be of variable quality, though if there's decent moderation in place, obvious trolling, things that simply don't make sense, and inconsistent tenses/persons are removed - The quality is still variable, however) - I think the first of that form were the Addventure (Insert horrible groan here) series, though I don't think any of those are still 'live' (i.e. recieving submissions), and the more automated they are (Addventure was very) the less annoying they are to administrate.

[panton41]

Originally Posted by Gizensha

As a child I think my favourite was the first Sonic the Hedgehog adventure gamebook, though the Star Wars ones were decent. Rereading the sonic one as an adult (Yeah, still have that) and I found it... Well, actually, it was surprisingly witty. I note that the other Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone have found yet anothert avenue to republish, though they're doing some new ones that seem to be about three times the length of the originals, I dunno if that's due to ~3x the amount of sections or due to ~3x the length of each section... Though as an adult I'm more fond of the medium than any specific titles within it.

Yes, and you're not the first person to realise that - When published in HTML I believe they're commonly called Hypertext Fiction. Depending on who wrote it will cause various features to be implemented or not, but at there simplest they are identical to CYOA books - I think the most interesting feature I've seen in hypertext fiction that isn't in pulped tree stuff is pieces where the readers are also the authors - Get to a section that hasn't been written yet? Write your own. Some also allow you to write your own options as well. (Though, they tend to be of variable quality, though if there's decent moderation in place, obvious trolling, things that simply don't make sense, and inconsistent tenses/persons are removed - The quality is still variable, however) - I think the first of that form were the Addventure (Insert horrible groan here) series, though I don't think any of those are still 'live' (i.e. recieving submissions), and the more automated they are (Addventure was very) the less annoying they are to administrate.

I was thinking about how to write them and realized the easiest way would be to write a flow-chart like narrative tree of all possible outcomes, then actually write the sections of the story. I could see using a preorder tree transversal in order to turn it into a linear narrative (like for a book).

[Rocket Man]

Lone Wolf, CYOA and Twist-A-Plot were all staples of my childhood -- I don't know if they were the cause of my roleplaying interest, but they certainly kept the seed well-fertilized and watered.

Ditto for a series called Wizards, Warriors & You, where you got to play the adventure as either the Wizard (with a list of "spells" available for use, some of them no more than once) or the Warrior (where you had to pick three weapons from your "armory" to take on the adventure; depending on the quest, some of the gear could hurt as much as help!). I collected those books like they were going out of style.

I came to the Fighting Fantasy books later. They were good in general, but my favorite in the series by far was a superhero-themed one, "Appointment With F.E.A.R." You got to pick from a set of four different superpowers for the Silver Crusader, each of which meant different turns in the plot would be useful. I remember it was easiest to complete with the Super-Strength set and difficult to the point of insanity with Psionic Powers, unless you were willing to cheat. (The Energy Blaster and the Gadgeteer were in between, as far as challenge level.)

[Gizensha]

Originally Posted by ciaran_skye

I was thinking about how to write them and realized the easiest way would be to write a flow-chart like narrative tree of all possible outcomes, then actually write the sections of the story. I could see using a preorder tree transversal in order to turn it into a linear narrative (like for a book).

There's some visualizations of existant ones that might be interesting to look at, forget where they are though.

Doing the flow chart first would probably be a more game-oriented approach to the design, while doing the narrative simultainiously with the flow chart would be a more plot (or story, depends on how you specifically do it) based - Don't forget that any time your flow chart converges with itself that chapter has to make sense however you got there.

All of that is without any experience of it, mind, so take with a pinch of salt and experiment if you're going to give it a go.

[trooper6]

I was gaming before I was reading choose your own adventure novels. But my interest in gaming made me interested in the books. My favorite was one that wasn't by Choose Your Own Adventure...but a different company. It was a mystery set on a train...and the cover had a woman looking into a box emanating a green glow...if I recall correctly.

[zorg]

Reading through the thread has made me nostalgic, and without conscious decision, I have checked the itunes store and marked a number of items for later download. My former favourites are mostly available, it seems.