Choose Your Own Adventure!

Steven Sorrels

Steven Sorrels

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When I was young, there was always a large selection of Choose Your Own Adventure books whenever the book fairs would roll through school. While the writing quality was nothing to write home about, I always found them to be an interesting and unique way of hooking the reader, by making their choices matter. You would read the page or pages, and at the bottom there would usually be at least two choices to make, directing you to the corresponding page number. Many times, this would lead to the characters' horrible deaths! Recently, I realized I have not seen any of these books in quite some time.

Do you have memories of these lovely tales, or am I simply delusional? Did you enjoy them, or find them to be repulsive? Do you have any idea what I'm talking about?

Turn to the next post to find out!
 
Yes, I remember those, well at least one anyway. It was an adventure about finding something and it contained a memorable description of door in a garden wall overgrown with vines. Do you knock on the door or move on? Much like the early computer adventure games with simple binary choices.

I also remember a book of WWI aerial combat where you would make a decision in which direction to fly, it was always a shock to see the enemy diving in behind you guns blazing!
 
I remember them too! There was one about being kidnapped by aliens and exploring their space ship which I enjoyed. My cousin had one about a shipwreck, where one ending had you being towed to land by a sea monster!

They were quite similar to, if less "grown up" than, the Fighting Fantasy books of the 80s. I know a writer called Jonathan Green who wrote quite a few of them (along with many other novels: he's incredibly prolific). While they weren't going to win the Booker Prize (turn to 38 if you have existential angst: turn to 43 to open a laundrette in Shoreditch) they were fun, and lent to the sense of going into another world that I got from a lot of fantasy novels at that time.
 
I had (well, have) tons of the Lone Wolf books. You can play a stack of them for free (with the author's knowledge/consent) at Project Aon.

There's also the new Destiny Quest series by Michael J Ward.
 
I've never heard of these, but they sound wonderful! I would have loved these as a child...wait - am I too old for them now?? :)
 
Cat's Cradle, give them a look and see what you think. I suspect they'll be fine (and the Lone Wolf online ones are free, so costs nothing to see).
 
These came up a few lonchrons ago. Harebrain and The Big Peat I believe. What a lovely conversation they all had as I sat rocking to and fro by myself mithering about games not being literature.

I had managed three gins before the topic of conversation got back to opahs or demonic possessions.

:ROFLMAO:
pH
 
Vladd67 said:
Wasn't that the first and original that started the genre?
Click to expand...

It might well be. It's certainly the first Fighting Fantasy book - written, IIRC, by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingston, who were big names in the early days of Games Workshop. I never got the hang of the whole dice-rolling aspect of FF, which seemed to take away from the sense of adventure. Choose Your Own Adventure didn't have that. Besides, did anyone really ever let their character die because they rolled a 1?
 
I loved these books. I'm sure we had a few of them at home, and I would borrow them all the time from the library. Makes me want to borrow one from my new library if they have. I also remember making my own... now if I could find that, I would have a good laugh.
 
Yes, I tried out a few of the Steve Jackson ones, but was a bit put off that you had to roll dice to fight in them. Too easy to look ahead and cheat...

Apparently there is a tribute to these books in Skyrim, I can't remember what the virtual book is called in the game, but it's doubly odd 'playing it' when you are playing the game.
 
Steve Jackson's Sorcery! (yes, the ! is part of the title) was my favourite as a kid, partly because it had a spell-book, partly because it was an epic four-parter, and partly because of the illustrations by John Blanche.

There are still a few being written/published. I think Ian Livingstone might be about to do some new ones. And if you want to relive your youth, this is worth your £25. (Expensive, yes, but beautifully put together.)
 
I loved these as a kid. Our library still has half a dozen or so of them, but slightly newer ones than the ones I had back in the day, as I don't recognize them at all.
 
Jo Zebedee said:
The Warlock of Firetop Mountain. Never managed to complete it. Still rankles.
Click to expand...

Oh god I know! The pain of getting right to the end, beating the Warlock and then dying because you hadn't picked up the right combination of keys! City of Thieves was even worse. For the first half you're gathering three ingredients, only to learn that one of them isn't needed and you choose which one to discard - and you wouldn't know if you'd made the right choice until right at the end. Then there was another one (Creature of Chaos maybe?) where for the first third or so you couldn't even control the character, so dice rolls told you where to go.

...Yeah I was big on the whole Fighting Fantasy series, frustratingly hard though they be. I recently learned that a bunch of them are being adapted into Steam games. I've so far resisted temptation. So far...
 
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