Choose Your Own Adventure!

My favourite one was about a time traveller looking for the archaeopterix. I swear to this day every choice in that book lead to gruesome death in something's jaws, being fed to baby pterodactyls, or drowning in toxic swamps...
 
Grailquest was the first I ever picked up. Enjoyed it enough to buy book 2 - but always seemed to end up at a deadend with no way to finish the book.

Tried a few of the Steve Jackson books, but never got past the first few. I still have a couple of his Warlock magazine in my archive. :)

EDIT: Actually, thinking about it, it may have been some free Choose Your Own Adventure books from Weetabix that drew me to pick-up Grailquest in the first place. The Weetabix books were pretty contemporary and not much fun - I remember falling asleep in one, and never waking up because I'd either been killed in a flash flood, or eaten by army ants.
 
Oh man, choose your own adventures were the BEST. I totally devoured the Young Indiana Jones choose your own adventure books when I was a kid... that stuff was my jam!
 
This is the original series:
12-choose-your-own-adventure.w750.h560.2x.jpg


The first series ran to 184 books, with several follow up series. The previous "Adventures of You" was from the same author. The books had some illustrations inside (which were a particular and strange style, mostly by the same illustrator), outcomes were anywhere from success to being permanently handicapped to being eaten alive. They came out in 1979, and at 8 years old, I found them provocative and disturbing. I owned at least 3 books, but the libraries had them. Started reading Jules Verne the next year, then Azimov and lost interest.
 
Venusian Broon said:
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.
Click to expand...

Yes! The books are called Kolb and the Dragon and I think there are 4 or 5 of them. I had forgotten about that. :ROFLMAO:
 
MemoryTale said:
I never knew they were in there - although to be honest I didn't get too far through the main story of Skyrim before deciding to put it away.
Click to expand...
Skyrim is full of little gems like this, but often you have to trek off the beaten path to find them. IMHO, that's the best way to play Elder Scrolls games, anyway :D
 
Steven Sorrels said:
Skyrim is full of little gems like this, but often you have to trek off the beaten path to find them. IMHO, that's the best way to play Elder Scrolls games, anyway :D
Click to expand...

And that's why I put it away. I don't have a huge amount of free time, and when a game has this many sidequests I have all the attention span of an ooh, shiney!
 
I loved the FF books by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone, but never picked up the CYOA equivalents; I think the pulpy, nod-and-a-wink content put me off. I liked my fantasy and sci-fi straight down the middle back in those days.

I actually wrote a handful of these CYOA-style books a long time ago, but they were anything but straight down the middle. My favourite was Elephant Man and The Last Crusade, where you play Joseph (John) Merrick in a race against the Nazis to recover the Holy Grail, using superpowers such as "great chat-up lines", "singing like Jon Bon Jovi", "profanity", and "being like Harold Bishop off Neighbours" to navigate your way through the adventure. Utter tosh, but probably one of the most enojyable things I've ever written.

@HareBrain funny you mention Sorcery! as I never got round to reading that, and always wanted to. Appointment with F.E.A.R was one of my favourites, but it was a bugger to complete. And I've also seen the limited edition FF books that Snowbooks are doing, they are really nicely put together. We shall have to badger (or maybe otter?) them for stocking fillers.
 
I have never heard of them or read them. From reading this thread they sound like they were a lot of fun.

The closest I have ever got to this kind of literature were the solitaire games of Tunnels and Trolls. They were fun and I don't think I ever survived any of them.

I wonder if they sell them anymore? I would also like to try out some of the books you mentioned.

Thanks for sharing your experiences.
 
I just finished writing a partial CYOA for a spin-in novel to my current series.
I chose to write a partial because I wanted to keep page numbers down, and I wanted the second half to remain cohesive with the first half.
Kinda important in writing to maintain plot cohesion.
 
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