This week we’re reading "Mountain Survival" during #StorytimeWithSteve, book #28 in the original #ChooseYourOwnAdventure series. Bonus is that I’m reading it from a special library edition, which makes it a hardcover! You just know the story is better because the cover won’t bend! 🙂
It had to happen. Desperate for more material, Puffin Books started accepting outside book submissions into the #FightingFantasy#gamebook line, and here is their first definite misstep. #SpaceAssassin used the very first book as a blueprint, not accounting for any developments since then. Worse, it is not even remotely a good imitation of the original. Don't worry, Andrew Chapman's books improved a lot later on.
Choose Your Own Adventure Leans into Gaming: "Shannon Gilligan, co-founder and publisher at Chooseco, noted that, excluding sales through Ingram, gift and toy stores recently took over from bookshops as the company’s top direct-sales channel. “Bookstores are carrying more games as well,” she added."
This is a longshot, and perhaps will go nowhere, but I’ve been creatively drained lately. So rather than let these newly acquired #Twine skills go to waste, I’m going to try something. This is your chance. Do you have an idea for a #ChooseYourOwnAdventure or #hyperlink style #gamebook that you don’t want to make? Come talk to me. We can talk ideas, implementation and how to get your story out there, and across to readers in the best way.
I have not practiced outside personal friend groups, but I can also, if wanted, provide narrative reviews or help with the actual writing of the game. I would say my strengths as a narrative consultant focus on high level aspects. Do you have enough characters? Are those characters distinct enough from each other? Are there pacing changes you can make? Things like that. That is also entirely optional, though. I'm happy to just write the twine code if you prefer.
So when making a #gamebook or #textadventure there’s always the urge to make a shallow but fun ‘all-in-one’ game that crams every association I have with the genre into it, so it becomes a pastiche.
Written by Edward Packard in 1992, it only has 12 endings, but the cover has a kid riding a flying bicycle over some cows. C'mon, you want to know how he got into that situation, right?
Question about the history of #DnD: there was ever a proper published "canon" adventure featuring the #Tarrasque, or it was always just in the Monster Manual?
@masonporter Can you point me to any official adventure that feature the Tarrasque? I looked around a bit, but the best I could find is "Clash of the Sorcerer's", a #DnD#GameBook from 1987, which I remember playing as a kid, but doesn't fit the bill.
While I have an original, this is one of the few that's been updated and reprinted by Chooseco as part of the new generation of #CYOAs, rereleased in 2019 (yes, you can buy a copy now: https://www.cyoa.com/products/return-of-the-ninja!)
Having just escaped from Deathtrap Dungeon, a well-deserved rest with our good friend Mungo seemed in order. Only that said Mungo immediately sends us on another seemingly hopeless adventure: defeating the Lizard King and freeing the enslaved humanoids from his grasp. At least he's coming along as well. Oops, maybe that wasn't the best of ideas…
New #50YearsOfTextGames article on the strange 80s type-in adventure book "The Antagonists," which featured both in-game puzzles but also an unintentional meta-puzzle so challenging that no one in the 80s may have solved it. #gamebook#retrogame#TextAdventure
For #StorytimeWithSteve at work this week, giving Edward Packard's "Horror House" a scary read.
This 1993 #ChooseYourOwnAdventure appeared towards the end of the original run (book 140 of 185) - a time when the number of endings dropped considerably. There are only 8 in this book. At what point are you just writing a linear story with just a few page hops? Very glad the relaunch of the series moved away from this trend!
This picture left a strong impression on me as a child. It all seemed to be there. The impressive guard figure, looming above us due to the choice of perspective. And then, in the background, a sketchy, but alluring promise of what would await us if we managed to get past that guy. It all seemed perfect. But, of course, memories may be misleading. So let us enter the #CityOfThieves together.
Continuing the summer camp theme with #StorytimeWithSteve, this week we're reading "It Happened at Camp Pine Tree" - a #ChooseYourOwnNightmare, the 'scary' 18-book #CYOA spinoff from 1995-7 designed to compete with the more popular 42-book #GiveYourselfGoosebumps series (1995-2000).
Fav camp counselor goes missing. Murdered by ghost, eaten by snakes, disintegrated by toxic waste? Only 6 endings - great setting, poor #gamebook.
New #ChooseYourOwnAdventure dropping October 3: "Murder at the Old Willow Boarding School" by Jessika Fleck.
Description:
"YOU need to solve a murder… your own!
You go to breakfast with your friends & feel strangely alone. No one looks at you and no one is answering your questions. It's not until you hear a scream and rush to the library to find the sight of your lifeless body that you realize YOU ARE DEAD. "
With the unofficial start of summer, this week for #StorytimeWithSteve I'm reading "Summer Camp" - a 1984 #ChooseYourOwnAdventure for younger readers by Judy Gitenstein.
My coworkers & I enjoyed the many adventures for such a short book: archery, softball, hermit hunts, scaring friends, adventure trips, and 2 months away from our parents!