Do you still read gamebooks? Which ones do you enjoy?

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GiantToenail

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What's your Experience with Gamebooks and which do you enjoy?

I was cleaning out my attic of cob-webs to find some old goosebumps books I remembered reading and really enjoying as a kid (Camp Jellyjam was my favorite), and found "Goosebumps: Tick Tock, You're Dead". I forgot Goosebumps even had choose-your-own adventure books and it reminded me of Joe Dever's lone-wolf!

What gamebooks did you enjoy, if you played any back in the day or more recently? Did they lead you into your TTRPG hobby you have now or vice versa? Any fond memories of daring adventure? I want to know!

My Favorite Gamebook!

Lone Wolf I remember really enjoying because it played out like a S&S movie but you got to choose what you do in the interesting bits and have it change a good amount of your character's saga; like choosing to help a wizard getting ambushed by the forces of darkness, you could either help him and potentially make a new companion/get a cool artifact or move on with your quest since time is of the essence and wizards aren't to be trusted anyhow what with their habits of consorting with unknown powers and sinister sorceries, instead of MMO quests where you maybe get 1-2 lines of different dialogue in a quest for different options if there are any along with the quests being little contained stories that get canned when you get to the next zone (SWTOR was killer, The exception).

I also remembered hearing about Fighting Fantasy and Black-Baron/White-Warlord to a lesser extent, The latter being a multiplayer gamebook which I thought was slick! Looking into Gamebooks on the internet I found Fabled-lands and Destiny-Quest to be popular and saw it had lots of classes and stuff similar to MMO's and ASCII Rogue-likes but in a MMO/Book hybrid sort of way. I read somewhere one of those series was due to get more books but the writer/company stopped making books because something along the lines of "Digital is the future" and "No-one will buy Game-books anymore".

Sounds like a bummer to me, A hybrid Book/MMO means no updates/patches/microtransactions to ruin the fun besides reprints and the chat feature is going to your friend's house to tell him about your adventures and showing him your sickass book! (Without Moderators!) Buying new books was like buying quality dlc/expansions I'd imagine too, unlike buying an expansion where the bulk of it is in-game skins and maybe a short quest.

Also, not paying the pain-in-the-ass subscription fees and the higher electric/internet bill for playing 3+ hours on weekends is also a plus.

Edit: Plus, you own the book physically! Forever until you sell/lose it! You can put notes in or create a high level toon and do later areas immediately, No exp/golding farming required!
 
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I wasn't into them when I was younger. I had a single Choose Your Own Adventure book, which I was not impressed by, so I didn't go out of my way to seek out any others. I had the D&D Solo module Blizzard Pass which used a special pen to reveal invisible text, and before I had revealed all the invisible text I accidentally left the cap off the pen and it dried out becoming unusuable, so I wasn't able to explore any further options in that one. Back then I always found the programmed adventures such as the one in the front of the GURPS3e book to be less than interesting.

The fact that my introduction to those things coincided with the rise of adventure games like Zork and the later electronic RPGs like Ultima certainly didn't help the gamebooks.

I will say that I appreciate them more as an adult. I've kicked around with a few T&T Solos and have found them entertaining if I'm in the mood for that sort of thing.

I guess it's ironic that the place they've clicked the most for me have been electronic ports of old Fighting Fantasy gamebooks. There are several available on the Nintendo Switch and I'll occasionally get engrossed in one of those electronic versions of an old game book.

There was someone here who had done a whole thread talking about European versions of gamebooks. I think it was Baulderstone Baulderstone . IIRC, he mentioned something called "strats" which were a type of gamebook which I would likely have been drawn to as a moth to flame back when I was a teen had they been available in the US.
 
Lone Wolf is still great. You could read Greystar the Wizard or Freeway Warrior, the other two 4 book series he wrote.

I would recommend getting Bloodsword from the authors of Dragon Warriors. They are playable with multiple players but are great as solo playing experience as well. All 5 have been reprinted.

You can then go on to Fabled Lands by the same authot, which are a sandbox gamebook. 7 out of the 12 books are done with the 8th to come. That’s more than enough to play for months.

If you want something a little different, I love the Time Stories board game for being a board game adaptation of the gamebook experience. The stories are very good.
 
Every couple of years I go back and try to play my way through the four Sorcery! books again. I try to play as fair as possible, but I give myself one 'extra life' and I set the ending of the second book as a 'save point' I can retry from if I die in the second half of the series.

So far the furthest I've gotten is the beginning of the fourth book. One day, one day...
 
No spoilers by there is something toward the end of the 4th book which may make you throw the book across the room given your with approach :smile:
 
Anyone play Legacy of Dragonholt? It attracted a lot of complaints and outrage from the worst in the hobby for the expected reasons, but there were so many parts that I really admired that also seemed to be working against one another. Part of this was no doubt due to the publisher/manufacturer and accompanying consumer and retailer expectations (box with stuff, to start with) but also in terms of gameplay. (This also says a lot about me as a player, uncomfortable with You can focus on everything! solo games, analog and electronic)
 
No spoilers by there is something toward the end of the 4th book which may make you throw the book across the room given your with approach :smile:

Oh I have an inkling, I cheat-played my way through the whole thing decades ago, but the journey is still worth it in my estimation.
 
Anyone play Legacy of Dragonholt? It attracted a lot of complaints and outrage from the worst in the hobby for the expected reasons, but there were so many parts that I really admired that also seemed to be working against one another. Part of this was no doubt due to the publisher/manufacturer and accompanying consumer and retailer expectations (box with stuff, to start with) but also in terms of gameplay. (This also says a lot about me as a player, uncomfortable with You can focus on everything! solo games, analog and electronic)
I have the game
Picked it up at a thrift store for $6. Never played it. Should I?
 
You might want to check out The Necronomicon Gamebook: Dagon and The Necronomicon Gamebook: Carcosa from Officina Meningi. These are pretty cool.

Also, not quite a gamebook but more of a solo city crawl book, Alone Against Fear from Ganesha Games. There's two supplements available for this one.
 
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I play some of the Advanced Fighting Fantasy ones on my phone, I need to get back to them. Sadly the Lone Wolf ones no-longer have HTH as an option, which is always one of my picks. :sad:
 
I have the game
Picked it up at a thrift store for $6. Never played it. Should I?
Absolutely. And for only $6 you may not have the hang up I did "To get my money's worth and play it right" (so it goes unplayed of course) and cheat like hell get to the main story faster which I sensed might be worth it but I kept losing interest earlier on.
 
I still dig up my old Fighting Fantasy books now and then. There's just something nice about all those green-spined books sitting there on the shelf.
 
I have the following in my collection:
A bunch of old fighting fantasy books up to the low twenties in the series. I have replayed through a few of these recently with my son in book and phone app form.
Legacy of Dragonholt, I got it second hand and have played through a couple of days.
The blood sword reprints books 1 to 5. Not started these yet.

In the past I played right through the Lone Wolf books and also played a fair amount of Grailquest books.

If you were starting now I would recommend the fighting fantasy classics phone app as a good place to go.
 
I have started a Fabled Lands "campaign". The Fabled Lands books are sandbox style games and quite unique. Like in sandbox style group plays, I have limited impact on the overall story but that is part of the design.

The Blood Sword books are still lying around somewhere.

Still, the best solo experience is Star Saga One & Two. They are old PC + Mac computer games. The program is basically just a moderator and GM. Inside the box are 800-900 pages of books, a color space map and some glass tokens. You're able to freely fly through space, trade with planets and experience a huge story. The whole thing is extremely well done and quite funny. Sadly the final third part was never released.
 
I have started a Fabled Lands "campaign". The Fabled Lands books are sandbox style games and quite unique. Like in sandbox style group plays, I have limited impact on the overall story but that is part of the design.

The Blood Sword books are still lying around somewhere.

Still, the best solo experience is Star Saga One & Two. They are old PC + Mac computer games. The program is basically just a moderator and GM. Inside the box are 800-900 pages of books, a color space map and some glass tokens. You're able to freely fly through space, trade with planets and experience a huge story. The whole thing is extremely well done and quite funny. Sadly the final third part was never released.
That's interesting:thumbsup:.
 
I've only started Alice's Nightmare in Wonderland (by Jonathan Green), but I pretty much know I'll pick up the author's other offerings as well (I'm particularly curious of the Dracula- and Beowulf-themed ones). I also ordered a few horror gamebooks penned by Victoria Hancox (The Phantom Self, Behind the Weeping Walls, and Shopping Maul) that should arrive tomorrow or the day after.
 
I played Time Stories (again) on the weekend. Cavendish Manor and Damien. It reminded me so much of the gamebook experience and feels like a natural evolution of the medium towards a multiplayer experience.
 
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