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January 5, 2024 5:08 AM Subscribe
Early studies of interactive fiction focused heavily on digital texts and paid little attention to gamebook series that had sold millions of copies and shaped the imagination of a generation
Gamebooks have appeared many times on the blue, and most of the obvious links have been posted. There are, however, some useful lists.
Gamebooks have appeared many times on the blue, and most of the obvious links have been posted. There are, however, some useful lists.
What are text-based discussion forums, if not "you are likely to be eaten by a grue" persevering?
posted by cupcakeninja at 5:57 AM on January 5 [8 favorites]
posted by cupcakeninja at 5:57 AM on January 5 [8 favorites]
Related, a text game created specifically for the Ultimate Collector's Edition of 50 Years of Text Games, is now available for everyone.
posted by juv3nal at 5:58 AM on January 5 [5 favorites]
posted by juv3nal at 5:58 AM on January 5 [5 favorites]
I'm sorry this article doesn't mention MAZE: Solve the World's Most Challenging Puzzle - I was thoroughly obsessed with it as a kid. Spoilers: We did not solve the puzzle, although my sister and I went back to it in our early 30s and tried to reverse-engineer a solution.
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 6:18 AM on January 5 [2 favorites]
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 6:18 AM on January 5 [2 favorites]
My brother currently has ChatGPT generating a very long and complicated classic D&D setting adventure templated on the Choose Your Own Adventure series - about a paperback page’s worth of story / dialogue, followed by three choices for what to do or say next. What had my jaw on the floor is how fleshed out all the characters are and the sheer continuity of the thing across several dozen branchings.
I’m friends with a modestly successful fantasy author who used to write top-notch interactive fiction modules for the app equivalent of Choose Your Own Adventure (the Choice of… app)- the generated plots and characters don’t hold a candle to anything my friend wrote, but they are much, much better than any of the actual Choose Your Own Adventure novels I remember as a kid or 90% of shlock fantasy RPG stories.
My brother’s a realist about context window limits and aware it can’t continue forever, but because story summaries and brief character bios exist, it might be possible to create custom output templates to aid longterm arc and major character persistence with periodically recompiled summaries.
Point is: my brother the rural postal worker messaged me out of the blue last night with a use for ChatGPT in interactive fiction that I don’t believe can be accomplished any other way: functionally infinite (in quantity, not story length…yet), higher-quality Choose Your Own Adventure. I’m sure others have done it before, but my brother and I have never talked about LLMs (difficult as it might be to believe from my comment history), he’s just vaguely aware I’m “into AI” and (correctly) suspected I’d be interested.
From the article:
posted by Ryvar at 6:19 AM on January 5 [12 favorites]
I’m friends with a modestly successful fantasy author who used to write top-notch interactive fiction modules for the app equivalent of Choose Your Own Adventure (the Choice of… app)- the generated plots and characters don’t hold a candle to anything my friend wrote, but they are much, much better than any of the actual Choose Your Own Adventure novels I remember as a kid or 90% of shlock fantasy RPG stories.
My brother’s a realist about context window limits and aware it can’t continue forever, but because story summaries and brief character bios exist, it might be possible to create custom output templates to aid longterm arc and major character persistence with periodically recompiled summaries.
Point is: my brother the rural postal worker messaged me out of the blue last night with a use for ChatGPT in interactive fiction that I don’t believe can be accomplished any other way: functionally infinite (in quantity, not story length…yet), higher-quality Choose Your Own Adventure. I’m sure others have done it before, but my brother and I have never talked about LLMs (difficult as it might be to believe from my comment history), he’s just vaguely aware I’m “into AI” and (correctly) suspected I’d be interested.
From the article:
In Avatars of Story, Ryan described such links as «blatant» and partially dismissed them as «too legible», because «they give the reader a preview of the content of the target lexia»I think this specific property is why ChatGPT worked so much better for my brother than my own early experiments with it as an interactive storyteller in a less-structured manner. The output text all needs to naturally lead into the three prompts at the end, and the consistency of that cadence across likely all training input (I’m assuming the novels I read as a kid are in the Common Crawl) means that this format might be an accidental core strength of ChatGPT.
posted by Ryvar at 6:19 AM on January 5 [12 favorites]
This is a great resource! I'm excited to dive deeper into it. Normally when I talk about gamebooks and choice-based works I have to gather a disparate group of links like Sam Ashwell's analysis of game book structures that the article cites.
Gamebooks and CYOA novels first got me into interactive fiction, and here I am, four decades later, still writing IF. The bit about how gamebooks have often been dismissed and overlooked resonates with my experiences. I saw that echoed in how people in the interactive fiction community (read: text adventures) dismissed choice-based games written in Twine. Heck, I've had to argue against that position right here as recently as 2016. I hope this article spurs more interest in gamebooks.
posted by sgranade at 6:20 AM on January 5 [3 favorites]
Gamebooks and CYOA novels first got me into interactive fiction, and here I am, four decades later, still writing IF. The bit about how gamebooks have often been dismissed and overlooked resonates with my experiences. I saw that echoed in how people in the interactive fiction community (read: text adventures) dismissed choice-based games written in Twine. Heck, I've had to argue against that position right here as recently as 2016. I hope this article spurs more interest in gamebooks.
posted by sgranade at 6:20 AM on January 5 [3 favorites]
Oh! I got weirdly into this topic a few months ago and made a TWINE version of the first gamebook, Consider the Consequences (playable in your browser)
posted by bookwo3107 at 8:03 AM on January 5 [7 favorites]
posted by bookwo3107 at 8:03 AM on January 5 [7 favorites]
When I was about eight years old, I found my uncle's old copy of the first Fighting Fantasy book at my grandma's house, The Warlock of Firetop Mountain (pretty sure it was a first edition because it had the cover from the Wikipedia page) and got super into it. Not the character creation/dice rolling stuff, which was kind of over my head at that age, but the idea of choosing my own path from an adventure book was extremely neat.
Then I lost the book, forgot about it for a while, tried to search for it when I had broader internet access as a teen but failed (because I assumed it must have been Choose Your Own Adventure brand, and didn't realise there were a few other brands publishing those kinds of titles at the time), then eventually found it a few years ago and bought another copy. And now I'm so old that it's apparently also a video game.
It didn't turn out to be the beginning of a lifelong passion for interactive fiction, though I did play around with Twine in its early days, but I still have a little spurt of nostalgia for the way that book made me feel when I was a kid.
posted by terretu at 8:15 AM on January 5 [5 favorites]
Then I lost the book, forgot about it for a while, tried to search for it when I had broader internet access as a teen but failed (because I assumed it must have been Choose Your Own Adventure brand, and didn't realise there were a few other brands publishing those kinds of titles at the time), then eventually found it a few years ago and bought another copy. And now I'm so old that it's apparently also a video game.
It didn't turn out to be the beginning of a lifelong passion for interactive fiction, though I did play around with Twine in its early days, but I still have a little spurt of nostalgia for the way that book made me feel when I was a kid.
posted by terretu at 8:15 AM on January 5 [5 favorites]
Just as a side note, they're not gamebooks, but Mefi Projects has had some fun interactive fiction in the past year, e.g. Zarkonnen's "Isle of Beasts," dng's "Coin Toss World Cup," and mcbaya's "Kraken Whispers."
posted by Wobbuffet at 8:29 AM on January 5 [3 favorites]
posted by Wobbuffet at 8:29 AM on January 5 [3 favorites]
cupcakeninja: "What are text-based discussion forums, if not "you are likely to be eaten by a grue" persevering?"
Word of mouth, passing the legend down to the next generation. If my 14 year old son is in a dark place, he will quite often reference his chance of being eaten by a grue. I feel that means I am a good parent.
posted by caution live frogs at 8:33 AM on January 5 [6 favorites]
Word of mouth, passing the legend down to the next generation. If my 14 year old son is in a dark place, he will quite often reference his chance of being eaten by a grue. I feel that means I am a good parent.
posted by caution live frogs at 8:33 AM on January 5 [6 favorites]
I look forward to checking this out, but at the moment I'm in a maze of twisty little passages all alike (aka, at work).
posted by BigHeartedGuy at 9:31 AM on January 5 [7 favorites]
posted by BigHeartedGuy at 9:31 AM on January 5 [7 favorites]
As a lover of 80s gamebooks and am pleased with the minor resurgence of branching literature in computer form. I can particularly recommend the iOS implementations of Steve Jackson's Sorcery! for a high quality faithful re-imagining of the elaborate 80s originals.
posted by AndrewStephens at 9:57 AM on January 5
posted by AndrewStephens at 9:57 AM on January 5
The entire Lone Wolf series by Joe Dever is available to read/play online at Project Aon.
I only got to play them back in the day starting from Book 3, the Caverns of Kalte, which I got as a Christmas gift one year. But that meant I had missed the Sommerswerd, which effectively meant I did the whole series on Hard Mode. I was not dissuaded!
posted by notoriety public at 10:14 AM on January 5 [4 favorites]
I only got to play them back in the day starting from Book 3, the Caverns of Kalte, which I got as a Christmas gift one year. But that meant I had missed the Sommerswerd, which effectively meant I did the whole series on Hard Mode. I was not dissuaded!
posted by notoriety public at 10:14 AM on January 5 [4 favorites]
The branching format can be used in a didactic/exploratory context, too, outside of an explicit adventure book; Holly Jean Buck's "After Geoengineering" starts with a CYOA section where the reader selects various climate scenarios and is encouraged to think of human involvement with the climate as a series of choices and paths that can become dependent but also open up in unexpected ways despite initial conditions. The book then becomes a combined series of near future scenarios and interviews with people doing a wide range of climate work right now.
posted by Typhoon Jim at 10:52 AM on January 5 [3 favorites]
posted by Typhoon Jim at 10:52 AM on January 5 [3 favorites]
You are meeting Deep Throat in a parking garage. It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by Agnew.
posted by kirkaracha at 11:04 AM on January 5 [5 favorites]
posted by kirkaracha at 11:04 AM on January 5 [5 favorites]
We are thinking of two very different Deep Throats.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 11:07 AM on January 5
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 11:07 AM on January 5
Did anyone else only have anxiety reading these? Or is that why I have no friends?
posted by lextex at 12:00 PM on January 5 [1 favorite]
posted by lextex at 12:00 PM on January 5 [1 favorite]
Thanks for posting. I bought my sister a Midsommer Murders CYOA book for Christmas that I hope she enjoys. There are some interesting graphs about the rise and fall of game books at The Life and Death of Gamebooks.
posted by paduasoy at 12:15 PM on January 5
posted by paduasoy at 12:15 PM on January 5
so there's a couple of choose your own adventure books, both by edward packard, that did some things with the form that kind of launched my love of metafictional devices when i was first exposed to them while significantly smaller than i currently am:
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 1:01 PM on January 5 [8 favorites]
- ufo 54-40. this one features aliens abducting humans because they have a legend that there is a utopian world that only humans can access, and that they can only get to by taking no choice and making no decisions. as you'd expect from that description, there is an ending, featuring iirc a glorious two-page illustration, where you, the reader, pilot the alien craft down to the utopian world, and as you'd likewise expect there was no way to actually reach that ending.
- hyperspace. at least i think it was hyperspace? anyway, the one i'm thinking of has an ending where your character meets edward packard himself, who tells you that he can't take you any farther and that you'll have to complete the story on your own. i'm fuzzy on details, i think because i checked that one out from the library instead of buying a copy for myself. the important thing, though, is that there's an ending where the author directly addresses you and discusses the nature and limitations of storytelling.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 1:01 PM on January 5 [8 favorites]
John Darnielle’s quite good novel Wolf in White Van has an adventure-by-mail game (same logical structure as the books but different socially) as a big part of the setting. The D&D comment makes me think of Borges, and makes me a little concerned for my friend who makes a living illustrating D&D publications. Darnielle sings for the Mountain Goats.
posted by lwxxyyzz at 1:22 PM on January 5
posted by lwxxyyzz at 1:22 PM on January 5
did anyone else read/play the fabled lands books? I remember really enjoying them back in the day.
posted by an opinicus at 2:35 PM on January 5 [1 favorite]
posted by an opinicus at 2:35 PM on January 5 [1 favorite]
I have a stack of Fabled Lands books here, but I haven't found the time to delve into them yet. I've heard good things, though! (For those that haven't heard of them, Fabled Lands is similar to Lone Wolf, with statistics, dice, and an inventory -- but instead of each book being the next chapter in a sequential story, the books are geographic realms, so upon crossing a border or boarding a ship, you'll be told "Turn to page X in book Y".)
I've also recently picked up "Escape from Portsrood Forest" and "The Bradfell Conspiracy" by Samuel Isaacson, which appear to be Amazon print-on-demand. They aren't dice-based like a Lone Wolf, but do use the modern trick of giving you passwords to serve as found 'keys', and occasional checkboxes on one-time-only paragraphs. I can't give a proper review because, again, time, but they seem pretty decent and worth a look if anyone's looking for a new one of these.
posted by rifflesby at 5:37 PM on January 5
I've also recently picked up "Escape from Portsrood Forest" and "The Bradfell Conspiracy" by Samuel Isaacson, which appear to be Amazon print-on-demand. They aren't dice-based like a Lone Wolf, but do use the modern trick of giving you passwords to serve as found 'keys', and occasional checkboxes on one-time-only paragraphs. I can't give a proper review because, again, time, but they seem pretty decent and worth a look if anyone's looking for a new one of these.
posted by rifflesby at 5:37 PM on January 5
Oh and also I'd be remiss to not mention that Holmgard Press is reprinting the entire Lone Wolf series as very nice hardcover "Definitive Editions", revised and mechanically rebalanced, including putting back some sections that were chopped from the original version of volume 1.
posted by rifflesby at 5:53 PM on January 5
posted by rifflesby at 5:53 PM on January 5
as you'd likewise expect there was no way to actually reach that ending
Sure there is. You accidentally turn to the wrong page.
posted by praemunire at 11:35 PM on January 7 [1 favorite]
Sure there is. You accidentally turn to the wrong page.
posted by praemunire at 11:35 PM on January 7 [1 favorite]
and i mean that’s beautiful, right? to make kids this little game out of books and then have the big win dependent on kids treating the book as a book, something you can turn to any page, and ignoring the rules of the game that mandate reading it in a particular page order. and because the book physical object is easy to turn to the wrong page, it’s possible to treat the book as a book instead of a game by accident.
like it’s not just metafictional, it’s metatextual as well. concerned with what it is to be a text (in this case a game-text).
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 9:14 PM on January 8 [3 favorites]
like it’s not just metafictional, it’s metatextual as well. concerned with what it is to be a text (in this case a game-text).
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 9:14 PM on January 8 [3 favorites]
I believe similar things happened in Don't Panic, Neil Gaiman's first book, a work-for-hire thing about The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. There were various footnotes, and some (one? many?) of the footnotes were not actually linked to the text, saying things like "you're just reading footnotes now, aren't you?" (It's not a CYOA, but I remember the same sense of glee as a kid on breaking the "rules" of reading.)
posted by cupcakeninja at 2:48 AM on January 9 [1 favorite]
posted by cupcakeninja at 2:48 AM on January 9 [1 favorite]
Mod note: You like this post. Do you:
A. Favorite the post.
B. Eat a snack.
C. Tell your friends about its inclusion in the Best Of blog.
D. All the above.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 7:22 AM on January 11 [2 favorites]
A. Favorite the post.
B. Eat a snack.
C. Tell your friends about its inclusion in the Best Of blog.
D. All the above.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 7:22 AM on January 11 [2 favorites]
The Internet Archive has scans for some books mentioned, some requiring an account to checkout.
* MAZE: Solve the World's Most Challenging Puzzle...
* Hyperspace, with Edward Packard just shrugging about being in his own book
* Inside UFO 54-40, and visualizations from Christian Swinehart. It's not readily easy to tell on mobile, but that free floating duo at the top left is the ending you have to jump to without directions.
MAZE has spawned a number of sites delving into it, huh.
posted by Pronoiac at 11:24 AM on January 11
* MAZE: Solve the World's Most Challenging Puzzle...
* Hyperspace, with Edward Packard just shrugging about being in his own book
* Inside UFO 54-40, and visualizations from Christian Swinehart. It's not readily easy to tell on mobile, but that free floating duo at the top left is the ending you have to jump to without directions.
MAZE has spawned a number of sites delving into it, huh.
posted by Pronoiac at 11:24 AM on January 11
For many months I've been off-and-on working on a front page post about finance writer Daniel Davies. One interesting thing he's done a couple times is write a CYOA-style interactive fiction experience to put you in the shoes of an expert trying to save a country's economy from a crash.
https://crookedtimber.org/2012/02/16/so-what-would-your-plan-for-greece-be/
https://crookedtimber.org/2012/03/07/whos-in-charge-here-by-alan-beattie-a-field-guide-to-maynards/ - an explanation
https://crookedtimber.org/2013/03/19/what-would-you-do-part-2-the-island-of-surpyc/ "Once more, I’m trying to help people understand how policies get made from the inside, and how something that looks like a dumb idea can often be the best choice out of a bad decision set, in the context of the ongoing Euro crisis."
posted by brainwane at 2:24 AM on January 13 [3 favorites]
https://crookedtimber.org/2012/02/16/so-what-would-your-plan-for-greece-be/
https://crookedtimber.org/2012/03/07/whos-in-charge-here-by-alan-beattie-a-field-guide-to-maynards/ - an explanation
https://crookedtimber.org/2013/03/19/what-would-you-do-part-2-the-island-of-surpyc/ "Once more, I’m trying to help people understand how policies get made from the inside, and how something that looks like a dumb idea can often be the best choice out of a bad decision set, in the context of the ongoing Euro crisis."
posted by brainwane at 2:24 AM on January 13 [3 favorites]
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posted by grumpybear69 at 5:53 AM on January 5 [5 favorites]