I recently ordered a copy of S John Ross’ Ring of Thieves solitaire gamebook adventure thanks to
a 35%-off Lulu holiday sale (alas, ordered before they announced the
50%-off hardcovers sale...). When combined with memories of immersing
myself in game books – solitaire or otherwise – over the holidays
during my misspent youth, I can’t help having solo gamebooks on my
mind.
Frequent readers know how much I love
solitaire game adventures, especially those included in roleplaying
game rulebooks to help teach both the system and setting. Solo
gamebooks offer a complete, self-sufficient play experience without
reliance on or eventual transition to a full set of game rules in a
vast, tome-like rulebook. They can scratch some of the itch for
traditional roleplaying activities – a lone hero trying to overcome
numerous obstacles in an adventure – but might seem limited by
their streamlined game mechanics and programmed format (though that
still provides a good degree of replay value as players explore
different choices and meet various ends...). I realize the programmed
game experience isn’t as freeform or unexpected as some other solo
roleplaying game options available today, particularly those
pioneered by a small but dedicated core of solo gamers exploring new
tools and techniques. Like roleplaying games, solo gamebooks balance
rules and story, though they employ printed text to describe
situations and streamlined game mechanics to resolve conflicts. I’m
not saying one kind is bad and the other good – people (even
designers) have their own tastes, projects have their own parameters
– but the product and the experience it delivers (intentionally or
otherwise) can vary between storytelling and game.
The pros and cons of solitaire
gamebooks when compared with the group roleplaying experience remains
open for future exploration and debate here at Hobby Games Recce;
this particular article looks at my own experiences with and
impressions of solo gamebooks. The programmed story format has its
roots in the extremely popular Choose Your Own Adventure
interactive children’s series creators R.A. Montgomery and Edward
Packard made popular in the 1980s (although Flying Buffalo had
already pioneered programmed solitaire game adventures as early as
1976 with Rick Loomis’ Buffalo Castle). The Choose Your
Own Adventure books relied completely on reader choices, with no
die rolls or stat comparisons to determine the outcome of uncertain
situations (such as combat). Some stories provided clues on
strategies, emphasizing the difficulty or danger of some routes; but
the results of choices sometimes seemed arbitrary, with few clues to
lead readers along the correct path that didn’t lead to a nasty
end.
Games Workshop founders Steve Jackson
and Ian Livingstone were among the first to merge these two solo
formats – programmed story and programmed game adventure – into
solitaire gamebook with their Fighting Fantasy series,
starting with what might be the very first effort in this field, The
Warlock of Firetop Mountain, in 1982. To resolve combat, readers
rolled dice and added a skill value for their character and their
opponent, the lower one taking damage until a stamina score reached
zero...at which point they would proceed to the next programmed entry
(victory over the foe) or perish in combat. The basic concepts
survived in numerous variations for many subsequent gamebook systems,
each with a different level of complexity. Most had some degree of
bookkeeping, with players tracking health or other stats on a
character sheet page, not a terrible prospect in itself, and
necessary for some semblance of game elements to liven up an
otherwise standard programmed pick-a-path story. Some added magic and
skill systems, equipment lists, or even experience systems to port
characters into other books in the series. Some books included maps
as references as well as illustrations to bring to life scenes and
characters described in the text. A few even incorporated systems for
generating random number results like dice – odd numbers in the
corner of the pages or dice results at the bottom of pages to
randomly flip to, or a “Random Number Chart” to blindly poke at
with a pencil to generate a result – and at least one actually
packaged a set of six-sided dice with the books.
Despite all these trappings of
traditional roleplaying games, gamebooks don’t usually require the
table space of a full-on game adventure, with the rulebook nearby,
the scenario spread open, a character sheet and pencil, and a handful
of dice. Many solo gamebooks still require pencil and dice, but often
combine rules, scenario, and character sheet into a single compact
book (though some of us, myself included, might indulge in separate
character sheets and even maps to enhance the game experience). The
small-book format enables one to curl up on the couch, jotting down
notes with a pencil and occasionally rolling dice.
Here’s an overview of the solitaire
gamebooks I’ve personally enjoyed over the years, with my brief
impressions and recollections:
CYOA/Endless Quest: I
have over the years enjoyed the Choose Your Own Adventure
books and TSR’s Endless Quest books (the company’s attempt
to take advantage of the original series’ popularity using popular
game settings from D&D and its other roleplaying games).
My brother had several Choose Your Own Adventure books I
borrowed, but the Endless Quest books really caught my
interest given my immersion in D&D and the books’
foundation in the setting and game fundamentals. I fondly recall
borrowing a friend’s copy of Return to Brookmere, a title I
recently picked up for my own library at a used book store. My own
collection of much-read Endless Quest books includes the D&D
themed Dungeon of Dread, Dragon of Doom, Raid on Nightmare Castle,
plus Villains of Voluturnus and Hero of Washington Square,
which satisfied my teenage interest in the Star Frontiers and
Top Secret game worlds. I’ve since bought a few new Choose
Your Own Adventure titles (particularly the classic first one,
The Abominable Snowman) and found several at used book stores.
I still occasionally pick up a Choose Your Own Adventure or
Endless Quest book for my nightly reading and try making my
way through it at least once, if not several times given the numerous
endings. In my earliest days of gaming I tried writing my own
programmed interactive fiction, in a science fiction setting; I’ve
not seen it for years (if the handwritten pages still exist at all),
though I fear it’s a terrible piece of writing infested with errors
common to my early high school writing style.
Fighting Fantasy: As
a teenager I discovered the first book in the Sorcery!
series, The
Shamutanti Hills,
on the science
fiction/fantasy shelves of my supportive, local bookstore. It
was one of those series the perceptive owner noticed I’d started,
so he made sure he stocked subsequent titles so I could explore them
without interruption. At first I wandered through the setting,
keeping a map to track my movements and
offer guidance for future forays (a practice ingrained by playing
D&D);
I also kept a separate character sheet so I wouldn’t mar the book.
After playing several times as a warrior, I reversed-engineered the
spells (as I didn’t have the separate Sorcery!
Spellbook) by following the different
programmed outcomes. I spent more time than I should have meeting
grisly ends in the sequel, Kharé – Cityport of Traps;
I became so frustrated I started writing (and never finished) a
programmed adventure to actually go around the city. I stumbled
through the final two books, though I quickly became frustrated at
their high lethality. Several aspects of these
gamebooks remain with me today; the evocative John Blanche artwork,
the rich setting, and the innovative spell system, which gave spells
three-letter names players had to memorize, and provided several
choices – some of which were close but false names, and hence
ineffective as spells – any time the sorcerer had an opportunity to
use magic. I later picked up a few other
odd Fighting Fantasy
gamebooks, which I enjoyed, though they didn’t have the
spellcasting option for characters, nor did they have the same
evocative artwork or setting continuity I’d enjoyed in Sorcery!
(The
Fighting Fantasy
series
recently expanded from print books to interactive aps people can play
on
their
pad devices.)
Sagard the Barbarian #1, The Ice
Dragon: I picked this up around the time I discovered
Sorcery! mostly because D&D co-creator Gary Gygax
was a co-author of this gamebook. It remains remarkable among solo
gamebooks in that the rules sat at the back of the book instead of
the more traditional and intuitive front. Curiously, although
published by Pocket Books (instead of Gygax’s TSR) with no D&D
trade dress on the cover, the map depicted in the book directly place
the adventure in Gygax’s Greyhawk setting. I vaguely recall several
attempts to complete the adventure – I’ve no idea if I actually
did – and despite it’s famous author it made such a feeble
impression on me that I didn’t bother following up with any of the
sequels.
Tolkien Quest – Night of the
Nazgul: One of the few Middle-earth solo gamebooks Iron Crown
Enterprises (ICE) published remains remarkable not only for its
setting but for two interesting and rarely imitated
innovations...using a map keyed to particular entries to track travel
and initiate encounters and the indication of time spent for various
actions (in the advanced rules). It’s also one of the few rulebooks
that includes a section for using the original roleplaying game rules
with the gamebook (“Using MERP With This Gamebook”). The
adventure incorporated elements from Tolkien’s Middle-earth into
the solitaire adventure to immerse readers in the setting. The series
ran afoul of licensing disputes when Tolkien’s publisher deemed the
gamebooks fell under its domain as “literature” instead of ICE’s
approved license for games.
Fabled Lands –
The War-Torn Kingdom: One of two such books I picked up when
they released in the mid-1990s (the other being Cities of Gold and
Glory), this gamebook came with an interesting pedigree. Authors
Dave Morris and Jamie Thomson had done some work for the Fighting
Fantasy series and other British game industry projects. Artist
Russ Nicholson, a frequent contributor to the Fighting Fantasy
series and overall prolific game industry and fantasy artist,
provided evocative, crisp line art reminiscent of John Blanche’s
work for Sorcery! It also came with two dice stuck to the
cover in a molded plastic package; I carefully peeled mine off, but a
perforation would have allowed me to punch through, remove the dice,
and even store them there when finished. Unlike other solo gamebooks
– typically produced as trade paperbacks – these gamebooks came
in an almost-square eight-inch by nine-inch format. I played through
both books, but they never seemed to capture the same sense of epic,
original setting as Sorcery! (for me, anyway).
Ring of Thieves: S. John
Ross’ solitaire adventure might not come with fancy maps or
illustrations, but it tells an engaging story set in a medieval
fantasy city complete with a kidnapping, a magical, meddling ring,
and a formidable band of thieves. Ring of Thieves has thus far
proved impossible for me to complete successfully, easy on the
game-related bookkeeping, and entertaining in both content and tone.
It remains perhaps the only solo gamebook to incorporate a complete
game system, the author’s excellent Risus: The Anything RPG
system. Although the full copy of Risus occupies eight pages
at the back of the adventure, all the rules readers need to play the
gamebook appear on one page describing the main character, the
halfling thief Lucas Marks, right up front. For anyone interested in
trying out Risus (available as a free PDF), Ring of Thieves
serves as a great solitaire adventure demonstrating how the game
works in a particular genre. I’ve had the PDF for Ring of
Thieves for years – it’s available for free on the Cumberland
Games website – and I even printed it out and played it a few
times. The Lulu sale on paperbacks was just what I needed to order my own professionally printed copy.
Alas, many of these solo gamebook
series have become out-of-print and unavailable over time; some sit
on musty used bookstore shelves, others might live on in the shadowy
realm of internet PDF files. Those still in print include the Choose
Your Own Adventure line, the Fighting Fantasy books, and,
of course, Ring of Thieves.
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