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| # ? Jun 4, 2024 02:51 |
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CYOA books have been a staple of pen and paper gaming for decades! Whether you first experienced the genre through a Goosebumps CYOA book, or one of the other big series' from the '80s onwards. Here are some of the big names, that I know of: Endless Quest  Fabled Lands series (which also appears to be on Steam, now?)  Fighting Fantasy series  Goosebumps 
Major Isoor fucked around with this message at 02:34 on Mar 29, 2023 |
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Mar 29, 2023 01:05
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I read the hell out of the Choose Your Own Adventure series from the 80s. To this day I remember the name Edward Packard, who wrote like half of them
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Apr 1, 2023 05:18
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I bought that at a school book fair when I was like 5 or 6. The school librarian tried to talk me out of it because it was for older kids, but it had a sparkly cover so I knew it was good. I was disappointed when I received regular Goosebumps books as gifts because it meant I had to read the whole loving book instead of dying after 5 pages.
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Apr 1, 2023 05:36
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Hot Stunt posted:I bought that at a school book fair when I was like 5 or 6. The school librarian tried to talk me out of it because it was for older kids, but it had a sparkly cover so I knew it was good. I was disappointed when I received regular Goosebumps books as gifts because it meant I had to read the whole loving book instead of dying after 5 pages. Oh yeah, I'd forgotten about how sparkly some of those Goosebumps CYOA covers were!  And yeah they were good. Just about blew my mind as a kid, about how many different routes, etc. there were. I always wonder if there are any good (as in, for someone who's not 10y/o  ) CYOAs these days. I've heard from a friend that the Fabled Lands series has made a bit of a resurgence in recent years. I think I've still got the first one (War-Torn Kingdom) somewhere, so I'm wondering if it might be worth revisiting sometime, to see if it still holds up.
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Apr 1, 2023 08:16
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I love how random the old CYOA books were. We had one about exploring a haunted mansion where depending on which random death you got, you could be killed by a ghost, eaten by aliens, arrested by the police, and god knows what else. It was never about uncovering a single mystery or solving a single adventure by making choices, you got a completely different book with a completely different theme depending which way you went.
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Apr 1, 2023 15:53
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vyelkin posted:I love how random the old CYOA books were. We had one about exploring a haunted mansion where depending on which random death you got, you could be killed by a ghost, eaten by aliens, arrested by the police, and god knows what else. It was never about uncovering a single mystery or solving a single adventure by making choices, you got a completely different book with a completely different theme depending which way you went. Oh yeah, some of the plotlines were bizarre! It's odd that they'd try to include so many random plots. I would've thought that they'd focus on one, and just allow you to tackle it in different ways. Then use these other random plots in different books
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Apr 1, 2023 22:00
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the cretan chronicles, in which you play theseus' brother traipsing through ancient greek mythology, were basically just a big long list of gotchas aimed at classics students pretty fun
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Apr 1, 2023 22:40
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Major Isoor posted:Oh yeah, some of the plotlines were bizarre! It's odd that they'd try to include so many random plots. I would've thought that they'd focus on one, and just allow you to tackle it in different ways. Then use these other random plots in different books I guess the idea was so that you wouldn't already know the ending, to let you reread the book more than once and have a different experience? Like based on the idea that if there was a mystery CYOA but the murderer was always the same, you're not going to have as good a time solving it when you already know the answer? But the effect always came off way more random than that to me, like which door you choose to explore changes whether the house is really haunted or not.
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Apr 1, 2023 23:48
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now this is how u make a thread
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Apr 1, 2023 23:51
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i wish i still had my old goosebumps cyoa books, they were so goofy and fun. i read em like a million times trying to see every single page without "cheating" i remember one that had you stuck in an endless loop instead of giving you a proper 'you died' which i thought was extremely badass when i figured out what was going on
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Apr 1, 2023 23:58
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vyelkin posted:I guess the idea was so that you wouldn't already know the ending, to let you reread the book more than once and have a different experience? Like based on the idea that if there was a mystery CYOA but the murderer was always the same, you're not going to have as good a time solving it when you already know the answer? But the effect always came off way more random than that to me, like which door you choose to explore changes whether the house is really haunted or not. Yeah that's true, on both counts. I guess they could've altered the plot a little bit to keep it fresh. Since yeah, as-is it seems like there's something totally different haunting each individual room in the haunted house, for instance. Either way, it made for a fun/silly read I suppose!
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Apr 2, 2023 02:45
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This made me remember there was one CYOA with an ending that was basically "Your space ship is headed into the sun, you have no way to change course and there's nothing you can do as everything slowly gets warmer." I always though that was a pretty wild, cruel ending.
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Apr 4, 2023 10:43
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Oh, I just remembered - there was a Mario CYOA I played back in the day. I looked it up then and I think it was the first in the series - "Double Trouble". (No idea there was a series TBH. Never saw any of the others) It was alright, but very weird. Lots of different endings, which weren't just standard "you died" ones. Like, from memory one had you/Mario being turned into a koopa, while another changed you so you have three heads. So yeah, according to the internet there were a whole heap of these Nintendo Adventure Books. A heap for Mario, as well as some for Zelda. Has anyone else read them? Very weird
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Apr 4, 2023 22:47
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There was a CYOA book I read in the early to mid 90s. Looking back on it, it was British, probably published anywhere from the late 70s to the late 80s. It was fantasy and written for kids. It wasn't a dice-rolling gamebook. I know it involved getting your pick of a magic item, and one of them turned the user into a phoenix (it was the last page ending iirc) and another one caused you to walk and talk in reverse. You could squander you magic item in dumb ways. Anyway, I can't remember the title or author. I've tried in the various "help me remember this thing" threads around the forums, and now I'm trying here.
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Apr 4, 2023 23:08
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Major Isoor posted:Oh, I just remembered - there was a Mario CYOA I played back in the day. I looked it up then and I think it was the first in the series - "Double Trouble". (No idea there was a series TBH. Never saw any of the others) oh yes! those one were before my time but when i was a kid i got this novelization of Super Mario Advance from The Scholastic Book Fair itself! it functioned sort of like a strategy guide and had a couple of full colour illustrations of the characters in the middle. i always thought it was so cool, i wish i still had it.    
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Apr 4, 2023 23:12
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I found CYOA books kind of disturbing as a kid because of all the different ways your 12 year old protagonist could die, like getting bit by a rattlesnake in the desert, or sentenced to death by the intergalactic governing body, etc. but then as a kid i would always turn to the pages at the end to see all the endings so i kind of got them all at once out of context My fave adventure books were the ones with the puzzles though.  Danger at Demon’s Cove Usborne Puzzle Adventures
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Apr 6, 2023 18:29
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underrated/unmentioned cyoa picks - the race forever actually, two races to forever - the book is split in half such that you choose between dirt rallying and tarmac rallying, and if memory serves, as long as you survive one race (like, you can lose or have a mechanical failure which would be THE END in any other book) they give you the option to move on to the other format. it's obviously THE END if you get eaten by leopards or drive off a cliff of course  return to brookmere mountain of mirrors and some of the other endless quests were probably a better book and a better adventure, but this is the one that really felt like a proper dungeon crawl. look at this elf, he'd kick the poo poo out of link and take his place in the zelda games  eye of the dragon this was my first proper gamebook, so it's toeing the line of not being a straight CYOA, but look at that kid ready for ancient greek gym class. had way gnarlier interior illustrations, like this coral guy  
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Apr 6, 2023 21:21
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Hmm, just wondering - has anyone read/revisited any CYOAs that hold up for adults? I've been playing through Fabled Lands here which has been pretty fun. I'm just wondering about playing through one on my own/offline though, alongside FL. Preferably something fairly long (or in a series where you can carry across progress, ideally. Not required though) so that I don't just blitz straight through it. How are the more recent CYOA(tm) books for example, if anyone has tried them? I've admittedly been rather out of the loop in recent times, but diving back into Fabled Lands has given me the itch! I quite like the 'CYOA with character sheet' style, after coming back to it with TTRPG experience under my belt
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Apr 27, 2023 07:45
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I remember checking out Fabled Lands from the library as a kid and being blown away by how I could go anywhere and do anything. I think it was my first experience with open world gaming as a concept. They're releasing them on steam right now with fancy graphics and whatnot, but there's something special about doing it with a book and an increasingly messy piece of paper with all the crazy stuff you've gotten up to. There's a goon-made published CYOA called Sword of the Bastard Elf which I remember buying when it had a thread, it was definitely a product of its time though Major Isoor posted:Hmm, just wondering - has anyone read/revisited any CYOAs that hold up for adults? I've been playing through Fabled Lands here which has been pretty fun. I'm just wondering about playing through one on my own/offline though, alongside FL. Have you looked into Lone Wolf? You can carry through each book and they were aimed at an adult audience. There's reprints out now, an unofficial android version to play that does the dice for you, and an extremely long-running thread for a goon playthrough: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3830605
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Apr 27, 2023 09:01
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| # ? Jun 4, 2024 02:51 |
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i do not remember the plot of a lot of these books, but the aesthetic of the cover of these books hexwren posted:the race forever
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Apr 27, 2023 13:07
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