Your first gamebook (Not the CYOA-lite Your First Adventure)

[a moderator]

Simple enough question: what was the first gamebook you read/played?

I imagine that for many people it'll be The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, but mine was Skyjacked, from the Tracker Books series. Totally different, except for the bit where the later stages of the book are spent trying to find the way through a confusing network of subterranean tunnels. And it's possible to reach an ending where the villains are thwarted (at least for now) but the loot remains unobtainable.

[kieran]

Dave Morris's Knightmare gamebook The Forbidden Gate. Well, actually The Forbidden Gate was the name of the novella which I largely ignored because of the much more interesting thing at the back of the book where you could make decisions that influenced the story and roll dice!

[slloyd14]

Talisman of Death. I got it when I was 7 from a school Christmas fair. I loved it and it started my gamebook obsession.

[scouserob]

(If my memory can be trusted…)

Deathtrap Dungeon from the school library. 💪🏻😀
When my turn to borrow it finally came.
Though I would have read it when one my friends had got hold of it first.

No wonder I was quickly hooked.

[CharlesX]

I actually don't remember.

It might have been Knightmare gamebook number one, which was prosaic and underwhelming.

And it might have been Make Your Own Adventure With Doctor Who, which was very disappointing (all of them - it was a poor series, no exceptions).

I think though it was one of the CYOA (I believe the thread title's intent is to exclude Junior CYOA, although I don't know why as CYOA for Younger readers like CYOA can be well-written as well as enjoyable). Possibly Deadwood City, which I recall being one of the better, even best CYOA. The writing wasn't fantastic but was coherent, clever and exciting. I also enjoyed Knights Of The Round Table, as one of my first CYOA. It was adventurous, intelligent and rich. The illustrations in both weren't bad at all.

I enjoyed some more simple-style gamebooks without dice such as Endless Quest. Like Kieran, I didn't bother reading the story in Knightmare gamebooks - in fact I didn't ever bother, in all the years I owned them. I've no idea if they were well-written & what they were like!

[schlendrian]

Die Ruine, Franz Sklenitzka. In retrospect, it is barely a gamebook, as there are very few actual choices to be made, most just lead you back onto the railroads of the story very soon (it's basically: "Do you want to go on to the goal as quickly as possible or on a more longwinded route?)

Pretty soon afterwards Fabled Lands from the local library.

[a moderator]

Oct 20, 2023 15:54:56 GMT CharlesX said:

(I believe the thread title's intent is to exclude Junior CYOA, although I don't know why as CYOA for Younger readers like CYOA can be well-written as well as enjoyable). 

No, the thread title's intent is to indicate that this is about whichever gamebook was the first one you read, rather than being exclusively for discussion of Your First Adventure, the CYOA-for-toddlers series featuring anthropomorphised animals and (based on the ones I've encountered) only one choice and one ending per book.

The parenthesis in the title is for disambiguation, not exclusion. If there's anyone here whose first experience of gamebooks was a YFA, that book would be just as relevant to the thread as the ones already mentioned.

[a moderator]

Oct 20, 2023 15:54:56 GMT CharlesX said:

Like Kieran, I didn't bother reading the story in Knightmare gamebooks - in fact I didn't ever bother, in all the years I owned them. I've no idea if they were well-written & what they were like!

The stories in the Knightmare gamebooks I've read were pretty decent. At least some of them also contain information that could help with some of the puzzles in the gamebook, so you've potentially been making things more difficult than they need to be by skipping them.

[CharlesX]

Oct 20, 2023 16:31:12 GMT a moderator said:

Oct 20, 2023 15:54:56 GMT CharlesX said:

Like Kieran, I didn't bother reading the story in Knightmare gamebooks - in fact I didn't ever bother, in all the years I owned them. I've no idea if they were well-written & what they were like!

The stories in the Knightmare gamebooks I've read were pretty decent. At least some of them also contain information that could help with some of the puzzles in the gamebook, so you've potentially been making things more difficult than they need to be by skipping them.

As I recall there were one or two names that were essential or very helpful, but seemingly nothing that affected the gameplay choices such as which clue objects or spells to choose or which way to go (everything was fairly generic without 'trick questions', like the TV show). I'm pretty sure I read all the Knightmare gamebooks except the last one.

  Yes, I recall being asked to pass a guard and being told "you should remember his master's name from reading the book, and here's the page number and line to check" and if you don't know the name he kills you. I cheated, of course.

 

[vastariner]

Codebreaker International, one of the Tracker Books. Took me about 40 years to find the prequel...

In period I also got Road Racer, in the bargain bin at somewhere like Woolies, but other than that nothing until IotLK.

[bloodbeasthandler]

Deathtrap Dungeon when it first came out. Got it from the Puffin Bookclub which was introduced into school. Bought because of the cover.

[Per]

My first hypertext adventure was most likely a 14-paragraph tutorial adventure in a Swedish RPG.

First book, almost certainly Warlock.

[CharlesX]

Oct 20, 2023 16:07:52 GMT schlendrian said:

Die Ruine, Franz Sklenitzka. In retrospect, it is barely a gamebook, as there are very few actual choices to be made, most just lead you back onto the railroads of the story very soon (it's basically: "Do you want to go on to the goal as quickly as possible or on a more longwinded route?)

Pretty soon afterwards Fabled Lands from the local library.

As you expect I have not seen or played this gamebook before, is it like You Can Be The Stainless Steel Rat in that there is just the one ending with bad choices merely admonishing you and returning you to the central path?

   I remember reading You Can Be The Stainless Steel Rat as a boy, and being disappointed. While the book series was good escapism, the gamebook was very flat and failed whether as drama, humour, description, whatever. Of course, we had high expectations about gamebooks back in their heyday in the 80s and 90s, these days below-average adventure games are 10-a-penny on streaming and e-books, but it definitely didn't impress.

   Returning to the thread's topic a bit, Your First Adventure sounds like that sort of thing done well, but I had not heard of that series before reading this thread. As for Choose Your Own Adventure For Younger Readers, one which has a number of possible endings, I have only read one or two, but my understanding is it is variable like CYOA.

[petch]

The Magic Path, from the 'For Younger Readers' range of CYOA, ordered from a Weetabix promotion. I'm pretty sure I wasn't even that keen on Weetabix, but the TV ads for it were intriguing enough that I asked my parents to change up my usual sugar-encrusted breakfast cereal of choice just so I could take advantage of the promotion.

It was okay, but not grrreat.

[schlendrian]

Oct 21, 2023 7:42:29 GMT CharlesX said:

As you expect I have not seen or played this gamebook before, is it like You Can Be The Stainless Steel Rat in that there is just the one ending with bad choices merely admonishing you and returning you to the central path?

   I remember reading You Can Be The Stainless Steel Rat as a boy, and being disappointed. While the book series was good escapism, the gamebook was very flat and failed whether as drama, humour, description, whatever. Of course, we had high expectations about gamebooks back in their heyday in the 80s and 90s, these days below-average adventure games are 10-a-penny on streaming and e-books, but it definitely didn't impress.

   Returning to the thread's topic a bit, Your First Adventure sounds like that sort of thing done well, but I had not heard of that series before reading this thread. As for Choose Your Own Adventure For Younger Readers, one which has a number of possible endings, I have only read one or two, but my understanding is it is variable like CYOA.

In contrast, I haven't read Stainless Steel Rat, but yeah, it's probably similar in that the game-aspect is very subservient to the book aspect (I had to look up "admonish", so I learned something through your post).

That said, bad choices don't admonish you, they kill you (as does rolling the wrong number on a d6, because hey, that's always a fun game mechanism, isn't it?). Most other choices are like the first choice in Sword of the Samurai, where you can basically choose on which route you want to reach the hub, only that in Sklenitzka's gamebooks the paths converge much quicker. Sklenitzka is a children's book author and his gamebooks also are basically a story he wants to tell. You can skip some scenes, sometimes you can choose in which order you want to read some scenes, but in the end his story will play out or you will die before it concludes. It really isn't much of a gamebook if you know any real gamebooks, but, back then I didn't, so I was thrilled even by those few choices I had.

(To get this a bit off topic, a couple years ago I analysed one of his other gamebooks, Die Bibliothek, which is worst in that regard, and found out that it features only one choice that doesn't bring you back on the right track within 3 paragraphs or less: Right in the beginning you have a choice whether you want to investigate the mystery of the library or not, and in case of you choosing the latter the book tells you that your adventure is over, you should gift this book to someone a bit braver than you and go on with your boring life.

For your amusement, I will also translate paragraph 104 from Die Bibliothek:

"You leap at your opponent, trying to get the better of him. Roll a die. If you roll

    -1,2 or 3: Your lack in formal combat training means you are quickly overpowered. Turn to 105

    -4,5 or 6: Your opponent's proficiency in combat means you are quickly overpowered. Turn to 105")

[vastariner]

I am not sure Stainless Steel Rat can properly count as a gamebook - from memory there is no game element in it, it leads to the same ending regardless. Just occasional alternative paragraphs from time to time.

[CharlesX]

Oct 21, 2023 11:22:26 GMT vastariner said:

I am not sure Stainless Steel Rat can properly count as a gamebook - from memory there is no game element in it, it leads to the same ending regardless. Just occasional alternative paragraphs from time to time.

Well, that's true, and we could debate about whether puzzle and detective 'gamebooks' do either (I read Usborne puzzle adventures before I read gamebooks, but I agree that they don't count). But the thread title includes Your First Adventure which has only one ending, as has Stainless Steel Rat, with one distinction being Your First Adventure has good writing where Stainless Steel Rat gamebook is poorly-executed, so that was my basis about it.

   I might add what I've written (and indeed what you've written) is opinion. Demian's gamebook review site has a positive write-up, I've no idea if Mrs. Giggles has reviewed it etc.. Demian's gamebooks website mentions some game-esque elements in YCBTSSR such as flipping a coin and getting trapped in loops. 

[a moderator]

Almost a year ago I wrote a post on my blog about gamebooks with only one ending. This is what I had to say about You Can be the Stainless Steel Rat:

Play it once, and it's a moderately entertaining adventure in which you're a rookie in the Special Corps, sent to a prison planet to find a certain mad scientist. Play it again, and you soon discover that the decisions you make are meaningless. For instance, at one point you get to take one of three weapons with you. Immediately afterwards, you encounter an opponent against whom the weapon you chose is of no use. The nature of that opponent varies depending on which weapon you picked, but the plot beat is always the same: you chose 'poorly', and get robbed as a consequence of not having selected the 'right' weapon.



Almost every fork in the narrative is like this. Faced with a binary choice, one option leading to success, the other to disaster, your selection always takes you to the outcome the author has already chosen. And it's not just decisions. Flip a coin (renamed an amphisibenic bipolar determinator in the text because jargon) to determine who wins a contest - the result for heads is identical to that for tails. When captured by the Star Beast, your freedom depending on how well you answer its riddles, wrong answers leave you no worse off than correct ones.



There are a couple of sort-of exceptions, where picking one option leads to being told something like, 'No, doing that would be stupid and doom you. Go back and choose the alternative course of action, you idiot,' but that's not exactly an improvement. The book's interactivity is illusory, and the decisions you make are irrelevant.

Not dissimilar to Die Ruine, going by schlendrian's description, but that bit more railroady because DR does include the possibility of character death.

[nathanh]

Hmm, I don't really remember. Probably a Stephen Thraves one; if I had to guess I'd say Tunnels of Fear or Ghostly Towers.

[schlendrian]

Oct 21, 2023 15:17:14 GMT a moderator said:

Almost a year ago I wrote a post on my blog about gamebooks with only one ending.

While reading your blogpost I was reminded of another "gamebook" from my childhood that fits this description of gamebook with only one ending, though in an entirely different way of anything you mention in the post, and that was Der Palast der Rätsel by Wolfgang Kramer (this is now seriously off topic, so feel free to move it, but it is still one of my first gamebooks and matches the ongoing discussion).

Storywise you are trapped in a palace. Every paragraph is a room with a number and a title, f.e. Room of Discovery and each room has a riddle to solve. That riddle will give you the number of the next room and so on, until you get to the last room and get out of the palace. Unlike regular gamebooks, that means you can basically get from one room to any other room, because if you get a riddle wrong, you will of course get a wrong room number. There's therefore no dead ends and so you can only succeed or give up, so it meets the criterion of gamebook with only one ending, if we can call it a gamebook that is.

And of course, if there is a successful ending, because there is no "paragraph 400" equivalent of a room distinctely labelled as "victory paragraph", rather the book cryptically states that if you enter the last room, you will know that you have succeeded without the book explicitely stating so. I can only guess that means that the right paragraphs form some sort of logical progression where you will know when you have reached the end of that, because back then, the book proved to much for my 12 year old mind and I never achieved much in it. One day after a flea market it vanished from the local library, perhaps one day I will hunt down a used copy, right now it just remains "that mysterious gamebook where I didn't even understand what I was supposed to do"