Febuary 10th 2018

What is a "Game Book" ?

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 

( Gamebook )

A gamebook is a work of printed fiction that allows the reader to participate in the story by making choices. The narrative branches along various paths, typically through the use of numbered paragraphs or pages. Gamebooks are sometimes called choose your own adventure books or CYOA after the influential Choose Your Own Adventure series originally published by US company Bantam Books. Gamebooks influenced hypertext fiction. Production of new gamebooks in the West decreased dramatically during the nineties as choice based stories have moved away from print based media, although the format may be getting a new lease of life on mobile and ebook platforms. Such digital gamebooks are considered interactive fiction.

In all gamebooks, the story is presented as a series of sections of printed text. Branching-plot novel sections often run to several pages in length, whereas solitaire and adventure gamebook sections are usually no longer than a paragraph or two. At the end of a text section, the reader is usually given a choice of narrative branches that they may follow. Each branch contains a reference to the number of the paragraph or page that should be read next if that branch is chosen (e.g. to go north turn to section 98). The story continues this way until a paragraph or page which ends that branch of the story. In most solitaire or adventure gamebooks, there is usually one "successful" ending, and the remainder are "failures."Branching plot novels, on the other hand, tend to be more concerned with narrative resolution rather than winning or losing, thus often have several endings which may be deemed "successful".

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Gamebooks can be grouped into three families.

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The first is the branching-plot novel, which require the reader to make choices but are otherwise like a regular novel.

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The second type is the Solitaire adventure (an example of this is the Tunnels and Trolls series of gamebooks), which combines the branching-plot novel with the rules of a role-playing game, allowing the game to be played without a Gamemaster but may require the purchase of separate manuals.

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The third type is the Adventure gamebook (examples of these are the Fighting Fantasy and Lone Wolf series of gamebooks), which essentially combines the two: a branching-plot novel that comes complete with a simple role-playing system unique to the book (or series).

Gamebooks are typically written in the second person with the reader assuming the role of a character to experience the world from that character's point of view (e.g. 'you walk into the cold and dark forest').