May YOUR stamina never fail!

Greetings mythics!
If you’re an avid reader of fantasy like myself, you’ve probably stumbled across the genre of branching narrative novels, nowadays more commonly known as gamebooks. For me, I fell in love with the genre through Fighting Fantasy’s first book, The Warlock of Firetop Mountain by Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson. But what the elves’ ears is a branching narrative novel and what is a gamebook? Is there a difference?

According to the Scottish Book Trust their definition is:
“Branching narrative fiction features immersive, game-like stories where the reader is cast as the main protagonist and can chose the direction the story moves by making choices and turning to the appropriate page to read the outcome.”

To my surprise the origins of the genre is far older than I had realised. A lot older! Consider The Consequences! by Doris Webster and Mary Alden Hopkins is considered to be the first branching story, and was published in 1930. That’s fifty-two years before The Warlock of Firetop Mountain in 1982! But unlike the massive success of the Fighting Fantasy series, the branching narrative idea didn’t catch on when first published. This may seem like a surprise now considering the many popular gamebook series besides the Fighting Fantasy one: Lone Wolf, Destiny Quest, and Fabled Lands spring to mind.

What is interesting, is the differences between Consider the Consequences! and the approach taken later on by the Choose Your Own Adventure books of the 1970s, both branching narrative stories rather than gamebooks:

1. Written in third person instead of second person. Instead of becoming a protagonist, the reader is making choices for a separate character.
2. Instead of one protagonist, it follows three, each getting their own third of the book, and their possible stories and relationships overlap in a love triangle.
3. Not aimed at kids and doesn’t draw on fantasy subject matter, instead presenting “real-life” adult dilemmas like whether to refuse the responsible but boring suitor your parents favor or whether to risk your job by reporting on your boss’ financial shenanigans.
   
   

Source: www.intfiction.org

And more to my surprise the genre’s earliest comeback was through education rather than entertainment. By the end of the 1950s, the branching narrative method was used as a training mechanism and so programmatic learning books were born. The Arithmetic of Computers, published in 1958, the first of the TutorText series, and according to Gideon in the article The Life and Death of Gamebooks, indicates why this subject may have been why gamebooks were not created sooner. Which, strangle enough, is the precise method of how gamebooks are written, through programmatic thought – choices and variables.

For the genre to switch from the training world of educational purposes to the entertaining realm of storytelling took twenty years. In the 1970s adventure series such as, Trackers, Tunnels & Trolls, and Choose Your Own Adventure (with honourable mentions of Mission To Planet L, (1972), State of Emergency (1969) and Lucky Les (1967), exploded into bookshops showing how the branching narrative mechanic can be exciting if used within the context of a story where readers connect and engage in the practical and moral decisions they had to make.

By the early 1980s the gamebook genre was well established, however, it wasn’t until the Fighting Fantasy’s The Warlock of Firetop Mountain that the genre broke through into a bigger, wider, and more mainstream audience. Ian Livingstone said at first the book wasn’t selling well and it wasn’t until they read a sample out on Radio 1 that sales shot up! And the rest is history as they say.

But what of the differences? The main one I can see is branching narrative stories are pure choice based adventures whereas gamebooks have added a combat system to the story element and thus turning the story partly into a game. Before the reader begins the adventure they are asked to roll dice to determine various stats such as Skill, Stamina, and Luck. Readers (or players?) use these scores to test their abilities, by rolling dice, to overcome challenges and if successful, enable them to progress. The combat system is representative of role playing games, with Dungeon & Dragons launching only a few years previously, the blend of story and game was seemless.

So where is the gamebook genre now? After the success of the genre in the 1980s and 1990s the popularity dipped massively. This could have been due to the rise and the ever increasing sophistication of video games. The gamebook genre didn’t disappear and is enjoying somewhat of a resurgence with new series continuing the gamebook tradition. Jonathan Green (author of seven Fighting Fantasy gamebooks) with his ACE Gamebook series, the new Definitive Editions of Joe Dever’s Lone Wolf, Michael J. Ward’s DestinyQuest, Victoria Hancox’s gothic horror gamebooks, James A. Hirons’ Paranormal Hero series, Savage Realms series, Oliver McNeil’s The Storymaster’s Tales, and ‎Usborne Publishing’s Adventure Gambooks, to name a few, are all breathing new life into a historic genre than is not far from celebrating 100 years of existence. Let’s raise our flagons to that!

What about you? What was your first gamebook that hooked you into the immersive genre? Let me know in the comments!

May magic be with you, always.

Loquacious McCarbre
Storyteller Extraordinaire

References:

Scottish Book Trust:
https://www.scottishbooktrust.com/articles/engage-reluctant-writers-using-branching-narrative
Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamebook
Renga in Blue:
https://bluerenga.blog/2019/06/06/brief-history-of-gamebooks
Int Fiction:
https://intfiction.org/t/1930-s-consider-the-consequences-the-first-book-to-offer-a-choice-based-branching-narrative/64048
Gamebooks:
https://gamebooks.org/Item/11406/Show
Awesome Lies Blog:
https://awesomeliesblog.wordpress.com/2021/08/27/the-life-and-death-of-gamebooks
Jonathan Green – Gamebook Author:
http://jonathangreenauthor.blogspot.com

James A Hirons – Gamebook Author:
https://jamsplace.co