NOW LIVE! -- Presents for Goblins: Festive Resources for 5E on Kickstarter! A festive softcover of holiday-themed D&D 5E resources, including the short adventure 'Presents for Goblins'.

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="talien" data-source="post: 7703252" data-attributes="member: 3285">Dungeons & Dragons has always been a group activity, likely due to its roots in wargaming community.  Co-creator Gary Gygax's early games were so large that he cited groups of 20 or more players at a time.  As a hobby, this is perhaps one of the biggest barriers to anyone who wants to play -- finding other people to play with.  When <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/content.php?3560-Flying-Buffalo-s-Legacy-Part-2-Tunnels-Trolls#.WBYGeyQVFQI">Ken St. Andre launched Tunnels & Trolls through Flying Buffalo Incorporated</a>, he hit on a solution that has been widely mimicked since: the solitaire adventure.[ATTACH=full]113558[/ATTACH][h=3]A Brief History of Gamebooks[/h]Gamebooks are essentially hypertext, interlinked text that references each other -- a technique that is the foundation for the HyperText Markup Language (HTML) and the World Wide Web.  The difference is that, due to the nature of the printed word, hypertext books must have all the content available at once.  Thus gamebooks were born, in which the reader chooses a path and then the reader flips to a page as instructed by the book.  This continues until the reader reaches a satisfactory conclusion ("winning" the gamebook, although there can be multiple win conditions) or fails and the gamebook ends. Because a gamebook is static, the player can of course go back to the beginning and try again, avoiding paths that led to failure the first time. Historically, reference books were the most frequent "self-navigation" books <a href="http://overmental.com/content/a-brief-history-of-the-interactive-gamebook-39512">prior to the arrival of gamebooks</a>:The concept of gamebooks was around for some time <a href="http://turntopage4.blogspot.com/2009/11/completing-history-of-game-books.html?_sm_au_=i2Vg2SV4ngHTR2D7">before the role-playing solitaire gamebook arrived</a>:The thread of gamebook development picks up in 1941:It wasn't until Rick Loomis, founder of Flying Buffalo, realized that players needed a way to play Tunnels & Trolls without a dungeon master that he hit upon the role-playing gamebook.[h=3]The Buffalo Arrives[/h]Loomis lays claim to the first solo RPG adventure, <a href="http://www.flyingbuffalo.com/bcintro.htm">which predated choose your own adventures</a>:It's telling about how Buffalo Castle works: running away from monsters is an option, as is taking the exit.  The adventurer can essentially leave the dungeon at any time, collecting his experience points and gold as he leaves.  Games vs. Play distinguishes this type of gamebook as <a href="http://gamesvsplay.com/a-brief-history-of-gamebooks/">British rather than the less-interactive American style</a>:The claim that role-playing elements for a gamebook are distinctly British is disputed by (American company) Flying Buffalo's claim of Buffalo Castle, which was published in 1976 and predated The Warlock of Firetop Mountain by several years.[h=3]The Future[/h]Gamebooks largely ended around 1987 and their decline was no doubt due in part to the rise of computer games and interactive fiction, <a href="http://gamesvsplay.com/a-brief-history-of-gamebooks/">which allowed writers to recreate the experience faster</a>:Gamebooks and computer games weren’t so much locked in a Darwinian struggle for survival as they were <a href="http://overmental.com/content/a-brief-history-of-the-interactive-gamebook-39512">complementary and interconnected entertainment forms</a>:Gamebooks largely went digital, <a href="http://geekandsundry.com/geeky-history-choosing-your-own-adventure/">befitting their hypertext roots</a>:There are some things that those of us who played gamebooks may not miss.  "American" gamebooks were brutally unforgiving, regularly visiting fates worse than death on the protagonist.  And of course, since the reader made the decisions that led to the protagonist's fate, he or she likely felt at least partially responsible.  The end results can be seen at the <a href="http://youchosewrong.tumblr.com/">You Chose Wrong Tumblr</a>, which is filled with screenshots of the "wrong" choice in gamebooks.Surprisingly, an offshoot of gamebooks in the form of audio-based games have experienced a resurgence in popularity thanks to a new technology on the horizon: the Amazon Echo. We'll cover this new incarnation of the solo gamebook in the next article.</blockquote>

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