Category Archives: Text Adventures

The very first published role-playing game was the original Dungeons & Dragons boxed set, with its three 36- to 40-page booklets (Men & Magic, Monsters & Treasure, The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures) presenting the idea that RPGs should go big. Of course, the second RPG was Tunnels & Trolls, which fit everything into one 42-page booklet. Still the belief has been that RPGs need to go big, with the average length of main books about 250,000 words. So it may surprise you to learn that RPGs can be less than 0.1% that […]

One out of five adult Americans with online access (90% of the population) have ever read any gamebooks, such as Choose Your Own Adventure, Fighting Fantasy, Lone Wolf, or solitaire RPG adventures such as the Tunnels & Trolls series. These books definitely reflect the 1980s, when publication peaked: those 35-44 years old (kids in the 1980s) are most likely to have ever read a gamebook (39%), compared to just 18% of those 45-54 years old and 30% of those under 25. While classic gamebook lines are being relaunched (e.g., Endless […]