gamebook

Strike of the Eagle (Sote) is a modern war boardgame, incorporating many contemporary game mechanics such as hidden orders, fog-of-war, diceless combat, and a card-driven system. As with many card-driven games, a card play starts a turn and a card can be played in three different ways: for bonus unit movement, for a combat bonus, or as a historical event. Giving three different ways to play a card ensures that a player never gets a bad hand because it is up to the player to make creative combinations.

The hidden order mechanics are implemented via order discs. Each order is disc is chosen secretly and placed on top of units, then flipped and resolved simultaneously; this way a player can bluff and be unpredictable. As with other block games, your opponent sees the blank back side of your units, creating fog-of-war; as well, the blocks can rotate 90 degrees to track hit points, a mechanic pioneered in Quebec 1759. Finally the combat is diceless: the combined combat strengths of attacking and defending units are compared on a chart. You can add two free randomly drawn cards to modify the combat result or pay with specific cards from your hand. Thus you can pay resources to hedge your bets or press your luck.

I barely have time to sleep. I am working late into the night, staying one step ahead of my students. Few months ago Daniel Cho and his wife Michelle, instructors at Language Transit, approached me to create an exciting summer program for them. They wanted a program that would set them apart from their competition. I was already doing research on using gamebooks for a college level game design course. As it turns out, my idea works well with younger students as well. Writing is not something that students look forward to, especially during summer vacation. I had to create something compelling that can keep students focused -- something epic, something heroic...

The Hero's Journey: Write and Publish a Branching Path Book class is a one month long, gamified, creative writing class for students, 4th to 9th grade. It is currently in session at Language Transit, an after-school program in Arcadia, California. I am focusing on the game system design, while co-instructor Michelle Cho, an experienced writing instructor, is handling the the academic writing portion.

Seventh Sense is a gamebook reader by David Olsen of the Project Aon, a Lone Wolf gamebook fan volunteer group. Seventh Sense uses Project Aon's digital depository of Lone Wolf gamebooks and adds rich features such as bookkeeping, savepoints, dice rolling, commentaries, and more. As you recall Lone Wolf is an award winning which-way gamebook series by Joe Dever. After winning the 1982 Advanced Dungeons & Dragons tournament at the Origins Game Fair in Baltimore, Dever left the music business for gamebook design and writing. He wrote Flight from the Dark in 1983, which would become the first out of 28 Lone Wolf gamebooks, spanning more than 14 years. Flight from the Dark sold 100,000 copies in the first month, while the entire Lone Wolf series sold over 9 million copies in 18 languages until it went out print in 1988. However, the entire Lone Wolf series is available online via Project Aon with Dever's blessings, and books 1-17 are being reprinted by Mongoose Publishing with bonus materials.

The Party of One series is a third party supplement for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Beginner Box (Beginner's Box). All three gamebooks are mini solo adventures designed to teach the basic Pathfinder RPG system, introducing players new to paper RPGs. Since the Beginner's Box only includes a six-page, 23 section, solo adventure, the Party of One series fill the need of a full Pathfinder RPG tutorial.

The Party of One series comprises of:

• BB1: Kalgor Bloodhammer and the Ghouls through the Breach –- The undead break into the dwarven halls. It's up to you and your warhammer to repel the intruders and find the cause of the breach.
• BB2: Elgar Fletch and the Dark Army –- You must be stealthy, cunning, and sometimes forceful as you travel secretly to warn the capital of an incoming invasion. Can you save your love and the capital?
• BB3: Alosar Emanli and the Creatures from the Fallen Star –- A falling star brings strange creatures into the forest. This is no game but a true rite of passage as a young druid.

Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Beginner Box is Pazio's clone of Wizards of the Coast's Dungeons & Dragons Starter Set, commonly known as the "Red Box". Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Beginner Box or simply, the Beginner Box is a complete RPG introduction kit designed to welcome players new to paper RPGs and the Pathfinder system. Like the Red Box, the contents include dice, maps, counters, character sheets, rules for players and GM -- everything you need to run a full campaign in one box. The components are shinier, thicker, more colorful, and generally better than the components of the the Red Box. The cardboard stand-up pawns are awesome. Miniatures make the game so much better, yet painting, collecting, and storing minis is expensive and time consuming. The included thick and colorful cardboard stand-up pawns of heroes and monsters are an excellent substitute for miniatures.

Where's Waldo? is a series of illustrated hidden object gamebooks by British author and illustrator, Martin Handford. Martin Handford's gambebooks pioneered the popular casual game genre, hidden object games. Wally, the official British name is localized as Waldo (North American), Charlie (German), Holger (Danish) and differently in numerous other languages.

The Where's Waldo? in Hollywood book and the app both have adjustable difficulty levels. At the easiest difficulty you look for Waldo in his bright red striped shirt and bobble hat. If you want to challenge yourself, you can look for his friends, other characters, or small objects. The game is challenging because Waldo is surrounded by hundreds of colorful characters who are in comical situations. The digital port is superior to the book because it offers competitive play, light animation, and a hint system. In Where's Waldo? in Hollywood, Waldo travels to different big-budget film sets where hundreds of fans, actors, and crew members are crowding in elbow-to-elbow fashion.

Armor Attacks: The Tank Platoon is a serious gamebook created as "An Interactive Exercise in Small-Unit Tactics and Leadership." The designer and author is colonel (retired) John F. Antal, the former commander of a tank battalion in South Korea. He is better known in the game industry as the Executive Producer at Gearbox, responsible for historical accuracy for the Brothers in Arms series.

Temple of the Spider God is a gamebook published as an iOS universal app, seventh in the Gamebook Adventures series by Tin Man Games. They are setting a new trend of publishing gamebooks solely as digital books, rather than as digital reprints of paper gamebooks. Designer and author Jonathan Green, while new to the Gamebook Adventures series, has authored several Fighting Fantasy gamebooks. Temple of the Spider God (TOTSG) centers around discovering the source of parasitic mind control spiders that threaten to invade land of Orlandes. You battle pirates, sea monsters, spiders, and other fiends in the search for the source of evil. The gamebook uses a light RPG system similar in complexity to the Lone Wolf series. Thus you have stats like hit points, combat strength, and an inventory system. Furthermore the system uses standard six-sided dice for random number generation.

Gamebooks are back! Since we reviewed the Lone Wolf and Fabled Lands series, they are both back in print. Furthermore, at the Apple app store, there are around ten gamebook apps, over half being new gamebooks, others being digital version of classic gamebooks like Fabled Lands and Fighting Fantasy. What really convinces me of the second coming of gamebooks is that a major British publisher, Gollancz, is publishing Destinyquest: The Legion of Shadow (Book One) by Michael J. Ward. At 534 pages, Destinyquest: The Legion of Shadow (LoS), is the biggest gamebook in history and Book Two will be even bigger. It is as thick as a phone book, roughly four or five times longer than the average gamebook. The first 1,800 copies are self-published but Ward is working with Gollancz to get a second print of Book One with bonus materials printed, while simultaneously writing Book Two for the fourth quarter of 2012.

Dungeons & Dragons Starter Set, or commonly known as the Red Box, is a revision of the the Dungeons & Dragons Set 1: Basic Rules printed in 1983. The Red Box is a complete kit with rules, dice, maps, counter and everything else one needs to play a basic version of 4th edition Dungeons & Dragons (D&D).

What I am primarily reviewing is the the Players Book, one of two book in the Red Box. The Players Book is a solo pick-your-path gamebook that is designed to teach character generation, combat, skill checks, and the UI of D&D. The gamebook plays like the first adventure of a computer RPG, designed to show the player the environment, basic rules, and the UI.