Played any good books lately...

This is the Fortieth article in a permanent column for Stroud Arts that appears in the Stroud American. The mission of these articles is to inform, educate and inspire you, the reader, to Make Art Happen in your life and the life of our community.

Last week we looked at reading books, but this week we will look at the lesser known subgenre of novels; the Interactive Novel, also known as Interactive Literature.

Let us travel back to a time before the Cellphone, the Internet and the home computer.

To an age undreamed of, when the Wikipedia was commonly known at the Encyclopedia, and the precursor to the Programmed Interactive Roleplaying Video Game, the Interactive Novel, was created.

An Interactive Novel is one which is written in the second-person point of view, with the reader assuming the role of protagonist and making choices that determine the main character’s actions and the plot’s outcome.

One of the earliest series, created in 1976 and written for children ages 7-14, was the ‘Choose Your Own Adventure,’ or ‘Secret Path Books.’

In this series, each separate novel allowed the reader to take on the role relevant to the adventure, such as a private investigator, mountain climber, race car driver, doctor or spy.

The next series to enter the field of interactive literature was the ‘Fighting Fantasy’ series in 1982.

This series distinguished itself by mixing the choose your own adventure style storytelling with a dice-based roleplaying element included within the books themselves.

This new component made the books more engaging as the reader now could win or lose to various degrees, and longterm strategic planning became a requirement for victory.

The majority of the titles followed a fantasy theme, although science fiction, post-apocalyptic, superhero, and modern horror gamebooks were also published.

The next series, first published in 1984, to enter the growing market of Interactive Literature took the concept of the sole gamebook into a new direction and created a novel series that focused on one character and setting while expanding his adventures in over 32 gamebooks.

The ‘Lone Wolf’ series introduced the reader to Lone Wolf, the last of the Kai warriors and the fictional world of Magnamund, a world where the forces of Good and Evil fight for control of the planet.

Now you could take the protagonist from his first adventure as a neophyte warrior, through an epic quest in which he would grow in experience and skills from one adventure to the next.

Your choices in one book carried over to the next book and gave the reader the satisfaction of experiencing how they could control the growth of their Lone Wolf character and by extension, the world they adventured in.

The target audience for the Interactive Novel was always a niche market, and by the mid 2000’s, with the rise in quality of RPG Videogames, the market faded away leaving the published novels to become rare items to find in a used book store or on eBay.

However, with the recent worldwide lockdown, small, independent publishers have begun to reawaken the Interactive Literature format with ‘Micro-Chap Books’ which can be found online.

These gamebooks emphasize the game component over the reading component but are still fun ways to engage your imagination while you are alone.

In a quiet place, you can still Make Art Happen.