The book with a multiplayer first-person shooter inside

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QUESTING KNIGHT PATRONS!
Adam Baulderstone
Adam Waselnuk
Alex Dzuricky
Craig Chouraki-Lewin
Craig Marais
Dwayne Boothe
fickle
Grant G.
John Case Tompkins
Jose Trujillo
Kevin Harris
Kris Redmond
Kurtis Bright
Paulie
Ricardo Sedan
Robert DeLuca
RollStats
SonOfSofaman
Steven Taylor
Stewart Mohammadi
That One Guy
Zix

This video description makes use of affiliate links, which help support the Questing Beast channel at no cost to you.

[philipramirez]

This gives me hope that one day I will find a book that I can play Doom on

[Bluecho]

This is blowing my mind. It's a Choose-Your-Own First Person Shooter, that is Multiplayer(!), but also has concurrent Single Player Modes (that are different depending on which book of the pair you're playing). AND it not only has multiplayer, but has a Campaign Mode.

All while being 90% full page illustrations. And it all has to work together in a coherent way within itself, AND with its partner book.

The amount of work that must have gone into not only producing this book, but doing so in a way that gives replay value, is astounding. They could have just made this a simple game that wears thin after a few runs. But they went the extra mile to give the player their money's worth.

[RogerTheil]

As a game designer, this concept is actually my deepest dream come true. I'm thrilled someone has actually realized this style of gameplay.

[HitsujiMamoru]

When you want to make a videogame, you don't know how to program, but you know how to draw.
This needs to be reprint or get a spiritual successor. Mind-blowing.

[ericjome]

There is also a Scarlet Sorcerer and Emerald Enchanter pair in the Combat Heroes series.

[primusinterpares]

It's crazy how creative some people are. This is awesome!

[jaksantio]

The saddest part of this video is that dear Joe Dever is no longer with us, and all known available copies of these books have been bought out. The few that remain go for HUNDREDS of dollars, and I'm sure that this video has had an impact on their desirability. Shame I only learned about them now or I would’ve spared little expense to get my hands on all 4. P.S. the other 2 are called "Scarlet Sorcerer" and "Emerald Enchanter"

[vladt]

The second 'Combat Heroes' pair ("Scarlet Sorcerer"/"Emerald Enchanter") is basically a fantasy version of 'Aces of Aces' with magical flying ships (right down to the 8 way view points and pseudo-hex map movement scheme); the solo adventure in both books is a map crawl where you are trying to find the magic gem your recently deceased mentor has hidden before the Deathlord finds it and conquers your homeland - the adventure has a time limit, where you need to find the gem within (I think) 30 in-game days as you travel the map, looking for clues as to the gem's location.

As an aside, the creators of the 'Way of the Tiger' gamebook series (Mark Smith & Jamie Thompson) also created a 'One on One' series of books called 'Duel Master', which were more like a traditional text-based gamebook (vs the graphic based ones like 'Combat Heroes', 'Lost Worlds', etc), but used several Time based mechanics and code words to track a Player's location and progress;

• "Challenge of the Magi" involved dueling mages travelling through a series of dimensions based on the five colours of Magic to collect resources and to ambush their rival ( before M:tG was even a thing) ;

• "Blood Valley" involved one player being a slave (a Barbarian, a Thief or a Priest ) that has been released by the other player (who plays the cruel Archveult, a demonic/dragon-kin like being who rules the Valley and who conducts an annual hunt for their own pleasure), with the slave trying to either escape the valley or gather enough resources to turn the tables on their hunter and destroy them;

• "The Shattered Realm" involves the players being the heads of two kingdoms fated by prophecy to go to war, with one annihilating the other - the first part being you and the other player trying to establish alliances with the neighbouring kingdoms (to get them to add their troops to your standing army), and the second part being the actual battle which takes place on a square grid);

• "The Arena of Death" involves the players being Gladiators in the Arena of Mortavalon, who alternate between stalking each other in an above ground colosseum (divided into 4 areas), and a massive underground complex filled with traps, threats and potential allies who can assist the gladiators.

Each set except "Blood Valley" have rules for solo play (though it's usually nothing more complex that rolling a die to if the "other player" has a specific code word or not)

If you (and your kid) feel up for a slightly more complicated challenge, I recommend looking out for the 'Duel Master' series on the usual second hand book places (just make sure you're getting Books 1 *and* 2 of each set if playing two player). 👍

[KeterHirameki]

I had no idea this existed and it's absolutely incredible, I can't even begin to imagine how hard it must've been for the writers to make something like this.

[adamjchafe]

This is such a wild concept. Game designers brains blow me away sometimes!

[drewdederer]

Lost Worlds was the largest block of these. Most were based off of Grenadier miniatures, but they also did Battle Tech (with somewhat different rules). There were also Ace of Aces books for Star Wars. AND there is also the Japanese "Queens Blade" series of books (which came about when the lost worlds idea was carried overseas by Flying Buffalo). Where you can not only injure your opponent, you can damage their clothing (and dignity). This system was biggest in the 80s and early 90s, but it keeps coming back..

[fakebadpeople]

This looks like the type of thing I would have tried to make as a kid before giving up after three days. I was enchanted by books that function differently than most books growing up, and this is still very much up my alley now, but would have been especially so back then. Maybe I'll look for some copies at some point and try the game with my brother. I bet he'd love this!

[EmperorSmith]

Lone Wolf game books were my jam as a kid.
Really excellent elevation of the 'choose your adventure' format - where you would pick skills and abilities at the start that would give you options to move to different pages if you had that skill or ability.

[mrben]

This is the kind of thing I wished existed as a free to play browser game. Like... I don't think I'm going to purchase these books and muddle through them. But if it was all digitally streamlined so it tells you what options you have and all you have to do is make decisions and click buttons, that would be a fun time. I'd click around in the browser based version of this for sure.

[inthefade]

I'd love to see this digitized and made into something you could play online, just so I could experience it.

[justingain]

Growing up in the late 80s/early 90s and seeing how choose your own adventures were popular - this would’ve blown my mind if I could find it. Thanks for the video. This is awesome!

[tychozzyx]

Ace of Aces! I grew up on that game (simplified variant) and I remember mapping out all the moves in it and realizing they all fit onto a hex map. The pages ended up being every orientation of two planes within three hexes of each other with every other result being LOST with another neutral start if you both go looking for each other.

The rules also mentioned that you could play more than a duel given more books and bookmarks so that you saw a different page for each enemy, but had to take the same action against each

[Romanticoutlaw]

the fact that you call out numbers rather than roll them in combat is interesting.. I feel like you eventually wind up memorizing number combinations so if you hear your opponent start to say like, "seven" you say a number that goes favorably with it for you. Saying things at the exact same time is difficult to both do and enforce

[krounos]

There are also digital versions of these on Project Aon, which also contain all of the Joe Dever Lone Wolf books officially endorsed by the man himself before his passing.

[collectivesartori]

Early Lone Wolf rpg game books were the most complex of their type in reproducing ad&d style gaming for one in a paperback form. Chasm of Doom was a monster, dark complex and easy to die. Phenomenal interactive fiction. Incredible work of the imagination.