Demian's Gamebook Web Page |
[List All Series] [Show Series Images]
These books were one of the most successful American series to follow in the footsteps of Choose Your Own Adventure and were the first of many interactive book offerings to be published by TSR. Each adventure is based on one of TSR's role-playing games or other licenses, with most taking place in one of the worlds of Dungeons & Dragons but others using the settings of Gamma World, Star Frontiers, Top Secret or even the worlds of familiar pulp literary characters Conan and Tarzan. Despite their role-playing origins, the books completely avoid game mechanics, with no dice-rolling or character statistics to be found. There is, however, a certain touch of role-playing to be found in the fact that each book casts the reader as a specific character with a defined past rather than following the more common gamebook tradition of attempting to keep reader identity as generic as possible. More complex gameplay was later introduced in the Super Endless Quest books (which were quickly renamed the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Gamebooks) while simplified stories for younger readers were released in the Fantasy Forest line.
The Endless Quest books were released in two distinct series; the first thirty-six books were released during the eighties and featured fairly large type and a format identical to that of the Choose Your Own Adventure books. This format was carried over to two spin-offs (the gimmicky Endless Quest Books: Crimson Crystal Adventures and the romance-oriented HeartQuest books) as well as the Lazer Tag Adventures series. The final thirteen books were released in the nineties and differed from the predecessors in several notable ways: their text was smaller, they featured text sections numbered independently from the actual pages (thus following the layout scheme used by Fighting Fantasy rather than Choose Your Own Adventure though still retaining the rules-free simplicity of the latter series), the settings were based on a different set of games (mostly Advanced Dungeons & Dragons campaign settings, but also the DragonStrike board game and the Amazing Engine RPG), and the volumes themselves were not assigned official numbers, though they are numbered (starting with thirty-seven) in the list below for convenience.
Advertisements
Endless Quest series from Dragon #95
Thanks to Jim Oaks for the image!Articles
1 Contre 1 Gamebook Advertisement (English translation)
This is an unofficial translation (by Demian Katz) of the French interactive ad from the back of several Donjons & dragons, niveau avance books.
No comments available.
Demian's Gamebook Web Page (c)1998-2010 Demian Katz.