You see kids, in the old days people played RPGs on tables with dice, or on a large cleared-off section of floor with dice and lots of snacks that seem good at the time but are regrettable on the drive home.
Failing this, we had to resort to drastic measures. One of these was supplied by Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks, which were simplistic enough for children, yet complex enough for young adults who needed a RPG fix.
The advantage of the FFG was that you could “roleplay” BY YOURSELF (Which is a bit of a contradiction…if someone roleplays and noone sees it, do they really say “Huzzah!”???). But the limited dice-rolling and keeping of statistics, inventory, etc. provided for some aspect of the role-playing tabletop experience.
At a time when your computing options regarding games were EXTREMELY limited, these books served a useful purpose. At least, when they were fairly well-written. They could be read multiple times because you “chose” the path that the story took as you read. To a very limited extent, you were “playing” your character, deciding his (or her) fate.
Some of the books were very clever indeed, while others (especially after the first 21) were very, very bad. And no need to worry…unlike the traditional “Choose Your Own Adventure” books, there was plenty of combat and chances to come to an untimely end in FFG’s. In fact, it was extremely difficult to “win” any of them on the first try, and some were pretty d@mn near impossible.
Useful today mainly as pieces of nostalgia given the state of interactive computer gaming, but not without their charms and still potentially interesting to anyone that doesn’t WANT to be part of a multi-million person online “community”.
-Puppy >.< Yip!