Gamebook gear: how do you read gamebooks?

Curling up with a good book is lovely, but it’s quite different from getting the old gamebook out. Reading a gamebook is more involved, more tactile than just flipping pages. You need at least a pen, paper, and dice – even if you’re using digital ones. Sometimes the preparation for reading a good gamebook is almost as involved as the actual reading.

While we love games over here at QuestForge, we rarely have time to sit down with a physical gamebook. That’s part of why we decided to digitize DestinyQuest: we want to be able to take the experience on the road so we can play wherever we have a device handy. But when we do have downtime, here’s how we like to read gamebooks.

Yuliya: I read gamebooks the way I cook…I like to have all my ingredients laid out on the table and ready before I dive in. I prefer physical dice (it’s such a satisfying feeling!) but I usually use a dice-roller on my phone instead (Chris kind of always forgot to bring the dice for our gamebook meetups…!). I do need an actual paper and pencil for my character sheet, preferably one I hand-made beforehand. Background music is a must, but only music without words.

Chris: I go into gamebooks very… unprepared. I scribble things down on paper if I have to, but otherwise I just read and use whatever’s on hand. I like dice (I apparently am accused of kidnapping them, so I might as well live up to the title) but when I’m in a hotel room with a copy of Heart of Ice it’s far more likely that I’ll have a phone with a dice app than any actual dice.

We did some asking around, and found how other fans enjoy a gamebook.

Nathanh writes on the Fighting Fantazine forum: “I can’t imagine playing it away from a computer, but then I can’t imagine playing any dice-based gamebook away from one.”

Jeffrey Dean told us on Facebook: “I keep two small scraps of paper for temp bookmarks (IE: cheating) and a large sheet of folded paper if notes are necessary along with my trusty mechanical pencil.”

And over on Twitter, Graham Hart says: “Pen, paper, dice (kept in a pouch), backpack, helm, battle-axe… Actually, just pen, paper, and dice.”

What’s your gamebook kit?

Yuliya

Yuliya handles marketing and writing at QuestForge, and is the self-appointed chief of keeping Chris sane (despite Chris's insistence that he is the sane one).