Genres
Gamebook
A work of printed fiction that allows the reader to participate in the story by making choices, with the narrative branching through numbered sections.
A gamebook is a work of printed fiction that allows the reader to participate in the story by making choices: the text is divided into numbered sections that are not intended to be read in order, and each section ends with a choice directing the reader to another section. The form runs from branching-plot novels such as Choose Your Own Adventure (from 1979) to adventure gamebooks such as Fighting Fantasy (1982) and Lone Wolf (1984), which add rules, dice, equipment and health stats to build solitaire role-playing adventures, typically written in the second person. The format boomed in the 1980s, declined sharply in the 1990s, and its descendants survive as digital interactive fiction.
For web-serial writers the adventure gamebook is the print ancestor of fiction with visible game mechanics: the tracked stats and dice rules that turned a reader into a player are the same contract LitRPG runs on today, mapped in how to write LitRPG.