Choose Your Own Adventures

Books, games, and my next distance learning lesson

I loved Choose Your Own Adventure books when I was a kid. My school library had a big collection of them and I'm pretty sure I read every one. Though I don't recall the plot lines – they did change depending on your choices, after all –  I remember so much of the cover art.

I don't know if it was because it reminded me of Indiana Jones or what, but Mystery of the Maya was one of my favorites. It sparked in me an interest in the Maya that I still have to this day.

Choose Your Own Adventure books are still available; you can look through the catalog at their homepage. The newer editions do not have the same great cover art as the "vintage" books (man, I'm old!), but some of the new titles, such as the non-fiction series called Spies, look pretty cool.

Also, there are two recently released Choose Your Own Adventure board games from Z-man Games, House of Danger and War with the Evil Power Master. They are cooperative games, so you and the people you play with work together to complete the mission. The basic mechanic of the book – choice – is central to the games, too, so each time you play you will have a different experience. I picked up House of Danger when it first came out and I received War with the Evil Power Master in my Easter basket this year.

Along with Choose Your Own Adventure books, I was also really into Dungeons & Dragons Endless Quest Books. I don't know what happened to all of my Choose Your Own Adventures, but I still have about a dozen of my Endless Quest Books, including two that were based on Star Frontiers, D&D's sci-fi cousin.

The first Endless Quest Book I bought was Revolt of the Dwarves.

So after finding some of my old books and playing my new game, I was inspired to create a distance learning lesson based on Choose Your Own Adventure stories.*

Towards the beginning of last school year, I came across a blog or social media post about using Google Forms to create an interactive story. I cannot find that original article – a Google search pulls up lots of options, but none of them is the right one – so I apologize for not citing my sources. Nonetheless, I played around with Forms some more, tried out my new Screencastify skills, and put together this video lesson:

Just like last week's lesson, this one is hard for me to watch. I thought about redoing it before I sent it out, but I tamped down my perfectionist tendencies and went with what I had. When I redo it for future use, I'll take it a few steps further so it's more clear how the final story reads. Hopefully, I'll get some fun stories in my inbox over the next few days.

One last bit of Choose Your Own Adventure news: take a look at Out of Print Clothing's new collection.**

*Read about my history lesson from last week.

**You can also read my blog post about Out of Print Clothing.