When Computer Games were on Paper —コンピューターゲームが紙の上だった頃—

1

Somehow, your alarm failed to go off in the morning.  Unless you do something quick, you are going to be late for work. 

Will you:

-Skip your usual morning shower and rush straight to work? (Turn to paragraph 2)

-Call a taxi instead of taking a train, and jump in the shower quickly while waiting for the taxi to arrive? (Turn to paragraph 3)

-Go back to sleep? (Turn to paragraph 4)

 

2

You make it in time for work, but your colleagues look at you in disgust.  Apparently you still smell of alcohol and cigarettes from last night.  Lose 1 Luck point, and turn to paragraph 5

 

3

Feeling refreshed from your shower, you get out of the taxi just in time for work.  Gain one Luck point and turn to paragraph 5

 

4

You are fired.  Your adventure ends here.

 

5

…

 

Welcome to the world of “choose your own adventure” style gamebooks.  Instead of reading the books in order, you have to make choices and explore the world in the book in order to achieve some goal.  I used to love these books when I was a child, and I have started playing them with my seven year old son.  We are currently playing “Forest of Doom” from the Fighting Fantasy gamebook series. 

Rather than making choices about how to get to work, though, we are deciding how to fight monsters such as trolls and vampires, how to avoid death traps, and picking up magical items.  When we fight monsters, we roll dice to find out whether we injure our enemy or our enemy injures us.  We have to be careful not to make too many mistakes or our Stamina score will reach zero, and our character will die.  It is like a computer game played on paper. 

This seems to be a better game for us to enjoy than shogi, since I have fewer things to remember, and my son is less likely to throw a tantrum from losing. 

At least he hasn’t thrown a tantrum yet.  But then his character hasn’t died yet.  I hope he keeps getting favourable rolls of the dice, and doesn’t wake up that sleeping giant.