The book with a multiplayer first-person shooter inside 

Subscribe to the newsletter for a chance to win a copy of Ace of Aces!: bit.ly/TheGlatisant Check out Dark Places & Demogorgons on Kickstarter: bit.ly/DPaDKickstarter Get White Warlord here: amzn.to/3dYYzlq Get Black Baron here: amzn.to/3EafPir Get them on eBay: ebay.us/g9yL99 Patreon: bit.ly/QBPatreon

This gives me hope that one day I will find a book that I can play Doom on

This is blowing my mind. It's a Choose-Your-Own First Person Shooter, that is Multiplayer(!), but also has concurrent Single Player Modes (that are different depending on which book of the pair you're playing). AND it not only has multiplayer, but has a Campaign Mode. All while being 90% full page illustrations. And it all has to work together in a coherent way within itself, AND with its partner book. The amount of work that must have gone into not only producing this book, but doing so in a way that gives replay value, is astounding. They could have just made this a simple game that wears thin after a few runs. But they went the extra mile to give the player their money's worth.

As a game designer, this concept is actually my deepest dream come true. I'm thrilled someone has actually realized this style of gameplay.

When you want to make a videogame, you don't know how to program, but you know how to draw. This needs to be reprint or get a spiritual successor. Mind-blowing.

There is also a Scarlet Sorcerer and Emerald Enchanter pair in the Combat Heroes series.

The saddest part of this video is that dear Joe Dever is no longer with us, and all known available copies of these books have been bought out. The few that remain go for HUNDREDS of dollars, and I'm sure that this video has had an impact on their desirability. Shame I only learned about them now or I would’ve spared little expense to get my hands on all 4. P.S. the other 2 are called "Scarlet Sorcerer" and "Emerald Enchanter"

It's crazy how creative some people are. This is awesome!

The second 'Combat Heroes' pair ("Scarlet Sorcerer"/"Emerald Enchanter") is basically a fantasy version of 'Aces of Aces' with magical flying ships (right down to the 8 way view points and pseudo-hex map movement scheme); the solo adventure in both books is a map crawl where you are trying to find the magic gem your recently deceased mentor has hidden before the Deathlord finds it and conquers your homeland - the adventure has a time limit, where you need to find the gem within (I think) 30 in-game days as you travel the map, looking for clues as to the gem's location. As an aside, the creators of the 'Way of the Tiger' gamebook series (Mark Smith & Jamie Thompson) also created a 'One on One' series of books called 'Duel Master', which were more like a traditional text-based gamebook (vs the graphic based ones like 'Combat Heroes', 'Lost Worlds', etc), but used several Time based mechanics and code words to track a Player's location and progress; • "Challenge of the Magi" involved dueling mages travelling through a series of dimensions based on the five colours of Magic to collect resources and to ambush their rival ( before M:tG was even a thing) ; • "Blood Valley" involved one player being a slave (a Barbarian, a Thief or a Priest ) that has been released by the other player (who plays the cruel Archveult, a demonic/dragon-kin like being who rules the Valley and who conducts an annual hunt for their own pleasure), with the slave trying to either escape the valley or gather enough resources to turn the tables on their hunter and destroy them; • "The Shattered Realm" involves the players being the heads of two kingdoms fated by prophecy to go to war, with one annihilating the other - the first part being you and the other player trying to establish alliances with the neighbouring kingdoms (to get them to add their troops to your standing army), and the second part being the actual battle which takes place on a square grid); • "The Arena of Death" involves the players being Gladiators in the Arena of Mortavalon, who alternate between stalking each other in an above ground colosseum (divided into 4 areas), and a massive underground complex filled with traps, threats and potential allies who can assist the gladiators. Each set except "Blood Valley" have rules for solo play (though it's usually nothing more complex that rolling a die to if the "other player" has a specific code word or not) If you (and your kid) feel up for a slightly more complicated challenge, I recommend looking out for the 'Duel Master' series on the usual second hand book places (just make sure you're getting Books 1 *and* 2 of each set if playing two player). 👍

Lost Worlds was the largest block of these. Most were based off of Grenadier miniatures, but they also did Battle Tech (with somewhat different rules). There were also Ace of Aces books for Star Wars. AND there is also the Japanese "Queens Blade" series of books (which came about when the lost worlds idea was carried overseas by Flying Buffalo). Where you can not only injure your opponent, you can damage their clothing (and dignity). This system was biggest in the 80s and early 90s, but it keeps coming back..

This is such a wild concept. Game designers brains blow me away sometimes!

I had no idea this existed and it's absolutely incredible, I can't even begin to imagine how hard it must've been for the writers to make something like this.

Lone Wolf game books were my jam as a kid. Really excellent elevation of the 'choose your adventure' format - where you would pick skills and abilities at the start that would give you options to move to different pages if you had that skill or ability.

Finally we can run Doom in a book

This looks like the type of thing I would have tried to make as a kid before giving up after three days. I was enchanted by books that function differently than most books growing up, and this is still very much up my alley now, but would have been especially so back then. Maybe I'll look for some copies at some point and try the game with my brother. I bet he'd love this!

This is the kind of thing I wished existed as a free to play browser game. Like... I don't think I'm going to purchase these books and muddle through them. But if it was all digitally streamlined so it tells you what options you have and all you have to do is make decisions and click buttons, that would be a fun time. I'd click around in the browser based version of this for sure.

Growing up in the late 80s/early 90s and seeing how choose your own adventures were popular - this would’ve blown my mind if I could find it. Thanks for the video. This is awesome!

I'd love to see this digitized and made into something you could play online, just so I could experience it.

Ace of Aces! I grew up on that game (simplified variant) and I remember mapping out all the moves in it and realizing they all fit onto a hex map. The pages ended up being every orientation of two planes within three hexes of each other with every other result being LOST with another neutral start if you both go looking for each other. The rules also mentioned that you could play more than a duel given more books and bookmarks so that you saw a different page for each enemy, but had to take the same action against each

There are also digital versions of these on Project Aon, which also contain all of the Joe Dever Lone Wolf books officially endorsed by the man himself before his passing.

That is really freaking cool that someone figured out how to make a multiplayer book! As an amateur game designer for both board games and video games I think I need to track down some copies of these kinds of books.

the fact that you call out numbers rather than roll them in combat is interesting.. I feel like you eventually wind up memorizing number combinations so if you hear your opponent start to say like, "seven" you say a number that goes favorably with it for you. Saying things at the exact same time is difficult to both do and enforce

Joe Dever was probably the best author to ever work in the field of Choose-your-own-adventure books. I grew up on his Lone Wolf books. What a genius!

Early Lone Wolf rpg game books were the most complex of their type in reproducing ad&d style gaming for one in a paperback form. Chasm of Doom was a monster, dark complex and easy to die. Phenomenal interactive fiction. Incredible work of the imagination.

My teens absolutely loved the Lone Wolf series, but I didn't know these amazing books existed. Thanks so much for highlighting their features, what an innovative concept.

Fascinating! Also so much b&w line art I'm drooling

The fact that this is a really complex version of one of those interactive computer games where you click to choose your direction, but its multiplayer... and all in a book

Takes me back. A friend and I played these during a few school lunchtimes. Short-lived really, because I remember running Palace of the Silver Princess later that term - a couple more kids had been interested in what we'd been playing, so it opened up a chance to play D&D at school. I'd totally forgotten about the books though. Thanks for the memory.

Lost Worlds implemented a picture book combat system as well. Lots of character choices.

This is hands down the most interesting thing I’ve seen in a while! That fact it’s fully coherent aswell and looks kinda fun makes this even more amazing! Thanks for sharing these with us !

Woah, thats amazing! Hats off to the game designers who managed to create such a thing. Having the other player move and correctly portraying that on the pages of the book is really amazing!

I never thought a book like these existed. What an amazing idea!!

I remember some choose your own adventure books that took dice and had you track inventory. Pretty fun stuff.

This is really similar to the Star Wars battle books that I have seen! In those it is a Tie Interceptor vs an X Wing with each having their own unique maneuvers

I found one of these in my primary school library (around 1988 or something), and could not for the life of me figure out how it worked, no matter how much I was busting to play it. The pages looked so awesome, but I just had no idea! Now I learn it's basically a multiplayer game requiring two books! Hahaha! Cheers. Great to see it again. :D

I thoroughly enjoyed watching this. You did an amazing job explaining the mechanics and how these books work. I was not expecting it to be that in depth!

This Video is doing some NUMBERS!!! I hope that means you'll cover the sequal books, Emerald Enchanter & Scarlet Sorcerer...

I only know of the Magnakai Lone Wolf series from this author and could only buy a few books back then... Didn't know he had more series out there, even today. It's my first ever experience in knowing about such a roleplaying game in book form as well.

I still have a 1 on 1 adventure game book "Dragon Wand of Krynn" that is almost identical to this. Looks like it was published in 1987. I also have three AD&D adventure gamebooks that are essentially choose your adventure but with stat sheets and dice.

Well, I guess I need to add these to my wishlists...also don't forget Emerald Enchanter and Scarlet Sorcerer!

Already backed Dark places and Demogorgons! These kind of books show off how crazy dedicated people can be; The sheer amount of notes that had to have gone into creating the books boogles the mind. It's literally paper computing, a fully functioning game. There are definitely a lot of factors in why we don't really see this kind of stuff anymore, but I think the sheer amount of time required to make it and the low visibility this kind of stuff has are some of the biggest reasons. I totally can see some people who'd probably go crazy making these kinds of books if they were just free to do that

This is crazy. Truly a work of art.

This is amazing. What a work of art. I really like how rolling a d20 is just two players shouting a number from 1-10 and adding it together. That’s such a fun idea. I hope more modern ttrpgs pick it up. Thank you for sharing!

What a cool idea. I can hardly imagine how they originally mapped out all the pieces and kept all the pages straight.

Omg. Thank you so much for sharing and appreciating this! Used to play these with my brother. We called them “white knight, black knight.” Unfortunately, when I tried to google them years later I couldn’t remember the original titles. Now you’ve found them for me! Wonder if bro is up for a game?

As a librarian I must acquire these at all costs.

Lone Wolf was an inspiration for me to get into d&d with my friends. Probably wouldn’t have otherwise.

You could take a look at the two new Fighting Fantasy books - Shadow of the Giants by Ian Livingstone and Secrets of Salamonis by Steve Jackson Secrets of Salmonis is very very innovative and really worth playing, as it has lots of ideas you could pick from for a city based DnD campaign.

Now I want to see speedrunners going through the single player campaign and see how fast they can read and flip through pages.

I've seen Choose Your Own Adventure books before but this is a really innovative way to put books in kids's hands. Also, I see inspiration from games like Dungeon Master and other old school first-person dungeon crawlers. (Legend of Grimrock is a modern example, try it!)

I cannot find these for sale ANYWHERE! Ugh this got me so excited and my dreams were dashed away shortly after. I’m so jealous of anyone who has them just from growing up with them.

I turn around and see the White Warlord book behind me! My brother has the Black Baron one. We loved playing them back on the day. I keep wanting to Discord chat with him and play them, and maybe I finally will! I am also a huge fan of the solo adventure books. I currently own all but one of the ancient TSR CYOA books (the first Tarzan book is impossible to find without paying some greedy bastard $300USD for some reason). Marvel comics in the early 2000s came out with a comic series of combat comics similar to the ww/bb and ace of aces books which are also awesome.

With laminated things, use wet erase, as dry erase ink will eventually bond with an stain the lamination.

That this even exists is fascinating. I'm not sure it would have been exactly to my taste but what an absolute treasure!

the planning that went into designing this is really impressive

Highly suggest reading through Lone Wolf from Joe Dever. Had the full set as a kid and still remember the whole series.

I've had a few game books in the days of old... The concept of multiplayer books just seems so amazing to me!

There's also a second set of books in the same series, Scarlet Sorcerer and Emerald Enchanter, in which the 2-player game is aerial combat in magic skyships (possibly somewhat like Ace of Aces, which I've paged through back in the day, but don't own). The solo games in this set consist of flying over segments of a landscape / map, trying to discover the location of some magic Power Crystal. My White Warlord/Black Baron books have a different cover, but the inside looks identical to the ones in the video. Possibly UK vs US versions?

That's the most unique thing I seen in a while! When I was a kid, there were books called "Book in which you are the hero" (Livre dans lequel vous êtes le héros), which apparents itself a bit with this concept. Tho, it was not PVP, and you actually had to read your way through the story, make choices... Which could be fatal to the story. It was fun.

This is such a cool idea Ben. I would totally buy this. I kinda wish someone would make a modern version as a D&D minigame or something. You could even do a scifi version with lazguns and vibroswords or lightsabers. I wonder how it would play with 3 or 4 people on a slightly bigger map?

This is the most amazing thing I've ever seen OR will ever see, period.

holy crap, i think i had one of these. i vaguely remember the art, and have faint memories of trying to play this with my friend in fifth grade, but never really figuring it out. wouldnt surprise me, as i bought all the lone wolf books too

Wow, what a blast from the past. My best friend through school had both of those sets (Combat Heroes and Ace of Aces). So much fun. Over the Reich and Achtung Spitfire! are basically computer game versions of Ace of Aces that came out in the 90s, also loads of fun. He also had a similar set that I can't for the life of me remember the name of. It was a PvPvE system where one player starts off as this OP dragon lord thing (I'm pretty sure called the Archebald or something), and the other player is a captive who has been released to be hunted down for sport. The captive gets a few free turns to make their escape while the other player uses the time to set traps, gear up and gloat. Then the chase is on, except the play area is significantly larger and more varied and there are environmental hazards and beasts that will attack both players. The goal for the captive is to escape the lands or find good gear and level up enough to kill the hunter, the Archebald has to track down the captive and kill them before they escape or get too powerful. IIRC it kind of plays similarly in that if the captive kills a monster then when the hunter reaches the same spot they're told to go to a different page that says the monster has already been slain, so they know they're on the right track. They're both also playable solo. Then I found the sister set to that one in an old book store, that I also can't remember the name of. They were also PvPvE except the scope was a lot broader and the goal was for each player to negotiate with nearby societies and raise an army large enough to defeat the other player in an epic battle.

I LOVE the Lone Wolf series. Found a ton of them like 20 years ago in a store and played them all a dozen times.

The fact that the author needed to illustrate each page to follow the same structure as the rest and it the fact it's hand-drawn is incredibly impressive. It might seem simple but each image nails the visual style of medieval books. I love this concept and these books are amazing works of art if you ask me.

Never heard of this before. Wild, creative stuff! Thank you for introducing me to this.

I had a similar book when I was a kid, you were dropped into an arena with a maze beneath it and the two players were supposed to stop at key pages and check if the other was in the same room, if so there was a combat system through which you could fight one another. Neat to see someone talking about a similar set of books in 2022.

When the RU-vid algorithm actually works it brings wonderful gems like this video. You got a sub from me, congratulations on getting over 500k views in nearly 2 weeks more than your drawing video did in 5 years. Can't wait to see more of your content!

As a computer science student I really like this concept, it's like if the book was the memory/program and you the player/processor. It also reminds me of a book a friend and I used in the elementary school's library, it was about a knight in a dungeon or something like that, the cover had a skeleton and the book was a couple inches thick, you needed to play with a couple of dice, pencil and paper.

This is an insane concept! Would really like to see a playthrough

This reminds me of a fantasy roleplaying game book I used to have when I was younger, it was called Wizard of Firetop Mountain, and you had to roll a pair of dice to progress, or combat enemies.

I played this in college! I loved it. I had started a small cult for these types of games in my friend group.

Joe Dever is a genius, Lone Wolf and World of Lone Wolf was my favorite series as a kid. Tabletop but you didn't even need a dice (random number chart in the back of the book). So many good twists and turns fascinated me and I didn't even mind the few times I got taken out because it was an excuse to do it all over again. This doesn't surprise me, but sheesh Mr. Dever, your awesomeness deserves more love and attention, thanks Questing Beast for showing these off. There is Lone Wolf on Steam also.

Pretty sure I'm never getting a copy now.🤣 I picked up White Warlord on a trip to Kmart with my mom...at the same trip I got Def Leppard's Hysteria. I would love to see a company put these as phone apps one day.

Reminds me of another series of books called "1 on 1". It was a similar idea but in more of a standard gamebook format. It was made by TSR so also had some D&D elements.

I kinda feel a bit smarter when i know about something that Ben does not hahahaha. Yeah, those books are amazing, and so was Joe Dever, he will forever be missed. I highly recommend his gamebooks.

This completly blew my mind, not in my wildest dreams I could have thought something like this was even possible for a book

6:55 A large figure 8 has proven to be a very popular 'simple deathmatch' map in quake 2 and 3, and unreal tournament. Nice convergence there :D

Love this! Please do the Lone Wolf series next. Also, if you want to read a mysterious, atmospheric, immersive story-based puzzle book, read Maze by Christopher Phillips. Trust me, it's amazing.

I remember being in 3rd grade and reading books that you the reader made choices on how the story turned out, and would tell you to turn to a specific page depending on which choice you make and each choice can lead you down a totally different story and ending. Loved them.

Muito maneiro esse Dungeon crawler em um livro, lembra Migth & Magic.

There's some nostalgia for real. Loved all of Joe Dever's stuff, very creative designs and stories. The Lone Wolf stuff is available on apps these days.

Ace of Aces also had a dungeon version with several different characters that all worked together. The way it worked was you exchange your character books but kept a card related to your character that had your moves.

Funny .. Who would have thought of something like this... amazing! When I was a kid (I was 7-8 years old back then), I made paper games for myself because there was no chance to get even a PS1, not to mention a PC. I took 2 sheets of paper, in one I cut a square in the middle, leaving a small strip for the figure that was moving around the "map". On the second piece of paper, I drew the level of the game (I dreamed of playing half-life then or gta because I could only read about them). Then the first sheet of paper was put on top of the second and I was moving it around and pretending to play. I even managed to transfer it to 3D because I made the levels in a tic-tac's box, but the character had to be a ball of paper. It's amazing that someone had such a brilliant head to bring the idea of paper games to the level of a book fps with multiplayer

That is awesome. I love the randomization system for the bow.

Imagine a competitive scene where the books are memorized and two people are just screaming numbers at each other.

I got the Bounty Hunter: Shootout at the Saloon that has the same concept. Quite fun to play especially after a few drinks.

I remembered these books. It was so much fun and I'd gotten lost in my own world reading/ playing this.

I work on a big fishing boat every summer, this is gonna be a fun passtime with the crew

So cool! I've never had the opportunity to play D&D stuff, but this looks fun! I remember my grandma had this old electronic D&D game where you'd press buttons and put up little plastic walls

I couldn't think somebody would have talked about these again. Nice review!

I had these books :) Also Emerald Enchanter and Scarlet Sorcerer. My school would sometimes do a book sale, so that's how I got them. I lost them when my mum threw out all my toys and books in the late 90s (including all my Star Wars toys that would now be worth a fortune).

As a kid I could never find White Warlord, but I wanted to play this so bad! I actually had copies of the other two books in this series, where you play as fighter jet wizards - not a joke, seriously. One was called Emerald Enchanter... I think the other one was Scarlet Sorcerer. Played it all the time with my friends. The Emerald Enchanter looked somewhat Mexican on the cover of the book, so we started calling him Spanish Fly. True story!

This is absolutely mind-blowing to me. Maybe i'm just stupid but i can't comprehend this concept, yet a i am totally in love with it.

I had some of these books growing up. I’d forgotten about them completely. This is amazing!!

My Dad found these books and gave them to me and my sister. We were going to learn the rules but never did. This video is a great learning tool and I’m definitely going to try it out now

I used to play Ace of Aces at school - 54 now and still remember it well

As soon as I read the title I had an idea of what was going on, but even still it’s so damn cool that books like this exist. Every time I see one of these types of books it really impresses me

I had a similar book but it was planes dogfight where each player had a representation of the other plane from its own perspective and had to chose his next move to try to align it in its visor (both planes moved at the same time).

This is actually such a cool concept I like it yes yes