From Gamebooks to Solo RPGs

The Self-Performative in Text-Based Solitary Play

Máté Hirsch

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 Faculty of Arts Master’s Thesis Statement, University of Groningen

Name of student: Máté Hirsch

Student number: S4948009
Master’s degree programme – specialization:
Music, Theatre, and Performance – Theatre, Culture, and Media
Title of final-year thesis:
From Gamebooks to Solo RPGs:
The Self-Performative in Text-Based Solitary Play
Name of thesis supervisors: Dr. Pieter Verstraete; Drs. Lucia van Heteren

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I hereby declare unequivocally that the thesis submitted by me is based on my own work and
is the product of independent academic research. I declare that I have not used the ideas and
formulations of others without stating their sources, that I have not used translations or
paraphrases of texts written by others as part of my own argumentation, and that I have not
submitted the text to this thesis or a similar text for assignments in other course units.

Date: 2022.06.08
Place: Budapest, Hungary
Signature of student:

N.B. All violations of the above statement will be regarded as fraud within the meaning of
Art. 3.9 of the Teaching and Examination Regulations.

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Table of Contents

Summary.....................................................................................................................................3
1. Introduction.........................................................................................................................4
1.1 Motivation and Hypothesis...............................................................................................4
1.2 What is a Gamebook?.......................................................................................................5
1.4 Chapter Outline...............................................................................................................11
2. Theory and Methodology..................................................................................................12
2.1 Game and Play................................................................................................................12
2.2 Studying RPGs, and Terminology..................................................................................17
2.3 Video Games, Hypertext, and Narratives........................................................................19
2.4 Text and Performativity..................................................................................................21
2.5 The Potential of Interactivity, and Self-Performance......................................................22
2.6 The Shift in Presence, and in the Goal of Performances.................................................25
2.7 Role-Play and Well-Being..............................................................................................27
2.8 Concepts of Analysis.......................................................................................................29
3. Case Studies, and Critical Analysis...................................................................................33
3.1. Gamebooks.....................................................................................................................33
3.2 Solo RPGs.......................................................................................................................38
3.2.1 Solo-Boardgame or Ludus-Type Solo RPGs............................................................39
3.2.2 Fixed Prompt-Based Solo RPGs...............................................................................42
3.2.3 Random Prompt-Based Solo RPGs..........................................................................43
3.2.4 Gamification-Based Solo RPGs...............................................................................48
4. Conclusion.........................................................................................................................50
Bibliography.............................................................................................................................51

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 Summary

In this thesis, I introduce two contemporary literary genres, the gamebook, and the
solo RPG as potential tools for self-performance. These texts are usually written in the second
person and are meant to be ‘played’ and ‘performed’ by their reader, meaning that there are
expected interactions to be performed other than reading from the first page to the last.
Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, quarantine, and social distancing, there has been a
new-found interest in solitary role-playing games (or solo RPGs for short), and self-performed
self-care routines, which combined could mean the rebirth or reinvention of the gamebook
genre as a more personal, more approachable, more directly applied recreational tool for
people around the world.
I choose to focus on the self-performative aspects of the gamebook in context of the
ludologic or literary aspects. Due to the lack of discussion around the two genres, my two
main goals are to establish a theoretical basis in which one can refer to them in the academic
scene, and to analyse both historical, and contemporary case studies through questions of
presence, time, the participant and their corporeality, the willingness to perform, the work’s
performability, and the actor-spectator relation.
My hypothesis is that the gamebook, as a predecessor to the solo RPG, shows a
historical development towards performativity. I would argue, that contemporary play-texts
have much more in common with performance art and applied theatre than with video games
or traditional tabletop role-playing games, making them a self-performable experience, which
could be used to exercise self-care, self-motivation, self-help as well as give the experience of
participating in a performance without human contact.

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 1. Introduction

1.1 Motivation and Hypothesis

My interest in studying the gamebook and the solo RPG 1 started during the Covid-19
pandemic in 2020, when series of lockdowns drastically changed the rules of everyday life, as
well as the rules of performance. Performers (including me) had to adapt to the new situation,
not being able to perform at theatres and public spaces, people moved their productions
online. The words “synchronous” and “asynchronous” have also been thrown around in both
performance and education environments, the former meaning the current (virtual) live
presence of both the actors and the spectators (or the educator and the students), and the latter
meaning the lack of being present in the same space and time, usually meaning that only a
recording is available for viewing. Performances that were meant to be asynchronous
(although they existed before the pandemic) became a stable in the repertoire of theatre
companies. This shift towards a theatre without co-presence, made me question if
performance requires the presence of people at all. If not, can something only a single person
experiences (whether it is a visual or a literary experience) be considered a performance?
Asynchronous performances can be recordings of works that were once played on
stage, but now a can (only) be accessed online or works of performance that were made to be
viewed on a screen at home. But then in what way do these works differ from film?
There is also a lesser-known way of asynchronicity in the theatrical world: solely text-
and paper-based performances that give their readers instructions to be performed, making
their readers the performers. A good example would be Wrights and Sites’ Mis-Guides (2003-
2006) series, which as a semi-parody of organised city walks, guides its spectators through a
certain city, showing unimportant or hidden places through a single booklet – and no
performers. The question rises again: how Misguides differ from regular tourist guides? How
is one a performance, while the other one is ‘just a book’?
When I encountered such works, I was intrigued by the ever-expanding boundaries of
performance, and immediately thought to the Fighting Fantasy series, and other gamebooks
of my childhood, that were built on interactive reading, dice-rolling, taking notes, and role-
play. Were they (in retrospect) also performances?

1
RPG is the abbreviation of role-playing game.

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 Later, as a university student in the years of the pandemic, I often found myself lost in
the amount of work I had to do on my own. I had a hard time getting used to the changes,
spent a lot of time alone, slowly losing every bit of human interactivity, getting disjointed
from my career goals and future. I used to participate in and instruct theatre pedagogical
classes, doing presence and mindfulness meditation exercises, role-play, sing etc., but since
the quarantine, I could not take part in such classes.
That was when my friends suggested me to try out a solo RPG. Since I was familiar
with the old gamebooks of the ’80s, which I mostly took as ‘dumb fun’, so I was quite
sceptical about these new texts as well. I was also in a Dungeons & Dragons playing group,
which showed me how role-playing can help coping with everyday issues or even lead to a
certain catharsis, but I was still surprised by how much solo RPGs can actually provide to
their players. These pen and paper RPGs served as a natural relief for the long hours spent
online as well as self-reflective (or even self-caring) exercises, which deepened my
knowledge regarding my own identity – in such an interactive way I only thought applied
theatre could do.
I was surprised to find out, there are little to no theory around the gamebook and the
solo RPG, especially not from the context of performance studies, and that no-one has
expressed the connection between the solo RPG and applied theatre, self-performative
practices, and self-care. This scarcity of critical theory about these constantly developing
genres motivated me to write this thesis, to show how the potential they have and could have
as part of applied performances or self-reflective routines, and where they stand on their own
in a time where digital media reigns.
There are two main questions I am looking to find an answer to in this thesis: first,
how can we analyse and categorise the gamebook and the solo RPG genre, and how game
studies and performance studies benefit with the addition of such genres; secondly, how self-
performance may attribute to well-being through concrete pieces in both genres. I will try to
find answers to these questions using a qualitative methodology, applying ludology- and
performance theory on my case studies (from both genres), and comparing their tools and
their potential uses. My hypothesis is that playing these contemporary pen-and-paper-based
solo RPGs can be seen as a way of self-performance and have much more in common with
contemporary performance than with last century’s gamebook; and such self-performative
texts can be used as a self-reflexive or self-helping tool, both as a game and as part of a
performance.

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 1.2 What is a Gamebook?

Gamebooks (as well as solo RPGs) are difficult to categorise: They use elements of
literary fiction, traditional (Aristotelean) drama, as well as role-playing games, and one cannot
try to analyse them without keeping all of this in mind.
On the outside, gamebooks look like regular books: they have a cover, numbered
pages, and on these pages a fair amount of text and illustrations. However, they are no
ordinary prose, since their text not only tells a story, but also includes instructions to be
followed and performed2. These instructions go beyond the traditional process of reading,
they often ask the reader to read in a non-linear fashion, by turning pages back-and-forth; or
ask them to write in the book, or perform something in real life (roll the dice, turn off the
lights, contemplate on the meaning of the text, etc.). Their narrative is usually written in the
second person and addresses the reader directly.
The ‘game’ part of gamebooks also comes from this ‘expectation of interactivity’, and
the additional devices that are required to participate in playing, such as pen and paper, dice,
playing cards, appendixes, etc. – since these are also devices of many boardgames. They also
include rules, and often have obstacles to overcome, or goals to reach by role-playing or by
playing well. It is also worth mentioning that the most popular interactive book series (the
Choose Your Own Adventure and the Fighting Fantasy series) were heavily inspired by early
tabletop role-playing games, such as Dungeons & Dragons (which I will be abbreviate from
now on as D&D).
In this thesis, what I will call gamebooks are texts that are paper-based, usually a
couple of hundred pages long, they are divided into numbered sections, usually there can be
more than one section in one page. Gamebooks tend to begin with an introduction to the genre
(that the sections are not meant to be read in numerical order), explaining the rules of the
book, and what tools and preparations are needed to start playing (dice, pencil, eraser, filling
in the character sheet, etc.) The narrative begins with from section 1. At the end of each
section the reader might be given an instruction to turn to a specific section, or they are given
a choice between a number of sections, each leading the story in a different direction. At
certain sections the reader is asked to roll the dice, write, or draw in the book. The game ends
with either a victory or a loss, depending on the choices and the luck of the reader. To
describe the reader’s or the player’s actions, I will be using the ‘they/them’ pronouns, since

2
Such as: „Turn to 278” (Jackson, Livingstone 1982, 1) – This means that the reader must turn to the section
numbered 278 in order to read the book correctly/follow the game’s rules.

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the characters they take on are often non-gendered. I will refer to their avatars in role-play as
their ‘characters’.
The other genre that I must define is the solo RPG. In contrast to their predecessor,
solo RPGs are not sold in bookstores, they are usually published online, printed only in a
limited number or only purchasable as PDFs. They are also much shorter than gamebooks
(usually between 1-30 pages long, with some rare exceptions), and their text mostly consists
of rules and elliptic narrative, rather than a branching story. They give more of a framework
or a ruleset to play by, and a fictional structure that turns everyday objects and activities into
role-play, rather than an actual ready-to-play game. They also experiment with what the tools
required to play could be, from dice, paper, and pencils, to playing cards, chess-pieces, Jenga-
bricks etc. They also put more emphasis on the creative aspects of play, asking their players to
draw, write, or come up with imaginary plot elements, making some of them into more of a
creative or self-developing exercise rather than a game for recreation.

A Note on Terminology

In my thesis, 'game-text' refers to the textual part of a game, whether it

describes rules or narrative. In gamebooks and solo RPGs, the majority of the game
itself is the game-text.
By the word 'gamebook', I refer to what is commonly called as “choose-your-
own-adventure book”3. Large, paper-based interactive texts, that use a branching-paths
narrative to tell their story.
Lastly, the term 'solo RPG', in this thesis, refers to the contemporary solo
RPG, a wide variety of printable/printed text-based games, varying both in size, form,
and theme, distributed online. They use multiple forms of interaction with their reader,
from giving out creative task, to giving tools for self-reflection.

1.3 The Short History of the Gamebook

Before introducing theories around game-texts, I first must talk about how interactive
literature came to be. It is important for us to see that what was the historical origins, and the
historical role of the gamebook, and how the solo RPG differs from it from that standpoint,
3
“Choose-Your-Own-Adventure-style books” is also a common name for the gamebook genre in general,
refering to the Choose Your Own Adventure gamebook series, which was quite popular in the U.S.A. from the
late 70’s to the late ‘90s.

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since comparing the two shows the change in the notion of the performative in paper-based
interactive texts. As of this moment, there is little theory about contemporary paper-based
interactive texts, and a historical outline seems necessary to even start an argument on such
works of fiction, let alone to show a shift towards performativity in contemporary writings.
However, there is much more intermedial theory about digital text, computer-game-text, and
hypertext, some of which I will discuss later, but our focus is on paper-based texts, and their
performance, some of which consciously stand against multi-mediality, or serve as a relief
from the digital world. I will be using Österberg’s essay The Rise and Fall of the Gamebook
as a rough starting point to give a short overview of the history of gamebook, while using
texts of other RPG scholars such as Tosca (2009), Jolin (2016), and Scriven (2021) to
supplement, critique, and correct his research.
The historical development of the gamebook seems parallel to the historical
development of role-playing games; however, the former is originated some thirty years
earlier than the latter, with Jorge Luis Borges’ 1941 experimental short stories: Examen de la
obra de Herbert Quain (An Examination of the Work of Herbert Quain) and El Jardin de
senderos que se bifurcan (The Garden of Forking Paths).
Herbert Quain is a non-linear story in which the reader must decide on which chapter
to read next (out of the possibilities given by the author). It involves thirteen different
chapters, with nine possible readings4. The second shorty story is, in itself, not interactive, but
it describes a fictional book that definitely is. The Garden of Forking Paths also has an
allegoric, non-linear narrative in which the protagonist comes across a book that only makes
sense if its chapters are not read in the traditional left-to-right order, it has a maze-like
structure, with interwoven timelines and events. This description imagines the interactive
book as a never-ending holistic, cyclic piece. In the following decades a variety of authors,
who might have been inspired by these works, experimented with interactive writing.
During this experimental phase, interactive literature eventually found a place with a
more commercial use in education too. A good example where the choose-your-path-style
writing has been used would be the TutorTexts series, a self-teaching book series for children
and adults alike published between 1958 and 1972 by Doubleday (US). The first fiction-based
adventure book series, The Tracker series, were first published in 1972.
In 1976, just two years later than the first edition of Dungeons & Dragons debuted, the
tabletop role-playing game Tunnels and Trolls got its first instalment released, called Buffalo

4
If the reader follows the rules given by the author. This is also generally true for gamebooks and solo RPGs,
and other postmodern literature where the reader can choose freely on what chapters to read.

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Castle. A revolutionary invention in this game was that it supported solitary play, the owner
did not need a group of players to participate. However, to play its instalments the reader
required access to the rulebook of the game, so they cannot be taken as standalone
gamebooks.
The gamebooks that had commercial success and that most people are familiar with
are the ones from the 1980’s. This period is where the genre peaked in popularity with
franchises such as the Fighting Fantasy, the Choose Your Own Adventure and the Lone Wolf
series. They all used branching-paths narratives and were aimed at mostly children and
teenagers (Österberg 2008, 7-19).
In the mid 90’s the interest in gamebooks dwindled. While in the previous decades,
RPG video games were mostly text-based with minimal graphical components (just like
gamebooks), they became more advanced, more immersive, and more affordable over time –
written texts could not keep up with the technological advancements of the medium.
Hypertext theory and hypertext fiction 5 have both gathered followers during these years,
moving what was “only” a book sized phenomenon onto an infinitely larger digital level
(Tosca 2009). Another hypothetical reason might have been that the genre reached its both its
creative and its physical limits. Compared to its predecessor, the tabletop RPG, which got
more and more complex, with more rules, more boxes, pieces, and accessories 6, the
gamebooks were restricted to the confined space of a single book (or a series of books), with
the same, simple rulesets that the players could pick up easily, the focus still being on
narrative and decision-making. Even though there are many examples of formal
experimentation (like in Fabled Lands series, which I will introduce more deeply in Chapter
3), the genre could not reinvent itself.
Österberg’s analysis ends here, only talking about the nostalgia-renaissance of the
gamebook in the 2000’s with the re-release or one-time sequels of Lone Wolf and Fighting
Fantasy. He considers the genre to be “dead” (Österberg 2008, 27-28.).
Little did he know that in the next decade non-digital role-playing will began to
prosper again. From around 2010 people all over the world become more and more interested
in tabletop RPGs (or TRPGs in short). For this there might not be one individual reason, but
one could guess it might be the effect of a multitude of circumstances: the release of the 5 th
edition of Dungeons & Dragons (in 2012), which was much more accessible for new players
than previous instalments of the series (due to its easier rules, and the huge amount of official
5
By ’hypertext fiction’, I refer to digital hypertext works.
6
The miniature-collecting wargame Warhammer 40,000 would be a great example on how far a tabletop game
can develop in complexity, with over eight editions, and hundreds of expansions, playkits and additional rulesets.

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online content published), the representation of TRPG playing in popular/mainstream media
(on shows such as Stranger Things, The Big Bang Theory, and Community), and podcasts,
streams, and influencers who promoted the game on social media with hundreds of hours of
playing a D&D campaign (such as Critical Role, or Dimension 20) (Jolin 2016).

Money raised on the crowdfunding website Kickstarter for developing tabletop games
in the last decade.7

During the Covid-19 pandemic the popularity of tabletop gaming reached a new
height, given its social benefits, and the Theatre of the Mind (TOM) 8 style storytelling, with
option of remote play D&D become the go-to TRPG for everyone (Scriven 2021).
The topic of this thesis, although closely related to all of this, is another online
movement that grown parallelly with the TRPG craze of the recent years: the solo RPG. Solo
RPGs are text-based pen-and-paper games that can be or are meant to be played alone. They
are published in scarce numbers, some of them only available as digital printouts – although
they are meant to be read digitally, they are no video games. They can, however, push the
creative boundaries of the gamebook, shifting and changing its format sometimes drastically,
to reach almost boardgame-like features, or a game that is more focused on self-reflection and

7
https://medium.com/icopartners/state-of-kickstarter-and-games-mid-2021-update-132964d2c523
8
Originally coming from the radio term RPG studies have adopted the word ‘Theatre of the Mind’ to describe a
playstyle that is not about the props (figurines, buildings, terrain, etc.), but the descriptive and performing skills
of the game master, who must describe every scene of the story, and perform as every character the players
encounter. (https://whatnerd.com/what-is-theater-of-the-mind-dnd/)

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performativity, rather than winning or losing. I will introduce concrete pieces of the genre,
and the genre itself in more detail in Chapter 3.

1.4 Chapter Outline

In the following chapter, which focuses on theory and methodology, I will start with
an introduction on basic game theories, as well as introduce some useful terminology when
studying RPGs (Zagal, Detering 2018). Using Hoover, Simkins Deterding, Meldman and
Brown’s 2018 study, Performance Studies and Role-Playing Games as a starting point, I will
start to connect the two disciplines.
After that, I shift my focus to performance theory, and the changes and novelties in
contemporary (post-Covid) performance theory in regard of the notions of corporeality and
actor-spectator co-presence. As they are most central to explain the means of a solitary
performative work, and the social/personal goals of performance. I will connect these theories
to the potential psychological benefits of role-play and performance, and how creative work
could help in self-care. After this, I will present my methodology in order to apply these
concepts to my case studies.
In the third chapter, I will present my case studies, starting with early gamebooks of
the ’80s and ’90s, finishing with contemporary solo RPGs from 2010 to 2022. I will briefly
explain the rules of each one-page-adventure, pamphlet, book or book series, and describe
their aspects of storytelling and worldbuilding, as well as what objects are needed to play, and
what is expected from the reader in each piece.
Here, for the critical analysis, I will apply performance and RPG theories individually,
to analyse how text-based RPGs differ from traditional role-play and performance, and
describe the performative tools used by these texts, comparing the genres of gamebooks and
solo RPGs in their properties, such as the reason of play, the rules, time, space, immersion,
reading as an event etc. in terms of how they have changed over decades, and I will ultimately
show how these tendencies work towards a more mindful, more self-caring way of role-
playing.
Then in my fourth and final chapter, I will summarise what are the performative
aspects of text-based RPGs, and how these aspects have shifted in the general sense and
reflect on the genre’s limits and give a glimpse on its potential opportunities. After these, I
end with a conclusion on the result of the analysis.

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 2. Theory and Methodology

As there are no disciplines currently studying the exact cases of gamebooks or solo
RPGs, and as I described before, there are quite a variety of art fields from which one could
approach these genres, I have decided to restrict my theoretical approach to a ludological and
a performative toolkit, which I combined to form my methodology. When analysing my case
studies (in Chapter 3), I will reflect on how these two complement each other, and where
these two collide in the genres, and what classificational approach should be implemented for
one to be able to analyse these works comprehensively. I will also introduce the contemporary
changes and development in performance and play, both in the notion of presence, their social
aspects, and their relationship to psychological well-being and care.

2.1 Game vs. Play (Ludus vs. Paidia)

In the previous chapter, I have mentioned how much gamebooks have in common with
video games, boardgames and tabletop RPGs. It would be hard to argue against the statement
that boardgames and video games are, indeed, games. But even though in their name they
share the word ‘game’, in the case of the gamebook, (and even more so in the case of the solo
RPG,) it is hard to tell exactly, how much of a certain work is playable and interactive, and
how much of it is a literary or a performative experience.
In order to see if the relationship between gamebooks and solo RPGs are purely based
on form and material, or there is indeed a historical development towards a freer and more
performative structure in pen-and-paper play, we need to compare performative and game-
like elements in our case studies. To do this, we first must decide on concise criteria on
features that literary performances, self-performances and games have in common. Of these
features, which ones are measurable and comparable; and what features only appear in only
one of the two – but may still be an integrated part of either the gamebook or the solo RPG?
To do this, we must first define what we mean when talking about ‘game’ and ‘play’, first in
general speaking, then in context of the gamebook and the solo RPG.
Huizinga’s well-known definition of play in Homo Ludens (1949) was one of the main
foundations for games studies, and can also give as a nice starting point to see what elements
of play can be found in our case studies, taking reading and performing the text as an activity.

15
 Play is a free activity standing quite consciously outside ‘ordinary’ life as being ‘not serious,’
but at the same time absorbing the player intensely and utterly. It is an activity connected with
no material interest, and no profit can be gained by it. It proceeds within its own proper
boundaries of time and space according to fixed rules and in an orderly manner. (Huizinga
1949, 19)

Even though this definition represents a historical-cultural (and anthropological)

approach, which takes play as a cultural phenomenon, the social and personal benefits of play
can also be interpreted from the text and gives as a good starting framework on what we are
looking for in play. Many scholars built their theory upon these criteria, and many tried to
complement it with certain missing necessities. This definition, for example, excludes
gambling, since there is material wealth involved (Anchor 1978) as a form of capitalist
critique. Luck, chance, and productivity, however, are all crucial part of gamebooks and solo
RPGs – rolling dice, assigning random numbers, drawing and writing etc.
As I stated before, game studies and performance studies share some theoretical roots,
but Huizinga treats theatrical performances, festivals, and other social rituals as a concrete
form of play. Consciously participating in an immersive pretence could very much be a
definition of post-modern performance, too. Having a fixed ruleset (or traditions), and a set
place and time is also true for most performance, but the goal of play might just be, l’art pour
l’art, pretence itself (Huizinga 1949).
The ludologic study I will mostly refer to, however, is a critique of Huizinga’s,
Caillois’ Man, Play, and Games (1961). This work might seem outdated nowadays, since it
does not account for the immense variety of video games that modern ludology works with,
but since the topic of this thesis is paper- and text-based play, Caillois’ ideas are much closer
to it then contemporary scholars who build their cases on digital examples. The multi-medial
tools of immersion, and interactivity, the dual presence of the player (corporal and digital), or
the uncertain code-based rules can all be omitted, since none of these are present in pen-and-
paper play.9 Another reason, why Caillois’ could work well for analysing undefined,
uncategorised genres (such as the gamebooks or the solo RPG), is that he uses six clear
distinctive qualities that define what a game is, as well as a set amount of game types, both of
which can be used to see if the genre has enough features to even qualify as a game. His
definition of play is a bit stricter, having six qualities that define a game: “free”, “separate”,

9
I do not to state that the text of a gamebook or a solo RPG needs to be on paper, they can be played digitally,
but only if the player can write freely on the game-text, and the required objects are at hand.

16
“uncertain”, “unproductive”, “governed by rules”, and “make-believe” (Caillois 1961, 9-
10).
‘Free’ and ‘separate’ could be translated to the ideas of Huizinga, that players are not-
and cannot be forced to play, and the space and time of play is set before beginning to play,
however the other four qualities strongly differ from their inspiration.

3. Uncertain: the course of which cannot be determined, nor

the result attained beforehand, and some latitude for innovations
being left to the player’s initiative; (Caillois 1961, 10).

The outcome of play is always unknown, this ‘uncertainty’ is what motivates a

drawing of a card, or a dice roll in a game, randomness making play an ever-changing
experience, however, the variable does not necessarily have to come from an object – in the
case of both the gamebook and the solo RPG, the most important variable is the player
subjective. Decision-making and creative tasks make every playthrough different. Evidently, a
game with fixed text and decisions is less open to variations, than a game based on ellipsis,
creative writing/drawing, with no victory or solution.

4. Unproductive: creating neither goods, nor wealth, nor new

elements of any kind; and, except for the exchange of property
among the players, ending in a situation identical to that prevailing at the beginning of the
game; (ibid.).

This is similar to Huizinga’s statement that “no material interest” can be involved in
play, but with the extension to creating anything new – starting and ending with the same
‘status quo’. This also means that the process of play cannot be counterproductive. These
rules have a parallelism with performance scholars taking performance art as non-productive,
temporary events, rather than artworks that can be repeated, recorded, stored, admired from a
temporal distance. Although some of these rules can be applied to gamebooks to some extent,
solo RPGs often produce some form of material imprint, either in the form of a drawing, a
newly written text, pictures, videos etc. – and have immense replayability.

5. Governed by rules: under conventions that suspend ordinary laws, and for the moment
establish new legislation, which alone counts;

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 6. Make-believe: accompanied by a special awareness of a second reality or of a free unreality,
as against real life. (ibid.).

Other similarities with performance studies include the fact that the world of play is
outside of ordinary life and is governed by social conventions (of what people do when they
play or watch/perform something on stage) and individually by rules from the
creator/performer. The idea of a rule-governed second reality is also a continuation of
Huizinga’s “magic circle” theorem, which states that there is a place in every form of play
(whether it is a fairground, a court, or a stage) where the rules of play apply (Huizinga 1949,
10). Make-believe is here synonymous with role-play, but the self-awareness a player or a
performer must practice is also similar in performance and role-playing games.
In the case of our two literary genres, it is easy to tell, that the player/reader has the
ability to practice role-play, and the books and pamphlets are governed by rules given at the
beginning by their author. If one does not follow these rules, gamebooks and solo RPGs are
neither games nor performances, they are nothing more than pieces of paper.
Caillois also describes four different “qualities of play”, all of which resemble a
separate fundamental notion in a game. They are (taken from ancient Greek) agon
(competition), alea (chance), mimicry (simulation), ilinx (vertigo10). These are not necessarily
goals of a game but rather the effects that make a game engaging. Although there are games
only including a single quality of play (for example a running contest only has agon), most
complex games consist of a combination of the four. The boardgame Monopoly for example,
consists of agon, alea, and mimicry: the players competing in a dice-throw- and card-draw-
based random system, while role-playing as a group of investors. While gamebooks usually
rely on almost all forms of play11, solo RPGs can almost exclusively use mimicry (or pretence)
as their main effect. They rather use tools of performance and self-care to affect the
reader/player, than qualities of play. In gamebooks alea and ilinx both work as a form of
excitement over uncertainty, whether it is due to the randomness of a dice-roll or turning to an
unknown page in which some new dangers come to life through the narrative. Alea could be a
crucial part of solo RPGs as well, by giving random prompts, or ideas to develop the player’s
own story, the game makes the act of pretend look more rule-governed, and personalised.

10
The other ones are quite self-explanatory, however, Ilinx is a bit more complicated to define. It refers to an
adrenaline-rush caused by something unsettling or nauseating, similar to the effect of a rollercoaster, standing
between fear and excitement. As for this paper, I am unsure how simple text imitates this effect, but if a game’s a
story is gruesome or scary, there might be a chance.
11
Even agon, even though they are played alone, and there is no one to compete with, if there is a potential
victory, they can challenge themselves simply to beat the game, or win with a better result.

18
 The last two terms that I will be borrowing from Caillois are ludus and paidia – the
two forms of play he distinguishes in Man, Play, and Games. Ludus is essentially what we
call game, the form of play with pre-defined rules, goals, and structure, like Monopoly or
Risk, while paidia is free play12, which has rules and goals defined by their player, they are
open to interpretation, like a toy or a sandbox-game. Caillois is mostly concerned with the
aesthetics and social applications of constructed games, ludus, and the details around paidia
are less fleshed-out, but complex games can involve both forms of play.
In the situation of the gamebooks and the solo RPGs, these two types of play might be
the key to understand the relationship of play and performance. The question, which one is the
larger category, that both Huizinga and Caillois seemed to answer with games being superior,
and traditional performance (theatrical play, ritual, etc.) being a sub-category of play. From
Caillois’ perspective every rule-based game is ludus, and while this would seem to be fitting
to the 1980’s gamebook, due to the limited freedom the player/reader has, solo RPGs are a
good example on why the ludus-paidia opposition does not work in contemporary play. Solo
RPGs are pre-defined, well-structured, and most of them consist of nothing but rules – yet
they give the ability of free play almost immediately, someone starts playing, turning on
creative ways of interpretation and interactivity. But this is not the freedom of paidia either,
since it has a distinct rule-based intermezzo, when the magic circle is broken, and the rules
create a role-playing structural outline, not the creativity of the player.
There are many contemporary followers and critics of Caillois, but only a few of them
seem to address the issue with the polarity in his arguments.

Games without paidia seem ultimately sterile, formulaic settings in which players quickly lose
interest; but games without sufficient ludic elements also lack appeal in that they do not lead
the player toward increasingly sophisticated challenges or permit complex social interaction.
(Henricks 2010)

This systematic binarity does not seem to be applicable to contemporary performance

either. In both solo RPGs and some contemporary performances, the goal of playing is outside
of Huizinga’s magic circle: there is personal benefit (which is also prohibited in both
Huizinga’s and Caillois’ definition of play), self-reflection, self-care, and eventually, well-

12
It was rather difficult for me to distinguish ‘play’ from ‘game’, since n my native language, Hungarian, there is
no difference between two, they are both called ‘játék’. For a clearer distinction, I will refer to paidia as ‘free
play’, since its rules are, in Caillois’ terms, improvised or created on-the-spot, while if these rules get properly
established, or written down, the activity becomes ludus.

19
being – all performed through play with a second motive. All in all, I would argue that even if
we take some of the most well-established definitions of play, certain works of contemporary
performance, and the genre of the gamebook and the solo RPG, the event of reading and
performing them, does not always suffice as ‘play’.

2.2 Studying RPGs, and Terminology

In order to discuss the self-performance aspects of the gamebook and the solo RPG,
we must develop an adequate critical methodology that encompasses both performative and
play elements. Studying role-playing-games would be an evident direction. As of this
moment, RPG studies is a relatively young discipline, with more focus on finding its own
systematic and academic place, boundaries and rules, rather than specification or regulation.
Deterding and Zagal (2018) state in their introductory chapter of their collection of
theories in RPG studies that: “RPG scholars currently have no easy way of reviewing the state
of research on other RPG forms, cultures, or disciplines” (21). This difficulty comes from the
mixed (academic and non-academic) sources of the theories, the interdisciplinarity nature of
the works, and the cultural differences in the institution of role-playing between countries
(Zagal, Detering 2018, 21-2) as well as the many academic directions the subject can be
approached from (Lehto 2019, 74).
RPG studies is an interdisciplinary field that comprises of, amongst others, theorists of
anthropology, psychology, games studies, performance studies, and sociology who have
worked on expanding the theoretical and methodological frameworks of its research. I use a
simple definition of RPG (role-playing game) based on Lehto (2019), who summarised the
connection between practicing well-being and role-play: RPGs are rule-bound, create a
different social reality, and there is at least one role-playing player, who is “performing
actions, thinking, and speaking for the(ir) character” (Lehto 2019, 73).
Role-playing games are mostly known from either tabletop-boardgame RPGs, RPG
video games, or larp (live action role-playing). Although there is unspoken connection both in
general theme and in narrative, there is little to no theory on whether gamebooks are RPGs.
There is even less written about paper-based solo RPG play, even though they, of course,
share a name with the genre. Theory-wise this young, and convoluted field, does have studies
on the relation of performance studies and RPGs, but they are largely focused on larp, which
is the most theatrical form of RPG play, since players wear costumes, practice and play in a

20
set place and time outside of social reality, without breaking character, often in front of
spectators.
Gamebooks and solo RPGs are much more difficult to place into such correlations,
although from Lehto’s definition we could argue that they are both forms of RPGs, since they
use concrete, written rules, have exactly one player (the reader), who is making decisions and
act for the character given, chosen, or created. To my mind, the difficulty is with the ‘creation
of a different social reality’, which if we take for example the immersion in the fictional world
of a narrative, then all types of written fiction could suffice in this criterion. Therefore, I
would argue that the social reality only changes, if beyond accepting the fictional world, the
player also accepts the rules and the symbolic system of the game. For example: the player
only role-plays if they follow their character’s journey as their own, while also respecting that
their character’s fate is decided by the roll of a dice. This perspective of the player/reader that
is both outside and inside of the story is crucial to solitary play (Wake 2016; Antonsen 2021),
and it can also be related to how in solo performances the actor is often its sole spectator.
In both gamebooks and solo RPGs, the player takes on the role of a fictional character,
either given to you by the author, chosen by you from a set of pre-made characters, or created
entirely or partially on your own in a certain framework. This is quite similar to character
creation, in games like Dungeons & Dragons, or in RPG video games. I discussed the
similarities with D&D earlier, but the latter has its own set of theories, rules, and terminology,
and have advanced simultaneously with the improvement of computer technology. There is,
however, little formal connection between video game RPGs and solo RPGs, other than that
they are both played alone. Video games can create immersive worlds with texts, visuals, and
sounds, making their creator the world-builder, and their player the person who interacts with
the world. This is also how gamebooks have worked, in the sense that in the given set of rules
and boundaries, the player/reader could only practice play in the limits of the ruleset.
The mechanics of RPGs, and the terminology of RPG studies will be very useful when
describing certain elements of play in the case studies. Here, I will list some of these, and give
examples on what forms are used in everyday play. RNG or Random Number Generator
would be a good term to add to our vocabulary first, even though it is also used in computer
science, and mainly appears in computer games, as a “mechanism that purports to generate
truly random data” (Ruhkin et al. 2010, 1), like dice in boardgames, and also in gamebooks
and solo RPGs. This effect could be also achieved through the use of other physical objects,
like drawing cards, flipping coins etc. The random numbers generated this way can be used to

21
achieve what Caillois calls alea, by creating random prompts, determining the fate of certain
events in games, or establishing permanent stats for the player, and their character.
‘Stats’ is the common term that refers to numeral values connected to character
attributes. The higher the number on a certain stat is, the better the character is at the attribute
the stat refers to. An example: if in fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons your ‘Intelligence’
stat13 is 18, it means your character is quite clever, but if you have a 5 in ‘Dexterity’ it means
that your character is not very agile. The act of comparing dice-rolls to stats are commonly
known as stat-checks. Stat-check determines the outcome of an unsure or risky action that a
player tries to execute with its character. An example: if in Dungeons & Dragons a player’s
character tries to break into a building unnoticedly, the player must make a ‘Stealth’ check –
if the roll is high enough, the plan goes well; if the roll is not high enough, there might be
complications (Crawford 2014, 173-179).
In the following subsection, I will develop RPG terminology to describe peculiar
cases, or cases for which either ludology or performance theory in their own right are not
sufficient enough.

2.3 Video Games, Hypertext, and Narratives

For the purpose of this study, I am mostly focusing on printed, or printable works.
This gives a limit to the size of the narrative, as well as the amount of interaction a work can
offer to its reader. Even though digital copies are available for many of the solo RPGs listed
in Chapter 3, they have little to do with hypertext or hypertext theory, since they are concise
and short, they need no Internet to be played, they are meant to be printed out, and they are
not linked with any other digital content (Tosca 2009). Solo RPGs are usually rather short
text-wise, but are limited only by their player’s creativity, whereas hypertext can branch out
infinitely, but it is limited by its author(s) productivity.
Sandbox games might be a more adequate parallel to solo RPGs, instead of video
games RPGs, since they work freely with their given materials, but sandbox games are still
limited to the program’s data, while solo RPGs are only limited by the mind and interpretation
of their reader. As stated before, traditional gamebooks have much more in common with
hypertext fiction, both in narrative, mechanics, and their form of development. The so-called
‘branching-paths narrative’ which lets players/readers choose their way of continuing the
story is one of the main shared features of the two. Other than its physical form, the game-
13
Stats are called abilities in the D&D.

22
likeness of the gamebook is what makes it different from hypertext fiction. Standing much
closer to literary genres in this sense, I would argue that digital hypertext fiction focuses more
on telling a story, and the aesthetics of narration, rather than (game)play and
(self-)performance. If it would focus more on such aspects, bringing other levels of digital
interaction to the text, it would become a video game (an example for this would be visual
novels, or narrative-based video games). I would also argue that the gamebook genre from the
90s onwards started to experiment with leaving out more and more of the fixed narrative, and
it started to implement more open-world video game and (board)game-like features into their
ruleset.
As established, in both the case of the gamebook and the solo RPG, there is a set of
rules that is meant to be followed. These rules defy the traditional, linear way of reading by
addressing the readers directly, giving them instructions to follow outside of the narrative
structure, making them read pages in a non-linear order or stop reading temporarily and do
actions in real life (such as rolling a dice, writing, and drawing on the pages, or even just
contemplating on the things read). The formal peculiarities of the two genres turn reading
itself into a more interactive14 event. Jara and Turner (2018) compare traditional narratives to
role-playing game narratives, showing that an interactivity is the key to game storytelling,
basing their theory on the ellipsis in the game-text and the freedom offered to the player,
rather the potential than the concrete.

(D)ifferent RPGs allow for different forms of interactivity and thus various ‘degrees’ of
narrative potentiality and emergence. Game designers and players may therefore use different
strategies to ‘harness’ narrative content and confer it with meaning. Whereas classical
narratology attempted to reduce narrative discourse to its basic components, the qualities of
RPG storytelling often require an approach from an inverse perspective: identifying, in
retrospect, the elements used to generate meaningful narratives during gameplay. (Jara and
Turner 2018, 275)

Traditional narratology is often seen as an opposing field to game studies, mainly

because game narratives seem to defy all what seems to be known about non-interactive
stories. Gamebooks rely on descriptive, situation-driven narratives, while solo RPGs (even the
ones focused on storytelling) tend to leave the situations blank, only giving a narrative
framework or an elliptic narrative to their reader to interact with. Storytelling is a crucial part

14
I will define what I mean by interactivity later in this chapter.

23
of both genres, mostly using second person narratives, that serve both as a tool for immersion
and a self-reflective tool. I will not focus on the narrator’s character in my case studies, only
the role that it plays in establishing the story, but I will try to find who the narratee is, or
rather what character the player is in the second person (Wake 2016; Capecci 1989). Due to
the complex nature of some of these works, and how many of them are focused on omission,
or the lack of a written narrative, I will be using Jara and Turner’s “inverse perspective”, from
which we analyse not just the game-text itself, but the forms of narrative and textual ellipsis,
the results of the game, the imprints, and the texts and drawings created by the players
themselves.

2.4 Text and Performativity

In this section, I will focus on the performative in literary cases, as well as self-
performing, and the potential of interactivity in text-based performance. These are key to
show and analyse the performative elements in gamebooks and solo RPGs, since they use
literary performative tools, are performed alone, and have multiple ways for the reader to
interact with them – all of which could show the genres likeness to performative genres other
than games, as well as show us how well-being and self-care can be performed through it. I
will also discuss, what performative means in the context of this paper.
The smallest performative element that a gamebook or a solo RPG could use is what
Austin (1962) calls the performative speech act or performative utterance. Performative
utterances describe sentences that are not only stating something, but by stating something
they create a new social reality. By saying certain words out aloud, one performs an action as
well (for example: “I name this ship…”). The success of such an utterance, according to
Austin, depends on the total speech act, the communicative situation as a whole (Austin 1962,
5).
Criticising this, Bach and Harnish (1981) state that the success of the performative act
largely depends on the recipient. This means that those who hear (or read) the statement(s),
determine the outcome of the act, if they understood the act indicated by the sentence, both
the act and the statement is successful. If not, then the ‘new social reality’ only establishes in
the mind of the speaker. This is very similar to the way the author of a gamebook states
certain facts about the player/reader or events that happen to the player/reader. “You are an
adventurer” would be a great example. The player does not necessarily have to perform the
statement; however, by ‘becoming an adventurer’ metaphorically or by means of role-play,

24
the player participates in the game. They enter the magic circle, according to Huizinga. This
doubleness of the second person, who is sometimes addressed as the player, sometimes as the
adventurer, sometimes as both, is what makes reading gamebooks such a complicated role-
playing experience (Wake 2016).
The literary performative is similar to Austin’s performative utterance but it is located
only in written text. Simply put, “to read the address is to perform what one reads” (Kacandes
1993, 141): by reading a sentence, the reader immediately performs an action. Hence, they
turn themselves into a performer. This is most common in post-modernist second person
literature. A classic example is Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller (Calvino and
Weaver 1981), in which the readers can read about themselves reading. The literary
performative, however, does not fit into our criteria of a game as such; hence, the reader, even
if asked to do something more than reading, does not necessarily have to perform said tasks,
and still can perform the literary text only by reading. However, in gamebooks and solo
RPGs, the player/reader must make decisions, write, roll, act, etc. based on given rules. Only
if they are willing to interact with the game-text, or the game’s framework, they can fully
experience the work itself. In conclusion, the literary performative is a tool used by the
gamebook and the solo RPG, but their toolset goes beyond them in interactivity.

2.5 The Potential of Interactivity, and Self-Performance

Next, the notion of interactivity must be taken into account, even though some form or
potential of interactivity is always present in all games (from tic-tac-toe to D&D) and in all
(self-)performances (from giving an applause to coming on stage). Although originally
discussed in the fields of media and intermedial studies, ‘interactivity’ in the past decades has
been a most fruitful concept used in performance studies as well. Interactivity in live
performances can be traced back to direct communication: every act of the performer might
cause a reaction from the spectators. But in drastic cases the performer has the option to force
interaction with the spectators, by directly engaging them. This is not the case with written
texts, which even with the literary performative, can only indirectly approach their reader,
who always has a choice to not do as the text says.
When talking about interactive texts, we associate mostly with hypertext, which is
interactive in the simple way of eliciting immediate responses, compared to the gamebook or
the solo RPG’s limited, paper-based expected interaction, which happens if the player acts
upon what they were asked to do, and receive little to no response, either only by the

25
continuation of the narrative, or by getting new prompts, stats, etc., making the player interact
with themselves or with the world outside the magic circle. This expected interactivity is best
described as a constant nudge to do, rather than a back-and-forth communication (Smuts
2009; Tosca 2009). Hypertext, gamebooks and solo RPGs require interaction to be
experienced in the author’s intended way of reading (the reader of hypertext fiction needs to
click on links, the player of a gamebook needs to write and roll the dice etc.).
I would argue that many written texts already hold the potential of interactivity, but
this interactivity is not necessarily with the text itself (or its author), since the text cannot
respond, but either with the reader themselves, or with a third, outside person. The text in the
former works as a score to be performed, in the latter it only works as a catalyst to
performance. If a text is supposed to be performed, it still needs an interaction originating
from its reader, to be performed: fulfilling the expected interaction is the performance itself.
At this stage, I would like to coin the term self-performative text – that could refer to
any text that was written with the intent to be performed by their reader. Some examples
could be gamebooks and solo RPGs, (self-teaching) textbooks, hypertexts, puzzles, riddles,
quizzes, self-help books, cookbooks, instruction manuals, certain dramatic texts and works of
post-modernist fiction.

In Painting to See the Skies, a Fluxus event score by Yōko Ono (Ono 1964).

If we look at gamebooks and solo RPGs as self-performative texts, then the event of
reading them has a desired outcome, which is for the reader to perform certain actions based
on (but sometimes outside of) the text. This is similar to how a dramatic text, or a

26
performance score is not just meant to be read, but to be put on stage, or performed in a
certain way, at a certain place and time. Fluxus event scores of the 60s and 70s would be good
examples for self-performative written texts, since their main goal was to bring performance
art to the greater public by making it reproduceable and available to anyone in paper format.
In theory, anyone who had read these works, could perform their “instructions”. We could
also take the solo RPG as a 21st century applied version of the Fluxus scores, making them
scores for performances too. This would be quite similar to how Gaut (2010) considers
playing video games as a form of performance, just like how musicians perform what is on a
music sheet (143). But can a solely textual replica in itself be performed similar to a theatrical
piece or performance art?
Fischer-Lichte (2008) states that Austin’s speech act theory “coincided with the
performative turn in the arts” (24), a moment in the 20th century when every field of art
started to incorporate tools of performance art, making them more effect-based and focused
on presence, change, (social) interactions and the transformative. “Speech entails a
transformative power” (ibid.), and writing is no exception to that. The performative turn has
also happened (or is still happening) in the literary field. When looking at Calvino or the
Fluxus movement, we can clearly see how. However, there is also the correlation between
performance and play in Fischer-Lichte’s concept: interpretation and interactivity are both
tasks on the part of the spectator:

Through their physical presence, perception, and response, the spectators become co-actors
that generate the performance by participating in the “play.” The rules that govern the
performance correspond to the rules of a game, negotiated by all participants – actors and
spectators alike; they are followed and broken by all in equal measure. (Fischer-Lichte 2008,
32)

Similar to games, performances are often also governed by (a minimal set of) rules,
and by their corporal presence spectators participate in the play. This is similar to the literary
performative theory where actions are represented by words. Here, the present bodies
represent the participation in the event. This does not mean that a performance needs a
separate actor and spectator. Self-performance could occur even with no-one else but the actor
is present, by the actor taking on the role of the spectator. Even though the words ‘spectator’,
‘actor’, and ‘spect-actor’15 could all be used to describe the role of the person interacting with
15
Often used by Augosto Boal to describe the duality of spectators who have also become actants in the
performance through interaction (Boal 1993).

27
the text in the case studies (discussed in Chapter 3, I will usually refer to them as either ‘the
reader’ or ‘the player’, since these words usually refer to the original activities, and need no
further explanation or evidence.
As we could see, the words ‘performative’ and ‘performativity’, even in the context of
text-based performance hold a lot of different interpretations by a multitude of fields. I would
argue that a performative event occurs, when the reader/player is reading through a gamebook
or a solo RPG, but only if they are interacting with it based on the given rules and framework.

2.6 The Shift in Presence, and in the Goal of Performances

It would be quite a bold statement to say that performance can happen when we are all
alone, with nothing but a mass-produced literary text in hand. Many performance scholars
believe that co-presence (between actor and spectator) is necessary for a performance to
happen, and one could easily argue that the author of a literary text is the main artist, the
creator of the piece, while the reader is a mere participant, making them far apart in a physical
sense, as well as separated in time, since this form of textual communication is indirect, and
one-sided. Peggy Phelan prescribes the following conditions to a performance in The
Ontology of Performance:

Performance’s only life is in the present. Performance cannot be saved, recorded, documented,
or otherwise participate in the circulation of representations of representations: once it does so,
it becomes something other than performance. To the degree that performance attempts to
enter the economy of reproduction it betrays and lessens the promise of its own ontology.
Performance’s being, like the ontology of subjectivity proposed here, becomes itself through
disappearance. (Phelan 1993, 146)

This manifesto is quite restrictive in order to exclude the commercialisation of

performances and would certainly not allow for gamebooks or solo RPGs to be treated as
performances, not even through analysing the event of reading them. Fischer-Lichte’s criteria
are somewhat broader, yet still raise quite a few questions:

28
 The bodily co-presence of actors and spectators enables and constitutes performance. For a
performance to occur, actors and spectators must assemble to interact in a specific place for a
certain period of time. (Fischer-Lichte 2008, 32)

Can the actor and the spectator be the same person? If yes, then what is co-presence in
this situation? Must the place and time of the performance be in the real world? I will try to
answer these questions in my analysis in the next chapter.
Peggy Phelan, representing a purist/anti-capitalist perspective, states that repeated
performances lessen their value. What I would argue for is that this is largely subjective and
depends heavily on the goal of the performance itself. I agree that a certain artistic
performance being a live, unmediated event does serve an aesthetic, or even ontological
purpose, but there are other purposes for a performance to happen. A performance tackling
social issues, when repeated several times, can certainly lose in novelty and aesthetic value.
However, a performance focused on psychical well-being, such as the performance of certain
self-performative texts, or certain solo RPGs on a regular basis, like regular meditation,
regular exercise, or other forms of self-care, could bring more benefits when practiced
frequently.
Another, more classical argument is to say, that no two performances are the same. If
we see solo RPGs as mass-produced performance-scores, then this can be seen by their
replayability, and how each playthrough (by each different person, or each different time) is a
different experience for the player, and results in a new, different creation, created by the
player. I agree on that the goal of the performance is not to create a material object, or an
artwork, but the social transformation through the event of the performance itself (Fischer-
Lichte 2008)16. I would also argue that the goal of playing a solo RPG, or even a gamebook, is
not the creation of the end-work, but the creative process itself.
The notion of presence itself has also changed drastically in the past decades, with
performances starting to include new media tools and digitalisation, corporeality is no longer
a must in many cases. Bodily co-presence can be substituted with the co-presence of digital
avatars, or the corporeal presence of either the spectators or the players, while the other is
only present digitally, or only engages in a non-bilateral communication (Dixon 2007). Some
examples for performances experimenting with such tools would be Rimini Protokoll’s
Nachlass: Pièces Sans Personnes (2016) and Uncanny Valley (2018), both having no physical

16
This is quite similar to Caillois’ rule on how games should not be used produce any material goods (Caillois
1961, 10).

29
performers present. Nachlass includes eight people’s voice-recordings guiding the spectators
through rooms from their lives, while in Uncanny Valley, a human-size, life-like yet
completely mechanical puppet performs a monodrama with a human voice and gestures.
Another example, which might stand closer to our topic, would be Wrights and Sites’ Mis-
Guides series (2003-2006), which I mentioned in Chapter 1. A Misguide is a booklet that
guides the reader through a landscape, not to tourist attractions, but rather to sometimes vague
directions and arbitrary places the author and the reader give significance to, which produces
a personal (fictional) history, an interpretation, and subjective points of interest to the land.
Such works can all be considered applied and/or – in some form – solitary, making them a
good comparison to both gamebooks and solo RPGs: the lack of presence of the performers,
the pre-recorded or written texts that initiated the performances, the potential to interact with
objects that represent more than their material self – these phenomena can all be traced in our
case studies as well.

2.7 Role-Play and Well-Being

The potential in changing the notion of presence in theatre and performance has
commercialised even more so during the Covid-19 pandemic. Before, one could only watch a
livestream of a successful play, opera, or concert. Due to the Coronavirus measurements all
around the world, thousands of theatres had to move their repertoire to the online sphere,
either through livestreams or video-recordings of the plays performed. Many theatre
companies and individuals have also started to develop performances with the intention for
them to only be available online, from collective meditation to Zoom-theatre – countless
experiments were born this way (Nelson 2020) and the solo RPG genre has also started to
grow both in aesthetic and structural complexity, and popularity.
Quite a number of performances have been created to reflect to the feeling of solitude
and confinement during the Covid-19 pandemic, and the solo RPGs genre has also started to
build around such notions. The created pieces, on the one hand, worked as a social
phenomenon, helping to create a feeling of collectiveness and a sense of companionship in the
face of difficulties; on the other hand, they also gave more personal relief, some through the
means of self-reflection and applied psychology. Performances such as these have been
proven to help with the maintenance or even the improvement of mental health (Cziboly and
Bethlenfalvy 2020; Onderdijk et al. 2021; Maguire 2022). The same has been told about the
practice of role-playing games, such as D&D, both before and during the times of the

30
pandemic (Lehto 2019; Scriven 2021). Covid 19 and the urgency of personal well-being have
increased the interest in solo RPGs. The need for personal ‘self-presence’ as well as the lack
of corporal presence are important aspects of this. Role-playing a character, a community, an
object or an event in both solitary and non-solitary RPGs created a doubled, symbolic
presence that can both distract their player from real events and help to reflect on them with
an outside perspective, while their corporal presence does not have to leave a safe space.
To gauge what health and well-being benefits certain pieces of gamebooks or a solo
RPGs could provide, I propose to use Lehto’s (2019) summary on which fields of RPG
studies overlap with the study of well-being to create a framework on what aspects of well-
being solitary role-play could potentially improve.

The most essential overlaps are in (1) practices of sociodrama and replication therapy; (2)
social, cultural, and digital capital; (3) leisure time research; (4) performance studies; (5) the
topic of erotic role-play; (6) problematic online gaming; and (7) health education. (Lehto
2019, 81)

I will not try to compare sociodrama, social, cultural, and digital capital, erotic role-
play, and problematic online gaming to my case studies, since none of the above truly refer to
solitary activities. Sociodrama is meant to be performed only with a therapeutic group (see
Moreno 1946). Social, cultural, and digital capital mostly refer to social skills. Online gaming
requires other players playing the same game. And erotic role-play is …, although sexual-
themed gamebooks do exist (such as a Girl Walks Into a Bar). I did not choose those pieces as
case studies, since form-wise they are less complex and they do not provide a different means
of self-performance than other gamebooks. Although autoerotic role-play can be considered
to belong under role-playing studies, there are much more advanced tools that help with
sexual well-being.
Replication therapy, leisure time, performance studies, and health education could all
be important comparisons to our case studies. Replication therapy refers to Serbin and Allen’s
(1968) theory that states that the “therapeutic part of drama happens outside of character: the
director or therapist gives the actor feedback and thus helps them to develop. In their opinion,
the aim is to learn social and psychological skills in a similar manner that an actor learns from
a director” (Lehto 2019, 76). When playing a gamebook or a solo RPG, feedback can only
happen: a) indirectly by the author, b) by the reader, who reflects on themselves, or c) by a
third person who evaluates or spectates the performing happening or its results. Self-reflection

31
is a crucial part in solving puzzles in gamebooks, or when contemplating on a solo RPG
experience. Since I am not making a psychological study, I cannot have access to empirical
evidence for therapeutic effects, so my comparison is solely based on the role of reflection
and feedback in a gamebook and solo RPG, and the way they involve social and
psychological engagement.
Leisure time refers to any recreational activity, such as artistic creation as a hobby,
without the expectance of a reward. The connection of RPGs and performance studies might
seem evident by now; however, Lehto mentions that only the Nordic live-action role-plays
(larps) are discussed in detail academically and stated to be potentially beneficial to one’s
well-being. However, he does not reject that other forms of role-play could be similarly
beneficial as larps (Lehto 2019).
When it comes to practice of health care, “RPGs are commonly presented as a form of
(art-based) participatory learning, not as a source of well-being” (Lehto 2019, 80). Lehto also
mentions that this field is also more practical than academic in this topic (ibid.). In our case
studies, pedagogical practices are not discussed, but art-based self-learning, and practice of
self-awareness are key ideas to studying game-texts.
All in all, corporeal co-presence is not always part of a performance anymore,
therefore gamebooks and solo RPGs can be considered as performative works, and both
playing RPGs and participating in creative, performative works have been shown to be
beneficial to the participant’s psychological well-being, ergo gamebooks and solo RPGs could
also provide such benefits.

2.8 Concepts for Analysis

As I stated earlier in my hypothesis, I am trying to prove that the gamebook and the
solo RPG can be treated as games as well as performances, both of them having game-like
and performance-like qualities to different degrees – the former being less performative, less
socially engaging, more in line with Caillois’ more rule-bound ludus; the latter being more
performative, more psychological, similar to applied performances, and free-play, in line with
Caillois’ paidia. The development from the gamebook to the solo RPG is not only a formal
change but can also be seen as a historical reinvention of a genre in a time-period when it
could finally prosper. I would also like to argue, that similarly to how RPGs and applied
performances are beneficial on psychological well-being during the Covid-19 lockdowns, solo
RPGs could have the same effect, using the same psychological tools as other RPGs. To

32
analyse these, I will use the introduced concepts from performance theory, ludology, media
and computer studies, and RPG theory.
In my critical analysis, I will introduce two different gamebooks and nine different
solo RPGs. I will be using a qualitative approach to see what properties gamebooks and solo
RPGs share with a) games in general; b) role-playing games; c) performances; d) performance
scores; and e) each other. Then I will analyze common tools for psychological well-being
used in these works, and focus on the question if such tendencies form a pattern or not. The
reason why I have chosen a qualitative approach is that one can hardly measure how many
narrative, game-like or performative tools are used in a concrete work, due to their immense
number and potential overlaps, and their evaluation being largely subjective.
The gamebooks I have chosen as case studies are well-established in their genre: the
first one, Caverns of The Snow Witch is part of the Fighting Fantasy series, one of the first
gamebook series of the 1980s. It has quite a simple ruleset, compared to my second case
study, The War-Torn Kingdom, published well-over a decade later, when the gamebook genre
already started to struggle to reinvent itself. I will show, how the more advanced rules
changed, helped, and convoluted the work. These books were hard to come by, since they are
not being printed anymore, they can only be ordered in a used form. Most solo RPGs, on the
contrary, can be accessed online, for a small fee or completely free, mostly on https://itch.io,
https://www.drivethrurpg.com, or on their own website. I have printed out and played through
over two hundred instalments, out of which I have selected nine of them that I would consider
either worthwhile to try out and explore, or a great example to how these texts could help
perform well-being. These solo RPGs all have unique settings, rules, and gameplay
mechanics.
My line of argument and analysis for each case starts with an introduction of the texts’
story-setting and rules first, focusing on what character the player/reader is playing as –
setting the magic circle of the work. Then, I will describe the properties of the work that are
both present in performance and in play, such as symbolic acts done by the reader, and what
they represent in the role-play context, the space and time of the event of reading, and the
fictional space and time inside the magic circle. I will also analyse how productive, and
how interactive a piece is, by showing in what ways the reader can or must interact within
the game-text or do creative work outside of the boundaries of the game-text, and at the end
of the play, what these creative works represent. From this, I will conclude with the overall
goal of the play, either how to “win” in the game, or how to finish performing the text by
following the rules, in order to discuss from an inverse perspective, what the game’s results

33
tell about the author’s intentions and the narrative created by the player throughout the
play/performance.
After this, I will start to differentiate in the text between game and performance-like
attributes. From the ludological viewpoint, I will search for, and evaluate Caillois’ game
qualities (tools of immersion), game types (combination of goals) in the texts; as well as
designate whether they belong under ludus and paidia. With these I can answer the questions:
‘Can the text be considered a game? If yes, is it a form of a role-playing game?’.
I will also apply performance theories to the case studies, asking questions such as:
When does transformation happen? Are objects/artworks in focus, or is the event of
play/reading more important? Who and what is present (physically and
digitally/indirectly) during play? What is the expected interaction? Is the text self-
performative? Who is the actor and the spectator, and what is their relation? I might not
apply all of these conepts to every piece presented, when a) there is no evident way to tell
whether something is applicable or not; or b) it is evident, that there is no need to apply
certain concepts.17 I hope, that this evaluation helps to establish the general differences
between gamebooks and solo RPGs, as well as the two genres’ limits and potentials, and to
see to what extent they rely on either performance or play as their main source of engagement,
helping the categorisation of each piece.
The last aspect I will analyse is what forms of self-practiced well-being and self-care
could gamebooks and solo RPGs provide, although this is largely theoretical, since there are
no studies examining the effects of these texts. My main question, therefore, is what form of
well-being could it help to develop? Using Lehto’s theories, connecting RPGs and well-
being, I introduced how replication therapy, leisure, performance studies, and health
education could all be a good starting point for comparison. I will look for verbal suggestions
and rules, that suggest, support, or even order practices of self-reflection, relaxation,
participatory learning, performing in front of a public, educative practices etc., thereby aiming
to show evidence that some of these works intentionally provide psychological help. By using
the listed concepts, I am testing out a multi-disciplinary framework that can be applied to any
gamebook or solo RPG. There are, however, some shortcomings in my methodology, that I
will address now.
Although I mainly focus on the positive impacts on well-being, there could evidently
be negative aspects to solitary role-playing too: detachment from reality, developing anti-
social tendencies, or feeling frustrated from unsuccessfulness or loss due to the random nature
17
If a game, for example, does not produce a self-created artwork, I will not try to analyse, what if it would.

34
of the genres, to name a few. This is similar to what Lehto refers to as “problematic gaming”
(2019, 80). However, given the scope of my research questions, I will only focus on the
positive intentions behind the works.
Another problem is that the genre of the solo RPGs is very new, experimental, and
therefore convoluted, and some might even argue that certain works do not belong under the
same genre. Since this thesis is a genre-establishing study for text-based solo RPGs, I would
consider all the texts listed as solo RPGs, similarly to how every poem is a poem, even if they
differ in style or genre, as well as in overall theme or aesthetic deepness.
It is also hard to ignore that early gamebooks share their structure and mechanics with
video game RPGs, with features like RNG, encounters, branching-path-decision-making etc.,
all within solitary play. This comparison is only briefly present in this thesis, not because of
its irrelevance, but rather because video games are a multi-medial phenomenon, and I am
focusing on pen-and-paper games, as a counterpart to digital play. I do not state that video
games cannot do the same type of immersion, or serve as a form of self-performance, but they
use more complex multi-medial tools, and their performance is set in a digital sphere, all of
which would require a completely different critical framework to analyse, which is not
applicable to the purposes of the gamebook and the solo RPG. Most difficulties in the analysis
come from the coordination of the multitude of disciplines and approaches I am working with.
But in the long run, the overlapping fields complement rather than restrict each other.

35
 3. Case Studies, and Critical Analysis

3.1. Gamebooks

Due to the genre’s lack in formal diversity, there are not many gamebooks that differ
in their basic concept: each of them has a branching-path narrative, and the player/reader’s
decision brings the story forward, and to life. The role-playing and performative elements
work through these repeating structures, therefore a single case study would be enough to
represent it. However, to show the direction gamebooks started to evolve, and how, by
implementing more game rules, tried to become a more immersive experience, I suggest to
present two gamebooks as case studies, the first one being Caverns of The Snow Witch written
by Ian Livingstone, published in 1984, and the second one being The War-Torn Kingdom
written by David Morris and James Thomson, published in 1995. First, I will describe the
narrative, the formal details, and the rules of both works, then I will do a comparative analysis
based on the criteria given in the previous chapter, starting from a role-playing-game
standpoint, through a separate ludological and performance studies perspective, and then I
will discuss the (potential) effect of the works on the reader’s well-being.
Caverns of The Snow Witch is the nineth instalment in the Fighting Fantasy series. It
is set in a cold and stark landscape in the fictional world of Allansia. The player plays as a
nameless adventurer, who is paid to protect a caravan and hunt a beast that has been attacking
travellers in the region. They later find out about the Snow Witch, who had been kidnapping
and enslaving people and creatures to do her bidding. The character decides to find and kill
the Snow Witch, take her treasure, and save everyone lost in her caverns.
In most Fighting Fantasy books, the player’s character has three different basic stats:
Skill, Stamina, and Luck. Skill resembles the character’s strength, reflexes, and fighting
abilities; Stamina resembles their constitution and health; and Luck resembles their fortune,
and how much are they favoured by the gods. To determine Skill and Luck the player rolls
with a d618, then adds six to the number rolled. To determine Stamina, they roll with two d6s
and add twelve to the number rolled. These stats change during the course of the game, (for
example: getting hit in a fight could dwindle-, tending one’s wounds could rise one’s
18
d6 is the common abbreviation of a standard six-sided dice. Other common abbreviations in RPGs are: d2 – a
standard two-sided coin, d4 – a four-sided rolling dice, d8, d10, d12, d20 – an eight-sided, ten-sided, twelve-
sided, and twenty-sided rolling dice, respectively. The d20 is most commonly used in Dungeons & Dragons
games.

36
Stamina,) but they could never rise above their base values. If, at any point of the game, the
player’s Stamina reaches zero, the character dies.
The game follows a branching-paths narrative: the player makes decisions at certain
sections on how to continue playing by turning to one of the pages offered as a continuation
(see Chapter 1). In each section the player may find items, weapons, gold, or learn useful
information about the perils ahead. The character sometimes also must solve riddles or fight
enemies to continue playing or make stat-checks to determine the outcome of a certain event.
Most of the time, the game ends with the player’s death, which could happen either by them
losing all of their Stamina or finding themselves in a situation in which there is no more path
to follow (“Your adventure is over”). This second part either means the certain/immediate
demise of the character, or a failure to finish their quest. The game ends with the player’s
victory only if they manage to find the right order of reading, finding each item and clue
necessary to reach the book’s last segment (400).
My second gamebook case study, The War-Torn Kingdom, is the first instalment of
the Fabled Lands series, set in the fictitious land of Sokara, currently under civil war. The
player’s character washes ashore on an island, and from there they are free to explore.
Eventually they will get to cities and encounter friends and foes, while gradually getting to
know the main questline: deciding which side of the civil war they would support. They can,
however, choose not to take part in the conflict at all, and only do side-quests instead, or just
travel, trade, gamble etc.
In The War-Torn Kingdom the reader can choose from a set of six starting characters
to play as, each of them having a unique backstory, and different base stats. In this gamebook,
the character has eight different stats, a unique profession, a ‘rank’ (which is a basic level-
system), some possessions, and some money. During their adventure the character can
increase their rank and stats, acquire new possessions, blessings, resurrection arrangements,
hold titles and honours, pick up a religion, own a ship, or a house – each of the listed having
with their own set of rules. The progression in the book happens the same way as in the
Fighting Fantasy series, with a branching-path narrative. At different sections, the player can
choose which way to proceed, by turning to the numbered section designated to the chose
event.
What makes the Fabled Lands series quite unique is that its world is not linear. The
player/reader can return to certain sections (such as cities or crossroads) at times, and replay
that section in a different way. Maybe they have more money to spend in the town now, they
need or have information to proceed, or just want to fight a person, who they thought was an

37
ally before. In the Fabled Lands series all the books intertwine19, the player/reader can travel
from one book to the other with their character, if the possibility is given at a section. There
are also ‘codewords’, that the player can write down, tick a box for at the beginning of the
book, or simply remember, which indicate achievements and information throughout the
whole series. At certain sections there are small boxes next to the section number, and by
ticking or filling in the box, the player can indicate that they have completed the task at that
section, possess what is described at that section, or simply that they have already visited that
section – usually there is a different way of reading the section, if the box is filled out on top
or if it is not. There are also two maps included with every book, in which the player/reader
can follow the path of their character’s travels. All of this results in a much bigger, more
open-ended narrative compared to the Fighting Fantasy series.
Both books’ stories are set in a fantasy world, created almost exclusively by the game-
text narrative, with minor supplements from the player. There are many symbolic acts done
by the reader/player: reading the text develops the story (the narrative has a stand-alone time,
sometimes days pass in a sentence), turning pages mean decisions, writing down items on the
character sheet means that the character acquires the items, re-writing numbers on the sheet
could stand for the injuries and misfortunes the character suffers, while rolling the dice
represent fate and the character’s luck and current skill in performing a task. In The War-Torn
Kingdom, ticking boxes serves as an indication for the player about their character’s
possessions, experience, and knowledge. There are illustrations in both books, visually
helping immersion of the player into the fictional world.
The rules of Caverns of The Snow Witch are relatively simple, yet they are quite
restrictive in the sense that the player must follow the branching-paths narrative until either
they reach the single point that grants them victory, or end on one of the multitude of points in
which they lose. The difficulty of the game comes from the player picking their path ‘blindly’,
without knowing what to expect, and getting punished by the slightest of mistakes (for
example: playing a ‘rock-paper-scissors’-type of game with the Snow Witch to life and death).
Another annoyance is that in some cases the value of the player’s three stats can determine the
outcome of the game, before the reader even starts playing (for example: to kill the Snow
Witch with a wooden stake the player needs a Skill point of higher than 10, or they lose the
game immediately). Österberg’s (2008) critique to the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks in

19
Although originally the series was meant to have 12 instalments, the last five was never published. The series
were cancelled in 1996, but the 7th instalment The Serpent King's Domain, was published in 2018, due to a
successful Kickstarter campaign. This is stands together with what Österberg (2008) calls the “renaissance” of
the gamebook.

38
general is quite similar: trial-and-error is the only way to proceed through them. In the Fabled
Lands series, the game is much more about exploration than challenge. The character can still
die in battles or by making poor decisions, but there are only a few instances where their
death is implemented in the second-person narrative.
In both gamebooks the reader role-plays as/performs an other-worldly hero, who can
overcome obstacles with luck, skills, and clever decision-making, but as seen if we take a
glimpse into the deeper intentions of the authors, we could assume that both books have
slightly different goals both as games and as self-performative texts. In the Caverns of the
Snow Witch the reader is supposed to try to win the game, but not expected to beat the game
on their first try. Through repetition, the player could get a bit further each time they start
over, so the player is expected to learn the patterns of the game. The player is even suggested
to draw a map to remember which section leads which direction. Therefore, there is not only a
surface form of interaction that asks the reader to turn pages and write in their character sheet,
but a second, underlying interaction that makes the game a sort of modest puzzle-solving
focused on memorisation and trial-and-error. This in terms of performance means that the
player not only needs to perform the game-text, but they need to realise that in order to further
the performance, they need to use certain real-life, out-of-the-magic-circle skills.
The interactions in The War-Torn Kingdom are a bit more developed, the player has
much more to write and record, and has a separate note-sheet. Since they can travel around
the game-text cyclically, there is much more focus on what the player wants from the
experience. The game has two “happy endings”, with helping either side of the conflict to
victory, but reaching a happy end does not mean the end of the game. The reader can choose
how deeply are they getting involved in the game, will they travel on without a goal, fight
every monster, buy every property, maybe try to earn more money by gambling or investing,
but after a certain time, the game begins to repeat itself with no form of change whatsoever.
This semi-open-endedness resembles early hypertext literature. Here, interaction seems much
freer than in Caverns of the Snow Witch, but even though there are more tasks to perform and
more options on how to do them, the only difference is that the way the game ends is partially
subjective to the reader. Without changing the core mechanics of the genre, the Fable Lands
series allows to change freely immerse themselves into the magic circle for any preferred time
in a single playthrough.
If we take a look at the works from Caillois’ standpoint, we can see that they both do
qualify as forms of play in which they are free: the player can choose whether they want to
play or not, they are separate from the real world, they have uncertain outcomes due to the

39
randomness of the dice-rolls and the subjective of the player, they are largely unproductive,
they are governed by rules, and use make-believe (or role-play) as their main tool of
immersion. Gamebooks are not productive, if we do not count the maps and writings that the
player ultimately leaves behind after finishing playing. They combine agon (competition),
alea (chance) and mimicry (simulation) as their main types of play, similarly to most
boardgames. They share a lot of similarities with boardgames, both standing much closer to
the rule-driven ludus, although the freedom given by The War-Torn Kingdom’s semi-open-
ended narrative seems like a way of trying to implement free-play, paidia, into gamebooks by
creating an ever-traversable world only through text. Whether or not this would have been
successful, we do not know, since the Fabled Lands series was never finished, and thus
certain books have multiple dead-ends.
If we consider these books from a performance studies standpoint, the only person
present is the reader/player, who is performing the instructions of the game-text and spectates
themselves and/or is evaluated indirectly by the author. The narrator and the text both only
serve as tools for the performance. We can see that the transformation from player to
character is present through the second-person narrative and in the decision-making, although
it only happens after the rules are set, and it is constantly getting broken whenever the player
is asked to turn pages, roll dice, or write something on a paper. I would argue that both books
are self-performative, since the guidelines and rules all suggest that the player should perform
certain actions in real life, usually indicated in bold. Simply reading the text and looking at
the illustrations does not suffice as playing a game, but the event of playing a gamebook could
be considered a performance, if we take that both the actor and the spectator constitute the
reader who interprets and performs the text at the same time.
Performance-wise there are mostly structural differences between the two case studies,
the main one being the open-endedness and timeframe of the performance. Since there is no
set ending for The War-Torn Kingdom, ending the performance is partially or solely 20
dedicated to the reader. Another difference might be the complexity to the characters
themselves. In Fighting Fantasy games the player plays a nameless adventurer, with their
only goal being survival and gaining wealth, while in the Fabled Lands games the player can
choose from multiple characters with individual goals, while still being able to look for their
own goal of play and performance in the book. I would argue that more information with
more freedom provides better immersion and a better role-playing experience altogether. The

20
Depending on how well they play.

40
literary performative is present in both case studies, as an optional second-person
performative.
As for what forms of well-being these books could help develop, reading and playing
these gamebooks are mostly aimed to be a leisure-time activity. Both gamebooks create an
immersive fictional world that can serve as a temporal relief from real-life struggles, with
feedbacks on how the player performed (similarly replication therapy) usually by getting
points, items and riches, and eventually succeeding in their quest(s). However, in The
Caverns of the Snow Witch, the player is supposed to play to win, which due to its difficulty,
can be quite challenging, and cause stress and frustration. This is also a likely problem in The
War-Torn Kingdom, since if the reader treats the book as a game, they might try to achieve
something in the game-world, not just get immersed in it. Other than personal relief,
gamebooks can also serve (self-)educational purposes (Figueiredo and Bidarra, 2015), but this
was not common in established titles, such as our case studies. Although not listed here, since
performance and structure-wise they are not even as complex as the Fighting Fantasy books,
the Choose Your Own Adventure series was famous for trying to give each of their titles a
separate theme, trying to be informative (one could argue, even educational) in said topic,
while still being enjoyable to play. This could seem as a valiant effort of formal restructuring
of study-books but not as structural development for the gamebook genre.
All in all, gamebooks constitute a complex medium that could not keep up with the
passage of time. Since more than a decade passed between the two books’ release, there are
evidently some formal and thematic differences between them. The genre tried to move
towards a more open-world videogame-like territory with more convoluted rules, a larger
world and a larger non-linear narrative. In my opinion, these gamebooks are games with a
performative element, namely role-playing games. I would argue that a trial for a shift
towards a more advanced form of performativity and paidia can be traced in the Fabled
Lands series, perhaps even due to its complexity, it could not succeed in reinventing the genre
altogether.

3.2 Solo RPGs

In the case of the solo RPG, the situation is completely opposite to the gamebook: the
formal diversity is so drastic and conspicuous, that it is hard to grasp exactly where the genre
starts. Board games, video games, hypertexts, gamebooks, applied performances – one could
easily argue that certain titles listed could belong under either one of these categories too. No

41
wonder: Solo RPG is, at its current form, an umbrella term, generally meaning the online
movement of the last decade, that experimented with pen-and-paper-based zine, booklet, and
print-out games, that can be played alone, focusing on formal and stylistic innovation, while
still establishing some fix points as a genre.
To better showcase these ‘fix points’, I selected and categorised nine case studies into
four sub-categories: a) solo-boardgame or ludus-type; b) fixed prompt-based; c) random
prompt-based; d) gamification-based.21 Solo-boardgame or ludus-type solo RPGs are the most
similar to gamebooks out of the four sub-categories, since they are rule-driven, have distinct
goals, can be won or lost, and require no creative or self-reflective behaviour from their
player, only luck and chance-based decision-making skills. Prompt-based solo RPGs consist
of a series of creative writing, drawing, and world-building exercises based on direct or
indirect evocative prompts, that can be a contemplative, self-reflective, or simply relaxing
role-play experience. Some solo RPGs have their prompts linked together with an RNG, to
make every individual play-through different, while others have a more strict, linear approach
to the exercises. I will analyse these types together, since, despite the structural difference,
they are tied together, both in their tools of immersion and their main goals. This will also
make it easier to compare and emphasise if the structural changes shift the notion of
performativity into subjective play. The last sub-category, the gamification-based solo RPGs,
essentially turn everyday tasks into gameplay experience.
I will introduce the case-studies in each category individually, describing their
narrative, their formal details, and their rules. Then I will do a comparative analysis based on
the criteria given in the methodological chapter, starting from a role-playing-game standpoint,
through a separate ludological and performance studies perspective, and then I will discuss
the (potential) effect of the works on the reader’s well-being.

3.2.1 Solo-Boardgame or Ludus-Type Solo RPGs

Trapped in a Cabin with Lord Byron, created by Oliver Dakshire, is a one-page solo
RPG with traditional boardgame-like elements. It is set at Lord Byron’s holiday home with
the player and their friends trapped inside due to the terrible weather. The setting is evidently
inspired by the holiday when Marie Shelley came up with the story of Frankenstein and his

21
I broadly use the term ’gamification’ to describe implementing game-mechanics onto any real-life activity.

42
monster. This is also underlined by the three scores the player can get: ‘Scandal’,
‘Masterpiece’, and ‘Stress’.
The player rolls two six-sided dice to see what happens each day. The first roll
determines the type of the event happening that day (‘Byron’s Recreations’, ‘Byron’s Drama,
or a ‘Brief Redoubt…’ – each represented by a table); the second roll determines the concrete
event on the selected table, and its consequences. Some scores go up, some scores go down. If
any of the scores reach ten, the game ends, either with fleeing from society (if the ‘Scandal’
score gets too high), or by either killing Byron or descending into an uncontrollable weeping
(if the ‘Stress’ score erupts), or by creating a “new genre of supernatural horror fiction based
on your time with Byron” (if the ‘Masterpiece’ score gets to ten).
Delve is a solo map drawing RPG, where the player plays as an Overseer of a dwarf
community, that grows and develops by digging deeper and deeper underground, discovering
caverns, building mines, fighting beasts, etc. The player needs a standard, fifty-two card deck
(without jokers), something to draw the map on (preferably a grided paper), a pencil, an
eraser, and any small objects that can serve as tokens.
A turn consists of exploring, fighting, trading, and recruiting. The player first draws a
card, hearts stand for resources, clubs for natural formations, diamonds for trade goods,
spades for remnants. Each card has individual meaning and a concrete rule for it written in the
game-text. They must draw up the corresponding event on their map to the corresponding
spot, write the resources found or traded on their paper, place tokens representing monsters
and adventurers, among others. The community gathers resources, hires adventurers, fights
and tames beasts, and builds rooms, buildings, and pathways across the caverns, partially
based on the drawn cards, but also on the individual decision of the player. For example, the
player can build a smithy or an office anytime but can only encounter monsters when cards
are drawn. The tokens may move around the map, representing travelling adventurers, or
rampaging monsters.
The game ends either when a monster found underground destroys the players
buildings and emerges to the surface, or when the player finds the Void Crystal, a magical
relic that makes the community prosper beyond belief.
The two solo RPGs here are drastically different both in complexity, length, style and
theme. Yet they have quite a lot of attributes in common: the player role-plays a certain
character, they use RNG to determine what the character encounters during a fixed period of
time (and in the case of Delve, a fixed space) from a limited number of fixed encounters, and
there are goals to the game (an ideal outcome, or a victory would be to create a masterpiece,

43
and to find the Void Crystal, while every other outcome could be treated as a loss). The
complexity of Delve comes from adding a spatial dimension to the gameplay (similarly to
most boardgames), making it partially productive, since finishing the game always results in a
map drawn.
The authors’ intentions can be deduced from the gameplay and the end-results: while
in Trapped in a Cabin with Lord Byron the outcome of the game is solely luck-based, in
Delve randomness can be structured, by strategy and decision-making that will eventually
benefits the player (For example: deciding where to put a dangerous monster on the map, or
where to place a tavern for adventurers, etc.). This is similar to how in gamebooks clever
decision-making could benefit the reader, but it was also impossible to predict what happens
next. Compared to the fixed narrative of the gamebook, we have something freer and/or more
random: the game could start and end with almost anything in the given framework. However,
when drawing a map in Delve, the creative process is something new: role-playing gets to a
new level when the player is asked not only to imagine, but to create the world they are
playing in.
When it comes to a ludological viewpoint, I would argue that these games stand very
close to gamebooks, still having all of Caillois’ game qualities, while also using the same set
of goals: agon (competition), alea (chance), mimicry (simulation), although in different
proportions. They are still ludus, while Delve uses some form of free play with using the
imagination of the player drawing the different encounters on the map. They are very much
games in the strictest sense rather than play (?), as they have little freedom in their
interpretation, not focusing on role-play as much as strategy, winning or losing.
From a performance studies perspective, the idea is again quite similar to gamebooks,
despite the map-drawing element of Delve, and the structured randomness, that makes every
playthrough different, creating a non-mediated, non-reproduceable experience, similar to
Phelan’s (1993) performance-idea. In my opinion, however, playing Trapped in a Cabin with
Lord Byron is not much of a game-experience, but rather an artwork. Although, similarly to
the Fluxus event scores, by treating it as an artwork, it is again a product. Therefore, it does
not suffice as non-productive, non-capitalistic performance. The potential to perform the two
works is always there. Hence, they are both self-performative texts.
As for well-being, both solo RPGs serve as interesting leisure-time activities, and
Delve can help developing strategical thinking and problem solving, but they are not self-
reflective, and not focused on education.

44
 3.2.2 Fixed Prompt-Based Solo RPGs

Artefact, created by Jack Harrison is a twelve-page long contemplative solo RPG. In

this game, the player must become a magical object, who can talk, has its own identity, and
consciousness. There is one thing, however, it cannot do: act on its own. Every magical
artefact needs a keeper.
First, the player is instructed to design their character (the artefact), by answering
questions about it, choosing from pre-set properties, and draw it on the paper. The game
consists of times the artefact/character is being used, and times it is abandoned, and waiting
for its next keeper. The player is instructed to darken their room, to create a scene of
abandonment. Then the player must close their eyes to represent time spent alone without a
keeper. Each second roughly equals to a year spent abandoned. The wait ends when a new
keeper finds the artefact and starts using it for their adventure, the keeper can be based on
character types and traits given by the author. When the keeper dies or loses the artefact, the
artefact goes back to abandonment, and the cycle starts all over again.
The player writes down the experiences their keepers have, the adventures they go
through together, the ways the artefact is misused, and the places they visit, or the places in
which the artefact lies on its own for decades, or even centuries. The player can come up with
these either on their own or based on prompts given by the booklet, slowly building up the
legend of the artefact. The game ends whenever the player feels like they do not wish to
continue. Here, they write an epilogue for the legend, and the artefact is either ruined,
destroyed, or forgotten forever.

Take a final moment to sit in silence in the dark. Think about how the Artefact is remembered,
if at all, through stories, art or archaeological remains in a museum. Then turn the lights back
on, have a snack and stretch out. (Harrison 2019)

FETCH is a one-page solo RPG based on a series of prompts and questions, created by
Grant Howitt. Compared to other solo RPGs with difficult topics, FETCH does not warn the
reader about what is going to happen.
The player is immediately let known by the text, that they are not real, they have been
replaced with a puppet, a hollow, lifeless entity by a nameless “They”. The player can decide
if he wants to end their life, take revenge on “Them”, or continue living with the knowledge,
that they are not real. The player is asked to write their name down, and then cross it out: they

45
no longer need it. They must write down what feels wrong with their body, who will miss
them, when they are gone, and when and how did they realise that they are not themselves.
Then the player is presented with a series of creative writing prompts about what they
encounter, their task being to fill in the gaps in their story, each segment of their revenge-
journey represented by a page of paper. The game ends with page seven, and the last prompt:
the player finding their original self: what will they do with it? Or, as put by the author: “How
do you choose to die?” (Howitt 2021)
They’re Onto Me is a two-page solo RPG by Banana Chan. It pushes the concept of
solo RPGs by using creative tools outside of pen-and-paper, moving the magic circle to
virtual sphere. The player plays as a conspiracy theorist, who believes that they have
discovered that parasitic aliens live in the bodies of certain people. The goal of the game is let
the world know about this. The game lasts for twelve real-life days, each day the player must
film a short (maximum one minute long) recording of themselves from their phone, talking
about the ‘alien invasion’. Each day in the video recording the player must answer one
question about the aliens, pre-defined by the author. “Your post will start with ‘Hello world,
this is (name)’ and end with a variation of ‘They're onto me. Talk later’” (1). At the last day,
the player must state, why they are giving up on making these videos, and decide on what to
do with these recordings. However, there is a suggestion:

When you are alone, after each video session, upload the recording online and organize it into
a playlist called “They’re Onto Me”. Do this for every session. You may choose to keep this
private or public. (1)

3.2.3 Random Prompt-Based Solo RPGs

Her Odyssey, created by S. Kaiya J., has at first glance a lot in common with the
previously mentioned gamebooks. Her Odyssey is a five-page solo RPG following a wanderer
(mainly referred to as ‘Her’ but it is open to any gender), who is dealing with the loss of her
home and/or loved one(s) through wandering and adventuring through the land. The wanderer
also has her own name, pronouns, an uncharacterised ‘shadow’ chasing her, and a motivation
and a goal that she is trying to reach, all of which are decided by the player before starting the
game.

46
 To play the game, the player needs at least one d4, a standard deck of fifty-four
playing cards (including jokers), and a journal where you can record the game’s story. The
player’s character has three attributes in Her Odyssey: Vitality, Quickness, and Fortitude –
each one represented by a numeral value that is assigned by the player from one to five. The
added-up value of the three attributes cannot exceed eleven. Each day in the game is
represented by the player drawing a card from the deck, determining that day’s Hazard. Each
suit can stand for a list of encounters (the concrete one is chosen, fleshed out, and described
by the player), and each card value stands for the difficulty of the Hazard. The player is
suggested to draw one card in a real-time day in the morning, contemplate on what that card
means in the character’s quest, and in the evening roll stat-checks to determine the outcome of
the event, then write a journal entry about what happened. For stat-checks, the player rolls as
many d4s as the value of their representative stat is (so if they have a three for Quickness, and
to solve the task they need to use their Quickness, they roll three d4s), and then compare the
rolled number to the drawn card’s difficulty score. If they manage to beat the difficulty score,
the day was Auspicious, the encounter, task, or hazard, the player thought out, went well for
the character; if they could not beat the difficulty score, the day was Inauspicious, and the
character failed to succeed in the encounter, that the player thought out. The stats move up if a
day was Inauspicious, “failure provides opportunity for learning and growth” (4), while an
Auspicious day tires the character, making their stats decrease. The game pauses on the day
when the first joker is drawn from the deck: this means a False Homecoming, where the
character believes to have found the place they were looking for, but something goes wrong.
The player is advised to reflect on their wanderer’s journey, their Auspicious and
Inauspicious days here, and what their character is going to do next. They also gain a new
stat, called Hope, which equals to the Auspicious days the character had. They can take one
point of hope to add it to one of their other stat-checks, but if Hope reaches zero, the character
gives up on their journey.
Thousand Year Old Vampire is a long, journal-writing solo RPG in which the player
takes the role of a vampire by writing their diary, and while doing so uncovering the past
events of their life. The reader requires a d6 and a d10 to play, as well as something to write
with and something to write on, although there is also space left on the pages to be filled out.
Instead of stats, the player’s character holds five traits: Memories, Skills, Resources,
Characters, Marks. These traits are not represented by numbers, but rather with text written
by the player. When creating a character, the player comes up with ideas for each of the five
traits, and writes them down. Memories represent the events in their life as an ever-living

47
vampire, that they remember and hold onto (a maximum of five), Skills are the abilities and
techniques they have mastered over the years (this could range from swordsmanship to
adequate speech, etc.), Resources are the belongings and titles the character possesses;
Characters are the important figures in their life; and Marks are the signs that built up over
the years of them being a vampire. After creating (writing) the character, the game begins.
The player must answer/develop a story on a series of Prompts in writing, each of
which modifies their traits, either by adding new ones (for example: the thirst for blood) or
taking some away (for example: by giving new core memories, they lose a part of their old
self, since they can only hold onto five). In the whole book there are more than eighty
numbered prompts, with additional ones in the appendixes. The player chooses which prompt
to move next by rolling the two dice and then subtracting the rolled value of the d6 from the
rolled value of the d10. If the number is positive, they move forward; if it is negative, they
move backwards; if the value is zero, they encounter the same prompt again. Most prompts
have second-, and third entries, so they change when encountered again. The player can also
change the text of previous encounters to make the narrative more coherent. Some prompts
ask the player to make Skill checks, not meaning stat checks (since the character has no stats),
the player must cross-out or tick a skill, that has been used to solve the encounter. That Skill
cannot be used again. Alternatively, if the character has no more useful Skills, they can give
up one of their Resources to solve the prompt in a different way. The game ends, when the
player has no more Skills or Resources to check, or when one of the prompts states so. Then
the player must describe and write down their character’s demise.
Alone Among the Stars is a journal-writing solo RPG by Takuma Okada. The player
plays as a space-traveller, and explorer. They travel from planet to planet, all alone with their
space shuttle, and discover new, interesting places and creatures. The player/reader must roll a
d6 to discover a planet, and then draw equal number of cards from a deck of playing cards.
This reveals one to six prompts on what they find on the newly discovered planet. The four
suits represent four different prompts: mobile living beings, immobile living beings and
plants, ruins, natural phenomena; while the card values represent where the encounter
happens. For each card drawn they must also roll another d6, to decide how they come upon
the encounter. Then the player writes the encounters down to their ship or travel journal
(which is a notebook, or a piece of paper).

Play until you are tired, and want to return home. If you want to remember your travels, save
the journal. If the memories bring you pain, burn it. (Okada 2018)

48
 Prompt-based solo RPGs (both random and fixed) are much more subjective and self-
reflective, can be seen as ‘gamified’ personality tests or self-expression challenges, and in my
opinion are less like typical board games, or video games, or even gamebooks, and much
more similar to applied performances, pedagogical, and psychological practices. Their magic
circle is usually well-established in the beginning through a disclaimer about the topics and
themes that appear in the work, being mindful to both their materials as well as their
audience’s sensitivities22, signifying that the immersion here is deeper, and more personal than
what one would expect from a traditional game.

Be uncomfortable. Your protagonist is a vampire, even if you try to keep them decent and
humane. Terrible and delicious things are going to happen. You should have moments of
discomfort as Prompts combine with constrained resources to result in your vampire
murdering loved ones and performing strange deeds. This is a strength of the game, so let
darkness fall where it may. (Huchings 2019, 28)

The player’s character in our case studies, is a person (or object) in some form of
solitude, their adventure either being a rite of passage to self-knowledge, or a transformation
through learning or giving the answers to the prompts. The prompts are usually intended to be
used freely within the framework of the game. However, the concreteness of the rules (and
thus the freedom of play) varies from game to game: in Alone Among the Stars, and Her
Odyssey the player can describe any event in their journal, the drawn cards give a multitude of
inspirational ideas, but no concrete event. While in in FETCH, They’re Onto Me, and
Thousand Year Old Vampire the events are described in detail, the player only needs to fill in
the missing information with their own ideas. Artifact allows the player to choose from
premade prompts (artifact-keepers, events, etc.) or come up with their own. There is usually a
suggested way for players to work on their prompts.

Prompts are opportunities to learn about history and the real world. Turn to Wikipedia and
read about the different types of Turkish nobility if you need to. (Huchings 2019, 28)

There are many symbolic acts present in these games, from drawing a card
representing a day past, crossing one’s original name out in FETCH, or closing one’s eyes in
22
This is not the case in FETCH, where despite the strong themes, players get presented with moral and self-
determining decisions first hand.

49
Artifact each second standing for a year spent in solitude, but most of this is happening on the
very surface level of writing: by using the first person in self-written/spoken text, the player
transcends into their character. The fictional space and time are presented through these acts,
already established in the introduction of the rules as well. In Her Odyssey and They’re Onto
Me, however, real-time days stand for the days passed in the magic circle. This idea, again,
blurs the line between reality and fiction, player and character, aiming for a more immersive
experience. The expected interaction, or the goal of play, is self-writing (and drawing),
presumably as a self-reflective exercise. Therefor here play is always productive, but the
product of play is likely intended to work more as a representation of the journey and
transformation the player went through, rather than an object with material value, while still
resembling an artwork, that was not created to commercial use, but rather as simple self-
expression through play.
If we look at these works from Caillois’ ludological perspective, I would argue that
despite their loose productivity and the conscious potential of their self-care benefit, they very
much are a quite traditional form of play: a more adult form of pretend, a more immersive,
less rule-bound role-play. Agon (competition) is completely negated from these solo RPGs,
while alea (chance) is only included in the random-prompt versions, all are mainly focused on
the effect of mimicry (simulation). Ludus is still quite present in the rules, more intensely in
determining random prompts, since game tools, tables, and rules apply to all randomness, but
all in all paidia is the stronger form of play in these games, with the immense freedom given
to the player, and the fact that there is no way of telling what the outcome of play will be. One
could even argue that these prompt-based solo RPGs work as encouragement, inspiration, or
even loose scores or canvases to practice free play, similarly to how Fluxus Event Scores
present the potential of self-performativity. As for the performance studies stand-point, I
would argue that these solo RPGs are by far the most performance-like, in the sense that they
are not strictly rule-driven, they are transformative, and self-focused, they create an event in
which the player/actor can experience and spectate their own transformation and reflect on it.
The event of reading, contemplating, reflecting, and writing, together becomes self-
performance. By opening towards a more social experience (such as sharing your creations
online in Artifact, or posting your messages in They’re Onto Me) the player extends the role
of spectator to a greater public.
These games could help develop well-being through self-reflection, contemplation,
creative world-building, and pretence – serving both as a relief and a motivational tool to
socialise, create, meditate, etc. Focusing on creating and reflecting on another self, and the

50
already used semi-conscious psychological tools, seem like a possible way of connection to
replication therapy and performing the self. As a leisure time activity these solo RPGs work
both as games and as a non-evaluated creative work, but for (self-)educational purposes it
might be harder to find a use for this type of solo RPGs, perhaps if one would like to know
more about themselves.

3.2.4 Gamification-Based Solo RPGs

Book Report: The Game is what I call a ‘self-motivational solo RPG’. It is only two-
pages long and focuses on what the title suggests: writing a book report. First, the player must
choose a book, either on their own, or they can roll two d10s to choose the genre and/or the
author of the book from two pre-made tables. Secondly, they must then read the book
thoroughly (this is also included as a part of the game). After or during reading the player
starts writing the book report, with numerous formal suggestions and requirements in mind.
The player decides on the length and the details of their report, although they can roll a d4 to
determine how many pages their report should be. When the report is finished, the player
must find a person to evaluate their work: it can be a friend, a lover, or a relative, although the
game suggests someone who is familiar with literary studies and grading systems. Or if the
player cannot find a person, they feel qualified for their evaluation, they can also upload it to
the general web, or to online forums dedicated to the game. The game ends when the player
gets graded for their work.
Even if it is not mentioned in the game-text, one could easily argue that the player
takes on the role of a student, or someone who must write a book report, but without the
actual urgency of doing so. There is not much of a magic circle established here: this could
also mean that that Book Report: The Game is not a game at all, simply a challenge with
gamified elements (such as rolling an author or a genre from a table, or getting a fictional
grade). But I would argue that it is a solo RPG (and therefore, a game) although not as
developed as the previously mentioned titles. This is mostly true for gamification-based titles,
since they try to directly implement useful real-life activities into their game-text, which then
evidently loses in aesthetic and immersive quality. Here everything happens in real-time, and
real-space, although many acts performed by the player become symbolic, if they are only
doing it to play the ‘game’. Reading a book might not be symbolic but getting graded surely
is. The game is productive, since if it succeeds it ends with a finished report (which is again

51
only has value in the magic circle). I would argue that goal of play, or the author’s intention,
is to get the player to read a (new) book, while paying critical attention to the things read.
There is not much substance to the gameplay of Book Report: The Game, and I would
argue that this is mostly due to the fact that the game, in Caillois’ terms, is not separate,
meaning that there is no clear outline between the real-world and the magic circle. However,
pretence or mimicry is still the main quality used here, which is the cornerstone of free play,
accompanied by agon (competition), the player challenging themselves to read and evaluate a
book, and then get a good grade, making a framework or inspiration for paidia.
The main performance part of this game is when the player’s work gets evaluated.
Here another ‘player’ gets involved and a transformation can happen, both taking on roles
such as ‘student’ and ‘teacher’. The first part of the performance is self-performative, the
event of reading and writing helps create a product, then product becomes an essential prop in
which the performance extends socially. By implementing a spectator into the game, the
player shares its spectating role (similarly to They’re Onto Me).
How these games could help develop well-being is perhaps more clearer than any
other work we have seen so far. They can be educative if the gamified actions are educative,
they can work well for replication therapy (if the evaluation comes from a professional). They
are not as potent for leisure-time activities, but they have the potential to turn difficult tasks
into easier, game-like situations.

52
 4. Conclusion

Even if, due to a lack of sources present, we cannot take gamebooks as direct
predecessors to solo RPGs, their formal historical roots are evidently connected. While
gamebooks of the 1980s tried to imitate tabletop boardgames, both in narrative structure and
mechanics, they came short in their effort, due to a lack of formal diversity and limitations of
their toolkits. Even with the implementation of more performative, more complex structural
schemes, and open-ended narratives – resembling hypertexts and video games – they kept
losing popularity.
The solo RPG genre is the revival of paper-based solitary play. The general solitude of
the Covid-19 quarantines generated a wave of interest in self-care and self-reflection, and solo
RPGs, either coincidentally or following the same trend, managed to be a tool for such
practices. A more mindful, more intimate experience than gamebooks, using concepts and
tools reminiscent to ideas of applied psychology, and dramatherapy, the genre gained
popularity during the pandemic, but its future, and its potential applications are unknown.
As for the currency of our topic, it feels like the difficulty of the discussion comes
from the fact that the gamebook genre is already past its prime, while solo RPGs, on the
contrary, are still trying to establish their own place in today's convoluted mass media.
However, I would argue that the role of the solo RPG genre, due to its personal nature, could
very much be to stand as a counterpart to the mass-produced digital and multimedial art and
games.
The more rigid form of gamebooks and ludus-type solo RPGs are more about the end-
result, winning, losing, getting a high score etc.; yet they still use performance elements to
make their gameplay more immersive and work quite well as a fun, relieving pen-and-paper
game, as well as a simple self-educative experience. The contemplative, self-reflective nature
of the prompt-based solo RPGs gives much more freedom to the player, who is expected to
perform and redefine themselves, by practicing creative writing and drawing, and performing
symbolic, immersive actions to create a world or a narrative, or both. These, along with
gamification-based solo RPGs are more like drama-pedagogic or drama-therapeutic exercises,
rather than fully fleshed-out performances or games. I would argue that in the future these
RPGs could be used in a myriad of ways, such as personal relief, for (self-)educational
purposes, or even as therapeutic tools. Of course, all of this would need plenty more research

53
to be proven, but I believe that the primetime of solitary pen-and-paper play is still yet to
come.

54
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Harrison, Jack. 2019. Artefact.

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