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go back to page 46 and make another choice” (p. 148). These dead ends are not common, but even a few of them will narrow the choices ultimately available to the reader. Ryan’s (2003) tree diagram accounts for the branch-like structure of the Choose Your Own Adventure book, but it does not account for the types of backtracking I found in Winter Wizard. In Ryan’s (2003) diagram, “once a branch has been taken, there is no possible return to the decision point” (p. 248). However, we see not only decisions that lead back to paths that were previous options, but also several dead ends where the reader is actually directed to turn back and choose again. In addition, it is unlikely that a reader who makes an unsatisfactory ending will put down the book and not return. If all endings were equally satisfying, then this sort of backtracking might not occur, but in actuality, only a handful of endings pass as satisfactory. Others, such as the ghost or the cockroach, clearly indicate that the reader has taken a wrong turn from the correct storyline.

The interactivity seen in gamebooks is clearly selective rather than productive. The reader does not actually affect the world of the story in a meaningful way, but simply navigates through the text. In fact, the selection of choices gives the illusion of more interactivity than is actually present. Although there proved to be a good number of endings in Winter Wizard, only a few of these were satisfactory. In addition, the pathways to these choices were limited by steering the reader through certain nodes. This early model for interactivity within the print media proves to be less interactive than it may at first seem.

Cybertext: A Model for Adventure Games

Text-based adventure games offer another model for interactive fiction that also emerged in the early 1970s. These games involve a computer database of commands and possible plotlines that the user attempts to access (Aarseth, 1997, p. 100). In these text-based games the user enters textual commands and receives a response, in text, that describes the resulting action in the story. As in the Choose Your Own Adventure books, adventure game players’ decisions lead to certain predetermined outcomes but involve more activity on the part of the player to reach these outcomes. Rather than simply choosing one path or the other, the player must solve the puzzle in order to proceed.

The most often recognized first in text-based adventure games is Adventure, which was completed in 1975 (Montfort, 2003, p. 86). However, Montfort (2003) argues that SHRDLU, developed at MIT from 1968–1970 should instead be conferred this honor (p. 83). Again, we see that this form of interactivity existed before the TRPG, yet D&D still had an influence on adventure games. David Keller (2007), still credits D&D for the origin of interactive fiction because he explains that text-based adventure games developed before D&D were very basic (p. 280). While Adventure came first and was in development at the same time as D&D, Zork, released in 1979, became far more popular (Keller, 2007, p. 280). The influence of D&D in Zork cannot be denied. In fact, a leaflet from 1978–1979 directly says that the game was inspired by D&D (Montfort, 2003, p. 99). Zork was also named Dungeon for a while, but this caused concerns with copyright infringement and, according to Montfort (2003), also led to a change in the text of the leaflet which, after 1981, ceased to mention D&D specifically (p. 100).

Aarseth (1997) focuses one chapter of his book Cybertext on textbased adventure games. Aarseth’s model for cybertext works to explain the structure of this particular type of interactive fiction, but is also intended to be representative of a larger group of texts, including TRPGs. He explains that in a traditional narrative there are two planes: the event plane, where events of the plot are narrated, and the progression plane, where the events are unfolded by the reader (Aarseth, 1997, p. 125). In traditional narratives, these planes must be connected because the reader follows the order