The year is a blisteringly ancient 1992. I am somewhere around 10 years old, socially awkward, and more or less living in a library, buried in books either at the sacred building, or digging through fractured pieces of its soul at home. Finally graduating from the droll monotony of Garfield (the banal feline-oriented strip, not the 20th president of the United States), I have recently discovered choose your own adventure books.
Rich, diverse entertainment in 90 pages
While I was (and still am, let’s be real) unable to read a single paragraph in a history book without reading it thrice, I could bookmark every single path of every single thread, document the paths on scratch paper, and make sure I didn’t miss a single thing. I would devour Choose Your Own Adventure books, and look like a madman doing it.
The be fair, the writing wasn’t always pristine, the character development wasn’t the greatest, and you could probably find better plot development with far less manic Beautiful Mind-style mapping in a collection of short stories. You’d also have a better time-to-enjoyment ratio as well. But I was discovering and exploring. And to me, that’s all that mattered at the time.
New Technology, New Ways to Entertain
A couple of months ago, OpenAI added a new feature to ChatGPT called “MyGPTs” and if you haven’t played with that yet, you’re missing out. Put succinctly, MyGPTs allow you to create tailored, revisit-able instances of ChatGPT that can be configured to do very specific tasks.
If you’re interested, I have a page on this site dedicated to my favorite ones, and here’s OpenAI’s marketing page on MyGPTs.
Shortly after OpenAI added the MyGPT capability to my account, I started tooling around with writing, SEO, coding, and even stock trading assistants. Overall, they do a pretty decent job, but are more of a tool than the producer of a final product. My favorite “playful” one of them all, however, has to be the “Adventure Crafter”.
Rekindling old flames, without the extra work
“Adventure Crafter” is a GPT that I created to do one thing, and do it well: Simulate old-school, Choose Your Own Adventure novels. While the “in real time” nature of ChatGPT means that you can’t keep track of pages, backtrack “accurately” and visit every possible outcome, I actually find that to be refreshing – my ambiguity intolerance is completely satisfied that there is no other preset outcome that absolutely must be known. And you get to participate in a story by directly influencing the outcome. It’s like a textual Bandersnatch.
I was pretty intentional in the way that I wrote the configuration. Adventure Crafter opens every virtual tome with a quick question to identify the intended age range of the audience – meaning it’s perfectly serviceable for interactive bedtime stories, drinking games, or creative inspiration. You can even direct the genre and theme if you like.
Classic fun, new format, and highly accessible
For me, the Adventure Crafter, powered by OpenAI’s MyGPTs, does more than revive those fondly remembered choose your own adventure books; it introduces a fresh way to engage with narratives. This innovation proves that the tales which captivated us as children can adapt to modern times, retaining their core appeal. Whether you’re an adult seeking the nostalgia of simple, choice-driven plots or a tech enthusiast excited by the prospects of interactive storytelling, there’s never been a more opportune time to explore the endless possibilities that lie ahead.
