For a few weeks (months?) I’ve been doing this silly and fun thing on Monday nights. I pick a random Choose Your Own Adventure book from my collection, and I read it on my Twitch channel, letting the audience make the choices for me:
Last night, I had this dumb idea to get onto my Twitch channel, read a Choose Your Own Adventurebook, and ask the people who were watching to make the choices. We did Inside UFO 54-40 and The Race Forever. I think about 200 people showed up (not bad, considering the short notice), and holy hell did we have fun. It was this great community experience, and I liked it so much, I’m going to try to make it a regular thing.
So it’s pretty much a regular thing, now, and I seem to have settled upon 6pm Pacific time every Monday, unless there’s a Kings game or I have some other pressing engagement.
Anyway, I always point out that I am not doing this for money, and I don’t mean to infringe on Choose Your Own Adventure’s IP rights or anything like that. I always point out that I’d rather beg forgiveness than ask permission, and I hope that if CYOA ever stumbles upon my thing, they’ll treat it as free marketing and not a thing to throw lawyers at.
So last week, someone from CYOA emailed me … and it turns out a lot of them at the publisher are fans of my work, including my Storytime with Wil thing!! Not only do they not want to sue me to death, she offered to send me a care package, and it arrived today.
BEHOLD:
I will read from at least one of these titles on tonight’s Storytime With Wil, which is at 6pm Pacific at Twitch.tv/itswilwheaton. Come by and join us, if you want! It’s been a positive experience for all of us, and seems to attract a really kind and clever bunch of friendly people.
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Nicely done.
Wow, how cool is that!? I love it when the creative minds behind a work are totally into their fans expanding on or playing with their original works. Definitely going to be joining in tonight!
This. Is. Epic.
I am really loving Storytime With Wil. (Although you reading The Monster at the End of This Book is still my favorite.) Laughing along with fun nerds is a really good tonic for anxiety and depression.
Holeeeee shizz wil, that’s fucking cool. I used to read the hell out of these when I was a kid. I’ve only been available once at 9 pm EST and when I clicky the link I get a wheel that spins for infinity. Maybe someday.
That’s awesome! These look like the new editions of the books. Are the ones you’ve been reading the old ones? I noticed that a lot of the more grisly death scenes have been changed or removed in recent editions, compared to the ones I read as a kid. (See Trouble on Planet Earth for examples.)
This rocks on so many levels.
It’s raining Awesomeness.
Did we ever find out what happened to the Prince? =D
I think I’ll get a couple of these for those interminable family get togethers. My and the nieces and nephews will at least be entertained.
Now I have “Baby Ran” stuck in my head.
Motorharp wins.
MAY I PETITION FOR US TO READ EIGHTH GRADE WITCH? coughs I mean, as someone who WAS an eighth grade witch (even if nowadays I only manage about one spell a month and can’t be buggered to remember any festivals other than Yule and Midsummer), I am intrigued as to what sort of mischief we could get up to with that one. 🙂 Or Zombie Penpal? Because who DOESN’T want a zombie penpal? I’m imagining a zombie teenager qirl her legs kicked up as she lounges on her favorite headstone in the cemetery and tells everyone else to keep it down because “Becky just realized that her second favorite friend stole her first choice date for the spring dance and I have to tell her how to kill them both and get away with it. Do you guys want fresh teenage brains or not? Keep it down!”
I grew up with those books! I still have about fifteen or so of them, some in dubious condition. I was actually literally looking at them yesterday. my favorite ones are the SPACE VAMPIRE and THE MAGIC OF THE UNICORN. xD
Storytime with Wil forever! I’d LIVE if you read “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark” during October.
So awesome!
That is so awesome! I love Storytime With Wil!
Good on them for realising this was a good thing that is just bringing a bit of joy to a lot of people and for encouraging it. Kudos to the CYOA people.
I usually am at work (I’m at work right now) but if I ever have a Monday off I will certainly tune in!!
Fun time tonight! #CelebratorySandwich!!
I just rediscovered my love for the genre when my brother introduced me to Gamewright’s Cardventures line. It’s basically CYOA on cards with a little gamification involved. You might like it, Wil. http://www.gamewright.com/gamewright/index.php?section=games&page=game&show=320 https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/169984/stowaway-52
This makes me really happy. It’s good to see that there’s still some parts of the net that are fun for the sake of fun.
Swag-o-licious Storytime with Wil sweetness. Must try to tune in next time!
I really hope that there will be Storytime with Wil on JoCo Cruise!!
This sounds like it might be worth figuring out what twitch is! Of course Monday at 9 (Eastern) is usually “getting ready for bed” time, but perhaps an exception could be made…
For some reason every time I see “CYOA” my brain is filling it in as “Cover Your Own Ass”.
Inside UFO 54-40 was a transformative experience for my young game designer brain—a game you couldn’t win unless you cheated? Wow. It obviously inspired my Parsely games. Loved these and the whole Endless Quest series.
Probably nobody’s watching this topic anymore, but it made me think of Parsely, and I was about to ask if Wil was familiar with those games… but Google tells me he is (http://wilwheaton.net/2012/06/live-action-interactive-fiction-games/). And then you popped up in the thread! So let me just say thank you for creating that system; those games are a ton of fun. I got to play one for the first time at a local game con a couple weeks ago and have now bought Action Castle to try my hand at playing he computer with my family. Great stuff.
This is awesome. I didn’t know they still made these!
Are you familiar with the ‘Choose You Own Nightmare’ series? Same concept, but I think they’re from R.L. Stein.
I’ll try to be there (and be square).
Last night’s Storytime was a Choose Your Own Nightmare one! And it was sooooo great!
This is what they mean when they say “living the dream”!
I SO used to cheat these books! I’d hold my finger where the branch was and read through that choice, then go back and read the other branch! I loved these books so much!! Now I’m going to have to get them for my son. He’ll love them too!
That is awesome. Ryan North, of The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, has a few excellent Choose Your Own Adventure-type books that I plan to help me get past my Shakespeare block.
Can I admit it kinda bothers me when you say your ideas are dumb (in a “makes me sorta downhearted” way)? They’re not. They are an experiment that you are trying out and finding out if it works, if you need to define different parameters or drop it altogether. I acknowledge there are other factors at play, but you deserve to give yourself more credit for being an innovative thinker and have ideas that are either awesome or didn’t work out so well.
BUT THEY ARE NOT DUMB!
You, like, roll bunches of 20’s with an occasional 1 every now and then. Okay, so not literally. You’ve documented aplenty how often you don’t roll 20’s, but still…
You’re awesome. Remind yourself. And often.
^ THIS.
This is the kind of thing that makes me feel like this country (world or whole world) hasn’t gone to the corporate greed bullshit that’s so prevalent today. A+ to these guys for being soo cool.
This is awesome. Glad you’ve found a new way to entice your fans. If this is going to be a long running thing, you should try out the Give Yourself Goosebumps series some time.
My heart skipped a beat. I am so jealous but storytime is going to be awesome.
Oh, SCORE!! That was a classy move on their part, and think of all the people it will bless and make happy now. What a fun thing!
There is nothing about this I don’t like. I still have all of my CYOA books, right next to my Goosebumps books.
I had some CYOA as a kid, but my real favorites in the 80s were the Fighting Fantasy books by Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson (the UK Steve Jackson, not he of Munchkin/GURPS fame). They were as if CYOA and D&D got put in the Brundle teleporter. Roll stats, maintain inventory, fight monsters, turn to reference 127 if you want to open the big creepy door… I still have around 30 of them on a shelf.
LOL! As I was reading this I was thinking, “I’ve MET the publishers of those books at Book Expo America and they would LOVE this.” And then I got to the part where they already do.
They really are awesome people with awesome books!
A used book store near me went out of business last year and I hit the mother load with Choose Your Own Adventure books. Shockingly, my wife (who also grew up in the 80s) never read one so I officially baptize her with #5 — The Mystery of Chimney Rock.
I love this! My wedding speech was all about CYOA and the shuffling of pages that led me, my wife and all our friends and family to be in that room on that day. Of course in real CYOA I was pretty much always killed by that fishman in that room. Regardless of the setting or plot of the book, it seems to my failing memory…
Off-topic (and please accept my apologies), I wanted to thank you here (I couldn’t work out how to send a general message) for getting me back in to board games and opening my eyes to the Renaissance in gaming that’s taken place since I put down my success many years ago.
Since finding TableTop and then your various blogs and videos (Ashes etc.) I’ve fallen so much back in love with it all that I’ve ended up creating my own silly casual game with a friend of mine. We’ve just launched it on Kickstarter and I’d really appreciate any feedback that you or any of your readers could give.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/517634914/animals-with-weapons-the-game-of-tooth-and-clawham
Once again I apologise for the breach of etiquette (I can re-post somewhere else if someone can point me in the right direction) and I absolutely mean what I say about the effect that this (CYOA included) has had on me.
Thanks in advance,
Lex
Without question, those Scholastic Achievement books that my mother bought for me throughout my school years and at Christmas time always kept me searching for more knowledge. The turn of each page and discovering new things was a real joy to me.
Good on them at CYOA, because your earlier post reminded me that they existed. And because of that, I bought a whole bunch of them again. Not for me, but for my daughter who is having motivation issues with reading. Guess what? These books solved that issue like a charm. She’s digging into them big-time.
Darn, I wish this were earlier in the day so that I could watch with the geekling, but 2100 ET is past his bedtime. Oh well. Still, this sounds wonderful and it’s great that the publisher is supportive!
I’ve always wanted to come and watch, but i usually have something else going on then, or i convince myself that i shouldn’t. because of the main reason i don’t usually get on twitch is i either pay 100% to chat and miss what’s going on in stream or 100% to the stream and miss what’s going on in chat. but it sounds awesome I loved choose your own adventure books as a kid. or that no one wants me there. basically i overthink.i do that with a lot of people i follow on twitter who has twitch streams. I like them but they wouldn’t know because apparently people follow people they don’t like which is weird to me.