Find Your Fate

Icybro

Member
I thought it was about time to resurrect this thread.

It seems to me that the "Find Your Fate" books are undeservedly ill-regarded by fans, mostly because of the problems presented by the "Choose Your Own Adventure" format. There are many contradictory stories in a FYF book; how do these stories fit into the larger Indy canon? (How did Indy escape from the Legion of Death, for example, before getting caught up in the events of Raiders?)

It's not an easy question. The consensus approach thus far, as evidenced by TheRaider.Net's own Indy timeline, is to treat the premise of each FYF book as canon, but stay silent about what happens after the reader is presented with his/her first decision point. I don't find this to be a particularly useful approach, because
  1. it doesn't actually answer any questions; it just responds to "what happened then?" with a big shrug.
  2. it ignores the vast majority of the content of the books. At most, a few pages at the beginning are considered canon, and the rest is worthless. That doesn't seem like it's getting the most value from these books.

Now, Junior suggested an intriguing alternative several years(!) ago:
A while back I embarked on a project to rewrite the "Find Your Fate" books, trying to make each one into a single, cohesive story. I took the best parts from all the story branches and tried to put them together.
That certainly gets more value from the books... the problem is that it's a subjective process: reasonable minds can disagree about what constitutes the "best parts" of these stories. Plus, synthesizing elements from the various branches is more of an art than a science; no two Indy fans would create the same story out of any given book.

So (because I'm an OCD Indy nerd and issues like this literally keep me up at night) I would like to propose another solution. While there are many narrative paths in these books, the possibilities aren't infinite. Each path can be evaluated against just a couple of simple criteria, and in most instances a single "best" path can thus be determined. This path's story should then be considered canon.

Seems reasonable, right? But what criteria should be used to evaluate the narrative paths? Well, I would suggest the best path is
  • the longest path (as measured in number of pages) that
  • does not thoroughly contradict established Indy canon.
If the longest path ends with Indy getting burned alive in 1934, for example, well that contradicts all of the movies, so it can't be canon and it shouldn't be considered the best path.

I wanna wrap this up before it turns into a Master's thesis, but because this proposal involves determining the longest path in each of the Find Your Fate books, it would be extremely helpful to chart out all of the paths. You guessed it: I've got charts! Here's one for Find Your Fate #1: Indiana Jones and the Curse of Horror Island:

e887ebbe37.png


(Each bubble is a page, and ending pages appear as black boxes. Purple bubbles are illustration pages. You can see there are 18 endings, and the longest path ends on page 63.)

I've got graphs for all the other books too, but I'm tired and I don't know if anybody besides me cares anyway :)

Thoughts?
 

indyclone25

Well-known member
nice to see that someone took the time to research the pages like that , might want me to dig out my books and re-read them again
 
Hopefully you can, (and DO) use them for some kind of class credit in the future! I'm not interested in the "canonicity" but find your work interesting. If nothing else it provides a reason, (as Cloney suggests) to open them up again. I'm interested in checking out the others, I was always a big fan of these books when I was younger. Maybe someone will use it to plot out interactive animated Indy adventures! Nice work...:hat:

Icybro said:
I thought it was about time to resurrect this thread.

It seems to me that the "Find Your Fate" books are undeservedly ill-regarded by fans, mostly because of the problems presented by the "Choose Your Own Adventure" format. There are many contradictory stories in a FYF book; how do these stories fit into the larger Indy canon? (How did Indy escape from the Legion of Death, for example, before getting caught up in the events of Raiders?)

It's not an easy question. The consensus approach thus far, as evidenced by TheRaider.Net's own Indy timeline, is to treat the premise of each FYF book as canon, but stay silent about what happens after the reader is presented with his/her first decision point. I don't find this to be a particularly useful approach, because
  1. it doesn't actually answer any questions; it just responds to "what happened then?" with a big shrug.
  2. it ignores the vast majority of the content of the books. At most, a few pages at the beginning are considered canon, and the rest is worthless. That doesn't seem like it's getting the most value from these books.

Now, Junior suggested an intriguing alternative several years(!) ago:

That certainly gets more value from the books... the problem is that it's a subjective process: reasonable minds can disagree about what constitutes the "best parts" of these stories. Plus, synthesizing elements from the various branches is more of an art than a science; no two Indy fans would create the same story out of any given book.

So (because I'm an OCD Indy nerd and issues like this literally keep me up at night) I would like to propose another solution. While there are many narrative paths in these books, the possibilities aren't infinite. Each path can be evaluated against just a couple of simple criteria, and in most instances a single "best" path can thus be determined. This path's story should then be considered canon.

Seems reasonable, right? But what criteria should be used to evaluate the narrative paths? Well, I would suggest the best path is
  • the longest path (as measured in number of pages) that
  • does not thoroughly contradict established Indy canon.
If the longest path ends with Indy getting burned alive in 1934, for example, well that contradicts all of the movies, so it can't be canon and it shouldn't be considered the best path.

I wanna wrap this up before it turns into a Master's thesis, but because this proposal involves determining the longest path in each of the Find Your Fate books, it would be extremely helpful to chart out all of the paths. You guessed it: I've got charts! Here's one for Find Your Fate #1: Indiana Jones and the Curse of Horror Island:

e887ebbe37.png


(Each bubble is a page, and ending pages appear as black boxes. Purple bubbles are illustration pages. You can see there are 18 endings, and the longest path ends on page 63.)

I've got graphs for all the other books too, but I'm tired and I don't know if anybody besides me cares anyway :)

Thoughts?
 

m-3po

New member
I've done this myself the first time i read each book - its an old trait i have with Choose Your Own/Find your Fate books that started with the Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks - in those days it was essential to make a map as you went along, especially in one of the books which you could go round in circles if you didn't go the right way. I'm quite surprised with some of the Young Indy CYO books in that their choices are very limited and ultimately the longest line is pretty short.
 

Stoo

Well-known member
Icybro said:
I've got graphs for all the other books too, but I'm tired and I don't know if anybody besides me cares anyway:)

Thoughts?
Nice flowchart, Icybro. Your proposition of which storyline to treat as the right one, is very sound. I like what you've done but noticed that page 118 has no result after it. Is it the end of a path. (I no longer have my copy to check.)
Rocket Surgeon said:
I was always a big fan of these books when I was younger. Maybe someone will use it to plot out interactive animated Indy adventures! Nice work...:hat:
'Interactive animated Indy adventure'. Now there's an idea...

Re: the books, I'm the opposite of you. After buying the 1st one, "Curse of Horror Island" when it came out back in '84, I found it a bit too childish for someone in their late teens and never bought any more. Down the road, I got rid of the book which is something I regret because now I want them ALL (especially "Ape Slaves of Howling Island" just for the title alone)!
m-3po said:
I'm quite surprised with some of the Young Indy CYO books in that their choices are very limited and ultimately the longest line is pretty short.
Lucky you, m-3po. These books rarely get mentioned here at The Raven and are also on my want-list. An opportunity to get them slipped right through my fingers: The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles Choose Your Own Adventure books
 
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Montana Smith

Active member
Stoo said:
Down the road, I got rid of the book which is something I regret because now I want them ALL (especially "Ape Slaves of Howling Island" just for the title alone)!

I like it! Now I want a copy, too.

I still have all my Fighting Fantasy type books (including a couple of Asterix ones), but never had these Indy versions.
 

JuniorJones

TR.N Staff Member
It may not be the same but there seems to be a movement in digital preservation to catalogue Indiana Jones material, as is being done with Star Wars.

I'm assuming this will include the "find your own fate" books as one has already turned up on the digital versions thread.

iof.jpg


It's quite a nice preservation and I'm confident that the other books will appear.:D

PM if you would like the link.
 

AnythingGoes

New member
JuniorJones said:
It may not be the same but there seems to be a movement in digital preservation to catalogue Indiana Jones material, as is being done with Star Wars.

I'm assuming this will include the "find your own fate" books as one has already turned up on the digital versions thread.

iof.jpg


It's quite a nice preservation and I'm confident that the other books will appear.:D

PM if you would like the link.
Looks pretty good! I've never read the RPGs but being a big fan of both Indy and Interactive Reading I've always wanted to get my hands on one
:whip:
 

Icybro

Member
Nice find re: page 118 in the chart, Stoo. I'll have to correct that and post a new version, along with the charts I have for the others in the series.

I have a number of the Young Indy CYOAs, and have been extremely disappointed with them. They don't offer many choices to the reader, and have very few endings... The first one has a grand total of four, if I remember correctly. (Compare that with the FYF books, which usually have about twenty different endings. You can really see the difference in complexity when you compare the charts--oh yes, I have charts for the CYOA books too.) Plus, they're based on the YIJC, so they're all very educational, with a lot of emphasis on history, and not much on adventure.

"Indiana Jones and the Ape Slaves of Howling Island" has to be the worst title in the Indy canon. ("Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" might be second worst :D )
 

m-3po

New member
Lucky you, m-3po. These books rarely get mentioned here at The Raven and are also on my want-list. An opportunity to get them slipped right through my fingers

I've managed to acquire most of them in the last year for minimal cost from Bookmooch http://bookmooch.com/

basically you send people books you don't want and have a wishlist of books you do want that you get sent from other people. All it costs is the postage of sending books out and you pretty much get 3 books for every 2 books you send out. The only downside is that its a waiting game, (patiently waiting for someone to list that book you want can take a lifetime) but when u get one it feels good!
 

Lao_Che

Active member
Icybro said:
I've got graphs for all the other books too, but I'm tired and I don't know if anybody besides me cares anyway :)

Thoughts?

I care. ;)

You've taken into account that Genghis Khan's first pages, in theory, narrow canonicity down to the path(s?) taken in Mummy's Crypt with scorpions, right?
 

Icybro

Member
You've taken into account that Genghis Khan's first pages, in theory, narrow canonicity down to the path(s?) taken in Mummy's Crypt with scorpions, right?

The canonical path (or "best" path as described above) through Mummy's Crypt does indeed include an encounter with scorpions (on page 28).

As promised, my charts for all the other FYF books can be downloaded here.

Interestingly, Legion of Death appears to have published before it was properly finished. 15 pages (including 4 unique endings) don't appear in any path; they're just inaccessible story fragments. (These pages appear as gray bubbles in the corresponding chart.)
 

Maestro

New member
Junior Jones said:
Has anyone here read any of the Find Your Fate books? It took me a while to find them all, but now I've got the complete set.
Some of them are pretty cheesy, and some are pretty good, in my opinion.

I own all of them and I like them. I hope that my kids one day will enjoy them as well. As a kid, I had 5 of them. I acquired the remaining 6 through e-Bay as an adult. It took a while to get Mask of the Elephant, but I finally found it for a decent price.

As you say, some of the books are better than others. To be honest, MOTE really isn't very good as Jones acts out of character and the artwork looks nothing like him. In the book, Jones is wearing a brimmed hat with a white band and which is clearly not a fedora. He has medium length hair which comes down over his ears and he is wearing a short-sleeved shirt. In short, it looks nothing like him. Ape Slaves of Howling Island is also not a very good book in the series. These are te two weakest in the series. If you want another example of why they aren't very good, consider this lne from ASOHE:

"By now the howling sounds like a hundred car alarms all going off at once."

Does that sentence belong in an Indiana Jones story?
Others, however, are quite good for a kids' book. Lost Treasure of Sheba and Curse of Horror Island, are perhaps the best ones. Both of are true to the feel and tone of the movies. It's interesting that R.L. Stine wrote both one of my favorite (Curse) and least favorite (Ape Slaves) in the series.

Cup of the Vampire is a fun one for its darker tone and subject matter. and I enjoyed Dragon of Vengeance as a kid because I found it so difficult to complete successfully. Reading it now, the writing doesn't really hold up to some of the others, but it's fun to see Jones in China and, as I said, it is more difficult to get to a satisfactory ending than it is in the others.
 
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Montana Smith

Active member
Maestro said:
If you want another example of why they aren't very good, consider this lne from ASOHE:

"By now the howling sounds like a hundred car alarms all going off at once."

Does that sentence belong in an Indiana Jones story?

That reminds me of something Tolkien did in The Hobbit - he used the noise of a railway locomotive as a description.
 

Maestro

New member
Montana Smith said:
That reminds me of something Tolkien did in The Hobbit - he used the noise of a railway locomotive as a description.

HAHAHA Really? I don't remember that.

Tolkien might be able to get away with it a little more since, if I remember correctly, I think Tolkien starts out directly talking to the reader about Hobbits and such. By doing so, one could argue that he separates the reader from the story a bit and draws him closer to the author (a common trick in children's books). Then, he can use terminology that the reader would know even if the characters would be unaware of it. Still, I wouldn't do it. It's jarring.

Stine has little excuse however given that the reader is supposed to be one of the characters in the book. There are even pictures of the reader/protagonist in the story. How could he know what a car alarm is?
 

Montana Smith

Active member
Maestro said:
HAHAHA Really? I don't remember that.

Tolkien might be able to get away with it a little more since, if I remember correctly, I think Tolkien starts out directly talking to the reader about Hobbits and such. By doing so, one could argue that he separates the reader from the story a bit and draws him closer to the author (a common trick in children's books). Then, he can use terminology that the reader would know even if the characters would be unaware of it. Still, I wouldn't do it. It's jarring.

Stine has little excuse however given that the reader is supposed to be one of the characters in the book. There are even pictures of the reader/protagonist in the story. How could he know what a car alarm is?

I just downloaded The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings so I could search the text: there's use of the term "pop-gun" in The Hobbit, and the dragon firework in The Fellowship of the Ring was described "like an express train". I can forgive Tolkien, but maybe not Stine!
 

IndyBr

Member
I have the follow Find your Fate books:

- The Cup of the Vampire
- The Lost Treasure of Sheba
- The Ape Slaves of the Howling Island
- The Cult of the Mummy's Crypt
- Horror Island

I haven't got the chance to read The Cult of the Mummy's Crypts yet, but I'm not crazy about the other ones, specially not The Ape Slaves of Howling Island, where Indy can speak the "Ape language".... :rolleyes:

But the covers are all quite nice.
 

Henry W Jones

New member
I owned a few of these as a kid. They were fun for me at 7-8 years old but they are designed for kids as far as reading. Cool :cool: collectible though.
 

Montana Smith

Active member
I never owned any of these, but I was into the Fighting Fantasy series (as a natural addiction to wargaming and RPGs). I remember when Warlock of Firetop Mountain came out, there was a live action show on TV explaining how these books worked.

From what I read here the Indy series were aimed at a younger audience than the FF?
 
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