D&D: The Endless Quest Books Have Been Turned Into Interactive Audiobooks
The Endless Quest books, aka D&D’s pick your own path adventure books, have been turned into interactive audiobooks that are available now.
Endless Quest is a series of books that date back to the early 80s, when they quickly became a bestselling novel concepted by Rose Estes, one of the many women who helped make TSR what it was before Gygax and the Blumes ran it into the ground.
Rose Estes was a champion for TSR, especially to people who had never played the game before; writing explanations of the game, talking about them on radio shows, and notably introducing the Endless Quest books to the game.
Estes–who had a hand in just about everything at TSR, including answering phones and writing fiction–helped spread the heroic dragon-slaying, dungeon-delving aesthetic of D&D’s RPG to a wider audience. As the story goes, Estes was out following a traveling circus for a magazine article, when she came across a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure novel and brought it back to TSR saying that D&D needed something like this:
Well, in 1982 I took a leave of absence to travel with friends who were part of a tent circus, I figured that it would make for interesting newspaper articles. I had been with them for only a few weeks when we set up in Decorah, Iowa and went to town to do some laundry. There was a bookcase and books that one could borrow or buy and I picked up one of R.A. Montgomery’s Choose Your Own Adventure books. I realized instantly that the books would be the perfect method of explaining D&D to both adults and kids. It had been my job to try to explain the game to adults, most of whom disapproved of the game without understanding it. So, I cut short my trip and called a friend to come and get me.
When I returned I tried my best to convince the powers that be that TSR should do a Choose Your Own Adventure type of book. But the idea met with little interest despite my many attempts to convince them otherwise. Finally, annoyed that I kept on about the idea I was told that if I thought it was a good idea, I should write it myself.
The thought had never occurred to me. I had worked as a journalist, but had never written or even envisioned writing fiction. But I was so aggravated that I did just that, I went home and wrote the first of what would become the Endless Quest series, “Return to Brookmere.” I wrote it longhand on legal pads.
Return to Brookmere, and the other four of the original Endless Quest books: Mountain of Mirrors, Pillars of Pentagarn, and Dungeon of Dread, were on the bestseller list for more than six months. Sadly that wouldn’t last as TSR’s education department–created to help Estes and Jim Ward reach out and diversify their audience–was never really support by the divergent interests of TSR’s executives.
Which brings us to today with the most recent incarnation of Endless Quest books, written by Matt Forbeck. These books are fifth edition adventures based on the old format. And as of this last week, they are now an interactive series of audiobooks, starting with Into the Jungle:
Into the Jungle Audiobook – $28.19
The Harpers have lost one of their own, a legendary adventurer named Artus Cimber, keeper of the artifact known as the Ring of Winter. They’ve hired you to travel to the jungle-clad land of Chult to find him. Hopefully, you can manage to find Cimber before the frost giants do―or the zombies that infest the land get you first. You’re in the jungle now, cleric. Welcome to the Forgotten Realms® Endless Quest®.
You are about to embark on a journey. To where, only you could possibly say. It is not a journey like any you have been on before, where you start at the beginning and continue on a straight course until you reach the end. Instead, you will be presented with many choices along the way. Each time you are faced with one such choice, given to you by your narrator, make your decision from the options that are given and then follow the directions to continue your adventure. Once your quest has come to an end, either favorably or, as I’m afraid in some instances it is foretold, gruesomely, return to the beginning of the track or the last choice and try again.
Happy Adventuring!
