I had worked as a journalist, but had never written or even envisioned writing fiction. 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. But the idea met with little interest despite my many attempts to convince them otherwise. 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.

So, I cut short my trip and called a friend to come and get me.

It had been my job to try to explain the game to adults, most of whom disapproved of the game without understanding it. I realized instantly that the books would be the perfect method of explaining D&D to both adults and kids. Montgomery’s Choose Your Own Adventure books. There was a bookcase and books that one could borrow or buy and I picked up one of R.A. 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.

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. 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: 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.Įstes–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. The Endless Quest books, aka D&D’s pick your own path adventure books, have been turned into interactive audiobooks that are available now.Įndless 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.

Endless quest books pdf