|
Synopsis:
Star Wars Missions was a twenty book series
released as a mail-order book club promoted through
schools starting in 1997.
The books were written by Ryder Windham and Dave
Wolverton and published by Scholastic. Members first
received a boxed kit containing two dice (one six-sided,
one twelve-sided), a rulebook, a pad of score sheets, a
blank mission log, a member card, several game cards, a
small poster and the first adventure in the series.
Subsequent packages contained additional books, cards,
and posters. Club members also received a magazine,
unrelated to gameplay, called Star Wars Kids: The
Magazine for Young Jedi Knights.
Each book contains several linear chapters followed by
the actual gamebook segment. Upon reaching the
interactive portion of an adventure, the reader must
first select some cards (representing characters,
vehicles, weapons, and powers) based on criteria
specified in the book at hand. Unlike most gamebooks,
these adventures do not feature numbered sections, nor
do they instruct the reader to turn to particular pages;
instead, they are composed of a linear sequence of
events. Each event is described, then several choices
are listed. The reader must select one of these choices
and then skip ahead to find the matching paragraph
describing the results of the choice. Readers are
sometimes forced to revise their decisions before
proceeding, but no choice ever leads to a premature
ending. Since victory is inevitable, gameplay revolves
around a score kept as a running total throughout the
adventure. Rolls of the dice and values printed on the
cards are frequently used to raise or lower this score,
and while it has no impact on gameplay, it can be
considered a measure of success.
After twenty adventures based on the original Star Wars
trilogy, the series came to a close in 1999 and was
replaced by the similar Episode
I Adventures.
|