Choice of the Dragon
originally posted on Reddit in 2021, and reproduced here without modification
It was ten years ago this December that I discovered Choice of Games. Back then there were only four official titles and about a dozen Hosted Games. Most of the latter were short and puzzle-based, rather than story-based; I played them and enjoyed them, but it was the four official titles I kept coming back to over and over. The first-ever CoG game, Dan Fabulich and Adam Strong-Morse’s Choice of the Dragon, wasn’t my favorite of the four, but I still lost count of how many times I played it.
Recently, I played Choice of the Dragon for the first time in years, curious to see how this small early effort would hold up in an era of longer and more complex ChoiceScript games. Compared to the delectable buffet of possibilities served up by the likes of The Play’s the Thing, A Kiss from Death, or The Vampire Regent, Dragon is merely a snack - but I’m pleased to report that it’s as tasty a snack as ever.
This is just such a fun game to play. The narrative voice has a dry self-awareness, in a way I don’t believe I’ve seen attempted in any other game of this kind, and the writing’s strong enough to pull it off without descending into bathos or mockery. It takes place in a standard medieval-Europeanish fantasy setting and hits on all the tropes you’d expect, but with an affectionate wink that keeps them from feeling stale. I’m not a big fan of the Honor/Cunning continuum stat - why should my dragon get dumber just because they kept their word? - but the utterly delightful Disdain/Vigilance stat (which measures whether the dragon is fiercely sensitive to insults or rises above such trifles) makes up for it.
After all these years, Choice of the Dragon holds its own as a great little game. More than a mere historical curiosity, it deserves to be played and enjoyed for a long time to come.