Solo RPG's: You Never Forget Your First Game

Steve Jackson.

The Man.

The Myth.

The Legend.

Steve--freakin'--Jackson!

You most likely know him from this rather lucrative game series:

Although his credits go back to the early days of gaming, starting with this:

And if I mention Steve Jackson and role-playing games, 

you probably think I'm going to talk about this:

But you'd be wrong.

Let's go back further, to the 70's, the era that spawned D&D and Star Wars. In the 1970's, a twenty-something Steve Jackson was designing for a company called Metagaming.

Their forte was producing inexpensive wargames. Rulebooks were a few pages of 8.5 x 11" paper, folded and stapled, while game-boards were a similar size of folded cardstock. The whole thing was sold in a transparent plastic bag.


<   $2.95?!?

The games Jackson designed for Metagaming were big hits, starting with Ogre (a wargame about a miles-long cybernetic tank vs. a horde of smaller units) and G.E.V. (an expansion to Ogre.) Ironically, he was also one of the crew that worked on Monsters! Monsters! a sequel/expansion of Tunnels & Trolls that flipped the dungeon-crawling paradigm on its head.

Jackson, like everyone else at the time, shared the same love/hate reaction to D&D: he thought that a role-playing game about high fantasy heroes was a great concept, D&D just implemented it very poorly. Being of a more strategically-minded bent, Jackson wanted to create something with cleaner wargame-like mechanics that brought in some of his experiences with "actual" sword-play from his time in the Society for Creative Anachronism (the organization that spawned a million Renaissance festivals.)

And so he created Melee, a game of man-to-man gladiatorial combat. Characters had just two attributes: Strength (which also dictated how many points of damage you could take) and Dexterity. Combat was similarly bare-bones: you roll three dice, and try and get under your Dexterity score. And, other than adding in some typical wargame-like structure (such as a hex grid for movement), that was literally it. Clean, concise, simple. Melee was a big hit, so it was quickly followed up by Wizard, which added a third attribute, IQ, and rules for magic.

A third product, "In The Labyrinth," added skills and turned the two smaller games into a larger, fully-fledged RPG called "The Fantasy Trip." (In my mind, NOT naming both the system and the book "The Fantasy Trip" seems like a marketing blunder, but I digress.) Metagaming (like Tunnels & Trolls) saw that there was a market for solo play, and so they jumped onto the bandwagon, using their small, inexpensive model of producing games.

Like the Tunnels & Trolls and "Choose Your Own Adventure" books, the Fantasy Trip solos used numbered paragraphs to direct players through the storyline. But unlike Tunnels & Trolls, these were closer in tone to the serious, straightforward adventure modules of D&D. Each was set in a specific world (for example, Arthurian England for "Grail Quest," or post-apocalyptic fantasy  for "Security Station.") Games were also balanced so that players who worked through them rationally could succeed--no surprise "there's a Balrog in the next room, just because it's fun."

They did, however, employ a unique marketing gimmick on two of their adventures, where clues in the text led to a prize hidden in the real world: a silver dragon in one adventure and a gold unicorn in another. But, for the most part, these were solidly-constructed, entertaining adventures with a high replay value.

The Fantasy Trip could have turned out to be "The Next Big RPG," but unfortunately Jackson had a falling-out with Metagaming, and after the split, the company retained the rights to the game. Only a few years later, Metagaming went belly-up.

Jackson tried to purchase The Fantasy Trip, but in those pre-Munchkin days, the asking price higher than what he could afford. And so he went on to create another  RPG, the very successful. GURPS (the Generic Universal Role-Playing system.) Comparing the two, it's obvious that GURPS shares a huge portion of its DNA with The Fantasy Trip. (The differences are significant, and maybe worthy of a discussion for another day.) And, looking at the success of GURPS--which spawned a library's worth of follow-on books--you'd think that Jackson would be content to let The Fantasy Trip go.

But you never forget your first game, and for Jackson that was all the work he'd done for Metagaming. As the decades passed, he re-acquired the rights to all of his old games, one by one: Ogre, GEV, and eventually, The Fantasy Trip.

Now, it's been rebooted through an INSANELY successful Kickstarter, and is now available in gorgeous new editions, with revived versions of solo games and many add-on products. 

People looking for a simple, straightforward solo RPG experience couldn't go wrong by choosing The Fantasy Trip. Highly recommended. My personal favorites are Grail Quest and Security Station. The latter shared The Fantasy Trip's default 's setting of Cidri, a "high fantasy world" that evolves from the ruins of a technological world (a post-post apocalyptic?) similar to the "Shannara" book series or the Ralph Bakshi movie "Wizards." A unique take on standard fantasy tropes.

You can find The Fantasy Trip here.

So, what parts of The Fantasy Trip does the FAST RPG share? Well, early on, our designers wanted FAST  to work with as few attributes as possible, which was a key ingredient of Melee and Wizard. Simple, clean, consistent mechanics and a point-buy method for constructing characters is also something that both games share. Like The Fantasy Trip and Tunnels & Trolls, FAST eschews polyhedral dice, and uses d6's. And finally, thinking about TFT's hex-grid based movement, we here at FAST are about to embark on a new project, one that uses the hex grid, but in a new way.

That's a story for another time--like the story of how I pissed off Steve Jackson at a convention. In the meantime...

Game on!

Falstaffe

Solo RPG's: The Second One

"Imagine if you will, a world without Zelda or Azeroth,

No polyhedral dice or dry-erase maps.

When a "character sheet"  went on your mattress 

and was filled with the Charlie Brown kids.

A world we call...the No-RPG Zone."

For some, it's hard to imagine a time before D&D was cool, but grey-beards like Falstaffe can remember back to before it existed at all--when wargames and miniatures were the closest you could get to RPG-like flights of fancy (and for me, that was Avalon Hill's Starship Troopers and Lou Zocchi's Star Fleet Battle Manual.) 

Still, try and place yourself in that era. Imagine hearing of a new kind of game--it wasn't even called a "Role-Playing Game" yet--described by players bursting with excitement and enthusiasm as something new and revolutionary--only to get smacked in the face with the glorious chaos that is the original 3-book ruleset.

Imagine all that and you'll get a glimmer of what faced Ken St. Andre back in 1975. He loved the idea of high-fantasy adventuring, but hated the confusing mess of the D&D system itself. And so he decided to make up his own game, using only easily-available six-sided dice that had simple, concise rules. This is the birth of the second published RPG called "Tunnels & Trolls." 

 First five T&T editions

The game owes a lot of its flavor to the personality of the creator and his crew, including artist Liz Danforth, James "Bear" Peters, Rick Loomis, Rob Carver, Steve Crompton, Michael Stackpole, and others. Where D&D was pretentious and verbose, T&T was humorous and rules-light, with spells like "Alaka-Scram," "Take That You Fiend!" or "Shake & Break."

It used D&D's core six Attributes, but added others including Speed, Wizardry, and Luck. Any these could be used in "Saving Throws" and to accomplish various tasks--one of the earliest stabs at a universal skills and task system.

Combat was handled in a very different way than D&D. Instead of throwing a single d20, each combatant rolled a number of d6's based on the weapon used, plus "Adds" from Strength, Luck, Dexterity and Speed (using Attribute Bonus rules that were, again, much more consistently applied than D&D.) The total from each side was compared, with the larger number winning. The amount over WAS the damage dealt out to the loser--one roll did it all. Unlike D&D's weirdly unintuitive Armor class, armor in T&T simply absorbed points of damage (as did Runequest, another early RPG.) 

One advantage to T&T combat was the way it sped up group combat: all the efforts of a party of adventurers could be combined into a single "party total." This could then be compared to the total from all the monsters. The group with the higher total won. And, in a unique twist, the losing side got to decide how to divide up the damage taken, making parties of mixed levels and abilities a viable option.

Early on, T&T's creators realized that there was more hunger for RPG's than there were players and GM's, so they created a series of solo adventures. 

Just like the core rules, they reflected the impish humor of the creators. You never knew what might happen next in a T&T adventure. For example, in one solo, the jolly green giant literally appears. In a dungeon. Turning yourself green and trying to pass yourself off as another jolly green giant is a viable choice for the player. 

But T&T solos also kept players on their toes, as they were notoriously difficult and deadly. T&T characters could be quickly and easily created, which was a good thing because they usually didn't last long.

Pressed for a favorite, I'd recommend the Blue Frog Tavern and it's sequels, if only for the bar's owner, a grumpy blue rock demon named Quartz. (Yes, much like Star Trek Deep Space Nine's Quark.)

While interest in T&T has waxed and waned over the years, in 2015 a successful Kickstarter campaign resulted in a new edition: Deluxe Tunnels and Trolls, featuring revised mechanics, the Trollworld campaign setting, and gorgeous new art from Liz Danforth and other T&T stalwarts. 

With the successful launch of the revised edition, T&T's solo adventures were also revised and re-released, and you can find them here, along with many other fine GM resources like the "Grimtooth's Traps" and "Citybook" book series. 

  

Another way to try Tunnels & Trolls is the free smartphone app. It features adaptations of many of the original modules and automates combat and saving rolls (the "Borgoth vs Guard Leader" screenshot is from the online game.) It even allows for custom character creation. Do expect a few glitches, but it's a good intro to the T&T system. Best of all, it gives a generous helping of free play before you hit the pay wall.

For those of you looking for a simple, rules-lite solo game with a little bit of humor, T&T is a great choice. There's a large library of adventures, many of them available in three different formats: print, PDF, or via the app. 

As one of my first RPG games, it still holds a place in my heart and was definitely an inspiration for the FAST RPG. We both share a rules-lite architecture, quick game-play, and unified mechanics (albeit in very different ways.) Initially, we tried doing a similar "one roll does all" combat roll, but couldn't quite make it work satisfactorily for us, although a ghost of it survives in FAST's "Light Mode." And finally, I hope that T&T's good humor and dedication to  creating a fun role-playing experience for players also lives on in our game. 

Thanks, T&T!

Next up: You Never Forget Your First Love

Solo RPG Adventures

And suddenly, the whole world joined me in the retired lifestyle.

Put on your daytime pajamas, sit a spell, and let your pal Falstaffe tell you a story. Since we're all getting cozy, let me tell you about role-playing games that built their fanbases on solo RPG play. But hold up--these aren't some "ghosts of gaming past." These systems are still alive and kicking today in new and refreshed editions, and from their original creators, no less! Listen a spell, check out my links, grab some dice, and you, too, can be playing a solo RPG (or, at least as soon as it takes for the Amazon Prime truck to deliver.)

First off: Mea Culpa--I am definitely biased, and this isn't an exhaustive examination of all the solo systems out there. Feel free to tell me about your favorites in the comments. And yes, both of the systems covered here contributed to the FAST RPG in one way or another. 

Bias noted, forge on!

First, a few words on solo play for the uninitiated. These adventures are very similar to "Choose Your Own Adventure" novels where the story is broken up and scattered throughout the pages of the book. Players make decisions at key points in the story that guide them through a flowchart-like narrative. 

"Your path takes you to a chasm. A thin tree trunk spans the gap. Do you walk across (go to page 5) or attempt to jump the distance (go to page 23)?"

Solo RPG's follow this model, adding RPG rules to the experience, which allows for more variety in the outcomes of things like traps, combat, or the after-effects of drinking deadly poison. Solo RPG's also differ from "Choose Your Own" books in that players create an adventuring hero who can embark on multiple book-adventures, creating the feeling of a campaign. It's not tabletop, but a close approximation.

Solo RPG's were wildly popular back in the early days of gaming when most people had no idea what an RPG was, or how to find other players. Dave Arneson and the "Blackmoor Bunch" who created the hobby went to great creative lengths to find potential players. For example, they found books in the library related to wargaming and called up the people whose names were written on the sign-out cards! (That's how we stalked people back in the olden day, kids!)

But this style of play is far less common today for some obvious reasons. The hobby has many more players, GM's, and systems. It's far easier to connect with other players thanks to Social media sites, YouTube, game stores and conventions. The result being that the hobby has become so pervasive that people who would never consider themselves "gamers" still thrill to computer and console RPG's, or who binge-watch movies and TV shows ripped straight from TSR modules. (Looking at you, Witcher!) 

Sure, there's a nostalgia factor at work here, looking at solo RPG's that use real books, paper, and dice, but don't discount them altogether. Many find Solo RPG's to be a rewarding, creative, (and right now a relevant) experience. 

So, to paraphrase Freddie Mercury of the band Queen, "You had your time, you had the power. You've yet to have your finest hour. Solo RPG's--someone still loves you!"

Game on!

Now let's begin at the beginning (almost.)

Mile Markers

You're traveling through another dimension,
a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind.
A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination.
That's the signpost up ahead—your next stop, Falstaffe's Tavern!

What a busy week! Falstaffe here, with an update on what's been going on lately, and I have lots of news to share, starting with this bad boy right here: 

IT'S ALIVE!!!!  After over a year of work, the Third Edition of the FAST RPG is done and available for purchase (a mere $30 at Lulu.) That's the big exciting news, and I do want to delve a little deeper into the making of this behemoth in another post, but first I wanted to give a larger overview of where I'm at now, where I'm headed, and why it took so long to return to the blog.

Let's start with some other good news and work backwards, shall we?

My new year's resolution was to create a new slate of short stories, and yesterday (6/19/2018) I sent out three! They are:

"The Justice of Atla" -- a tale of ancient Greek sailors vs. a monster of their own making.
"The Bride of Barton Ash" -- a Grimm fable of a boy on a mission to find himself a bride.
"Snooker" -- a fantasy/sci-fi mashup about castles in space.

These are working their way through the submission process right now. I'm hopeful that they find a home somewhere, because they represent some of my best work, blending some unique ideas with action, emotion, and humor.

In addition, I've also resurrected another story, "The Weary Traveler" and hope that it finds new life via a podcast. A humorous fantasy heist, the potential to hear it in an audio format has me more excited than the return of chocolate-covered Peeps at Easter. Fingers crossed.

So what took so long to get here?

The simple answer is the FAST 3rd Edition . It's a beast of a book at 266 pages with full-color illustrations, and slated for a mass-market paperback edition. 3rd Edition was a difficult and demanding project that gobbled up most of my free time, demolishing Spring Breaks, Christmas Breaks, and Summer Vacation days with glee.

Was it worth it? 

Oh yeah!

Like I said, I'm planning on posting more about the process of working on the guts of the rule-book in a later post, so for now I'll just say that our home gaming back got their first good look at the Beta in the Fall of 2017, and since then I was busy refining the copy, play-testing the rules, and adding new artwork. Everything was going great.

Confident that the book was 100% ready to go, the printing process quickly relieved me of that silly notion. This was my first time working with Lulu, and while the finished product looks great, their website is NOT user friendly, and was filled with broken and empty links. It also didn't help that most of the work was being done on an old loaner Dell laptop, slowing pdf rendering time to a crawl.

Finally, after much wailing and gnashing of teeth the printer's proof arrived on my doorstep in early June, coincidentally, the first day of DieCon, our first big game event of the year. Talk about a dramatic entrance! The con-goers loved it, and we've already sold a bunch of copies online. Next week, FAST goes to FearTheCon with actual copies to sell.

So that's the simple answer to my absence. Of course, the reality is much more complicated than that. As always "real life" threw curve balls into my path, although Summer of 2018 finds everyone here doing well and in good health. I felt like now it was time to return to that New Year's resolution and get back to doing the thing that I want to do most: telling great stories.

Thanks for stopping by the Tavern, see you again soon.

Falstaffe

How 1985 Changed Speculative Fiction

In the genres of science fiction and fantasy it seems as if there should be an infinite number of ways to show the story’s point-of-view. After all, your main character can be a deity from the Norse pantheon (American Gods), a human/starship hybrid (Ancillary Justice), or whatever this thing is:

(Sorry, Cassandra.)

But in actuality, there’s only a handful of framing devices that the author can use to convey the point of view of the characters and tell the story. 

Briefly, (or not) they are:

1^st Person. “I walk into the room and see Fred.”

2^nd Person. “You walk into the room and see Fred.”

3^rd Person Limited. “Betsy walked into the room and saw Fred. If only he knew how he'd broken her heart.”

3^rd Person Omniscient. “Betsy walked into the room and saw Fred, reminding her of his broken promises. He smiled, lips drawn tight, unable to reveal to her his secret identity as the city's caped protector. Neither one of them knew that there was a time-bomb taped beneath the table.”

(Note that in my examples, the 1st and 2nd POV examples are written as "Present Tense," while both 3rd Person pov's are "Past Tense," although for the purposes of this blog post, they could have been written either way.)

There is one more flavor of 3^rd Person point-of-view that I’ll bring up here, “3^rd Person Objective.” This is a viewpoint that asks for “Just the facts, m’am.” It functions like 3^rd Omniscient, but does not let the reader in the on the character’s thoughts and feelings. It’s pretty rare today, but I’ll circle back around to it in a minute, so keep it in mind.

With only five choices, is there one POV that’s the best?

Well, of course you should use the one that best suits the purpose of the story. All of these approaches have advantages and disadvantages (which is a discussion for a whole ‘nother post.) However, there is one among them that has become the 800-lb gorilla that rules genre fiction: 3^rd Person Limited. It is inarguably THE most-used literary POV for modern genre fiction, and a mastery of 3^rd Limited is absolutely essential to new writers.

However, does that mean it is “the best” or “only” choice a new writer should make? Has 3^rd Limited always been so prevalent, or was this gorilla once just a chimp? After all, I read a lot of 3^rd Limited now, but my bookshelf is loaded with titles where Omniscience rules the day.

Thinking about this issue, I began to form a sneaking suspicion that 3^rd Limited rode the late 90’s wave of Young Adult novels that was ushered in by Harry Potter. But, was that true or was it just another opinion, maybe one misinformed by nostalgia? Aware of what I knew, and what I didn’t know, I set out to find out the truth.

Step one was to compile a list of works by different authors from different time-periods, sticking to the genres of science fiction and fantasy, and only choosing highly-regarded novels. No cherry-picking titles, so as much as I enjoy me some old-timey Alan Dean Foster (famous for his novelizations of Alien and other movies) or H. Beam Piper (The "Little Fuzzy" series), they weren’t getting on the list. 

Instead, I turned to a pretty reputable source: NPR. (Full disclosure: I am an NPR listener and contributor, so my opinion of other NPR listeners may be biased.) NPR gave me my first big data-sample: a 2011 poll that asked listeners to cite the 100 best science fiction and fantasy novels of all time, which you can find here. To this base I added other classics and other outstanding SF & F titles from online study website Shmoop.com. All this information was gathered together on one spreadsheet. 

A disclaimer is probably needed here: I did not study nor do I claim to know all of these titles in-depth. In many cases, I simply previewed the first chapter, scanning it to see what literary POV was employed. (This method was suggested to me by the agent of one of authors, advice that was both helpful and not at the same time. Regardless, I will not be sending this agent any further queries.) For some of these books it is entirely possible that the POV changed later on in the novel. Any additions, corrections, etc. would be appreciated. Buyer beware.

With that said, here’s the raw data, and afterwards, what I learned from it.

Title	Author	Year	POV	NPR Reader Ranking	Notes
Gulliver's Travels	Jonathan Swift	1726	1st Person	Gulliver is the central narrator
Grimm's Fairytales	Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm	1800	3rd Omni	A few 1st Person
Frankenstein	Mary Shelley	1818	Mixed	20	1st and 3rd, told from multiple viewpoints.
Andersen's Fairy Tales	Hans Christian Andersen	1837	varies		1st, 2nd, 3rd Omni, and 3rd Limited
A Journey To The Center Of The Earth	Jules Verne	1864	1st Person	72
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland	Lewis Carroll	1865	3rd Limited
20,000 Leagues Under The Sea	Jules Verne	1870	1st Person	37
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde	Robert Lewis Stevenson	1886	3rd Limited	One main pov, with four supplemental
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes	Sir Arthur conan Doyle	1891	1st Person		Peripheral Narrator
The Time Machine	H.G. Wells	1895	1st Person	36
The Island of Dr. Moreau	HG Wells	1896	1st Person	Central narrator
Dracula	Bram Stoker	1897	1st Person		Epistolary
The War Of The Worlds	H.G. Wells	1897	1st Person	39
The Invisible Man	HG Wells	1897	3rd Objective	varies
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz	L Frank Baum	1900	3rd Omni
Cat's Cradle	Kurt Vonnegut	1922	1st Person	28
Brave New World	Aldous Huxley	1932	3rd Omni	9
The Conan The Barbarian Series	R.E. Howard	1932	3rd Omni	68
The Space Trilogy	C.S. Lewis	1938	3rd Limited	100
Animal Farm	George Orwell	1945	3rd Omni	13
1984	George Orwell	1949	3rd Limited	6
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe	CS Lewis	1950	3rd Omni
I, Robot	Isaac Asimov	1950	3rd Omni	16	With 1st-Person Frame
The Martian Chronicles	Ray Bradbury	1950	3rd Omni	27
The Martian Chronicles	Ray Bradbury	1950	varies	3rd Omni and 3rd Limited
The Foundation Trilogy	Isaac Asimov	1951	3rd Omni	8
The Illustrated Man	Ray Bradbury	1951	3rd Omni	91
Fahrenheit 451	Ray Bradbury	1953	3rd Limited	7
Childhood's End	Arthur C. Clarke	1953	3rd Omni	49
The Caves Of Steel	Isaac Asimov	1953	3rd Omni	94
More Than Human	Ted Sturgeon	1953	varies	1st Person Central Narrator with 3rd Person Limited and Third Person Objective
I Am Legend	Richard Matheson	1954	3rd Limited	65
The Chronicles of Narnia	C.S. Lewis	1954	3rd Omni
The Lord of the Rings	J.R.R. Tolkien	1954	3rd Omni	1
The Once And Future King	T.H. White	1958	3rd Omni	47
Starship Troopers	Robert Heinlein	1959	1st Person	31
Flowers For Algernon	Daniel Keys	1959	3rd Omni	38
A Canticle For Leibowitz	Walter M. Miller	1959	3rd Omni	35
The Elric Saga	Michael Moorcock	1961	3rd Omni	90
The Phantom Tollbooth	Norton Juster	1961	3rd Omni
Stranger In A Strange Land	Robert Heinlein	1961	3rd Omni	17
Harrison Bergeron	Kurt Vonnegut	1961
A Clockwork Orange	Anthony Burgess	1962	1st Person	30
The Man in the High Castle	Phillip K Dick	1962	3rd Limited	Rotating POV's
Something Wicked This Way Comes	Ray Bradbury	1962	3rd Limited	79
A Wrinkle in Time	Madeline L'Engle	1963	3rd Limited
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory	Roald Dahl	1964	Varies	3rd (Limited Omni), 2nd, and a bit of 1st
The Dune Chronicles	Frank Herbert	1965	3rd Omni	4
The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress	Robert Heinlein	1966	1st Person	34
The Chronicles Of Amber	Roger Zelazny	1967	1st Person	40
Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?	Philip K. Dick	1968	3rd Limited	21	Close to stream of consciousness
Dragonflight	Anne McCaffrey	1968	3rd Omni	33
2001: A Space Odyssey	Arthur C. Clarke	1968	3rd Omni	24
The Last Unicorn	Peter S. Beagle	1968	3rd Omni	55	Hero and wizard seem to be aware that they're in a fairytale.
Slaughterhouse-Five	Kurt Vonnegut	1969	1st Person	19	Blurs the lines between narrator and main character
The Left Hand Of Darkness	Ursula K. LeGuin	1969	1st Person	45	Mostyl, with some chapters experimenting with different POV's
The Crystal Cave	Mary Stewart	1970	1st Person	84	with quirks
Ringworld	Larry Niven	1970	3rd Limited	44
The Lathe of Heaven	Ursula K. LeGuin	1971	3rd Omni
Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH	Robert C. O'Brien	1971	varies	Mostly 1st Person with some 3rd Limited
Watership Down	Richard Adams	1972	3rd Omni	32
Rendezvous With Rama	Arthur C. Clarke	1973	3rd Omni	76	?
The Dark is Rising	Susan Cooper	1973	3rd Omni
The Princess Bride	William Goldman	1973	3rd Omni	11	Told from the storyteller's POV
The Forever War	Joe Haldeman	1974	1st Person	56
The Mote In God's Eye	Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle	1974	3rd Omni	61
The Dispossessed	Ursula K. LeGuin	1974	3rd Omni	78
The Female Man	Joanna Russ	1975	mixed	1st Person Peripheral narrator, plus 3rd person omniscient
The Xanth Series	Piers Anthony	1977	3rd Limited	99
The Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant, The Unbeliever	Stephen R. Donaldson	1977	3rd Limited	58
The Silmarillion	J.R.R. Tolkien	1977	3rd Omni	46
Lucifer's Hammer	Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle	1977	3rd Omni	96
The Shannara Trilogy	Terry Brooks	1977	3rd Omni	67
The Stand	Stephen King	1978	3rd Limited	25	Multiple POV characters.
The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy	Douglas Adams	1979	3rd Omni	2
The Riftwar Saga	Raymond E. Feist	1982	3rd Limited	66
The BFG	Roald Dahl	1982	3rd Limited
The Belgariad	David Eddings	1982	Loose 3rd Limited	41
Neuromancer	William Gibson	1984	3rd Limited	14
Snow Crash	Neal Stephenson	1984	3rd Omni	26	Strong central narrator
The Handmaid's Tale	Margaret Atwood	1985	1st Person	22
Contact	Carl Sagan	1985	3rd Limited	50	w/3rd Omnii framing
Ender's Game	Orson Scott Card	1985	3rd Limited	3
Watchmen	Alan Moore	1986	Graphic Novel	15	3rd Omniiscient with bits of 1st and 3rd Limiteded
The Culture Series	Iain M. Banks	1987	3rd Limited	83
The Vorkosigan Saga	Lois McMaster Bujold	1987	3rd Limited	59
The Legend Of Drizzt Series	R.A. Salvatore	1988	1st Person	73
The Hyperion Cantos	Dan Simmons	1989	3rd Limited	51
The Wheel Of Time Series	Robert Jordan	1990	3rd Limited	12
The Outlander Series	Diana Gabaldan	1991	1st Person	89
The Thrawn Trilogy	Timothy Zahn	1991	3rd Limited	88	Multiple POV characters.
The Sandman Series	Neil Gaiman	1991	Graphic Novel	29
Doomsday Book	Connie Willis	1992	3rd Objective	97
Small Gods	Terry Pratchett	1992	3rd Omni	57
A Fire Upon The Deep	Vernor Vinge	1992	3rd Omni	93
The Mars Trilogy	Kim Stanley Robinson	1993	3rd Limited	95
The Mists Of Avalon	Marion Zimmer Bradley	1993	3rd Limited	42
The Book Of The New Sun	Gene Wolfe	1994	1st Person	87	The narrator remembers everything and the story is his past.
The Sword Of Truth	Terry Goodkind	1994	3rd Limited	62	Multiple POV characters.
The Dark Tower Series	Stephen King	1994	3rd Omni	23
The Farseer Trilogy	Robin Hobb	1995	1st Person	69
Wicked	Gregory Maguire	1995	3rd Limited	80
The Diamond Age	Neil Stephenson	1995	3rd Omni	75
A Song Of Ice And Fire Series	George R. R. Martin	1996	3rd Limited	5
Neverwhere	Neil Gaiman	1996	3rd Omni	48
Harry Potter Series	J.K. Rowling	1997	3rd Limited
Cryptonomicon	Neal Stephenson	1999	3rd Omni	53	Strong central narrator
Stardust	Neil Gaiman	1999	3rd Omni	52	POV bounces around a lot
The Malazan Book Of The Fallen Series	Steven Erikson	1999		81
Perdido Street Station	China Mieville	2000	Loose 3rd Limited	98
The Kushiel's Legacy Series	Jacqueline Carey	2001	1st Person	77
The Eyre Affair	Jasper Fforde	2001	1st Person	82
American Gods	Neil Gaiman	2001	3rd Objective	10	3rd person objective narrator
Artemis Fowl	Eoin Colfer	2001	Tricky		2nd and 3rd Person Omni
Feed	M T Anderson	2002	1st Person	Unreliable narrator
The Time Traveler's Wife	Audrey Niffenegger	2003	1st Person	70	From the POV of two characters
The City of Ember	Jeanne Du Prau	2003	3rd Limited	2 main characters
The Wee Free Men	Terry Pratchett	2003	3rd Limited		Discworld Novel
Sunshine	Robin McKinley	2003		92
Inkheart	Cornelia Funke	2004	3rd Limited	Mostly the main character, with other POV's sprinkled in
The Codex Alera Series	Jim Butcher	2004	3rd Limited	86
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell	Susanna Clarke	2004	3rd Omni	64
Going Postal	Terry Pratchett	2004	3rd Omni	60
Old Man's War	John Scalzi	2005	1st Person	74
The Book Thief	Markus Zusak	2005	1st Person	Limited (Death)
The Uglies	Scott Westerfeld	2005
World War Z	Max Brooks	2006	1st Person	54	but told through an interviewer (1st Peripheral)
Fablehaven	Brandon Mull	2006	3rd Limited	Split between two siblings
The Mistborn Series	Brandon Sanderson	2006	3rd Limited	43	1st Person bumpers
The Road	Cormac McCarthy	2006	3rd Limited	63
The Kingkiller Chronicles	Patrick Rothfuss	2007	3rd Objective	18
Anathem	Neal Stephenson	2008	1st Person	85
Leviathan	Scott Westerfeld	2009	3rd Limited	between two characters
The Way Of Kings	Brandon Sanderson	2010	3rd Limited	71
The Great Gatsby	F. Scott Fitzgerald		1st Person
The Invention of Hugo Cabret	Brian Selznick		3rd Limited	Narrator
The Golden Compass	Phillip Pullman		3rd Omni

Still here? Great. 

Studying the chart reveals a number of things. First of all, it looks pretty clear that different periods of time tended to feature certain types of POV. Therefor, we can roughly divide all of genre fiction into the following eras:

• Pre-Victorian. Prior to this time, authors employed a wide variety of styles.
• Victorian. First Person viewpoints dominate.
• 1900-1985. 3^rd Person Omniscient is the POV most frequently used.
• 1985-Mid-90’s. 3^rd Person Limited dominates.
• Mid 90’s-to today. Although 3^rd Person Limited still holds the largest share, an increasing number of novels have other viewpoints.

Going back to my original assumption about 90’s YA novels and how they might have shaped trends in POV, I could see that I was both right and wrong. There was a great shift in genre fiction as the vast majority of the market moved towards 3^rd Person Limited. However, the shift happened much earlier than I’d thought, around 1985, well before the YA explosion. (Who or what might have sparked this change is a question for smarter people than myself.) 

So I was wrong about that, but compiling the titles reassured me that my memories of titles that I read as a wee young lad in the 70’s and 80’s were correct. Books that were published before 1985—both great works like Dune and guilty pleasures like Alan Dean Foster—were all largely 3^rd Person Omniscient works.

And finally, while my research was cursory at best, it did suggest something about the changing nature of the novel, something that touched on ALL viewpoint schemes. As I reread chapter excerpts from “Pre-Shift” novels it was clear that authors and readers simply didn’t place as much value on identification with a main character, on seeing the story through their eyes, feeling their emotions, etc. Where a “Post Shift” novel might languish in pages of describing one character’s sensory impressions, a Pre-Shift work would briskly want to hurry things along to keep the plot moving forward.

This brings me back (finally—see, I told you we’d circle back) to 3^rd Person Objective, the more journalistic, pared-down, non-mind-reading version of 3^rd Person. That viewpoint seemed to color all 3rd Person POV's, making a Pre-Shift 3^rd Limited a very different reading experience from a Post-Shift 3^rd Limited. 

So that about sums up what I learned. I grew up reading during science fiction’s great “New Wave” of the late 60's and early 70's when authors were pushing the boundaries of what the genre could be and what stories we could be told. And, gauging from the data, it looks like Novels and POV are continuing to change and evolve as writers experiment with characters, explore different POV's, and forge new styles. 

Maybe the possibilities in speculative fiction are endless, after all.