Are the Choose Your Own Adventure, as a series, sufficiently on topic?

Question

I have a question in mind about the history of the Choose Your Own Adventure series. Most of the books in the series (including the "young readers" spin-offs) have science fiction and fantasy topics.

However, some of the books are in other genres. "Who Killed Harlowe Thrombey" is a mystery; "Deadwood City" is a western; "By Balloon to the Sahara" is a sort of general pulp adventure story. These examples are all from the early Choose Your Own Adventure books, since my question only deals with the early history of the series.

I think that a series, like this one, that is predominantly science fiction & fantasy, should be on topic. However, I wanted to get others' opinions before I asked a detailed question about the development history of the series.

Answer 1

Questions about CYOA gamebooks (or indeed any mixed book/film/TV/etc series) are only on topic where they specifically address science fictional or fantastical elements. The fact that other books in the same stable contain fantasy/scifi isn't enough to make the non-fantasy books on-topic here.

Discussing the whole series would apply here;

Are works that aren't SF per se, but have occasional SFnal elements on-topic? (e.g. spy movies)

And we've discussed this tangentially before when we talked about epic blockbuster sequels like Baywatch Nights and Weekend at Bernies II that contain SFF content and the general consensus was that you can't backtrack into older books and apply constants.

If a sequel contains SFF content, does that make the original property on-topic as well?

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If you're after the historical background behind a mixed series, probably Literature:SE is your best option since the kind of question you're suggesting asking would be entirely topical there.

Answer 2

Yes

Since most of the books in the Choose Your Own Adventure series are on topic, questions on the series itself should be on topic as well.

Note that questions about the off-topic books in the series remain off topic.