Fantasy novels, or any other novel, relies on the author's ability to weave a plot and mesh characters.
They don't work as games. As soon as players get involved, the plot goes to hell and the player-characters change everything. Your average FRPG campaign is fun to play but would make a dreadfully dull novel. The Hobbit would probably have started with Bilbo pickpocketing the dwarfs or trying to murder them.
I swear to God I am not stalking you and picking fights.
One could say you cannot write a personal biography as a Choose Your Own Adventure story, and yet that is precisely what Neil Patrick Harris, and actually quite a few others, have done. It isn't a bad idea, it is simply incredibly difficult to execute it well. When Philip K Dick wrote the Man in the High Castle, he did it by writing a scene, consulting the I Ching to determine an outcome, described it arriving at its natural conclusion, then consulted again to see what would happen next. Writing for a CRPG must be something similar. It cannot simply be one compelling narrative. . .It must be several, all interwoven, with the character determining the ensuing branch at those points where they all meet.
Think of it as several and distinctly varied alternate realities which the player navigates at points where they overlap in order to make a new and unique timeline of events from a combination of them all. It is difficult to do well. No one argues that it is not, but those efforts which have made honest and earnest efforts in that direction are quite often dearly loved by those who get to experience what they have to offer. I tend to think it is why we are all here. I love literature, it is incredibly rewarding, but the little boy who resides in my heart wants desperately to be a part of one and not simply experience them vicariously.
