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Let’s learn more about Solo Legends Treasure Hunt #1 in the following Six Questions with Steven Marks – the mastermind behind the hunt!
What if you could go on a treasure hunt without ever leaving home? Steven Marks, creator of Solo Legends RPG, has brought that idea to life with Treasure Hunt #1, an interactive gamebook featuring ten legendary treasures to discover. From Oak Island to Atlantis, hunters must make choices, follow the right paths, and uncover the codes that lead to each treasure. I caught up with Steven to learn more about the hunt, how to get started, and what advice he has for those ready to take on the challenge. Enjoy!
(Join discussions on the MW discord, Forum, or Facebook)
Overview of Solo Legends Treasure Hunt #1
- Released 10/18/26 by Steven Marks
- 10 Code words to discover within book (Available on Amazon)
- Fully armchair
- Treasure is a growing bounty – shared prize pool
- End date August 31, 2027 (official website)
Six Questions with Steve:
- 1Q) Thank you for sharing Solo Legends with the treasure-hunting community! For those who may not know you, could you tell us a little about yourself and what inspired you to create Solo Legends and combine a gamebook adventure with a treasure hunt?
Thank you, Jenny — and thank you for hunting yourself. I’m Steven Marks, an author in Ocala, Florida. I’ve written more than 30 novels in several genres, but the work that led here is Solo Legends: full-length gamebook adventures you play alone, with choices and a single die (or Siri random number assist, or just choosing the die roll if you have no die), right on a Kindle. Those are massively advanced “Choose Your Own Adventures” just for fun and are available on Amazon. There is a Fantasy adventure, a Sci-fi adventure, and a Western Adventure so far.
Are you The World’s Greatest Treasure Hunter – Hunt #1 is the fourth Solo Legends book and the first hunt. The inspiration was a wall I kept hitting in the famous hunts: I loved them, but resented the airfare, cold wet feet, and risking death! To really play, you needed a plane ticket and boots on the ground somewhere. So I built the hunt I always wanted to join — one where the adventure, the danger, and the treasure all live inside the book, and anyone with an e-reader can hunt on equal footing from their own chair. Fully armchair, armchair all the way down.
- 2Q) Each treasure adventure has one true path that leads to a code, and hunters can solve as much as they like before starting their clock. What advice would you offer someone approaching their first Solo Legends adventure? Are there any important rules or requirements they should understand (or not miss) before beginning?
The single most important thing: your clock does not exist until you enter your first code. Registration is free, and nothing is timed while you read. So my advice is to register, get the hunt book, live in it, solve at your leisure — and only start entering codes when you’re ready. One should not wait to enter the codes, because finding a code does not mean it’s the correct one, so just enjoy the hunt and enter the codes as you find them!
The requirements are simple and they’re all on the site: the book is $12.99 on Amazon or free to read with Kindle Unlimited (now Kindle+); you need one free account at sololegendsrpg.com/treasure-hunt; there is no proof of purchase collected, ever unless there are linked accounts where it will be required to prove that each account had their own copy even if only one account wins; hunters 13 to 17 join with a parent or guardian’s permission, and an adult claims any prize. One account per hunter, and the Official Rules on the site are the whole law of the hunt — read them before your first code, because the clock rules in the next answers are real.
- 3Q) What advice would you give hunters as they work through the gamebook? Are there particular skills, techniques, or ways of thinking that might help them solve the puzzles? Is there anything participants should pay special attention to as they explore the different paths? Are there important clues to discover on the different paths – or is the path leading to the code – the only one that matters?
The skill is reading. Not skimming — reading. I built the book under a rule I call the Reader’s Burden: you should never need notes, maps, or a spreadsheet. Everything you need is carried inside the story itself, so a hunter with a good memory for what they’ve read will always beat a hunter with a system. As for the paths: there are 12,920 passages and 319 ways to die, and I wrote every trail — true or false — as a complete experience, because a hunt you can only enjoy on the correct route isn’t an adventure, it’s a corridor. Death costs you nothing but the walk back; failure in this book is how you learn the country. What I won’t do — and your readers should know this about me — is hint, for anyone, ever, not even my own dad. The paths have to be earned, and that’s exactly what makes a lit frame on your Wall worth having.
- 4) Once hunters have found the codes, how do they submit their results and qualify for the prize pool? What should participants know about the timing rules and the competition? Do you have any advice for hunters who want to improve their chances of finishing successfully?
You enter each code on your personal Wall at sololegendsrpg.com, and your clock starts with that first entry — right or wrong. After a correct code, there’s a 24-hour wait before your next entry; a wrong code costs a 6-hour wait. Your clock stops at your tenth correct code. That means the fastest possible hunt takes over nine days of real time, by design: nobody can binge this, brute-force it, or buy their way through it. The ten hunters with the lowest personal total entry times split the pool — 40% to first down to 1% each for sixth through tenth, ties splitting their place’s share.
The pool started at $250 (it has started to grow) and grows in public view: $1.00 for every ebook sold and $1.00 for up to 3,000 pages read on Kindle+ per hunter, no cap, and every edition — English and Spanish — feeds the same pool. The hunt closes August 31, 2027, and prizes are paid by December 1, 2027, after winners verify their identity privately. My advice for finishing well is boring and true: solve first, enter second. Accuracy is speed — a wrong code costs six hours, and a calm hunter with ten correct codes in hand beats a hurried one every time.
- 5Q) The ten fastest finishers share the prize pool, with timing rules that add another layer of strategy to the hunt. What inspired the competitive format, and what do you hope participants enjoy most about the experience? If I understand correctly, every registered hunter also receives a bonus adventure when the hunt closes. Can you share anything about that extra reward?
The format came from a fairness problem. In most hunts, whoever starts first — or lives closest, or has the most free weekends — wins before anyone else has a chance. I wanted a competition where the calendar couldn’t beat you. So every hunter races only their own clock, the lockouts force the hunt to unfold over days, and a schoolteacher who registers in July has precisely the chance of a retiree who registered in October.
What I hope participants enjoy most is the unhurried middle of it: weeks of evenings inside ten legends, knowing the treasure is real and the trail is fair. And yes — every registered hunter, finisher or not, receives a bonus adventure when the hunt closes: an eleventh treasure, in miniature, at the bottom of the Mariana Trench. No prize attached to that one, and I built it to be genuinely hard — most hunters won’t finish it in one run. It’s my thank-you for hunting, and my way of making sure nobody who joined us walks away empty-handed.
- 6Q) What can we look forward to from Solo Legends in the future? Are you planning additional gamebooks, treasure hunts, or other adventures? And where can readers follow your work and get involved?
More of both. The regular Solo Legends adventures — fantasy, a western, science fiction so far — continue, and I have a horror adventure and a pirate adventure in the works. Treasure Hunt #2 arrives next year, and I’m pleased to say it will welcome Canadian hunters from the very first day; this year’s hunt is US-only, and our Canadian friends who hunted anyway, for the love of it, will be first in line next time. The Spanish editions continue too — Treasure Hunt #1 already plays in Spanish, in the same contest and the same pool.
Follow the hunt at sololegendsrpg.com/treasure-hunt, find the books at amazon.com/author/stevenmarks, and find my occasional roughly done, but well-intentioned videos on YouTube at @sololegendsrpg. I also welcome all emailed questions to sololegends@proton.me And Jenny — thank you. The treasure-hunting community has been kinder to this book than I dared hope. Treasure the adventures, indeed.
Join the Adventures! Available on Amazon! — Go to the Solo Legends Website
