Heart of Ice versus The Fabled Lands

Not too long ago, I was supposed to be completing an assignment and I got completely side-tracked by what at the time seemed like a great idea. What if we combined the world of Heart of Ice – the frozen Earth setting that Per Jorner (2007) calls “the best one-shot world design” – with the ongoing campaign system of the Fabled Lands series? I originally thought it might be a fairly amusing diversion for a few days, but it quickly became apparent that the project would be far bigger in scope. However, as my time at the moment is fairly constrained and I’m unable to develop the concept any further, I thought I’d post my notes up here, for comments and discussion. It’s also in the spirit of what Robin Laws (2004) named his Abandoned Ideas Clearinghouse:

Like most writers, I keep a file containing ideas for what might one day become novels or short stories. Since it takes a few moments to think of a project and months if not years to complete one, I now have more ideas than I could possibly develop for the rest of my life. It’s good to have a big store of ideas in reserve; you never know when one will come in handy.

Often a seemingly lame idea will become interesting when cross-pollinated with another one that isn’t quite working. But even so, I can tell that some of these entries will never see the light of day. Some of them are hypothetical books I’d like to read, without being books I’d like to write. Others just plain bite.

In a spirit of magnanimous amnesty, I will periodically use this space to free from its imprisonment a premise which would otherwise be doomed to languish forever in my idea file, alone and unloved.

So, if anyone wants to take this idea and develop it further, feel free (just credit me for inspiration, or something like that!).

The rest of this post covers the first two sections examining how you would convert Heart of Ice to a Fabled Lands style of play, in terms of the gamebook’s form, and its character design. Subsequent posts will look at further conversion details including combat, outdoor survival, gamebook structure, and various miscellaneous rules mechanics.

1. Gamebook Form. As we’ve already seen (Wright, 2011a), Heart of Ice is a ‘one true path’ kind of book, whereas the Fabled Lands are about as non-linear as you can get. They don’t even have a proper ending. How do we combine the two? Bear in mind we have to be especially careful because the storyline of Heart of Ice is one of the things that make it compelling, whereas one of the criticisms labeled at the more non-linear gamebooks is their “endless wandering” (Jorner, 2009). In my view, there are two real approaches we can take here:

a) Retrofit. We presuppose that our mash-up gamebook (hereafter known as Frozen Lands), takes place either well-before or well-after the action in Heart of Ice, and there is no effect on gameplay. Characters may venture to the Lost City of Du-En, but they will not encounter the Heart of Volent there. Instead we can create a series of other quests with which to tempt players. This approach has the virtue of simplicity, in not having to work Heart of Ice into the gameplay, but it lacks any over-arching plot or purpose.

b) Reworking. We incorporate the Heart of Ice plotline into the Frozen Lands gamebook, perhaps as the big final quest after they have built up their character exploring the cities of the Mediterranean region and the icy wastes between them. This gives immediate purpose to the book, but it’s going to take some work incorporating the story of Heart of Ice and the actions of its various NPC adventurers into the Frozen Lands. It also seems like we’re just repeating ourself, using an alternate rules system to tell a story that’s already been told.

I find myself alternating in favour between both of these ideas. Currently I’m leaning more towards the first though, after a long period of preferring the second. What do others think?

2. Character Design. Another danger of this project is that we lose the well-regarded character creation process of Heart of Ice (Jorner, 2007), and replace it with the Fabled Lands model, which has far less flexibility. The redeeming feature of the Fabled Lands system however, is that it is easy to scale up for a campaign game, and allows for a greater series of smaller progressions until the player/character feels up to trying a big challenge (like seeking the Heart of Volent).

As previously noted (Wright, 2011b), Heart of Ice gives us seven different character types, and twelve different skills. Converting this to a Fabled Lands system involves trimming the professions to six, and also compressing the twelve skills into six abilities whose numeric value represents how good each profession is at accomplishing the task at hand (Morris & Thomson, 1995, p. 5). What follows are suggestions for this:

a) The Professions. From the Heart of Ice list of starting character types (Morris, 1994, pp. 7-8), we lose the Trader, and keep the following:

Explorer

Bounty Hunter

Spy

Visionary

Scientist

Mutant

b) The Abilities. Converting the skills from Heart of Ice (Morris, 1994, p. 9) into abilities, yields the following:

TECH: Cybernetics, Piloting

COMBAT: Close Combat, Shooting

PSI: Paradoxing, ESP

LORE: Lore

SURVIVAL: Survival

ROGUERY: Agility, Cunning, Roguery, Streetwise

c) Combining the Two. Assigning abilities and their values to the professions is a tricky business, and I’ve revised my notes at least four times. The current iteration I’ve come up with is:

Explorer: COMBAT 5, LORE 4, PSI 2, ROGUERY 3, SURVIVAL 6, TECH 1

Bounty Hunter: COMBAT 6, LORE 1, PSI 2, ROGUERY 5, SURVIVAL 3, TECH 4

Spy: COMBAT 3, LORE 2, PSI 4, ROGUERY 6, SURVIVAL 1, TECH 5

Visionary: COMBAT 1, LORE 6, PSI 5, ROGUERY 4, SURVIVAL 3, TECH 2

Scientist: COMBAT 3, LORE 5, PSI 1, ROGUERY 2, SURVIVAL 4, TECH 6

Mutant: COMBAT 4, LORE 1, PSI 6, ROGUERY 5, SURVIVAL 3, TECH 2

Although some of these match their corresponding characters from Heart of Ice, there are also a few shifts in emphasis. The Visionary for example becomes more of a dual LORE/PSI mystic type, whereas the Mutant becomes the strongest in PSI but also a decent fighter and thief. The Spy has also become stronger with PSI which is surely useful for their line of work.

That’s it for tonight. Tomorrow I’ll look at some other conversions issues, starting with combat and those dreaded barysal guns.

References

Jorner, P. (2007, May 31). Reviews part 18: The future’s so bright I gotta wear polarized goggles. Message posted to http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/fighting_fantasy_gamebooks/message/2752

Jorner, P. (2009, November 26). Notification of Results for the 2009 Windhammer Prize. Message posted to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gamebooks/message/10494

Laws, R. D. (2004, March 29). Abandoned Idea Clearinghouse: Palindrome. Message posted to http://robin-d-laws.livejournal.com/2004/03/29/

Morris, D. (1994). Heart of Ice. London: Mammoth.

Morris, D. & Thomson, J. (1995). Fabled Lands: The War-Torn Kingdom. London: Macmillan.

Wright, A. (2011a). Heart of Ice (Part 3). Message posted to http://fantasygamebook.blogspot.com/2011/01/heart-of-ice-part-3.html

Wright, A. (2011b). Heart of Ice (Part 2). Message posted to http://fantasygamebook.blogspot.com/2011/01/heart-of-ice-part-2.html