Fantasy Gamebook newsdesk update!

 Just a bunch of random plugs while I'm getting my next #Everything25 entry ready.

• I'm on Bluesky! @fantasygamebook.bky.social
• I forgot to mention the Magic Companion! It's out, it's all about new magic for Advanced Fighting Fantasy 2E and I wrote 5 chapters for it!
• A History of Magic: tedious speculative wafflings on the history of different kinds of magic from the world of Titan.
• Animal Mastery (and Plant Mastery): Be the Beast Master you want to be! Command anything from a Mammoth to a Moth, from a Toad to a Tiger! Show the so-called Masters of Scorpion Swamp how it's really done, animal-wise!
  
• Illusionism: The coolest magic-users finally get a Titan-appropriate rules update. Come back Senyakhaz, all is forgiven!
  
• Psionics: This is much better than the Psionics rules in the AD&D 1E Players Handbook. It's certainly easier to understand! :-) I've adapted the Psionics rules created by Graham Bottley and Jonathan Hicks for the AFF 2E Stellar Adventures sci-fi ruleset, to a fantasy setting. Brain Slayers of the Underearth unite!
  
• Warlocks: Lothar the Warrior-Prince of Gundobad finally gets his due credit. The spell system from Andrew Chapman and Martin Allen's lone Clash of the Princes FF duology becomes a playable magic system for AFF 2E.
  

•  I did a speculative map of the major nations and areas of Irritaria the First Continent in issue #12 of The Warlock Returns! 

•  The Lindenbaum Prize hosted by the incredible Stuart Lloyd is underway! I won it last year with a crazy little fantasy gamebook adventure called Are You The Hero? I'm currently working on my entry for this year!

• Issue #15 of the esoteric and atmospheric Casket of Fays fanzine features my third part of the Marauders of the Azure Main series, originally a chapter in a proposed Dragon Warriors pirate book. In this episode, set in the Azure Coast port of Banar, our heroes Kanthos and Ekaterina find themselves in a spot of bother with the purple lotus leaf merchants...

• I'm 90% finished of a top secret AFF 2e book of which this is a taster:

• Over and out! :-)
  

Interviewed!

There's a whole host of reasons why nothing has happened on the blog for ages (and there's been a stillborn post sitting on my laptop explaining all of them that I still haven't posted), but for now, check out this interview I did with Stuart Lloyd. You can find the interview here.

A New Year and a New Plan

 

This past year has been a good one for Fantasy Gamebook! This blog got started for one thing, taking a detailed look at Dave Morris’ amazing Heart of Ice adventure. Tin Man Games then released my Catacombs of the Undercity gamebook as the fifth entry in their Gamebook Adventures series on iTunes to good reviews. Finally my entry, Sea of Madness, won first prize in Wayne Densley’s 2011 Windhammer competition for short gamebook fiction.

However, it has been exceedingly tricky at times trying to balance fun stuff like gamebooks with real-world concerns like employment and studying, and the number of posts on this blog has suffered as a result. For 2012 there will be some changes, with posts being shorter, but hopefully more regular. In order to do this, I’m going to have to introduce a bit more structure to the proceedings, with posts organized into a cascading series of categories as follows:

News

Wherein I talk about a bunch of tangentially-related gamebook stuff that caught my eye over the past week or so.

Gamebooks

Where I explore some facet of gamebook lore in more detail.

Games

Whether it be boardgames, RPGs, or CRPGs, I briefly review or offer examples of play.

Books

Be they paper or PDF, I offer a few thoughts on whatever texts I’m currently wading through.

Influences

Ah nostalgia! Wherein I look at childhood influences that inspired a life-long lurch into the realm of fantastical endeavours.

Multimedia

Music, film, or (rarely) television; I post on what my eyes and ears are currently distracted by.

Science

A close favourite I’ve previously dallied with here.

That’s the plan anyway. Whether it actually happens is a whole ‘nother kettle of fish...

Adrift on the Sea of Madness...

Wow! When not battling word-heavy assignments or rising Bangkok floodwaters, I received the most welcome news that my Sea of Madness adventure has won Wayne Densley's 2011 Windhammer Prize for short gamebook fiction! Cue celebratory beers here at Fantasy Gamebook HQ where we are ever-increasingly surrounded by a deluge of stench-laden black klong-water.

As I talked about before, this year's Windhammer competition saw a lot of high quality entries and everyone who entered deserves a congratulatory pat on the back. There was also a record number of adventure downloads and votes, so thanks also to all you readers and voters who were able to enjoy a glut of interesting and adventurous gamebook fiction.

In a bid to resurrect this blog now that I've completed my studies for this semester, I plan on following this post with a series of similarly-themed entries:

• Talking about all the entries in this year's Windhammer Prize, to give you an idea of the quality and variety that was present.
• Looking at five things that helped Sea of Madness win this year, when previous attempts like Hills of Phoros or RAMPAGE! had failed.
• Exploring the planning process behind Sea of Madness as a counter-point to the Adventure Game series I write for Fighting Fantazine on DIY gamebook adventures.
• Finally, DestinyQuest the review is nearly done!

Onwards and upwards, away from the floods...

Lost in Bangkok...

Apologies for the complete lack of updates but I've been totally snowed under flooded (via the Bangkok monsoon), with real-life tedium like work and study, and much more fun stuff like trying to get my entry in for Wayne Densley's 2011 Windhammer Prize for Short Gamebook Fiction. 

There's eight entries this year in Wayne's competition, which is the most in its four year history, and they all look very interesting! I plan on talking a bit more about them later, particularly once the entries are published online, but for now it's good to see some familiar faces among the entrants, such as 2010 Windhammer Prize Winner Stuart Lloyd, two-time Merit Award winner (and author of GA4 Revenant Rising) Kieran Coghlan, Merit Award winner and Fighting Fan-tales writer Zachary Carango, and regular Fighting Fantasy Project guestbook contributor Dark. A strong field indeed!

Two other things I need to get done ASAP and hopefully in the next week or two, are:

• Finish off my review on the Fabled Lands Roleplaying Game.
• Finally get a review up on Michael Ward's first DestinyQuest book!

Until then!

Gasp! A breather...

I'm taking a break tonight while I attempt to compile the rest of the Heart of Ice/Fabled Lands mash-up into a single bumper post for publishing soon. As is my curse, it began to bloat out beyond the initial idea for a single post, and I'm keen to finish it off, and move on to postings new (blessed as I am with a ridiculously short attention span).

Thanks to everyone so far who has stopped by to read the blog, and also to post comments. As you may well gather, I'm enjoying this lark immensely! :-) 

cheers

Andy

Future Projects

Just a quick post for now unfortunately. Three weeks of holidays end tonight, and I go back to work tomorrow, to a day filled with presentations I have to give and planning I have to do, so no late night blogging tonight. It's also going to be interesting over the coming few weeks to see how I combine these blog posts with the demands of work. If that isn't enough, I've also taken on writing a novel this month, as I was too busy last November for NaNoWriMo (2010), and I've got to resume studies in February some time. So, every day this January as well as blogging, I've been churning out 1400 words of "fantasy fiction", or something like that. Ah, the joys of self-inflicted pressure...

Anyway, the following is a list of ideas for some posts I'll be writing over the coming week. I'm forewarning you now, to serve as personal motivation later, when I feel obligated to sit down and type them out. So, some things you can look forward to reading about here include:

1. Heart of Ice versus Fabled Lands. In which I take Heart of Ice and provide a skeletal structure of sorts for converting it into a Fabled Lands-style project.

2. Heart of Ice versus Necromunda. The world of Heart of Ice converted to Games Workshop's cult miniatures game featuring gang warfare in an urban future dystopia.

3. Influences. In which I begin an occasional series of posts going back as far as I can or dare to see why I have become "Fantasy Game Book".

4. The Joy of Maps. As a lead-in to a possible series on maps in gamebooks, I want to first look at maps themselves, particularly evocative examples (fantasy or otherwise) that have left some lasting impact on me.

5. Fabled Lands Book 1: The War-Torn Kingdom. I review this amazing book in similar fashion to what I just did with Heart of Ice.

Wish me luck in getting these posts together!

Reference

National Novel Writing Month. (2010). Accessed from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Novel_Writing_Month