2015 in review

Happy new year, gamebookers! 2016 is just around the corner, so I thought I’d be original and go review the past year and talk about what’s going on in the future.

Year in review

Asuria Awakens!!!!

Yes, my Gamebook Adventures book came out this September. It felt great to finally get my book out to the world and also to have great reviews for it.

Legend of the Wayfarer

My mini gamebook series has reached 8 books now. I want to make shorter gamebooks but also make them better, such as including hyperlinks in the books. I want to system to be sustainable and possible to do in my spare time at the rate of 1 a month. Having books of 80-120 sections each are too big to do once a month with the spare time I have. These books don’t have hyperlinks as well and people do want them to make reading them easier.

Windhammer 2015

My gamebook, Isaac Newton: Badass Ninja Crimefighter did not win any prizes, but I’m proud of it anyway. At the very least, I’m glad that I managed to get over my problem with working out titles.

AFF2 – I have contributed lots and lots to the forum. As well as the adventures (see my bibliography), I have made a collection of other things to help with AFF2. Have a look on the forums for loads more homebrew stuff.

For more information on what I have written, here is my bibliography.

My New Year’s resolutions

Getting more blog posts

The thing is the gang of us who started blogging about gamebooks around 2010 then went on to write actual gamebooks. We all have jobs and a lot of us have children too. Since I started writing this blog in 2010, I have got married and had two children. I have also been approached by people to write some gamebooks and also my store of thoughts on gamebooks has started to run dry. Writing gamebooks has provided me with more thoughts, but I need the time to write them down.

I don’t know how to get more posts – I have shared this blog with people, but they are equally busy. we need to find some new blood out there – people who are interested in gamebooks and interactive fiction and who are eager to share their thoughts and post their books. The audience is there.

If you want to contribute, please email me at sl1605@gmail.com.

Revisiting old posts

I have mentioned before that my gaming guru is Mark Rosewater, lead designer of Magic the Gathering. I read Mark’s Monday articles since he started writing them and also long after I played Magic seriously. One thing Mark did was revisit old posts that he had done in the past. I have been thinking about this for a while. I think the first posts I will revisit will be my ‘How to Write a Gamebook’ posts as I will want to go back to the core of writing a gamebook.

More gamebooks

I have some gamebooks in the works, which I don’t want to talk about yet. Hopefully, they will come to light in 2016.

More Interactive Fiction

I have gradually become aware of Interactive Fiction circles, mainly by having my Windhammer entries Sharkbait’s Revenge and Isaac Newton: Badass Ninja Crimefighter reviewed by Emily Short http://ift.tt/1wEyfK3. I have also started reading the These Heterogeeous Tasks blog.

I want to write something using Choicescript or Twine, so that will be something next year.

So there we are. I hope you all have a happy and prosperous 2016. Happy gamebooking!

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Magic systems that don’t warp the world

I’ve been taking some time away from my Legend of The Wayfarer last month to do some Advanced Fighting Fantasy stuff and real life stuff, but I’ve updated the system (and I’ll be updating books 1-5 to fit it later) and I’m about half way through book 6.

One thing that I had an issue working out was magic. I wanted magic in my world to be present, but not affect it too much. I also did not want a situation where some people were making non-magical tools, professions or weapons obsolete.

This is a topic that people ussually ask about Dungeons and Dragons. If having a bunch of spells that can do everything a rogue and warrior of a comparable level can do, then why have rogues and warriors? If every novice cleric can cure wounds, and it only takes a little bit of experience to cure diseases and poison and not too much experience to cure death, why don’t people live out their natural lifespans and nver catch a disease?

One answer is that magic is rare. Dungeon Crawl Classics has a breakdown of the percentage of the population by level and 95% of the population is 0 level (which are incapable of using magic). Of the remaining 5%, almost no one is above level 2.

That is one reason.

DCC also has a magic system where there is a huge range of effects. A spell that opens doors can have an effect that ranges from complete failure to destroying all doors in a mile radius.

However, this is difficult to do in gamebooks.

Maelstrom (and it’s  medieval version, Maelstrom Domesday) have a very interesting version where there are no lists of spells. Instead, you describe the effect you want, and then you have to roll to see if you know the relevant spell and then you are capable of casting it. Spells are ranked in terms of difficulty depending on how removed from reality you want to be. Trying to do something that is likely to happen is quite easy. The more improbable the effect, the harder it is to pull off.

There are some interesting comparisons here. A novice Dungeons and Dragons wizard can make a random object shine like a torch, but this would be one of the hardest possible spells in Maelstrom.

I prefer this kind of magic – sure, wizards have  power over the world, but the only effects that they can produce are those that could have happened anyway. This is the way that the charms skill in the Virtual Reality books worked (at least the ones by Dave Morris). If you had charms, things would happen in your favour, which were unlikely but possible (such as skarvench having a misfire on his cannon at just the right time or your charm blocking a bullet that he fired at you).

From what I remember of The Golden Bough this is how a lot of sympathetic magic worked. Hunters would put the lead bullets in their mouths before firing them as this action would represent them putting the meat from the animal that they will shoot into their mouths and make it more likely to hit something. In this case, there are still only two possible outcomes if they fire a gun at an animal – they hit it or they don’t hit it – but performing the action makes hitting it more likely.

This is the kind of effect I wanted in my game, but I did not want to affect skills (which would make everyone hypercompetent). Instead, magic in my world affects luck. In Legend of the Wayfarer, magic only allows you to reroll fate rolls, which means that a) the only outcomes you get are normally possible b) your magic could just produce the same result or a worse one c) no one would see anything supernatural; just that you are slightly luckier than others.

I have not decided how many people can use this magic – it is one of the 12 possible skills, but I haven’t done a skill breakdown.

There is also another type of magic (mysticism) where the character is more aware of spirits and fae, is better at communicating with them and might be able to protect themselves from them. However, in these cases, there are no huge effects.

I have given myself the get out clause that there is more powerful magic that can do impossible things in this world, but for mortals to use it, it requires several items and long incantations and sacrifice. In short, powerful magic (such as curing a disease, teleportation or enchanting something) will only be used as a plot point in books.

I have also had the idea of ‘gods’ in this world who wield more powerful magic. However, some of these gods are not magical – merely rare monsters (such as dragons, sphinxs, treents etc.) and the humanoid gods with magic would have the equivalent power of a level 5 wizard or cleric from Dungeons and Dragons with some immortality thrown in (although in a sense that if you kill the mortal form, it will return some time later, meaning that you can stop these gods doing something if you kill them – they just won’t stay dead). This idea was inspired by a very old article about Gandalf that is all over ther internet.

I think this would make it more interesting as it will prevent a deus ex machina.

Anyway, if you want more Legend of the Wayfarer stuff, go here.

Happy gamebooking!

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Tinkering tinkering

Hello all!

I have made some more changes to Legend of the Wayfarer system. And I need to stop them. I need to make a promise to only change the system every 6 books or so, to stop constant tweaking. Here are the latest tweaks:

Changes to the abilities:

My ideas with the abilities was to keep them balanced and keep them concrete. What I mean is that I didn’t want one ability to be useful more than the others and I also wanted any situation that involved an ability test to be clear as to which abilities will help, so I wouldn’t have to think so much about it. For this reason, I made these changes.

Insight has been replaced by perception and lore: Originally, the insight ability covered both general knowledge AND spotting things. This was because I used 6 abilities in the first edition and because of that, insight covered 2 abilities worth of things. It also didn’t make sense from a flavour point of view. Someone who knows a lot isn’t necessarily perceptive and vice versa. So when I decided to have starting characters choose 3 abilities from a list of 12 (instead of 1 from a list of 6), it made more sense that I could have the abilities cover smaller areas and this was the obvious choice.

Mysticism now also covers what intuition used to: In the original 12, mysticism covered communicating and repelling the fey whereas intuition was about detecting Fey creatures and magick. Since insight also covered detecting things, intuition seemed to cover too narrow a field, so it is now covered in mysticism and perception took its place.

Cunning is gone: Cunning was a pretty awesome ability to have in the Virtual Reality series. It conjured up the idea of the quick thinking trickster and I usually chose it, especially when doing the ‘Most unlikely hero skill set’ challenge (usually meaning no swordplay, archery, magic, charms or brawling). However, I found it a bit nebulous to fit into the books. Where to use it seemed a bit arbitrary and the skill itself seems to be a mix of roguery, charm and lore. Since it is not as ‘concrete’ as the other abilities, it got the axe.

Roguery no longer covers sneaking and hiding. Stealth does that: Cunning was replaced with stealth, which covers hiding, sneaking, disguise and blending in with the crowd. Originally roguery covered stealth as well as picking locks, picking pockets, disarming traps, forgery and the other things you consider a rogue to do. This seemed like too broad a skill set for one ability, so I split it up. Also, rogues do not necessarily get a monopoly on stealth. It fits just as well with a outdoors hunter type.
 
Use of 1d6 instead of 2d6

I always want to make things as simple as possible, so using anydice, I made a few calculations on the probability of success in a 1d6 and 2d6 system. It turned out that using a 1d6 system gives players a small (about 5-8% decrease) in the chances of success, but then I remembered that these values are rough. I’m taking the standard test as difficulty 4 on 1 die (so roll 4 or more), which is 50/50 normally. I will name 3 abilities. So the probability of success then is 64%, which is OK. If I used a 2d6 system, the chance of succeeding at a difficulty 7 test with 3 abilities mentioned is 70%, which is better.

However, this does not take into account the fact that sometimes, I will let items and codewords give the player rerolls as well as having the spend 1xp for a reroll rule. Also, this is only for characters with 3 abilities and some characters may have more if they have bought them with experience. Coupled with a personal rule that no ability test should lead to instant death in the case of failure, I don’t think that the 6% decrease will be a big problem and coupled with the increase in simplicity, it’s a no-brainer. It might even be that the 2d6 system was too easy.

Also, I had the idea of fate rolls being 1d6, 2d6, 3d6 or 4d6, but all of my fate rolls turned out to be 1d6, so I won’t bother with the other dice rolls.

Experience increase for critical success in ability rolls only if experience is 6 or below

I thought of a little loophole that might happen over time. In my old rules, you got 1xp if you rolled a double 6 on an ability test. The idea of this was for you to have a special treat and also to make sure that players will never see any ability test as pointless (for example, if they come across an easy test and they have 3 abilities for it, they may not want to roll the dice as the chances for success are certain. This way, they will roll to see if they get the double 6). However, if you get more xp, you can get more abilities, which leads to more rerolls, which leads to more double 6s which leads to more experience and so on.

In the 1d6 system, I changed this to a single 6 which has a 17% chance of being rolled before any rerolls. So I changed the system so that you only got experience if your experience was 6 or less. I’ve come up with a couple of flavour reasons, but the main one is to prevent a vicious cycle of rerolls.

Vitality and will start at 6 and have a maximum value of 12

They have smaller values as I wanted to get the size of the consequence of each gain and loss of vitality and will right. What I mean is that I don’t want a loss or gain of 1 to be inconsequential and I don’t want a change that is inconsequential for one character and devastating for another. If your starting value is 6 and your maximum is 12, a change of 1 is never inconsequential, whereas if you could start with a value of 12 and there’s no maximum, 1 could be inconsequential. Also the range between 6 and 12 for starting values might be too much where a change of 5 could be a huge problem for one person, but no big deal to another. So I’m reducing the variance to 0 at the beginning and putting a maximum on so that no one gets too powerful.

So now, with 3xp to gain 1 will or vitality and 12xp to get a new ability, you need the following xp to get the maximum scores.

9 x 12 = 108 for all the abilities.

6 x 3 = 18 to maximise your will

6 x 3 = 18 to maximise your vitality

-3 because you start with 3 xp

So you only need 141xp to get all the abilities and maximum scores, as long as you don’t spend any on rerolls. However, since I only give out 3xp max per book, it’s going to take a while.

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The Non-adventurer class for DnD 5th edition

Hello all! Recently, I made an E2 version of DnD where I introduced the master class, a class that basically gets lots of skills and is used mainly for powerful NPCs. I did this because I wanted some NPCs in the world to not just be ‘0 level’ people who get trodden all over by the heroes. There are powerful and skilled characters out there who aren’t necessarily adventurers. So I decided to expand this class for normal DnD by raising it to 10 levels. There were some rules for it, though. I didn’t want it to be objectively weaker than PC classes, so it’s not a commoner, but I also didn’t want to make it too complicated so that DMs could make NPCs on the fly.

Basically, this non-adventurer has a lot of skills and a higher proficiency bonus in a lot of skills, but little combat knowledge and no knowledge of magic. They are not necessarily worse than PCs, but less suited to adventuring. PCs could take a few levels in this class to increase their skills, or PCs could all start with a level of non adventuring class to signify them being normal people thrust into adventure.

If the non adventurer goes above level 10, they will have to choose a PC class at level 11.

Some people in certain jobs could have 2-3 levels of non adventurer and 1-2 levels of PC class. The green militia might start off as a level 1 non adventurer and then have to work their way up to level 3 non adventurer before having actual training as a fighter. A trained soldier might be a non adventuer 3/fighter 1 and an officer might be a non-adventurer 3/fighter 4. A lay priest might be a non adventurer until level 3 before gaining a level of cleric. A sage may get 3 levels of non-adventurer before learning a level of wizard and an entertainer might ply their trade as a non-adventurer before enrolling into bard college. However, the majority of non adventurers will just have the non-adventurer class.

This is a good class if you want an obscene number of skills and a minor bonus during down time, but it won’t do much else. It is quite straightforward so DMs can create NPCs with a minimum of fuss.

Anyone who wants to multiclass into non-adventurer does not need to have any minimum ability requirements.

The non-adventurer

Hit points 

Hit dice: 1d8 per level.

Proficiencies

Armour: Light armour
Weapons: Simple weapons
Tools: Any two from the list of artisan’s tools and musical instruments.
Saving Throws: Intelligence and wisdom
Skills: Any three.

Equipment

Any simple weapon
Leather armour
One set of artisan’s tools or one musical instrument

Level	Proficiency Bonus	Features
1st	+2	Expertise
2nd	+2	Bonus training
3rd	+2	Downtime bonus
4th	+2	Ability score improvement
5th	+3	Bonus training
6th	+3	Ability score improvement
7th	+3	Downtime bonus
8th	+3	Ability score improvement
9th	+4	Expertise
10th	+4	Bonus training

Expertise

At 1st level, choose two from your skill proficiencies, tool proficiencies or musical instrument proficiencies. Your proficiency bonus is doubled for any ability checks that use those proficencies, tools or musical instruments. You do this again at 9th level.

Bonus training

At 2nd level, you may gain proficiency with one skill, one language, one set of tools or one musical instrument. You do this again at 5th level and 10th level.

Downtime bonus

At 3rd level, you can choose one of the following features:

Better living: If you practise a profession or a craft or perform in your downtime, your standard of living can be 1 step higher that what you normally have.

Paid research: You do not have to pay for your standard of living whilst you research in your downtime. In addition, you do not need to spend any money to conduct your research.

Fast learner: It only takes you 125 days (instead of 250) to learn a set of tools, a language or a musical instrument in your down time. It also means that you only have to pay 125gp.

At 7th level, you may choose another downtime bonus.

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When exploring gets boring

One of the reasons that we play gamebooks and RPGs in general is to immerse ourselves into new worlds and explore dark corners for shining new treasure.  We want to know what kind of people and monsters populate the world, interact with its people and know what the weather will be like tomorrow.

In writing a few site based scenarios, I have discovered that if I am not careful, I could turn what should be a voyage of discovery into a boring crawl around a load of non descript corridors.  So here is what I have discovered:

Is the ‘Which door’ choice really necessary?:  I’ve borrowed this term from Ashton Saylor.  It stems from the most common use of this choice – you are in a dungeon and you are standing in front of two doors.  Which one do you go in?  Ashton discusses the many issues with this choice.  I will look at it from an exploration point of view. 

Say you in an abandoned dungeon with two doors.  You go through one, have an encounter and then move on deeper into the dungeon or you choose the next door.  That is frustrating in many ways.

I wish I’d taken a left.

Not allowing backtracking

From an exploration point of view, the which door choice can be frustrating if the book does not allow you to backtrack for no good reason.  Why can’t I just wander around Deathtrap Dungeon until I’ve found all of the gems?  How about exploring all of the corridors of Firetop Mountain or all of the streets to Port Blacksand?  The real life answer is that you can, but it would turn the book into a time consuming exercise, which takes away any real choice and, barring bad dice rolls, makes victory a lot easier. 

There are some ways to keep someone from just exploring everywhere.  One is by blocking off the route back (One FF book does have a portcullis descend after going past a certain point).  This works up to a point, but it might look a bit contrived if EVERY door sealed shut behind you and EVERY passage had a portcullis or boulder block it up.

Another way is to have a time limit.  If the consequences of being late are severe, then I could just put in the text ‘You can only visit one place before x happens.’ and then use the narrative to guide the player then.  Giving the player a time score where something bad happens if it reaches a certain level also works but in a different way – you still have to give the player the freedom to move around and they have to discover for themselves that they can’t explore every nook and cranny before their mission fails.

Choosing a direction at every junction

This route (pun intended) certainly allows the player to backtrack.  However, the player has to make a directional choice at every point and this can get tedious.  It certainly has a point if the aim of the game is to make a map and if clues involving directions are involved but even if these are used to good effect, there is a rist that the player will just get annoyed and making a load of directional choices instead of juicy action adventure choices or choices where you interact with the characters.

This method certainly has its uses if mapping is important or if there is a time limit and people give you hints on a route but it must be used sparingly.  I think Scorpion Swamp did this a little too much (I do think that Scorpion Swmp does have loads of good stuff about it though such as a magic system and three quests). 

A happy medium?



Each building is numbered.

How about this.  If a player arrives at a place where they are free to explore wherever they want and there is no real time limit, I could have a paragraph describing the place that they are exploring along with a description of rooms don’t really contain anything interesting or if something is easy to find, have them automatically get it.  This saves them turning to lots of paragraphs saying ‘You open the door to a room with a pouch containing 10 gold pieces.’  followed by ‘You open the door to the other room to find a sword.’.  Instead, they read a description of the place that they are exploring and then add any items to their equipment list.

Then, list all of the places of interest that require further exploration for the hero to go to.  No ‘East or west?’ choices as the player already knows their way around.  There’s no need to describe every corridor and room and the player can get straight to the bits with the action in them.

This method is served very well by a map such as the ones you find in Grailquest 2 or in Destiny Quest.  Each location has a reference that you turn ti.

This still leads to a player being able to go everywhere, so you could impose a time limit on this either with a score or just by limiting the number of places the player can go (only introduce a new attribute when necessary.  Don’t introduce a numerical attribute when a couple of sentences can serve the same function).  Another method of limiting the number of places a player can visit is by giving them an option of one place to go from several, each place having its own group of places to explore.  Going to place a allows you to explore places x, y and z while going to place b allows you to go to places c, d and e (or you could have them cross over so that you could go to place e from both places.

Any other suggestsions?

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5th edition Dungeons and Dragons and E2 rules

I love looking through RPG systems for inspiration for gamebooks, so naturally, so soon as 5th Edition Dungeons and Dragons came out, I got the Players’ Handbook, Dungeons Masters’ Guide and Monster Manual.

However, I am not a fan of people walking around fantasy worlds with superhuman abilities or magical spells that can wipe out hordes of opponents or render any mundane utility completely useless. This is one reason I like Advanced Fighting Fantasy, Maelstrom and others such as the Conan RPG and Barbarians of Lemuria.

Of course, Dungeons and Dragons does not lend well to this, but someone has come up with the E6 system which is DnD using the Open Source material but stops the level progression at level 6. Players can then get extra feats with more experienece, so there is progression, but numbers do not increase (except in a few special circumstances made for E6 where skills can go above 9 points and the restoration spell can be used).

5th Edition does a lot of things to make sure that players do not become too superhuman with bonuses capping at +6, concentration meaning that spellcasters can’t just buff themselves up with tons of spells.

However, there are still spells that allow flight, teleportation, summoning items, fireballing tons of opponents and bringing people back from the dead, so I started searching for some low level rules for 5th edition.

I found this website which goes from E2 to E10 and this website which details how each level affects the world.

I decided to go for an E2 system, but being a fan of Dungeon Crawl Classics, I also wanted to start at 0 level. As always, the internet provided and I found this post about 0 level 5th Edition.

So here are my E2 rules. My world is a human-centric one, so only humans are able to be created.

Roll your abilities

You can use whatever method you like, but I’m going for the DCC way of 3d6 in order (but I’m doing this for 2-4 characters per player, so at least one will be good).

Each character has 4 hit points + CON modifier.

Each character has a +1 proficiency bonus.

Choose your racial benefits

My world is human centric so they are the only option (of course, you can use whatever races you like). To increase variety amongst characters, I will use the variant human traits (PHB page 31) where you can increase two scores by 1 point, gain proficiency in one skill and gain 1 feat (PHB page 165).

Choose background

Also choose other details and equipment (you can use Bernie’s random tables)

Level advancement 

This is where I differ from the others as I’m amalgamating two ideas.

It takes 100 xp to get to level 1, where the character now gets a proficiency bonus of +2 and they can add their hit die to their current hit points (making their hit points slightly higher than a regular level 1 character). They also get to choose their class and get all their regular class abilities.

It takes another 400xp to get to level 2 (so 500xp in total). The character can multiclass if they want with no penalty or requirements.

On level 2, the character can then improve every 500xp after that. The character gets to choose whether to get 2 ability points either for one ability or split between 2 ability scores OR they can get another feat. Bear in mind that some feats are of limited use to 2nd level characters.

New class – master

This is an idea I got from the Dragonlance sourcebooks. If you want an NPC to be level 1 or 2 but still be a civillian, this could be the class for you.

Hit points 

Hit dice: 1d8 per master level.

Proficiencies

Armour: Light armour
Weapons: Simple weapons
 Tools: Any two from the list of artisan’s tools and musical instruments.
Saving Throws: Intelligence and wisdom
Skills: Any three.

Equipment

Any simple weapon
Leather armour
One set of artisan’s tools or one musical instrument

Features

Level 1: Expertise (double proficiency bonus with two skills), Jack of all trades (add half proficiency bonus to any ability check that does not already have a proficency bonus), Bonus training (gain proficiency with one language, one set of tools or one musical instrument).

Level 2: Skilled (gain proficiency in any combination of three skills or tools), Expertise (double proficiency bonus with two skills), Master of craft (Has the advantage on one roll that involves a skill or set of tools that the master is proficient in. They can only use this once and then need to complete a long rest), Bonus training (gain proficiency with one language, one set of tools or one musical instrument).

The world of E2

Using the DCC table as a guide, I figured that 90% of the world is 0 level, 9% is 1st level and 1% is 2nd level.

The world of E2 would be almost historical fantasy, but casters of level 1 spells can create food (goodberry) and water (create water). Mending things and healing is also better. There are some good rituals that anyone with the ritual caster feat can learn, which are mainly divination spells, but there’s also purify food and drink.

Magic items will also be quite rare and the only magic items found randomly will be on magic item table A (DMG page 144).

Some magic items could have minor properties only (DMG page 143) but anything more powerful would be at the GM’s decision only.

However, powerful magic is not completely unobtainable – there are stories of planar travel, telportation, flight and resurrection – it’s just that such magic will require an adventure to access it.

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April A to Z – Z is for Zines. An interview with Alexander Ballingall, editor at Fighting Fantazine

Hello all! Last day of the 2015 April A to Z challenge and we have someone who I love to have on easy way to get Z in either.
the blog, and not just because he gives me an

Here we have Alexander Ballingall, the editor behind the excellent Fighting Fantazine. Which is also free! Go and check it out after reading this interview.

How has Fighting Fantazine evolved in the past year?

In small ways. I had originally seen involving other gamebook ranges as a sudden throwing open of doors, but it has been a much quieter process than that. An article here, an adventure there. I’d love to see more, but that contributions haven’t exactly been flooding in. 🙂

How can people contribute to Fighting Fantazine?

Article, both humorous and serious about gamebook. Either from an in-world perspective (like the “Rogues’ Guide to Blacksand”) or real-world (looking an the history of thematic material etc. of gamebooks (both series-wide and individual titles)).

What would you like to see more of in the gamebook world?

Interesting, well-written gamebooks. Maybe a more generic, less-FF only gamebook conventions (preferably within easy reach of NZ!).

Fighting Fantazine has just printed a Lone Wolf adventure. Are there any other ways that it will branch out?

Well, in terms of adventures we have permission to use the rule sets of Tunnels and Trolls and Gamebook Adventures. No one has submitted a adventure proposal for either rules yet.

Are there any future developments that you can let us in on?

Nothing ground-breaking any time soon. I’m looking to refresh the interior layout before the end of the year (probably with issue #16) and the website needs more work on it. I’d also like to print some more issues, but that depends entirely on more people buying the copies already available!

 

Now go and read Fighting Fantazine!

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April A to Z – Y is for Yet more stuff from Graham Bottley – Advanced Fighting Fantasy

Hello all! Today, we have Graham Bottley, writer of many games and also star of Gogglebox. He has been a busy boy and we talk Advanced Fighting Fantasy, Maelstrom and more…

How is the Salamonis book going?

The Salamonis book is being written, and is mostly planned.  I will be really cracking on with this over the next month or two.  Steve Luxton has already been producing some fantastic maps, and the successful Trolltooth Wars graphic novel kickstarter will also help as they have already produced some images of Salamonis!

Steve Luxton is making some awesome maps for Fighting Fantasy. What do you intend to do with them?

Steve has indeed been creating some cracking stuff.  One idea we did have was a glossy map book with maps and various commentaries.  Maybe even a pack of colour maps in a poster tube?  All What are your future plans for Advanced Fighting Fantasy?suggestions gratefully accepted!

 What are your future plans for Advanced Fighting Fantasy?

There are two more AFF books half written (one gamebook adventure conversion and one supplement) but at the moment I can’t say much more unfortunately..

You have managed to run several successful crowdfunding campaigns. Do you have any tips for being successful at crowdfunding?

Kickstarter is great.  It provides some funding up front, proves that there is some demand for the game and also provides a core of invested fans who are keen to proofread and otherwise help produce and promote the game.  My biggest bit of advice would be to be very modest in your initial goal.  Set the target amount as low as possible and aim for a basic product.  If there is loads of interest and the total rockets up, add content/colour/images as stretch goals.

What are your plans for future books?

I have lots and lots of books planned, both for existing lines and new ones!

 You came up with a game for children called Witch. Where did your inspiration come from?

“Tales of the Village”, a game about a newly qualified witch, was heavily inspired by the Tiffany Aching books by the late, great Terry Pratchett.  My daughter loved the books (Crivens!) and so I wrote the game to play with her.  I was very happy with it, got some incredible art done, and published it.
I have another one half written focussing on a young Knight, and a few more planned.  The idea will be that they can all be used together.

 Sorcerers of Ur Turuk will be out soon. What was your inspiration for it?

Sorcerers arose from my desire to play Ars Magica (in a S&S setting) but knowing that the chances of getting my group to play such an involved game are close to zero.  I know and love the D6 system, which seemed a good fit for a S&S game, so sat down to write.  The KS hit the final stretch goal, and so the setting book will be written next and the pdf sent free to all of the KS backers.  Hopefully there will be more after that.

You have extended the original Maelstrom, created Maelstrom Fantasy and also Maelstrom Domesday. Do you have other plans for Maelstrom? Do you plan on releasing it in another time/genre?

I was at Conpulsion last weekend in Edinburgh, and when I wasn’t guest starring on a panel (!) I was discussing Maelstrom Space with the main author.  It will be a fairly gritty hard scifi, but all tied into the phenomena of the Maelstrom.  We bandied ideas around for a Roman or WWII version!

Do you have any other plans?

Lots and lots of plans.  Probably far too many for me to actually write though!

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April A to Z – X is for eXtra stuff from Andrew Drage

 

Hello lovely gamebookers! Today, we have Andrew Drage, writer, gamebook creator and editor and all round genius who is going to talk about his latest creations. You can read Andrew’s blog here.

 

Q: What are you working on right now (both gamebook and non gamebook related)?

A: You’ve probably noticed I’ve been quiet of late on creative/social media fronts… That’s mainly been because I’ve been busy (and a bit overwhelmed) with the “day job” that’s often taken up days, nights and weekends, until recently anyway… Then I’ve just been taking a break from promotion etc. Sometimes you need to do this (we’re all in this cos we want to be and it’s fun right?) but as I think any creative person will understand, you never really stop being creative (it’s something you’re compelled to do), it just finds expression in different ways… Lately a lot of my creative energies have gone towards the running of an “old school” Greyhawk D&D campaign, which I’m enjoying very much. I say “old school” since I’m using the rule set I’m most familiar with – second edition (with the Player’s Options added in for “something different”). If I was new to the game, fifth edition does indeed look like a good rule set to play with, but for me I can’t be bothered learning a new set of rules (and besides the rules matter far less than the story and roleplaying anyway)… Furthermore I’ve got boxes and boxes full of first and second ed material haha.

Having said all that, I am working on a couple of different gamebook-related projects at the moment (I’ll decline to say anything about those just yet) and still in the process of finishing “The Calling” – which is the musical prequel to my horror novel “The Dark Horde” (see here: http://ift.tt/wjgBk1watch?v=1Ty92GrHoxg)  -Was planning to have this finished of course by now, but sometimes real life can cause delays, and ultimately it’s better to have something as good as you can make it, than rushed out to meet some arbitrary deadline 🙂

Q: You have some really in depth analysis of Windhammer entries. Is there anything that has cropped up that people definitely should not do?

A: Yes and I’ve still got half of last year’s entries to get through before I can post my latest reviews… Sorry about that! But to answer your question, and of course this is all just my (somewhat informed) opinion, I would sum up what writers shouldn’t do as simply “do not break the contract that they have with the reader”. What I mean by that, is that by getting the reader to commit to the reading/playing the writer’s story, they have made a “contract” with them that implies that (a) the reader will be able to follow the story, (b) that sufficient care/effort has been taken to merit the reader taking the time to invest in and experience the story and (c) that the reader will be treated fairly and has a “plausible” chance of being able to complete the story if they “play fairly”. Anything that violates these implied principles (whether that be because of broken/unclear links in the story, poor writing quality, bad game balance or near-impossible odds), I would argue is to break this writer-reader “contract”. Most other things are more down to personal preference I guess, but I did cover such a list in more detail on my blog here:  http://ift.tt/1ExJQ62blog/entry/the-brewin-guide-to-writing-better-gamebooks

Q: What about something people definitely should do?

A: Hmm I’d suggest that’s both harder and easier to identify. Harder because I think that there really isn’t a “magic rule” to follow of what you should do, and easier because the only “magic rule” to follow is that there really isn’t one haha. As I recall I’ve said in previous interview with you (and a point I’ve made numerous times elsewhere), regardless of how good or bad anything you release is, or how you go about executing it, there’ll be some that love it, some that hate it and some that have a reaction somewhere between those two extremes. Yes the degree to which you’ll get positive reactions over negative ones will vary depending on how “good” the work is, and your publicity, but ultimately it’s important to understand that you’ll never please everyone (I don’t believe there’s ever been a creative work of anything in the history of humanity that “everyone did or would like”, nor ever will be). Which to me means that you only really need to please one person – yourself – and anything beyond that is a nice bonus haha. Okay sure, you do want to build and keep your audience, but ultimately you should be creating the work that you want to create in the way that you want. This can mean “following established conventions”, but equally it can mean taking risks and trying something completely different from what you and/or others have tried before (which is certainly my preference). There is no “failing” as such, there is only the “failure to try”.  

Q: You have written some in depth posts about turn based games. What do you look for in a good turn based game?

A: Yes and that’s another blog post series I’ve yet to finish! But anyway, yes it is quite clear to me what I do look for in such a genre (something which is even more apparent once you know what are my personal all-time favourites, but I’ll keep you in suspense as to what those are for now!) and that is as follows:

1. Familiarity. Not an essential thing by any means, but the one thing my top three turn based games all share is that they’re based on games that now at least twenty years old and were games that I was already intimately familiar with. Playing a game based on a world you already know and love, with rules you already knew is like reuniting with an old friend where it seems like it was only yesterday rather than years ago when you last caught up – you just seem to pick up from the last time you left off without any effort, and the experience is much the same with such a game… Most games however, won’t be able to take advantage of this however, but there’s still plenty they can do to “be awesome”.
2. Modularity. Having a game with some epic story is great, but ultimately it’s “one story” and that once you’ve finished it, you can only ever redo the “same story” (in different ways yes, but ultimately it’s still the same story with probably the same conclusion). For me the truly awesome games, that can be replayed hundreds, even thousands of times over many decades, are those that exhibit a high degree of modularity – their elements can be changed and recombined to form an endless number of stories. It is the most modular of games that I continue to play decades after their original release…
3. Other things I like in my turn-based games, in no particular order, are a decent AI (too often the “hard” mode isn’t actually very hard and easy to anticipate and beat), only having as much text as is needed to follow the story, not having ridiculous amounts of inventory – most of which isn’t actually used, and having variety in the enemies and scenarios that require different tactics.

Q: What other influences do you draw on to aid you with your writing and game design?

A: With writing, my influences are all things horror, fantasy and science, but I suppose heavy metal has its influences there too haha. With game design my influences are these same things, with the additional influences of my background in statistics, mathematical modelling and zoology. My greatest work (still at least a couple of years away from release), which fills about four drawers is the ultimate culmination of all of these things I think – hopefully one day soon I’ll be able to talk more about that, but let’s wait and see ey? 🙂

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April A to Z – W is for Marc Wilson

You managed to get the books funded on Kickstarter. What was using crowdfunding like?

For me it was a great opportunity to promote the book I was writing, and the ideas I had surrounding a fledgling series. It was pretty exciting, and waking up each day to find perfect strangers backing my project was personally very affirming. I was quite lucky to have it fully backed at an early stage, without the need to explicitly tap up friends and family. It’s not a fun run – you can’t badger people for money, otherwise the whole thing is just a fabrication built on quicksand. My parents didn’t back me. They don’t get it. It’s a truly an alien concept to most people. The phrase ‘Oh, I sponsored you’ is not one you want to hear.

I’m proud, and clearly insane, to say I didn’t make a penny of profit from the initial campaign. I’m in it for the long haul.

What advice would you offer to someone who is planning on using crowdfunding?

Don’t rush it. Publicizing the campaign and working on the product is mutually exclusive. I’m not terribly disciplined and used the date as my red line, which enabled me to tie up all the loose ends. Let’s say it was a tough month. Do your research on costs. Tier your rewards realistically – no one cares about what your time is worth. Use it for what it is – a platform, not a cash-cow. It’s a one-use-only teat, so don’t be greedy or think you’re going to grow fat off the proceeds. Give free stuff of low value; everyone likes bundles.

Will you do another campaign to fund more gamebooks?

I don’t really believe in going back for a second dollop of good will. If a project doesn’t stand on its own merits after the initial push, it’s probably because it’s not a good product, or that it betrays a lack of guile on behalf of the originator. I know some big companies use it to effectively guarantee pre sales for new products, and I don’t subscribe to this as an honest function.

Is there anything you would do differently if you did a second kickstarter?

I would probably do a bit more research about how to push people towards it. I was quite reliant on social media and forums, and often felt like a gatecrasher to other peoples parties which I’m not madly comfortable with. I would certainly have given a free copy to bloggers and influential figures within the products market. I would have written a press release and circulated it to the same. I regret not tying it in with other Kickstarts or having the patronage of a big name. Going solo is a hard task. It’ll always be easier when people are going into bat for you. I was going to get Brian Blessed to do the voice over. Couldn’t afford him.

Oh, and I’d also do proper research on postage costs to Australia, the US and Far East 😉

Can you give us a preview of the Lost Legion? Does it continue from the cliff hanger of book 1?

The Lost Legion is a standalone book, based in the same fantasy world as Restless Heart of Evil,though on a different continent – an immense and capricious jungle setting in which you are part of a search and recovery mission. It’s somewhat unique in the sense it can be played either as a solo adventure, or with you in command of a company of men. You don’t get to choose which – your decisions dictate the circumstances you find yourself. There are individual and group characteristics and different over-arching storylines. There are multiple dynamics running through it; trading, disease, curses, earthquakes, different protagonists fighting for various causes. It started off as a simple adventure and became something quite complex. Writing an adventure in a single setting is a challenge I hadn’t fully understood. So much more work is needed to keep pace.

The first 150 sections were written in one go over the space of three days and are quite heavy on narrative, so these are being revised to inject more immediacy into proceedings.

You have had some feedback about the system. Are you thinking of changing it?

Most of the feedback was complimentary towards the writing and characterisations, and hesitatingly critical about gameplay. I have to admit, this was a relief. Gameplay can be tweaked – poor writing is more difficult to turn around. The mechanics are very similar, crucially however I have adopted randomisation into tests and combats, using 1D6 and 2D6 ‘rolls’ to add to attributes, rather than flat pass/fail criteria. The bottom of each page will feature virtual dice rolls, so thumbing through the book will act it a proxy for rolling dice. Obviously, I’m not the first person to use this mechanism.

What does the future hold for the series?

I’m planning for two more books in 2015, so three published in total this year. Ambitious, but realistic. As I mentioned in my painfully narrated Kickstarter video, I wanted other authors on board, and have one such pensmith beavering away on a Desert Kingdom adventure, whilst I will be working on a Sci-Fi adventure. The follow-up to Restless Heart of Evil will follow as Book 5.

Work needs to happen to underpin the series. Social media needs a lot of love, and a website is planned. As it stands, meaty paperback gamebooks are a niche and I’m pretty comfortable with this, but should opportunity arise I’d love to take them to mobile in the form of Dangerous Worlds Lite.8

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