Hello gamebookers! We have a treat for you today in the form of Dave Morris, author of many, many excellent gamebooks, including the fantastic Heart of Ice. Dave is re-releasing a lot of his gamebooks under Critical IF. Dave has been a constant source of advice and helpfulenss to me over the years, and I feel very privileged to present an interview from him...
Have you had a good 12 months with
gamebooks?
Very good! Fabled Lands Publishing
re-released my four Virtual Reality books, now under the Critical IF series
label, and five of the Golden Dragon gamebooks. The latter will also be coming
out as apps from Tin Man Games later in the year. FL Publishing also gave
Megara a licence to do a limited hardcover edition of Way of the Tiger, funded
by Kickstarter, and we'll be publishing those in paperback and licensing to Tin
Man to do the apps. And I'm just in the process of commissioning covers for new
editions of Blood Sword. All in all, I don't think I ever had a more
gamebook-packed year, not even back in the early '90s!
What gamebook related projects are you doing at the moment?
I'm working with Leo Hartas on an all-new
gamebook that we'll probably do as an app. It's set in the world of Legend from
Dragon Warriors and is open-structured like the FL books but with a core
storyline. I'm also consulting with Ashton Saylor and Jamie Thomson on their
Wild West horror gamebook, I'll be editing Blood Sword for re-release, and
maybe Keep of the Lich Lord too.
What do you have in the pipeline that
is non-gamebook related?
I've been developing a TV project, a
24-episode, time travel adventure for a family audience. It's an original
concept that I created, not an established show, so it's a long shot in the
current era of tightened budgets, but still a lot of fun to work on. It's been
getting a lot of enthusiastic feedback from the broadcaster (I can't say which
at present, but not hard to guess) so if that gets the green light I may have
to sideline the gamebook projects for a while.
You've been thinking about using crowd funding to fund some books.
What will convince you to do so?
It would have to be for an app. When you Kickstart a physical book, the
printing and shipping eats up most of the funding.
Megara is reprinting Blood Sword - will you change the system to remove the
maligned maps, or do anything else to simplify it?
Actually, that's all changed. Megara were going to do Blood Sword but
they've decided to focus on Way of the Tiger instead now. So Fabled Lands
Publishing will release new editions. We've got Megara's Mikael Louys
art-directing new covers for us. The interior illustrations will be by
Russ, of course. Currently I'm planning two versions. The classic edition will
retain the tactical maps but I'll print them full-page so you can actually use
them. Then, later, I'll do a streamlined edition with much simpler rules. I'd
also like to turn those books into apps, because the tactical rules and maps
would really work in that form, but first we need to find a developer who can
do it. We like Tin Man, but what I have in mind is more Warhammer Quest than a
straightforward gamebook app. Inkle could do it but they are justifiably swept
off their feet working on Sorcery.
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These days, the strategic marketing. Do I write a gamebook in the style
of the old '80s or '90s ones, which will please the tiny handful of diehard
fans, or something new like Frankenstein? I prefer the latter, and it has the
advantage of being commercially successful, which never hurts. But I work at getting
the old books back out there so that the fans with traditional tastes are
catered for.
What is the most exciting thing about writing a gamebook?
It's still that moment when somebody is talking about a discovery they
made while reading it. Like, as the monster: "I found an old coat on a
scarecrow, and when I put it on a man saw me across the field and waved!"
You set up these moments of emotional journey or exploration, like sparks, and
it's great when they ignite in someone else's imagination.
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What spoils
a gamebook for you?
Being told
what to think or feel. Those writers should just do a novel. Also death
paragraphs that are there solely to prune the flowchart so that the writer
doesn't have too much work. You leave the dungeon? Oh, you're dead, then - just
because he or she couldn't be bothered to let the adventure go off in that
direction. You have to have walls, of course. The trick is to make them not
seem like walls.
What makes a gamebook stand out for you?
I'm a roleplayer, so I like books with a sense of freedom. Steve
Jackson's Sorcery books were pretty good for that. They were a linear adventure
but they conveyed a sense of sandbox exploring around that central thread. My
ideal gamebook is something like Fabled Lands. That's why Jamie and I created
them, I guess. We'd love to do those as apps, to really do justice to them in
the way Inkle have treated Sorcery, but most of all I'd just like to turn them
into a full-on CRPG like Drakensang.
Don't rush in, do the planning first.
I don't just mean flowcharting. Think about the system, the rules. What do you
want the gamebook to achieve? Is it a boardgame-type adventure, in which case
the tactical aspect is most important, or is it more about character and story?
What is your wish for gamebooks?
I'm mostly interested in interactive
storytelling via apps. So more audio, more images. Text is a pretty odd medium
for interacting, if you think about it, though it does have the advantage of
being cheap.
So there we go. Thanks, Dave! Dave's blog is here and you can buy his excellent books from Critical IF here.
Fascinating post, as always, from Dave. Though I think it's occasionally allowable for a gamebook to describe a character's feelings. I've just devoted a blog post of my own to that very subject, in fact: http://pwgresty.wordpress.com/2014/04/07/including-motivations-as-choices/
ReplyDeletePersonally, I disagree with the idea that a character's feelings cannot be described in the prose of a gamebook. I guess I am a target here, because I make a lot of the 'you'/character in the DestinyQuest books. In Book Three, out in less than a fortnight, I push this even further. Readers are like 'players' in a computer game - and are used to identifying with 'larger than life' (or lesser than life!) characters, from Lara Croft to Garret the Thief. It never destroys immersion in those games and yet you are playing them for 20+ hours. I feel if gamebook is to evolve - in my humble opinion, having more of that writers art in there is necessary. I don't think in 2014 we can get away with simple location descriptions and a 'what do you do now?' interactive point. If so, we as well go back to the adventure text adventures of the 80s. Right?
ReplyDelete(Sorry, not allowed to edit the typos!)
ReplyDeleteI can't have explained myself very well if I gave the impression that I want to return to Zork-like text adventures! My ethic (based on being a role-player) is that the player is in charge. Removing that means you might as well just write a novel. Why doesn't that just lead back to Zork? Well, see Frankenstein, for example, or The Walking Dead, or some of Jon Ingold's work... Etc.
ReplyDeleteI find this a fascinating subject when it comes to gamebooks. I think Frankenstein and the Walking Dead are stunning examples of the genre, pushing interactive fiction forward in exciting ways – and probably where it needs to be. I guess, they are also hybrids too – having strong central and identifiable characters, but also allowing the reader/player to have a say over their motivations and actions. I suppose I was thinking of the old traditional gamebooks (often still mimicked today), where the player’s character is barely referenced – a blank canvas. And I wonder if readers prefer that – to be able to project their own voice and appearance onto a character as you would in a role-playing game. I suppose my knee-jerk reaction to that was to go down a different road with DQ, where the character (who you are) is more embedded in the narrative (so more novel than gamebook). Always a fine line though – as you never want a character to act or do something without the reader’s say. However, how those choices play out is where the ‘feelings’ behind them can be explored more deeply in the narrative.
ReplyDeleteI think there is a place for both types of writing - I doubt it is a debate that will go away, and that’s cool. It feels a great time (in terms of interactive fiction) for exploring different approaches.
Anyway, I’ll get back to planning up my novel - heh ;-)
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ReplyDeleteGreat comments! Certainly, it's a very interesting subject.
ReplyDeleteWe agree with Dave's point of view about the wish for gamebooks: the interactive storytelling via apps with more audio and more images. That's a challenge for the gamebook app developers!
It seems clear that a gamebook can be more GAME or more BOOK, and it have the features of both (gaming/narrative). It's amazing to explore the two sides!