Gamebook blogs revisited

Hello all! 

I thought I'd update a list of blogs that are currently running and talking about gamebooks. 

Blogs come and go on tide and time, and since it's been a while since I've interacted with the blogosphere as much as I did in the 10s, I thought I would provide an updated list of blogs that are either completely about gamebooks or mention gamebooks that are still running.

These blogs have had at least 1 post in 2021. I have split them into gamebook authors/producers and gamebook playthrough blogs/reviewers.

If you have a gamebook blog that is active and I haven't mentioned it, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it to the list!

Gamebook authors/producers

Ashton MacSaylor

Ashton made a lot of great gamebooks back in the 10s. His post for 2021 details what he is up to now. His latest endeavours are Sun Sailor productions and Story Tables. These provide camps in role playing gaming and collaborative storytelling. Living the dream.

Fabled Lands

Dave Morris, gamebook legend has kept this blog going for 11 years with regular posts the whole time. The posts refer to many gamebooks and RPGs written by Dave and friends.

Fighting Fantasy

A blog about Fighting Fantasy. I assume that I don't need to explain what that is if you're reading this blog.

Fighting Fantasy.net

Fighting Fantasy.net is an awesome website that allows gamebooks to be played online. If you have a gamebook, you can host it there. One of the members, Matt Ward, also has a blog about gamebooks.

James Schannep's blog

James Schannep has written several gamebooks in different genres with titles that are one work with an exclamation mark after them. His book genres include zombies, spies and superheroes.

Jonathan Green

Jonathan Green has written many gamebooks, starting his career in the 90s with the later Fighting Fantasy books. He now works on the Ace Gamebook series, based on public domain works.

Librojuegos.org - Librojuegos y Ficción Interactiva

This is a gamebook blog for those fans who speak Spanish.

Martin Noutch's blog

Martin Noutch is the man behind the Steam Highwayman open world gamebook series.

Project Aon blog

This is the blog for the Lone Wolf series and the free Lone Wolf gamebooks.

Samuel Isaacson's blog

Samuel Isaacson has written many awesome gamebooks in recent years with many different genres.

Tin Man Games

Tin Man games started in 2008 with their Gamebook Adventures series, which started out as apps that basically did what gamebooks did. Since then, they have branched out into many other apps including The Warlock of Firetop Mountain game.

Titan - The Fighting Fantazine blog

This is the blog for the Fighting Fantazine gamebook zine. Issue 17 should be out this month.

Trollish Delver

Scott Malthouse has written several great RPGs and also dipped his toe into solo RPGs such as Quill, the letter writing RPG.

Victoria Hancox's blog

Victoria Hancox has written 3 superb horror based gamebooks (With a fourth book out soon!)

Playthrough/review blogs

Adventure Gameblog

This blog covers many gamebooks from many different series.

Cybe's Website

Alison Cybe is one of the few people who has reviewed every Fighting Fantasy gamebook from the original series. They also have a podcast coming out soon.

Deathtraps and Dungeons

This blog was started recently and they have done the first 10 Fighting Fantasy gamebooks so far.

Ludicrously Niche

This blog delves into many subjects about the 80s, including some gamebook posts. These posts are usually about the mistakes in gamebooks called broken gamebooks.

Malthus Dire

Mark Lain has reviewed every Fighting Fantasy book and some others.

Mrs Giggles

Mrs Giggles reviews many things, usually in a very acerbic fashion. This year, she has been working her way through the latest Fighting Fantasy and Lone Wolf gamebooks.

Turn to 400

This is a comedy playthrough blog. My favourite is Forest of Doom.

Your Adventure Ends Here

This blog is currently working its way through the Fighting Fantasy series.

Interactive Fiction

I am classing Interactive Fiction as fiction that provides choice but has fewer stats and dice rolling that you would see in an RPG. It also has aims that are more about exploration and character instead of "kill the wizard" and a lot of them are in the format of computer programs where you can type commands rather than pick them.

Choice of Games

This website has many interactive fiction games. In fact, it is a juggernaut that churns out games with hundreds of thousands of words at an insane rate. They also have a blog about their craft.

Emily Short

Emily Short is an awesome figure in the world of Interactive Fiction, so much so that she has her own Wikipedia page. Her blog is full of pearls of wisdom.

Renga in Blue

Another awesome Interactive Fiction blog.

These Heterogeneous Tasks

Another awesome interactive fiction blog. My personal favourite post is a bestiary of player agency.

Finally, a massive host of links:

Demien's gamebook web page is the most comprehensive collection of gamebook information on the internet. Here is Demien's link list of gamebook related websites going back almost two decades.

Link List - Demian's Gamebook Web Page (gamebooks.org)

The new, improved Gamebook Feed

Hello, gamebookers!  I'm just writing to tell you that I have changed the Gamebook Feed and that it
is new and improved.  I'm particularly proud of the blog now.

It used to be a collection of gadgets where each blog had a feed.  The trouble with that was that it was too busy and blogs that didn't update were taking up space.  However, after some searching and tinkering, I found a new way, where I just have a Feedly list of gamebook blogs and sites and every time a site on that list posts something, it will also appear as a post on the gamebook feed with a hyperlink.  No business, no fuss, and if one of the sites disappears, it won't make a mess.  If you want to see the list of sites I have used, I have it in Excel form and OPML (Feedly file) here.  I will try to keep it up to date.

There is also a list of websites that do not have an RSS feed and so won't work on Feedly.  I have found a website to RSS converter (there are several - just Google them), but I have no idea whether they will work if I stick the URLs into Feedly yet - if there's any social media whizzes who know the answer, I would be grateful if you could tell me.

I'm also going to tell you how I did it in case anyone wants to create a similar sort of feed for other topics.  Enjoy it!

So how does this feed work?

Well, first of all, I needed to know which blogs and websites I needed to add to the feed.  I then signed up to Feedly and added all of those websites to one Feedly group.

Then I signed up to If This Then That.  I clicked on Create a recipe and then the big this.

I then had a massive list of apps and websites.  I found Feedly and clicked on it.

I then chose "New article from category" and then chose the Gamebook Blogs category on the dropbox.

I then clicked the large that and chose blogger as my "that" action.

I then clicked "Create new blog post"

I then got this page:

Almost done!  Myself and some other people really wanted the link to the pages hyperlinked rather than be a copy and paste job (the script I was given at first did not hyperlink the link), so after some tinkering, I managed to get it to work with this script:

Where it originally said Article URL, I put on the left ,<a href="{{ArticleURL}}"> and to the right of it, I wrote </a>, turning it into hyperlink.  I also experimented with more and fewer <br> (breaks), but that is just window dressing.

And there you have it. I'm writing this because it took me about 4 hours looking for websites to help (I eventually got Feedly from Charlie Feming on Twitter.  Thanks Charlie), finding the websites to add to the feed (which you won't have to do if you want the same feed, because you can just upload this OPML file of my feed) and then work out how to hyperlink the links.  So, if you want to do something similar, it will take you a lot less time.

So there we go.  One lesson I have learnt is that if you have a bit of time to search and/or talk to your online network, anything is possible.

Happy gamebooking!

What new technology is doing for gamebooks

The internet has been instrumental in making gamebooks prevalent again.  After a short search on the internet, I have found many ways in which interactive fiction has made itself prevalent.  This post is a summary of online gamebooks.  I will do a more in depth review of each method later on.

Tweet RPG


This twitter feed has made an innovative use of Twitter in order to create an online gamebook.  The rules for how to use Tweet RPG are here.  


Basically, TweetRPG offers you a choice.  You need to reply to the tweet with your decision.  After a set amount of time, the vote closes and the option which the most people voted for will be used.  This is a great use of twitter and a great way to make a gamebook.  At the moment, I'm investigating a farmhouse in a storm.  Absolutely nothing can go wrong with that.  


Choose your own adventure wiki


The wiki system has been used here to make some great online gamebooks where you can make your decision by clicking links.  Since it follows the wiki layout, anyone can make their own gamebook or even edit another gamebook making it possibly to co-write a gamebook with many other people.

Adventure Cow


This is similar to the Choose Your Own Adventure wiki in the sense that you can write and edit your own adventures.  It started off as a website but it is now being designed for mobile devices.  I have written a story for the site, called The Path to Greatness.

Fighting Fantasy Project


This is a website which has several great amateur Fighting Fantasy books in a format where you make decisions by clicking links.  The site also determines dice rolls for you.  Check out the gamebooks.  They are awesome.

Age of Fable


This website is similar to Fighting Fantasy Project with an excellent sandbox style game similar to Fabled Lands.

Worldweaver


This company is producing Fighting Fantasy books for the Kindle.  Unfortunately, they are only available in the US at the moment.

Gamerunes


This website has interactive fiction games in the medium of IM chat.  At the moment, you can play Soultracker: Day of the Supernaturals (also found on ww.ffproject.com) but there are more gamebooks in the pipeline.

Pirates and Traders


Pirates and Traders is a great Android app where you play the captain of a ship where you can decide to trade or be a pirate.  It also has some elements of interactive fiction where you meet someone in a tavern who gives you a job to do.  do you deliver the goods or take them for yourself?

Destiny Quest


Destiny Quest is a paper gamebook, but it makes a good use of the internet by having a forum and a place to download add on quests.

Gamebook Adventures


Gamebook Adventures have some great titles for the iPad and iPhone (and hopefully the Android in the near future.)  Since I do not own an 'i' device, I have not yet had the pleasure of playing the games, but they are getting rave reviews.  One of them has been written by Andrew Wright and another has been written by Jonathan Green. 

Gamebook writing programs  (look at the gamebook creation systems)


Writing a gamebook requires a lot of organisation in terms of getting the paragraphs to link up and then randomising them.  There are several gamebook programs at the moment.  My favourite one from the ones that I have tried is A.D.V.E.L.H.


"How to make a gamebook on a blog"


This is what someone put into google to search for my blog and it led me to think if you can write a gamebook on a blog.  I guess you could if you made a post for each paragraph and had links between them.  Thanks for that, whoever wrote that.

Yahoo Groups and forums (and more forums)

There are plenty of places to meet fellow gamebook lovers.  Just do some searches on the internet.

Demian's Gamebook Web page


This deserves a section all of its own as it is the most comprehensive collection of information and links regarding gamebooks EVER.

So there we are.  I'll be linking to this page from teh homepage in future.  I will also be looking at these media in more detail in later posts.  


EDIT - Lone Wolf


I know I alluded to Lone Wolf below, but it deserves a bigger slice of publicity than a link.  After all almost all of the Lone Wolf gamebooks are free to play online and download!  So if you want to be part of a huge epic quest where you save the world several times and battle dark gods then go to www.projectaon.org.


Blogs


There are several blogs on the bloosphere dedicated to gamebooks or by gamebook authors.  They are:

Jonathan Green, Author
Let's Play a gamebook
Fantasy Gamebook
The Lone Delver
The World of Gamebook Writing
Adventures and Shopping
Fabled Lands
Turn to 400
Fighting Fantasist
Titan - The Fighting Fantazine Blog
Trollish Delver


I have just noticed that I do not know of any Lone Wolf blogs.  Are there any?  Does anyone want to start one?


Once again, I meant this to be a short post, but as always, I have discovered many hidden depths to gamebooks and the interactive fiction that they have fathered.  My in depth posts on each of these media will keep me going for a while.  


Right - I originally promised to do one post a week as to not run out of ideas too quickly so I need to stop doing these impromptu posts, but I wanted to get the word out about all the great gamebook innovations that are going on.  


My next post will be on Sunday and it will be entitled Gamebooks for Dummies.  If anyone has any questions, please leave a comment, email me on sl1605@gmail.com or send me a message on twitter (http://twitter.com/#!/slloyd14).

Stuff that's happened, stuff that will happen.

There is a new gamebook blog on the web.  Jaoa Maia has started a blog where we all play a gamebook together by voting on the options.  Owen at Fighting Fantasist has also done this before and it can be good fun.

My copy of Advanced Fighting Fantasy arrived yesterday and I've been flicking through it and enjoying the new material inside it.  I will be posting a review on it in June after I have digested it properly.  I have enjoyed my initial read through immensely though and I recommend that you buy it (along with the reprints of Titan and Out of the Pit if you do not already have copies of them) or try to win a copy from Alex, editor of Fighting Fantazine.

So what am I posting for the rest of May?  On Sunday 16th May, I'll be posting my article on why Zagor is actually a hero rather than a villain, accidentally advertised a while ago.  On the 22nd May, I will post a review on the latest paper gamebook to hit our shelves, the brilliant Destiny Quest.  And on the 29th May I'll be posting a topic linked to a special event that is happening on that day.  :).

Have a good week, until my next post on Sunday.