April A to Z update

Hi all,

What started off as me emailing a few people for interviews snowballed into me trying to hunt down literally EVERYBODY online who has had some kind of connection to gamebooks.  So I've made a few changes to the line up.  I have sent off interviews and already got some back, so this is what the line up currently looks like.  Basically, if I have my way, the April A to Z will be like an assembling of The Avengers for gamebooks.


Amateurs 
Blogs
Choice of Games
Discussion forums
Excalibur Junior (Grailquest)
Freebies
Gamebook Adventures
Harkuna and the Fabled Lands (interview with Dave Morris and Jamie Thompson)
Illustrations
Jasan Barnett
Kleptomaniac Heroes
Lone Wolf
Magazines
Tunnels N Trolls (Interview with Scott Malthouse)
Own Adventure (as in choose your)
Pirate gamebooks that took a while to be released (Jonathan Green)
Quest, Destiny
Readers (here, here and here)
Spin offs (here, here and here)
Twitter
Undead filled new Fighting Fantasy books (Ian Livingstone's 30th Anniversary book)
Very comprehensive Gamebook websites
Windhammer competition (interview with Wayne Densley)
Xhoromag and other gamebook programs (interview with Xhoromag)
Youtube
Zhu Bhajee

This is getting very exciting.  I'm looking forward to April with great anticipation.  Until then, happy gamebooking!

Trickster classes in RPGs and gamebooks

In many gamebooks, you are a warrior who deals with problems by swinging a sword at them and faces their opponents in fair combat, but that is not the only way to achieve victory and you will not come across enemies who share your skills and values.  There are some careers for which all is fair and you will have to be quick witted to deal with them.  Here are some classes that would suit the trickster mentality.


Rogues


The rogue class is a catch all term for a character that uses their agility to avoid blows in combat rather than face it head on.  Rogues also have a large number of skills which are usually devoted to getting things that other people do not want you to get.  Rogues could be anything from dexterous burglars to charming con artists.  You play a rogue in several gamebooks.  for example, in the Blood Sword gamebook series, you could play a trickster which is a rogue like character.  You also get to play a rogue in the Fighting Fantasy book Midnight Rogue.

Bards

The bard is a Dungeons and Dragons class which mixes some stealth, some magic and some martial abilities with their unique bardic music abilities.  Most of these abilities combine to make the bard an excellent support class for the group - the bard's music improve rolls and their spells include healing.  Bards can be described as the best choice for fifth member of a party of adventurers including a fighter, cleric, wizard and rogue.

In flavour terms, bards are charmers who make friends easily and can really get a party started.  They are all nonlawful as their trade cannot be restricted by laws.  Bards are always on the lookout for adventure following their whims to the next load of excitement.

Arcane Tricksters

We're moving into magic using classes now.  Arcane tricksters are rogues who use arcane magic to supplement their abilities.  Being able to pick pockets and disarm traps from a distance, become invisible and cast spells without speaking or gesturing must be infuriating for an opponent.





Illusionists


Illusion is all about manipulating appearances, the classic staple of a trickster.  If you do it enough, then your opponents will question everything they see and hear.  They will be thrown into confusion and disarray.  Your encounter with Thaum in Talisman of Death is a great example of how illusions can be put to good effect.










Enchanters


Enchanters manipulate the mind.  Making people go against the rule of law is what the trickster likes to do and enchanters can make people do what they want.  You can play an enchanter in The Blood Sword series.





Next week, we will look at the Riddling Reaver, a famous Trickster across the gamebook world of Titan.  Until then, happy gamebooking!

The A to Z of why gamebooks are great

Good morrow to you all!  I feel compelled to make yet another blog post riding on the back of the great Windhammer announcement.

I am going to do the April A to Z challange again.

Last year, when I wrote about one gamebook villain per day, I opened up the gamebook genre to many people and got myself several new followers and page views.  People said that they liked the posts but they had very little idea about what a gamebook is.

So this year, I aim to write posts that do not require much gamebook knowldege.  I got my idea from Tin Man Games with their post 2012 - the year of the gamebook.  I then realised that there was tons of great gamebook stuff going on.  It seems that there was some wonderful gamebook news or product every week - from Infinite Universe to Fighting Fantazine to Ian Livingstone's 30 year anniversary book.

So I will devote my A to Z to showing everyone just how wonderful gamebooks are.  Here is my list:

Amateurs 
Blogs
Choice of Games
Discussion forums
Excalibur Junior (Grailquest)
Freebies
Gamebook Adventures
Harkuna and the Fabled Lands
Illustrations
Jasan Barnett
Kleptomaniac Heroes
Lone Wolf
Magazines
Tunnels N Trolls
Own Adventure (as in choose your)
Pirate gamebooks that took a while to be released (Jonathan Green)
Quest, Destiny
Readers (here, here and here)
Spin offs (here, here and here)
Twitter
Undead filled new Fighting Fantasy books (Ian Livingstone's 30th Anniversary book)
Very comprehensive Gamebook websites
Windhammer competition
Xhoromag and other gamebook programs
Youtube
Zhu Bhajee

Until then, happy gamebooking!

2012 Windhammer Prize announced. Here is why you are entering.

Woot!  The new guidelines for the 2012 Windhammer prize are out.  Apart from the slight change that the length limit is now 23000 words rather than 40 pages (probably because some idiot was pushing the boundaries with small font because he wrote a really long introduction about a dystopian future in his entry) it's all the same great stuff.  Submit a 100 paragraph gamebook with the chance of Glory and Renown along with a cash prize.  The entries submissions start on 1st August and the deadline is on the 7th September.

Oh yes, and the writers who win and get merit awards will be published by the awesome Tin Man Games.

WHAAAAT?  

This is even more reason to get typing.  If you've ever thought about writing a gamebook or if you have had one shelved away for ages, this is a great opportunity to enter the competition.  Windhammer was one of the things (Andrew Wright being another) that inspired me to write my own gamebooks and publish this blog.  As well as the potential prizes, the community of readers have always offered great constructive feedback on my work and it is just so affirming to know that people out there have taken the time to read my work, comment on it and enjoy it.

So really, get typing.

You're still here?  What's wrong?  Is it time?  Do you think that it may take a lot of time to write the book?  It won't.  You don't have to go up to 100 paragraphs.  Garden of Bones  by Alec Worley is a merit award winner with 50 paragraphs.  00:04:23 by Colin Blackwood is a great gamebook full of tension with only 30 paragraphs.  So far all the winners have 100 paragraphs in their book, but you might change that.

However, if you are worried about all that paragraph randomisation and organisation, there are solutions to that problem too!  There is a comprehensive list of gamebook creation programs here  (scroll down a bit) and some are discussed here.  I use ADVELH.

So time is not an issue.  All you need is an idea.

You need ideas I hear you say?  You can get your ideas from anywhere.  Sorcery! was inspired by a trek through Asia, Starship Traveller has Star Trek influences.  Freeway Fighter has some Mad Max leanings whereas it's easy to see where the inspiration for Appointment with F.E.A.R comes from.  You can get ideas from anything.  All you have to do is imagine some choices that you could make and what will happen next. Believe me - 100 paragraphs will fly by in no time.



Still here?  It's the game system you need ideas for?  That's OK.  You can keep it simple.  The minimum you need is an inventory list and Kieran Coghlan won a merit award with such a simple system with Waiting For the Light.  You don't even need to create your own system.  It seems that the Virtual Reality  system (inventory limit, skills to choose from and health points) is a simple yet very effective system to use and two books have utilised it to great effect:  The Bone Dogs by Per Jorner won the 2009 award and Above the Waves by Zachary Carango won a merit award in 2011.




For inspiration on the wide range of gamebooks that have been entered to the Windhammer competition, you can get the complete list here.

OK, if you think you need more help, read my How to write a gamebook posts.  They may help.



Also, have a look at the great blogs on gamebooks and what makes them good by successful Windhammer entrants.  Andrew Wright, who won in 2011 has written two posts on what he learnt from the Windhammer Prize and Ashton Saylor who has won two merit awards (here and here) has some very deep posts on gamebook theory.

Still here?  You shouldn't be.  Get writing!

Great interactive fiction on Youtube

So this is what Lord Fear's been
doing since Knightmare ended.

Hi all!  I've made a vlog which offers a small sample of the interactive videos that you can find on Youtube.  I'd like to thank Sam Richards of Tweet RPG fame for introducing me to The Dark Room  by comedian John Robertson.  This led me on a hunt for other interactive Youtube videos.  I found a few and you can hear all about my searches from my vlog found below.  Have a good week everybody!

Yes - I've finally sold out or: It used to be all about the music, man.

I've made some changes to the blog today - I've added a poll, an email subscription link and my April A to Z picture.  I intend to do it again as it was a great way to look at lots of new blogs.  I was blog 714 to sign up so there's a lot to look at.

I've also added an ad.  Yes, I'm monetizing.  I didn't want to for a while as I just wanted to sell gamebooks but, in my endless quest to listen to every podcast ever made, I stumbled across Pat Flynn's blog and podcast called Smart Passive Income.

His podcast and blog have given me some great ideas and tips for getting income quite easily and by putting in very little effort.  The obvious one is using ads.  Another one is the use of affiliate links.  I've linked to a lot of products that I love in this blog, but I never knew that Amazon had an affiliate links program.  What this means is that if I sign up as an affiliate, I can get links to all the products on Amazon.  If anyone buys a product from one of my affiliate links, I get some commission.  It will not cost you anything else.

Pat Flynn also told me to tell you that I'm using affiliate links, so that is what I'm doing.  I'm going through old posts and adding some affiliate links to Amazon.  From now on, if you click on a link that leads to Amazon, it will be an affiliate link and if you buy a product from that link, then I will get commission.  You will not need to pay anything extra and I thank you very much for buying your product in a way that makes me a little extra money.

The podcast also suggested that Infobarrel is a way of earning some passive income. Infobarrel is a site where you write articles and your get money if people click the ads on your article.  Since you cannot add articles that you cannot find elsewhere on the web, I won't be writing much about gamebooks on Infobarrel (I might write an introduction to what a gamebook is at some point).  My profile  has only one post at the moment and this is about avoiding mistakes in A level chemistry questions about ionisation energy.  I will also be writing other posts on Infobarrel so watch this space.

So there we go.  Please don't be mad at me for trying to get money for what I do.  I still love gamebooks and want their babies and ?I still love you, my readers, but I also want to see just how far I can take my blog, twitter feed, Youtube channel and god knows what else.  I'm not expecting millions, I'm just curious.

On Sunday, I'll be writing about my explorations of Youtube for interactive fiction.  Until then, you can get your gamebook fix from several places:

Fighting Fantazine Issue 8

Trollzine 4

Andrew Wright's new review at Lone Tiger Gamebook Reviews.

Two time highly commended Windhammer contender Ashton Saylor's new blog.

Until then, happy gamebooking!

My experiences of the Fool God or: Why I didn't finish writing a book when I'd finished the writing

I was very glad to have finally published a gamebook.  Temple of the Fool God contained a lot of firsts for me - first use of the Tunnels and Trolls system, first gamebook with art and my first gamebook that I published on RPGNow.  It was also the first book where I realised that once the writing is over, there is still a lot more of stuff to do with a book.  Stuff I used to consider to be less fun than the writing  but still needs to be done as it is very important such as proof reading, formatting, playtesting, inserting hyperlinks and publishing.  I used to consider it a tedious add on, but now that I've done these things a few times, I don't mind doing them now and actually even enjoy them.




The idea


I got the idea of the dungeon's theme from my thoughts and reading on the trickster.  I wanted trickster characters, trickster races and even the dungeon to act like a trickster.  I had the idea of a kingdom where the king is being advised by fools from both the idea of fools in Tudor times and the idea of the Shakespearean fool, especially the fool in King Lear who speaks to King Lear wisely yet escapes punishment because he is a fool.  There was also the idea of the wise fool in the middle ages who through their innocence and simplicity would be closer to God and could  therefore impart wisdom.

Writing

I had read a few TnT solos and most of them were either only suitable for warriors or for wizards.  Rogues weren't particularly good at either book, so I wanted a system that could incorporate both magic and fighting.  It was for this reason that I went through the spell list and came up with uses for spells that did not need to be referenced in the text.  In Temple of the Fool God, I came up with a list of spells that could be used before combat and decided that the find object spell could be used to add 1 to the treasure table roll in order to get more treasure.  That meant that there were fewer spells to reference in the text.  I managed to get at least one use for most other spells.  I gave a list of spells that weren't going to be used in the solo so that rogues wouldn't choose a useless spell.

I also came up with a talent for each stat that would be useful in the solo and stated that the player could swap their current talent for one used in the book.  In future solos, I will have a wider range of talents.

I filled the dungeon with all the references to fools and tricksters I could find.  I tried to make the logic of the dungeon quite contrary to normal thought.  I hope it worked.  I especially enjoyed the encounter before the Fool God himself.


Artwork

Thanks to Murray for introducing
me to this picture.

This was the first gamebook I wrote that I have put artwork in.  I used public domain art from the following sites:

http://karenswhimsy.com/ - Scott Malthouse directed me here.

http://openclipart.org/ -  jonny_automatic had a lot of good clipart for me to use.

http://www.pdclipart.org/

In future, have the situation fit the art. - I like working with restrictions.  I can't work with a blank slate.  Restrictions breed creativity.

Since writing Temple of the Fool God, I have discovered another public domain clipart site - http://etc.usf.edu/

Publishing


I went through Lulu and RPGNow.  They were both straightforward.  Lulu required a bit of fiddling - the font had to be embedded and the image had to be 595 by 841pixels but they gave very clear, straightforward instructions on how to get your book online.

So there we go.  You can buy Temple of the fool God from here but I would like to write more TnT solos in future.

Happy gamebooking!