April A to Z - O is for One more interview with Zhu Bhajee

I interviewed Zhu Bhajee last April under the predictable letter  Z so this year, I decided to think of some convoluted way of giving him another letter of the alphabet.   

Zhu's blog covers a wide range of art, RPG and gamebook material and it is well worth a look.  In fact, before you read this interview, just take a look now.  Go on.  See?  Told you.

>   - Who you are and how you got into gamebooks/solo adventures/RPGs/art.

From reading the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings at a young age, then growing up through the D&D boom / FF boom of the 1980s. I still think dungeons should have shops in them.

>   - What you have done since April 2012

Oh, I hate retrospectives, like birthdays and christmas, and school-reports. A time for looking back and reflecting, yuck! Gosh, I don't know what I've been doing. I probably did some more artwork for Otherworld Miniatures http://otherworldminiatures.co.uk/ and Red Box Games,http://www.red-box-games.com/  becuase they're kind enough to keep asking me to draw for them. I think Greg Gillespies Barrowmaze IIhttp://www.barrowmaze.com/ got released, but that might have been a bit before, and I have a load of artwork in that. Also took on my first tattoo commissions and had a few private commissions as well.

On the fandom front. I managed to get my hands on a copy of Trolltooth Wars by Steve Jackson from @FFproject  http://fightingfantasyproject.wordpress.com/ because he took a photo of a shelf in a charity shop and posted it on twitter. Silly stuff. Great illustrations by Russ Nicholson in there, and some quite gory and weird scenes, but overall not one of Steves high-points.



>   - What you plan on doing now related to gamebooks/solos/RPGs/art.

Well I am developing a couple of games, slowly. One is a dungeoncrawl (yes, the world does need another dungeon-crawl boardgame) that can be played solo, and the other is an old-school style XXX game loosely based on XXX, which is top secret. I am also available for commission (hint!) and would be happy to do do some work on solo/gamebook products (hint!).

>   - What you think the future of gamebooks/solos/RPGs/art  is.


Did we do this before? The future is going to be largely digital, but with a niche space for highly produced physical products. But I think that is largely true of publishing in general.  Kickstarter has completely revolutionised how people buy games. It might be a bubble, but it is altering the commercial landscape considerably at the moment, this seems especially true of miniatures gaming and board gaming. It does seem to be able to empower the creator/publisher quite significantly. With regards gamebooks, something like The Maze of Games shows how experiments within the form are being successful.


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Zhus gaming blog: http://realmofzhu.blogspot.com

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Follow me on twitter.

Join the Lloyd of Gamebooks Facebook page.

Keep up with other gamebook blogs at the Gamebook Feed.