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Wednesday 6 November 2024

Triumph of the pill

Scared yet? If you'd rather retreat from the real world into adventures with entirely imaginary bugbears, here's your reminder that Can You Escape The Vampire's Lair? is still on sale at the special Halloween price of £7.99.

Tomorrow we'll shoot forward to the end of the 23rd century. Come to think of it, I might stay there for the next four years.

Thursday 31 October 2024

Halloween treat, no trick

Forty years ago I wrote my first gamebook. I was a roleplayer and board gamer. I’d played the Fantasy Trip solo adventures, and even wrote a short solo dungeon for my friend Steve Foster (designer of Mortal Combat) when he had to spend a week in hospital, but I’d hardly noticed the growing kids’ gamebook craze until Ian Livingstone asked me to write a serialized solo adventure for White Dwarf. That was The Castle of Lost Souls.

It wasn’t long before almost everyone I knew was signing up to write a gamebook series. Joe Dever and Gary Chalk left Games Workshop to do Lone Wolf. Jamie Thomson too, teaming up with Mark Smith (who was another stalwart of our Tekumel campaign) to create Way of the Tiger and Falcon. You can see why Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson (UK) might have felt a bit miffed. They’d started a trend and now half their workforce was deserting the ship to jump on the bandwagon – if that isn’t mixing metaphors.

I used to freelance for White Dwarf a lot in those days, but once Jamie quit the editorial chair I didn’t have as much reason to show up at the office. Then Steve Jackson asked me to come in to talk about a series of gamebooks that he wanted to publish. He and Ian were committed to doing more Fighting Fantasy for Puffin Books, so these would be Games Workshop’s own series.

Steve was always coming up with fascinating game mechanics. He told me about a little tactical combat system he’d thought of when stuck in a motel in the middle of America. You had a tactical diagram that showed which actions were permitted in a combat round. So from EVADE you could move to DEFEND, REST or NORMAL ATTACK. From DEFEND you could only move to EVADE or NORMAL ATTACK, and so on.

When the player’s action was compared with the opponent’s, that gave the number of hit points each combatant lost. ‘Do you think you could use this for a gamebook?’ Steve wondered.

I went away and did a little work on it. I can’t remember how I handled the NPC adversaries, but this was a 1980s gamebook so there wasn’t going to be any AI. Probably the NPCs just acted randomly each round, and that was cross-referenced with the player’s action to give the outcome for that round. That would eat up a lot of paragraphs if every encounter had its own set of action entries, so I imagine I had a few dozen entries for each of several types of monster. They could be customized by SPECIAL ATTACKS, which would vary depending on the monster.

‘Looks good,’ reckoned Steve, ‘but I’d like to see a sample. Fifty or sixty sections, say.’

I went home, sat down at my Olympia Traveller typewriter, and began: ‘Dusk in Wistren Wood…’ and launched into a solo adventure in a vampire’s mansion. When I showed it to Steve he liked it and proposed a contract for Vampire Crypt, as it was then called. When the contract came it had a clause preventing me from writing gamebooks for any other publishers. I’m glad I never signed it, as if I had then my writing career would have been over before it began. (You may have noticed that Games Workshop never did get around to publishing their own gamebook series.)

Still, I was left with the beginning of a gamebook. When I signed with Grafton Books a few months later to do the Golden Dragon series, those fifty sample sections let me get a head start on the tight deadlines. Of course I couldn’t use Steve Jackson’s clever rule system, but Golden Dragon needed something a lot simpler anyhow. And thus Crypt of the Vampire was born – or spawned, or sired, or whatever the appropriate term is for vamps.


(Yes, these are the original maps and notes. I'm that much of a hoarder.)

And here we are at the 40th anniversary. To mark it I dug out a reboot of the book that I wrote for Amazon a couple of years ago. They wanted apps for Alexa (for some reason they call them skills) so I turned Crypt of the Vampire into The Vampire’s Lair, a consciously old-school adventure in audio form. Rather than retain the dungeon fantasy flavour of the original, though, I leaned into the influences of those Universal and Hammer monster movies I loved as a kid, when horror was delicious shuddersome fun and before it became synonymous with serial killers, torture porn and (yawn) demonic possession.

The text I wrote for that is now on sale for Halloween in a slim paperback with Leo Hartas’s original illustrations reworked in full colour. (My generous Patreon backers get to read it for free -- just sayin'.) It was Leo’s first book too. I’d seen his portfolio when he came into the White Dwarf offices one day, and when my editor at Grafton, Angela Sheehan, asked me if there were any artists I wanted for the series Leo's name sprang to mind. And because of that I began a close and dear friendship, a friendship which also now forty years old. If it were a marriage that means Leo and I would be celebrating our ruby anniversary – a very suitable hue given the blood-sucking tastes of the sinister count.

Wednesday 30 October 2024

Not long now


A couple of years ago I ran a post about Can It Happen Here?, my proposal (well, mine and Sinclair Lewis's) for a gamebook of the US election. In the end I decided it would be easier to just see what happens and then watch the news from the relative safety of the British Isles. 

In any case, writing about US politics from the European side of the Atlantic is strangely like looking backwards to an earlier model of government. Must be the US's written constitution, which effectively took the concept of the monarch and made it an elected post, setting that in stone for the next 235 years, whereas in Britain (which does have a constitution, incidentally; it's just not in a single document) the monarch has been free to evolve into a useful figurehead with no direct power, government is carried out by a team of people who must debate and reach consensus, and sovereignty resides with Parliament. But perhaps I'm only saying all that because the (possibly) future Veep has been so snotty about the UK.

At the other extreme there's the alarming option of "unitary executive theory" (aka dictatorship) which is best avoided whichever candidate gets elected. Once you let go of democracy it's very hard to get it back.
"A dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people than under the forbidden appearance of zeal for the firmness and efficiency of government. History will teach us that the former has been found a much more certain road to the introduction of despotism than the latter, and that of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people; commencing demagogues, and ending tyrants." 
- Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist Papers #1.

Anyway, America, good luck; the world holds its breath for your decision next week. If you need some inspirational reading here are five novels that are no doubt far better than anything I'd have written. And here's some equally disturbing fiction about another possible future.

(Image by Diliff under CC BY-SA 3.0 licence.)

Friday 25 October 2024

Fantasy for the fireside

With the nights drawing in and Halloween approaching, it's time to think about reading matter for that snug little nook by the pub fireside. You're going to want a bit of fantasy, a bit of whimsy, some dry humour to wash down with a good pint, and just the occasional gust of spooky chill to make you appreciate the warmth indoors.

One of my favourites of my own books is A Minotaur at the Savoy. If that cuts no ice, let me just add that it's one of Jamie's favourites too, and he (along with Freya Hartas) won the Roald Dahl humour prize. You get fifty vignettes in the urbane fantasy genre in the form of correspondence to the Royal Mythological Society in the year 1901 -- when, as the cognoscenti know, a green comet stirred everything up by dissolving the boundary between the real and the imaginary. And that's no bull.

Previously documented incidents from the Year of Wonders include:

Thursday 24 October 2024

Four jewels of fantasy fiction

All ready for Halloween? If I were plonked on the spooky equivalent of a desert island -- say a remote manor house with flickering candlelight, wind howling down the chimney, and rain pelting the leaded panes -- the reading matter I'd want with me is Coven 13, the late-'60s horror/fantasy magazine. 

As our two virtual hosts from NotebookLM explain here, Coven 13 gave a uniquely modern twist to the genres it dealt in, often with an outlook that still feels fresh today. It was the '60s fantasy/horror version of Black Mirror. You can see what I mean thanks to the Internet Archive, which has brought all four issues back from beyond:

(That's assuming that by the time you read this post the Internet Archive has recovered from the DDoS attacks that knocked it out of action recently.)

Here's NotebookLM's perceptive but typically bullet-pointy view of what set the magazine apart:

  • The emphasis on originality and uniqueness: The editor of Coven 13, Arthur H. Landis, repeatedly stresses the importance of originality in the horror genre. He criticises the overabundance of clichéd vampire, werewolf, and pact-with-the-devil stories, urging writers to find inspiration in contemporary settings and themes.
  • The focus on contemporary vignettes with an occult twist: Landis encourages stories that ground supernatural elements in the realities of the modern world. He cites examples like Rosemary's Baby, Bell, Book and Candle, and Psycho as successful examples of blending horror with contemporary life.
  • A preference for genuinely frightening content: Landis expresses a desire for stories that evoke genuine fear in both the reader and the writer. He yearns for manuscripts with the terrifying impact of classics like The Haunting of Hill House and The Uninvited.
  • Rejection of formulaic horror tropes: Coven 13 distinguishes itself by rejecting mindless, stereotypical monsters and scenarios. Landis advocates for more nuanced and psychologically grounded depictions of horror. 
  • An appreciation of psychological horror: The magazine showcases a preference for gothic and psychological horror, exemplified by stories like "Odile" and "Leona!". These tales emphasize atmosphere, suspense, and psychological complexity over gore or gratuitous violence.
  • Openness to diverse subgenres: While Coven 13 focuses on horror, witchcraft, and the supernatural, the letters page reveals a demand from readers for a variety of subgenres. 
  • High-quality artwork: Both the editor and readers commend the artwork of William Stout, praising his ability to capture the mood and atmosphere of the stories. This emphasis on quality illustration further distinguishes Coven 13 from other pulp magazines of the time.

If that sounds intriguing, stock up on those four issues, and also drop in on our sister blog, Wrong, which is a spiritual successor to Arthur H Landis's ideas, but also be sure to keep a space on your bookshelves for something else that I'll be back to tell you about on All Hallows Eve as the sun sets over Wistren Wood.

Friday 18 October 2024

Dusk in Wistren Wood

This year is the fortieth anniversary of my first published book, Crypt of the Vampire. I've blogged about it before, and longtime readers will already know the story of how it came to be written -- and revised (in 2013) and later expanded (in 2016) by David Walters.

And if you're familiar with the Mirabilis blog you'll also know how the Golden Dragon Gamebook series led to my lifelong friendship and creative partnership with Leo Hartas -- which also weaves back into the present day and my Jewelspider RPG, which is being illustrated by Leo's son Inigo. Everything's entangled.

In the introduction to David Walters's 2016 version I wrote:

"As my preference when running role-playing games is to let the players drive the story, I dispensed with the long introduction usual in gamebooks at the time. There’s no spoon-feeding here, no overt mission. You aren’t told your history. You are the hero, as the back cover blurb used to say, so your background and motivation are up to you. I’m not saying it works. You as the reader must decide that. I’m just saying it was deliberate. Crypt of the Vampire is my love letter to Hammer horror, and I wanted it to have the pace, vigour and dislocating dreamlike quality of the best of those movies."

Is there anything more to say? Yes, plenty. The full origin story of Crypt of the Vampire has yet to be told, but it's coming soon. With Samhain approaching, expect to hear the creak of a coffin lid, the howl of wolves, and the flapping of leathery wings. There's no escape -- so stock up on garlic and hawthorn stakes now, and watch this space.

While you're waiting -- have you tried this Golden Dragon mini-adventure, "The Island of Illusions", that Oliver Johnson and I wrote back in 1984? And listen to this comparative analysis of two very different Gothic novels by the virtual hosts on NotebookLM.


To get you in the mood for Halloween, here are some vampire movies I've enjoyed. Got your own favourite? That's what the comments are for.

Thursday 17 October 2024

An ocean in which no oar is dipped

Following on from last time's post about getting started in the Vulcanverse, here's a guide to exactly that from the Book Wyrm channel on YouTube. Noah begins his adventures in Notus using The Hammer of the Sun, which has the advantage that most of the companions you can travel with are met there.

Noah promises further installments on his channel, so stay tuned. I'm just envious of his ultra-neat handwriting. If your own penmanship is less precise, or even if you're in too much of a hurry to hand-letter your own Adventure Sheet, you can download an all-purpose sheet for the series or one specifically for Notus.