The determination of incident

When you're playing a gamebook, how much freedom do you want in creating the main character? As I'm a roleplayer I like to define a character for myself, and that attitude is reflected in most of my own gamebooks. Yet even back in the early days of the medium, series like Falcon, Way of the Tiger and Lone Wolf presented the player with a pre-defined character who came with a history, a name, and usually an implied set of beliefs.

Nowadays, perhaps because of the influence of CRPGs, many gamebooks expect you to play the character the author gives you. To some extent that's what Paweł Dziemski and I have done in Whispers Beyond The Stars, our Cthulhu Mythos gamebook currently available for pre-ordering on Gamefound. The amnesia gambit (trust me, it makes sense in the story) means that you have plenty of latitude to decide what your Alex Dragan is like, a bit like Doug Quaid in Total Recall. There's history there, and other people react to you based on that, but you still have the final say about what motivates your character in the here and now.

What's your preference? A blank slate? A sketchy template? Or a fully author-defined persona?

Roll the bones

We've talked here before about whether gamebooks need dice, and what place there is for randomness in interactive stories. Paweł and I thought a lot about this for our upcoming Cthulhu gamebook, Whispers Beyond The Stars, and here we are talking about it. I'll just add there's a week to go on the crowdfunding campaign for the book, and the advantage of being an early backer is you can reserve a full-colour hardcover edition rather than waiting for the paperback.

A shout-out for Whispers

Don't let a little thing like the Christmas and New Year holidays get between you and the mind-shattering secrets of nameless horrors from the sunless abyss of eternity. Or, to put it another way, there's still just over a week to reserve your copy of Whispers Beyond The Stars, the modern Cthulhu Mythos gamebook that I've written with Paweł Dziemski.

There's a new review on Facebook which gets right to the heart of what Paweł and I are trying to achieve with this book: "It pays homage to Lovecraft without ever lapsing into dusty pastiche. Instead, we get modern Lovecraft: sleek, eerie, buzzing with uneasy implication rather than melodrama."

He goes on to say, "The true spirit of cosmic horror is here in full: that creeping insignificance, the suspicion that the universe is enormous and indifferent, and the gnawing sense that humans, when handed forbidden knowledge, behave exactly like a toddler given access to permanent markers and a freshly painted wall." 

The review concludes: "If you enjoy adventures where your decisions matter—and occasionally haunt you—this gamebook deserves a place on your shelf, somewhere high up where the tentacles can’t quite reach."

Mapping the FL universe

Isn't this a thing of beauty? What is it, you ask? It's a map of all the connections in the seven Fabled Lands books. I don't know who created it, but I'd like to thank them for making the effort. The end result looks a little bit like a map of the actual universe, though naturally that has around a sextillion times as many nodes. You can view the source files (for the FL map, not the universe) here. And now I'm wondering what the Vulcanverse connections map would look like...

Season's greetings

This card will make most sense if you've played in or read Tim Harford's solstitial adventure "Water Like A Stone" or its predecessor from last year, "The Malletta Caper". Inquisitor Paln probably wouldn't share these sentiments, but my message for the season is to wish you peace and happiness in 2026. That goes for everyone, whoever you are, wherever you may be. If we all listen more, try to understand more, help whenever we can, and forgive each other -- we could yet make this a planet to be proud of.

A cold cosmos

Today in our countdown to Christmas: a little more chat about the background to Whispers Beyond The Stars, the upcoming near-future gamebook inspired by the work of H P Lovecraft. Aspiring Cthulhu cultists can reserve their copy here. It's $35 for the hardcover + app or $15 for the app alone -- either way you get the PDF too. Why not treat yourself? After all, it's Christmas.

That's neat

“At the time, ninjas were new and exciting and everyone loved them […] So basically ninjas meets Lord of the Rings was what we came up with and it turned into a hugely successful game book series.”
-- Mark Smith 

A part of our rapid-fire countdown to Christmas, here's a look at Gremlin Graphics' Way of the Tiger computer game from the 1980s.

Having played very briefly in Mark Smith's Orb campaign, I always thought it was a pity it got overshadowed by martial arts mania. There weren't any ninja in the original Orb setting, which was a masterclass in how to use Tolkien-like fantasy elements in a D&D game. Prancing around flinging shuriken and flash powder was far less interesting than all the richly original flourishes Mark had put into his world.

The gamebooks are still available, and there's occasional talk of publishing an Orb RPG. (Basic Roleplaying or Mythras would get my vote.) Fingers crossed -- and I'm not talking about the kuji-no-in.