Getting started in the Vulcanverse

As with a lot of open-world gamebook series, you can begin your adventures in any of the Vulcanverse books. In each case you play through your childhood, your choices in those early flashback years shaping the kind of character you're going to start as -- your skills, deity, any starting gear, and so on. It's a little more involving than just rolling a bunch of dice.

In the first four books, whichever you pick, those childhood events are more or less the same. In Workshop of the Gods, though, it's a little different. Now you're not starting in a rural area; you grew up in the biggest city in the Vulcanverse and your family and home there provide a base you can return to.

Your early-life choices in the city are different from the other four books. Having defined your initial abilities, you're then presented with a couple of opportunities to acquire mentor characters. First, when watching your uncles play a board game, you notice a strange antique coin and if you ask about it you may end up meeting a veteran who will guide you through quests in Book 2: The Hammer of the Sun. Then later, shopping with your aunts, you can ask them about the land of Arcadia and thereby acquire a mentor who'll prompt you to undertake quests in Book 3: The Wild Woods.

In both cases you get the option to ignore the cue, thereby avoiding these mentors. Game designer Ernest W Adams has pointed out that when presented in a game with, say, an interesting inscription, there's no point in giving the player the choice of "look at the inscription" or "don't look". That's a non-choice, because why wouldn't the player look unless there's some other cost to doing so? (For example, unless they're being chased and stopping to study an inscription puts them at risk.)

But I still give players the choice of passing on the mentors for two reasons. First because your decisions at this stage of the book aren't only setting your starting stats; they're also shaping how you think about your character. Do you look after your younger brother with love, or through a sense of duty, or do you leave him to fend for himself? Making that choice will determine the character you're playing not only in game terms but in your own conception. Ignoring the cues from your uncles and aunts tells us the kind of self-sufficient person you might be.

Also, not all players are going to want mentoring. You can strike out into the other regions of the Vulcanverse and just discover quests at random. That's fine if you have the time for exploration and you don't need any hand-holding. Others will appreciate being given some hints -- and if so you can pick up more hints, though of a less structured sort, by talking to the Oracle at the temple of Apollo.

When out in the world you can find companions who will travel with you. They sometimes offer advice, but usually only after you've already embarked on a quest. They don't tend to nudge you towards any particular goal. If you like setting your own goals, forget the mentors but it's still worth picking up a companion. There are a couple you can find fairly easily if you look around the south-eastern part of Notus in The Hammer of the Sun.

Mentors differ from companions because they don't accompany you. They'll look at what you've achieved so far, suggest the next stage of a quest and give you some clues as to how to go about it, then with a pat on the back or a kick in the pants they'll send you off to try it. You can return to the city and seek them out if you're having trouble. The advantage of doing it that way is you get quests sliced up into readily achievable chunks, which a lot of players prefer to just playing on till they're tired. The mentor lets you know when you've hit a convenient episode break.

So, whether you're a self-starter or whether you like taking advice from a friend, either way you should find what you're looking for in Vulcanverse Book Five: Workshop of the Gods. Still, the books in the Vulcanverse series are not self-contained; they comprise one vast connected saga.

To give you an idea of the sweep and scope of that saga, think of the Sorcery! series by Steve Jackson. That's four big gamebooks to start off with. Now add the original six books of the Way of the Tiger series. Then pile on top of those the first four of Joe Dever's Lone Wolf books. All together that lot is as long as the Vulcanverse series. Vulcan City is a good place to begin, but you'll soon need to venture into the the other realms, so start off with a couple of books and bear in mind you'll need all five to complete the full adventure.

The Dark Lord speaks

By chance I just came across an interview with Jamie. These are few and far between, so worth a look even though it's very short. Much of it covers the same ground as Jamie's talk at FFF 5 but there are some extra details too.

And there's also important news about another of my co-writers, Oliver Johnson of Dragon Warriors and Lightbringer fame. The Bookseller has just announced that his conspiracy thriller novel Caller Unknown is due for publication next year. I've read it and it's great. Now I've got my fingers crossed for his (even better) fantasy novel The Knight of the Fields.

The next wave is the big one

2010. Leo Hartas and I had tickets to the London Book Fair. We weren't expecting much to come of it. If an author steps onto a publisher's stand at the LBF, they look at you like they want to call RentoKil. But we had just published our comic Mirabilis: Year of Wonders on iPad and we were hopeful of showing it to other writers and artists at least.

Fate smiled on us, though. A volcano erupted in Iceland, disrupting air travel, which thinned out the crowds at the LBF. Deprived of the international reps to do deals with, UK publishers had nothing better to do with their time than hold their noses and talk to the authors. (Oh, you thought they'd welcome the opportunity, seeing as we're the people whose work pays their salaries? Ha ha.)

Still, Leo and I thought we had something pretty interesting to show them. We knew they'd have zero interest in the creative content of our Mirabilis app, but there were features they should be taking note of. "Look at how you can buy each issue of the comic in the app," we said. "Those could be the latest titles in your book list. There are share buttons, and if the user signs up they'll get told about new titles in any series they're following."

The publisher's eyes scanned the crowds behind us, probably wondering where that exterminator had got to. "We are publishers, not booksellers," she told us with infinite disdain.

"But this would give you a direct relationship with your customers. You can find out what they like. Sell directly to them. Push additional content like author interviews. Let them know about upcoming releases. All within the app."

She turned away, visibly sickened by having to talk to tradesmen. Mama would never have had to stoop so low. "It is not our business to have a direct relationship with our readers. Publishers do not need 'apps'."

Fast forward only six or seven years and every publisher by then employed bright-eyed tech advisers. "What we want as publishers," they would tell you loftily, "is a direct relationship with our customers."

Too bad they didn't get on that bandwagon when it was setting off. Perhaps if Leo and I had worn suits and pretended scorn for the saps who wrote and drew the comic, the publishers at the 2010 LBF might have listened. But probably not. It's an unchanging trait of British publishers that they will completely refuse to embrace any new trend till it's already passed them by. (A few years earlier, discussing ebooks with another publisher, they'd asked us where they would sell "the discs" with the ebooks on.)

So I'm wondering what trend they're missing right now. It might well have to do with AI. Here's a podcast about that very point featuring Joanna Penn and Thad McIlroy. And if you find that interesting try the episodes on writing with generative AI and using generative AI in book cover design.

Holding out for a hero

A recent comment by Pierre Millet set me to thinking we need a medal for gamebook readers who play all the way through to the grand finale of the Vulcanverse series. Especially this:

"It still amazes me to think that, after all these hours, there are parts in these books I haven’t found a way to explore. No idea how to open that strange door in the mountains. No idea how to gain the Ooze or Oxen codewords. I saw my brother mentioned in entries I shouldn’t have read and I still scratch my head when I think of it. As for the Murmillo, I only saw him mentioned in the final battle."

My idea is that anyone who earns the medal can get talking with other champions of the Vulcanverse and compare notes on how their experience differed. Did you travel in time? Were you made Queen of the Amazons? Did you sail across the Ocean of Night or enter the land of dreams? Were you the heir of a wealthy noble family? Have you set foot on Mount Olympus or the plains of Troy? Did you get to battle a god? All of those are possible in the books depending on the choices you make.

There are many paths to the end of the Vulcanverse campaign, and multiple different endings too. If you succeed in reaching any of them, feel free to display the medal and share your experience with other Vulcanverse veterans.

Not got started yet? Create your first Vulcanverse character here.

The first full moon of Michaelmas

The darkening nights, the curling leaves, that smoky tang in the chill air -- and to really mark the coming of autumn here's a new issue of Casket of Fays, the Dragon Warriors 'zine. It's the usual high quality blend of scenarios and articles by what I maintain to be the top creative team in roleplaying games today. There are grave knights, poisons, saints, magic items, micro-games, creatures, adventure seeds, and much more.

I especially liked Dominic Bailey's descriptions of a bunch of NPC priests, showing the many faces that the True Faith can have, because both PC and NPC priests are proving troublesome in the Helfax campaign I'm playing in at the moment.

There's also an expanded version of Stanley Barnes's DW rules conversion of Blood Sword sages which we looked at here a while back.

What will it cost? To you, nothing. And as if a free 32-page magazine isn't enough, you also get the second part of Andrew Wright's traveller's tale cum adventure seed, "Marauders of the Azure Main", complete with maps of the Mungoda coast.

And there's also exciting news at last from Serpent King Games, stirring from their lair as the balefires of the season flare out in the gathering dusk. Next month we are promised The Cursed King with Robert Dale's eagerly awaited Brymstone following early in 2025. All this just in time for Dragon Warriors' 40th anniversary. Don't miss it!

March? But it's September!

If you live in Britain and you aren't the sort who feels like looting shops and chucking bricks at the police in response to a school stabbing tragedy, and if you deplore the cheapening of British politics by the Trump-wannabes of Reform UK, you might want to register your support for a more international and inclusive worldview by coming to London on Saturday for the Rejoin EU march. (Strictly a peaceful and civilized affair, this, so angry old gammons may prefer to stay home and wrestle their XL bullies.)

If marching isn't your thing, there's an open letter you can sign. Or, if you're interested in the whole UK/EU question but don't have a strong view either way, or even if you still think Brexit could work out fine, you could just play Can You Brexit? and see how you get on. (Hint: if you just make decisions at random you'll still do better than the Tory governments of the last eight years.)

Still, we're all for evidence-based reasoning here. No ideology counts a jot against hard facts, so be sure to fully research the subject before you form an opinion, and be ready to update your opinion if the facts change.

When to go all-in

John Whitbourn, author of the wonderful Binscombe Tales and many other first-rate fantasy stories, has the knack of finding out about a wide range of interesting curiosities. "Perhaps you've seen this," he'll say, pointing me to an obscure book or a movie or a game that is absolutely right up my street and yet that I'd never heard of before that moment. If I try it in reverse, telling him about a little-known Nigel Kneale SF drama, say, or a 1960s Soviet folk horror movie, or a seminal work of English apocalyptic fantasy, it usually turns out he already knows all about it.

I've given up looking for an explanation. The universe just looks favourably on John while I'm its red-headed stepchild. But I'm grateful to be kept abreast of news that otherwise would have passed me by. For instance, he recently dropped me an email about an OSR game called Slay. This line jumped out:

Slay has a unique d6 combat system. Roll a red effort die along with your white task dice. Make a decision to either add the effort die to your attack or convert it to a dodge die and keep it to improve your defence. This makes every attack roll a decision: do you go in for damage but potentially leave yourself open? Do you play defensively even though you could potentially deal damage?

That made me think of Tirikelu, another RPG where you can trade off attack against defence. But there are differences worth pondering. In Slay, you roll the dice and then decide how to share out your zanshin. In Tirikelu, you set your priorities first, then you roll. You also get the chance to alter your tactics as the round progresses. Say you get initiative and you start off with a half-value attack. That leaves you with the option later in the round of either using the other half-value action to parry, or letting your opponent strike at you unopposed and then at the end of the round you can use the remaining half-action to attack again.

One system gives more tactical choice, the other is super-quick. Which you opt for depends on your playing style and preferences. In fact, since Slay is pay-what-you-want and Tirikelu is free, why not try both? And now that autumn is here, and Halloween barely a month away, the perfect reading matter as the nights draw in is the aforementioned Binscombe Tales. Tell a friend about them and you'll soon have a reputation for spooky synchronicity.