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Monday 22 April 2013

Undeadwood buried

Back in August I announced that we had a new gamebook project in progress with the working title of Undeadwood. Its real title was going to be The Good, the Bad and the Undead, but the more I think about it, the more I prefer the former. The pitch was "30 Days of Night meets Django Unchained," but that doesn't sound like something I would personally queue up for. (Funnily enough, though, if you said "A Fistful of Dollars meets Cronos," you'd have my money like a shot. Fine distinctions, I guess, as far as the wider world outside cinema geekdom is concerned.)

Even in October I still had hopes. By November I must have known better, but I am adept at denial. Anyway, it was destined to remain a shrivelled thing, hidden from the light. Jamie and I talked briefly about doing it as a comic instead, but that's unlikely now. It has joined the distinguished ranks of gamebooks that never were. That stake is not coming out.

We did at least get as far as a back cover blurb. Well, I say back cover, but it was one of the titles going in the Infinite IF series, which means an ebook, so the blurb was really just for the website:
THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UNDEAD

Texas, 1870. The small, dusty mining town of Affliction, alone and isolated in the middle of the Badlands is the only place with a gaol for fifty miles in very direction, the only place Marshal da Silva can take his captive, the brutal outlaw, Walter Corse.

But when he arrives in town with his prisoner in tow, it is strangely deserted. The wind moans through the dusty streets and dust devils dance where the townsfolk once walked. But when the night comes... so do the vampires. Affliction has been overrun by them, and many of its inhabitants have been turned. The others are kept as food for the rest. The marshal and the outlaw find a shotgun-toting saloon girl still alive and free. Together they must hold out against the vampire hordes until morning.

Notable vampires include the Sheriff William Masters, Reverend Ezekiel Smith, Jacob Colt, the undead gunslinger, Jimmy Nighthorse, an Apache scout, and several other vampire versions from the mythology of the Old West.

Eventually, the marshal and his companions must take the fight to the chief vampire, Tizoca, the Bled One, an ancient Aztec vampire awoken from her sealed tomb by an over-eager treasure hunting archaeologist, along with her ‘consort’, a Portuguese Conquistador – in fact, the marshal's great, great, great grandfather.
(Okay, okay, so it was notes for a blurb...) If that whets your appetite for gun-totin' gamebook weirdness, all is not quite lost. Per Jorner wrote a great gamebook called The Bone Dogs that's a bit Wild West, a bit magic realist, and you can get that free right here.

The Good, the Bad and the Undead actually began life as a proposal for a first-person shooter that Jamie and I floated at Eidos in the late twentieth century. In that version it was a modern-day western, Dusk Till Dawn style, and I'm not sure whether it had any vampires in it, as our original write-up said:
The town is overrun by all the freaks, monsters and weird stuff that was inside Dr Marvell's Travelling Booth of Wonders. The hero's first job is just staying alive long enough to get to the bottom of things. There are pygmy tyrannosaurs, skeleton outlaws, giant fleas, Sioux medicine men, homicidal fire-breathers, crazed knife-throwing dwarves, and bearded fat ladies who sound like James Earl Jones on steroids. How all these nasties came to be in Dr Marvell's booth doesn't matter. How they even fit inside the booth doesn't matter. All that does matter is they're out for your blood.
Yeah, I know - but FPS isn't exactly about the integrity of the story, you know. Anyway, I guess we could post up the detailed notes for the storyline(s), but in the absence of the book itself (or game itself) it's just so many ideas; there's nothing to play through. However, James Wallis thought "Undeadwood" (the title, that is) would make a great Kickstarter - and he should know better than most - so if anyone wants to have a crack at that, be my guest. I'd like to read it, or play it, or watch it - especially if you can work in an Al Swearengen vampire.

The image is by PurpleFilth on DeviantArt. It's from his own RPG and you can check out his other work, and the terms of the Creative Commons licence, here.

13 comments:

  1. Cool! I have perverse fascination with westerns.

    Is it going to be actual book printed on paper? Will it be possible for to play it during long train rides with you smelly co-travellers ogling over your shoulder?

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    1. Jonas, you really should read the w_h_o_l_e article my friend, though I have been guilty of similar things in the past.
      Sounds like the plot from a Savage Worlds Deadlands scenario...

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    2. Lol. I'm afraid it was only ever going to be an ebook, Jonas, but if you've now had time to read the whole post you'll know it isn't even going to be that. I had hoped the Infinite IF books would appear in both digital and print editions, but the publishers decided the latter aren't worth bothering with. Print may not be as dead as they think, if you ask me, but until I run my own imprint (hey, there's an idea) I'm afraid non-digital readers are stuffed.

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    3. Excuse me Dave and Savagelegend, my enthuism really got better of me.

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    4. No need to apologize, Jonas. Around here we like enthusiasm!

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  2. So, apologies if I missed an earlier hint/explanation, but why is this not happening? Is it just that there’s too much else to do? Or are you having second thoughts about the (financial) profitability of the venture? No criticism is implied there, because we all have to pay the bills somehow, but, aside from disappointment at the crumpling of this particular project, it doesn’t seem to bode well for any prospect of FL 7–12… unless, of course, writing FL 7–12 is what will be taking up all of your time!

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    1. Jamie was scheduled to write it, Graham, but he couldn't get into it. I think it probably would have made enough to pay the bills, if written in the four months from July to October as we originally planned, but we'll never know.

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  3. Oh Dave, getting my hopes up... This sounds bloody amazing. If I didn't have so much on my plate, I'd try to take it on myself. Bone Dogs is one of my favorites from the Windhammer archives.

    For the record, the long-form gamebook I'm working on now, Shadow over Rema, could be seen as having some western elements. Well... it's dark fantasy more than western, but a lot of it takes place in a very arizona-esque desert.

    I'm sorry to hear this got the axe!

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    1. It didn't exactly get the axe, Ashton. As I said to Graham, it just didn't get written. As it was supposed to be the launch title in the Infinite IF series, I had to do some hasty footwork to secure the rights to Way of the Tiger to replace it. (And that turned out to be a rod for my own back, in fact, but that's another story.) WOTT fans will see ebook editions of Avenger(!) and Assassin(!) later in the year, and hopefully the rest of the series to follow.

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  4. I love the synopsis for the FPS as a gamebook idea, but then I've always liked gamebooks with a bit of humour. Shame to hear it didn't get off the ground properly. Anonyboss

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  5. Regarding the latter FL books, when can we expect to be able to buy them? They are definity up on my to play list.

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    1. All 6 existing FL books are now available again - see the carousel thingy at the top of the page. If you mean books 7-12, though... there just isn't the demand, I'm afraid. We keep trying to think of ways to make the series more popular, but I suspect 99% of gamebook fans just want more Fighting Fantasy!

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  6. What I can say is that Jamie and Ashton Saylor are talking about teaming up to make The Good, The Bad & The Undead happen after all. I'm not getting excited too quickly because I thought it was being written for 4 months last year, but it does look FAR more likely to actually happen now.

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