With me so far? The first two paperbacks, Avenger(!) and Assassin(!) are now on sale, and you can buy them from Amazon, Barnes and Noble and other online stores. As you can see from the pic, the new books are a bit bigger than the '80s originals and have rather more impressive covers. Mylène Villeneuve really packs energy, movement and drama into her paintings, whereas the original '80s painting for Avenger looks like a waxwork of a ninja having a poo.
Fabled Lands Publishing will be releasing the other four original books in paperback over the coming months. But that's not all. Megara have commissioned new books in the series. You can now buy the prequel book, Ninja, and the series is set to continue in Book 7, Redeemer, in which our hero or heroine bounds free from the giant spider's web. Both of those are by the talented David Walters, with stalwart support from editor and Megara US chief Richard S Hetley, and of course none of this would be possible without the Herculean dynamism of Megara's founder, Mikaël Louys.
Before you backflip over to Amazon, feast your eyes on the Easter eggs in the picture. Zen Combat by Jay Gluck (1962) and Ninjutsu by Donn F Draeger (1977) were the white-box DnD of the genre, the books that retconned "ninja" into Japanese history and ignited the craze for black-pyjamaed black ops that had become a full-on media frenzy by the start of the 1980s. And if you look really closely, you may see part of the flowchart for Down Among The Dead Men in the background there too, as stealthy as the ninja who lives in your chimney.
How did you know today was my birthday, Dave? ;)
ReplyDeleteYou can have another birthday in a couple of months, Magnus. I've been editing Book 3 today.
DeleteThose look like big books.
ReplyDeleteFunny how many gamebook reprints these years are noticeably bigger than the original, standard paperback format editions. Hardcover WOTT is huge, comic book-sized. I didn't expect that.
On the other hand, Fabled Lands reprints are so much smaller...
Standard paperback sizes have got bigger since the 1980s - I don't know why. So the new WOTT paperbacks are 127mm by 202mm, whereas the '80s editions were 110mm by 178mm. The quality of the paper is also better now - though the unit price is higher (even adjusting for inflation) so it ought to be.
DeleteI would love to have published the FL books in the original large format with cover foldouts, but our print-on-demand company didn't offer that option.
Hi Dave,
ReplyDeleteI wanted to reply to your earlier comments regarding taking a more humorous approach for Books 7-12 in the Fabled Lands series, though with that post being rather old I'm not sure if you'd ever see it there, so with apologies I'll post it here. :)
I own both Ryan North's Hamlet CYOA and Zach W's Trial of the Clone. They're both great, but I would heavily caution against viewing them as part of a trend towards humorous gamebooks; the quality of the books themselves aside, the reason they've succeeded so wildly is because their authors are famous (well, famous on the Internet, at least). I doubt the potential sales of Fabled Lands 7 will depend much on whether the book is relatively serious or light-hearted. I say this as someone who would desperately like to see the series concluded. :)
I think I said earlier that Kickstarter is a machine for turning fame into money. So you're right, Joe, those gamebooks weren't just successful because the humorous approach appeals to modern readers. But balance that against the fact that our Mr Thomson has his own degree of fame since winning the Roald Dahl Prize, and there are getting on for half a million Dirk Lloyd fans out there who might be quite eager to buy a comedy gamebook he wrote. I don't think that would be FL7, though. Fabled Lands has its own following - measured more in the hundreds than in the hundreds of thousands, and if we're to increase those numbers, a series of blisteringly good Sorcery-style apps would do a lot more to achieve that than the question of whether to make the books funny or serious.
DeleteWhat's holding us up is that nobody except Inkle yet has the tech to do them properly. I don't want apps that have creaky carry-overs from the books like "turn to 323" and "get the codeword KNAVE". They must be sparkling, modern CRPG-gamebook hybrids that are true to the map-driven spirit, not the fusty letter, of the original work. When we find a developer that (a) can do the apps justice and (b) actually is able to deliver a product, that's when we can start turning Fabled Lands from an obscure piece of gaming history into a viable ongoing series.
A very thoughtful reply! You're right about Thomson and Lloyd -- I'm only speaking within the context of Fabled Lands, since that's my (monomaniacal) focus these days. :)
DeleteI actually think there's a very large market to be had for gamebooks on Steam. What you lack in terms of sheer numbers compared to an app store, you regain in terms of higher prices and a more dedicated audience perusing far fewer offerings. In particular, I'm curious whether The Yahwg, a recently released "CYOA-esque" bite-size snack of a game, does well on there. http://store.steampowered.com/app/269030/
By the way -- I know you commented a while back that you didn't want to read the fan-made FL9, for fear of it influencing you if you ever started out to write something of your own. Fair enough!
But if someone were to complete a Fabled Lands fan-made (designed to be compatible with the gamebooks) that was a) up to your standards of quality and b) didn't conflict with the rest of the FL universe in any way (no overlap with Books 7-12, not contradicting any elements of the canon), would you ever consider giving it an unofficial imprimatur, perhaps by linking to it on the Fabled Lands site?
I'm always happy to promote fan material. I'd even publish Pace's Journal if I were in contact with the author. And if the unofficial Book 9 is online anywhere, I'll link to it in the sidebar. As I said recently, the best way to get the FL series finished would be for a group of interested fans to do it as a team.
DeleteAs for gamebooks on Steam - okay, I have to confess I just don't get that at all. Which is not to say we wouldn't license Fabled Lands to a developer who wanted to give it a go. Still, why do that when the FL App is already out there? http://flapp.sourceforge.net/
Excellent news. I never had the Chance to play this serie.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the good news, Dave!
Ikaros
Will Ninja get a "mainstream" non-exclusive release? The 35 euro price makes me weep, especially when coupled to shipping, which isn't added to that price. Also, would Redeemer get a paperback release?
ReplyDeleteFabled Lands Publishing only has the rights to the original books, so I'm not able to talk about Ninja or Redeemer with certainty. David Walters has already released a Kindle version of Ninja, and he tells me that he's working on a paperback edition. It would make sense to do the same with Redeemer.
Delete"whereas the original '80s painting for Avenger looks like a waxwork of a ninja having a poo" – funny. Yes the artist must have used traditional martial art imagery as a basis for the ninja hence the silly kung fu stance. Kung fu and their horse stance! On the other hand I believe respect for previous success (and the artist) is important. Sure, move on but respect the history. And respect is a wonderful thing; after all it was my respect for your support of WOTT series that led to me buying 5 of your books which I had never read before. I could be disrespectful of the current art and say “it looks like its straight out of a Scooby Doo” but instead I’ll say its cool but prefer the old style.
DeleteWe have horse-riding stance in Shotokan too, Gaza, but the torso should be upright. What makes that cover look silly is the way the artist put him leaning forwards. But it was far from the worst gamebook cover of the 1980s. I think I had a few of those ;-)
DeleteI'm very glad you bought some of my books, anyway. Hope you enjoyed them. Perhaps that's a sale on false pretences (I've never read the WOTT books, after all, and suspect they're not a lot like mine) but I'll take what I can get.