Probably not. Jamie and I submitted a whole bunch of concepts to the editors at Puffin, and Keep was a long way from being our favourite. It was rather odd that they picked it, come to think, as a quick glance on Wiki suggests that, Black Vein Prophecy excepted, the surrounding books in the series were all horror-inflected fantasy built on the very similar premise of raiding a monstrous super-villain's secret base. I guess Jamie and I aren’t the only ones who spent our formative years steeped in 007 and Hammer movies.
The deal with those FF books was that the authors got 60% of the royalty and Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson got 40%. Or possibly it was the other way round. You can’t really copyright a concept, but they established the brand and the split struck us as more than fair. When Icon Books picked up the series from Puffin (which, incidentally, is a bit like the BBC throwing Doctor Who to Canal+ in the early ‘90s) authors were offered a deal to sell their rights. Jamie and Mark Smith gave up Talisman of Death and Sword of the Samurai, but I make a point of never parting with copyright unless I’m paid crazy money. So Jamie and I kept Keep.
When I was prepping The Castle of Lost Souls for re-release, I briefly entertained the notion of relocating it to Golnir. The tone of the book just felt too whimsical for Fabled Lands, so that plan got dropped, but Jamie and I continued tossing around some other ideas. And we kept coming back to The Keep of the Lich Lord.
Obviously Fighting Fantasy fans would rather see Keep re-released using the FF world and system. I appreciate that. We can’t because we don’t have the rights, and anyway we have a gentlemen’s agreement not to make a big deal about it having been an FF book when publicizing the new edition. Not that we ever do any publicity per se, but you get the picture.
All of which is why Lord Mortis is now rising from the dead on an obscure but strategically important archipelago close to the Unnumbered Isles. You can start the book with a new character, or you can get an existing FL character to Dweomer and pick up the story there. We’re calling these single-story specials Fabled Lands Quests – though I admit to being slightly at a loss as to which other books could be adapted in the same way. Maybe a new version of Castle of Lost Souls, or the long-awaited reworking of Eye of the Dragon? Suggestions welcome!
To fit the adventure into the Fabled Lands, I wrote a new introduction set in Dweomer. But what to do with the old intro..? Recently on the blog, MikeH was asking about extras in our books. Well, Mike, you’ll be pleased to know that we have shamelessly swiped your idea and stuck our own names on it. This new edition of Keep has a wealth of cool stuff including the original introduction as an appendix, a section describing all the other concepts that could have become Fighting Fantasy #43, and a foreword in which I talk about the process of adapting the book from Titan to the Fabled Lands.
Anything else you want to know? Oh, artwork, of course. We don’t have the rights to the original FF illustrations so we couldn’t use those. Obviously, this being a sort-of Fabled Lands book, some new pictures by Russ Nicholson would have been great, but all-new art is expensive. We have the next best thing: thanks to the generosity of our friends at Megara Entertainment, the new edition features artwork from their Keep of the Lich Lord app of a few years back. Leo Hartas kindly let us use his gorgeous map, which appears in its full-colour glory on the back cover. And the front cover painting is courtesy of Kevin Jenkins, being the inside flap detail (as if you didn’t know) from the triptych of Over the Blood-Dark Sea.
I just ordered this and it's due to arrive Friday. What Rank range should the characters be who start this? I get the feeling going straight from washing up on the beach in War-torn Kingdoms would be a bad idea. However, I don't want to bring in some Rank 11 ubermensch with +6 weapons and armor that turns the book into a walkover either.
ReplyDeleteIt's all in the book... ;-)
DeleteFantastic, swipe away Dave! I love the idea of Fabled Lands Quests, but am also struggling to think of any of your works that would be suitable. I suppose your VR titles could conceivably be transplanted?
ReplyDeleteAnd not to be an artwork snob (since I similarly derided the internal artwork in Falcon) but I'm happy to see the back of Keep's artwork. I never liked David Gallagher's style; seemed like a poor cross between Russ Nicholson and Martin McKenna. Though he must have been popular as he illustrated quite a few FF titles from that time as I recall.
I seem to remember he didn't have much time to illustrate Keep for some reason. I sent him a few filler sketches (some of which were just photocopies of David Roberts watercolours) and he pretty much used them as they were. So it was odd seeing a Ptolemaic temple in there.
DeleteIn a perfect world, we'd have got new art by Russ for this book, but there wasn't any money to pay for that. So I'm very grateful that Megara gave permission to use their artwork from the KotLL app.
Did Paul Mason hold on to the rights to his FF gamebooks, and if so, and if he were agreeable, would they be suitable for conversion? It has been far too long since I last looked at any of them.
ReplyDeleteAh, good point. I'll ask him.
DeleteI'd say that several FF gamebooks written by Paul Mason will fit pretty well with FL6...
DeleteThere was at least one gamebook that Paul planned in detail but didn't get around to writing before the FF series folded. I think he intended it to be set in real historical China, though.
DeleteYes, I remember I read that on his interview on Fighting Fantazine #11 ;-)
DeleteOhps... I just double checked and I think that the bit that you mention was actually in the part of the interview, in #10
DeletePaul Mason's Crimson Tide and Black Vein Prophecy are clearly far eastern stories, while Slaves of the Abyss and Magehunter are more middle eastern in flavour. They are all part of FF.
DeleteOne or two of them may be more difficult to adapt to FL, but... it's worth having a good look at them, I think.
Then you can have a look at Sword of the Samurai, FF by Mark Smith and Jamie Thompson... people that you met before... I think...;-)
I'm pretty sure that Jamie & Mark signed Sword of the Samurai over to Ian Livingstone to include in the Wizard Books FF range. And Paul probably did the same with his books. Magehunter I remember, as Paul wrote it after we'd been to see the movie Warlock, with Julian Sands and Richard E Grant.
DeleteOf course I don't know who owns the rights, but Paul Mason's FF books have not been included in Wizard books FF ranges.
Deletehow about the Heroquest books (at least 1 and 3, and possibly 2 if you don't have to travel to another world to do it)?
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately Hasbro own the rights to those, so I suspect that they will remain out of print forever. Likewise Knightmare (owned by Anglia TV and Transworld).
DeleteSo if anybody wants to put up pirated PDFs of those books, you'll get no complaint from me ;)
DeleteDoes it mean that they paid you crazy money to convince to to part from the rights??? ;-)
DeleteI never had the rights. In the case of Knightmare, it was a TV show. I was brought in to fix the first novel written by the producer, and ended up doing all the books. As for Heroquest - the guy at Hasbro wanted to fire me (he was a creative director on a par with my dustman) but the editors at Transworld backed me up. I got paid a good salary so they are welcome to the rights.
DeleteDid John Butterfield, David Honigmann and Phillip Parker (along with illustrator, Dan Woods) hold onto their rights to the Cretan Chronicles series? That seems like something that would work pretty well as the basis for some adventuring in Atticala.
ReplyDeleteAnother smart idea! You guys should be doing my job. (Hopefully you'd be better paid.) I never met the authors but I have an inkling they either knew James Wallis or were at school with him. So I'll chase that up as well as Paul Mason's books.
DeleteI disagree, now that I think about it. The Cretan Chronicles were very specific to a world and character. By the time you bought the rights and spent the time hammering that particular column into the dodecagonal hole that is the Fabled Lands setting, you'd be better off in terms of time and money just writing original books.
ReplyDeleteWhich brings me to my next suggestion: write some more original books. You have six full books of Fabled Lands settings. You have at least some notes for the other six. Pick a setting and tell a story that fits there. Then do it again. And again. Et cetera. I know it's harder than re-purposing older material, but it's also the only genuine path forward.
Sure, you can adjust Eye of the Dragon to fit in Fabled Lands (it probably wouldn't be very hard). You could likely change some names, re-write some scenes and otherwise file the serial numbers off of some of your Heroquest and Knightmare books (the latter of which would probably fit in fairly well in Golnir). But at the end of the day, I think your best path is to dig some more creative wells.
My work these days, if it's interactive at all, is stuff like Frankenstein - which sold hundreds of times more than any FL book, but probably with little overlap with traditional gamebook readers. However, I am writing an all-new gamebook app set in Legend, the Dragon Warriors world. It has to be fitted into odd moments of spare time, though, so don't expect that anytime soon!
DeleteI agree with John's disagreeing(!). While the CC books are interesting for their vastly different take on gamebooks at the time (and are particularly impressive if they were indeed written by college-age guys), so much of the mechanics would need to be changed to fit FL. The tone of the books is also very different; I love the second book, but much of it is character-based around court intrigues and relationships; it's a large part of the reason why I enjoy it, but I couldn't see it working for FL. Plus the third book is terrible.
DeleteThe suggestion of using Paul Mason's books is a great one though; he's one of the very few authors able to really develop a compelling world in 400 paragraphs. Just maybe adjust the difficulty levels slightly... :)
game book app set in Legend? can't wait! any hints you'd like to drop? setting, protagonist etc?
DeleteWait - a Land of Legends videogame? Really?
DeleteWOOHOO!
Mike, you're making me want to track down the CC books - the first & second ones, anyone. But in any case it doesn't make a lot of sense to take a series that already works well in quasi-historical ancient Greece and relocate in a Greece-y fantasy setting.
DeleteAs for the Legend app - it's a way off yet, seeing as I am having to design & write the whole thing on my own. I will just say that it's set in Ellesland and the protagonist is defined by choices you make early on.
Cretan Chronicles are very interesting. The first book is fairly straightforward, but with some cool encounters. The Hint system (where you can add 20 to paragraphs in italics) is subtle and well done. Sometimes there is something good to do, sometimes it's a trap.
DeleteThe second book goes into full-on role-playing/political intrigue. The first time I played it I blundered into so many plots and ended up getting saved by Apollo.... it didn't end well...
For my part, I bought the first Keep of the Lich Lord and the re-worked Fabled Lands version. I figure that way I can adapt any other Fighting Fantasy books to Fabled Lands as well.
DeleteAlso, Dave, check your e-mail for a Halloween surprise.
Hello, Dave! It has been far too long since I posted anything, but I still read everything you post!
ReplyDeleteI love the idea of Fabled Lands Quests, as I've been suggestion add-ons for years, and am glad you have adapted Keep of the Lich Lord to the FL system!
The risk was that Fighting Fantasy fans would be irritated or just baffled by the switch to FL, Mike. And indeed, Keep has so far proved to be our least popular reissued gamebook - which surprised me, as I thought the new material and extra sections make it great value for money. I guess that FF fans already own the original and don't want to see a version without the usual FF fantasy tropes.
DeleteKeep of the Lich Lord was only re-released recently, so I'd give it more time to pan out. I don't have any of your rereleased books in any form, but I will purchase them all at once at the end of December!
DeleteHope you like them, Mike. KotLL hasn't had many takers, but the Blood Sword and Way of the Tiger books sold very well right from the outset and are still going strong.
Delete*suggesting
ReplyDeleteI know you're not one for save the world type scenarios, but could a modified Blood Sword series (with lower stakes) happen in Fabled Lands?
ReplyDeleteIronically, a save-the-world scenario would fit better in the high fantasy world of FL than in Legend. But having recently re-released Blood Sword, I don't think anyone wants to pay a second time to see the same material repurposed to a different setting.
DeleteOh, Blood Sword is far too iconic in its own right for conversion to Fabled Lands. Let the two series stand separately.
DeleteShame that Mark and Jamie sold the rights to Sword of the Samurai, though. That could have fitted in nicely on a little island somewhere near Akatsurai...
I agree that Blood Sword wouldn't work in Fabled Lands, but you might be able to repurpose some of the modules/adventure from Dragon Warriors to fit it.
DeleteI think I did a post a while back about the big differences between Legend and Harkuna. Blood Sword apart, I think of Legend as live action and FL as animation.
DeleteI haven't read Sword of the Samurai, but I'm guessing Mark & Jamie based it on a Edo Period Japan? So it could fit Tetsubo without too much of a stretch. The main Japanese elements in FL book 6, though, were from 500 years earlier (and so my reluctant use of the term samurai therein is very anachronistic).
DeletePlenty of the same types of stories can be told in animation and live action. In Kill Bill I, O-Ren's animated origin story fit seamlessly with the rest of the movie.
DeleteConcerning the Keep, I liked it, though there were some extra things I'd have liked to have seen. For the village after you get the Ivory Spear, a notation that you can pay the Blacksmith another 30 Shards to sharpen it to +1 (and/or a note that the Blacksmith cannot affect magical weapons, including the spear).
I expected the gods Iorto and the White Queen to have been changed to (or identified as local aspects of) the Three Fortunes and Lacuna, respectively. Following on that, I noticed a lack of Sanctity rolls as well. You'd have thought that a Priest would have been very useful in this book, but no, not so much.
Finally, can the charm vs the undead be used outside the Keep book and if so, would it work against the Vampire Knight in Cities of Gold and Glory?
Well, Tarantino's movies are all cartoons anyway, lol.
DeleteDon't forget that Sanctity in FL has nothing to do with the sort-of Christian priests in D&D, so won't necessarily have any bearing on undead.
A charm that destroys any undead creature anywhere in Harkuna might be a bit too useful. Best to say that, as the gift of a local deity, it only works locally. But that's just my take on it - house rules may vary.
Well, that's true about Taratino. My main point (which I forgot to write) was that you don't transplant the adventures you re-purpose in unmodified form. You edit the details of their location and "feel" to fit your purposes. I own a copy of the Battlestar Galactica RPG. Due to the lack of adventures for that game, I often repurpose Star Wars RPG modules. Like that.
DeleteThere are multiple occasions in the rest of Fabled Lands where Sanctity is used to drive off or outright destroy undead creatures. My mental fix is that the Lich-lord's power has somehow overriden that ability, much the same way that his magic will prevent the resurrection of those who perish on his island.
I will note that the charm is a little less useful since any one person can only ever use it once. Still, it gives me the chance to keep the Ivory Spear, which will become much, much more useful once it (and a crapload of Shards) go to Molhern's Forge.
BTW, what about the blacksmith? Can he sharpen even magical weapons? Including the Spear on a return trip?
What Paul said about Blood Sword applies even more strongly to Dragon Warriors scenarios. Folks can squeeze 'em into Fabled Lands if they like, but I'd never do it.
DeleteThere's a bigger problem with world-changer adventures like Keep than resurrection. In real FL, if you fail to defeat Mortis then he should conquer the northern continent and that changes everything. But we could only reflect that by writing all-new alternative versions of books 1, 2, 3, and 5 (at least)! So I guess any such standalone adventure is going to call for plenty of disbelief suspension.
I think the blacksmith can just turn a nonmagical weapon into a +1, but for an easier adventure you could interpret it more liberally.
I figure if you're already bringing a +3 weapon or so into this adventure, you've already got it easy enough.
DeleteAs for failure in the adventure, so what if Mortis conquers the northern continent, or even transforms all living this in the Fabled Lands into undead slaves? However you fail in the adventure, it's treated as though you died without a resurrection arrangement, in which case you start over on page one of another FL book (including Keep of the Lich Lord).
Remember that when you do this, everything resets. If your (now dead) character killed Nergal in Book One, that would-be king is alive again so that you new character can kill him (or aid him or ignore him). You are effectively starting over in another Fabled Lands universe, which means all the stuff that occurred in another universe is irrelevent.
Of course. That's what I meant by KotLL forcing a world reset if you fail. If it were a true FL book then you could die, get resurrected, and find the northern continent overrun by undesd armies. But I figure there's a big enough gap with the missing books 7-12, without having to write "King Mortis" versions of everything to date.
DeleteI'd figure that the resurrection text would have the addition "and as you leave the temple/area you are almost immediately set upon and eaten by hordes of ravenous undead. Start over in another Fabled Lands book."
DeleteA question about online booksellers... the links on the FL blog head over to Amazon (dot com). Is that the site you'd prefer readers to buy the books from? Would you recommend any other sites? From the author's perspective, does it make any financial difference?
ReplyDeleteAmazon have been taking a lot of flak for unethical behaviour, lately. I was wondering what the alternatives might be.
As far as our own revenue is concerned, Fabled Lands Publishing makes more from books sold on the Createspace eStore than on Amazon. But let's face it, nobody is going to go to the bother of registering their details with Createspace.
DeleteEthically..? There's a question. I'm not personally up in arms about Amazon's tax avoidance. The purpose of a corporation is to make money for its shareholders, which means that purposely paying more tax than they need to in law would be unethical behaviour on the part of the corporation's officers. If society wants corporations to behave ethically, it must impose financial penalties that discourage unethical behaviour. That's how corporations are supposed to "think".
As for Amazon's near-monopoly - well, there were plenty of opportunities 10 years ago to mount a challenge to that. I even attempted to convince a VC of it myself, but his verdict (in 2000) was that Amazon had already won. They have now! It won't be good for customers in the long run, but what can you do?
Talking of Amazon... if anyone already has the FF edition of Keep of the Lich Lord and doesn't want to buy the FL version, you can read the rules and the new introduction to the adventure via Amazon's "Look Inside" feature. See why I'm ambivalent about them? It's how publishing and bookselling needed to go, I just wish they had some healthy competition.
ReplyDeleteHi Dave, this might be a good opportunity to remind you that you had suggested you would write up a short mini-adventure for characters to escape from hell when they are in book 3 and encounter the 'dragged to hell' roll (head to book 12 with no option if you don't have the book). You mentioned it might be a little xmas present for us (I'm sure a few of us have characters still stuck down there!)
ReplyDeleteArgh... But yes, you're right, I did ask to be reminded. No promises, though. If it doesn't happen this Christmas, jog my memory next year.
DeleteDave,, there is a fantastic series made by Hachette in the golden age about the Prester John the Crusader that is absolutely brillinat (it can be compared with the very best in gamebooks history) and has never been translated in English... please give it a serious thought!
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure what I can do about that. After English, my best language is Latin, and I'm pretty rusty in that. Did you want me to recommend it to friends in UK publishing? You're going to need to give me some hints if so. An author name would help!
DeleteHello Mr Morris! It's been a while since I last wrote tu you... :)
DeleteI wondered if, now that you're going to start a Fabled Lands Quest series, there's a chance to see brand new adventures written for this series, not only re-adaptations of already published titles... I'd really like to read something completely new, and I hope there are many authors eager to be part of the project out there! :)
I was suggesting it as a potential for English translation http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Saga_du_pr%C3%AAtre_Jean
Deletehttp://www.gamebooks.org/show_series.php?name=saga+du+Pr%C3%AAtre+Jean,+La.
It might turn out to be a good Fabled Lands Quest as well, with some adaptation, if you are interested in this at the moment.
It is a shame that English readers never had access to this, as it is great.
Kingfede, there is a very good chance of all-new Fabled Lands material coming up in 2015. I'll have a post with more details later in the month.
DeleteYaztromo, I'm very interested in Prester John - just wish my French was good enough to read this. Given the Crusades setting, it doesn't sound like it should be relocated to the Fabled Lands, though. I'll mention it to the guys at Megara as they could maybe re-release it in French. The problem with an English edition is that a good translation is a lot of work - and you need a writer who is fluent in both languages. But I'll ask Mikael at Megara if he knows anyone. Alternatively, could the author approach Tin Man Games? The higher sales of apps mean more money to pay a translator.
The Saga of Prester John can be adapted without massive interventions to Fabled Lands, as far as I can understand, as the theme of the Crusade is mostly a background story, rather than a influencing factor and there is nothing really peculiar of cristian crusades rather than any other fantasy crusade. Of course, probably this would involve acquiring rights or agreeing with the authors the adaptations.
DeleteIt was written by a team of authors from Hachette publisher in the Eighties and had a great success in France, Italy, Spain and Germany (i.e. everywhere it was translated). A success probably bigger than Fighting Fantasy, just to clarify the scale.
For reasons that I can't understand, it was never translated in English and it could be a great surprise for lots of English speaking gamebooks aficionados.
I mentioned the series to Mikael Louys at Megara and it turns out he's a fan from way back. Whether he'll have time to chase up the rights is another matter. He's kind of busy with the Lone Wolf boardgame, the Orb RPG, Way of the Tiger 7 and a Kickstarter for Fabled Lands next year!
DeleteIt's good news about Fabled Lands... and that you're doing the Kickstarter the "Dave Morris way"... write the book first, then raise the money... with Russ as a stretch goal! Looking forward to it!
DeleteThat's the Megara way - the Dave Morris approach to Kickstarter is to have nothing to do with it! Jamie and I will be consultants, but we're very happy that Mikael Louys and his team are handling all the crowdfundery.
DeleteYes, I stand corrected! Crowdfunding can be an odd thing... :)
DeleteFor a long time I thought you were posting at really odd times of the night (like at half midnight and what not). Nope, for some reason comments on your blog are at GMT - 8! I'm sure White Light is behind it somewhere...
DeleteThere's no conspiracy, James; we just have more followers in the USA than the UK. Admittedly they may not all be on the West Coast.
DeleteHello,just wanted to note something.On section 281 of Fabled Lands Quests:Keep of the Lich Lord,the guard talks about Khul.Do the Fabled Lands exist alongside Titan?
ReplyDeleteI think he meant Kull the Conqueror but he had a bit of phlegm ;-)
DeleteAh,so he meant that his auntie is the queen of all Kull.I totally got it ;-)
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ReplyDeleteIs that anything to do with Badogor the Unspoken?
DeleteI wished that you and Jamie's other ideas had been allowed by the wretched Puffin team as well. I like 'Keep Of The Lich-Lord' as an FF (it surprises me to hear both FF32 AND FF42 desribed as horror tinged FF-both were so god damn boring with less encounters of anything that you'd find in an empty matchbox. Two things on it though.
ReplyDeleteI didn't like the way the Wights in the castle were desribed. They do not eat flesh and were never linked with via Jackson and Livingstone themselves nor the Dungeons & Dragons monster manual. Tha majority of undead beings do not need to eat and therefore have little point in doing so, especially when sucking the life force from a living being is far more potent and worthwhile to them. "Ravening hordes of the undead" you say. Well the only ravening hordes of undead are surely Ghouls, with maybe the odd Draugur here and there, but this is a misprint surely or an oversight. It's bad enough Hollywood pretends that "zombies" are actually zombies-rather than bitey idiot people in their lousy films (all million of them and counting), don't plague it into fantasy fiction where it has no right. There are many many things in the FF world that eat flesh and humans-we don't need every member of the undead to do it too. Demons yes, not undead except Ghouls.
And I wondered why Mortis looks like a Chaos Warrior. Is he a twat of all trades-trying to be a fighting Knight of evil AND a sorcerer now back from the dead. Is he really a Lich? What does he look like with his helmet off?
It's good to see this book in another guise, though I find adaption a little hard sometimes, and wonder how the rules/stats/play will compare with the FF rules I'm used to. Wish you could have made your unaccepted ideas available through Fabled Lands, but as I've barely heard of the series, and now some are back out, I'd be truly interested in looking at them.
Don't get me started on the popular modern notion of zombies!
DeleteIs Mortis really a lich? Well, in the sense that lich means corpse. Beyond that I couldn't say - I'm not even familiar with the D&D interpretation. (I'm partial to liches having grown up in a house with a lich-gate - there's a photo of it somewhere on the Mirabilis blog.)
Wrt wights eating flesh... I'm sure if they do it then it's not for the calories. Like vampires drinking blood, it's just a kind of mimetic magic for what they're really about, which as you say is actually sucking life force.
Ghouls of course originally were a kind of demon, but their association with graveyards has led to them becoming retooled as a variety of undead. I think the best approach is just to figure that all these labels are just stuck on them by ramshackle medieval-level attempts at taxonomy, which may or may not be entirely futile. A wight, after all, just means a living person - when William Morris translated Grettir's Saga using the term barrow wight he was saying, in effect, "barrow dweller" or "barrow man". But, rather like the "were" in werewolf, fantasy writers have perverted the original meaning.
Sorry that doesn't make sense, I meant to put (beginning paragraph two): "Wights shouldn't be described as hungry fro human flesh-they don't eat and were never decribed as such by either Steve or Ian, nor in the D&D world and monster manual. They're cool enough without that silly nonsense and they're not Ghouls, despite being solid too.
ReplyDeleteYou really wouldn't like Dragon Warriors. The characters in that world use these terms pretty interchangeably - though my argument in favour of that is that few of them can read, there are no monster manuals, and science is still at the level of treating plague with rose petal potpourri :-)
Delete