Kickstarter, you say?
Not run by Fabled Lands Publishing but by our friends at Megara Entertainment. The current plan there is to schedule the campaign for next autumn. So if that works out you could be holding a hardback of FL7 by early 2016.
A hardback?
Fabled Lands Publishing will follow up with a black-and-white paperback edition, but what Kickstarter backers will get is Megara's deluxe full-colour hardcover version. If you've seen the Way of the Tiger books or The Thief of Memories, you'll know that's going to be a really nice collector's item.
Who's writing it?
The lead writer will be Paul Gresty, but there's a possibility that Jamie and I will contribute fifty sections or so. You're in safe hands with Paul. The quality of his writing speaks for itself, and he knows more about the Fabled Lands universe than I do.
Will Russ Nicholson be doing the artwork?
You bet. Jamie and I are are making that a condition of the contract, and Mikael Louys at Megara was very happy to agree. Everyone knows that the Fabled Lands can't exist without Russ's vision. He's the Ditko to my and Jamie's Lee. The more the Kickstarter campaign raises, the more illustrations Megara will be able to pay for.
What about the cover?
I'd like to say we'll get Kevin Jenkins, but he's insanely busy at Framestore working on multi-million-dollar movies so it's unlikely he's going to have the time. But I'm sure Megara will find an artist very nearly as good.
But didn't you say Kickstarter wouldn't work for print books?
Not for the FL paperbacks. The money raised has to cover writing, editing, typesetting, and artwork. Luckily the margin on collector's edition hardbacks can be set a little higher, making those viable - although how much artwork there can be will depend on hitting stretch goals.
And will it have -- ?
Don't ask me. Paul Gresty is in charge of this thing. Megara will reveal all when the time is ripe.
But I was going to ask about Lauria.
Oh, okay. Even if she doesn't show up in book 7, you probably haven't seen the last of her.
Main picture by TyphonArt and reproduced here under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No-Derivative-Works Licence 3.0 (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)
That is rad.
ReplyDeleteI shall rent an apartment in Smogmaw and wait it out :-)
Been always meaning to suggest this: how bout plug-in chapters? That way there'd be - in theory - a controllable, steady flow of money. Could work anyways.
Cheers Andy
A steady, controllable flow of money of about a fiver a month, lol.
DeleteWhat would make me *more* excited than the appearance of Fabled Lands 7 (well, apart from the obvious: FL8–12)? Tolkien properly completing The Silmarillion, I think; but that’s never going to happen, so, the continuation of the Fabled Lands series is as good as it gets. I’ve been waiting for FL7 for 18 years! I also feel a little more justified now in splashing out recently on the Collector’s Edition of FL1 from Megara, as I guess the format will match. Anyway, it sounds like I’d better start saving up those pennies.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if Megara has any plans to do matching editions of books 2-6, but at some future point we'll hopefully issue a b&w paperback version of FL7 too. But of course that only happens if the Kickstarter succeeds.
DeleteI asked the same question about hardback 2-6 and I think they are committed to book 2.. but no more at the moment
DeleteI would pay full price (hell even hard back price) for a DAT file for FLAPP for book 7!
This is most excellent news!
ReplyDeleteWow! I had nearly given up hope! Such fantastic news! Here's to hoping that the kickstarter will be successful!
ReplyDeleteGah! Now I just need a character that survives long enough to find out who the hell Lauria is.
ReplyDeleteSeek out the excellent Pace's Journal, Erik. It's online somewhere. The perfect introduction to Lauria.
DeleteOh my God. That's mine. I totally forgot I'd ever written that, let alone that I'd uploaded it to the yahoo group! I can't believe you actually read it! I definitely didn't intend for it to be widely disseminated. Embarrassing.
DeleteI'll admit it did make me smile a few times, but there's also a good number of jokes in there plagiarised from Pratchett and the Simpsons. I guess I had a lot of time on my hands as a teenager...
Jamie and I both have pretty teenage senses of humour (have you read the Dirk Lloyd books?) and I can tell you that we love it!
DeleteHaha, well I'm glad you enjoyed it. I'm pretty sure I scribbled out another two, although if they were never uploaded to yahoo they're gone forever now.
DeleteI think part of it was trying to thread together the various major adventures into a single life. So, for example, after leaving the university he might seek out further tutelage under Estragon, which naturally leads to doing quests for Ravayne, including taking on the Reavers and general Violet Ocean gallivanting. Ravayne also leads to attempting to contact Nergan and all that entails, plus going west to spy on the Uttakin (given that a militaristic Sokara and strong Uttaku might make Golnir nervous). That involves all the quests for the Uttakin, leading up to the king's desire for a tatsu pearl, which leads to the player becoming acquainted with Akatsurai and thus suggesting to Ravayne that they make diplomatic contact.
Also I was intrigued by weather and seasons. Time sort of stands still in the gamebooks, and I grew up in a part of Australia where there's very little seasonal change. I think it was Dragon Warriors that gave me the notion that one would want somewhere to "hole up" for winter (or snowbird it down to the Violet Ocean.) I notice I had a very quaint idea that snow settles in November or December and remains a static part of the landscape until it melts in spring!
I should add that I'm of course delighted 7 is finally seeing the light of day! Although I'd be more excited if you were writing it, and also (because I'm lazy) if it could be integrated into Flapp.
DeleteThat's one of the reasons I enjoyed Pace's Journal - it's exactly what FL was designed to do, ie to serve as a complete RPG world for players to live out their own adventuring lives. And it's a very funny take on those familiar events, too - we both enjoyed seeing our blueprint for dozens of characters and events take shape through the eyes of a player-character.
DeletePaul Gresty will do an FL7 that is more like the FL7 everybody wants to see, believe me. But I agree I'd rather play it as an app. Dice, paper, pencils... isn't this 2014?
Totally. I mean, I'll buy the book, but would love for whoever made Flapp to integrate it as well (not to mention the Lich-Lord type add-ons.)
DeleteReading that journal again reminded me of another story I wrote last year, a piece of comedy/fantasy flash fiction which was almost definitely inspired by Fabled Lands - namely the fact that sometimes, no matter how many adventures you've had, you're number's up.
http://www.schlockmagazine.net/2013/10/26/the-shipwreck-of-andalus-the-hero/
Lol - I hope I never killed a player-character quite so ruthlessly as that, mind you.
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ReplyDeleteWelcome news! The post I've been waiting for since I first started following your blog :) after all this time it's hard to believe, almost too good to be true. A part of me wishes it would be released in the same format as either the originals or the newly released copies of 1-6 but that's just the OCD in me talking, I can overlook it if it means really getting FL7.
DeleteFantastic news! Somehow I feel as though we've collected ground Dave & Jamie down with Kickstarter, but I'm quite happy about that now. :) Now we all need to get behind the campaign to ensure books 8-12 follow...
ReplyDeleteDave, while I see what you've said around authorship, presumably Paul will be writing based off the notes you kept for the series originally (ie. rather than taking it in his own direction)? With no disrespect to Paul, I'm sure that's what all of us here would hope to see.
They aren't copious notes, Mike. Naturally Paul will be working from the history & mythos we created, and adding to that his own considerable creative chops. Think of it like RTD rebooting Dr Who after a gap of about the same time. Much as I loved the old Robert Holmes episodes, for something like that to come back fresh and strong it needs a new approach. Also bear in mind that the kind of things Jamie and I write these days (Dark Lord, Wrong Side of the Galaxy, Mirabilis, Frankenstein) don't have much appeal to most FL readers. I'm reminded of the comparison I drew with Alan Garner's book Boneland:
Deletehttp://fabledlands.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/surely-you-jest.html?showComment=1392231060079#c674691588848878098
Well as long as you're the Graeme Harper to Robert Holmes' Caves of Androzani Dave, I'm fine with that. :)
DeleteSo, like a romantic comedy, finally, the Will They, Won't They? relationship between Fabled Lands and Kickstarter ends with them finally getting together in front of everyone to a large round of applause. Congratulations! Looking forward to the baby from this relationship in the form of book 7. I'm going to stop with this analogy now. I don't know how far I can take it.
ReplyDeleteI have to admit, I still don't like Kickstarter myself. I think it encourages people to back the boringly familiar rather than the interestingly cutting-edge. But if people are happy with it, just as they are happy with US and UK democratic systems, then who am I to say the whole thing seems fatally flawed? At any rate, it's Megara who are running this KS campaign, so my own moral and aesthetic qualms make no difference.
DeleteThis is great Dave. Finally my childhood dream is coming true =D
ReplyDeleteMy childhood dream will come true when we make contact with an alien civilization. No wait, maybe I mean cloning dinosaurs. Or was it greater-than-human AI? Or me getting an Iron Man suit for Christmas..? But then there's the hope they'll find the unwiped tapes of "Power of the Daleks"...
DeleteToo many dreams, that's the trouble!
I know I'm a little late here, but this is great news! I only got into Fabled Lands relatively recently thanks to the reprints, and having tried the first book out for a while, I've started to realize just how unfortunate it was that only half of the originally planned books were published. This potential Kickstarter is still most of a year away, but I'll try to watch for it. I hope that there will be some relatively low levels of support, and I suspect there will be. Honestly, I'd prefer a paperback of Book 7 to match the reprints of 1-6 I already own, but that's dependent on the hardcover getting funded, so I'll probably want to support the Kickstarter. If this new Book 7 goes well, will there be a chance of getting Books 8-12 written and published as well? :)
ReplyDeleteJamie and I are braced for the law of diminishing returns to kick in quite fast, James, so that even if book 7 and maybe book 8 get funded, we're not counting on backers sticking around till book 12.
DeleteHowever... one way we might be able to get the whole series funded is if we can attract new players. If the only backers are people who already heard about Fabled Lands, it's going to have a limited future because there aren't many of them. But if we can pick up a bunch of new players who start with The Serpent King's Domain - then maybe, just maybe...
Thanks for the reply. Those are good points about diminishing returns and how gaining new players would help. Hopefully enough existing fans will stick around to help with the funding of future books and enough newer fans will join in that getting the previously unpublished books published won't end too quickly. I'm relatively new to Fabled Lands but not gamebooks in general, so I don't know if you'd count me as a new player or not. Maybe I'm an in-between case. I've only been working on book 1, but knowing that there was supposed to be 12 books and only 6 were published before, I do hope that more can be produced.
DeleteSince I'm not that familiar with the Fabled Lands series, how many of books 7-12 are accessible from books 1-6? If some of the second half books are not reachable from the first half books, you might be able to skip them and still end up with what's basically a "complete" series where things are wrapped up more neatly than I'm guessing they are right now. Of course, I'm sure that would involve extra work and it might be tricky to do, but it could be something to think about.
You'd definitely fall into the category of "new convert", James. I don't envisage the FL Kickstarter attracting anybody who has never played gamebooks before, but I hope it will appeal to a lot of people who have played gamebooks but never tried Fabled Lands. Just like banks, those are the customers that matter most to us.
DeleteThere's not really any "wrapping up" to be done in books 7-12 because there's no principal storyline in FL. More books just mean a bigger world with more quests. At a guess there might be a couple of dozen places in books 1-6 where the lack of books 7-12 means you have to turn back. That's why I don't believe that fans will really demand six more books, and rather than doing book 7, I would prefer to have done a single new volume tying up all the quests and incomplete links.
Yes, as I've been playing book 1, I've started to realize how non-linear things are here. It does seem like you can explore the Fabled Lands as desired, without having to follow what's essentially one major path from start to finish (like many other gamebooks I've played seem to have). By "wrapped up", I was thinking of something like you said: not so much finishing a story, since it is sort of open-world exploration here, but like somehow minimizing the turn-backs from not having later books, ensuring quests can be completed in some way if they were supposed to go to places in later books that remain unpublished, and the like. If that sort of tying up could be done with one new volume, I think that's an option worth considering. It sounds like that would be a suitable way to conclude the series.
DeleteHi everyone
ReplyDeleteBeen holding on to my Fabled Land book which is getting quite dog-eared since 1996! Want to relive my childhood by buying a whole set of game books - Fabled Lands and Lone Wolf were my favorites as a child.
I read there is a kickstarter campaign to get the other books going. Is there a link for this?
Ken
Not yet, Ken. Keep watching the blog and when Megara Entertainment announce the Kickstarter I'll be sure to provide a link.
DeleteHere's the link to the Megara Kickstarter project for The Serpent King's Domain: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/57119387/fabled-lands-the-serpent-kings-domain
ReplyDelete