More than two decades the Serpent King has been out there in the jungle waiting for us to come find him. And now at last the machetes are ready, the insect repellent is packed, and the team is ready to set out. The Kickstarter campaign for The Serpent King's Domain will run through July and, with your help, a new corner of the Fabled Lands will be opened to explorers.
Who's on the expedition? Jamie and I are at the wharf to wave off the intrepid Paul Gresty; he'll be your guide. We're hoping to have Russ Nicholson along as cartographer, and with a cover painting (sorry, I can't keep the metaphor going) by Kevin Jenkins, concept artist on such blockbuster movies as Guardians of the Galaxy, Thor: The Dark World, Edge of Tomorrow, World War Z and others. No promises, we're still negotiating, but hopefully they'll be on board by the time the campaign launches.
This is going to be one of Megara Entertainment's "collector's edition" hardbacks, and the tricky thing about crowdfunding a book like that is that you have to pay for the printing and shipping, leaving not a whole lot to pay for writing, editing, typesetting and art. Of course, all that anybody on Kickstarter really cares about is art (ooh, shiny things) so Megara have come up with an art meter that allows backers to specifically pledge for extras that will largely go towards paying for artwork.
Talking of collector's editions, Megara have The War-Torn Kingdom and Cities of Gold and Glory (Fabled Lands books 1 and 2) for sale in uniform format with the new title. You'll have to do some rooting around on their site to find the books, but if you're willing to venture into the dark interior of Ankon-Konu then a little bit of online store navigation shouldn't present too many challenges.
So, while making sure to keep enough to pledge for The Frankenstein Wars and The Good, the Bad and the Undead, remember that July is the last best hope for Fabled Lands book 7 and spare some shards for a good cause, guv. I'll leave you with some stirring words from Jamie Thomson that, if I wasn't one of the authors, would certainly convert me to being an FL fan:
"The Fabled Lands are, for me, the best game books we ever wrote, a vast, sprawling sandbox world of adventure and exploration with a big streak of dry, wry humour. And all of it done with words. No computers, tablets or iPhones. Just words. It’s a wonderful thing to see it rise again with The Serpent King’s Domain. Hopefully this will be the beginning of the completion of the rest of the series."
Fabled Lands 7... woohoo! After that, will Morris, Thompson and Gresty start work on Half-Life 3? :) Great news, and hope that the Kickstarter goes well. I've got a summer of gamebooks planned, with Way of the Tiger to play through (the new luxury edition where Jamie and Mark throw the dice for you), so this is great news!
ReplyDeleteAguirre: Wrath of God is a cracking film. For exploration buffs, good books are "Exploration Fawcett" about Colonel (not Farrah) Fawcett, and then the amusing "Brazilian Adventure" about the folks who go looking for the Colonel.
I'd happily work on a Aguirre videogame. I guess it really couldn't end well for the player, though.
DeleteAs for Half-Life 3... what have you heard?
I was just being joky Mr Dave... and still have to play Half-Life 3. Perhaps the return of Fabled Lands will lead to Half-Life 3, the return of Atlantis, and Shergar winning the Grand National! Aguirre I think ended up in Trinidad where he is today a bogeyman figure for naughty children!
DeleteI thought so. You got my hopes up there, James. I'd suggest a Half-Life Kickstarter, but past experience suggests that any campaign I back is doomed to fail. Although The Long Dark was an exception.
DeleteYesssssssssssssssssss.
ReplyDeleteExcellent. It would be so good to see it happens. I will start thinking about how much to pledge. Of course, I will start a new character and play through six books again. :)
ReplyDeleteJoe
There are going to be some extras as well as the book itself, Joe, possibly including a PDF book of Russ's prior FL work. The extras feed into Richard S Hetley's cunning idea of an "art meter" whose proceeds will help pay for the cover and interior illustrations. There may also be some cross-promo with The Frankenstein Wars. Interesting times ahead.
Deleteglad it finally come out!! 20 years of waiting since i got the book 1 and 2 in the a4 size format!
ReplyDeleteI dont mind donating for the kickstarter however would it be on ebook or hard copy?
i supp via ebook it would be less costly?
The advantage of an ebook, Jeff, is that all the money pledged goes towards writing, editing and art. The downside is that gamebook readers are not very digitally-minded, as a rule - and fair enough, since an ebook is hardly the ideal format for gamebooks, and a full-on app would cost a lot more to develop. So on balance we decided to offer a full-colour hardcover, which I imagine will be priced around $50, with optional extras like the PDF art book for maybe $12. Don't quote me, these are decisions that still have to be taken and they're up to the fellows at Megara Entertainment, not me.
Delete"This is going to be one of Megara Entertainment's "collector's edition" hardbacks, and the tricky thing about crowdfunding a book like that is that you have to pay for the printing and shipping, leaving not a whole lot to pay for writing, editing, typesetting and art."
ReplyDeleteThen why release it that way? Why not have it in the same format as the original books, or even a standard paperback? With a lower price point, you'll sell a lot more. And it seems rather silly to label the very first printing of any title a "collector's edition"- kind of like releasing a new movie and labeling it "the director's cut".
Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. To be honest, I'm tired of hearing about "collector's editions" which seem to consist of nothing more than a massive increase in price. Even as a massive fan of the FL books - I was gutted when the series got cancelled - I find myself very reluctant to part with around £30 for a collector's edition. Releasing a paperback edition and none of this "collector's edition" nonsense would drop the price to less than a third of that.
DeleteThat's not really true David. Having worked with a number of printers gathering quotes for my recent successfully kickstarted gamebook Westward Dystopia, I have found that in general a decent sized hardcover is less than twice the cost of a smaller paperback to manufacture, often as low as a 25% increase. I priced the tier for my HC at a bit less than twice the price of the paperback mostly due to the time it would take for re-formatting. That said, I offered my book in ebook, softcover, and hardcover because choices are good, although I can certainly see why Megara might not want to do that. It's a lot of extra work to format the book multiple times for the same Kickstarter with very little pay-off for the author/publisher,
DeleteNow, I COULD be wrong, but I think what Dave meant in the part that Anonymous quoted was that printing and shipping IN GENERAL is expensive. Selling ebooks leaves much more funds for the things Dave mentioned such as writing, editing, and art. To once again pull from my kickstarter experience, if I had only sold physical books and not sold ebooks as well, I would have essentially made no money whatsoever for writing and formatting the book since printing and shipping are so incredibly expensive.
That's so, Jeffrey. The thinking at Megara is that people will be happier paying $50 (or maybe it's $45) for a colour hardback that will last a lifetime. The Kickstarter page will include a pie chart that explains exactly where the money is going - how much on printing, how much on shipping, how much on paying the writer, and so on.
DeleteI would also prefer a softcover paperback. I have backed all of Megara's KickStarter but always thought more backers would have selected paperbacks if offered. Like the Holdfast K.S.. Regardless of the format I will buy FL7. Any eta for bloodsword 5 reprint or for WOtT 7 in paperback?
ReplyDeleteI agree completely and couldn't have phrased it better myself.
DeleteBloodsword 5 must wait until I have the time to finish typesetting it. Hopefully this summer. As for WOTT 7 - we don't own the rights to that, so you'd have to ask David Walters, who wrote it.
DeleteIs there a direct link to the Kickstarter campaign; I'd like to make a pledge!
ReplyDeleteYou're going to have to wait till the campaign starts in July, Catherine. But I'm glad you're so eager :-)
Delete[Mikael from Megara]
ReplyDeleteJust a few precisions. 1) The FL2 collector's book is still in layout form for some months so not available on our webstore atm - only FL1 collector will be available during the time of the FL7 campaign 2) I'm not against letting Dave and Jamie publish the FL7 book in paperback, but after the FL7 campaign - it's the Kickstarter (hardback, and pdf) which will finance the art for now. So if you support the Kickstarter it will help us pay our artists and then you can have the unlocked art in your paperback version as well, some time after the campaign.
Dear Dave - I imagine there will have been some thought as to the possibility of 'stretch goals' - well, one such goal could be a mini-adventure (say 100 or so paragraphs) which operates as a side quest in the same way that Keep of the Lich Lord. This would of course be written by the original authors - we could then have some fun deciding where such an optional adventure might be placed. Perhaps an entire mini-adventure dedicated to a stronghold, building a vast vessel to sail the oceans or a perilous expedition into the frozen mountains in the north. (This is also a good time to mention that we are waiting for the very small mini-adventure that follows the "sent to hell" option in book 3!)
ReplyDeleteRichard Hetley is planning out a whole bunch of stretch goals. Mainly they're feeding into the "art meter" mentioned above, on the grounds that we would like to have a full colour cover by Kevin Jenkins, who nowadays is a concept artist on movies like Avatar and Edge of Tomorrow, so he's not cheap. And we'd also like to pay Russ to do a lot of illustrations and a colour map of Ankon-Konu. Whether Jamie and I would have the time to write a mini-adventure - well, we're pretty busy, but never say never. The art is the priority, however.
DeleteHypothetically, were I to pay say, $200, I would gladly pay for a book that matches the size, text, layout etc of the original fabled lands books. With the colour maps and starting heroes etc
ReplyDeleteIt might well cost $200, too. Well, more than a regular format hardcover, anyway. That fold-out format was so expensive to produce that it was the main reason Pan Macmillan cancelled the series back in the 1990s - they weren't making enough of a profit after paying the printer.
DeleteFantastic news, sign me up! I get the quibbles on format and cost (hell, I'd chuck in my own about Dave and Jamie not writing it solus) but at the end of it all we'll have a shiny new FL7 to read, so I'm taking the glass half full approach.
ReplyDeleteDon't think of it as making the best of a bad job, Mike. People often ask me and Jamie to continue the FL books, but that was 20 years ago and look what we do now. I write comics and things like my Frankenstein interactive novel, Jamie wins awards with his comedy books for kids. To deliver what FL fans want involves a Heraclitan impossibility in our case, whereas Paul Gresty is writing cutting-edge gamebooks like The Thief of Memories right now. He's your man for this, trust me.
DeleteAlthough it's amazing to think that a twenty years old series could come back from the dead, it would be more interesting if you'd do a Kickstarter for a new gamebook. Like the Frankenstein War game mentioned recently, how about a Fabled Lands style book set in that world. Or a graphic novel gamebook tied in with your Mirabilis world? Way of the Tiger and Fabled Lands were great in their day, but their day was in the 1990s!
ReplyDeleteI'd love to do an FL-style book set in the Mirabilis universe, but that would rely on the overlap between gamebook fans and comics fans. However, please do back the Frankenstein Wars campaign (it only costs $4 to get the complete game, after all) and then I can hopefully do more of my own projects like that.
DeleteHey,
ReplyDeleteSo I haven't waited 20 years, more like 15, but just the possibility that the series will be continued made my birthday!
Premature as it may be, the existing books have come out in several editions, so a discussion about potential extras and a premium edition makes sense.
Why not include then ridiculously small goodies in such formats, like an extra townhouse (stash) or an extra long rope that can be cut in half and used twice. Works for computer games anyways.
Thanks for your efforts, dear writers and contributors!
Andy
On reflection, we could have had a rule that you could bury a stash anywhere in the countryside, but when you came back you had to roll d6, and on a 1 somebody had found it and dug it up.
DeleteGreat news...
ReplyDeleteWill FL7 be available in paperback at a later date? I'm not really interested in a collectors edition hardback - I find paperbacks far easier to read and have 1 to 6 in that format as well.
It's certainly possible we will do a paperback version, Richard, but obviously that can only happen if the Kickstarter campaign hits its target. In fact, it needs to exceed the target as there's no way we could release a paperback without colour cover, regional map, and b&w interior pictures. And I wouldn't expect the paperback version to appear until everybody who pledges to the campaign has received their copy. So all I can advise is to wait and hope that enough people do want the hardcover version. Time will tell.
DeleteThanks Dave - really appreciate the honest and unambiguous reply!
Delete