On the subject of starting a story with amnesia, Mantikore Verlag, publishers of the German edition of Fabled Lands, are running a Kickstarter that may be of interest to those of you who like traditional fighting fantasy style gamebooks. Rider of the Black Sun is a 1350-section gamebook and the campaign runs till Guy Fawkes Night. Remember, remember...Even if fantasy adventure gamebooks aren't your bag, don't forget to tune in tomorrow for the regular weekly blog post, in which we'll take another look at the Games Workshop RuneQuest world pack that never was.
And finally, in a completely spurious segue based only on the German connection, here's a video I found absolutely fascinating -- as will anyone who's role-played in a medieval or early modern setting, I bet. Cornelius Berthold at the History Park in Bärnau-Tachov explains how people in the past used to walk.
I'm backing the Black Sun: interested in the structuring as well as the adventure.
ReplyDeleteI've been seeing that 'walking tutorial' everywhere... Strange way to go viral. Applicability of 'toe-heel' vs 'heel-toe' walking style seems hard to embed in fantasy / medieval gaming, though.
'If your character walks in moccasins, sole-less shoes or bare feet, expend 1 stamina point to gain 1 nimbleness for every 10 miles walked...'
You piqued my curiosity, Martin. Do you mean the fact that the adventure is divided up into chapters, or is there some cunning new innovation in gamebook structure going on here?
DeleteI'd assume it's the idea of multiple chapters. I can't really imagine what kind of grand, brilliant innovation there is to be brought to paper and pencil gamesbooks at this late date. Probably that last innovation like that came from you and Jaime with the idea of codewords and tick boxes to give books a more organic "memory" of the changes resulting from the encounters the player has had within the book.
DeleteI suppose I'll find out for myself. I decided to back the Kickstarter after all.
I wrote Frankenstein in chapters back in 2012 and I doubt if I was the first to do that in a gamebook. Back in the late '90s Macmillan discussed bringing back Fabled Lands in a more affordable edition, and one way I proposed doing that was to restructure the books so that you moved your character on the map, which would have numbers to show where to turn to. It just occurred to me that's effectively the print version of what the Sorcery apps did 15 years later.
DeleteI'll probably give this one a miss. I've pretty much hit my Kickstarter limit for the year.
ReplyDelete