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Thursday, 2 September 2021

Hot off the anvil


The first two books in the Vulcanverse series are now out, with two more coming later this year. If you don't know what that means -- well hey, where have you been? (And check out previous posts here and here.)


There will be five books in the series, but they're open world solo roleplaying, which means you can start in any of the first four books and play them in any order. The numbers on the spines are just so you know where to put them on your bookshelf.

The art is by Mattia Simone, who also painted the cover for the Librarsi edition of Heart of Ice.


You'll be seeing more of Mattia's work on our future projects, I hope. Comments are open below if anyone has played Vulcanverse -- and there's a no-prize if you spot the itsy-bitsy deliberate mistake (I hope there's only one) in The Hammer of the Sun

If you want to order the full-colour hardcover editions, any bookstore should be able to do that for you and the details are:
  • The Houses of the Dead  ISBN 978-1-909905-37-5
  • The Hammer of the Sun  ISBN 978-1-909905-38-2
Or you can get the black-&-white paperback editions from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and all the usual places.

hardcover

 
  
Also at Blackwell's UK:
And at Barnes & Noble in the US:
paperback



And by the way you can get copies of the Adventure Sheets (including maps) for the books from the Spark Furnace website: The Houses of the Dead and The Hammer of the Sun.

45 comments:

  1. Can't wait! Can't wait! Can't wait!

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    1. Hopefully you won't have to, Richie. Amazon often say it'll take 10-20 days to deliver, then rock up the following afternoon. Let us know what you think!

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  2. Dave, I had clocked that The Hammer of the Sun was pricier than The Houses of the Dead and was going to crack a joke about that presumably being due to the respective quality of writing. However, I've just gone to order them, and the latter is now pricier than the former, so that would have backfired. This was the colour versions by the way (I'm a sucker for nice artwork). It's now circa £8 more than it was on originally on for. Any clue why that is is? I don't mind so much if it's going in your pocket, but I don't want to feed any global behemoths unnecessarily! Thanks.

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    1. I've no idea what's going on there, Andy, but it might be related to Amazon wanting to put rival companies like Ingram Spark (who print the hardbacks) out of business. Certainly you should only be paying about £18.99 for the hardback of The Houses of the Dead, so my advice would be to tell Amazon to get stuffed and order the books from your local bookshop instead. Or failing that I see Blackwells are offering it for £21.68: https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/THE-HOUSES-OF-THE-DEAD-by-THOMSON-JAMIE/9781909905375

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    2. Thanks for the prompt response, Dave. They'll no doubt be cashing in somehow. I may leave it for a few days to see if it reverts back, if not, do as you suggest. That or bite the bullet and buy the paperbacks instead. Good luck with them. They deserve to sell by the bucket load from the bit that I've seen already.

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    3. I see that Blackwells are now selling the Houses of the Dead hardback for £17.34. Maybe snap it up now, as I doubt if they'll lower the price any further.

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    4. Houses at Blackwells is a bargain, just over £2 more than the paperback from Amazon. Ordered.

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    5. Amazon's markup on the hardbacks is pretty outrageous. They are supposed to be priced at $36.99 (£24.99) for Hammer of the Sun and $25.99 (£18.99) for Houses of the Dead. By shopping around, readers can find them at those prices or cheaper, but Amazon apparently bank on people not bothering to look elsewhere.

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    6. Thanks, Dave, just ordered them off Blackwells. I must admit to being one of those people. After grumbling about it, laziness would have won out and I'd have ordered them via Amazon. Thankfully, I looked back here first. I'll raise a few pints to you next time I'm in the pub. Perhaps if the writing gigs dry up, you could instead turn the blog into a book price comparison website? I'll try and think of a name for you!

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    7. That's a pretty good idea, Andy. I bet if I released an app that did that I'd make a lot more than I ever could by writing books!

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  3. I've got a question. I can currently only afford 1 of The 1st 2 and for Christmas I'll get whichever 1 I don't and Books 3 and 4

    So my question to you Mister Morris is this. In your honest opinion should I get Book 1 1st? or Book 2 1st?

    I you can tell me why without spoiling the book you recommend please do

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    1. That's an interesting question -- and a difficult one. I'm going to say you should get The Hammer of the Sun because it's twice as long as the other book (1706 sections compared to 830) so you'll get twice the adventuring value. Also, in The Hammer of the Sun you get to travel with companions, but you don't get that in The Houses of the Dead as they won't enter Hades.

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    2. Interesting that Hammer of the Sun is twice as long but with only about half as many code words.

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    3. I deliberately limited myself to 25 codewords as checking through a long list can be tedious for the reader. If a condition didn't change the world globally but only locally, I figure a tickbox does the job better.

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  4. I've had a idea for 2 characters that will sadly only work if you do either A Vulcanverse Book 6 or A Vulcanverse RPG and they're both cross-overs. Here they are. What do you think?

    1 idea is that to have Down Among The Deadmen set on the far side of the world but A Millenium or 2 in the past, so add in A Pirate King that's Skaravench's Reincarnation

    The other is to have The Fabled Lands Books set in A Different World in The Same Universe as The Vulcanverse Books and in Vulcanverse when you land the killing blow on Book 5's Main Foe have him invoke A Ancient 1-use Spell

    This will let him appear in Book 9 as a spirit, similiar to Kereep Tlotor you'll fight him in both Spirit Combat and Regular Combat

    But here he wants to possess your body so its Spirit Combat First, if you win A Ally sacrifices his or her body to stop him taking over yours, to defeat the monster and save your friend requires the use of Books 10, 11 and 12

    The final fight with him is in Physical Combat and that's cos similiar to how in Book 7 you use A Xibalban Lantern to draw Kerep Tlotor to you as A Spirit you do the same in reverse

    But in this scenario I'm suggestion you use something to draw him the monster to you in A Physical Form

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    1. The snag there is that the Vulcanverse is not FL LLP's intellectual property, so it can't officially be part of the Fabled Lands universe. The idea behind it is that the Greek gods have faded from memory, becoming weaker, and are now all asleep except for Vulcan, who understands modern technology and has used it to create his own universe. At least, that's my understanding of how it works but there's so much lore that I haven't read it all. Some of it is on their website (https://vv.vulcanforged.com/GameBook ) though I reckon they could do with an editor -- "it's [sic] own landmarks" for example. Ugh.

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    2. Actually, I mentioned this to Jamie and he said he has specifically included characters who connect between the Fabled Lands world and the Vulcanverse. He created the VV so I guess I'm wrong.

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  5. Jamie tells me he's spotted a mistake in The Houses of the Dead. Section 391 currently takes you to 751, but that should read 752. I will now kick myself.

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  6. My books arrived yesterday. I'm looking forward to getting fully into them.

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    1. Hopefully you got a copy that was printed after I corrected 391 in Houses of the Dead (see above) but if not... er, it's a collector's edition.

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  7. I got my books last night, and jumped right into Hammer of the Sun. Having barely scratched the surface, here are a few immediate reactions-

    The copyright page is interesting. (Yes, I'm one of those people). It basically states: "Copyright Dave Morris, except for A, B, and C areas. Those are copyright Jamie Thomson". I've never seen that in a gamebook before. But if Jamie wrote part of HOS, then it's small wonder that his own title is significantly shorter.

    The book makes great use of multiple embedded checkboxes. This is a great way to get a lot of mileage out of the same sections. I have to admit to being a little thrown off, at first, by the "Check this box if you were instructed to in the previous section" directions. (Well, WAS I? I don't THINK so...)

    D'oh! I bit the dust early, so I got to experience character regeneration right away. The good thing about dying early is that you don't have any equipment to lose. At any rate, I really like that feature of the book.

    I chuckled the Crocodile Dundee reference. (In my best Australian accent: "That's not a knife. THAT'S a knife!)

    I played for a couple of hours. In that time, I was killed and regenerated, switched my god allegiance, completed a quest for the temple of Ares, gained a companion, saved some village livestock from a cyclops, and did various sundry exploring. I didn't gain a single codeword, which again means I've barely scratched the surface.

    True exchange with my wife:

    She: "What are those boxes you got in the mail?"
    Me: "My latest gamebook order. I've been looking forward to
    these for a long time!"
    She: (Rolling her eyes) "Well, I guess I won't be seeing you
    for a long time, then.

    Just so. Can't wait to get back into this world and explore the other books too.

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    1. Don't feel too bad about the codewords, Gaetano. There are only 25 in a 1700+ section book, so it could take a while to pick them up. Having a companion should help.

      I should offer a prize for spotting all the movie references!

      I decided I should be quite rigorous about copyright in these books because the setting is being used for an online game/world and you never know how the IP will get passed around from company to company over the next ten or twenty years. If one of the characters I created goes on to make millions of dollars, I wanted to make sure I don't end up in a Kirby/Ditko situation. So all those people you're meeting and places you're visiting in Hammer, I invented 'em!

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  8. I don't know anything about that Vulcanverse stuff but if the two greatest gamebook authors are in a new project and this project is an open world experience like the unparalleled Fabled Lands I just have that instinctive urge to go to Amazon and push that "purchase" button as fast as I can. Can't wait to dive into these books! :D

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    1. Thanks -- I hope you like them. Come back and let me know what you think?

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  9. My Hammer of the Sun has JUST (10 minutes ago) arrived. And Jamie's one is on the way.... :)

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    1. They arrived in the right order, then, James :-)

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    2. I had a dream last night and in it The Royal Mail deliberately made sure that Hammer of The Sun arrived a few days before The Book by Jamie

      The dream showed that that was their way of showing that in their opinion you are a far better author?

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    3. I'll thank the postman next time I see him. Though as I'll be thanking him for a dream he might be a bit puzzled :-)

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  10. Spotted a few mistakes. Sorry. Here's the correct version

    If you can get permission to make it I've had A brilliant idea for A Fabled Lands version of Talismen of Death and I've even thought of A way to justify using A Character that A Players used for a while. What do you think?

    Have the original adventurer fail but before its too late have Orbs God of Time, Dama whose The Patron Goddess of The Shield Maidens of Dama and The All-Father combine with The 3 Gods of The World of The Fabled Lands that cover the same aspects

    With their powers they, only just, send A Hero to Orb and he or she will arrive just before the original adventurer set off on his or her quest

    1 way to spice things up that I think makes sense is to have to have 1 of the more reasonable(?) Evil Gods of each World lend his aide

    1 for example on Orb may be The Patron God of The Monks of The Scarlet Mantis and in The World of The Fabled Lands I think the most likely god is Ebron, and as its in their best interests both gods lend a hand

    After all if The Death God and his Cultists succeed then only the only living beings on Orb will be The Death God's Followers

    This means that stopping it is in the best interests of The Patron God of The Monks of The Scarlet Mantis

    If The Death God and his Followers find a way to use it on The World of The Fabled Lands, and in my opinion A God as smart and as strong as Death is will eventually to pull it off but it'll likely take at least 1 century, then stopping The Death God is also in Ebrons best interests

    If so then that's why even Ebron and his followers are guaranteed to help, after all the enemy of my enemy is my friend

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    1. This does raise a distinction between the gods of Harkuna and the gods of Orb that I hadn't really considered before... on Orb, you have good gods and evil gods; Kwon is good, and Vile is... well, vile. The alignments of the gods of Orb has a much more Dungeons and Dragons feel to it - which is unsurprising, given that the setting grew out of a DnD campaign.

      In Fabled Lands, things aren't so clear. Nagil is the god of death, yes - but in Wheatfields he's also celebrated as the bringer of rebirth, and growth. Sig is the patron god of thieves, but also of lovers, vagabonds and travelling entertainers.

      Even Ebron. Ebron's worshippers - at least, those in FL5 - are often draconian and merciless, but multi-angled Ebron himself isn't necessarily this way. (Who knows - maybe in FL8 we'll see other approaches to the worship of Ebron...)

      So, my feeling is that while the followers of certain gods in Harkuna might have certain tendencies towards benevolence or brutality, this doesn't necessarily come from the deities themselves. Much as you might find in the real world, actually - how many people throughout history have used their faith in a 'loving god' to justify acts of horrific wickedness?

      Really, I suppose I'm thinking that the gods of Harkuna and of Orb - two wholly separate and distinct fictional universes, keep in mind - aren't really a one-to-one match. Would it be worthwhile - and possible - to create an epic universe-on-universe mash-up...?

      ... Well, I propose getting Fabled Lands finished off, first.

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    2. Yes, good point, Paul. There are no evil gods in the FL universe, just evil people -- who might worship any of the gods. And for those who think that death gods must be evil, I'll just point out that Jesus is a death god in one of his major aspects, and like most death gods he's all about the rebirth. Hence being born at the winter solstice, for instance.

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    3. Btw it would be really easy to do a crossover between Way of the Tiger and the Duel Master gamebooks as they are both owned by Jamie Thomson and Mark Smith. In fact, I'm amazed they never thought of doing a ninja fighting contest book in the Duel Master series!

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  11. Hello! The Hammer of the Sun came in the post this week and I've really been enjoying it (though I did get horrendously turned around in the desert!)

    I'm constantly amazed at how much you've managed to do with tickboxes and codewords and titles and companions. I was wondering what you could tell us about the new mechanics you've introduced and what you used them for? I'm especially interested in the sections where you're asked to tick a box only if you were directed to in the Previous paragraph! What's going on there?!

    Thanks for the brilliant adventures and I'm looking forward to many more!

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    1. Sorry about that metagrobolizing desert! You're not the only one to wander there for a while.

      The tickboxes are because I wanted to keep the codewords down to a manageable number, figuring that the player has to check through a list every time a codeword is called, and so errors can occur. With a tickbox, it's right there in front of you.

      The boxes that you just tick when you get to them are filters to record, "Did you already have this encounter once?" So typically the first time you get a detailed description and statement of what needs doing, then if the box is ticked you just need a reminder.

      The boxes that you only tick if specifically told to are effectively local (as opposed to global) logic flags. They work like codewords to record if you've done something that changes what you will experience the next time you visit the location. I could have used codewords instead, but if the change isn't going to make a global difference to the world I would use a box instead to keep that codeword list to a reasonable size.

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    2. Not to worry, it gave me a real sense of mastership once I got the hang of navigating it! Very rewarding.

      That's interesting! I'd worked out the first type but the second type are so clever! When I'm bounced from one section with a tick box to another with a tick box to another with an event, I'm so aware I'm witnessing something very clever that I cannot comprehend without taking the book apart page by page.

      It's so interesting about these kinds of systems in gamebooks and how authors balance their complexity against the chance of human error. I've been thinking recently about how codewords could be given with associated numbers which would be modified by the text ("if you have the codeword BAT-xx with a number less than 120, replace it with BAT-120") to track things like your reputation. That way, when it's time for the chickens to come home to roost, you can tell the reader to go to the reference for BAT and they'll be sent to one of several paragraphs depending on things that have happened previously.

      I'm not sure how feasible or useful it'd actually be but I think it's so great that after all these years, people are still coming up with more tools to make gamebooks more complex and immersive! Wow!

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    3. Hmm... nice idea there. I might swipe it for the print edition of my Frankenstein gamebook, with your permission, as I want to track variables like Alienation and Trust without showing the reader what's going on under the hood. Using codewords instead of stats would do the job.

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    4. Btw my favourite innovation in The Hammer of the Sun is the Current Location feature, which allows me to have encounters like the Amazons or Eros happen in different places around the world. But I'm always mindful of a programmer we worked with at Eidos who said, "I'm just amazed you even try to do with paper and ink what can be handled so much better and easier in code."

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    5. Absolutely, permission freely given! I've started working on a little project where I'm trying to come up with as many useful tools for gamebooks as I can. Even if some of them are strange and specific, I figure if I publish the list online where people can pull ideas from it then perhaps it'll encourage more people to give gamebook writing a try.

      That feature is so good! It's the perfect way of making the world more responsive without bloating the book.

      They're right! But there are strange differences like section limits and readers being able to handle complexity! Though I'm sure there are also (yet undiscovered) tools which gamebooks can do and code cannot. I have no idea what those tools will be but surely they must exist, right? Human brains are so amazing at things like pattern recognition, there must be ways to lean on that innate skill to create powerful systems.

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    6. The bit I like most is coming up with new flowchart tools, actually. My dad designed logic circuits for elevators, along with other control mechanisms, so it strikes me that I'm kind of following in a family tradition here.

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    7. Since your father designed logic circuits for elevators, along with other control mechanisms and you are clearly highly intelligent I'm assuming you got your brains from your father

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    8. Either him or my mother. Or both!

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    9. Oh, that's lovely. It's so interesting how family skills end up transferring across very different disciplines in interesting ways. Elevators to gamebooks, it's patterns of logic.

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    10. As far as I'm aware theirs no pattern of logic involving Elevators to Gamebooks, but since I don't mind being proven wrong can you explain the pattern of logic involving Elevators to Gamebooks?

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    11. I've just realized that in the post I made on The 7th I made a mistake. Sorry

      The mistake is that I meant to say that you are clearly very highly intelligent but by mistake I only(?) said that you are clearly highly intelligent. Again I say sorry

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