Gamebook store

Monday 13 May 2024

Counting the days

Workshop of the Gods, the concluding instalment of the Vulcanverse saga, is available for pre-order now in full-color hardcover.

6115 sections. 750,000 words. Hundreds of quests, locations, characters, items. An open-world epic with a central storyline that builds across all five books to a world-shattering conclusion.

(For comparison: the Fabled Lands CRPG has 9200 choices and 400,000 words. I'm not sure how many choices Vulcanverse has, but even if it averages only two options per section that's still well over 12,000 options.)

Both the hardcover and b&w paperback editions drop May 19. That's this Sunday. Just thought you'd want to know.

Pre-order links:

26 comments:

  1. Good luck with it, Dave. I've set aside a few days next month to give the whole series a proper run through, having not opened any of the books yet other than The Hammer of the Sun.

    As a (now possibly obligatory) aside, I've been watching Bob Servant after a 'Succession loving' mate recommended it. You've no doubt seen it, but as it's passed me by, I thought I'd mention that it's pretty good.

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    1. First I've heard of it, Andy, but I'll see if I can track it down. At least it's old enough that I might be able to find it on DVD, still my preferred viewing medium.

      You might find that a few days is barely enough to scratch the surface of the Vulcanverse. If it were on vinyl it'd be my All Things Must Pass plus the White Album combined, probably with Jamie's books as the Wings Over America contribution.

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    2. I'll extend the window to a few weeks for Vulcanverse then, Dave. Best not write that on my wife's calendar though.

      I'm with you on the DVD front, although you can still watch Bob Servant on BBC iPlayer. Thankfully, they only did nine episodes.

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    3. It can get a lot worse than that, Andy. I have a friend whose wife forbade him to play any roleplaying games in the whole month of December. We're slaves of the Matriarchy, I tell you.

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  2. Thanks so much, Dave! Very excited about digging up my slew of notes* and maps for this long, long-awaited conclusion.

    (*I realized early on that reading the books alongside a laptop made life much easier. Ha.)

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    1. I'll tell you what, Kevin -- I belatedly realized that writing a series like Vulcanverse would be a lot easier if I'd commented all my text. Time and again I'd go back to a bit I wrote months earlier and be scratching my head as to why I arranged it that way. I had about forty pages of story notes, but nothing beats actual inline comments.

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  3. Wow, that's very soon!
    I can't find it (paperback) on Amazon JP yet, but I assume it'll be released on the 19th too? Super excited to restart this.

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    1. The paperback should be on Amazon in all territories on May 19 -- though it may be tricky to find, as when I search for any Vulcanverse books on Amazon it's the hardcovers that show up first.

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    2. Thanks for clarifying, also, yeah, you need the mature filter off to find it on the search, Amazon JP doesn't like to show off adult stuff. I know how to find when it goes online. I'll buy it day one.

      Also, a suggestion (maybe you already did it, but difficult to find), when you announce the release of the book, or anytime you feel like it, please, make a post and link all of the codewords/page ticks in A4 sized ready to print pages, including the new book. (I have for the previous 4 books).

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    3. There is a really good online Adventure Sheet here (also linked to on our Vulcanverse page that you can find in the sidebar) but you're right, having a list of the page ticks is useful for those who don't want to write in the books themselves. The irony is that the whole point of tickboxes is to save the player from having to check a list of hundreds of entries -- otherwise we could have used codewords instead. Oh well...

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    4. I usually go full analog so I'm not looking at a screen. What I have are these http://www.sparkfurnace.com/wp-content/media/VULCANVERSE-PageTicks-by-John-Jones.pdf
      I don't know if these are official, but, if you could release for Book 5 too, it would be great.

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    5. John Jones (who also did a magnificent job of bug-hunting in these books) has already done a complete PDF of codewords and tickboxes for all five books. You can get that here.

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  4. Will there be a kindle/ebook version at some point?

    I ask because my lifestyle where I travel a lot does not allow me to have real books.

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    1. Hopefully -- though they'll have to wait till I have the time to bookmark and hyperlink all 6000+ sections, so I can't promise anything in the near future. (I guess I could put vanilla PDF versions on DriveThruRPG, but it seems like a bit of a cheat if those don't have hyperlinks?)

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    2. I much prefer to wait until the hyperlinks are there. I am in no hurry, and I think the experience will be much better.

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    3. In an ideal world, the Vulcan Forged company would turn the series into a CRPG to rival Baldur's Gate 3 or The Witcher -- but a hyperlinked Kindle version is probably a shade more likely.

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    4. I think programming the books into a game that track the paragraph, the codewords and your character sheet could be relatively easy. That would be somewhere between a hyperlinked pdf and a computer game.

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    5. I was dreaming of something a little more ambitious, Paul, but I think you're right.

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  5. A lot of great games exist done by very few people, if you are willing to forego good graphics. A genre I really like is the roguelike. These games do not have graphics in a traditional sense, they use ascii characters to represent things. They make it easy for a single person (or a very small group of people) to develop without having the need for an army.

    In the same way, a gamebook can be done by (mostly) a single person with one vision. This is an advantage of scale. It can also make the author explore ambitious settings that cannot be explored by big game studios that really need to make sure the game succeed because of the high expenses.

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    1. True, and I've enjoyed many indie games that have been discussed here, such as Papers Please, This War of Mine, What Remains of Edith Finch, and Return of the Obra Din. And the Fabled Lands CRPG is a beautiful example of a small indie game. But I can't help it, I just like massive triple-A CRPGs like The Witcher 3. I'd settle for a Vulcanverse adaptation in the same vein as Disco Elysium, if that helps.

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    2. I was going to mention the Fabled Lands digital adaptation -- seems like this framework would work for Vulcanverse as well? You wouldn't even need to worry about tactical combat, so it'd be even easier!

      (Also, as far as indie games -- Suzerain is my personal favorite. The pains, the PAINS of governance. No matter what you do, huge swaths of the electorate will despise you. Oy!)

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    3. Thanks for the tip-off, Kevin. I'll suggest Suzerain to Jamie next time he's looking for a game for us to play.

      The biggest obstacle to any form of Vulcanverse CRPG is that there's no market. Fabled Lands already had fans. Vulcanverse on the other hand is completely unknown to gamers. That's why there'd be no mileage in it as an indie game. It would only work if a major publisher got fully behind it and turned it into something spectacular in the CRPG genre -- and then spent the necessary funds to market it.

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  6. Very exciting. I hope Amazon Canada stocks it promptly so I can get it without having to pay import and delivery fees.

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    1. I hope so, Armaan. If it helps, the links should be: hardcover here and paperback here, though the latter won't go live until Sunday May 19.

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  7. Hi Dave, I saw that you give direct link for paperback for amzon.ca do you have the same for the paperback for amzon.it because can't find it in the search ? I saw that the canada link works and it's already online for them =)

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    1. It should be here: https://www.amazon.it/dp/1909905429

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