More from Fighting Fantasy Fest 5, and this time it's my chat with Gil Jugnot from Le Marteau et l'Enclume. Pay close attention and you'll get a scoop about the 40th anniversary of The Crypt of the Vampire -- but more of that anon.
More from Fighting Fantasy Fest 5, and this time it's my chat with Gil Jugnot from Le Marteau et l'Enclume. Pay close attention and you'll get a scoop about the 40th anniversary of The Crypt of the Vampire -- but more of that anon.
Thanks Dave and Gil to bring news of the new version of The Crypt of the Vampire, or should I say The Vampire's Lair. I think that you are doing the right thing as changing the tone of the book. To be frank, The Crypt of the Vampire is a nice refreshing gamebook, but I feel it doesn't really compare to the high standards you set later with Blood Sword, Heart of Ice, Fabled Lands,... There aren't much lighthearted, funny gamebooks out there, I'm sure it will be a nice addition to the genre.
ReplyDeleteI hope so. I enjoyed revisiting the book and changing it from a dungeon to (metaphorically) a funfair ghost train ride. It should be out in time for Halloween.
DeleteWhat a lovely interview... and you're right, tell Oliver to publish and let people enjoy his works.
ReplyDeleteRevisiting Crypt but in a new way does sound fun. I enjoyed the J H Brennan "Horror Classics" as a kid, which are light-hearted but also a bit gruesome and deadly.
Looking forward to getting back in to Vulcanverse when I get a chance. I need to find ANOTHER box of paints somewhere...
You've hit the nail on the head there, James. The Vampire's Lair is very much in the same tone as Herbie Brennan's books. Maybe it's my Irish side coming out.
DeleteI wish I could convince Oliver to self-publish The Knight of the Fields. It's easily the best fantasy novel I've read in the last ten years. I might be a little biased because Oliver also ran it as a brilliant roleplaying campaign.
There's at least one place in Notus you can find those paints, and several boxes to be picked up in Hades IIRC. Good hunting!
Excellent news! I stumbled on the Notus one and immediately rushed back to Hades... and died. Again. Luckily death is a slap on the wrist unlike Fabled Lands.
DeleteTell Oliver that if he self-publishes he's got at least one reader. I was a big fan of the Elven Crystals. Or tell him it's that OR he has to do TWO Gamebook Series, one with Jamie and one with Mark. Just out of tidiness.
:)
And the advantage of dying in Hades is that it's a lot easier to retrieve your belongings than it is in Notus, where you have to have found the vault between life and death.
DeleteI'll keep up the pressure on Oliver, never fear. Have you read his Lightbringer novels btw?
I haven't! Just bought the first one on Kindle, where confusingly it is described as "The Forging of the Shadows (The Lightbringer Trilogy Book 498)".
DeleteHe HAS been busy, hasn't he! :)
Dying in Notus unticks the wound box, which dying in Hades doesn't, at least not explicitly. So swings and roundabouts!
Book 498?! That's some James Patterson scale shit, that is :-)
Delete[I don't know if it's the right place to write this. Feel free to move it if it fist better elsewhere :)]
ReplyDeleteAnd after three months, playing several hours almost EVERY day (and each time finding new things to do, new paths to explore !), I finally came to the conclusion of the Vulcanverse. I wish my english were better, to express more accurately and enthusiastically what I’d like to say, but I will start with a huge, a tremendous THANK YOU for this experience !
What a trip ! What a ride ! Complex, dizzying, sometimes funny, sometimes frightening, multi-layered, almost always evocative and poetic… So many images and characters now remain in my head : saturnine Galatea, sybillin Polymnia, unforgettable Marsyas and Orphea, many-sided Loutro, miserable Jas (Jeeves ?), bi-polar Pandora and so many others… They often felt like Jack Vance’s characters to me, with their mix of astute wits and fascinating shades.
And so many vivid episods : the banquets in Arcadia, unleashing the Potamegalos, finding (at last !) that goddamned celestial tarbrush, fighting as a skeleton in an arena, descending into Erebos, making Iskandria great again (two times !), the nightmare of the Dales or the Slimeswamp, the boats lodged in mountains or trees, Thanatos’ fist struggling to open a crack in the sky, and dozens of others…
That, to me, is the ultimate experience as a gamebook player. The setting has never be seen elsewhere (fantastic idea to blend mythology in a Matrix-like experience), and the scale of the adventure is beyond imagination. Had I read it when I was a kid, I would have litteraly drowned in it, and that serie would have become a myth in itself !
It still amazes me to think that, after all these hours, there are parts in these books I haven’t found a way to explore. No idea how to open that strange door in the mountains. No idea how to gain the Ooze or Oxen codewords. I saw my « brother » mentionned in entries I shouldn’t have read (hm hm), and I still scratch my head when I think of it. As for the Murmillo, I only saw mentionned in the final battle.
That message is maybe long enough – forgive my english, I could elaborate a lot more in french – but I had to thank you both for this formidable gift !
I often wondered, while reading, what kind of reader it takes to enjoy such a huge piece of work. (Don’t know if I’m clear.) A specific kind of readers, for sure. Maybe an endangered species !...
I would have many questions to ask you - if you don’t mind - but I will start with those two (absolutely unrelated) :
- is freeing Lampedo of any use, eventually ?
- have you read the work of Gene Wolfe ?
Thanks again, from France ! And please carry all my compliments to Jamie either. ;)
Pierre, you have made my day. Your description of the Vulcanverse experience is exactly what I hoped for -- but you are right that there aren't many readers these days who will have the patience to undertake such an epic adventure. More often I hear from readers who say, "Nothing happened for fifteen minutes so I gave up." Perhaps CRPGs have made modern gamebook readers expect instant gratification? Still, I will be content as long as a few, like yourself, get to travel on that far-reaching journey that Jamie and I planned.
DeleteFreeing Lampedo gives some small rewards, the best of which is learning the location of a tunnel that allows you to go direct from Hades to Vulcan City.
Jamie and I are both firm fans of Gene Wolfe's work. (I'm curious -- what gave it away? I don't recall putting any deliberate homages to Wolfe in Vulcanverse, though I'm conscious of him as an underlying influence.)
Please come back with any other questions you may have. I've got unlimited time for any reader dedicated enough to complete the Vulcanverse series.
I didn’t see any direct relation with Wolfe’s books, although the « Soldier » serie is a wonderful way to re-invent Greek mythology too. (And some episodes in Vulcancity reminded me the way gods appear through « Sacred Windows » - basically old televisions – in the Long Sun !)
ReplyDeleteBut my question was linked to what I said in the previous message : while walking on Notus’ sands or Boreas’s paths, I often wondered : « Who could read such a massive piece of work ? Who could I lend these books to ? Who could find this as enjoyable as I do ? And why is it so enjoyable, after all ?? »
You may not know the french comic-serie « Dungeon ». It’s hands down my all-time favorite one : a universe of 55 books (so far), a big-bang of ideas and creativity spanning on several centuries, mixing every genres (some books are hilarious, other can be tragic, heroic or self-reflective), blending hundreds of characters you can see at different stages of their lives – all of this illustrated by the crème of the french cartoonists. (More details here : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeon_(comics) And a sample there: https://www.tcj.com/reviews/dungeon-monstres-vol-4/)
In a interview, Joann Sfar (one of the two authors) once said : « The thing is, readers who enjoy Dungeon are often players. » Whether he meant « roleplayers », I’ll never know. But I heard it in a more general way : the pleasure of connecting things, recognizing a character in the background, understanding why an artefact appears here, comparing two sides of the same episode, finding at last the explanation fort strange phenomenas, etc…
Coming back to Gene Wolfe, it’s true that there’s often a game between him and his reader. What else to expect, from someone who thinks good litterature is one that can be « re-read with incread pleasure » ? He’s the master of unreliable narrators ; some elements of his stories are simply suggested, if not crypted, and you sometimes have to connect many different things to fully understand some parts (cf The Fifth Head Of Cerberus – mythology’s never far !). That’s utterly satisfying for a reader like me. What a joy, to discover The New Sun, The Long Sun and The Short Sun are eventually linked together ! And it can even go further than the pleasure of solving a riddle or finishing a puzzle (the most spectacular exemple being given by the last Short Sun book, which – when you read it again and understand what’s REALLY going on – is tragic and upsetting in many ways…) On an other level, same thing can be said of Proust’s A La Recherche du Temps Perdu : many things to connect, many episodes that can be read on two levels, necessity to read it again when you turn the last page ! But maybe I’m getting carried away of my subject ! ;)
All of these books and comics – and I include Vulcanverse in that family – are what I call « cathedral artwork », demanding and rewarding in similar ways. And while achieving my twelve tasks (did I mention I sometimes miss walking in Arcadia’s paths ?), I told myself : « I have to go to Fabled Land’s blog and talk Dave Morris into Gene Wolfe and Dungeon ! If he doesen’t know them, there’s a great chance he’ll like them ! »
Whoa, that’s a long message ! Thanks for your answers, on the previous message ! I have two more, this time :
1. Can we follow the « brother » storyline if we don’t begin in the book 5 ?
2. Is there a link between Galatea, her scrimshaw hourglass and the murmillos (I never encountered) ??
Thanks again !
I love that term "cathedral artwork" and I know just what you mean. Oliver Johnson (co-author of Blood Sword and Dragon Warriors) and I are fans of Anthony Trollope's Barsetshire novels. One can only talk about how clever the series is to somebody else who has read all six books -- roughly one million words. I'm also reading Zola's Rougon-Macquart series, though those are less interdependent, the connections being looser, so it seems legitimate to read them out of chronological order. I've been thinking of tackling À la recherche du temps perdu, so now that you've mentioned it that ought to go on my to-read list.
DeleteTo take a less highbrow example, when I was at college in the late 1970s I used to collect Shang-Chi comics. My friend Nick Henfrey and I would spread dozens of issues out on the floor and pore over the intricate story threads that Doug Moench, the writer, was developing. Our obsession made no sense to anyone else; we could only discuss our theories about the plot with each other.
Another example: when I outlined my Mirabilis series to the publisher David Fickling, explaining that it would be at least 850 comics pages and a number of associated books, he said, "This is an opera." But your term "cathedral artwork" is still better :-)
It looks as if the first half-dozen Dungeon books are available in English (maybe more) so I will take a look at those.
To answer your questions:
1. The brother storyline is only available to Ares worshippers. It doesn't matter which book you start in.
2. The murmillo is connected to one of the battle standards you might have found in Ostopolis, whereas the scrimshaw hourglass comes into play if you can't escape from Thanatos in the endgame sequence, in which case it leads to two different story threads (one of them quite long and mythic -- no spoilers) depending on the sex of your character.
Thank you again for this moments !! It was very very friendly..! 😊
ReplyDeleteI hope we will have the opportunity to meet again very soon... 😊 (I still have plenty of questions! 😁😁😁😅😇😇😇😇).
OK, but I want a comfy chair next time :-)
DeleteThanks for your answers ! I’ll try to find more about Trollope, it looks really interesting (he’s not very well-known in France, I’m afraid).
ReplyDeleteYou’re totally right regarding Zola : there’s absolutely no need to read the books in chronological order. Characters are only linked by their family tree (and heredity, which is admittedly a big part of Zola’s theory). But, even when the hero appears in different books (which is very rare : 2 times in the serie), each story really stands on its own, and you don’t miss anything if you haven’t read the other one. Which is not a problem ; Zola remains one of my favorite author nonetheless !
But the ultimate crown goes without a doubt to Marcel Proust. I had always been a littérature fan : but when I discovered La Recherche, it was like ten atomic bombs falling on my head. It changed my life, in the full meaning of the word ! I didn’t know books could do things like that. And I’d even say what many Proust readers have said : I didn’t know a writer was ALLOWED to do things like that in a book !! (And I’ve never seen it elsewhere, by the way.)
I’m glad if I lead you to start this unforgettable journey. The beginning (the first part of the first book, « Combray ») may seem difficult or tedious, and you’ll probably wonder where all this is going to. But you can trust me : everything is here for a reason, and when you’ll connect all these stories later, I bet you won’t believe your eyes !
The first hurdle is to pick a translation. I've just ordered the first book in both the 2003 edition (published in the UK as "In Search of Lost Time") and a more recent edition (this time translating the title "Remembrance of Things Past"). When I read The Iliad I used multiple translations in parallel, but with Proust I'm going to pick the translator I like best and then get all their versions.
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