A previous post discussed whether to keep Blood Sword's very complex rules or to go for something a little bit easier. The current thinking is to start off with a "classic edition" using the original text and rules complete with tactical maps. That's the version the diehard fans will want. I can always revise it as a rules-lite edition later.
Fabled Lands LLP will start by releasing the classic edition in paperback, with the first two books, The Battlepits of Krarth and The Kingdom of Wyrd, appearing this summer. Personally I think the full tactical rules are better suited for an app version than print. In an app the tactical stuff would work brilliantly and require no work by the reader; something a bit like Warhammer Quest. But as the apps would necessarily prune the text down (those books are like thumping great GoT novels) we're going to publish the print version so that you can have both.
The hardcore collectors among you will be asking when the hardback edition is coming. Well, it's all just speculative right now, but probably this time next year. It all depends on Megara Entertainment's Kickstarter campaign for the Way of the Tiger books. Given the success of that, maybe we should try the same with Blood Sword's hardback edition.. Or maybe the Kickstarter should be to get the app launched, as that's going to take a little bit more oomph than most gamebook engines have going for them at the moment.
While you're waiting, here are a couple of images from the fourth book in the series, Doomwalk - which can be yours right now if you have $175 handy. The map is by Geoff Wingate, who I tapped for these books after seeing the fine cartographic work he was doing for Paul Cockburn in Imagine. The drawing of the marketplace storyteller is by Russ - as if you
needed telling. And if you want to see an overflowing treasure house of
great Russ drawings, hie yourself over to his blog this minute, for he generously posts collections of his outstanding fantasy and SF work, both old and new. The interesting thing about this one is the Vulcan (or Romulan?) in the audience there at top right. (I don't think I ever noticed that before, and I've been looking at this picture for 27 years!) I can't wait to see what these classic images look like in glorious color.