We'll never reach infinity

You can't keep a secret in the internet age. I'd barely heard the news myself when readers of this blog started asking why the Infinite IF gamebooks had disappeared from the Osprey Adventures site. Weren't we going to team up with Osprey to bring back the Virtual Reality and Way of the Tiger books in digital form? That was the plan last summer. So what happened?

Now it can be told. Fabled Lands LLP won't be partnering with Osprey after all. It was an amicable parting and we wish them huge success with the Osprey Adventures line. Think Nazi occult secrets, zombie hunting guides, Cthulhu investogators' handbooks, dossiers that lift the lid on Area 51 - all coupled with the awesome full-colour artwork you'd expect of any Osprey book.

It became clear that gamebooks didn't really fit in there. Personally I wish we'd realized that before I spent eight months writing tedious Javascript and pasting it tediously into Excel because that's the way the toolset for these books worked. Oh, and it was undocumented. And occasionally the syntax would change. So that was a lot of fun. But it wasn't anybody's fault. Sometimes you get into something - pointing a gun at an archduke, digging a trench in the Somme valley, and the next thing you know it's out of everyone's hands.

When we finally had breathing space to sit back and look at the almost-complete e-gamebooks, that was when we saw they didn't have a natural home alongside either myths and legends or dark Fortean stuff. Had I written all-new gamebooks it might have been different. I wish I had done that, in fact, because the Dark Osprey books in particular are a really cool genre to work in.

The silver lining is that this change of plan means there will be print editions of those books. The Infinite IF series was going to be epub3 only, but now that I have the edited and revised text of the books, it's not too arduous to set them up in paperback on Amazon. Those should be ready in time for Christmas. More news about that in a month.

If you actually prefer digital gamebooks, I have nothing to promise right now, but don't give up hope. Jamie is looking into various other ways to get those versions completed and published. Meanwhile, I'm just happy to swap Javascript for Serif PagePlus (my DTP software of choice) and to set up some covers featuring Jon Hodgson's glorious artwork.

A saga of the hero twins

I've been doodling some sketches for the covers of the Infinite IF books. This one, for Maya heroquest adventure Necklace of Skulls, is going to be painted by my favourite Dragon Warriors artist, Jon Hodgson. Which is really rather exciting, actually.

There will be few interior pictures this time out, so if you want to appreciate the great job Russ Nicholson did in evoking the One World when the book was first published, I recommend snapping up a secondhand copy on Amazon. Or you could wait for Russ to post those illustrations up on his blog, which he plans to do shortly.

I'll sign off with the doubtless du Maurier inspired opening of the book:

Last night you dreamed you saw your brother again. He was walking through a desert, his sandals scuffing up plumes of sooty black sand from the low endless dunes. It seemed you were hurrying to catch him up, but the sand slipped away under your feet and you could make no headway up the slope. You heard your own voice call his name: 'Morning Star!' But, muffled by distance, the words went rolling off the sky unheeded. 

You struggled on. Cresting the dune, you saw your brother standing close by, staring at something in his hands. Your heart thudded with relief as you stumbled through the dream towards him. But even as your hand reached out for his shoulder, a sense of dread was growing like a storm cloud to blot out any joy. You saw the object Morning Star was holding: an obsidian mirror. You leaned forward and gazed at the face of your brother reflected in the dark green glass. 

Your twin brother's face was the face of a skull. 

 

Inkle's digital Sorcery

If you're a longtime gamebook fan then you'll be aware of Steve Jackson's Sorcery series of linked gamebooks with a blend of unusual game mechanics and puzzles set in a world that was part Nepal, part Middle Earth. Tekumel it wasn't, but it was streets ahead of the competition back in the '80s.

I don't know if the Sorcery books ever explicitly connected with the Fighting Fantasy world of Alan, but in the minds of the readers I'm sure it was an easy glide between the two. (And in fact Wizard Books's new edition explicitly places them in the FF series, which clinches it.)

But that was then. It was a time when trees had to die so that we could read. Now dawns the age of backlit glass and pixels, a world in which gamebooks stand blinking like a cosily familiar but hopelessly befuddled elderly relative. So I've been curious to see what Inkle Studios would do with the iPad adaptation of Sorcery.

Inkle, as you may know, supplied the luscious visual design that burnished the iOS version of my Frankenstein interactive novel. The expectation for Sorcery, then, was that we'd see a graphically enhanced port of the books onto iPad. Now that Inkle are unveiling some details, it looks to be much more interesting than that. Sure, there's a lovely drawn 3D map by Mike Schley and dynamic character animation for the combats by Eddie Sharam. But instead of just a gamebook on a tablet, what we're seeing here is an evolution of gamebooks into something new.

On the surface it looks like a top-down CRPG (which is something much more likely to get a few hours of my time than a Fighting Fantasy book) but the truth is more complex and more interesting. You can go back and forth around the world Fabled Lands style, which I don't think was a feature of the original Sorcery books. More importantly, look what they've done with the text. It develops as you go - not in a simple old-style gamebook way, where the text you read depends on whether you take the money or open the box. Oh no. The style of the narrative - the way things are described, the way you speak - is shaped by the way you're playing.

Say you stride boldly into every battle. The system learns that and gives you text that portrays you as fearless. The things you say will be forthright and challenging. It's the original concept of Fable, only here it looks like it might go deeper than the colour of armour you wear over your Union Jack underpants. And the text that is being written aggregates a complete story, right down to the level of having procedurally-generated descriptions of the fights you get into. You could give the end result to a friend and it's the novel of your imaginary life. This is sounding a lot cooler than "roll two dice and add your Skill", isn't it?

The first Sorcery book/game is coming out in May, with the sequel due by the autumn. In my view it's a game changer, and the best hope for traditional "D&D-style" adventure gamebooks to find a niche along CRPGs in the 21st century. However, don't think for a moment that I'm giving up on my forthcoming Infinite IF gamebooks. They have something going for them that FF has never been renowned for: the quality of the writing, the story and the characters. That's why we're releasing them as ebooks, not apps, and have purposely kept them free of animated frills. But more on that next time.

Patience, grasshopper

The mad hunt for bugs in the epub code of the upcoming Infinite IF books has left me with no time for anything else, but hopefully this little taste of a certain famous gamebook series will make up for the dearth of posts.

Those covers, which you'll get to see in all their glory in just a few weeks now, are courtesy of Mikael Louys, sorcerer supreme at Megara Entertainment, and his talented artists Aude Pfister and Mylène Villeneuve. I've been looking at some of the advance material for Megara's Way of the Tiger RPG and it's looking pretty Orb-some.

To anticipate some of the questions about this series:

Will there be print versions?
Osprey are describing the series as "digital only" on their website, but you can bet I'm lobbying strongly for print editions. I don't believe ebook-only is a viable publishing strategy for any books, but most certainly not for something like this. You want something you can collect and keep. Well, I would.

What will the apps run on?
Technically they're not apps, they're fully interactive ebooks, and they'll run on any epub3-compatible e-reading software. Currently that means iBooks, Astri-Bee for Android devices, and Firefox's e-reader plug-in. (If you use that last one, you'll need to switch on Javascript; look for the cog icon at bottom left of the screen.)

What about artwork?
There are a few new filler pieces for the ebooks by Bruce Hogarth, and I'm currently designing covers for the four VR books. (Note to self: hire an artist.) If I get to set up the print books, and if Russ and Leo agree, we'll use their original artwork for those

Are there going to be more Way of the Tiger books?
What's the obsession with Way of the Tiger anyway? Maybe I should read them. If the first two are successful, we'll hopefully go on and do the rest and maybe even continue the series, which fans have told me ends with the hero stuck in a hellish cobweb about to be eaten. I expect Mark Smith had just been watching The Fly on TV or something. "Help meeeee!"

Will the Infinite IF series include any other classic gamebooks?
Fabled Lands LLP owns the rights to Falcon, Golden Dragon, Blood Sword and Duel Master. I can't see how we'd do the last two in this epub3 system - only something like Tin Man's gorgeous apps would do them justice - but Falcon and GD would be easy enough. (Just as long as I don't have to code them. The experience of writing all the Javascript for Frankenstein and four Virtual Reality books over the last seven months has been quite enough, thank you.)

What about all-new gamebooks?
Well, Undeadwood didn't happen. That's a shame, but it doesn't mean we won't try other new titles if the series takes off. Personally I'd like to push the envelope a bit towards the more mature character-driven approach I used in Frankenstein, as zombies and dungeon bashes have zero appeal to me compared to stuff like the Story Mechanics' 39 Steps, but the overall imprint for Infinite IF is called "Osprey Adventures" so I suspect that my own experiments in interactive fiction are more likely to come out elsewhere. Meanwhile, Jamie is going to be fully tied up on Dirk Lloyd and our new kids' series Starship Captain - which is what put the kibosh on Undeadwood. But there's no shortage of excellent gamebook authors out there who we can enlist. Hey, it worked for Jackson and Livingstone.

Infinite possibilities

And this week's Bookseller makes it official: now the outside world (well, the publishing world, anyway) knows that our Infinite IF series is launching in just eight weeks or less under the aegis of the Osprey Adventures imprint. The whole OA line is geared at that overlap between myth, legend, gaming, fantasy and history - and if that doesn't put a full charge in your barysal gun, I don't know what will.

I'm putting final touches to my four books this week, and Jamie is just finishing up on Avenger. While these new ebook editions are substantially unchanged from their earlier paperback incarnations, we are adding extra material. Heart of Ice has a new alternate ending (thanks to Romain Baudry for pointing out the need for that) which gave me the always-welcome opportunity to write another hommage to Blade Runner, and the other VR books also have a bunch of new sections. Once Upon a Time in Arabia even has an all-new prologue to reflect the change in tone and title.

The biggest bonus comes in the Way of the Tiger books, however. Because the ebooks don't feature dice-rolling (which regular readers will know is one of my pet hates in digital media) Jamie is writing all the moves and outcomes for the fights. So instead of a 3 and a 5, you get:

You crouch as if to wrestle with Gorobei who tenses, ready to throw his extra weight against yours, but then you jab unexpectedly towards his midriff - and hit home. Gorobei gasps, winded, but he's tough. He won't give up that easily.

These books are all about the narrative, you see. So despite Jamie's howls of protest, we're keeping him chained to the desk until he's written the flavour text for every single fight.

I could show you some of the colour art, but let's not spoil all the surprises. Let's just say that if Jeremy Clarkson doesn't end up wanting his own Manta car, I'll be very surprised.

Frostbite in the Sahara

I'm right in the throes of testing the digital versions of the first four Infinite IF books, so no time right now for that big post I've been meaning to do on how most videogames get interactive storytelling all wrong (Jurie Horneman has been blogging about that), nor the other one on how I'll adapt Blood Sword for the 21st century. Instead, I've been working up this sketch map for Heart of Ice to serve as a guide for the IF series artist, Bruce Hogarth.

What's wrong with Leo Hartas's original map, you may be asking? Nothing. In fact, as that one is in colour it's what we'll put into the ebook. But Bruce is working up black and white art and maps for the print editions of the books. Hence this sketch of mine, put together with the aid of Google Earth.

In other news: Roxlou Games's mouthwatering game concept Unwritten made its Kickstarter target. Guide your own tribe across the tundra, creating the defining stories of their oral history as you go. Think Cave of Forgotten Dreams meets strategy gaming with a dance and a song by a shaman to help it along. Seriously, this does look like interesting and original interactive storytelling (or story creation, rather) and shows that Kickstarter can actually fund some genuinely 24-carat original concepts.

Here be dragons

Jamie and I have been thinking a lot about maps lately, what with six gamebooks being released in a few months in the Infinite IF series we're publishing with Osprey, and hopefully another couple of dozen after that if they prove popular. We began with the plan of just doing black and white maps, and those are fine for the print books but they're hardly going to excite on a tablet. (I prefer the term slate, but must bow to the common usage, I guess.) Colour will be needed. Lots of it.

Anyway, that's just by way of a preamble. Out of the blue, and completely unconnected with the Infinite IF books, Dragon Warriors player Lee Barklam got in touch to ask about our maps for Tetsubo, the Oriental version of Warhammer that never got published. Lee creates his maps using Profantasy's Campaign Cartographer. (And I might well have to look into that for the Infinite IF series, unless somebody knows of a really good fantasy map artist?) You can see Lee's maps of Legend and of Yamato, the setting for Tetsubo, over on his site The Cobwebbed Forest.

So, I mentioned to Lee that my own Legend campaign is currently set in Crossgate Manor, the sort of disaster-prone fief whose level of violent death would reduce Brother Cadfael to carrying a repeating crossbow. Crossgate is in western Ellesland close to the Albion/Cornumbria border (the red dot on the map). And lo! Lee came back only a day later with this rather super colour version based on my scrappy original sketch below.

Crossgate was the setting for "Silent Night", my Christmas special adventure in December 2011, and I'll run that on the blog next Christmas. In the meantime, here's an overview:

The manor of Crossgate is the largest of three (the others are Moyses and Garrow End) held by the Keppel family from Lord Maldupine, Marquess of Westring, whose lands stretch from the Cornumbrian border to the Vindar Hills.

The Keppel family are originally from central Albion, but took over these lands from the original lords almost a century ago. Many still refer to them as “the new lords”. The last of the old ruling family was Lord Duruth, who was killed 90 years ago.

The priest overseeing the local parishes of Moyses (where he’s based), Crossgate, Garrow End and Torstum (a village in the manor of Sir Eustace of Viridor, a neighbouring lord) is Father Lanarius, a cousin of the Keppel family. The rector of the small church at Crossgate is Father Gules.

Across the Stonestruck Lake is Redfern Abbey, with a mixed (segregated) community of about thirty monks and nuns.

Crossgate is a village of about three score households. The population of 300 comprises 10 manor servants, 40 freemen (including the priest and sexton), 200 villeins and 50 cottars. Notables of Crossgate are:

• Sir Palagius Keppel, “Lord of Crossgate and Moyses”, 29 years old
• Lady Perdita – Sir Pelagius’s wife, 19 years old
• Lady Olivia – Sir Pelagius’s mother, 55 years old
• Ryger – Sir Pelagius’s cousin, a squire, 25
• Ogen – the steward, a little over-familiar in a daft-headed Luna Lovegood way
• Hywel – a blind Cornumbrian bard, about 40
• Rodwulf – the reeve (spokesman for the villeins) huge shock of red hair, burly, intelligent 
• Father Gules – village priest

The votes are in

It looks to me as if Biggles and the Martian Manhunter are thinking about ordering the lobster, but no doubt Falcon fans will explain what's really going on in this picture.

Anyway, we ran a poll to decide how the series should end, and although the response was about on a par with support for a sequel to John Carter, the results are decisive:

57% want to see multiple endings for the final book, and 42% asked for a more upbeat ending. Presumably the other 1% are content to be reduced to the ranks because field agents have more fun.

I think it will be a while before we get around to the Falcon books. There are Blood Sword, Way of the Tiger and a few others to come first, but Jamie and I will take it on board. One nice thing about fully interactive ebooks is that it's very easy to add new sections - I've been putting lots of extra bits into the Virtual Reality series.

Talking of which, here's the mock-up cover for Heart of Ice. I now have this running in iBooks and all it's crying out for is colour art and maps. Those who clamour for print should not panic, however - that version is typeset too, though it won't have the new material that's in the ebook.