The Vulcanverse is almost complete

OK, that took a little longer than I thought. Finishing the Vulcanverse gamebook series, I mean. I expected to tie up the saga last summer, but I didn't reckon on how complex it would be to pull together the threads of hundreds of quests spanning almost three-quarters of a million words and over 6000 sections.

But the finish line is in sight at last. You see me there with the typeset proof copy of Workshop of the Gods. I have checked all the logic (with the help of John Jones, without whom this Gordian knot would never have been cut) and now I just have to sort out any typos and the book will be ready to go on sale.

I think this might be the first open world gamebook series ever to be completed. (Eagle-eyed readers will correct me if I'm wrong.) Now if anyone has $100 million spare, I'll make the movie.

His dark dominions

Modern astronomy has put paid to the notion that heaven and hell are anywhere out there, relegating the abodes of the immortals and the dead to another plane of reality that's inaccessible from our universe by natural means, if not entirely imaginary. In older and simpler times it was still conceivable that you might climb a mountain and find the gods, and that on the far bank of a dark and sluggish river lay the dwelling place of those who no longer belonged among the living.

Thus it is in the Vulcanverse, where Hades's realm is a physical location. There are things there that do not sleep. Companions may desert you at the gates. Food in your backpack will rot and flowers wither. Even so one can simply walk into the land of death, a region that Homer tells us is "so dim, so dark, so loathsome; abhorr’d by men and dreadful even to the gods."

But where there is danger there are great prizes to be won, and glory awaits those courageous enough to venture among those "mouldy mansions so ghastly grim that even the gods shudder to think of them." So be sure to have the Hades gazetteer to hand (to be found here and here). And another resource that will be useful to explorers of the Vulcanverse is this list of tickboxes for books 1-4 so you don't have to mar your copies. (Thanks to John Jones for that.)

The Vulcanverse books are available on Amazon and from all good bookstores.

Theme tune

John Whitbourn remarked to me not so long ago that it was a pity we had to drop the comments on this blog for a while, because without them a spark had gone. I know exactly what he means. One of the main reasons I was a Marvel rather than DC fan was the sense of community that Stan Lee brought to the former, and a big part of that came from the lively exchanges on the letters pages.

But even while comments here were shut down I was still getting some feedback -- some of it bubbling up out of the moronic inferno of social media, and other communications (much more civilized) in real life, in emails, and on my Patreon page. John Jones, gamebook expert, valued consigliere and frequent correspondent, made an interesting point about themes in books and roleplaying games. He was talking about how White Wolf's World of Darkness used settings to convey themes and moods, for example Detroit in the '90s, with its theme of decayed grandeur and loneliness. "Detroit," John went on to explain, "was a city built for two million that at that time had 400,000 people or so living in it."

We discussed the themes of the Vulcanverse books, and John made some interesting observations:

"The Houses of the Dead is a little rough because it was the first book, but even there I can see a theme/mood of indifference. Charon knows the living aren't supposed to be in Hades, but the gods are asleep, so what does it matter? The philosophers debate endlessly at their foodless dinner until your character provides the picnic hamper. One of the Fates will give your character a favour for... a honey cake, because why not? 

 
"The Hammer of the Sun's general theme/mood seems to be withering. Without the waters of the rivers, Iskandria is little more than a largish village. The Amazons are basically a largish bandit gang. Even the Sphinxes of the pyramids mostly just slumber in the heat, too weakened or indifferent to guard their homes, for the most part. Heck, Loutro, who knows the rituals of Tethys, will only accompany the character, not actually do the rituals himself.

 
"The Wild Woods' theme seems to be ruin, whether through specific actions (suppressing the rivers) or just general neglect. The bridge-nets for the catapult travel system are in disrepair. Fort Blackgate is a ruin, home to a vile giant. The Summer Palace, home of a powerless king, is in bad shape. Even the Great Green Ones are slowly dying, just like the child of the truffle hunter who is unwittingly killing them.

"The Pillars of the Sky's theme seems to be isolation. One of the few surviving minotaurs roams his labyrinth alone. The bosgyns live away from their men. Stuck in their Great Sinkhole city the Gargareans dwell on their own perceived superiority, which allows them to brutally mistreat their captives and attack others as lesser beings. Even Boreas, the north wind himself, is isolated and trapped in a frozen moment of time by the Uroboros Ring."

I like thinking about things like this, and John and I got to talking about the fifth book in the series, Workshop of the Gods. The theme there would be secrets – the hidden social traps, the societies and gangs, scheming individuals weaving plans, and the ultimate secret being: what’s behind the curtain?

Well, that's my notion of it, anyway. The actual answer might turn out to be be completely different from that. The mood/tone is yet another question. I’m not sure how well my and Jamie's styles mesh these days, and would readers find that jarring if we each wrote half a book? The join might show in both style and theme. Every memorable IP in books, comics, TV, games, you name it, has a unifying theme that is the soul of the story, whether planned or otherwise. Take a look at your own favourites. Even if you haven't consciously dug down into the themes before, you'll probably find they've influenced you profoundly all the same.

Confounding expectations

This is my favourite Vulcanverse gamebook cover and the book doesn’t even exist yet. This is just a mock-up made using a thumbnail sketch by our artist, Mattia Simone.

Why do I like it? Partly because anyone who thinks the Vulcanverse is just a retread of Greek myth (yeah, I’d be yawning too) is going to do a double take when they see this. It doesn’t look like a classical Greek city? No, it looks a million times more exciting than that. Marble colonnades and hypostyle halls evoke the slap of sandals on a sound stage, the unconvincing clash of prop swords wielded by bad actors. Whereas Mattia's cover looks like the set of an MCU blockbuster. That could be Ronan the Accuser in front of the core of the Supreme Intelligence. It’s an image that promises nonstop excitement.

And it’s absolutely right that the fifth book should upend expectations. The Vulcanverse isn’t the world of Greek myth. It’s a Matrix-style virtual universe created by the god Vulcan (well, Hephaistos) using his hyper-accelerated development of today’s information technology. Go behind the curtain and you won’t find oxen turning wheels and steam-powered colossi from the old legends – you will find something startling and amazing and all-new. Something that coruscates with Kirby krackle, that whips the rug out from under you, that takes your breath away and blows your mind for good measure. This is not some lame old 1980s stop-motion movie with a bleeping owl. It’s the American Gods or Anansi Boys of Greek myth, the reboot that brings it up to date at warp speed. And that’s why Mattia’s cover is so perfect. It says: this is not your father's Greek mythology.

While we’re talking about the Vulcanverse books, eagle-eyed gamer Teófilo Hurtardo has pointed out some sloppy syntax in the second one, The Hammer of the Sun. If you get yourself killed, your god arranges to resurrect you and the text says:

‘If you were wounded, untick that box on your Adventure Sheet, but add 1 to your total scars because none returns from the land of death without being marked.’

What I meant there was that everybody coming back to life gets a scar, regardless of whether or not you were wounded when you died. But Teófilo rightly pointed out that’s not what I said. It might just about pass in everyday conversation, but not in a book where the precise logical syntax matters.

So what it should say is:

‘Add 1 to your total scars and, if you were wounded, untick that box on your Adventure Sheet.’

I’ll correct it in future editions. And this is a good moment to thank John Jones, who generously cast his diligent eye over the Vulcanverse books and caught a number of critical errors in The Wild Woods, some of which spread back in time to book one, The Houses of the Dead. For example, there's the ubiquitous demon Wolfshadow, who was supposed to be killed (in book one) based on advice given to you in book three by King Lykaon -- except that advice and the associated codeword had been missed out. Eek. John suggested a good way to fit the advice into the long spiel that King Lykaon actually delivers in book three:

'Despite my title, there is one wolf I do not rule...' leading into telling you about Wolfshadow and, 'Hey, take one of these arrows of Artemis to King Midas's tomb in Hades to maybe get gold-plated so you can kill that nasty thing why don't you? Oh, and don't forget to fetch along an actual bow, either.'

Unfortunately I'd already done the page layout, so I couldn't make use of John's elegant suggestion and we have to make do with Lykaon just mentioning Wolfshadow in passing. But at least you get the codeword so the book isn't actually broken.

John also took us to task, and rightly so, over the random permadeath the player suffers if they stray into the Slimeswamp without any vinegar. The only possible way to find out that you need vinegar there is to lose a character and have to start all over again. Not a lot of fun if you've just spent hours questing around the other books. John proposes this fix, which we fully endorse. Paste it into your copy of book one if you wish:

I'm barely scratching the surface of all the help John has given us with these books. He's the true hero of the Vulcanverse, and you can bet that after the final book is out I'll resign the position of gamebook editor permanently -- and thankfully!

Buy the Vulcanverse books at Amazon.

Also at Blackwell's UK:

• The Houses of the Dead
• The Hammer of the Sun
• The Wild Woods
• The Pillars of the Sky

And at Barnes & Noble in the US:

• The Houses of the Dead
• The Hammer of the Sun
• The Wild Woods
• The Pillars of the Sky

Also of interest:

Circe by Madeline Miller

Clash of the Titans (Davis, 1981)

Democracy by Abraham Kawa and Alecos Papadatos

Helen of Troy (Harrison, 2003)

Heroes and Mythos by Stephen Fry

Homer's Daughter by Robert Graves

Jason and the Argonauts (Chaffey, 1963)

The Odyssey (Konchalovsky, 1997)

Percy Jackson and the Olympians by Rick Riordan

Vulcanverse extras

Two more Vulcanverse gamebooks are in the layout stage right now and should be available next month. John Jones has kindly prepared a checklist of codewords and tick boxes for the first two books so you don't have to write in your copies. You can get that here and a blank Excel adventure sheet by the equally generous Puck Jackson here.

And there are also the PDF copies of the adventure sheets:

Hades (for The Houses of the Dead)

Notus (for The Hammer of the Sun)

The personal touch

Gamebook maven John Jones was in touch with the Fabled Lands team recently with an intriguing suggestion – indeed, a creative challenge – that occurred to him while watching Jessica Jones:

“What is interesting about the conflict between Jessica and Kilgrave is the personal nature of it. Unlike other villains, Kilgrave has only one very goal he wants to achieve and any effect he has on the larger world comes in service to that goal. At the same time Jessica has her own very personal goal. I mention this to contrast it with the main conflict in The Serpent King's Domain. To Namagal it's a very personal situation involving his death and/or humbling. To the viewpoint character playing the book, it is (or can be) little more than an item on a to-do list toward achieving a different goal. I make that contrast because one thing I'd like to see in The Lone and Level Sands or perhaps a later book is for an important quest to be personal and important to the viewpoint character.”

Of course, conflict is almost always more interesting when it’s personal. After a love story, perhaps the most compelling of narratives is a war in the family:

It only works when it’s earned, of course. Batman v Superman did nothing but lay popcorn-brained waste to the surprising-yet-inevitable showdown which in Frank Miller’s original story came at the endpoint of a difficult friendship that had struggled on against the odds for decades.

The point of the personal conflict is to up the stakes. The story has more bite, more pain, more inner struggle. We, the readers or viewers, feel more strongly involved. But writing rules are no substitute for commonsense. All those screenwriters who feel the need to make Robin the Sheriff of Nottingham’s half-brother, take note. And let’s also point an accusatory finger at the recent Harry Potterization of the 007 franchise, in which every adversary must be tied to Bond’s angsty childhood. Puh-lease. It’s more Charlie Higson than Ian Fleming.

The sharpening effect of personal conflict is why I don’t object to a little PvP in my roleplaying games. The civil war that happened in our Tekumel campaign was a classic tragedy in the making, with the player group splitting right down the middle. Jamie told his wife that the Tsolyani civil war was the most important thing in his life at the time. I can believe it. Think of any time you and somebody you care about have ended up on opposite sides on an issue of passionate importance. There’s a wrench in the gut that goes far beyond mere difference of opinion.

The Tsolyani example reminded me of a letter I got from Professor MAR Barker back in November 1985:

"Eyloa the Wizard of the Tlashte Heights, played by Mike Callahan, just discovered that the Pariah Deities' chief agent in his sector, Torsu, is in reality his own father. I was told later that this is a rip-off of the Star Wars plots, but then I have been running this particular campaign since before The Empire Strikes Back and all along the storyline has been the same."

So you can pull off the same trick between player and NPC. I must have been aiming for something like that in my second-ever gamebook, The Temple of Flame, which begins by establishing the backstory between the lead character and their former colleague Damontir the Mad, who is the book’s antagonist. Players of Heart of Ice have remarked that though the possible endings include saving the world and seizing ultimate power, nothing compares to meting out just deserts to the weaselly Kyle Boche. And even in Fabled Lands we have recurring adversaries like Talanexor the Fire Wizard and your persistent frenemy Lauria. You want to see more of them, don’t you?

Which brings us back to John Jones’s suggestion. I’m not going to reveal what he proposed because it was really cool and maybe Paul Gresty will want to run with it in future books. All I will say is that it made me think of Fritz Leiber Jr, and that’s never a bad thing.

Eight crimson arrows

John Jones recently pointed out that there's a pretty glaring omission in the reissued edition of Castle of Lost Souls. Most of the illustrations are not in the paperback, for reasons I can't remember now but it may simply have been that I couldn't get good scans of them at the time. Okay, fine, you can use your imagination. So no harm done? Ah, but one of those illustrations contained a vital clue. Here it is, along with the corresponding section:

192

You go only a short distance before arriving at a door. On the floor in front of you, eight crimson-fletched arrows have been placed in an intriguing pattern. You can pick up the arrows if you wish; remember to note them on your Adventure Sheet if so. There is no other way on from here, so you step forward and open the door. Turn to 153. 

And while I'm about it, I should also thank John for having helped out with some very useful advice on The Eye of the Dragon, another of those '80s gamebooks that recently resurfaced from the tidal flats of time. It's thanks to him that the Dagger of the Mind spell now does 3 points' damage instead of 2. Mind you, if you find yourself thinking of using it as a free strike in combat then you might have trouble completing the adventure. Just saying.