Comicon in Bergamo

Last weekend I was at Comicon in Bergamo as a guest of the festival organizers and my Italian publisher, Edizioni Librarsi. Jamie Thomson and I joined in a panel discussion (pictured above) on AI, technology and gamebooks, chaired by Francesco Di Lazzaro, and we sat in on a talk on gamebook design by Marco Zamanni. 

Our colleague on the panel was Gianmario ("The Teacher") Marelli and our superpowered translator was Giulia Brugnetti. Jamie was more sanguine about AI learning to write well, while I and Gianmario think (because good writing is a multi-faceted skill that doesn't lend itself to reinforcement learning, or even particularly well to supervised learning) that it's better used for the grunt work of writing to free the author's time for the actual creative part. Think of yourself as the manager/writer and the AI as your assistant.

For his design lecture, Marco used the interesting example of a gamebook based on Italo Calvino's The Cloven Viscount, a magic realist fable in which a character is literally split into two selves by a cannonball. The choices could emphasize the polarization of attitudes, whether the player wants to be purely "good" or utterly "evil", though when you repress half of your nature it has the habit of surfacing catastrophically. Alternatively you might concentrate on unifying the two selves. Not that Marco was suggesting anybody should actually vandalize Calvino's story by turning it into a gamebook, you understand, but it's an interesting thought experiment.

While at the con I met up with Valentino Sergi, who headed the design team on Blood Sword 5e, and he's hopeful there will be news about a 5.5e version soon. We also got to talk to author Alex Calvi, who translated a couple of my books for Librarsi. We all agreed that nobody could replace Russ Nicholson but that Marco Sada would be a great artist for any future Fabled Lands books. Oh, and on the subject of FL, Jamie blurted out the news that he's begun work on Into the Underworld, the 12th book, so that was a bit of a scoop.

The cosplayers at the convention showed great stamina, walking around in some heavy-looking costumes in temperatures nudging 38°, and Jamie and I signed a lot of books. Flying by RyanAir was hell, given the heatwave and delays of up to three hours each way, but (as Stevenson should have said) it is better to arrive than to travel without hope.

Fighting Fantasy Fest

Fighting Fantasy Fest 5 is coming up in just over a week. As you may have realized, it's the 40th anniversary of my first gamebook, Crypt of the Vampire. Oh, and it's the 40th anniversary of something called Deathtrap Dungeon, which accounts for why Fighting Fantasy author Sir Ian Livingstone and artist Iain McCaig are the guests of honour.

Originally the plan was for me to be on a panel discussion with Jamie Thomson and Paul Mason, perhaps reprising some of our talk from MantiCon in 2018. (Video above if you can't make it to Ealing for FFF.) Plans changed and now I think the panel involves Paul, Steve Williams and Marc Gascoigne, while Jamie is going to give a talk and I'll be there to answer questions. So in the last six years I'll have attended conventions in Germany, Italy, France, and now Britain. At my age it might be time to slow down. Cutting out air travel would be good for the planet, too.

I'm not specifically at FFF to sign books, apart from a brief slot from 10:30 to 11:00 just before Jamie's talk, but if you happen to bring a book along and I have time then of course I won't refuse. Jamie and Paul are probably planning to be there all day, so if you have limited space in your bag I'd advise bringing Way of the Tiger or Robin of Sherwood rather than any of mine.

Now, about that 40th anniversary of Crypt of the Vampire. I ought to do something to mark that, you say? Watch this space.

Festival of joy

It's like going from colour to black & white. My wife and I are back under the chill grey skies of Britain after a weekend in glorious Cannes, where we were fêted like royalty (Louis XIV, that is, not Louis XVI) by my French publishers Alkonost and the good people of Scriptarium. In the South of France, ham slices and bread bought from a Spar corner shop are as delicious as anything you'd get in a top London restaurant. What a shock to the system, then, to return to a country where cheese is sold in tubes after we'd been contentedly munching freshly baked croissants on the Croisette. But we brought back something priceless to cast a golden gleam over Britain's drab streets: memories of a warm and heartfelt welcome from all the French gamebook community, and those memories I will cherish forever.

The occasion was the Festival International des Jeux, where I was signing books alongside Jonathan Green, Emmanuel Quaireau, Gauthier Wendling, Frédéric Meurin (who took the photo below), and other talented folk. We enjoyed perhaps the best meal I'll have all year (for both the food and the company) at Le Caveau 30. I won one award (for the French edition of Down Among the Dead Men) and handed out several others, was interviewed, chatted to fans and fellow creatives alike, and generally had the most amazing time.

The Alkonost stand sold out of copies of Notos, the second book in the Forge Divine series (Vulcanverse to English gamers). I think that may have been a divine reward for my honesty when a mother with a 9-year-old daughter came over to look at the Forge Divine books. "She loves Greek mythology," said the mother; "should I get her this?" Remembering what it's like to be a 9-year-old otaku, and what purists the young are, I had to put my hand on my heart and say she would prefer Cyclades, Emmanuel Quaireau's gamebook, because that is set in mythological Greece whereas the Vulcanverse books are slightly Graeco-Roman flavoured fantasy, but mostly their own thing. The little girl went home happily clutching Cyclades, and the Fates took note and later ensured we sold the last copy of Notos fifteen minutes before it was time to pack up.

I just wish my French were better, as there's obviously a lot of really original work going on in the gamebook field nowadays. A couple of examples:

The Mini-Yaz silver medal went to Froides Lattitudes by Henry Pichat, set in the Arctic Ocean at the end of the 19th century. The blurb explains: "You are the leader of a polar expedition setting out in search of the Northwest Passage, but the boat you command is quickly caught in the ice. After two winters on a drifting ice floe, you have no choice but to abandon the ship and try to bring your crew back to inhabited lands. A thousand kilometers separate you from civilization. Will you be able to reach it? And at what cost?"

The Mini-Yaz gold medal was won by Adrien Saurat with his book Traité sur l'expérience divinatoire à propos du vampyre surnommé Le Valèque. The book is supposed to have been written in the 18th century and is formulated as a gamebook, except that the purpose is not (for the fictional author) playful but divinatory. He proposes possible paths that we will follow with our intuition and with the help of certain dice rolls (influenced by a superior force if we pray briefly at each new passage). This process is supposed to help us find the true thread of events relating to a troubled episode that a village experienced a long time ago, and whose testimonies, decades later, vary greatly.

Both sound superb and worthy winners, and hopefully somebody will get around to translating them into English soon. I'll be first in line to read them.

Cannes do

Next month I'm going to be at the Festival International des Jeux as guest of our French publisher Alkonost. I rarely attend games conventions but Russ Nicholson, who died last year, would normally have been at something like FIJ. It's yet another reminder how much we miss him.

FIJ won't lack for stalwarts of the industry, however. Jonathan Green, Sir Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson* will also be there, among others, so if you're able to get to Cannes you'll hear enough gamebook and RPG talk to last you all year.

* But see comments below. I'm only 100% sure about Jon Green.

Under the sun

London lies hushed and shivering under a blanket of snow, so it's pleasant to remember the warm weather and even warmer hospitality of Lucca Comics & Games just over a month ago. Here I am being interviewed in Italian, which perhaps accounts for why I was completely stumped by the question 6m 35s in. Hopefully my answer still made some kind of sense!

Everything you always wanted to know about gamebooks

Now that Jamie and I are working on the Vulcanverse gamebooks (first two almost ready, since you asked) this seems like a good time to revisit our 2018 trip to Manticon with Paul Mason. Travelling and meeting up with other people, eh -- those were the days.

We gave two talks while we were there. Here's the breakdown of the one on gamebook history and design -- of all the gamebooks that we three had a hand in, that is:

07m 41s: Media outrage about gamebooks as too scary for kids

11m 31s: The Lord of Shadow Keep, originally planned as a Fighting Fantasy book

13m 27s: The Way of the Tiger

17m 22s: Blood Sword

19m 24s: 1980s roleplaying in the world of Tekumel

22m 30s: Fighting Fantasy books by Paul Mason

31m 22s: Robin of Sherwood gamebooks

33m 12s: Heart of Ice

36m 10s: Duel Master

39m 33s: Inspiration for the Fabled Lands

42m 14s: The art of Russ Nicholson

43m 52s: The Keep of the Lich Lord

46m 28s: Fantasy maps by Leo Hartas

51m 01s: Frankenstein

53m 34s: Gamebooks in which you aren't the hero

54m 33s: Can You Brexit (Without Breaking Britain)?

1h 06m 05s: Early days of Games Workshop

1h 11m 51s: Steam Highwayman

1h 38m 09s: On not writing down to kids

Our other talk was about roleplaying games, and there's more RPG stuff coming your way tomorrow.

Shrouded in glory

It's convention season again. This year I was invited to be a guest of honour at Sentieri Tolkieniani in Turin. The cognoscenti of this blog will perhaps raise their eyebrows at that, as they'll be aware I've never read The Lord of the Rings, but I was assured by the convention organizers that no specialist knowledge of Middle Earth was required so long as I was willing to join a couple of panels on roleplaying.

Well, I'm always happy to talk about roleplaying, and the convention is set in the beautiful Osasco Castle, and it would have given me the opportunity to visit Turin, of which Calvino wrote: "It is a city which entices a writer towards vigor, linearity, style. It encourages logic, and through logic it opens the way towards madness."

Sadly, I was already booked up for a family gathering here in the UK, so I had to turn it down. But if you're interested in some hobbity chat and gaming, the convention takes place on June 1 and 2 and they might still have some tickets.

Vortrag über spielbücher

Last summer, Jamie and I met up with Paul Mason at Manticon in Germany. You knew that, because I posted about it already. Here's the second talk we gave, on gamebook history and design.

07m 41s: Media outrage about gamebooks as too scary for kids

11m 31s: The Lord of Shadow Keep, originally planned as a Fighting Fantasy book

13m 27s: The Way of the Tiger

17m 22s: Blood Sword

19m 24s: 1980s roleplaying in the world of Tekumel

22m 30s: Fighting Fantasy books by Paul Mason

31m 22s: Robin of Sherwood gamebooks

33m 12s: Heart of Ice

36m 10s: Duel Master

39m 33s: Inspiration for the Fabled Lands

42m 14s: The art of Russ Nicholson

43m 52s: The Keep of the Lich Lord

46m 28s: Fantasy maps by Leo Hartas

51m 01s: Frankenstein

53m 34s: Gamebooks in which you aren't the hero

54m 33s: Can You Brexit (Without Breaking Britain)?

1h 06m 05s: Early days of Games Workshop

1h 11m 51s: Steam Highwayman

1h 38m 09s: On not writing down to kids

Manticon notes

Jamie and I are just back from Heppenheim, where we were the guests of Nic Bonczyk, our German publisher, at Manticon. Paul Mason, who used to be a regular in our Tekumel games, was also over from Japan so it became quite a reunion.

We got to watch an axe-throwing contest (Jamie actually threw a few himself; nobody was maimed), gave a couple of talks (on roleplaying and on gamebooks), chatted to lots of great people who we previously only knew from the internet, feasted mightily on fine Teutonic fare, and drank our fill of great beer - including the justly fabled Mantibräu.

This all took place at Starkenburg Castle, which overlooks the town like the backlot set for a James Whale movie - and, as a matter of fact, Berg Frankenstein is just a few miles up the valley. While sitting in the town square I couldn't help thinking of the scenes from my comic Mirabilis, themselves hommage to The Fearless Vampire Killers, in which the villagers are watched from on high as they go unsuspectingly about their business.

My only regrets: one, missing the Heppenheim lantern trail, a jaunt around the folklore-themed streetlamps of the old town; and, two, not getting to join in Nic's every-hombre-for-himself Wild West one-shot game, which he was running in a dark corner of the battlements while we gave our second talk.

Nic's game was being played in German, mind you, which would have presented me with something of a challenge as I can understand about ten words - among them, Können Sie Brausgang? which Paul suggested as the German title of our latest Spielbüch. I can forgive continental gamebook fans not being much interested in that one, though; after three days away, returning to Britain felt to me and Jamie like coming back to a madhouse. The newspaper headline was "Doctor" Liam Fox accusing the EU of putting "theological obsession ahead of economic wellbeing". Wait, what? "We've arrived at Heathrow Terminal Decline," said Jamie. We felt like turning right round and getting the plane back to a place of sanity. I can see why most Europeans take no real interest in what's going on in our politics -- probably out of polite embarrassment for the recent British collapse into utter senility.

Here's a spooky small-world moment from our trip. Eating al fresco on the final night, I noticed a guy on the next table wearing an Iron Man t-shirt. I don't mean some johnny-come-lately movie-Shellhead fan, either. This was a proper Gene Colan armour design from the Tales of Suspense days. I wanted to go and shake his hand, but he wasn't one of the convention attendees (they were all up at the castle) and I figured we'd just end up trying to communicate in sign language. Then he looked over at our table and said: "Jamie?" Turns out it was Garry Shaw, a writer and Egyptologist whom Jamie had met at a book festival in Wigtown a couple of years ago. Surrounded by all that Hessian folklore on the street lamps, the chance encounter didn't even seem all that strange.

Just to digress for a moment (as if I hadn't already), some of the Manticon attendees were asking me what I thought of today's gamebooks, and Martin Noutch's Steam Highwayman got some love. So this seems as good a place as any to point out that he's running a Kickstarter for the second SH book. If you like Fabled Lands you'll want to back this. There's just over a week to go and the campaign has already made its target, so what have you got to lose?

Anyway, many thanks to Nic and the Manticon folks for making us welcome. It was our first trip to Germany but it won't be the last.