Everything must go

It's always a wrench having to chuck stuff out. Well, it is for me as I'm a bit of a hoarder. But lately I've had to take an "exterminate all the brutes" attitude to clearing out, so I've given a couple of boxes of gaming treasures to my wife to flog on Ebay. It's that or take them to the tip, and with classics like these that would be a crime. 

There's sets of Imagine, Adventurer, Red Giant (with Brymstone by Robert Dale), and Fantasy Chronicles - including the issue above with Steve Foster's superb Christmas adventure which I still remember us playing in his house on Western Lane.

There are some scenario books, Chaosium games such as Big Rubble, gems like Bushido and Champions, and some figurines. Take a look if you have space for them. I'd like to think they'll go to a good home.

Crossing the Cauldron

If you missed out on the Kickstarter for Blood Sword 5: The Walls of Spyte back in 2019, here's your one and only chance to jump aboard. Just 250 colour hardbacks were printed* but there was one duplicate**, and it's available on eBay till Sunday.

Alternatively you could be a cheapskate and just get the paperbacks. But that hardback is a thing of beauty, believe me.

I didn't personally have a lot to do with The Walls of Spyte, but while editing the book for re-release I had a whole lot of ideas for what I'd have liked to do to make it fit in better with the rest of the Blood Sword series. If you're interested then there's an article on my Patreon -- or you could wait (see cheapskatery, above) and eventually I'll probably post it here.

*Actually it was probably more like 260 copies, as some of the 250 backers ordered an extra copy, but I'm rounding it off. And only about seventy were signed. 

** I goofed, if you must know, and did one of the signature orders twice. Duh.

For hardcore collectors (of paperbacks)

Getting one of my old '80s and '90s gamebooks back into print involves a pretty laborious process. I have to take a Stanley knife to the book, scan each page, put the scans through an OCR program, reconstruct and fix the flowchart, typeset and edit the text, and finally run off an "editing proof" copy to do a final check before publishing.

That last stage means there's a one-of-a-kind copy of each book. As the cover art usually isn't ready during editing, and yet I'm too OCD (not OCR) to print a book with a blank cover, I grab some art online. The end result is too nice to just sling in the bin, but I'm having to declutter my bookshelves, so these two proof copies of Heart of Ice and Down Among the Dead Men are looking for a new home.

If you'll excuse the hard-sell, another thing that makes these copies unique is the filler artwork, which was never used in any other edition. I thought of holding the books back as rewards in a future Kickstarter campaign, maybe for Jewelspider, but to be honest running a Kickstarter is more effort than it's really worth, so in the end I just handed them to my wife and told her to put them on eBay. If you're a gamebook collector and you want a genuine one-and-only, here (and here) is your chance. And, if you're just interested in playing the books, they're still on sale on Amazon and at all good bookstores.

A slip of the pen

The Kickstarter campaign for the fifth Blood Sword book, The Walls of Spyte, offered a genuine collector's edition, as I only ever plan on printing the 225 copies pledged for by backers. That's the colour hardback version of the book. The paperback will be available for anyone to buy in a month or so.

Of those hardback copies, about 50 needed to be signed. Engage brain before putting pen to paper, I should have told myself. In particular, check the spelling of each backer's name before writing it in one of those expensive collector's editions. Oops.

Well, I have about a dozen copies still to sign and I only made one mistake. That copy (with the klutzed flyleaf carefully removed) is now up for grabs on eBay. So if you missed the Kickstarter and you've been kicking yourself for that, here's your chance -- a probably never-to-be-repeated chance -- to get one of these exclusive hardcovers.

Oh, and while we're here I might as well mention that the latest issue of Librogame's Land has an interview with me. You can find that right here.

Serpents and mongooses

If you're interested in Dragon Warriors, you may have noticed that the former printer of the books, Mongoose, have been putting their stock up for auction on eBay, one copy of each title at a time, at a starting price of 99p. Far be it from me to keep eager fans from a bargain, but it is important to realize that buying the books that way not only deprives the creators of the game (me and Oliver) of our royalties, it also takes revenue from Fabled Lands LLP and, much more importantly, from Serpent King Games, who are the guys trying to make a go of the series. So if you want to see more DW books in future, enlightened self-interest suggests you probably should buy direct from the authorized publishers.