Where goblins screech across the moors

That post last month about the realities of medieval warfare (nasty, brutish and not nearly short enough) set me to thinking about Jon Hodgson's excellent piece about the grim, fey world of Dragon Warriors. Jon's article was referenced a while back among some comments on this blog but could easily have been missed, so I'm linking to it here on the Serpent King Games site. And if that strikes a chord, take a look at SKG chief Ian Sturrock's companion piece here.

Fabled Lands players sometimes ask me what makes Legend different from Harkuna. Read what Jon and Ian have to say and you'll know. And you'll also see why I believe that Dragon Warriors has found its dream team, a group of guys with the passion, talent and sensibility to run with the torch, and can now look forward to its brightest (or should that be darkest?) days of all.

Sharing some secrets

A couple of snippets today. First, Stuart Lloyd has posted up the first of four in-depth reviews of Fabled Lands on his Virtual Fantasies blog. Some interesting insights there even for those who are familiar with the FL series.

And here's something to trumpet about: the Fabled Lands app from Megara Entertainment is proving a very big hit with iPhone and iPod Touch owners. The game is holding up there in around the #45 mark in RPG ratings on iTunes, and has been bobbing up close to the Top 100 in all adventure games.

This amazing success story means that Mikael Louys, Megara's Grand Fromage and all-around creative powerhouse, is able to pretty much guarantee release of the forthcoming apps for Cities of Gold & Glory and Over the Blood-Dark Sea. And if those do anything like as well as the first game, I think you'll be seeing the rest of the series before too long.

Incidentally, if you haven't yet got a copy of one of the Fabled Lands apps, iFanzine are giving away 20 copies (your choice as to iPad or iPhone version) so head over there posthaste and stake your claim.

The unforgiving muse

Simon Cornish is an artist, animator, RPG designer and writer who was part of the heady company who originally contributed to the launch of UK comic The DFC, soon to be reborn as The Phoenix.* Which was why we happened to meet up at the official unveiling party at David Fickling Books in Oxford last week.

I haven't played in Simon's role-playing world of Tefr yet, but Leo Hartas is a regular and he tells me great things about it, so next time I head over to the West Country to work with Leo on our Mirabilis comic, I'm hoping to join in a session. Tefr by all accounts is a richly detailed setting with (unusually for RPGs) a real theme and story point to it. Luckily I won't have to just plunge in unawares, as Simon has laid out a wealth of great gaming material on his Tefr website. There you can read about the world, get free ebooks of the rule system, or just marvel at Simon's frickin' awesome maps and artwork.

It makes a big difference that Tefr has been created by a skilled writer and artist. The setting isn't just a backcloth for random escapades, it's a classic story-set up with conflict and a problem for the protagonists to deal with. The hook could be the pitch for a movie or ongoing TV show:

You were born into a strange land, a world steeped in history and shaped by ancient strife, a place where rumours of magic and mythical creatures have the ring of truth to them. You'd rather not get involved in such matters; you want to stay home with your family and friends. But you have a problem; they say there is something wrong with you. You have a god's curse upon you, which makes you different: stronger, harder, scarier. Your family and friends no longer want you near them. Some would even want to harm you. If you don't want to become an outcast, your only choice is to join the Kerowan Guild and follow the only profession allowed to those cursed by the gods: become a sword for hire; expendable and despised, but better the jackal than the hare.

Now, I'd like to say that none of the above has anything to do with the fact that Simon is an old friend and Mirabilis fan and he just gave our comic a nice plug on the Fantasy Faction forum. But if you doubt me, hop over to the Tefr site, grab all those freebies and give it a go. It could be just the jolt your role-playing sessions have been looking for.


(* Well, sort of - the new comic is edited by DFC helmsman Ben Sharpe and published by the irrepressible David Fickling, but in fact it's a whole new fabulous beast and nothing to do with Random House's original venture. Just wanted to be clear about that.)

Blown away

I recently came across a sheaf of character concept drawings that Russ Nicholson did for my gamebook Heart of Ice. I thought these were as lost as one of those Patrick Troughton episodes of Doctor Who that the BBC wiped to make room for Some Mothers Do 'Ave Em, but then they turn up in a video library in Hong Kong. (Metaphorically, I mean. In this case, they were actually under a pile of dusty old Dragon Warriors posters in my attic.)

This concept stage is typical of the meticulous level of work that Russ puts into a project. Many artists would just send you the illustrations they were paid to do, but Russ takes the trouble to nail the costumes, architecture, etc. And the finished work stands as testimony to that care and attention he puts in, making him surely the pre-eminent illustrator of fantasy and science fiction gamebooks. Anybody who wants to argue with that is going to have to take it up with the redoubtable Sikh warrior Vajra Singh and his mantramukta cannon. Rather you than me.

Coming attractions

SF author John Whitbourn's first novel, A Dangerous Energy, won the coveted BBC/Gollancz prize for its virtuoso depiction of how a young hedge wizard's progress towards his goal of becoming a master sorcerer is a long, slippery slope over a precipice of damnation. Harry Potter it ain't. The follow up, To Build Jerusalem, won these accolades from one-time White Dwarf book reviewer Dave Langford:

An alternative England where magic works, science is retarded, and everyone grovels to the Vatican. It's a dark world, with witty touches – like Winston Churchill's eulogy to the martyred hero whose successful action shaped this history, Saint Guy Fawkes.

Something is rotten, though, in the alternative 1995. A major new demon is loose, and besides alarming sexual tastes she has a nasty sense of humour. King Charles IV himself is diabolically abducted. So is an entire castle. The workers – the Levellers – are revolting.

Enter papal investigator Adam, a one-man Inquisition who demonstrates painful martial arts on anyone slow to answer questions. After a spectacularly disastrous conjuration in Westminster and gory mayhem in Guildford, Adam locates the she-demon's lethal private universe and leads in the troops...

There are worse things than the demon, whose excesses are limited by an unnamed but guessable Power. England's real rottenness is the dispossession of farm workers, echoing the Thatcherite feeding frenzy of our own world. The fate of the rescued King is an ultra-black joke; Adam's fate is best not thought about.

A worthy successor to A Dangerous Energy: clever, uncompromising and uncosy.

I was lucky enough to play briefly in John Whitbourn's now-legendary Continuum role-playing game, set in the same world as his early novels - as I reminisced in a recent comment on this blog:

Player-characters could summon up magical powers; they just couldn't control them. I remember the first time I called on the Wild Hunt. I was being pursued cross-country by foes and fondly imagined I could sic Herne and his horde on them. Instead, I heard the thudding of hooves, the blaring of horns, I was seized by the scruff of my neck and carried pellmell over miles of fields at terrifying speed, finally to be dumped in a ditch as slavering red-eyed hounds barked around me. The Wild Hunt departed, leaving me bruised and muddy, but far from my enemies. That was real magic - it raises hairs on my neck just remembering it now.

Why mention all this now? Because Fabled Lands Publishing has just snapped up the rights to John Whitbourn's latest novel and we'll be setting it loose on the world in less than a month. If you like your science fiction to be uncompromising, unsettling, amazing and laced with dry-as-a-bone black humour, you're going to love this.

Mirabilis launches on iPhone, Android, Windows Phone 7 and desktop apps

A cross-post today from my Mirabilis comic blog. Mirabilis season one, all 200 full-color pages of it, launches this week on Graphic.ly's multi-platformed storefront. If you've had your nose pressed to the Apple Store window wondering about that iPad, save your money - the new version is out in a month or two anyway, and in the meantime you can not only get Fabled Lands on iPhone, you can now collect all eight issues of Mirabilis on a whole bunch of smartphones and other devices.

Which devices? Well, desktop or laptop for starters. You can get the free Adobe AIR application which really is a nice presentation frame for your comics. Then there are the iPad, iPhone and Android versions - also absolutely free, naturally. And if you prefer to go old school, there's Graphic.ly's web reader that lets you have a look inside all their latest titles and to view the ones you collect on stunning fullscreen view. Setting up your Graphic.ly ID takes a couple of clicks and then you can read your comics on any or all of the supported platforms.

Still not convinced? Okay, well try this: as an introductory offer you can get both Mirabilis #1 and #2 for free. And Graphic.ly offer a whole bunch of other great titles in their online store, many of them free, and all backed up by the kind of extras we're coming to expect in digital comics: creator info, interviews, trailers, character tags and so on. Having just raised a further $3 million investment, Graphic.ly are ramping up to be one of the major forces in the new comics media, and we're very proud to have Mirabilis as part of their 2011 flagship line.

This digital lark, there might actually be something in it, eh? But if you don't think so, hold on a few weeks and, if you live in the UK or Ireland, you'll be able to buy Mirabilis as two deluxe hardcovers.

Now, any choices I've left out..?

Fabled Lands e-gamebook now on iPhone

That's not a picture of Jamie wondering who farted, it's just visual proof that, despite fears to the contrary, Megara Entertainment's Fabled Lands iPhone game is far from being totally JPRG in style. In fact the app has hundreds of pictures with a range of styles reflecting the various locations, all aimed at giving a respectful facelift to the old '90s incarnation of the books.

Wait - back up a sec. Did I say "iPhone"? I did indeed, because Mikael Louys's team have done the conversion work so that you can play the game without needing to buy an iPad. You ask me, I'm still going to tell you to buy an iPad, but Mikael wanted to make it easy for you. The game will run on an iPod Touch too, so you don't even need a fancy phone.

Mikael reports that the FL app has shot up to #63 in the main USA roleplaying rankings on iTunes. This is no mean feat, given that it has been on sale for barely 36 hours. I know I will be asked two questions. First, "How can one or two sales make any difference to FL's future fortunes?" Well, as I've explained before, getting a high ranking on iTunes makes a game more visible, which leads to more people being aware of it and hence more copies sold. This is why early sales are so important, to boost that ranking quickly up and reach escape velocity.

Which leads to the other question: "How will buying an iPhone app lead to new Fabled Lands books?" Because no entertainment business these days can survive by selling one product. Marvel don't make money by just selling comic books, they create properties that are multi-stranded and you support those properties whether you buy the comic, the DVD or just the Iron Man lunchbox. Fabled Lands LLP makes just as much revenue from sales of the FL app as from sales of the new edition print books, meaning that a sale of either of those is another tick in the column that may convince the FL board to fund new gamebooks.

But who cares about all that business stuff? The fact is that Megara have produced a brilliant reinvention of the first FL book as a 2D roleplaying game, in living color with atmospheric music, and you get at least 20 hours of gameplay for about $5. It's a no brainer, even for old Jamie the Orc there.