Nature is usually wrong

More long-ago snippets today from the early development of Dragon Warriors. Above is Bob Harvey's illustration for the scenario "The Greatest Prize" from DW 4. Not a great scan, I'm afraid, but it spreads across two pages and I couldn't have got a cleaner image without taking a Stanley knife to the book.

And here's the sketch I did to brief Bob. It's no surprise that I'd do it as a bunch of comics panels, as I'd already used le neuvième art in DW book 1 to explain the combat rules and how to roleplay. I'd rather Bob had stuck closer to my sketch, with Sir Grafven looking to the right in the first panel so that his gaze led naturally to the castle on the island. And then having the falcon flying directly towards us out of the final frame for extra drama. I didn't know it at the time, but Bob was an experienced comics artist so this approach ought to have been right up his alley.

In the end I don't think it was one of the most successful Dragon Warriors pictures, perhaps because Bob felt too constrained by my over-detailed specification. He did some superbly atmospheric pictures throughout the books so the lesson (learned forty years late) is that I should have just provided brief descriptions and left the visualization to him.

The river out of Eden

Back in 1998 or 1999, I was having lunch with Russ Nicholson at the Dumpling Inn in London's Chinatown. I'd been working at Eidos, a videogames publisher, and had written specs for three games: Plague (later renamed Warrior Kings), 2020 Knife Edge, and the Fabled Lands MMO that was destined to morph into Abraxas. Astounding as it may seem today, back then most publishers had no clue that game development is an iterative process that requires continual refinement of the design, and so it had been suggested to me that Eidos wouldn't have much for me to do until their internal teams had finished those three games. I disagreed, and my friend Nick Henfrey and I had given Eidos execs a detailed analysis of how development ought to work (pretty much how every developer does it now, but not in the '90s) but while waiting to hear if the message had got through I was trying to come up with a new project. Russ was also looking for something to work on, hence our brainstorming session over dim sum.

"What about a comic book?" suggested Russ. He didn't need to twist my arm. We both loved comics. Because Russ had worked out in Papua New Guinea and met quite a few tough engineering types, we came up with a scientist/archaeologist and his roustabout minder who are searching for the site of the Garden of Eden. They find two sets of weathered tree roots, which unknown to them are the remains of the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge. That night they get stoned and are forced to run for their lives when attacked by bandits. They run through some kind of interdimensional portal to another world. We follow the scientist character who arrives alone in a beautiful verdant landscape quite unlike the desolate rocky terrain he was camping in moments earlier. But it's a case of out of the frying pan, as a spear thuds into the ground by his foot and he realizes he's being hunted by the natives of this other world. I scribbled the notes as we ate.

Long story short, here was our surprise twist: the roustabout guy ran through the interdimensional rift a few seconds ahead of the scientist, but in this other world that meant he arrived ten years earlier. In that time he's made himself the warlord of the place. He has corrupted paradise. We were quite pleased with ourselves for dreaming that up, and remained so until Outcast came out a few months later and it turned out to feature the exact same idea. Under the sun there is no new thing, it seems. Oh well.

I didn't lament our Garden of Eden story for long. Outcast did it all so brilliantly that it's hard to imagine we could have topped that. In any case, I got drunk with another gaming friend, David Bailey, and after an all-night conversation over whisky we came up with the idea of asking Eidos to set us up as an independent development company. That became Black Cactus and although 2020 Knife Edge and Abraxas fell by the wayside, Warrior Kings finally shipped. In the world of game development, one out of three ain't bad going.

Since then we have lost Russ, sad to say -- two years ago tomorrow, hence this post. Black Cactus and Eidos are no more. Even the Dumpling Inn has gone. The grass withereth and the flower fadeth...

Alternate versions of Heart of Ice

This post isn't really an April Fool, but it tickled me. Somebody told me they'd asked ChatGPT what The Warlock of Firetop Mountain might have been like if Oliver Johnson and I had written it. I could tell it that for starters the book wouldn't have sold a tenth as many copies, but it concentrated instead on the stylistic aspects:

"If The Warlock of Firetop Mountain had been written by Dave Morris and Oliver Johnson, it would likely have taken on a more complex, story-driven, and atmospheric quality, with a richer interplay between narrative and character choice. The book would be darker, more sophisticated, and immersive, with a layered story and morally complex characters that invite readers to question the nature of heroism, villainy, and fate. It would keep readers enthralled not just with the challenge of surviving the mountain but with the depth of the world and characters they encounter."

First thought: spare my blushes. But maybe ChatGPT always finds the upside in any comparison? I tried asking it what Heart of Ice would have been like if written by the éminences grises of UK gamebooks. Its reply:

If Heart of Ice had been written by Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson, it would likely have had a distinctly different tone, structure, and gameplay focus. Here’s how:

1. Emphasis on Combat and Skill Tests

Livingstone and Jackson’s style, particularly in the Fighting Fantasy series, leans heavily on combat encounters and skill tests. Instead of the intricate social interactions and strategic planning that Heart of Ice focuses on, there would likely be more dice-based combat and stat checks woven throughout. Encounters with mutants or dangerous factions might involve straightforward fights rather than diplomatic or strategic solutions.

2. Simplified Storyline and Character Interactions

Heart of Ice is known for its branching paths, character-driven plot, and complex narrative. If Livingstone and Jackson had written it, the story might be more linear and driven by clear objectives rather than complex interpersonal choices. NPCs would be more likely to serve as allies or adversaries without much emotional depth, focusing on the immediate stakes rather than broader story themes.

3. Collectible Inventory and Traps

Livingstone and Jackson often include item collection as a key part of their gameplay, with a particular focus on specific items needed to progress through the story or defeat major challenges. If they had written Heart of Ice, players would probably need to collect certain artifacts to reach critical locations like the chamber of the Heart, and there might be more hidden traps and hazards along the way, requiring particular items or choices to avoid disaster.

4. Greater Focus on Luck-Based Outcomes

Jackson and Livingstone's works often incorporate luck as a major mechanic, where random rolls can dramatically impact outcomes. Instead of just weighing the risks and rewards in Heart of Ice, players might face outcomes that hinge on a luck stat or a random roll, affecting their survival or success.

5. Increased Use of Instant Failures and Dead-Ends

Heart of Ice has a reputation for being fair in its approach to player agency and choices, allowing for a range of ways to succeed. In contrast, Livingstone and Jackson might introduce sudden death options more often, which could increase the difficulty and frustration. This could potentially make Heart of Ice a more challenging but also more punishing journey.

6. A Clear-Cut "Big Bad"

While Heart of Ice presents a nuanced story where antagonism isn’t always black-and-white, a version by Livingstone and Jackson might feature a single, clearly defined “villain” character. This villain would be more traditional, with the player's final objective involving a climactic showdown or battle, in line with the classic fantasy narratives they’re known for.

So, the gamebook might end up as a harsher, combat-heavy adventure with a strong, linear quest through a dangerous landscape rather than the layered and atmospheric narrative exploration Dave Morris crafted.

I haven't read enough Fighting Fantasy books to know how accurate that is, but it sounds pretty impressive. I couldn't resist asking it about other gamebook authors' possible take on the book:

“A Joe Dever version of Heart of Ice would likely be an immersive, heroic journey with a noble character, structured progression, and clear moral and strategic choices—capturing both the danger and the higher purpose of the quest in a more heroic fantasy style. He’d likely weave in a sense of duty, encouraging players to act for a greater good rather than personal gain.”

“In Jonathan Green’s hands, Heart of Ice would become a grimdark, horror-fantasy adventure, filled with visceral details, deadly encounters, and moral ambiguity. Green favours action-packed scenes and deadly encounters, so his version of Heart of Ice would feature frequent, high-stakes battles and physical challenges. It might involve collecting key items to reach the Heart or unlock special advantages. He’d likely add a layer of treasure-hunting, where players need to acquire specific artifacts or resources scattered throughout the wasteland to succeed. He loves a grand finale, so his version would likely end with an epic, high-stakes confrontation at the Heart.”

“Martin Noutch’s version would be a complex, playful, and layered adventure, balancing whimsy with emotional gravity. It would be a unique experience, inviting readers to engage with the story on multiple levels, both as an adventure and as a philosophical exploration of resilience, identity, and purpose in a world gone cold. He might include interactive features like tracking character traits, shifting perspectives, or even a system for moral ‘weight’ that changes based on choices. Noutch would probably play with the medium, encouraging readers to see the book as more than a story—perhaps introducing puzzles or mechanics that reflect the icy world’s desolation and the player’s perseverance.”

“If Paul Mason & Steve Williams had taken on Heart of Ice, the gamebook would be a surreal, philosophical journey, focused on introspection, symbolic encounters, and moral ambiguity. Rather than a straightforward adventure, it would feel like a dream-like, psychological exploration, where the destination matters far less than the journey itself. Their works often explore identity and transformation, so players might undergo changes based on their choices, affecting their skills, personality, or even memories. The players might evolve, not just in ability but in character, with each decision subtly reshaping the protagonist’s sense of self and purpose. The character’s motivations for seeking the Heart might also shift over time, depending on the journey's transformative impact. Instead of a straightforward victory or defeat, the journey might conclude with an open-ended, introspective finale, leaving players to interpret what they’ve achieved or lost. The Heart could be something far more abstract—maybe a philosophical revelation or an understanding about the nature of humanity and survival. The ending might reflect the choices made throughout, leaving players with questions rather than answers.”

“Jamie Thomson & Mark Smith are known for their sometimes irreverent style. Heart of Ice under their pen would probably include more dark humour and satirical elements, especially in character dialogue and descriptions of the setting. It might lean into the grim aspects of the post-apocalyptic world with a slightly tongue-in-cheek twist, letting players confront both the desolation and absurdity of humanity’s downfall.”

There are many other talented gamebook writers, of course, but let's keep this under two thousand words if we can. Also, many of the above examples make some kind of sense as Jamie, Mark, Oliver and Paul were all players in the Tekumel campaign that inspired Heart of Ice.

Finally, as a tonic against mortal hubris, I asked ChatGPT how it would improve on my original book:

To enhance Heart of Ice by Dave Morris, we could build on its strengths—the compelling world-building, intense survival themes, and open-ended structure—while adding new dimensions to enrich the experience. Here are some ideas:

1. Enhance World Interactivity and Dynamic Environment

Expanding the world’s responsiveness to player choices would amplify the sense of a living, evolving environment. For example, the harsh ice-covered world could react to the player’s presence in ways that change terrain, reveal hidden paths, or shift alliances among factions. This could make survival not only about enduring the environment but also influencing and adapting it.

2. Expand Character Development and Relationships

Adding a system where the protagonist's choices influence traits or relationships could deepen player immersion. Perhaps the player could develop unique bonds with NPCs, leading to varied endings or special advantages based on trust, alliances, or rivalries. This would make each choice carry more emotional weight, emphasizing both the loneliness and connection found in such an isolated world.

3. More Nuanced Morality and Consequences

The original story features morally ambiguous choices, but expanding these even further could add complexity to the player's journey. Introducing choices with delayed consequences that unfold in unexpected ways would heighten the stakes and allow the player to see the broader impact of their actions—either in aiding certain factions, using resources, or making ethical compromises.

4. Introduce Mysteries with Long-Term Payoffs

Building in hidden mysteries that only reveal themselves through multiple playthroughs could enrich the lore and encourage exploration. For example, obscure clues found throughout the icy wasteland might hint at ancient technologies, or the true nature of the Heart of Volent might only become clear through carefully pieced-together discoveries. Each run could reveal new layers of history or insight.

5. Expand Mechanics for Resource Management and Survival

Given the harsh, resource-scarce setting, adding more nuanced survival mechanics could make the journey more immersive. Players might have to carefully ration food, water, and warmth or deal with shifting weather conditions, making travel more strategic and emphasizing the environmental dangers of this world.

6. Player-Driven Goals Beyond the City of Du-En

Expanding the story’s focus beyond reaching the Heart itself would add depth, especially if there are varied side quests or goals tied to the protagonist’s backstory. For instance, players might choose to pursue knowledge about the world’s origins, help rebuild a faction’s community, or take on a personal mission with high stakes. These could offer alternative endings based on different player-defined motivations.

7. Deeper NPC Lore and Factional Storylines

The factions and characters in Heart of Ice are intriguing, but expanding on them could add richness. Each faction could have its own lore, unique goals, and internal conflicts that unfold through interactions. Aligning with different groups might lead to varied story paths, and the protagonist could gain insights into the world’s history, politics, and culture.

8. Philosophical or Reflective Elements Linked to the Protagonist’s Journey

Introducing elements that invite the protagonist to reflect on their motivations could add a layer of introspection. Perhaps they occasionally encounter sites of historical significance that reveal more about the decline of civilization, prompting players to consider their role in this world’s legacy. These scenes could add depth and give a more philosophical tone to the player’s mission.

9. Expanded Narrative Endings with Layered Themes

Adding more varied, layered endings based on how the player has changed or impacted the world would reward exploration and role-playing. Endings could reflect the protagonist’s growth, alliances, and decisions, offering insights into what their journey ultimately means in the grander context of the icy wasteland.

With these improvements, Heart of Ice could evolve into a multi-dimensional experience that emphasizes survival, moral complexity, and a sense of both personal and environmental impact—deepening the world and the player’s journey through it.

Good points, but I'm not sure if I could have packed all that into 454 sections -- or 455 if you're going by the revised Kindle version. Thirty years ago even delivering a gamebook as long as Heart of Ice (which is about 70,000 words) was tricky to sell to a book publisher. If I were doing it today I'd love to go up to 120,000 words (like Can You Brexit?) or even 220,000 words (as in Workshop of the Gods) which would allow me to indulge all the backstories of the other characters and to put more detail into settings which in the 1993 edition I could only describe with broad strokes. With Russ Nicholson I planned a 2000AD-style comic story (called "Don't You Just Hate It When That Happens", if you really want to know) expanding on Chaim Golgoth's history with Harek Asfar, which was touched on in the book in just a few lines:

We'd have liked to do a comic for each of the main characters but abandoned the idea because there was nowhere in the UK to publish them. And maybe it's just as well. Economy in writing can be an asset even when it's forced on you by the publisher. Maybe Heart of Ice if twice as long, or bulked out with standalone comics, would just feel self-indulgent.

I do occasionally get an urge to return to Heart of Ice's roots and write the roleplaying mini-campaign. I'd probably use GURPS 4e for that, which might put a lot of people off but it's really the best fit. I certainly wouldn't make it any less bleak. Modern readers sometimes grumble about that, but imagine Brazil or Excalibur or Sunset Boulevard, say, with a happy ending. Ugh.

What I'd really like, given a ring of three wishes or a lottery win, would be to adapt it into a CRPG or a TV show. And if I ever should get to do that, I'm planning to enlist ChatGPT (or maybe Claude, or Perplexity, or DeepSeek, or all four) as a writing partner.

Character sketch

On the rare occasions when I've played D&D I usually haven't taken it very seriously. In my defence, that was mostly back in the mid-'70s and the way the early books were written I don't think you were meant to take it seriously. I don't mean the rules; we used the latest iteration of those for the Blood Sword RPG and they work brilliantly. But the default fantasy setting of D&D is a bit sub-sub-sub-Tolkien by way of Monty Python, or so it usually seemed to me.

There were exceptions. I ran a Victorian-era investigative campaign (this was years before Call of Cthulhu, never mind Cthulhu by Gaslight) in which the only magic was 1st and 2nd level. That wasn't played for laughs. Also, when I joined in a game of Blood Sword 5e I not only thought it was brilliantly atmospheric, I actually liked the game system, which was several quantum leaps beyond the D&D of fifty years ago.

Anyway, back to 1976. Invited to join a D&D game by Steve Foster, creator of the Mortal Combat rules, I rolled up a Cugel-like knave called Necromageus Knoll, who soon had a reputation for greed, deceit and treachery. Come to think about it, he was three parts Cugel, two parts Zachary Smith, and one part Tricky Dicky.

The other players seemed to find Necromageus Knoll jolly enough that I put him in a comic strip (inexplicably relocated to the Tekumel underworld, hence the reference to 'Eyes') that lasted a week or two until we moved on to other campaigns. I did something similar but more serious a few years later with this authentic Tekumel write-up.

Having come across that Necromageus Knoll strip just recently, and intrigued to see how my visual storytelling had developed between 1976 and 2008 when I came to write Mirabilis: Year of Wonders (long story short: a lot!) I thought I'd share a bit of it here. Don't worry, I won't quit the day job.

Did Stan Lee steal ideas?

It’s the time of year for me to weigh in on a claim that’s causing controversy – not to deny that the claim if true would be outrageous, but to say that I remain unconvinced that it is true. And, in line with recent tradition, the outrage again involves a professor.

This time round it’s the turn of The X-Men, first published by Marvel in July 1963, though with a cover date of September because comics. The Doom Patrol debuted in the June issue (that is, April) of My Greatest Adventure, published by Marvel’s rival DC. The bone of contention is whether Stan Lee was influenced by (ie swiped from) Arnold Drake, the writer of Doom Patrol, in putting Professor Charles Xavier in a wheelchair like the Doom Patrol’s leader.

Drake shrugged it off for years as a coincidence, but after brooding on it for forty years he became convinced it was dirty pool on Stan’s part:

"I didn’t believe so in the beginning because the lead time was so short. Over the years I learned that an awful lot of writers and artists were working surreptitiously between [Marvel and DC]. Therefore from when I first brought the idea into [the DC editor’s] office, it would’ve been easy for someone to walk over and hear that this guy Drake is working on a story about a bunch of reluctant superheroes who are led by a man in a wheelchair. So over the years I began to feel that Stan had more lead time than I realized. He may well have had four, five or even six months."

Now, I’ll put my hand up to being a fan of Marvel from way back. I grew up on those stories. So you might want to take what I have to say with that in mind, but – was Drake completely nuts? First of all, Stan Lee was having to get out more than ten books a month, and he was doing almost all the writing single-handed. Sure, he had “the Marvel method” to help (plot first, then art, then write the script) but even so it’s unlikely he had much time to look through DC’s output, at that time upwards of thirty books a month. And even if Stan had been told about Doom Patrol in January 1963, he wouldn’t have had long to single out that one idea and work it into the new book he was planning with Jack Kirby.

OK, it is just possible an artist came across from DC (it was a 13 minute walk) and mentioned that DC was doing a try-out book with a super-team whose mentor was in a wheelchair. But was that really the standout detail worth swiping? Far more likely that Stan got the inspiration for Professor X from any number of brainy invalid scientists in 1950s sci-fi movies. And in any case there’s a strong story reason for Professor X being in a wheelchair. Stan loved irony, and this character is all about the power of the mind. He’s Nero Wolfe turned up to 11.

In the same year as the quote above, Drake also said:

"Stan Lee and I were working in the same vineyards, and if you do enough of that stuff, sooner or later, you will kind of look like you are imitating each other."

Well, that change of heart is interesting. Maybe Drake had taken a step back to think about where his own ideas came from. If there was any creative borrowing going on, more likely it was in the other direction. Why was Drake creating the Doom Patrol in the first place? Because he understood the appeal of the Fantastic Four. The FF’s first issue was November 1961 – only, you know the score, that means September, so it had been running for thirteen issues by the time Drake sat down and scratched his head about what could be done to counter this new and coming force in comics.

Drake saw that the FF frequently squabbled. And they got their powers from an accident – not mutants like the X-Men, notice. And the coolest members of the team were sort of freaks, the Thing especially. So it’s not much of a stretch (I’m not planning these puns, honest) to think of Robotman as the Thing, Negative Man as the Torch, Elasti-Girl (wait, what?) as Susan Storm and the Chief as Reed.

By 2000, Drake had convinced himself he originated all this:

“That was the thing that made Doom Patrol different, these people hated being superheroes. And they were a little bit self-pitying, just a little bit, and the chief was constantly telling them, ‘Stop crying in your beer.’ That made them something that wasn't around at the time.”

It wasn't around at the time? Really? What about Peter Parker? Ben Grimm? Bruce Banner? Tony Stark? So it’s a little bit rich that a few years later Drake was saying of Stan Lee, ‘He’d take credit for the King James Bible.’

All that said, it’s interesting that these days it’s hard to make a convincing movie about the Fantastic Four, and yet there were four seasons of a Doom Patrol TV show. I didn’t stick with it even for four episodes myself, but it actually feels more modern than the FF -- who were, after all, Stan Lee’s first attempt at making superheroes real and relatable and flawed. As the prototype, perhaps it’s not surprising that the FF have dated – and they were my own least favourite Marvel comic back in the Silver Age, their adventures being too cosmic and out there to appeal alongside the convincing contemporary lives of Tony Stark, Peter Parker, Matt Murdock, et al.

If you're interested in the full fascinating story of how Marvel overtook DC and revolutionized comic book storytelling, try Reed Tucker's book Slugfest and/or Adrian Mackinder's Stan Lee: How Marvel Changed The World.

Very nearly an armful

Not many people these days remember Tony Hancock. That's the only explanation for why there hasn't been more backing for this (bio)graphic novel by the stellar-talented team of Stephen Walsh and Keith Page. But there's still one day to go, so if you have heard of Hancock, or even if you haven't, get your credit card out and support The Lad Himself on Kickstarter.

[Added 17 March] Oh but wait... The Kickstarter failed to reach its target, but all is not lost. B7 Comics have announced that they're going ahead with publication anyway and you can pre-order copies here. Even Hancock might muster a cheer at that.

Frame by frame

Russ Nicholson and I tried pitching a graphic novel gamebook to UK publishers in the late 1980s. Little did we know that Delacourt were doing exactly the same thing at about the same time. It probably helped that comics (bandes dessinées) are well-established in France whereas in Britain they are, as my agent says, "not even a cottage industry". La Sphère du Nécromant was by Thierry Cailleteau (writer) and Eric Larnoy (artist) and you can read more about it here. And A J Porfirio is continuing the tradition with the Graphic Novel Adventures series.

Another graphic novel gamebook that I really like is Ryan Lovelock's Kadath Express. This is something really unusual, an interactive sightseeing trip through a world of fantastical weirdness and charm. Full disclosure: Ryan sent me a free copy, but the book is such a thing of beauty that I'd have bought it anyway.

No new thing under the sun

I knew gamebooks dated back much further than Choose Your Own Adventure and Steve Jackson's Melee and Wizard solo games. I used to play educational logic "gamebooks" back in the early 1960s. But it turns out that "Alan George"'s Treasure Hunt not only anticipated all that by a further two decades (it was published in 1940) but also sort of pioneered the graphic novel gamebook genre that I thought Russ Nicholson and I had invented in the early '80s.

Prior to that was Consider the Consequences, a gamebook of life choices, love, marriage and careers by Doris Webster and Mary Alden Hopkins, which came out in 1930 and is now available on the Internet Archive.

Much more up to date is a new(ish) open-world gamebook called Traquelero: A Quest for Happiness, by Othniel Poole. It seems pretty hard to get hold of, which is a shame as the concept sounds fascinating. No dice, no stats, just a character journey to explore. Effectively a walking sim in gamebook form? I'd like to try it and find out.

Blinking into the light

Happy New Year! I expect you've had more than enough of Vulcanverse to be getting on with, so here's a link to the comics I swiped that panel from. I'm just amazed that the artist (Richard E Jennings) predicted more than half a century ago what Jamie's study would look like.

Also, as I'm endlessly optimistic, here are links to my Mirabilis: Year of Wonders comic with Leo Hartas and Martin McKenna. If you're ever going to read Mirabilis, New Year is the time ('cause that's when the story starts) and at least it earned more reviews than the Vulcanverse books managed.

Commuting by catapult

Mirabilis, my fantasy graphic epic with Leo Hartas and the late Martin McKenna, originally appeared in The DFC, a short-lived forerunner of The Phoenix comic. A friend of mine read it on the sleeper train out of Moscow as he was travelling home just before Christmas -- pretty much the perfectly immersive experience.

You can read Mirabilis online here and dive into the background here and here and here. As you can probably tell, it was a labour of love and if I could finish it I would, only the world doesn't owe me a living. (Sadly.)

As part of the very extensive world-building for Mirabilis, I wrote the correspondence of the Royal Mythological Society in a little booklet called A Minotaur At The Savoy. So that's fifty whimsical vignettes of green comety weirdness that, if you're starting to think about gifts, would fit quite neatly into a stocking. But then, I would say that.

The stories range from a mysterious giant hand found in a wood in Yorkshire to the best way to deal with a dragon that's taken a shine to the gold reserves of Fort Knox, and although it's hard to pick one that can be described as typical, this will give you a taste of what to expect:

Dear human savants 

Following a motion of no confidence in the prime minister, I find that my Martian Party has enough seats in the House of Commons to form a new government in coalition with the Liberal Unionists. The only sticking point is that, as you may know, my prospective allies are committed to a very specific agenda. Their three-point plan entails establishing a minimum wage, giving women the vote, and maintaining the unity of the British Isles - whereas the Martian Party is pledged to subjugate the planet Earth, replace corn with red weed as the staple carbohydrate dietary supplement, and ship a million slaves to the helium mines of Phobos. 

As a compromise, I have agreed to defer mass enslavement for the term of the current Parliament, concentrating instead on domestic transport policy as an area of common ground on which our two parties can agree. For example, to alleviate the growing problem of “rush hour” congestion at the major London rail terminuses, we propose loading commuters onto massive catapults which will fling them across the city to land in collection nets near to their place of work. We estimate this would save at least seventy thousand man-months of labour per year. However, some of our advisors believe that it will not be a popular measure and could lose us votes at the next election. What do you counsel? 

Yours, the Right Honourable Xangovar the Merciless, OBE, c/o the Palace of Westminster

Prof Bromfield replies: It would be very popular with small boys. Unfortunately, they don’t have the vote. Might be a better world if they did, if you ask me. 

Dr Clattercut: Oh yes. Because resolving international disputes with conkers matches is obviously the way to go. Pulling girls’ pigtails when they demand enfranchisement. Declaring the whole of January a national tobogganing holiday. Making marbles the official currency of the Bank of England… 

Prof Bromfield: You think you’re being wittily scathing, Clattercut, but in fact you’re just proving my point. So that’s what I’d suggest, Mr – er, Xangovar: shake up the Cabinet a little. Bring in some schoolboys and artists and poets and whatnot. Be more radical with your reforms, if anything. This is the Year of Wonders, so what’s wrong with sprinkling a bit of magic on the tired old machinery of politics? Trust me, the electorate will thank you for it. 

Dr Clattercut: Those that land in the nets, anyway.

Have a great Samhain/Halloween! And if you're looking for strange stories in a very different vein from Mirabilis, don't forget to take a look at the Binscombe Tales.

Time to decompress

There seems to be a buzz around the Critical IF gamebooks, and in particular Heart of Ice. Here's yet another rave review, this time on the Solo Adventures with Livi channel. You want spoilers? OK, it ends with, "Solidly a 10 out of 10."

You can't please everybody. One comment below Livi's video was "Let the buyer beware." Yikes! Well, actually that's always good advice when picking up any book. Another comment, this time about Fabled Lands, raises an interesting point. Kosteri X said: "I found the Fabled Lands demo devoid of any emotion and all the NPCs were lifeless words. [...] A few more adjectives can go a long way of painting a scene or motif. Most story writers for board games fail to put any effort into painting a picture."

The template Jamie and I used for writing Fabled Lands was Eric Goldberg's boardgame Tales of the Arabian Nights. The descriptions therein are economical but effective, allowing Mr Goldberg to fit hundreds of quests into the space most gamebooks use for one little dungeon. Since each Fabled Lands book has to cover an entire country and allow freedom of choice and almost unlimited play, we knew we couldn't write it the same way we did books like Down Among The Dead Men or The Renegade Lord. It's like the compressed vs decompressed storytelling in comics.

I'm thinking a lot about this at the moment because I'm trying to recapture that compressed idiom for the Vulcanverse gamebooks. They're like Fabled Lands in having an open-world structure and each book being set in an extensive region. But, conscious that some readers miss the strong character relationships you get in books like Heart of Ice, I'm using much more dialogue than in Fabled Lands. So the Vulcanverse books (which I talk a bit about here) will weigh in about 50% heavier than FL even if we can keep them down to around 750 entries each. Hopefully that will strike the right balance for all tastes. You'll be able to judge for yourself in just a few months.

Go with the flow

The referee of our latest campaign shared this (from Shamus Young's DM of the Rings on his TwentySided site) after I scored a series of critical successes that stopped the Big Bad dead in his tracks -- to the slack-jawed astonishment of everybody around the table.

The comic gave us all a good laugh, but like all good comedy it makes a serious point too. "We need to adjourn for a bit of re-writing." Not a bit of it! If something like Gollum getting shot happened in a game I was running my first thought would be, "Wow, didn't see that coming! I wonder where this will go now..?"

Roleplaying at its best is jazz, not an orchestra and conductor working from sheet music. The referee is one of the band, leading but not dictating -- which is the reason I don't like terms like GM. There need never be any pause for re-writing because there shouldn't be a prescripted storyline you're trying to shepherd the players through. Play to find out what happens, as they say. The story that emerges will always be more involving than a plot you wrote in advance because the players will be right there in the moment, not watching to see which clue or trope has been planted there for them to pick up on.

And consider too the campfire mythology of the game, the stories players tell each other afterwards. Occasionally I've seen players make astonishing dice rolls that allowed them to overcome a threat that looked almost insurmountable. Years later they'll talk about that kind of victory with much more passion than one where they found the magic whatsit that was the only way to defeat the evil whosis and they used it at the exact time the scenario said to.

The pre-planned finale is not roleplaying, it's the kind of story you get in a movie or novel. There you can't have million-to-one shots come off (much as writers strive to convince you they have) because there's no element of chance. Every outcome in a scripted story is (by definition) contrived. The USP of roleplaying is that genuinely unforeseen and unlikely outcomes do happen, and immediately get folded into the action. Celebrate that and use it, is my advice; don't try to shoehorn roleplaying games into the same genres and tropes that linear fiction is bound by.

I've been thinking about this because our group is about to try the Yellow King RPG mini-campaign The Wars. I get that it's all about playing in a genre, and I'm always willing to experiment, so I set out intending to embrace that. But what is the genre? (Genuine question, for anyone who's played the campaign.)

I started out looking at All Quiet On The Western Front and Charley's War -- and, yes, I know The Wars is not WW1, but the flavour is what I'm looking for. The trouble is, I can easily see the action moving from the very specific mystery-on-the-battlefield to other settings: home leave, quiet moments back at HQ, and so forth. Do I have to prepare injury and shock cards for every eventuality? The Yellow King system looks like it's intended for games where you've carefully set the rails beforehand, but what do you do in a game like that when the players do the unexpected? I could use a less prescriptive set of rules, obviously. One option is just to have generic -1, -2 and -3 injury cards and hand them to the players saying, "OK, that's the game effect; you tell me what the injury actually is." But the point of the exercise is to see what the YK system is like. If you've tried it out and can offer some tips, I'd love to hear your comments below.

There's a little bit more about themes like this in the latest episode of the always-excellent Improvised Radio Theatre With Dice. Mike and Roger cover some of the same ground as I have, only more winningly and in stereo. (If you enjoy their discussion, don't ignore the tip jar.) But before you scoot off to listen to them, I must make a very important point:

Connecting with stories

Dramatic irony occurs when the viewer or reader of a story knows more than the characters. It can be an effective way of making you connect with the story (“Look behind you!”) though if sustained for too long it tends to distance you from the characters (“Doesn’t that numbskull realise the danger?”) and then you've got the opposite effect.

A less immediate form of dramatic irony might plant a seed that will build over time. For example, in the Marvel Cinematic Universe we learn about Thanos’s behind-the-scenes involvement long before the Avengers even know his name. That doesn’t create emotional distance because for most of the saga he’s not the problem they have to face right away. He’s an oncoming storm, but it’s his proxies and allies who present the immediate threat.

Most film and television dramas aren't like first-person novels. There are scenes that don't feature any of the protagonists -- like those early tease moments with Thanos, for example. But when you're telling an interactive story, jumping away from our heroes to another viewpoint gets tricky. The characters expect us to advise and guide them, and the story really only works if we pick a side. (Even if that side might change.) We form a bond with our viewpoint character and that tends to frame how we expect to see events in the story -- not first-person, exactly, but close third. Under those conditions can dramatic irony serve any useful purpose?

An example: in the opening episode of Mirabilis, I cut within the first three pages between Jack Ember and Estelle Meadowvane, both lead characters, and inserted a scene (above) in which we see series baddie the Kind Gentleman in his true devilish form. The Kind Gentleman closes a web of dangers and intrigues around Jack’s life, but it’s nearly two episodes – that’s 50 pages – before they meet face to face. If we’d been interacting with Jack all that time, and knew what we know in the comic, and hadn’t warned him then he’d legitimately want to know why.

Well, let’s think about how we would interact with Jack and Estelle in an interactive version of Mirabilis. We wouldn’t want to do a lot of head-hopping, because interactivity favours a close relationship with one character, so probably you’d let the reader/viewer choose which of our heroes to follow each episode. The more the reader sticks to the same viewpoint character, the more they'll bond with them – but at the expense of not knowing everything the other one has been up to.

What kind of interaction would this be? The “Bandersnatch” episode of Black Mirror reportedly entailed shooting more than five hours of story content. If you’re working in a medium where extra scenes cost money (anything but radio or prose, basically) then you’ll want to steer clear of that Choose Your Own Adventure model – oh, and don’t call it CYOA unless you want to get sued.

Luckily there are more rewarding ways to interact with characters than telling them what to do next. You can chat to them, get them to reveal their backstory (cf Lost), find out how they feel about each other, make subtle hints about what they should say or how they should behave that will influence other characters’ attitude towards them over time. These are the kind of subtle nudges and inputs that we get from interacting with people in real life.

To make that model of interactivity work, you’d have most backstory strands only accessible when cued by something that happens in the story. Jack, thrown in prison, talks about how he used books to escape loneliness and poverty as a child – and that leads him to a realisation that feeds into the plot. In the interactive version, there might be several breakthrough moments when you could get him to talk about that, and several different eureka plot developments as possible outcomes.

So the plot as it is in the comic remains largely unaffected by the player's choices. That's not only to avoid drawing the thousands of extra panels needed for a diverging story, but also because interacting with plot is not what's really interesting. The linear surface story is fine as it is. The interactivity can instead be about exploring interiority, discovering more about the character, and building a closer relationship with them so that they start to share their hopes and fears.

In other words, we can't (and don't want to) change the plot, but we can enrich it with foreshadowing. For instance, maybe Jack confides in the player that, "If anything were to happen to Estelle I'd die." When Estelle is captured by the Big Bad, that moment will now land with even more impact. And, yes, you could do that in a linear story too: Jack just tells somebody else how much Estelle means to him. But in the interactive version it’s a shared secret. It’s something you earned from your relationship with the character. Maybe you even encouraged him in those feelings, and because of that he’s now more vulnerable. Now you’re not just watching the story; you’re part of it. And that's what interactive storytelling is all about.

What now?

What Now? was a gamebook series that Leo Hartas and I took to Walker Books. The pitch document has a reference to gamebooks having been around for ten years, so I was either thinking of Death Test, which would date the What Now? pitch to 1988, or of Warlock of Firetop Mountain, which sets an upper limit of 1992. Hazarding a guess I’d put the date of this concept around 1990.

It wasn’t the first time I’d thought of doing a gamebook in the form of a comic. This one was different because it was for younger readers.Each book would have 28 or 29 content pages, with 4-5 full-page illustrations and the remaining 24 pages consisting of up to nine comics panels per page. We estimated a total of about 130 sections ("paragraphs" in traditional gamebook parlance) given that some sections would require more than one panel before the reader was presented with another choice.

Knowing more about publishing than we had when we started out, Leo and I appreciated that a full-colour art-heavy book of the sort we were envisaging would have to be a co-edition. That is, Walker Books would need to partner with other European publishers so that the books came out in multiple translations. That’s why we decided to use icons instead of text for the choices.

Because the lead character would appear in the illustrations, these books would have been third person, with the reader guiding the character and maybe having a conversation with them, rather than the first-person style of most gamebooks.

The people at Walker were enthusiastic. Not so enthusiastic as to offer an advance right off, but I remember a bottle of white wine was brought out at the meeting. That was rare by the 1990s, when those boozy publishing habits seemed long gone.

“We want to see thrills and spills, fun and laughter,” the editor told us. My heart sank. That meant they wanted us to do a sample before they’d commit – and a sample of something like this, to be at all representative, required us to plan out the whole system and produce a substantial chunk of one of the books. Even so, we went away keen.

But… no, you didn’t blink and miss them; these books never happened. I can’t remember exactly why. It could be that Leo’s contact at Walker Books went freelance. Or maybe we just couldn’t clear enough time in our schedules for such a daunting chunk of work, seeing as I was busy on Transformers and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Leo had cutaway books to do for Dorling Kindersley.

The idea of an interactive comic book was interesting, but I would much rather have done a version for older readers. I never got on with “kiddie humour” even when I was a kid, and while the fairytale feel of What Now? would have been interesting to work with, I'm quite sure the editors were expecting Beano-style comedy, and that style of British slapstick did not appeal to me.

From the interface and the kinds of puzzles we sketched out I think I was already leaning towards the career in videogames that I moved to five or six years later. Even so, it’s a pity we never got to do these. I enjoy working with Leo and I think the pleasure of that collaboration comes across in what we do. As it is, all that remains of the proposal now are a folder stuffed with roughly sketched pages and the pitch document below.

WHAT NOW? gamebooks

Gamebooks for older readers have been around for at least ten years now. Each year a new series comes out, but usually they’re in the same old "Fighting Fantasy" mould. WHAT NOW? books are something new.

These are gamebooks with a difference. Intended for younger readers (7-9 years), the plots are straightforward and uncomplicated. These are fantasy stories, but not the kind of fantasy that’s filled with dreary dungeons and dismal ores. WHAT NOW? will have fresh, funny, vibrant plots with a hint of fairytale magic about them.

The idea is that the reader guides the hero or heroine through a series of adventures and puzzles, selecting the next picture panel to turn to by deciding between visual icons in the picture. These give the option to talk to characters, run off, look around, solve mazes and puzzles, open doors, etc.

The books combine the best in interactive fiction with the flavour of a good cartoon: vivid characters, enthralling situations, and a comic-style format geared to the world of the younger reader.

The Ingenious Genie

The clever King of the Genies has turned the tables on mankind. Instead of a genie appearing whenever a magic lamp is rubbed, the person rubbing the lamp vanishes off to serve the genies. Since the city of Baghdad relies on genie magic, you must help Abdul enter Genieworld and set things right – by arranging a more equitable deal between mankind and the genies.

[The story had Abdul having to run errands for the genie who’d summoned him while also trying to resolve the dispute between humankind and genies. If he failed in any of his tasks he got expelled back to the mortal world, which gave us a neat way to have the possibility of failure that just took you back to the start. These weren’t books you could die in.]

The Dinosaurs Next Door

The world has gone crazy. Dinosaurs are digging up the roads, delivering the post, and having tea in the local café. Guide Colin as he goes back in time with Professor Swetybenk and teaches cavemen the secret of fire so as to prevent all this. But how is he going to manage that. when the only caveman he can find is terrified of flame?

The Sun King’s Crown

The Sun King has had his crown stolen by robbers from the far side of the moon, and now no one knows when to get up to do their day’s work. The cocks aren’t crowing and the sun isn’t shining. Princess Aurora decides to go into Moonbeam Wood to find the crown, and she wants you to help her.

Running Like Clockwork

When the Earth stops revolving one morning, it causes a lot of problems. People have to anchor themselves to the ground to keep from flying off into space, for one thing. Chang, exploring a tunnel in search of his pen-pal in America, falls through to the centre of the world and finds the source of the trouble. Maybe you can advise him what to do?

The Bad Ship Nightmare

Pirates on the Sea of Zees have been waylaying sleepers and stealing their dreams. They fight, not with cutlasses, but with pillows, teddies, lullabies and cups of cocoa. Silver, a nine-tailed cat, might just be able to find the pirates’ treasure casket and unlock the hoard of dreams. The snag is that Silver is so lazy that all he wants is to lie down and have a kip, so you’re going to have to coax him into doing it.