Gamebooks: a lightning tour

I've just heard about a great resource for gamebook fans: thirty-one themes in the medium, from horror to SF to modern to non-fantasy. Duncan Thomson's (no relation to Jamie as far as I know) in-depth post covers hundreds of different gamebook series both classic and modern. Check it out on Rand Roll here.

And if you want to write your own gamebook, Stuart Lloyd has compiled an invaluable reading list to get you started. And trawling through some old posts here (such as this one) might also prove inspiring. I also find it useful to listen to Hieronymus J Doom's perceptive analyses of gamebooks on the Haunted Phonograph and Ed Jolley's Adventure Gameblog.

Talking of gamebooks, have you been keeping up with Prime Games' development reports on the CRPG version of Blood Sword? The latest concerns my favourite character class to write, the Trickster:

"The Warrior holds the line. The Enchanter bends the arcane. The Sage unveils hidden truths. The Trickster thrives where no one else dares -- in shadows, in whispers, in the thin places between honour and survival. Assassin, Knave, Hunter, or something in between, the Trickster proves that guile can be sharper than steel."

Read more about the Blood Sword CRPG and add it to your Steam wishlist here.

New Tokyo 2130

Any new gamebook by David Velasco and Riq Sol is an event worthy of notice. David and Riq are the creative talent behind Expeditionary Company, a truly groundbreaking work, so when they say they're planning an even more ambitious project there's reason to get excited. New Tokyo 2130 has vibes of Blade Runner and (maybe) a dash of Heart of Ice, but no doubt with many completely original elements too. You can upgrade your frail human body with up to sixty cybernetic enhancements, for instance. Definitely one to watch.

Ill doings in God's country

Dragon Warriors' 40th anniversary won't pass unnoticed as long as Red Ruin Publishing have anything to say about it. They've just released the seventeenth book in their series of DW adventures, and it's one of the best. The Curse on God's Acre is a 500+ section gamebook by David Donachie and Paul Partington:

Deep in the fertile countryside of Chaubrette, you find yourself in the isolated valley known as God's Acre. Here the sturdy locals grow wine and keep sheep — but all is not as it seems. A pernicious evil haunts the lanes and narrow fields.

Revealed at first in scraps of children's songs, in the blank stares of straw dolls, in the animals masks lurking in the shadows, in the tangled entrails of a murdered woman. Mysterious evil has the valley in its grasp and is squeezing ever tighter.

Special rules for dread and exhaustion add to the sense (for me, anyway) of a blending of Clark Ashton Smith's eerie tales of Averoigne with the straightforward secular horrors of The Wicker Man. But to make any such comparison is to sell this atmospheric and original adventure short. The Curse on God's Acre is a memorable solo scenario that deserves a place in every Dragon Warriors player's collection. You can pick it up for as little as $1 if you're hard up, and the artwork alone is worth more than that, so grab your copy now.

The Horned Ram

2025 is the 40th anniversary of Dragon Warriors, and we can trust Red Ruin Publishing to mark that with some of their usual high-quality scenarios and gamebooks. Here's The Horned Ram, a solo adventure for an assassin, by Paul Partington. You're out of cash and out of luck when you get offered the job of 'reclaiming' a lost gem that may be in the hands of a religious group. What could possibly go wrong..?

Halloween treat, no trick

Forty years ago I wrote my first gamebook. I was a roleplayer and board gamer. I’d played the Fantasy Trip solo adventures, and even wrote a short solo dungeon for my friend Steve Foster (designer of Mortal Combat) when he had to spend a week in hospital, but I’d hardly noticed the growing kids’ gamebook craze until Ian Livingstone asked me to write a serialized solo adventure for White Dwarf. That was The Castle of Lost Souls.

It wasn’t long before almost everyone I knew was signing up to write a gamebook series. Joe Dever and Gary Chalk left Games Workshop to do Lone Wolf. Jamie Thomson too, teaming up with Mark Smith (who was another stalwart of our Tekumel campaign) to create Way of the Tiger and Falcon. You can see why Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson (UK) might have felt a bit miffed. They’d started a trend and now half their workforce was deserting the ship to jump on the bandwagon – if that isn’t mixing metaphors.

I used to freelance for White Dwarf a lot in those days, but once Jamie quit the editorial chair I didn’t have as much reason to show up at the office. Then Steve Jackson asked me to come in to talk about a series of gamebooks that he wanted to publish. He and Ian were committed to doing more Fighting Fantasy for Puffin Books, so these would be Games Workshop’s own series.

Steve was always coming up with fascinating game mechanics. He told me about a little tactical combat system he’d thought of when stuck in a motel in the middle of America. You had a tactical diagram that showed which actions were permitted in a combat round. So from EVADE you could move to DEFEND, REST or NORMAL ATTACK. From DEFEND you could only move to EVADE or NORMAL ATTACK, and so on.

When the player’s action was compared with the opponent’s, that gave the number of hit points each combatant lost. ‘Do you think you could use this for a gamebook?’ Steve wondered.

I went away and did a little work on it. I can’t remember how I handled the NPC adversaries, but this was a 1980s gamebook so there wasn’t going to be any AI. Probably the NPCs just acted randomly each round, and that was cross-referenced with the player’s action to give the outcome for that round. That would eat up a lot of paragraphs if every encounter had its own set of action entries, so I imagine I had a few dozen entries for each of several types of monster. They could be customized by SPECIAL ATTACKS, which would vary depending on the monster.

‘Looks good,’ reckoned Steve, ‘but I’d like to see a sample. Fifty or sixty sections, say.’

I went home, sat down at my Olympia Traveller typewriter, and began: ‘Dusk in Wistren Wood…’ and launched into a solo adventure in a vampire’s mansion. When I showed it to Steve he liked it and proposed a contract for Vampire Crypt, as it was then called. When the contract came it had a clause preventing me from writing gamebooks for any other publishers. I’m glad I never signed it, as if I had then my writing career would have been over before it began. (You may have noticed that Games Workshop never did get around to publishing their own gamebook series.)

Still, I was left with the beginning of a gamebook. When I signed with Grafton Books a few months later to do the Golden Dragon series, those fifty sample sections let me get a head start on the tight deadlines. Of course I couldn’t use Steve Jackson’s clever rule system, but Golden Dragon needed something a lot simpler anyhow. And thus Crypt of the Vampire was born – or spawned, or sired, or whatever the appropriate term is for vamps.

(Yes, these are the original maps and notes. I'm that much of a hoarder.)

And here we are at the 40th anniversary. To mark it I dug out a reboot of the book that I wrote for Amazon a couple of years ago. They wanted apps for Alexa (for some reason they call them skills) so I turned Crypt of the Vampire into The Vampire’s Lair, a consciously old-school adventure in audio form. Rather than retain the dungeon fantasy flavour of the original, though, I leaned into the influences of those Universal and Hammer monster movies I loved as a kid, when horror was delicious shuddersome fun and before it became synonymous with serial killers, torture porn and (yawn) demonic possession.

The text I wrote for that is now on sale for Halloween in a slim paperback with Leo Hartas’s original illustrations reworked in full colour. (My generous Patreon backers get to read it for free -- just sayin'.) It was Leo’s first book too. I’d seen his portfolio when he came into the White Dwarf offices one day, and when my editor at Grafton, Angela Sheehan, asked me if there were any artists I wanted for the series Leo's name sprang to mind. And because of that I began a close and dear friendship, a friendship which also now forty years old. If it were a marriage that means Leo and I would be celebrating our ruby anniversary – a very suitable hue given the blood-sucking tastes of the sinister count.

Darkness visible -- at last

It turned into a real labour of Hercules -- sorry, Herakles -- but it was worth it because now I can say: the Vulcanverse series is complete! The fifth and final book, Workshop of the Gods, is finally available in either colour hardcover edition or in paperback. As the blurb puts it:

Vulcan City is a place of striking contrasts. A metropolis where marble palaces and gilded rooftops soar against the sky, whose walls and towers seem to approaching travellers like the flanks of mountains, where gold and jewels overflow the coffers of wily merchants, and where nobles in silk finery indulge in epicurean pleasures to rival the banquets of Olympus.

But it is also a place of teeming streets and plazas where cutthroats and spies hide themselves amid the crowds, where narrow alleyways can lead to stinking, maze-like warrens where the unwary visitor is soon as lost as in the deepest wood. In candlelit taverns you may overhear whispered secrets that can make a fortune or ruin a reputation. And here in the magnificent hub at the centre of the Vulcanverse, life is often as cheap as a trinket sold on a marketplace stall.

Meet up again with old friends and bitter enemies. Uncover long-buried secrets, hunt down thieves and murderers, wrestle with demons, cross swords with assassins, join criminal gangs – even come face to face with the spectre of your own death.

Visit the puppet shows where you’ll find hints about the fate of a universe. Seek counsel from the oracle who is privy to the insight of the gods – if you can afford it. Venture into the prison that holds the cleverest man alive, knowing that you must either befriend him or kill him. Lay claim if you can to a mansion brimming with treasures and traps. Rise in society, making alliances among the ruling factions. And attend the glittering party at Vulcan's palace, whose location is hidden from the eyes of ordinary mortals, where you will set out on a perilous journey through space and time to reach the crucial, cataclysmic battle between light and darkness towards which all your choices have been leading.

This is the city where all possibilities meet, where destinies are made, where the fate of the Vulcanverse will finally be decided.

In the Vulcanverse series, as in Fabled Lands, you can begin in any region and travel freely back and forth between the books to pursue your quests. But there are significant differences from the earlier series. In Fabled Lands there's no central storyline, whereas in Vulcanverse most of the hundreds of quests feed into a plot that builds across all five books to an epic finale that occupies the second half of Workshop of the Gods. Your choices in the books have lasting consequences, altering the fate of nations and even the very landscape. You'll develop relationships with recurring characters, both friends and foes. And you will bear the scars as well as carry the glory of your exploits through all 6115 sections (more than fifteen Fighting Fantasy length gamebooks!) and three quarters of a million words. Did I say epic? It's longer than The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit combined.

And what is your ultimate goal through the series? As you'll soon discover, darkness casts a lengthening shadow over the Vulcanverse, threatening all who dwell in the five realms. Queen Nyx, with her dread sons Death and Sleep at her side, has unleashed a devastating war that will sweep away both gods and titans and leave her the unchallenged monarch of all creation. You must hone your skills, win over allies, and gather the weapons and clues that will make you into the Hero of the Age, the only mortal capable of opposing the Night Queen.

Although technically the fifth book, this is actually a good one to start your adventures in. That way you'll have a base in the city which is the hub for all the other regions. You can visit the Oracle in the temple district to get hints, and your family will introduce you to mentor characters who can help you figure out some of the major quests that you'll need to complete.

Jamie and I are keen to hear what people think of this series. So if open-world solo roleplaying is your thing, do pick up a volume or five, embark on some adventures, and tell us how you get on.

You can find a copy of the Adventure Sheet for the book here, and the books themselves (both hardcover and paperback editions) here.

You want fries with that?

In a very short time (I say that with fingers crossed) I'll be ready to put my Jewelspider RPG on DriveThruRPG. Urged by regular correspondent Stanley Barnes, and with the help of Simon Barns of Red Ruin Publishing, I thought I'd better learn the DriveThru ropes by uploading some books I did earlier.

So, if you're looking for digital gamebooks, you can now get the Critical IF series from DriveThruRPG:

• Heart of Ice
• Down Among the Dead Men
• Necklace of Skulls
• Once Upon a Time in Arabia

As well as the grand finale of the Blood Sword series:

• The Walls of Spyte

And a former Fighting Fantasy title that has been reworked as a standalone adventure in the Fabled Lands series:

• The Keep of the Lich Lord

And the first Fabled Lands book:

• The War-Torn Kingdom

You get a watermarked PDF with all the sections hyperlinked and the original illustrations by Russ Nicholson and Leo Hartas. In the case of Once Upon a Time in Arabia that makes this quite a collector's item, incidentally, as the print version currently lacks Russ's pictures.

A world where you can make a difference

The Vulcanverse gamebooks don't get nearly enough reviews. I would say that, wouldn't I? But Jamie and I genuinely feel they're some of our best work. We're aware that the gamebook resurgence, such as it is, is mainly driven by adults buying the books they enjoyed as kids. Naturally that makes it hard for a new series to break through, but there are standout successes: Steam Highwayman, Legendary Kingdoms, Expeditionary Company, and others. 

Our hope is that with the completion of the saga (Workshop of the Gods is due to be published in a few months) readers will get to appreciate the full story arc that's been building across the series. The entire adventure is over 6000 sections long, that's more than 15 old-style Fighting Fantasy gamebooks, and there are decisions you make right from the start that have repercussions in the apocalyptic showdown at the end.

Yes, I know, I could do with a better microphone. Still, if that all whets your appetite, you can get started by downloading Adventure Sheet PDFs for the Vulcanverse series here:

• Workshop of the Gods (Vulcan City)
• The Houses of the Dead (Hades)
• The Hammer of the Sun (Notus)
• The Wild Woods (Arcadia)
• The Pillars of the Sky (Boreas)

Gamebook hallucinations

There's a lot of misunderstanding about generative AI. "These large language models just babble nonsense," people say. Well, why not? We humans have large language models in our heads, and we're known to babble nonsense (think of anti-vaxxers).

An LLM's usefulness depends on what's behind it. Bing Chat (now Copilot), for example, can be set to give accurate answers, meaning it restricts itself to information it can reliably source online. And copilot AIs are the really useful tools. Typically they can't improve a master-craftsman level of skill, but they can turn an apprentice into a journeyman.

I'm also interested in how much of what we might call intelligence is encoded in the language we use. Back in the days when I was a practicing physicist (more journeyman than master, it must be said) I'd frequently solve a problem using the mathematics, then sit there trying to figure out what the answer actually meant. The language (maths in this case) got there first. Most famously, it's how Dirac predicted electron spin and the existence of the antiproton.

I'm drifting off track here. Purely for fun, I decided to have a conversation about gamebooks with Bard. What could it tell me about the early days of open-world gamebooks? "Here's one," said Bard:

Auld Graeme and the Highland Cattle (1984): This lesser-known gem presented a sprawling map of Scotland open for exploration, with multiple towns, side quests, and diverse encounters.

Auld Graeme and the Highland Cattle? The first open-world gamebook? That sounds intriguing -- if highly unlikely. Who wrote it, I asked? "Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone," Bard replied. But when pressed to back up its claims with sources it admitted:

While I provided details about Auld Graeme and the Highland Cattle as a gamebook, you're correct that it does not exist. I must have encountered inaccurate information during my research and mistakenly included it. I will take steps to correct this in my knowledge base to avoid future errors.

It won't, incidentally; it won't remember the conversation. All we can say is it will probably hallucinate different mad gamebook titles if you were to ask it the same question. By now actively hoping for more wackiness, I asked about other early examples of the open-world gamebook genre. Bard didn't disappoint:

The Dawn of the Sandbox

• Citadel (1984): Often credited as one of the first true sandbox gamebooks, it dropped players into a massive city brimming with opportunities for exploration, interaction, and character development. 
• Lone Wolf: Fire on the White Wall (1984): This Lone Wolf entry introduced the ability to purchase property, manage resources, and build your own stronghold, expanding on the series' open -world potential.

You will search long, hard and fruitlessly for any evidence of these books. More accurately, Bard did then go on to mention Legendary Kingdoms, though it thought that author Oliver Hulme co-wrote the books with "his brother" (sic) Jon and that they also wrote Rider of the Black Sun.

Heart of Ice isn't sandbox, but I asked about it anyway. Bard confidently explained the book's main features:

Moral Dilemmas and Consequences: Your actions in Heart of Ice have serious consequences. Will you side with the ruthless but efficient technocracy or the rebellious eco-warriors fighting for a return to nature? Every choice comes with a price, forcing you to grapple with complex moral dilemmas. 

Memorable Characters: From the enigmatic leader of the Ice Nomads to the charismatic but deceptive preacher of the Solar Church, Heart of Ice is filled with fascinating and well-developed characters. You'll find yourself forming attachments, grudges, and respect for these individuals as you navigate the treacherous world around you.

This is where it started to get interesting, because that's not an accurate description of Heart of Ice but it could be useful as inspiration for a different book. I wondered what Bard might invent concerning the Vulcanverse series. It rose to this one with enthusiasm:

Ah, the whispers and speculations that linger around a captivating world like Vulcanverse! Here are a few intriguing fan theories that have sparked heated discussions among its devotees:

• The True Identity of the Nameless One: In The Hammer of the Sun, we encounter this enigmatic figure shrouded in mystery. Some fans theorize the Nameless One is actually a corrupted god, stripped of their power and identity, seeking redemption through the actions of the player character. Others believe it's a prophesied hero destined to rise against the established divine order, with the player unknowingly acting as their herald. 
• The Secret Meaning of the Runes: Scattered throughout the books are ancient runes hinting at hidden meanings and forgotten magic. Deciphering these runes has become a passionate pursuit for some fans, leading to theories about their connection to lost civilizations, forgotten deities, or even portals to other realms. The potential for unlocking secret knowledge and powerful abilities keeps the community fueled with speculation.

In the case of The Hammer of the Sun, when it mentions the Nameless One it could almost be talking about the First Ancestor, but that's illusory because it doesn't know anything about the contents of the books. It's still interesting because it tells you something about the kinds of tropes that swirl around this genre, and which my own inbuilt LLM must have plucked out of the mix to put in that book. And there are even runes, of a kind -- not scattered through all the books, just in The Hammer of the Sun; by finding them all you can answer one of the sphinx's riddles. (Er, I mean: the riddle of one of the sphinxes.)

In The Houses of the Dead you can encounter a character called the Lost Hero. I asked Bard about them.

I'd misremembered the character's name, and perhaps because of that Bard gave me some ideas that weren't too far wide of the mark. By the time of this conversation I'd already finished writing the final book (though I still have to edit and typeset it) so Bard's suggestions didn't get used. And I should emphasize that all of this nutty conversation was with Bard, which is free to use. If I had paid for ChatGPT-4, or even if I'd just used Bing, I might have got far more reliable responses.

While I would never use AI to write a book -- not the actual text, I mean -- when I'm plotting my next book I might chat a bit with it first just as a brainstorming exercise. As a way of getting started it beats staring at a blank page.

When life gives you limes...

Few people have done more to keep the gamebook flame burning than Stuart Lloyd, whose blog Lloyd of Gamebooks continues to feature top-notch news, ideas and design tips. And once a year the cherry on the cake is the Lindenbaum Prize, a competition that Stuart co-runs with Peter Agapov of Augmented Reality Adventure Games to find the new gamebooks pushing the medium forward into fresh territory.

Everything you need to know about this year's Lindenbaum Prize is right here. Entries open on December 6 and run through to February 20. Better get planning.

A very witching time

My first published book was Crypt of the Vampire. That was before the Soviet Union fell. A couple of years ago I reworked it as an Alexa app (Amazon call them skills, but apps is what they are) but it never saw the light of day because the coder lost interest. Eventually -- by which I mean after I've finished Vulcanverse book 5, Jewelspider, Tetsubo, Abraxas and Λ -- I'll release that revised version as a book.

But you don't have to wait that long for some sinister vampiric thrills, because Red Ruin Publishing have unleashed another of their top-notch free Dragon Warriors solo adventures, Lair of the Vampire, set in Hudristania, where:

"...tiny villages squat miserably in the isolated mountain passes, like birds’ nests huddled into a crag for shelter. Frightened peasants quake under the rule of a hundred local despots. Terror soars aloft on membraneous wings by night and sifts the carrion in lonely churchyards—for this is the traditional home of vampires, ghouls and werewolves. Black-clad priests trek from valley to valley, but the peasants are always torn between faith and fear. Spend a few days in any of the mountain villages and you will see a funeral procession wending a path down through the narrow streets—old men whose lined faces show the scars of many losses, grim youths with jaws set in sullen defiance, veiled women sending up a shrieking lament, and wailing children who have yet to learn the injustice into which they have been born. The mourners are led by a priest with a silver crucifix on his breast. Watch and wait. After the procession has gone past, once the wailing and the clanging of the priest's bell have faded into the distance, you may see another figure pass by. He follows the mourners at a respectful distance, his eyes showing only a weary determination. On his back he has a heavy knapsack. After the coffin has been lowered into the ground, the priest will linger to pay this man a few silvers before hurrying back with the other villagers to bolt his door. The stranger opens his knapsack and prepares the items he will need. He is a draktoter, a profession that combines gravedigging with another unpleasant duty. He takes the mallet and stake from his sack and turns towards the open grave. It is his job to see that the ranks of the nosferatu will not be joined by this unfortunate soul."

(Incidentally, have I recommended Marcus Sedgwick's My Swordhand is Singing to you? Terrible title for a really down and dirty old-style vampire story that captures that same grim flavour.)

Over on Patreon today there are three adventure seeds for Halloween, as well as plenty of other material relating to Jewelspider and the lands of Legend generally. Also downloadable free from Red Ruin, and packed with the usual high standard of rules, scenarios, discussion and source material, comes Casket of Fays issue 11. Aunty Crookback alone will give you reason to close the curtains as dusk gathers, and you'll hesitate to answer the door to what sounds like trick-or-treaters...

Just a scratch

While talking to Paweł Dziemski at Other Worlds (publishers of the beautiful Polish edition of Heart of Ice) we realized -- well, Paweł did -- that the strict Endurance rules of the original Blood Sword books are not in step with the thinking of modern gamebooks. Back then, your hit points were whittled away and if you got to zero, too bad: bury that character and go back to the start.

It's never fun dying in a gamebook, but at least if it happens because of a bad decision then you can accept that you should have thought more about it or watched out for the clues and warnings. When you just conk out from hit point attrition, that's a death of a thousand paper cuts. These days it's likely to have you throwing the book across the room.

Of course, you could include a sage in the party and rely on their healing, but the rules shouldn't make it impossible for you to play without a sage. Paweł suggested restoring Endurance to full if characters survive a fight, but I didn't want to go quite that far as it would make the sage's healing power pretty useless.

So I've added these optional rules to the Blood Sword books. Use any that take your fancy:

• After winning a fight, every surviving character in the party can recover half their lost Endurance points rounded up. For example, if you normally have 30 Endurance and you end a fight with 9 Endurance, you can restore your score to 20. This only applies if you are victorious, not if you flee from the combat. Endurance is not recovered until the battle is over and all opponents have been vanquished. A character who was reduced to 0 Endurance during the fight does not recover; they are dead and gone.
• Instead of unlimited movement on the tactical maps, you move a number of squares equal to ½ your Awareness.
• If killed in a combat that the rest of the party win, a character returns to life with 1-6 Endurance.
• If the whole party is killed, use the flee option for that section (if there is one) and return to life with 1d6 Endurance each. (So the party only dies if there is no flee option.)

The Blood Sword series is on Amazon (UK and US and worldwide).

Peaks that stretch to the floor of heaven

If you've yet to start exploring the Vulcanverse, a good place to get prepped is over at the Vulcan Forged site where a fascinating new series of posts is providing an in-depth look at the lore of each region of this immersive world. This month it's the turn of Boreas, the icy mountain realm. (Part 1 here and part 2 here.)

A quick recap: Vulcanverse is an open world gamebook series. You can start in any book and travel back and forth between them. So far, so Fabled Lands. The differences with Vulcanverse are that you can explore the world with NPC companions, you get free resurrections (most of the time), and there are many more opportunities than in other gamebooks to permanently change the world by your actions.

Also in contrast to Fabled Lands, the whole Vulcanverse story builds to an epic finale in the fifth book, Workshop of the Gods, which will be released in a few months' time. I've been labouring away at the manuscript for almost a year (you'll never hear me criticize George RR Martin's work rate; I know just what it's like) and I now have over 20,000 words of notes covering the endgame sequence alone. The finished book will be around 1200 sections long, making the whole Vulcanverse series nearly 5000 sections and more than 600,000 words. After this one I might need a lie down.

Save your obols for Charon

Our cut-rate special offer on The Hammer of the Sun was such a hit with readers that we've decided to extend it to all the Vulcanverse books in paperback. 

Is this just a ploy to get you to try the series? You bet it is. Jamie and I think we've done some of our best work here and it's a shame that it might get overlooked just because it's an all-new series without a glow of nostalgia to attract gamebook fans' attention.

As Vulcanverse is an open-world series you can start in any book. The Houses of the Dead and The Wild Woods provide a bit more of a directed CRPG-style experience, with simple quests you can finish in half an hour or less, while The Pillars of the Sky and The Hammer of the Sun give a much wider canvass where there are epic payoffs that significantly change the world, but to earn the major rewards you'll need to actively seek out those quests and be persistent.

The fifth book, Workshop of the Gods, is where all these quests come together. (The image here, while generated by AI, just happens to illustrate one of the key scenes you might reach if you are able to cross the Ocean of Night.) I'm writing that final book now and it should be out early next year. While you're waiting, why not see how many of these bad boys you can cram in a Christmas socking?

You can also buy the paperbacks from Amazon in Spain, Germany, Italy, France, and Japan.

Here is an online Adventure Sheet for all the books.

Can it happen?

In 1935, Nobel-prize-winning author Sinclair Lewis dashed out his novel It Can't Happen Here in six weeks to warn Americans about the threat of populism to democracy. Right after seeing footage of the Capitol insurrection, and noticing that Lewis's work came out of copyright last year, I thought I should have a crack at an interactive reworking of his book: Can It Happen Here? Not that a gamebook will save US democracy in 2024, but as John Stuart Mill put it:

"Let not anyone pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion. Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing."

Good intentions can only take you so far. I spent a year researching and writing Can You Brexit? and that was on just one issue in the politics of the country where I live. I was heartened by the thought that Armando Iannucci, a fellow Brit, created Veep. If he can get his head around the US political system, why not me? Iannucci did have an HBO development budget, admittedly, while I have only spare time and access to Google, but I still meant to have a go. But then I got offered some actual paid jobs. So much for the spare time. Also, I'm still smarting from UK publishers turning down Can You Brexit? and then later saying that, oh, they should have taken it after all. 

The best way to pitch it would not be as a full-on Choose Your Own Adventure style book with micro-decisions every page or so, I think, but something more like Professor John Buckley's The Armchair General: Can You Defeat The Nazis? There you get presented with complete scenarios and you only need to make choices at about a dozen key points in the book. That ensures it isn't lumped into the niche gamebook market but instead counts as counterfactual history, which appeals to a much bigger readership. But even so it would be a hard struggle to get publishers to accept it. An editor might wreck their career by championing an odd book that flops, so they stick to safe bets. It could be a waste of a year or more of work.

In short, I can't be bothered to go through that again, and it would be particularly painful to hear from some editor at Simon & Schuster in 2028 that maybe if they had run with Can It Happen Here? then voting wouldn't have been suspended by Donald the First.

On top of all that, MCU shows and movies of late have shown how preachiness can really louse up a good story, so maybe I should stick to entertainment and let Western Union handle the messages. Anyway, here's the pitch. You decide...

Can It Happen Here?

The Plot Against America. The Man in the High Castle. The Handmaid’s Tale…

Is it any coincidence that over the last few years there’s been a surge of popular interest in stories that show the fragility of modern democracy? That highlight the ever-present threat of dictatorship? That pitch freedom head-to-head against tyranny?

In 1935, concerned at the rise of intolerance and political extremism, Sinclair Lewis wrote It Can’t Happen Here as a warning to American voters. He described the meteoric rise to power of a political outsider, a demagogue called Buzz Windrip who stands for office on a populist platform of anti-immigration, hatemongering, nationalist fervor and a return to a mythical better past. As President, Windrip soon begins installing his own family and loyalists into key positions with a view to subverting the institutions of democracy and turning America into an autocratic state.

Nearly a century later the book is as chilling and relevant as ever, but it can be hard for today’s readers to look past the creaky ‘30s period detail and really grasp the instant urgency of Lewis’s message. How do we package that message in a way that will make it compelling and contemporary?

Can It Happen Here is an interactive novel. Readers are probably familiar with interactivity from Choose Your Own Adventure books, but since those came on the scene the boundary between games and linear fiction has blurred. Black Mirror and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt both featured interactive episodes, and interactive dramas such as Tell Me Why and Twin Mirror are now being released episodically like TV shows.

Can It Happen Here is a true interactive novel, an update/reboot of Lewis’s original with a sweeping story and a wide cast of characters. The reader will be in the Oval Office, an aghast observer as President Windrip tears up the rulebook of decent behavior. Will you take a stand? Try to curb the President’s excesses? Be the voice in his ear nudging him towards moderation and sanity?

Or will you be the angel of his worst nature? Advising him to spread lies, insult his rivals, fire the good officials and instal his own family and loyalists in key positions until America becomes his personal fiefdom? Resistance or complicity? Integrity or personal power? Clean conscience or guilt? You can go either way.

In alternating chapters we are thrust into situations that vividly depict the consequences of the President’s actions. You’ll be called on to advise a journalist who’s thinking of running an exposé of Windrip’s business dealings. You’ll follow a family that’s being pulled apart and herded into an internment camp. You’ll be the conscience of a TV reporter who’s been asked to spread what she knows to be misinformation. You’ll be a defense secretary asked to order US troops to break up protests. You’ll be there in the midst of the riots, fighting for either freedom or for fascism.

You get to decide. Your moral choices make the difference. Every decision has effects that will change people’s lives. Unlike a game, there’s no win or lose. Whether each reader’s outcome feels like a victory is up to them – and it’s something that readers will debate passionately with their friends.

When you close the book will you think, ‘I did my best to protect liberty’? Will you think, ‘Strong leadership is what we need right now’? Will you feel good or bad about your decisions and the part you played?

Will you think: ‘Anyway, it can’t happen here… Can it?’

How it works

We have a big story to tell, and the way we do that is a bit like World War Z, where we see the impact of events on the lives of a range of very different characters. Throughout the story we’ll keep returning to the President, and the reader gets to be one of his advisers – for good or ill. And those decisions you make in the White House unfold as real consequences. Deny the pandemic and you’ll see a family losing loved ones. Rail against immigrants and there will be bloody race violence. Spread conspiracy theories and you’ll be fueling a firestorm of hatred and ignorance that will consume lives.

Alternatively you can be the voice of reason, mitigating Windrip’s worst autocratic instincts. You can’t make him, like a miracle, just disappear – but you can be the bulwark of basic tenets of American democracy so that there is a hope of light after the long night of his presidency.

The book keeps track of your choices using keywords. There are a dozen of these, listed in the front of the book, and you tick them off when one of your decisions makes a seismic and long-lasting difference.

So, say that you encourage President Windrip to give a speech whipping up his supporters to a pitch of violence. You’d tick the keyword ANONYMOUS that means in a later scene a group of armed Windrip voters kidnap a state governor. But if you tone the speech down, or limit the President’s access to Twitter, you might get a different keyword, say DIALOGUE, that means an informant tells the FBI about the kidnap plot and they turn up in the nick of time.

A similar approach is used in The Walking Dead video games. Those comprise a connected sequence of episodes. The choices in each episode don’t always have immediate and obvious effects, but each episode acts as a spotlight on the wider theme and all those choices feed into the larger narrative and have their payoff there.

So whether you are a US senator being pressured to compromise your principles, a homeowner who has to decide whether to speak up about the internment of a neighbor, or whatever – each of these glimpses of Windrip’s America will play out in their own way, but the final chapters will depend on the choices you made in all the others. If you don't stand up for your neighbors it means a majority of Americans also looked the other way, and in those small decisions freedom is won or lost.

Throughout the book, the point is: when you make a choice you have to live with it. The people who suffer because of the President’s trammeling of the law are not a faceless and indefinable “other” – they are going to be characters who you meet and get to know, so that the effect of your choices really matters.

Expeditionary Company is in need of goldash

Only three decades after Jamie and I more or less invented the open-world gamebook genre, suddenly you can't move for new ones.

I'm not complaining. Books like Steam Highwayman are more than worthy successors to Fabled Lands, in the same way that Citizen Kane didn't need to spend too long genuflecting to Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed.

What I like about the new generation of open-world books is the way they take the concept as a springboard, not a straitjacket. Steam Highwayman gives you a role to fill in the world, though you have considerable freedom in deciding how you go about it. Alba is a more directed story experience, like a literary The Long Dark. And Legendary Kingdoms has a party of characters with their own relationships and an epic story set in a detailed fantasy world.

Oh, and there's Vulcanverse of course, which has companions and a story arc that builds in from the first four books to culminate in a finale that the MCU wouldn't be ashamed of. And there's never been a better time to try it out, incidentally.

But I digress. Now comes Expeditionary Company by celebrated gamebook authors David Velasco and Riq Sol. This is more than just a gamebook, though. It's almost a mash-up of roleplaying game, boardgame and multiple-choice adventure, with notes of Expedition and To Carry A Sword. Download the free demo and see what I mean. 

But it looks to be much more than just a blend of those elements, with a compelling lore and world all its own. What I especially like is the depth of the backstory: a mystery to be uncovered that not only sets up some dubious saviours (or more likely outright scheming bad guys) in the form of the Auric, it also provides the dramatic tension between travelling to make money and exploring the wilderness to find out more. It's a background that would do justice to a series of fantasy novels. This is how gamebooks grow up.

Tragically the Kickstarter was cancelled, so we can only hope the authors find another way to fund this innovative project. Perhaps a games publisher will get behind it, or maybe a new crowdfunding effort will raise the money needed. It's not easy (I can't even figure out how to Kickstart any of my own projects) but I'm really rooting for this one.

Reversal of meaning

Fighting Fantazine issue 17 is now out. It's great, the artwork is fabulous, there are some epic gamebook adventures to play through, in-depth reviews, and it's free to download. What more do you want?

If you answered, "An interview with Dave Morris" then you're in luck, they've got that too. But I will just draw your attention to an erratum. Asked about my Jewelspider RPG, the reply printed is:

"I think Jewelspider will appeal to simulationists who have yet to see something to admire in Powered by the Apocalypse..."

But wait. What what I actually said was:

"Jewelspider will appeal to simulationists who yet see something to admire in Powered by the Apocalypse’s streamlined let’s-get-on-with-the-story approach."

Quite a difference! I do admire PbtA, you see, despite being a simulationist. My reason for favouring simulationism is not because I'm a wargames nerd but because I want rules that procedurally create a story without authorial steering. So on the spectrum of roleplaying, I'm probably nearer to the PbtA end than the GURPS end. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say I'm in a superposition of states; I like both.

Anyway, I just wanted to set that straight in case anyone bothered to read that far into the interview and thought I was some daft old fogey dissing the new(ish) trends in roleplaying.

The artwork above is by the very talented Johan Tieldow, incidentally. I hope if I ever write another gamebook that I can get him to do some of the illustrations.

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.

The mystery at the desert's heart

Why do people roleplay? For as many diverse reasons as they indulge any other activity. Somebody on Twitter was discussing the best way to include traps in RPGs, citing the example of a curse of fire and ice inscribed on a tomb. That’ll be interesting, I thought; how would a curse of fire and ice manifest? How would it take its toll on the violators of the tomb, whittling them away, pushing each to abandon his comrades and selfishly try to save his own hide? It wasn’t like that. It was just a fireball followed by a treasure sealed in ice and protected by extreme cold. So the players had to figure out a way to chip the treasure out before they froze to death.

Well, I enjoy lateral thinking problems, just not usually as part of my roleplaying games. Not that I have anything against the dungeoneers who like traps and secret doors and wandering monsters and rooms with puzzles. Whatever floats your boat. If you adventure in Legend, though, it’s likely to be because you prefer your fantasy to feel more real, peopled by adversaries with nuanced motives and allies who could in extreme circumstances abandon or even betray you. You want credible storylines, complexity of relationships, and richness of character interaction. If there are puzzles they shouldn’t feel like something in a game show but will arise organically out of the dynamics of the world and the society. 

If that sounds like your thing, take a look at David Donachie’s superb Outremer gamebook Icon of Death, which plays out like a real Dragon Warriors adventure with mysteries and uncertainty, fully rounded NPCs, and action that’s all the more exciting and involving for arising out of a completely convincing background. You get a 320+ section gamebook with superb artwork that brings the characters to life, and it’s entirely free.

David Donachie also has a strong contender for the Lindenbaum Prize with his gamebook The Garden of Earthly Regrets. For me it felt like Max Payne crossed with The Romance of the Rose and directed by Jan Švankmajer. You can try it along with all the other entries and vote for your favourites. And those too are all free.

I began by talking about fire and ice. If Icon of Death provides the desert fire L'Hiver des Hommes, Akonost's new release in the Destins series, brings the ice. It is of course the French version of Heart of Ice, now out in a beautifully produced edition with a couple of all-new illustrations by Russ.