Showing posts with label Fighting Fantasy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fighting Fantasy. Show all posts

Thursday, August 01, 2019

My First "Real" Role Playing Game Experience #RPGaDAY2019 Day 1

Every year game designer Dave Chapman aka Autocratik (Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space, All Flesh Must Be Eaten) issues his #RPGaDAY challenge where he asks gamers to blog once a day for a month using prompts he has designed. This is the sixth year of the project and I've started participating every year, but have failed to make it all 31 days. I'm going to try again this year.

As mentioned earlier, the goal is to use Dave's prompts to guide the posts. This year's prompts can be seen below and they begin quite simply with "First," so that's where I'll start.


I've blogged about my first experience with Dungeons & Dragons in a prior post, but that experience wasn't my first "real" experience with role playing games. It was my first experience to be sure, but it was such a bad experience and so unreflective of the hobby that I don't think of it as my "real" first experience. That honor goes to Citadel of Chaos by Steve Jackson. This is Games Workshop's Steve Jackson, not Steve Jackson Games' Steve Jackson, though Steve Jackson Games' Steve Jackson did write the Scorpion Swamp adventure (not confusing at all).





Citadel of Chaos was the second volume in the Fighting Fantasy Gamebook series created by Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson, but it was the first volume that I purchased. I bought the book at a local book store shortly after my parents purchased me the D&D Basic Set for Christmas. I had read the D&D rulebook several times, but I had not yet played the game so there were some gaps in my understanding of just how role playing games worked. Sure, there was the excellent example of play within the Basic Set, but it was still hard to imagine the array of choices that are available within a role playing game and it was Citadel of Chaos that provided the perfect demonstration of how rules affected narrative.

By the time I picked up Citadel, I'd already read a number of Choose Your Own Adventure books. I was comfortable with interactive fiction as a concept, so the Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks would have interested me even if I hadn't received the Basic Set as a gift, but there was something that set the Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks apart. They didn't just have a pick your path narrative, they also had rules for combat, magic, and interacting with the world. At least, Citadel of Chaos did. Warlock of Firetop Mountain, the first Fighting Fantasy Gamebook only has rules for combat and interacting with the world, it lacks a magic system.

Had Warlock been my first encounter with the genre, I don't think I'd have had the same excited reaction to the concept. In addition to lacking a magic system, the adventure in Warlock has only a single solution. There is only one way to complete the adventure successfully. That wasn't the case with Citadel. There are a couple of ways to have a happy ending playing Citadel and this fact kept me coming back to the book and replaying the adventure several times. By having a magic system and multiple paths to a successful conclusion Citadel gave me a better sense of how role playing games worked.

Sure, the mechanics of the Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks are simple to the point of being almost simplistic, but they are surprisingly flexible and have resulted in a complete role playing game that holds its own and that has a good fanbase.

I don't want to reveal too much about Citadel, only to say that it is worth checking out and that by bridging the gap between Choose Your Own Adventure books and full Role Playing Games, it makes a perfect introduction. Steve Jackson, unlike that cruel first Dungeon Master, wasn't arbitrary in his plot design. He wasn't cruel. He created an interesting and fun narrative that allowed sufficient choices that multiple plays resulted in different experiences. This fact alone, that the same book could result in different stories, was the revelation I needed to completely understand role playing games as a kid. They were stories, often starting in the same place and with the same modules, but where the players shaped what the end story would be.

After that, I was hooked.

Thursday, September 08, 2016

New 'Warlock of Firetop Mountain' Video Game Available on Steam



When the first 'Fighting Fantasy" gamebook The Warlock of Firetop Mountain was published in 1982, it helped to create an entirely new entertainment market. Fighting Fantasy gamebooks built upon the innovations of earlier interactive fiction like the Choose Your Own Adventure series and the solo role playing game adventures designed by Ken St. Andre and his compatriots for the Tunnels and Trolls roleplaying game.



Taking these two literary innovations as their inspiration, Games Workshop founders Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson created a line of books which contained both the narrative adventure and the rules for a complete role playing game. The game rules were simple, but very flexible. Throughout the series, Fighting Fantasy authors have found ways to add on subsystems that have allowed the basic mechanics to cover various magic systems, super powers, chambara-esque samurai abilities, science fiction, werewolf transformations, and much more. A complete history of the line of books can be found in Jonathan Green's excellent book You are the Hero! Green is the author of several books in the series and a fan turned professional.

The plot of The Warlock of Firetop Mountain is simple. You are a hero, or at least an adventurer, who seeks to locate and acquire the Warlock of Firetop Mountain's fabulous treasure. The adventure itself was quite challenging and required players to carefully manage resources, develop mapping skills, and have more than a touch of luck. As difficult as the adventure was, it helped to spawn a total of 57 sequels and numerous books by competitors. Additionally, Warlock as been adapted as a board game, a D&D compatible adventure module, an interactive kindle book, and a couple of video games. Some of those games captured the excitement of the original, while others were less successful.

Tin Man Games recently released a new video game adaptation of the book and the results look promising. Rather than merely "converting" the book to graphic form, it appears that Tin Man has followed the lead of some of the best books in the Fighting Fantasy series and used the book and the rules as a skeleton on which to build a meatier product. This looks to be especially true with regard to the combat system. It appears that they've added maneuvers and other options to make the game more appealing to the modern PC gamer.


 You can see the framework of the original system, but options like "quick jab" and "piercing strike" add options unavailable in the original print book.

The game is currently available on Steam for the reasonable price of $19.99.

Have a look at the trailer and see if you want to risk the dangers that await you in Zagor's mountain stronghold.





Thursday, August 09, 2012

You Got Your TWILIGHT in My Fighting Fantasy Style Gamebook, and I'm Glad.

When I purchased An Assassin in Orlandes, the first of Tin Man Games Gamebook Adventures, I did so out of a nostalgia for the old Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks by Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson and other excellent books in that genre.  I had recently acquired my first smart phone and was impressed that many of the old Fighting Fantasy books were available for purchase.  It was nice to revisit the books that along with Tunnels and Trolls solos had been my proxy game group during my middle and early high school years.  During that time, I was only able to play role playing games sporadically and the game books were a great substitute.  The smart phone versions brought back fond memories, even if it was harder to finish an adventure where one couldn't "accidentally" read future entries for clues.

The Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks, and their eventual competitors, became a huge phenomenon.  One thing they never managed to do was expand their audience beyond certain market sectors which were mostly male readers.  TSR made a brief attempt at expanding the demographic with their Heart Quest books, but they didn't catch on for various reasons.

With the smart phone and the transition to ebooks, the gamebook has seen a resurgence.  One of the leading publishers in this resurgence is Tin Man Games, and with good reason.  When I began playing An Assassin in Orlandes, just to see how this "small upstart's Fighting Fantasy competitor" would fare, I was impressed with the thoughtfulness that went into the production. The book had a compelling narrative, a fun little game system (that also allows for a little "tilting" of die rolls which is a nice touch), and even had "Achievements" that could be earned by successful and unsuccessful play.  In short, it was clear that Tin Man was going to be big.  Their success continued with the acquisition of the license to produce future Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks, taking them from competitor to partner, and the acquisition of the Judge Dredd license.  I've been playing around with their Judge Dredd gamebook app, and it is quite fun -- more on that later. 

Tin Man really seems to know what they are doing, and they are also doing what publishers should have been doing during the first boom.  They are expanding the pool of potential gamebook players.  While we geeks might be precious to protect our hobbies from "fakes," "hipsters," or "sparkly vampires," as John Scalzi points out -- we shouldn't be.  Whoever wants to be a geek should be allowed to be, and they should be welcomed into our hobbies with open arms.  One of the things that I've learned from living in Southern California is that everyone is a geek.  That's right...everyone.  Disneyland's profits are based on the premise, and have been working for years.  Walk around Disneyland one day as an observer of people.  What do you see?  People from all walks of life joyously expressing their love and affection for fantasy, science fiction, and cartoons.  It is a place where they let down their pretentious guard and allow themselves to have fun.  And that is what being a geek is about.  It is about never loosing the "Golden Age of Science Fiction is 14" attitude and making the Golden Age of Science Fiction right now.  The same is true for comic books, role playing games, or whatever else you geek out about.  When Vampire the Masquerade hit the gaming hobby, I remember those who wrong-mindedly poo pooed Goths coming into our hobby playing their "weepy Goth Anne Rice game."  While others were doing that, I was meeting some great friends who it eventually turned out happened to be willing to try playing Warhammer 40k and Globbo.  Trust me, if you can get someone to play Globbo you've won the pop-culture wars and I credit White Wolf with getting Vampire fans who would never think of playing Globbo in the first place to try it out.  VtM was the gateway game that lead to more gaming for a lot of people.

It appears that Tin Man Games is trying to give fans of the Twilight books and Vampire Diaries a gateway gamebook into my favorite hobby with Strange Loves: Vampire Boyfriends.  This is something we should be praising.  After all, how far is it from Vampire Boyfriends -- a book with game mechanics -- to Vampire the Masquerade?  And as I've mentioned already, Vampire the Masquerade can lead to Twilight Imperium play.

Check out Tin Man's book trailer for their new book Vampire Boyfriends, the first in the Strange Loves series.



 

You know what?  I think I might just pick up a copy of this book/game.

Friday, July 27, 2012

[Gamebooks] As they say, "Drokk! Here comes Dredd!" New Judge Dredd Gamebook App Coming Soon

Tin Man Games, publisher of the Gamebook Adventures line of smart phone and tablet based narrative solo gamebooks, have announced that they will be releasing a gamebook based on the popular 2000 A.D. character Judge Dredd.  The app should be available next week.  As is typical of Tin Man Games productions, the aesthetic qualities of the app look to be fantastic.




I have been a fan of Tin Man Games since their initial offering An Assassin in Orlandes.  Tin Man Games designed their own combat and skill resolutions system for the Gamebook Adventures line and it plays quickly while adding drama to the potential combats in their tales.  In the next month or so, I'll do an "Adventure Gamebooks as RPGs" entry for the line -- though that will have to wait until after I finish the Swordquest Table Top adaptation I'm working on.  The AGs as RPGs entries are conversations of how one can adapt the systems within gamebooks to table top play.  I was inspired to attempt them by the old Advanced Fighting Fantasy RPG which converted the Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks system into a full rpg.  It was workable, but I like to tinker.

Do yourself a favor and pick up a couple of the Tin Man apps.  Their consistent quality was likely one of the reasons that the company was given the license to do future Fighting Fantasy Gamebook apps starting with the upcoming Blood of the Zombies.



Color me excited.

Thursday, February 03, 2011

Adventure Gamebooks as RPGs Part 2 -- Sagard the Barbarian: #1 The Ice Dragon


Gary Gygax, the co-creator of the Dungeons & Dragons role playing game, dove into the adventure gamebook craze in 1985 with his Sagard the Barbarian series of gamebooks. This series of four interactive novels took place in Gary Gygax's signature "World of Greyhawk" campaign setting. Sagard's adventures in The Ice Dragon begin in a mountain range called The Rakers which make up the border of Ratik and the Theocracy of the Pale.


Gygax co-wrote the Sagard series with Flint Dille. Dille's other works have included the Transformers and GI Joe TV series, as well The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay video game. Gygax met Dille while he was in Hollywood working on the Dungeons & Dragons animated series, and his relationship with Dille led to Gygax asking Dille's sister Lorraine Williams to help save a floundering TSR in 1984. The Williams saga is its own story, one which has left Lorraine's name an epithet in some gaming circles. By the end of 1985, the same year that The Ice Dragon was published, Gygax sold his stock in TSR to Williams and ended his relationship with the company.

All of this leaves one to wonder what Gygax thought of Dille and whether the Williams affair is one of the reasons why the Sagard saga is limited to the four existing volumes.

The Ice Dragon is an engaging gamebook, but is its game system sufficient to support game play outside of the game book environment?

Let's have a look at the rules.


Game Mechanics

With the exception of rules for keeping track of "trophies" that Sagard collects during his adventures, The Ice Dragon rules set is entirely limited to combat mechanics. By itself, this doesn't automatically mean that the rules won't be able to be expanded into a complete rpg, combat is a central part of most rpgs, but it does mean that there will be some work for the game master who tries to adapt the system. If the combat system is robust enough, than one could extrapolate from those rules to create mechanics for other actions as well. Games like Dragon Age use the same mechanics for combat resolution and task resolution, so it can be done.

The Ice Dragon's combat mechanics are relatively simple. Characters and opponents are rated for Hit Points which determine how much damage an individual can take before being defeated. These are a common mechanic in D&D descended rpgs. Characters and opponents are also rated by level which represents their skill in combat. Their effectiveness in combat is determined by rolling a 4-sided die and comparing the result to the character's statistic block. An example of a character's statistic block looks something like the following:

SAGARD (LEVEL 2: 1/0, 2/1, 3/1, 4/2)
[20][19][18]...[3][2][1]

This stat block tells us that Sagard is level 2, has twenty hit points, and how much damage he does depending on the roll he makes on a 4-sided die. For example, if Sagard rolled a 3 on the die he would do 1 point of damage. Given that each number has an equal chance of occurring, this gives Sagard a Damage per Round of:

DPR = (.25)(0) + (.25)(1) + (.25)(1) + (.25)(2) = 1

A level two character like Sagard delivers 1 point of damage per round to his opponents, so it would take Sagard approximately 20 rounds to defeat someone as tough as himself. Thankfully, most monsters don't have the same number of hit points as Sagard or game play would be quite time consuming. The full chart for combat effectiveness can be seen in the table below:

Combat Ability 1 234
Level 0 0004
Level 1 0011
Level 2 0112
Level 3 1123
Level 4 1233
Level 5 2334

Looking at this table, I can see one quick discrepancy. Level 0 characters have the same average DPR as Level 2 characters, and are more effective than Level 1 characters. I understand that the mechanics are attempting to represent Level 0 characters as "unpredictable" and capable of "getting lucky" but the results don't seem quite satisfying.

These mechanics are easy to understand and present a fairly limited combat system. The system doesn't compare the combat abilities of combatants, like Fighting Fantasy, nor does it offer the possibility of maneuvers like Fighting Fantasy does with its "luck" mechanic. The system could be used as a basis for a skill system. Players could receive level ratings in skills. For example, Sagard might have a Level 2 skill in Stealth. This would allow him to roll 1 or 2 "skill success points," on a roll of 2 or better, demonstrating how stealthy the character was. These points could be compared to an opponent's Perception skill. If the opponent generates more skill success points than Sagard, then Sagard fails to hide.

Hmm...I actually like that. In this case, a Sagard stat block might look like the following:

SAGARD
Combat (Level 2: 1/0, 2/1, 3/1, 4/2)
Stealth (Level 2:1/0, 2/1, 3/1, 4/2)
Perception (Level 1: 1/0, 2/0, 3/1, 4/1)

[20][19][18]...[3][2][1]

The Ice Dragon, unlike the Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks, does provide a simple system for character advancement. As a character wins and loses combats he acquires and loses "experience marks." When Sagard has acquired enough experience marks, he acquires the abilities of the next level. One could easily expand the experience mark system to the skills system by giving 1 mark per successful use of the skill, or even failures if the attempted use was creative enough.

As you can see, the system in The Ice Dragon taken by itself doesn't provide a full game system, but that it can fairly easily be expanded to create one. Were I to use the "Sagard System" as the basis for a game though, one of the first things I would change is the use of the 4-sided die for resolution determination. There isn't enough variety in it and when comparing the different levels it allows for a Level 0 individual to be as good as a Level 2 character on average.

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Adventure Gamebooks as RPGs Part 1 -- Fighting Fantasy's Warlock of Firetop Mountain

Inspired by Dungeons & Dragons and Tunnels & Trolls role playing games, as well as the Choose Your Own Adventure series of interactive novels, Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone released the first of their trend setting series of Fighting Fantasy Adventure Gamebooks The Warlock of Firetop Mountain in 1982. The first American edition of Warlock was published in 1983. The Fighting Fantasy gamebooks were the first time that a publication featured both a fully usable set of rules for role playing game play along with a fully interactive solo narrative adventure.




Flying Buffalo was the first company to publish "solo adventures" for role playing games -- and there are quite a few excellent adventures in their Tunnels and Trolls line -- but their adventures required a copy of the Tunnels and Trolls role playing game in order to actually "play" them rather than just read them. Given that some of the early T&T solos were fairly straightforward dungeon crawl style adventures, they play significantly better than they read. They are filled with humor, but lacked an extensive story. This was the result of the adventures' format and not the skill of the writers. Later T&T adventures become more narrative as the marketplace developed and the format adapted to enable more in depth stories to be told. It should also be added that Flying Buffalo's adventures were primarily written for "existing" gamers who were familiar with D&D's genre conventions -- as they stood in the mid to late 70s.

The Choose Your Own Adventure series had entertaining interactive narratives aimed at younger readers. They featured exciting adventures where readers could travel through time, explore vast wildernesses, or investigate haunted houses. They could also be extraordinarily frustrating as certain narrative paths ended with annoying authorial fiat. When/if the reader encountered certain villains, they were doomed. The books satisfied the puzzle solving obsessions of young minds, but the lack of any game rules made the books feel less "alive" than they otherwise could have.

The Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks took the best elements of T&T's solos and combined them with the puzzle solving fun of the Choose Your Own Adventure series. The books sparked a mini-craze that lasted until the early 90s.

The internet is full of fan sites dedicated to the memory and recent resurgence of the Fighting Fantasy series and the Gamebook genre in general. Let me just say that I am a big fan, but that the purpose of the "Adventure Gamebooks as RPGs" series of posts -- at least I hope it will be a series -- is to look at the rules in the gamebooks themselves to see how they work as a rules set.

I hope to answer the following question in each post, "How much fun would this particular rules set be as the foundation for a campaign?"




I am starting with The Warlock of Firetop Mountain for a couple of reasons. It was the first book of its kind, and was thus an innovator in the field. It also eventually inspired two separate complete rules sets for group table top gaming -- Fighting Fantasy Introductory Roleplay and Advanced Fighting Fantasy which has a new version coming from Arion Games later this year. These stand alone rules sets will be reviewed as a part of the series at a later date.

How good are the rules in The Warlock of Firetop Mountain for a regular table top role playing game?

THE RULES

The rules set in The Warlock of Firetop Mountain is very simple to understand and implement, perfect for the new gamer. The game uses two mechanical systems to resolve the challenges facing characters. An opposed roll system is used to resolve combat, and a statistic test is used to determine the success of non-combat actions and one in combat action.

STATISTICS

Each character is rated in three categories: Skill, Stamina, and Luck. These statistics form the "core three" for the entire Fighting Fantasy line. While future products add additional statistics or use a skill system to enhance the statistics, Warlock uses these exclusively.

SKILL represents a character's fighting skill and his/her physical capabilities. Heroes have a rating of 7 to 12 in this statistic, while creatures/non-heroic characters potentially range from 2 to 12. The rules section of the book describes SKILL as a character's ability in combat, but it becomes clear as one plays through the adventure that SKILL is a measurement of the character's competence at all physical tasks. It is a measurement of the characters combat ability, strength, and agility.

STAMINA represents how much damage a character can absorb before dying. If a character's STAMINA is reduced to zero, the adventure is over and the player has been defeated. Heroes have a rating of 14 to 24 in this area. Given that successful attacks in Warlock typically do 2 points of stamina damage, this means that heroes can typically be injured between 7 and 12 times during an adventure before they perish.

LUCK represents how lucky a character is. In many ways this is a catch all statistic used to determine if the hero can avoid some otherwise awful fate. It can be used outside of combat to determine of a character stepped on a trap, or during combat to do more/take less damage from an attack.

COMBAT MECHANICS

Combat in Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks is highly abstract, but easy to learn. The player rolls two six-sided dice and adds that result to their SKILL value. The player then rolls two six-sided dice and adds that result to the SKILL value of the player's opponent. The character with the higher result successfully attacks the other combatant and damages him/her. If the result is a tie, then no character lands a blow. As an opposed system that relies on rolls that create a bell shaped probability curve, even a difference of only one point in skill makes a significant difference whether one opponent can harm another. Kit has a nice introductory guest post at Giant Battling Robots discussing the impact of relative advantage that I'd love to see expanded.

This is one of the areas where the cracks of the game system show when attempting to translate the game from a Gamebook environment to a table top environment. The Fighting Fantasy method of generating skill (roll 1d6 and add that to 6) results in some characters with widely different abilities. This can lead to player frustration.

For example, let's say that David has a character with a SKILL of 9 and Phil has one with a SKILL of 11. Let's imagine that their characters are attacked by two Orcs who each have a SKILL of 5. David would have an 84.1% chance of hitting his Orc, while Phil would have a 94.6% chance of hitting his. At first glance, this doesn't seem like such a huge disparity due to the fact that David and Phil are both significantly more SKILLED than their opponents. A 10% difference from a SKILL two points higher seems like it shouldn't bother the players too much, but let's change the parameters a bit. Let's give Phil and David an opponent with a SKILL of 11. In this case, David has a 23.92% chance of hitting the foe while Phil has a 44.37% chance of striking the opponent. The 10% advantage has shifted to a 20% advantage. This is because the differential in target number falls within the steep portion of the bell curve meaning that a +1 penalty can have a significant impact. If the two players were to fight one another, David would still have a 23.92% chance of striking Phil where Phil would have a 66.44% chance of hitting David.

If the system used a linear die -- like a d12 -- for combat resolution, the system would be more fair to the character with a lower SKILL. As it is, it takes a good deal of luck for a character with even two SKILL points less than his opponent to be victorious.

TASK RESOLUTION

In Warlock, everything from bashing down doors to checking to see if a character can successfully balance on a beam is resolved by rolling two six-sided dice and comparing that result to the character's SKILL. LUCK checks are resolved using the same system with the addition that a character's LUCK is reduced by one each time it is checked (though the LUCK can return as the character performs certain tasks successfully).

This system suffers from some of the same downfalls as the combat mechanics when used for group play. A character with a 11 SKILL will succeed 91.67% of the time if the character must roll "less" than SKILL to succeed, where the character with a 9 SKILL will succeed 72.22% of the time, and a character with a 7 will succeed 41.67%.




One of the key pitfalls that game masters, and one imagines game designers, have to consider when running/designing a game is how the players will feel in comparison to other players. Aaron Allston's excellent Strike Force sourcebook lists rules for making sure your players don't have any fun and one of these rules is to make sure that your player's are never the best at anything. Inversely, one might imagine that one could increase the likelihood that their player's do have fun by making sure that each player is good at something that no one else is good at. Since SKILL is so central to the success or failure of a character in combat and in task resolution, players can quickly become frustrated with the discrepancies in character performance. Characters with higher stats are significantly better than their comrades. This is exacerbated by the fact that SKILL and LUCK have a linear distribution in generation, but a standard distribution in action. On a roll of one six-sided die, every number has an equal chance of coming up. This isn't true when rolling two.

The Fighting Fantasy system is easy to learn, quick to play, but can lead to certain players dominating the group storytelling. This is not typically a good thing in a role playing session/campaign. Every character wants some time in the spotlight.

RECOMMENDATIONS

My recommendations are to separate SKILL into three categories: COMBAT ABILITY, PHYSICAL STRENGTH, AGILITY. Once this is done, you can move to a "point buy" system for the statistics rather than random attribute determination. I would think that giving the players 9 points to spend, which are added to values of 6 in each category, would be sufficient. That way if a character wants to be excellent at combat, he/she suffers in other areas where other characters can shine. Note that this recommendation is based solely on the rules as presented in Warlock and ignores rules from later books and the role playing games.

I might also recommend using a d12 for resolving tasks and conflicts. This would make penalties easier to determine for the GM. A -1 penalty to a check has a uniform meaning in a linear resolutions system where it has a dynamic nature in one with a standard distribution. If you prefer the standard distribution, that is fine, just understand that a -1 penalty to a character with an 11 isn't as significant as for one with an 8 in a statistical area. You can see why in the chart above.

Warlock lacks a magic system which means that its use is limited to low magic settings, but that isn't a disadvantage mechanically.

Overall, I think that the game has enough systems to handle most role playing necessities, but that the statistics need to be expanded to make the underlying mechanics more useful. All you really need in an rpg is a combat resolution system and a task resolution system, but I think that the task resolution system needs to be slightly more granular to take into account different areas of expertise. The ability to lift a weight is very different from the ability to walk a tightrope after all. The game would need more "stats" if it were to be translated to table top. As it stands, it is excellent for the adventure for which it was written.

Friday, December 17, 2010

Dave Morris and Jamie Thomson's Fabled Lands Adventure Gamebooks Return

In the mid-90s during the dwindling days of the vibrant Fantasy Adventure Gamebook phenomenon, Dave Morris and Jamie Thomson released their Fabled Lands series. It was a "mythical" and much talked about series among gamebook fans, but one that wasn't often seen in the United States. Dave Morris was one of the authors responsible for the Dragon Warriors role playing game (one of the most narratively driven role playing games of its time) and the books featured artwork from Fighting Fantasy artist Russ Nicholson, so the difficulty in finding the books was frustrating to many gamebook fans. I personally wondered if I would ever be able to find copies of the books, and thankfully my wait is over. Fabled Lands Publishing has recently published the first four books in the Fabled Lands series and has eight more listed on their publication schedule.




The adventure gamebook was a genre created by Ian Livingstone and Steven Jackson in 1982, with the publication of the classic Warlock of Firetop Mountain adventure. The genre combined the gaming experience of role playing games like Dungeons and Dragons with the narrative choice pathing of the Choose Your Own Adventure series. For over a decade publishers released a wide variety of these gamebooks.

The Fighting Fantasy gamebooks, being the first, set the standard for the industry. The vast majority of the Fighting Fantasy series were entertaining and inventive, but they didn't contain epic narratives that used the same character that traveled from book to book. The majority of the Fighting Fantasy series were episodic, and they failed to capture the feel of a role playing game campaign. The first series to truly capture the campaign feeling was Joe Dever's Lone Wolf series, where a player could use the same character for over 20 books as that character changed and grew and faced increasingly challenging foes.

Like the Dever books, the Fabled Lands series contains innovations that separate them from the typical gamebook. In Fabled Lands players have a wider array of character choices to play from than are typically offered. In your standard gamebook, players are typically limited to one "character class." There are books that allow you to play fighters, wizards, superheroes, kai disciples, and more, but each volume typically offers only one archetype. Steve Jackson's Sorcery is one exception, as are the Fabled Lands books. In Fabled Lands, players can choose from one of six professions which cover the majority of fantasy archetypes a player might find interesting. Additionally, Morris and Thomson included a "keyword" mechanic where players acquire keywords as they progress through the series. Possessing these keywords will affect future encounters and shape the playing experience. For ease of play, all keywords within a particular volume begin with the same letter. In The War-Torn Kingdom all keywords begin with A and the progression continues in later volumes. Fabled Lands uses a quick and effective combat system that allows for more variety in results than the Fighting Fantasy series without the use of a chart like in Lone Wolf.

My books came in the mail today, and I am eagerly anticipating my first foray into Sokara and the rest of the Fabled Lands

Friday, April 16, 2010

Lone Wolf: Multiplayer Game Book: Does it Deliver?

In 1982, Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone created a worldwide reading/roleplaying sensation with their Warlock of Firetop Mountain Fighting Fantasy Gamebook. Warlock combined the interactive qualities of the Choose-Your-Own adventure series of books with simple mechanics inspired by role playing games like Dungeons & Dragons. The books were wildly successful with over 50 entries in the series published to date. The series is currently being published by Wizard books in England, we Americans have to have our new books in the series shipped from Canada or overseas, and also has had two of the books released as iPhone applications.

The Fighting Fantasy books are classics in the genre, but they were surpassed in gaming complexity in 1984 when Joe Dever's Lone Wolf gamebook series first title Flight from the Dark was released. The Fighting Fantasy series is primarily made up of episodic entries where the puzzles/adventures are contained in full in a single volume. The exception to this is Steve Jackson's Sorcery series of four books. In contrast to the episodic Fighting Fantasy series, Dever created an Epic Fantasy narrative in his Lone Wolf series. In Dever's series, your character improved from book to book and items you acquired in one book would help you solve puzzles in subsequent volumes. Dever added layers of gameplay and narrative that were lacking in the Fighting Fantasy counterparts, and his series demonstrated the gamebook as a mature medium.



In support of their Fighting Fantasy gamebooks, Jackson and Livingstone released an introductory roleplaying game -- a non-solo and more traditional game -- in 1984 entitled simply Fighting Fantasy: The Introductory Role-playing Game. This game presented the rules system from the Fighting Fantasy books in a simplified form for use in pen and paper gameplay. The rules component of the books was relatively weak, as the rules were stripped down versions of the already simple rules of the gamebooks, but the two adventures included in the book were fun.



This initial offering was followed by the Riddling Reaver collection of adventures, which made for a fun campaign using a rudimentary system. By 1989, Livingston and Jackson realized that the introductory game was serviceable, but not a substantive offering in the gaming marketplace and they hired Marc Gascoigne and Pete Tamlyn to develop an advanced version of the product.



Gascoigne and Tamly's Advanced Fighting Fantasy presented a robust game system rooted in the system presented in the gamebooks and filled a niche that fans of the books needed filled. Gascoigne's system added layers of complexity to the gamebooks rules, while still presenting an introductory roleplaying game. The system is simple enough for beginners, but has a depth that allows for a great deal of game play.

Fans of the Lone Wolf series, who had purchased and read the Advanced Fighting Fantasy rules, eagerly waited to see what Dever would come up with in response to Fighting Fantasy's offering. That offering didn't come. In fact, while the Fighting Fantasy books seemed as unkillable as a zombie horde -- continually being resurrected from certain death just as a new generation of readers could be introduced to the books -- Lone Wolf began to fade into the background. Eventually, all the published books became available (with author permission) as free e-books on the internet. Then, from seemingly nowhere, wonderful news appeared. Mongoose Publishing released a tabletop RPG based on the characters of the Lone Wolf series and began republishing (in beautiful small format hardbacks) the original Lone Wolf books.



The republished volumes of the original gamebooks are a marvel. They include new stories as additional content in the back of each book; stories that expand the Lone Wolf world. The republished books are undeniably a godsend, but the first Mongoose Lone Wolf RPG was a gaming product that had rules based in Wizards of the Coast's d20 rules system. These rules are serviceable (they are actually quite good), but they lack the distinct feel of the Lone Wolf setting. After playing gamebooks that use a particular rules set, it feels a little unnatural to use an unrelated rules set when translating your experience into a multiplayer exercise. The d20 based Lone Wolf rpg sold decently, but with the release of the 4th edition of Dungeons & Dragons -- and the end of the d20 license -- it was time for Mongoose to create a multiplayer game that returned Lone Wolf gaming to its systemic roots.

It has taken a couple of years for the new rules set to come out, but as of the the first week of April 2010 long time fans of Lone Wolf finally have a multiplayer roleplaying game based on the system used in the gamebooks, but how does it measure up to the standard set by the Fighting Fantasy series?



Even though the products are separated by almost 20 years, it seems appropriate to compare the new Lone Wolf Multiplayer Game to the earlier Fighting Fantasy offerings. The Fighting Fantasy Introductory Roleplaying Game was originally published in 1984 and in its 240 paperback format pages presented a multiplayer version of the rules system contained within the Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks. Other than the two adventures included in the book, and a couple of sparse paragraphs describing the job of gamemastering and designing your own adventures, the booklet contained little that was not already in the published gamebooks. In fact, some of the solo gamebooks had already introduced some "advanced rules" that the introductory roleplaying game failed to include. The two adventures included in the book were formatted in a manner similar to that used in the gamebooks, but included some tips on how to run the encounters. By modern standards these adventures were simple "dungeon crawls," adventures where characters explore complexes and fight monsters. There was little or no context for the action in these adventures contained in the rulebook. This changed when the Riddling Reaver booklet expanded the adventures available for use by gamemasters, though it should be noted that it was 8 years before players of multiplayer Fighting Fantasy had rules for "skills" or "magic" published outside of the solo gamebooks for multiplayer use.

The Lone Wolf Multiplayer Game Book is similar in many respects to the earlier Fighting Fantasy offering. Coming it at 70 digest sized pages, it contains character creation rules for only one character type, the Kai Lord. It presents the basic system used in the gamebooks, including the "random number table," with very few options not offered in the solo versions. Unlike the Fighting Fantasy books, Lone Wolf contains a task resolution system for accomplishing things other than combat. It is a simple resolution system, to be sure, but it is one that is highly serviceable. Essentially, tasks are given a target number from 1 to 10 and that sets the number that the player must roll equal or higher than on d10 (or select from the random number table) in order to succeed. There are guidelines for bonuses and penalties, but it is essentially a quick and dirty task resolution system with a flat probability curve.

Lone Wolf contains a short Bestiary that includes some of the unique denizens of Magnamund like Giaks and Gourgazs, and some of the more generic character types a game master might need like Bears and Bandits. It also contains a brief discussion of the history of Magnamund, the world of the Lone Wolf tales. One really wishes that Mongoose had beefed up the chapters on the setting. At $19.99 for a 70 page book, one feels a little neglected when there is so little setting description. To be fair, the gamebooks are rich fields filled with descriptions of the world and its history, but this rulebook lacks that richness and the map in the middle of the book is made less useful or attractive by the fact that it is published in black and white.

Like the Fighting Fantasy RPG, Lone Wolf provides an introductory adventure for new game masters to use with their friends. The adventure is an entertaining narrative adventure entitled "The Merchant's Task." This adventure contains gaming opportunities for different kinds of players as it has roleplaying scenes, puzzle solving, and combat sequences. As such, it follows the modern trend of story based adventures as opposed to the classic dungeon crawl, but then again that is one of the things that separates the Lone Wolf solo book series from the Fighting Fantasy book series. The Lone Wolf books are more story driven and the Fighting Fantasy ones more puzzle/solution driven.

I have to admit that I was slightly disappointed with the first offering in the Lone Wolf Multiplayer line of books. It seemed in many ways more an overview of what gaming would be like that a complete game in itself, and with a $19.99 price tag the disappointment was exaggerated. I have to say though that there are a couple of things arguing in favor of the game. First is the fact that it isn't a bad introductory game, if only the price were $7.99 I would consider it an ideal introductory offer. The rules are clear and simple and the text provides numerous guidelines for the game master during the adventure, guidelines that can be used to create ones own adventures. Second is the fact that this is the first in a series of offerings.



This June we should see the publication of a book of linked adventures entitled Terror of the Darklords. This is slated to be a 160 page booklet containing an entire campaign's worth of game play in which the players will uncover conspiracies and battle against the evil Darklords.




Darklords will be followed in July by Heroes of Magnamund, a book containing a variety of character classes that players can use during campaign play. One can look at this as the second part of the player's guide in some ways. According to the Lone Wolf Multiplayer Game Book the Heroes book will also contain rules for higher level Kai Lords and additional rules for game masters. Mongoose is also planning to publish a gazetteer of Magnamund and a bestiary as well. All of these products will add to the cost of the game, but will add much needed depth as well.

As it stands, the current rule book places the Lone Wolf Multiplayer Game Book somewhere between the Fighting Fantasy Introductory Roleplaying Game and the Advanced Fighting Fantasy Roleplaying Game with regards to the complexity of the rules it offers. A good offering, but not quite what one would pray for after almost 20 years of waiting. If the later releases maintain the level of quality, the game looks like it might surpass Advanced Fighting Fantasy, but only time will tell.

I can say that I will be eagerly purchasing the books as they come out to see what Mongoose has to offer.

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Now on the iPhone: Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks -- WARLOCK OF FIRETOP MOUNTAIN



Searching my through my favorite interwebs sites the other day, I stopped by the Official Fighting Fantasy gamebooks website and discovered, much to my pleasure, that Wizard Books was releasing several of the Fighting Fantasy titles as iPhone applications. The first book in the series to see release was the classic Warlock of Firetop Mountain, the book that started the whole Fantasy Gamebook phenomenon back in the 1980s when I was a wee lad.

The Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks were a book series created by Games Workshop co-founders Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone (who are that rare breed in the gaming industry game designers and keen businessmen) that combined the reader interactivity of the Choose Your Own Adventure series of books with the game mechanics of early role playing games. Readers of Ian Livingstone's Dicing with Dragons (Signet), a book Livingstone wrote to introduce audiences to the role playing hobby, it comes clear that Livingstone was inspired by the solo adventures offered by Flying Buffalo in support of the Tunnels and Trolls role playing game.

Here's how Livingstone describes Tunnels and Trolls, one of four games he thought "worthy" of introducing neophytes to:

If Tunnels & Trolls (T&T) did not have one special feature (apart from the general ease of play), no doubt it would have achieved little in the way of popularity -- indeed, its author claims that it was originally designed purely for his own entertainment and that of his friends. Role-playing is generally a gregarious pastime -- one person is the referee and designer of the locations to be explored, and several more are needed as players. However, many people are keen to engage in role-playing but for one reason or another cannot participate in groups of like-minded enthusiasts. An isolated geographical location or lack of free time or transport, or work involving unsociable hours can all conspire to produce the solitaire role-player. In common with some other RPGs, Tunnels & Trolls has a considerable number of ready-to-use adventures, but, unlike most others, which are generally designed for normal group play, most of the Tunnels & Trolls adventures are specifically designed for solitaire play, and thus fill a distinct need in the role-playing market.

Emphasis mine.


Two things emerge from reading this paragraph. First, that Livingstone admires what St. Andre accomplished with T&T -- both in simplicity of rules and in innovation. Second, that Livingstone looks at role playing as an industry. That paragraph reads like part of a SWOT analysis someone might write as background for the introduction of a new product line. Livingstone and Jackson have always been at the forefront of new technologies when it came to integrating role playing and media. Interactive 900 line rpg adventures, video games, books, mass market paperbacks, board games, and miniatures war games are all in the line of products in which they have been directly involved. Now we can add to that long list -- iPhone application translations of their gamebooks.

While Livingstone and Jackson may have received inspiration from St. Andre's T&T both in the idea of a solo adventure market and the importance of simple rules, their Fantasy Gamebooks truly took T&T's solo adventures to the next level. Where the solo adventures by Flying Buffalo typically came in around 32 - 64 pages, the Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks were the size of full length paperback novels -- around 220+ pages -- something that enabled them to add greater narrative to the stories making for "deeper" interactive experiences.



Warlock of Firetop Mountain, which was drafted under the working title Magic Quest, was the first Fighting Fantasy Gamebook released into the market. It featured very simple rules, later products demonstrated how "deep" these simple rules were, and a relatively simple story. You were a warrior in search of wealth and glory who has climbed to the peak of Firetop Mountain in order to claim the treasure of the Warlock Zagor. You didn't have a very heroic motivation, and the world wasn't very well developed. The book was very much an early D&D style module translated into solo play. Go into a hole, kick down doors, kill things, and take their stuff. At least that's how it seems at first.

You see, there is only one real "solution" to the book -- other books in the series would have several possible solutions -- and it wasn't an easy solution to discover. You had to map your progress, especially considering there is a maze in the middle of the adventure. If you map it, the maze isn't complex, but if you don't...the frustration is substantive.



The latest application for the iPhone is a direct translation of this first gamebook -- a very good direct translation. I was able to use my old hand drawn map as I played through the encounters, and thus was able to find some nice enhancements and some minor glitches in the game.

I have to say that after playing one of these as an app, I'm going to buy whatever books they release in this format. It works better than flipping back and forth, and I can't cheat when fighting the battles -- it maximizes the play aspect by keeping track of all of the combat information and your equipment. The app limits your options to those you genuinely have available to you and you can't flip back and forth to see which choice is superior. You really have to play the game as it was designed.



I also appreciated the way that the app incorporated and enhanced the artwork from the original book. The app has the original line artwork from the book, but if you touch the images they get enlarged and become color images. The transformation from line art to color shaded art work makes for some very impressive images. The ghoul and the cyclops statue were two of my favorite images in the original, and they look even better in color.



As much as I loved playing through, I did notice two significant flaws -- likely corrected in the current updates. When I "lost a point of Skill" after looking into a portrait of the Warlock, I performed an action which should have returned the skill point to me -- in fact it should have returned up to two lost Skill -- but my skill remained at the lower rating. Additionally, when I acquired a magic sword, I was prompted to discard my current sword -- which was correct -- but the only sword listed in my inventory was the new magic sword and I had to discard it. This didn't affect game play, as the I still received the bonus for the magic sword even though I wasn't "technically" in possession of the weapon. These are two significant, but not overwhelming glitches in the game.

If you like Fantasy and want a fun application that is good for quite a few replays, you should purchase Warlock of Firetop Mountain for your iPhone. If you don't have an iPhone, you should buy the paperback which was re-released last September. On February 10th, the second Fighting Fantasy App Deathtrap Dungeon was released -- and bought by me.