Gamebook Friday: Stormslayer

Last month I asked people on social media what topics they would like to see me cover in my Gamebook Friday blog posts. The first suggestion that received a write up was Ian Reynolds', who asked for "Anything to do with Horror and in particular Vampires." This week I'm running with Matt Ward's idea, as he wanted to know how I came to write Stormslayer.

My fifth Fighting Fantasy gamebook, Howl of the Werewolf, was published by Wizard Books in 2007 and well-received by the fans. In 2008, Wizard decided to relaunch the FF series, with a uniform cover design, and I was asked to supply a new title for the initial tranche of four books to be released.

This all happened over ten years ago, and I do not have my planning jotters from that time accessible now, so there is a lot I have forgotten, but I'm pretty sure that Stormslayer - or rather The Eye of the Storm, as it was called in my initial outline - was an idea I had while Puffin Books were still the gatekeepers of the FF franchise. I may have even made some notes while I was in my final year at uni, when I had only had two books published so far. I'm sure I remember a sketch of an interlocked crystal made up of four constituent parts, one for each of the four classical elements.

The Eye of the Storm, by Stephen Player.

Before submitting an outline to the publisher, I brainstormed ideas for the gamebook. I had always wanted to do something featuring a weather mage, so he would be the villain of the piece. With a weather mage as the Bad Guy, a quest to collect artefacts linked to the four elements suggested itself, so I needed a setting which could encompass earth, air, fire and water. The Old World kingdom of Femphrey suited perfectly. For one thing, no one else had set an adventure there yet.

A map of Femphrey drawn by a French fan.

While coming up with weather- and elements-related encounters, I also had a flick through Out of the Pit, looking for suitable monsters to use, including some that hadn't appeared in a gamebook at that point, and Titan - The Fighting Fantasy World, which led to me including a Decapod (or Abyssal Horror) in the adventure.

Abyssal Horror, by Stephen Player.

I was also writing the Pax Britannia series for Abaddon Books at the time, so a little bit of steampunk might have snuck into the adventure...

Steam Golem, by Stephen Player.

Part of my plotting process is drawing a map. In the case of Stormslayer, I wanted the player to be able to visit any of the four major locations linked to the elemental treasures in any order they wanted, and for the linking encounters to vary accordingly.

Once I had all the encounters, monsters and maps ready, I wrote up the outline and sent it to the publisher. Once this had been approved, I started writing, coming up with many of the details of the gamebook in the process.

I also introduced some mechanics involving the days of the week. A passing reference in Titan - The Fighting Fantasy World mentioned that different types of  magic work better on the days associated with them, and are negatively affected by days associated with their opposite element, and so this became a vital element of the adventure.

After Stormslayer was published, all sorts of things happened that I wasn't expecting. For one thing, the book appeared on TV...

Someone playing Stormslayer during an episode of Channel 4's 24 Hours in A&E.

And then all these images started appearing online, which were clearly inspired by the adventure...

It turned out that Stephen Player, the artist who had illustrated the adventure, was using my illustration brief with his art students in San Francisco!

But it's not only budding artists and people waiting in A&E who have been inspired by Stormslayer. Recently I was contacted by Christopher Griffith, who has an MA in Creative Writing and who has turned my gamebook into a short story. If you would like to read it - but please be aware that it contains many massive spoilers for the adventure! - then click the image below.

Gamebook Friday: White Rabbits

Today is the first of May, and on the first day of the month people often say "White rabbits! White rabbits!"*

So in honour of the occasion, I thought you might like to see Kev Crossley's** new map of Wonderland that will appear in the fifth anniversary hardback of Alice's Nightmare in Wonderland that is being published later this year.

If you're looking for something calming to do during lockdown, you could do a lot worse than check out the Alice's Nightmare in Wonderland Colouring Books, featuring lots and lots of Kev's artwork.

And in other ACE Gamebooks-related news, due to events such as the UK Games Expo being cancelled this year, I have some spare hardbacks of NEVERLAND - Here Be Monsters!, Beowulf Beastslayer, and 'TWAS - The Krampus Night Before Christmas for sale. If you would like one (or more), drop me a line at info@jonathangreenauthor.com.

* Don't ask me why.

** Check out Kev's Batman-themed re-imagining of Alice and the Cheshire Cat here.

Lost

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of the legendary literary phenomenon Sherlock Holmes, died 88 years ago today. The reason I mention this is because he also wrote The Lost World, in which Professor George Challenger and his companions discover dinosaurs (and other supposedly extinct creatures) alive and well on top of a mesa in the Amazon basin of South America.

I have spent the last few weeks editing NEVERLAND - Here Be Monsters! And while it is clearing inspired by J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan, the gamebook is as much influenced by Conan Doyle's The Lost World. During the course of the adventure, you can explore much of the Skull Island-esque Neverland, which has called for me producing a map of the place.

Just like the adventure itself, there's still a fair bit to do before it's finished, but I've really enjoyed indulging my inner cartographer again after so many years.

To get an idea of what it is like on an island lost in time, inhabited by all manner of prehistoric beasts that want to kill you (or kill you and eat you), you can now play through Tiger Lily's introduction to the adventure, which also contains another Conan Doyle reference, by downloading the extract here.

Gamebook Friday: Bloodbones washes up in Brazil

Thanks to a Brazilian fan, I discovered this week that last month Jambô Editora published a new Portuguese translation of my most pirate-themed gamebook to date*. Now entitled Ossos Sangrentos (which translates as 'Bloody Bones') it has a rather splendid new cover.

For any Brazilian fans out there, here's the cover blurb:

O temido lorde pirata Cinnabar — ou “Ossos Sangrentos” para aqueles que o temiam — foi o flagelo dos doze mares. Agora de volta da morte, e munido com os poderes sombrios do vodu, ele busca vingança.

Mas você tem sua própria vingança em mente — quando você era criança, Cinnabar assassinou sua família. Só você pode evitar um novo reinado de terror ao destruir o capitão pirata e sua tripulação de assassinos. Atravessando o inferno ou singrando as marés, Ossos Sangrentos deve ser parado!

One of the fun things about the book is that my original map has also been 'dubbed' into Portuguese!

You can pick up a copy of Ossos Sangrentos here, the English version of Bloodbones here, or the app adaptation by Tin Man Games here.

* NEVERLAND - Here Be Monsters! doesn't come out until next year. Talking of which, I wonder if Jambô Editora would be interested in published Portuguese language versions of my ACE Gamebooks...

Gamebook Friday: NEVERLAND - Here Be Monsters!

The NEVERLAND - Here Be Monsters! Kickstarter comes to an end two weeks tomorrow, which means that it's already half way through its run.

That means we have just a fortnight left in which to raise the last 22% (as of writing). To help us achieve our goal I have made two more rewards available; one is a CLOTH MAP Add-on and the other is a cut-down version of the PLUNDERING PIRATE Reward, which runs for as long as Amazon's BLACK FRIDAY sale does. You can find out more here.

With just two weeks to go, I would urge everyone - especially everyone who loves gamebooks - to keep sharing the project with all and sundry and join the NEVERLAND - Here Be Monsters! Facebook group, even if you don't intend on backing it yourself, as I still have people contacting me to said they would have backed my first Kickstarter, which I launched five years ago, if they had heard about it.

Rest assured that any and all help in spreading the word is very much appreciated.

Hopefully, next Gamebook Friday I'll be able to report that the project has funded and that we're well on our way towards the first stretch goal.

Fingers crossed!

Gamebook Friday: Maps of Titan, the Fighting Fantasy world, by Scriptarium

Those thoroughly decent chaps over at Scriptarium (French publisher of the Advanced Fighting Fantasy RPG) recently sent me a copy of their translation of Titan. One of the highlights of the book is the set of maps that comes with it.

The guys at Scriptarium consulted me on various regions of Titan that I developed, primarily the Old World kingdom of Ruddlestone, but also the Giant's Teeth chain of islands (from the long defunct Saga of the Stormchaser proposal*).

Ruddlestone

The Giant's Teeth

One of the coolest maps is one of the entire FF world with the gamebooks that take place there connected to their relevant locations. (Most of mine appear in the same corner of the map.)

If you're a fan of FF then you should really pick up a copy of Titan, just so that you can get your hands on these wonderful maps.


* To find out more about that you'll have to read YOU ARE THE HERO - A History of Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks.

X is for X Marks the Spot

I've always been fascinated by maps, not so much your average A to Z (although I still get a certain frisson from poring over Ordnance Survey maps) but the kind of illustrated maps that were popular in less accurate times, where pictures of trees stand for forests and where there is a village, a picture of a village is drawn.I remember spending hours studying the maps in my dad's copies of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings so, as you can imagine, when I came upon Jackson and Livingstone's Fighting Fantasy series and when those books started to include maps, I was hooked.

As a teenager I drew all sorts of maps of fantastical places but I never thought my work would be good enough to ever be published. So, when I was commissioned to write Spellbreaker, my first Fighting Fantasy gamebook, in 1992 I just drew up a very simple map for the illustrator Alan Langford to embellish in his own unique style.

When Spellbreaker was published a year later, to say that I was disappointed by his efforts would be an understatement. Where other books had fantastic cartography produced by the likes of Leo Hartas, Alan had pretty much copies what I'd submitted, but just added a dragon-styled compass to one corner. It was a major letdown.

When I was commissioned to write my second FF gamebook, Knights of Doom, a year later, I decided I had nothing to lose by drawing the map myself. If they publisher wanted to use it, he would. If not, he'd just get the artist to re-draw it. I'm pleased to say that my map was the one that was used.

I produced the maps for all of my books after that (although the one for Curse of the Mummy isn't my best) and was even asked to draw the map for Revenge of the Vampire, which I hadn't even written.

And that wasn't the end of my career as a fledgling cartographer; I was also commissioned to draw many of the maps for the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay campaign The Dying of the Light, put out by Hogshead Publishing in 1995.

I personally believe that my best map was the one I drew of the Port of Crabs for Bloodbones, which I have reproduced for you here.