Shamutanti Magnificanti

The ebullient Steve Jackson shows off the ultra-rare Shamutanti Hills box set (which I own) and the new Shamutanti Hills app (which I don’t)

Bit of news. This weekend I was lucky enough to meet Steve Jackson at the Salon du Livre publishing trade fair in Paris, and I managed to convince him to give me a peek at the forthcoming Shamutanti Hills app, produced by Inkle.

Inkle are still finishing off the game, so I wasn’t looking at a final, final version. But so far, it looks fantastic. It’s very different to Inkle’s Frankenstein app, by Dave Morris, which was released not so long ago. Whereas Frankenstein was text-only, with a few illustrations dotted about, The Shamuntanti Hills is a mix of text and graphics – when you’re wandering about the region, you switch to a full-colour animated map, where you can trace the progress of your character until he runs into a main area, or encounter.

Ah, screen glare. My old nemesis.

Steve – he and I are on first-name terms now, y’see; he likes to call me ‘Tickles’ – mentioned that there will be a lot of new content in the game. The Inkle website has stated that opponents in the game will be a lot more intelligent, each one adopting different strategies. The Shamuntanti Hills will, it seems, be bigger, longer and deadlier than ever before.

Right now, the Inklewriter game engine doesn’t allow game writers to transfer stats / variables from one game to another. Nor does it provide any sort of ‘character sheet’. For me, these are two big points that need to be included in an adaptation of the Sorcery books. But I have faith that Inkle will cover these bases – certainly, the engine for The Shamutanti Hills already seems markedly different from the Inklewriter that’s up on the company’s website.

I’m looking forward to this game a lot. I only hope it’s iPhone compatible, and I don’t have to buy a tablet to play it.

Because, y’know, I might.

Animated Irritants of the 80s

Ah, the 80s. Transformers were still made of metal, and Knightmare was the best show on TV. Sadly, the 80s also presented some low points. The Exxon Valdez oil spill. The Falklands War. Cabbage Patch dolls.

Cartoons too came with high and low points in the 80s. That decade brought us excellent cartoons such as Thundercats, Visionaries and, uh… Transformers. And yet these cartoons, and their Japanese creators, had some strange ideas. Again and again and again we saw annoying sidekicks that were supposed to provide comic relief, but instead provided only – if you’ll excuse the Americanism – lameness.

So, find below a brief collection of the more vexatious sidekicks.

1) Orko, from He-Man and the Masters of the Universe.

Orko worked hard to overcome his handicap of being born without feet or a face.

Orko was a floating, blue-eared rat. He verged on being considered a ‘main character’, rather than simply a sidekick. No less annoying for all that. Multiple He-Man plotlines centred around one of Orko’s spells going wrong. That storyline was funny for the first 50 or so episodes of Bewitched. It’s been old ever since.

2) Uni, from Dungeons and Dragons.

Dungeon Master gained his powers from his enchanted pointy skull.

Uni sounded like a sheep, and contributed inappropriate cuteness to a show aimed at young boys. Quick test: which of the following Dungeons and Dragons characters is the least cool? a) Venger, b) Tiamat, the seven-headed dragon, c) Hank, the ranger with a magic bow, d) Uni, the bleating baby unicorn.

3) T-Bob, from MASK.

T-Bob transforms into a motorbike. No, really.

Scott Trakker was the Wesley Crusher of MASK - young, irritating, frequently menaced by villains and receiving an inordinate amount of screen time. And T-Bob was his sidekick. He was an android that transformed into a scooter. Scott was allowed to ride around on him without a helmet, which is somewhat indicative of what the rest of the MASK group really thought of him.

4) Nono, from Ulysses 31.

What’s worse than a robotic sidekick? A robotic sidekick that sings.

Ulysses 31 was a sci-fi interpretation of various Greek myths. Hey, you remember the myth in which Ulysses, the king of Ithaca, volunteered to fight Hector during the Trojan War – and the whole time, a whingeing, cowardly red robot was trailing around behind him, complaining non-stop? No, neither do I. Nono attempted to provide poor comic relief, and his ear-discs popped off his head whenever something freaked him out. ‘Nuff said. Still, at least he gets to sing the final verse in the Ulysses 31 theme song.

5) Oon, from Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors.

Robot designers in the future will decide that fighting machines must be a maximum of one and a half feet tall.

Robot sidekick number 3 is Oon, who wanted to be a knight of some kind, and who carried around a gaudily-painted lance that was about twice as tall as he was. He was basically a metal Scrappy-Doo. The least memorable part of that show.

I’m not counting the actual Scrappy-Doo as an 80s irritant, by the by, as he was no more annoying than Scooby-Doo or Shaggy.

6) Snarf, from Thundercats.

Poor Snarf suffered from a dreadful verbal tic.

Good God. Snarf.

For the 2011 Thundercats remake, Snarf can’t talk. That is a small improvement – though the creators have gone for the ‘cute’ vibe instead, which is hardly better.

7) Niddler, from Pirates of Dark Water.

Some sort of bearded monkey-bird thing. Jesus.

Pirates of Dark Water was a cartoon about a guy who discovered he had some sort of mystical destiny, and had to sail round the world looking for 12 amulets, or something. I forget his name; I’ll call him Keith. Parts of the ocean itself had transformed into ‘dark water’ – living, black, evil goo. That’s a pretty badass idea. Keith, our tanned hero, conscripted a freaking bizarre talking winged monkey to help him – the only winged monkey not currently in the employ of the Wicked Witch of the West.

8) Needle, from Conan the Adventurer

Needle, companion of Conan the Heterosexual Barbarian.

Needle is orange, screechy, and talks about itself in the third person. If I were Conan, I’d crush it with a brick.

‘Gamebook’ versus ‘Interactive Novel’

I once saw Marjane Satrapi speak at a literary festival. That’s one of the perks of living in Paris – world-famous celebrity-type folk will come to your neighbourhood, and you can just wander down the road to see what they’re up to. Anyway, Marjana Satrapi is the author of ‘Persepolis’, and various other semi-autobiographical comic books. Persepolis was made into a movie, to enormous success – in France at least, it was for a while ‘the’ intelligent movie to go see at the cinema.

Satrapi is a fantastically entertaining public speaker. Which is handy, really – it’s hard to do a reading from a comic book. She mentioned, among other things, that she’s a huge fan of Batman. Who’d've thought it? She also said that she hates the term ‘graphic novel’. It’s a marketing term, she feels – it’s a way of selling comic books to people who won’t buy ‘comic books’.

So, let’s switch to ‘interactive novels’. Is this a marketing term, a way of selling to people who won’t buy ‘gamebooks’? Certainly, I think the gamebook / interactive novel genre has outgrown its Tolkien-esque, RPG roots. That’s in part thanks to the advent of hand-held electronic devices of various formats, which make the necessary page-flipping and record-keeping (and, if you want to be retro about it, even the dice-rolling) rather less of a chore than might previously have been the case. It’s perhaps even in part due to the quality of the writing going into these stories – no longer is an interactive story, ‘Fight Monster A in order to get Item B so you can kill Evil Wizard C’.

Frankenstein, by Dave Morris, was billed as an interactive novel. Certainly, it fulfils the ‘interactive’ requirement – and yet I can think of few other works that also satisfy the ‘novel’ side of things as satisfactorily. The prose is just lovely. There are no damn dice to roll. The game mechanics – ‘Trust’ scores, and so forth (however they’re labelled) – are kept under the hood, away from the reader’s eyes. Because why would the reader need to see them, if he or she isn’t required to keep track of them?

Choice of Games uses the term ‘interactive novel’ to describe its publications. And certainly, storytelling – ethical choices, personal investment in that second-person protagonist – is at the heart of their games. The game mechanics are right there on display, but that’s just personal preference – it’s possible to play through these games without ever touching the ‘Show Stats’ button (and I have done this).

So I want to say that ‘interactive novel’ is more than a marketing term… and yet I can’t get that ‘gamebook’ label out of my head. In truth, I don’t really want to – I’m an ‘out’ fan of gamebooks; I just love those little buggers (I love comic books too, by the by). If squares and fuddie-duddies can’t help but associate ‘gamebooks’ with goblins / wizards / dungeons / dragons… well, maybe it’s the audience who needs to change their ideas, rather than the marketing strategists.

Sigh. If only the real world were so simple.

Is there any difference between an ‘interactive novel’ and a ‘gamebook’? Is an ‘interactive novel’ just a gamebook that has a (mostly implied) sex scene or two, and that occasionally uses the word ‘shit’? Does anybody at all have any idea?

Anybody?

By the way, I just know this blog post is going to come back and bite me in the arse one day when I’m trying to flog an ‘interactive novel’ of my very own. So… you know… I’m anticipating that irony.

Happy Nearly-February 2013!!

So, the Arcana Agency Kickstarter bid came and went. And joy, joy, joy, because the bid was a success. Thanks enormously to everybody who mentioned the book on Facebook or Twitter or elsewhere. And thanks especially to the project backers. Every man-jack of you is free to marry my sister, should you so wish. I hope you enjoy the book, which you’ll be able to get your paws on in the very near future. I’ll have some more news about Arcana Agency in the nearish future, too.

The blog has been in suspended animation for a while. That happens from time to time, when my workload picks up. This will change. I make this vow to the inner demons that whine at me while I dream, and which may simply be a dose of tinnitus I picked up from standing too close to the loudspeakers during a Korn gig in 1999.

2012 was eventful. Most notably, I became a father. I’m a little antsy about talking about my baby girl online – and particularly about putting photos of her on Facebook, or elsewhere. But, very briefly, I’ve been a daddy for several months, and the whole experience is just… groovy. One of the major plus points: baby-rearing is so far neither as stressful nor as word-count-destroying as I feared it might be. We’re a cooooool little family.

My baby girl was born around the time we started working on the forthcoming Way of the Tiger RPG, in fact, and for several days I maintained to the rest of the team that I’d named her Foxglove, in honour of the project. The WotT RPG should be available… maybe a year from now? When you get to look at it, keep in mind that I tapped out most of the development notes for the Templar of Time class one-handed on my iPhone, while a one-day-old baby was sleeping on my chest. 

The Case of the Unghostly Ghost – read it now!

I’ve calmed down a little. Now I’m only checking our Kickstarter page every 45 minutes or so.

‘Sup.

Remarkably, I haven’t yet written a thing about Arcana Agency since our Kickstarter bid went live. That’s ’cause I’ve been busy, yeah?

So, brief update: Arcana Agency is live on Kickstarter. Humphrey Brown, Joseph Strelli, Thomas Shanigan. 1930s New York – the age of the Depression. The age of things that go shrieking through the night. A pledge of 40 dollars will get you a copy of the book itself – hardback, full colour, and containing lots of lovely, lovely pictures to go with the story. You can rummage around the green bar on the right of the page to see what pledges of lesser or greater value will get you. So, go pledge if you want to read the book.

More recent news: want a taster of Arcana Agency FOR FREE? C’mon, things for free are always fun. Then read ‘The Case of the Unghostly Ghost,’ a bonus Arcana Agency adventure.

Click on this link to get a free PDF copy of that.

Still more recent news: Stuart Lloyd, gamebook superbrain, has written up a review of The Case of the Unghostly Ghost on his blog Lloyd of Gamebooks. Stuart’s blog is really one of my favourite blogs in the world, so I feel no small sense of achievement getting a review on there. Okay, I did send him a copy of Unghostly Ghost in person, and the subject line of my message was ‘READ THIS!! READ THIS!!’ But that’s by the by.

Stuart Lloyd is actually plugging our Kickstarter bid even though a bid of his own is also online right now. How nice is this guy? Nice enough that you should check out Goblin’s Bounty, an innovative crossover between a gamebook and a collectible card game. Go do that. Go. Go. 

Feeling rather distracted today. I’m just finishing my second cafetiere of strong coffee. Might there be a connection?

Um… so today I worked out how to use my ‘snipping tool’ to capture screenshots.

I Have a Man-Crush on Ben Kweller

Ben Kweller. Terrible hair. Amazing music.

Ben Kweller is a twenty-first century legend. I’m old and virile enough that my heterosexuality is both indefatigable and indisputable. But if it weren’t… I think I’d definitely be a little bit in love with the guy.

His concert last night at La Maroquinerie, in Paris, was just beautiful. My mum was in town, visiting me; I took her along too. She liked the concert, but she isn’t as much in love with BK as I am. Or would be, if I weren’t so fiercely masculine. 

‘We’ve only learned to play ten songs together,’ said Ben. Then he played half the concert by himself.

La Nuit du Nécromancien – Excéllence en VF

‘Tu vas mourir, Musclor !!!’

Etant d’origine anglaise, j’ai eu la chance de lire ‘La Nuit du Necromancien‘ en VO quand il est sorti en 2010. J’ai réussi à atteindre la fin du livre sur ma deuxième ou troisième essai – et, tout de suite, j’ai créé un nouveau personnage, et j’ai recommencé au paragraphe 1, juste pour explorer des autres chemins que je n’avais pas déjà essayé.

Le concept de ce livre-jeu est excellente. Vous êtes un fantôme (ou, plutôt, vous devenez un fantôme dans l’introduction du livre). Vous devez trouver la raison derrière votre meurtre, et pourquoi vous n’êtes toujours pas… vraiment, vraiment mort – tout en apprenant maîtriser les pouvoirs que votre nouveau forme vous accorde. Donc, vous trouverez peut-être un moyen de voler, ou de manifester devant les êtres vivant, ou de terrifier des gens.

Deux pouvoirs spectrales en particulier sont très importants dans cette histoire : 1) Vous pouvez mourir, encore et encore. Plusieurs fois, en tout cas ; vous avez essentiellement plusieurs ‘vies’ avant que vous mouriez définitivement (bien sur, chaque réincarnation est plus difficile que celui qui le précède…). Et, 2) Vous pouvez posséder les corps des autres, surtout près de la fin du livre. En fait, étant donné que l’HABILITE de chaque corps remplace le votre, ceci peut être un moyen excellent de booster votre prouesse dans les combats, particulièrement si les dès n’étaient pas très sympa avec vous quand vous avez créé votre personnage.

En gros, avec ‘La Nuit du Nécromancien’ Jonathon Green a écrit un livre-jeu qui est au même hauteur que les LDVELH ‘classique’ – comme ‘Creature of Havoc’, par exemple. Il a bien établi qu’il est un maître moderne de ce genre de livre interactive.

Ce livre est actuellement un peu moins cher chez Le Grimoire qu’avec Amazon. Soutenez les vendeurs indépendants !

If you don’t read French, by the way, I just gave this book a blinding review.

‘Quoi ? Vous avez oublié l’échiquier ?’