Gamebooks

*sigh*, who do they fuck with things? Blogger has changed its settings and I am now forced to deal with them. Not a good sign when it took me two minutes to find the NEW POST button. Nor can I actually seem to VIEW my own blog. Wonderful.

Nevetheless, this post is about Gamebooks. A few weeks ago I stumbled across an old copy of Steve Jackson's Island of Lizard King buried in the back of my bookself. When I was younger I had played through the Way of the Tiger series and some of the Lone Wolf books. I had a few other Steve Jackson gamebooks, but don't remember if I played them as much. I am now looking to change that and have already started peaking into ebay and dug into a few second hand shops.

I'm also very eager to get my hands on THIS.

Since I'm working on a solo-game meself, I started digging around to see what the status of Gamebooks are in the intraweb and I was pleasently surprised to see that its doing okay. Its also nice to see that many of these games are being reissued (some as apps, which is neat) or being put up as freeware, which means I now have a decent cache stored on my zip drive.

BLOGS and Stuff

Turn to 400
Adventure Cow - write your own!
Fabled Land
Llyod of Gamebooks

Free Stuff!

Abandonia-Gamebooks
Project Aon - all the Lone Wolf books, free!

Then last night I discovered Heart of Ice by David Morris, an post-apok setting gamebook available for FREE and loaded it onto my ereader. As fortune rolled, there was a mix up at my chemo this morning and I ended up waiting around for two hours while the pharmacy caught up. Since it doesn't need dice to play,  I loaded up Heart of Ice and ran a game. Poor Mike the Mutant, he was doing pretty well until he started exploring the Ancient Pyramid of Giza and accidentally triggered an ancient nuclear failsafe that caused the destruction of the pyramid and I am assuming, a few square miles of frozen Sahara. Hey, if you gotta go, at least it has style.

I'm thinking of finding a dice-app that will work on my cell phone so I can try out some of the other games in similar situations. No one comments if you're jotting notes in a pad, but dice weirds some people out.

I intend fo try HoI again, which as I said is great because it doesn't need dice. But up next, my happy find for the month, my own, slightly batterd second hand copy of Warlock of Fire Mountain!

Solo Tunnels and Trolls

Master Darkberry successfully made it into the Labyrinth, and was doing quite well, until an angered hydra knocked a wall down on his head.

Soon after, Grod Rusthelm of the Dwarves came to Midden. He easily made it through his first attempt at Buffalo Castle and returned in triumph, but with little reward. He girdled his loins to venture forth again, but was warned by the Wizard Zurn that Buffalo Castle has its secrets and is forever changing. More still, it may remember those who have walked its halls before and will be waiting.

[Solo Notes: Why the heck would anyone play a human in T&T? Demi humans are a great way to compensate for lousy stat rolls and very few of the demi-humans have significant penalties.

Because Grod had such an easy time of it the first time through, I'm doubling all the monster stats (within reason) even though he didn't bump up a level.]

Spending some of his coin, Grod refitted himself with stronger armour and a better axe and returned to Buffalo Castle. Remembering the wizard’s warning, he chose the left-hand door and ventured inside…

Alas, he never returned and no-one ever knew whatever became of poor Grod.

Trollstone Caverns

Did an inaugural Solo Run through using Trollstone Caverns adventure included with the 5th Ed Rule Book. It went pretty well and to my amazement, Master Darkberry didn't wind up rotating on spit over some orc's cooking fire. He is however currently trapped in the Caverns unable to solve the riddle of the Sphinx, find the secret door (lousy low IQ score!) defeat the giant Silver Serpent or figure out a way to sneak past the party of orcs currently guarding the exit.

The designers did include a blank door for a GM to expand the dungeon,so I may use that to give Darkberry a chance to escape. Looking over the first few modules, Labyrinth seems to be the best jumping off point here for a low level character.

I'm happy with the Tunnels and Trolls system so far, the only thing I'm not terribly keen on so far is the simplicity of the monster stats. I do like how the system handles multiple monsters (two or more opponents can get deadly, fast), but I don't like how the stats have a hard time reflecting special attacks or abilities. This doesn't give the monsters much flavor and in the end you might as well be battling a statistic. The tinkerer in me can't help but think there has to be a better way and I have a few ideas I might try.

That and the low number of available monsters inspired me to grab my old D&D Monster Manual, my Talislanta Bestiary and any other crittercatalogue I could find and start thinking about conversions. The Wandering Monster table I plan on building is gonna be sick!

The Setting: Welcome to the Nether Regions

For 500 years, the evil Sorcerer Zurn Ballcock, guarded by the terrible dragon Snoggs, ruled with an iron fist over The Kingdom. Finally, group of friends banded together to steal some treasure from Snogg's horde overthrow the Sorcerer and put an end to his horrifying rule.

Their names have gone down in history:

King Khurgen the Good (once a northern barbarian called The Kannibal): who went on to marry Zurn’s daughter and rule the Kingdom. He then moved the capital from Zuen's ruined city of Midden to the southern city of Sunbeach and rechristened it Khurgania.

Sissy Bignleafy: the Elvin Wizard-Warrior who went on to lead a revolution to overthrow the Queen of the Elfwood.

Hugfoot the Hobbit: incinerated by Snoggs while trying to steal the Great Golden Guzzundar.

Lightbottom the Fairy: who died heroically being crushed under a fifty ton slab

Patty O’Phernychur: the leprechaun who disappeared in the Beer Swamps.

And finally Zagnut the Wizard; rewarded for his service to the King with the Barony of Midden and all the accompanying lands.

Unfortunately the lands in question were the vast, unexplored waste known as the Nether Regions. Discouraged, but not undaunted, Zagnut set out with a handful of retainers to the ruined city of Midden, once the capital of Zurn’s mighty empire. There he established an inn and tavern called ‘Fortune Favors’. His retainers opened a smithy, a general store and a gift shop. Together, they make their living equipping bright-eyed adventures seeking their own fame and fortune in the bleak Nether Regions.

Our adventure begins one morning when a young Hobbit enters the Fortune Favors...

New Year's Gaming Resolution

Please bear with me; I promise that this will get around to RPGs in a sec…

Anyone who has been forced to navigate the treacherous waters of the medical system knows that it consists mostly of waiting: waiting for tests, waiting for results, waiting for appointments to get the results. Waiting for another appointment to see if the results mean you have to wait for another test to see if you need a special test … and so on.

I think they do it deliberately so that by the time they actually give you a diagnosis you're so happy just to KNOW you don't care what it is; "It's an alien embryo embedded in my chest that will tear itself out in an explosion of bone, gristle and intestines? Thank you, Doctor! Thank you!"
"Seriously, this didn't turn up on one of the first twenty X-rays?"
I'm currently in the "waiting for more tests" phase, but the point to all this is that there is the chance that I will be facing a (hopefully short) convalescence in the (hopefully near) future. This got me thinking about what I might do with that time, gaming wise. I did a little net-cruzin' and came across this golden-oldie.
In Jr. High, a buddy down the street had T&T and I think we might have played it once, but we were so used to D&D rules by that point weren't interested in variants.

But I remembered that T&T had a bunch of Solo Play adventures. Hey, why not? I may or may not have to go through any extended recuperation time, but Real Life has scattered my regular gaming group to the far winds anyway and I don't have the time right now to set up a regular Google+ game.

So my New Year's Gaming Resolution is to play as many T&T Solo Games as possible. I will play using the straight 5^th Ed Rules (encumbrance and everything!), then maybe try my hand at writing one of my own.

For the past few weeks I've been scouring ebay, calling some old buddies (Thanks to Matt for donating his old 5^th edition rulebook!) and building some Excel sheets to help me out with the heavy crunching. I also found this particularly awesome site. This weekend I plan on beginning to delve deep into "Buffalo Castle".

Anyone else have a New Year's Gaming Resolution?