I hope you enjoyed your holiday season and are looking forward as to what 2014 brings us. I for one, am dabbling in some minor roleplaying games/books: The Fabled Lands, a series of gamebooks that were originally published sometime last millennium (1995ish), discontinued then re-released as of 2010. My older brother was into these when he found them in our local library waaaay back in '99. Needless to say, I was interested in them but wasn't old enough to figure out the whole 'refer to ##' system. Come Xmas 2013, guess who got me the first six of them?
At this point I should mention there are twelve books in total, although only the first six were released. If the current re-released versions sell well enough, seven through twelve will come out. You can buy them on Amazon. I suggest you go do that. Now. Especially if you want to give RP'ing a go. Yes, I'm a sellout. Think of it as a kickstarter, only you're helping awesome stuff become a reality. Did I mention book 12 is about the realm of the dead? No? Well it is and that's another reason to get seven-twelve released. That and codewords that provide nice little additions to your adventure if you have them.
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| A land full of adventure! If only books 7-12 were out T_T |
Having played through book 1, The War-torn Kingdom for a few hours, I've managed to slay several beasties, get poisoned twice, become an initiate of the death god Nagil and am the captain of a small barque with an average crew (docked in Yellowport). While some names aren't the best, it feels fresh and vibrant as a fantasy world and that every adventure is truly unique.
The whole series is designed as a non-linear sandbox game, where you can adventure in one book, or travel across several. The books tell you how to keep track of this and provide sections at the back that you can photocopy to record all of your adventuring stuffs (like ships you buy, money, items, resurrection deals, etc)
The creators have a blog and a section giving a nice succinct overview of each currently published book. Upon finding a link to their facebook page, apparently book 7 is going to go up on kickstarter sometime in 2014.
Until the next year,
The Warlock