Gamebooks in Bulgaria

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AsenRG

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Well, since there was some interest in the gamebooks that were published in Bulgaria, I'm starting a thread. You can blame Séadna Séadna for that:devil:!
(And I had no idea where to post this...at the end, I decided on the RPG forum, since I consider gamebooks to be "RPG-lite". And because it seems they have got a lot of us into RPGs, as evidenced by a recent thread.
You have my apologies if I was wrong).


Let me start by numbers. The gamebooks appeared in Bulgaria in 1992. Until the implosion of the genre at the end of the decade, it seems the published books included:
241 or 242 gamebooks (no, I'm not going to count them for you). This easily surpassed 300 after adding the New Wave gamebooks, published after that.
22 gamebook/boardgame or gamebook/wargame hybrids (which were known simply as "strats"). No such has been published since, AFAICT...but some books incorporated similar elements, like maps.
14 issues of the gamebook magazine "Megaigra". (In the last decade, we added to that 13 issues of "Gamebooks Magazine").
...and I seem to remember an earlier gamebook magazine which only had issues in the single digits - but included a comic-game (gamebook in comic form) before it folded.


So...it all started courtesy of the well-known (in Bulgarian litterature circles) translator of the magnificent "The Lord of the Rings" Mr. Lyubomir Nikolov.
For what I've been told/read, he was walking around Sofia and decided to stop at an antique bookstore in Slaveykov Square (which, at the time, was The Book Market). There you could find all kinds of books...from Russian books on meditation and Asian and Russian martial arts, to English RPGs and gamebooks. A friend bought a boxed set of Marvel Superheroes, for example. Anyway, back on topic...
There, Mr. Nikolov bought Jack Brennan's book "The Dragon's Bedside" (sorry, guys, can't find the original title). It was a weird one: the story was divided in episodes and the reader was also the protagonist! Whoa!
Due to lack of money, he almost didn't buy it...but at the time, as I can attest, book readers had a saying "if you have to pick between a book and bread, choose the book - it's going to stay with you forever". I also used to know a few that lived by it (or despite it).
So Mr. Nikolov ended up getting this, and thus the Bulgarian scene was born...although nobody knew that yet.

Lyubo (I feel weird writing Mr. Nikolov, he's a very friendly person in face-to-face contacts) went home, played the adventure (repeatedly) and decided to write such a book. He already had written fiction books ("The Court of Generations", "The Mole", "The Worm in the Autumn Wind", "The 9th Righteous Man" and others), he decided to write time-based SF. It was called "In the Labyrinth of Time" the first Bulgarian playbook, but not the first published. Took him long enough to find a published that he ended up writing two more - "The Valley of Lost Dreams" and "The Castle of the Tallasums" (tallasum - a kind of spirit/creature in Bulgarian myths, often though not always, nefarious to people).

The "Valley of Lost Dreams" - 420 episodes in 200 pages - ended up being the first published (By "Equus Art", IIRC), although they asked the book to be renamed to something shorter (thus it became known as "Fire Desert" instead). "The Castle of the Tallasums" and "In the Labyrinth of Time" got published soon after by another publisher ("Pleyada", or "Pleiad Books"). BTW, they also had the best cover artists, at the time...even the head publisher was an artist :grin:! Also, they were publishing Stephen King and other horror authors at the time. (You've seen some of their covers already - the artists I remember best were Peter Stanimirov („Peter Stan“), Dimitar Stoyanov („Dimo“) and Ivaylo Ivantchev - the latter lives in Australia now).

Anyway...

The books became a smashing success, especially "The Castle of the Tallasums", which Lyubo Nikolov published under the pen name "Colin Wolumberry" (or something like this), because the publisher believed that books from Western authors are more popular, after having been restricted in the 1944-1989. Mr. Nikolov complied with the requirement, and devised his pen name by re-arranging the letters in his own name (in Cyrillic, so there's not an exact match in Latin alphabet).
But "The Castle of the Tallasums"* became almous synonymous with the genre. Even the Bulgarian National Television had a show named after it! Never been able to watch it - what kind of moron had put it in a time slot when most kids and teens are at school, I'll never know - but I think they were replaying the game..."game streaming", anyone:tongue:?
The first 3 Bulgarian books published all had a similar structure, BTW: the MC (Main Character, or My Character :shade:) is summoned and given a quest, along with a host of one-use magic items (or "sufficiently high science" items, when playing "In the Labyrinth of Time"). Then off you go...


After that, there was a time when the demand for gamebooks peaked, but there were no new titles. Equus Art published "Usurper!" as well, and then there was a pause. I bought Usurper!* and I can attest that I kept pestering the book sellers about "new gamebooks", with all the patience or lack thereof that an 11-years old boy has:devil:.
But then the publishers realized the untapped potential of the market, and the gamebooks exploded.

New authors appeared, including the tandem Robert Blond and Adrian Wayne (actually Bogdan Rusev and Alexander Alexandrov/Alex Sultanov), Michael Mindcrime/Stuart Dark (Dimitar Slaveikov), George M. George/Bob Queen/Silvester Gold/William Stane (Gheorghi Mindizov - don't read the "h"-s, I added them to signify that the G is pronounced like in "groom") and Virgil Dreamond (?), (actually Elena Pavlova). A new publishing house, "Mega", was created by Petar Stanimirov - they published the "strats", the "Megaigri" (Megagames) magazine, and dozens of books (and some people credit them with destroying the market by oversaturation - I can't speak about that, though).
Oh, and there were about a dozen less-productive Bulgarian authors with 1-5 books. No, I'm not planning to name them all.
All authors had their own styles of writing and their "trademarks".
Colin Wolumberry wanted to combine gamebooks with teaching tools and relied more on literature. Perhaps his most memorable work (to me) is the series about the British archeologist Dick Chancey (?), who had to explore weird places and deal with weird artefacts. He also had a book where the player was playing a Special Forces soldier sent to establish contact with an ET civilization (and ended up saving a crashed ET), where we had to learn jungle survival, and the two books set in the Spanish Reconquista.

Mindcrime's trademark was having a comprehensive charsheet, with numbers that went up and down, and game schemes that allowed you to get a number of "points" at the end. His most popular series were The Superagent's games. He also wrote a trilogy on martial arts, and the first "sports gamebooks" ("The Demons in NBA" and "The Gods of Football" - though that would be soccer for USAians). His "true crime" tetralogy about rise and fall of "The Kid" from a petty criminal to head of family was considered so dark that he had to switch the publishers to get the fourth book published...and let's just say it didn't have a happy ending, either.

Robert Blond (Bogdan Rusev) focused on literature at the expense of system. He is known for his series focusing on the monk Valence, who was best described as "fantasy protagonist who somehow became a monk", and the books on the fantasy city Bellegast (he did publish "ordinary" books in the same setting). In tandem with Adrian Wayne/Alex Alexandrov, they had about a dozen gamebooks, notable by their light and humorous style. If the main character didn't make a one-liner by dispatching an enemy, it wasn't an important enemy...:shade:
Also of note: most (though not all) of those were dice-based, but you had an episode not only for winning, but for losing as well (invariably with a short description of how you died:skeleton:).
After they separated, Rusev focused more on cyberpunk (reportedly, Shadowrun might have been an influence, or not), alone or in tandem with another author, Ted Grey (actually Bojidar Grozdanov), who only wrote cyberpunk...or at least, all 5 of his books were set up in the same cyberpunk universe.
OTOH, Alex focused more on his fantasy works. He also created "tournament" gamebooks. Four of those have been created, total, 2 by him ("Swordmasters" 1&2), 1 by Rusev alone, and 1 by Rusev and Grozdanov.
Unless I'm wrong, Bojidar Grozdanov also contributed to the creation of the first Bulgarian RPG, Endyval (but it had a team of authors and I'm not sure whether this was the same person...I'd only met him once when he was a gamebook author, and a couple times on RPG-related places).
Oh, and Rusev also wrote a "Vampire book" as a tie-in to the Valence books. In it, you play the story of the Vampire Lord whom Valence encounters at the end of his book. Much mindless slaughter and blood-drinking are (arguably, suitably) included in the deal!

George M. George/Bob Queen also had involved character sheets, and the first book emulating "kung-fu movies" ("The Shadows of Darkness", entirely diceless). He was known as the guy with the best systems, too, and with mechanical innovations. He only played an RPG later in my group...we introduced him to ORE (Reign: Out of the Violent Planet) and he loved it. One of his latest posts in the gamebooks forum says "if I wasn't married already, I'd marry this system" :grin:!
Yes, he understands very well the idea "it's just a game"... he just likes systems. It's no accident that he wrote the first "Strat" (short for Strategic Gamebook), named "Commando".
An often-neglected side of his gamebooks is that he also tried to teach the readers real-world stuff where possible. In his modern trilogy "Money and Gangsters", for example, he included info on financial markets...which you had to learn if you wanted to engage in the "stock exchange" mini-game included in the book. (I lucked out and made enough money with it that for the rest of the book I could treat spending almost any amount of money as the "consequences-free" option - but a friend lost enough that his character had to file for insolvency).
In other books, he taught the readers about the Native Americans's history (actually, let me add some outrage fuel, here: they're known simply as Indians in Bulgaria to this day... because our language allows us to have distinct words for Indians in North/South America and Indians from India - despite the words retaining the same root :gunslinger:).
Also, George wrote what were the best "sandbox" gamebooks, IMO. Read: he*** devised a system which made visiting the same place leading to different events, allowing you to "travel on a map" (a trick later used by Rusev and Pavlova as well - though see the note). And that was before getting to the "strat" level! He added a host of other tricks there...though "strats" never became my favourites, mostly due to the way "Mega" always managed to omit a rule or two. (What kind of rules? Oh, almost nothing...the HP totals of enemies in the second strat, the rules for movement on the map and required food/water in one of Pavlova's strats - the one that was taking place in a PA desert...if you think OD&D was unclear, guys, you had to see those).

At the same time, Way of the Tiger, Blood Sword, Virtual Reality, Fighting Fantasy and Choose Your Own Adventures books were translated and published (though FF and CYOA were considered "second-rate gamebooks" by most players I knew, we were reading them all - and other players considered them their favourites, so maybe it was just in my circle). Other publishing houses joined in the fray, too: "Astrala", "Mega", "Selecta", and some authors self-published...and I'm probably forgetting some publishers, too:grin:!
Also: Sorcery! and Lone Wolf got published. But I'm not going to dwell much on the gamebooks that you can easily obtain yourself, though. What's the point?

*If you want to imagine the influence of those first books, suffice it to say, the first books of many authors copied that. Robert Blond and Adrian Wayne did the same in an S&S setting...George M George did the same, though the setting was more of a dark fantasy one. And Mindcrime, too...though his first book was "super-agent in a fantasy world". The Superagent had to go on a backwards planet and survive - this was his "entry-level test" for the job, BTW - but he was given no guns, just a sword and an array of high-tech devices, which were one-use because of a law forbidding "artificially raising the local tech levels".
I think only Elena bucked that trend, but I can't remember her first book, so I might be wrong. If I'm right, her first book was "Icy Silence", which is arguably Jack London-inspired and lacks any magic...I liked that one a lot! It also helps that Elena at the time had forgotten more about dealing with dogs than I'd ever know...


And that was in the 90ies of the 20th century. Only a couple gamebooks were published before the 10s of the 21st century, when Al Toro published "The Cat/Mouser**** and Black Narcissus/Daffodil". After that


** We never got Avenger and Ninja from Way of the Tiger, because the English publishers couldn't (be bothered to?) find copies - and the translations we did get, had the rules mistranslated, adding the to-hit roll to the damage, and thus making the ninja's fist deadlier than any sword.
I only learned that when I was gifted Avenger and Ninja in French... along with Inferno, which was yet unpublished. I actually liked the French copy more, though I bought the Bulgarian one, too. But the rules mistake necessitated me to re-play all my "Way of the Tiger" books, in sequence... Ah! When such chores were being hoisted onto me, I vehemently...complied :grin:!

***I hear that Elena Pavlova had contributed a lot in the creation of it, or even that she'd created it...but I've never delved in the matter. I know for sure that I first encountered it in one of his books, but she also used it, for sure. Maybe her book has been sitting on my "backlog"? At some point I was buying every gamebook, but didn't manage to read them all in order.

****The word used means male cat (the default word you use for "cat" basically means "female cat" - or it might mean you don't care about what this cat has between its legs; usually "male cat" is used when the gender is at least vaguely relevant) but it also has some connotations similar to "mouser" (and often implies trickiness, craftiness). So I'd translate it as Mouser, because Fritz Leiber...and because the main character has a lot of common with the Grey Mouser.
Also, I have no idea which word to use for the flower. According to my dictionary, it's "daffodil" if yellow, and "narcissus" if white...so which one in hell is "right" if it's black:devil:!

To Be Continued!
Next: The New Wave! Including the Book Where You Are The Seducer :kiss::heart::sweat::brokenheart::evil::present::coffee::dice:!

IMPORTANT NOTE: I know this post needs an editor...but it was a choice between posting in a hurry, and not posting it for a month or so, if ever. So, apologies to everyone who reads my "inner narrative, recorded"!
 
This might be the one and only authoritative source for this info in the English language! :shade::coffee: It could have been a slice of gaming history lost to time and translation otherwise. Please, continue!:thumbsup:
 
This is very interesting - please do post more!
The Castle of the Tallasums"* became almous synonymous with the genre. Even the Bulgarian National Television had a show named after it! Never been able to watch it - what kind of moron had put it in a time slot when most kids and teens are at school, I'll never know - but I think they were replaying the game..."game streaming", anyone:tongue:?
This was shown on UK TV:

Was your show anything like that? Or more similar to modern streaming where the focus is just on the players of the game?
he wrote the first "Strat" (short for Strategic Gamebook), named "Commando".
What would you say differentiated a ‘strategic’ game book from a ‘regular’ one?
He also created "tournament" gamebooks.
Again, what makes those different from standard books in you opinion? Was there actually a tournament scene?
Also, George wrote what were the best "sandbox" gamebooks, IMO. Read: he*** devised a system which made visiting the same place leading to different events, allowing you to "travel on a map"
Cool - how did that work?
 
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This might be the one and only authoritative source for this info in the English language! :shade::coffee: It could have been a slice of gaming history lost to time and translation otherwise. Please, continue!:thumbsup:
Actually...that's flattering me, but it's highly unlikely:thumbsup:.

There are literally hundreds of people who might have written the same text, some of them better (like, you know, Lyubomir Nikolov...the guy who translated LotR - so I don't claim to have a better mastery of English than him - and wrote the first three Bulgarian gamebooks :tongue:).
Keep in mind that many if not most Bulgarians of speak at least one foreign language. For many that language is English, too...and most people in my generation have read at least a few.

Basically, it would have surfaced sooner or later, if anyone went looking for it. On the BG gamebook forum, you can basically start a thread in any language, if you managed to register - maybe with Google translate.


Onward for more gamebooks!

View attachment 15744
Exactly like that! Well, maybe with less swords, spears and horses...:shade:

This is very interesting - please do post more!
I shall! And in a fit of megalomania - I'll give you a behind-the-scenes peek of the activity of my gaming circle!
Because no doubt you want to know how we discovered the secret pen name of Michael Mindcrime... :grin:

This was shown in UK TV:

Was your show anything like that? Or more similar to modern streaming where the focus is just on he players of the game?

I'll post a link if I can find any video. But until then - it was kinda like that link... "watching other people reading a book and throwing dice" isn't a popular spectator sport around here.

What would you say differentiated a ‘strategic’ game book from a ‘regular’ one?
A huge-ass map that you moved on (it actually doubled on as a book protector, preserving the covers), with a gamebook inside that had more focus on mechanics. The rules of some were probably longer than the rules of OD&D.
Some also had papercut models, and - take a deep breath - paper-made polyhedron dice... :grin:

Beyond that, I can't say, because different "strats" were very different. But they were being sold in the map/book protector.
Here's what they looked like when spread out:
images


Again, what makes those different from standard books in you opinion? Was there actually a tournament scene?
No, simply the genre: they emulated the "fighting games" like MK, SF, VF and the like! OK, in this case Samurai Showdown would have been a closer model...all of them had most characters either using swords (Swordmasters), or using any weapons that came to mind in a cyberpunk setting...katanas and tonfas included, but also implanted blades and claws, electric whips, thrown spikes, metalic endoskeletons with fists, chains...

Cool - how did that work?
You have a number associated with the location. If you get there (rules for moving on map apply, including some random tables IIRC), you read the episode. As you leave, you're given a new number. All in all, this really cuts down on the number of codewords you have to remember... :smile:

And it was recently used in a gamebook aimed at children. But that's for the New Wave post :wink:!
 
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A huge-ass map that you moved on (it actually doubled on as a book protector, preserving the covers), with a gamebook inside that had more focus on mechanics. The rules of some were probably longer than the rules of OD&D.
Sounds a bit like Death Test for The Fantasy Trip. I have it, but haven’t played it yet. It looks like a FF structure but when you get to fights you make a hex map and play out combat using the Melee rules etc.
the genre: they emulated the "fighting games" like MK, SF, VF and the like! OK, in this case Samurai Showdown would have been a closer model...all of them had most characters either using swords (Swordmasters), or using any weapons that came to mind in a cyberpunk setting...katanas and tonfas included, but also implanted blades and claws, electric whips, thrown spikes, metalic endoskeletons with fists, chains...
Were they two player? There was a small number of two-player books created in English:

062A739E-ED4C-4778-B385-E78F8BD706D5.jpeg

That one was a bit more head-to-head, IIRC.

FF672B86-472B-49CF-9B99-1DDEEAE98C81.jpegC4245C6C-C768-439D-A233-A5F7EB1186D6.jpeg

Clash of Princes was kind of a parallel game, where each player would reach a certain point and be told to wait for the other to catch up.
 
Strats sound interesting. They seem like something I might have gotten into had they been available in the US/had I known about them.
 
Sounds a bit like Death Test for The Fantasy Trip. I have it, but haven’t played it yet. It looks like a FF structure but when you get to fights you make a hex map and play out combat using the Melee rules etc.
I haven't played Death Test yet. But from your description, yes, rather similar...well, for most :smile:.

Were they two player?
The tournament ones? No, single player only.
The "strats"...well, some of them yes - others, no. Like, I can't emphasize enough how different they were :wink:.
"Commando" was like a gamebook/wargame against an AI-controlled opponent...I think it was cooperative-only (or we only played it like this).
"Lord and Wizard" and "Nomads" ("Desert Nomads") had up to 6/4 players modes and exploring a map with random encounters (again, AI-controlled).
The "Uberstrats" by Elena Pavlova "Dragons Forward" and "Barbarian Invaders" were turn-based kingdom-building strategies, complete with resource management and stuff. Also, they were meant to be played in sequence, but I kinda botched that by changing some rules that looked like they wouldn't be fun...at the end the barbarian invaders died in dragon fire:grin:.

There was a small number of two-player books created in English:

View attachment 15746

That one was a bit more head-to-head, IIRC.

View attachment 15745View attachment 15747
Yes, I'm aware of Duel Masters. A friend had bought them from Slaveikov Square...though he didn't like them, so I didn't get to play them :wink:.
I'll admit that at the time my English wasn't up to par with my today's level, though, so I'm not sure I understood everything. I was still piecing together how to play them when he grew bored enough and brought them to his home.
But no, they aren't like strats. The closest analogues were the "paired gamebooks" by George M George ("Hour of the Witch" and "Hour of the Vampire") where you started with...any of them, really - and then the action changed depending on some codes you'd get. You also got instructions to switch from book to book.
However you were meant to play different incarnations of the same character, literally. So a two-players option didn't make much sense.

Clash of Princes
was kind of a parallel game, where each player would reach a certain point and be told to wait for the other to catch up.
I think* some of the latter ones worked like that (namely it was an option if you decided to play the uberstrats against a friend). But most of the two-player options for other strats simply had alternating turns.


*Not familiar with those specific books.
Strats sound interesting. They seem like something I might have gotten into had they been available in the US/had I known about them.
Yes. From your posts on the forum, you sound like someone who'd have loved "strats".
But then again, I liked some of them well enough, too...that's why I was angry at the rules that went missing during the editing:thumbsup:!
 
Such much great info! Cool how the authors created new directions and ran with them.

I totally would have gotten lost in the solo nerdom of strats if they had been available in English at the time.
 
Next: How My Gaming Circle Foiled Mindcrime's Plan!
 
OK, here's a funny chapter in the story that happened roughly near the end of the gamebooks boom...
Me and two friends were playing gamebooks at home, and comparing "achievements" at home. I was the best, of course...although they were obstinate enough to not recognize it immediately:thumbsup:!
Anyway. There was this new author being published by "Mega", named Stuart Dark. In his traditional "message to the fans" Michael Mindcrime said he is "teaching a guy how to write gamebooks" and presented him with his pen name - Stuart Dark. He even wrote a lot about how they have common interests and musical tastes and stuff.

There went the first book by Stuart Dark, "Heart of Stone"...and yeah, it was a lot darker than Mindcrime's. We read it, liked it, started to discuss it.
And then we started discussing his prose style, concluding it's remarkably similar to Mindcrime's. And the way he's using the stats. And we kept feeding off each other finding new similarities...
I don't even remember who said "OK, so that's Michael". It wasn't me, I think...but it was over a score years ago, so even that might be wrong (unlikely).
Well, that was before Facebook, so nothing ensued. We laughed some, and went on playing books :smile:.

Then a teacher was sick, and another teacher had twisted her leg or somethinf. Bottomline, we had time to fill.
So we spoke about gamebooks. The day before "Mega" had published a new one. We had disagreement about how to interpret some of the rules :wink:.
So again, someone suggested that we should go ask the publishers. Someone there was bound to know, right? And the address was in the same city (living in the capital has advantages).
So we went - in person - to find the publishing house "Mega", and paid them a visit to meet them and ask them about the rules that we were discussing. Hey, we had nearly two hours we had to somehow fill, and this was before Facebook!
Besides, whoever had interpreted the rules wrong, would have had to replay the book in question (I no longer remember which one it was and who was wrong)... :grin:
So we passed through Slaveikov Square, checked that there were no new books this day, and took the bus, like the totally normal Bulgarian highshoolers (two out of us three believed we were just that :devil:)!

At first the Mega staff were kinda surprised, but offered us tea, what with us being fans who had actually taken . But when we started asking them about rules and mistaken episode numbers (quoting them by heart :tongue:), they were kinda impressed. Especially since it was the book they had published yesterday.
(A fun fact: I think they answered us by the Rule Zero Fallacy: make up how you think it should work. There were no RPG forums back then, not that we knew what an RPG was, so we didn't answer by "Rule Zero Fallacy" immediately, but mostly we answered in that direction...and we didn't learn what RPGs were for a few months more! Amusingly, it was "Mega" that presented the genre in an article in their magazine).
So we started visiting them again. Why not? Free tea, and the opportunity to discuss gamebooks! And to ask about the unclear rules!
OTOH, the boss of "Mega" expressed deep regret that we didn't have 18 yet. He said he'd hire us as proofreaders if he could... but hiring people below 18 was, and is, heavily restricted in Bulgaria (in order to prevent abuses). Basically you need the parents and the DA office to sign an agreement.
And I don't think our parents realized how much time exactly we were spending with gamebooks vs how much we were spending preparing to get into an university. (BTW, we all managed it. One of us went to a respected British university, for that matter).

And it was during one of those visits that we heard they're preparing a new Stuart Dark gamebook. So we asked the natural question.
"So why does Michael hides he's Stuart Dark?"

We were kinda surprised by the reaction of disbelief...but nobody managed to deny it efficiently. So we had a confirmation, not that we doubted it.
(Turned out, Michael Mindcrime believed this pen name carries a bigger "brand recognition" and wanted higher payments for it. We were all like "what, those are basically the same books, just with more crime!")
Later, however, we read in a Mindcrime's book that he had issues with "Mega", because the publisher told him some fans had found out by comparing the books. The author's reaction was: "Bullshit, there's no such people".
And he wrote it in a "message to the fans".
So we officially didn't exist, then.
Well, Mindcrime had a reputation for abrasiveness and conflicts (which he keeps maintaining now that there is a gamebook forum - he's the guy who keeps recommending to people to ask for a prescription drug so they could start behaving adequately, in his opinion). So we just had a laugh and moved on, but it seems this event either prompted, or - more likely - speeded up him leaving the team of "Mega". As I understood later, there were discussions about money and ego (and we were all surprised about the latter...no, wait, not really, given his conflicts with other authors :evil:)!

But this is my own contribution to the creation of gamebooks. A few months later, the market basically imploded, so it didn't matter much. But at this age, this was the most we could have done :shade:!
 
Fast Forward to 2011...:thumbsup:
Why the fast forward? Because in the meantime, only a few gamebooks had been published. They included the memorable "Roma(ni?) labyrinth"... no kidding. It is about a Roma guy trying to make ends meet and encountering racism at every step - so I rate it more as a propaganda tool than a gamebook, and this is about everything that makes it memorable.
Wayne (see above for real name - I'll start abbreviating this to SAFRN from now on:shade:) also published a very small, low-production-quality gamebook called "Silk in the Night"...can't tell almost anything about it without spoilers, so I won't. It was nice, but not really more memorable than the previous one.

Anyway.
In 2011 was published "The Mouser and the Black Daffodil" and thus began the Gamebook Renaissance.
 
I have no idea how to continue this post... so screw it, here's the bullet point version. Please understand that this is me trying to capture a snapshot of what is a "work in progress", meaning the Second Wave. And, unlike what I was in the First Wave, I'm not reading everything.
So any inconsistencies and omissions are my fault entirely, and I apologize in advance:thumbsup:. Take it as my view on the genre.

So, "The Mouser and the Black Daffodil" by Al Toro (Alexander Torofiev) was the start. This means it merits more wordcount.
It's a gamebook without random elements, but with many - literally dozens, I think - codewords. In most of it, you're well-advised to avoid fights that seem hopeless.
Talking with people actually is necessary, though...you're playing a young hitman apprentice in the world of Kreya. You've been set up, your mentor is presumably dead, you're captured. Now let's start the game...that was the intro:evil:!

Kreya is, BTW, the setting of the RPG that Al Toro is/was writing. Yes, he's an RPG fan, too. His system is quite heavy, with multiple classes...and that's about all I know about it.
But the fact that then he wrote a gamebook which didn't use dice is one that shall never stop to amaze me :smile:.

After "The Mouser and the Black Daffodil" by Al Toro (SAFRN) there was a short period again where another book was published - "The Assassins of Persia", by Adrian Wayne (SAFRN)...a railroad par excellence, BTW. But then he believes good stories are like that. (As you well know, I believe he needs to read less on story-crafting and more on interactive litterature...but ultimately, it's his work:wink:).
At the very least, he has promised continuations. It's going to be at least a trilogy, or so he says. (He has yet to publish the second part, though).

Then there was word about a new book by Mindcrime (SAFRN). Some fans pooled money to cover his requirements for payment in advance, in return for which they should get an ultra-limited edition gamebook.
He got the money and they were waiting for it. Presumably there would be NO "regular edition".

Then endless personal bickering followed, I started a new RPG campaign and stopped visiting the site for 7-8 years.

And then I noticed them on the Sofia Book Fair. There were...wait, several new gamebooks? And a few gamebooks for kids? And they said many others exist?

Clearly I needed to investigate! So I bought the kids a couple books, and went off. Investigation can be done by visiting a forum, after all...
There was a second book by Al Toro (SAFRN), too - "The Mouser and the Ebony Dragon", which I bought immediately. (Rather nice book, BTW. You can play it with or without dice, and that's by design).

Long story short, what I found was that there were actually dozens of new gamebooks. Some were translated, others were "Made in Bulgaria". Now that was a surprise!
So I registered again on the gamebook forum, managed to find old connections (one of whom came to play RPGs in our group), argued with Mindcrime (SAFRN) and purchased a couple dozen books and magazines. Yes, there was a new Gamebook Magazine, which is published irregularly.
Then I started reading...still have books from back then to finish. And some are begging me to replay them:devil:!

I especially like the books by Jose Morales, who hasn't been part of the First Wave, despite being seemingly well-known in Spain.
The guy even has his own RPG (but it seems to be d20 based, so I didn't get it - it's on Drivethru).

An interesting note is that many if not most of the translations are NOT from English. German, French, Spanish and Russian books seem to be way more numerous.
No idea why. Probably because in some of those countries, especially France and Russia, there are still people who are writing new gamebooks - so it's easier to contact the authors (including for obtaining feedback)? On top of this, many of the new gamebook fans are bilingual...:shade:

So far, the biggest "brick" published (about 500 pages, I think) is "The Fifth Prince - 2". Reportedly, it has become one of the big sellers for the publisher*. It combines movement two different ways of moving around on a map, has an interesting combat system (in which you rely on getting the other side into a death spiral, and can achive it if your estimates are correct), and comes with additions like maps and counters. It's not a new "strat", but it's close to the tipping point, for me.

*Admittedly it's been published by "East-West", which publishes lots of books without broad popular appeal, like classical Chinese novels...:grin: Still, it seems they marketed it as a YA book, and it has met with at least a moderate success:thumbsup:.
However, the author left the forum soon after due to personal conflicts. So it's not exactly all roses and sunshine.

Almost as thick of a book (I haven't compared the pagcount, and how do you compare two gamebooks, anyway - by pages or by episodes?) is the book "Don Mon".
It's the infamous "Book Where You Are The Seducer"...:shade:
Yes, it's about being a pick-up artist on a cruise ship travelling from Bulgaria to Austria. Only problem: you're part of the crew, namely the new deckhand! Can you fix the plumbing of the bathroom, and take care of the dog of a rich playboy, and...
OK, the bad jokes write themselves, here!
Either way - if you haven't guessed it by now, it's a book that's at its best when not taken too seriously :tongue:!

And then there are dozens of smaller books.
For the new Bulgarian authors, they have adopted a new format with publishing the works of three different ones in a single volume. There are eight such volumes so far. One of them is all "horror stories", another is "Stories set in Asia", and so on. The latter contains, for example, "The Fifth Prince-1" and the first gamebook where you play a hwarang warrior... the title is "Hwarang and Kumiho".
I still maintain it should have been "Hwarang vs Kumiho". But then I'm one of those people who mentally translated the title to "Korean proto-samurai warrior and the fox demon"...which kinda spoils the plot.
Years of running wuxia games have left their mark! (And my players probably still remember running from kumiho:devil:).
 
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That was the present. Now a sneak peak of the future by an insider (me), exclusively for the Pub...and my blog...and whoever copies that:grin:!

Future projects (that I know of):
A German book I know is being translated is named "Way of the Quail"...think Way of the Tiger, but with a quail for a PC - sounds a lot like Usagi Yojimbo to me! It's a big brick of a book, tentatively expected to be thicker than the Fifth Prince. The translator has been working on it for 3 years so far... (And that's "working for free" for you. The genre exists because of the fans).

A fantasy gamebook with flying ships is being translated from French.

The fans are still waiting for Mindcrime's (SAFRN) new book, too. He has offered refunds if anyone loses hope. Nobody has taken him on it, it seems - and among the few that did? Other fans bought up their "shares" (presumably that should lead to more copies).
I'm not going to mention Far West KS backers, not going to mention...oh wait, I just did, didn't I:skeleton:?

George M George (SAFRN) also launched a "gamebook challenge" for books under 100 episodes. The results should be clear near the end of the year, though many people announced they are definitely going to participate in it. The prize? None, but you could claim your interactive story was "written in answer to a challenge by George M George"! Also, you can get his recommendations and/or "Praises by George M. George":tongue:.

And finally, it seems some fan, or fans, is gearing up to launch a new gamebooks forum, being dissatisfied with the administration of the current one. Ah well, we'll see how it would go!
 
Not going to open a new thread for it, but:
A new RPG has been published in Bulgaria! OK, I know I've mentioned it in the thread before, but now I've got my hands on it (mail order).

So here are some pictures. I know you people like pictures:grin:!
1587455628848-1247219723.jpg

1587455354319-719719039.jpg
 
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15874554146181140743539.jpg

1587455475397-2050822484.jpg


Despite the first picture, it's a single-volume book (all-in-one). You've got about 150 pages covering setting, system, monsters and presumably, GM advice.
From the author's brief info:
It's class-and-race based, with 2d10 and no multiclassing. Classes have 3 categories of development with 5 "skills" each. No "general" skills, it's "left to the roleplaying". But of course, it's totally different from D&D, many of the classes are unknown elsewhere:thumbsup:!
And of course, they're well-balanced.
The world is "something between high fantasy and LotR". (I guess that means medium-high magic? Didn't bother to ask).
Gaining new "class points" for improvement is based on fighting and roleplaying, which should be class-based. The combat system gives you 3 actions per round (normal ones of instantaneous ones) and a fixed number of hexes/squares to move. There's also a system for making your own equipment and items and improving those you've got already.
And there's an "elemental system", which is tied to a special resource called "essence", which replaces the money (no, I'm not sure what that means even in Bulgarian:shade:). You gather this one from creatures you defeat.
Is that The Game Of Cultivators or what? I don't know...but I guess I'd have to read it to find out:grin:!

My first impression is that the art is good (color cover, black and white inside), but the info is densely packed, if you get what I mean. There seems to be quite a few tables, too!
Given the above, it might take me a while to read it, but I'm going to, eventually:devil:! However, unless the inside really makes me change my first impression, it'd be unlikely to ever get actual play/run time with me.

OTOH, it's first edition, first printing, and signed by the author! When Courageous Chronicles becomes the hit it deserves to be, my copy would be enough to make me rich!

...well, I can dream, right:tongue:?
Actually, the author was nice enough to sign both books I ordered - one for me and one for a friend. Amusingly, said friend is the author of the second RPG published in Bulgaria (this one is the third, or the fifth if you count the different editions of Endyval as different games - the systems certainly were different!)
 
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Intriguing... what are those hexagon diagrams about?
 
What's the rough idea of the setting? The rules?

Obviously when you've read it.
 
Intriguing... what are those hexagon diagrams about?
Range:smile:.
He doesn't just say "up to two adjacent targets", he gives you a visual representation. OK, the guy had mentioned that he'd taken great care in explaining the rules...and I'm inclined to agree now:wink:!

The single hexagon has "hero" written over it - in Bulgarian, obviously - and means "the skill only impacts your character" (it's a damage or defence add, I think). The hex with two adjacent hexes is, well, you can hit up to two adjacent targets" (maybe "in front of you" should be added as well, I don't know yet if he's dealing with facing at all:shade:).

What's the rough idea of the setting? The rules?

Obviously when you've read it.
No idea yet, except what I just added to my second post (the one with the black and white art, if you've missed the edit). Well, there are obviously small, furry creatures which are playable as PCs - that's where one of the pictures is from.
I guess they replace hobbits by adding "teh cute" AND make any potential furry customers happy:tongue:?

From the quick skimming during taking the pictures, there are obviously block and dodge actions (or reactions, not sure whether they'd apply to a single attack or be round-long:thumbsup:). I guess some of those 3 actions he mentioned should be used for shoring up your defence?
Not sure yet. Either way, make of this what you will, because for now, that's what I know as well:grin:!
 
I wonder whether I should start a new Where I Read thread about Courageous Chronicles... maybe a moderator can split the posts starting by the first one with the pictures?

Anyway, I read the character creation. It's point buy, you get a fixed amount of points at first level. It seems the prices are 1 pt per point of stat, too.
Amusingly, it's a d100 system, actually. I guess the author wanted to let me know that I need 2d10 when he said the game uses those dice? Yeah, probably, I haven't yet seen any place where you sum them up...

There are six stats: Str, Dex, Agi, Vit, Magic and Will.
Then there is a list of stats that are either racial, class-based (this one includes Intelligence) or equipment-based, including Protection.
Then there is a list of almost 20 derived characteristics. Multiple derived characteristics are, more or less, the bane of all Bulgarian RPGs:smile:.
Oh, and you've got Allegiance: Good, Neutral or Evil (the latter not only hurt people, but also "don't help others as often, and usually when there's personal gain involved"). Of course you have to roleplay that, the text reminds you...:wink:
Defence is unrolled. You just subtract it from the opponent's chance to hit.

It seems that at level-up you get a fixed amount of points for your stats, plus bonus "class points" (you can probably guess that those will be used for class skills), and alter some derived characteristics that include your level. You also can gain "class points" for spending time training (the Narrator/Storyteller decides how much time), and for "good roleplaying" of your class.

I got as far as the list of Status Effects (16 in number, ranging from Immobilization and Bleeding to Cursed and Undead).
...and other than using d100, I still have no idea how I roll checks.
So I went to the table of contents, and checked...battle gets its own chapter (the final one). Let me guess where I can find the rolling procedure!
Yeah, I'd guessed right, so you spend about 130 pages not knowing how to roll.
It turns out Courageous Chronicles is a roll-high d100 system. You subtract your ability from 100, and must roll higher than that number!
...For some reason, that reminded me of the forum discussions with people who say "using a d100 for your odds of success is quite intuitive, but I don't like roll-under". Probably because that exact procedure is the standard answer to such concerns:grin:! So, I guess it's a good thing someone is using it, right?
I also remember giving my players who didn't like roll-under the option of rolling high with this simple calculation. Nobody has taken me on the offer yet, but maybe people would like that idea when it's presented as the default?
I don't know...yet. Guess I should ask the author:shade:!
Points for reminding me that Defence is unrolled, though. It would have been over a hundred pages ago if I was reading in order:thumbsup:! I can see that the author assumes "new player, not familiar with RPGs, trying to learn from the book".
...now that I think of it, maybe that explains a number of his "design decisions" as well:shock:? Not the one about Allegiance, since he called it out as "a stat that can be omitted with new players". But the style of explanation certainly seems to be aimed at such "potential customers"!
This is a good thing, if you ask me. The number of Bulgarians that know what an RPG is can certainly use an increase!
Too bad the Covid-madness is stopping people from ordering his book (other than online, like I did).

Oh, and I now have an early confirmation that you gather "elemental crystals" from fallen foes, and they replace the precious metals. The text also mentions that you can use them on your weapons, on your armour, or to raise a recently-fallen friend or foe! (Yes, it mentions foes, too).
I guess this is indeed "the game of cultivators"...paging BedrockBrendan BedrockBrendan as our resident expert on the matter!

Oh yeah, it seems there are 24 classes (that table of contents was useful - probably because it had several pages, instead of being on a single page, like some publishers used to do). The names Berserk, Knight, Monk and Samurai were clear enough if you ask me...and I guess the others were some boring wizardly types, because I didn't remember them:devil:!
 
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OK, I started reading the setting...

Then I got interrupted, so I'm still at the beginning. But basically, the Fey and Elves and some other races (some seem unique to the setting, though I haven't read the descriptions yet) were at war with the empire of the evil...Blooddrinkers? Not vampires, vampires were those that were turned into servants of the Original Blooddrinkers (I'm tempted to add a "TM" to this, but then someone might think they're from Palladium...and I doubt the author has ever heard of it:grin:)!
As you can guess, the Fey and Elves won, but at a price (for example, the centaurs were killed to the last).
It was during-and-after this war that magic developed so much, with the Fey teaching everybody else. They developed their own tricks, though!

...so much for today. I grew bored and went off to read another book, reasoning that this can wait:shade:!
 
Finished reading the setting. By all that is holy, I just read a mix of Warhammer, a MMO and a JRPG:grin:!

OK, so there are multiple other races. Two of them are "human-beasts", one of them is smaller than the other (the two are related, BTW) and then you've got insectmen, lizardmen, and living fungi...on top of the elves, fae/fey/fairies, humans and the Pure-Bloods (which I'd named Blood Suckers in the previous post). And I think there were two subterraneous races? And elemental humans?
You can see above an example of chu, the small humanoid creatures...I guess they're the "hobbit" option: furry legs, small, need to use smaller weapons, prone to being thieves and entertainers.

Continuing the history: after the PureBloods (and their servants, humans being chief among those) were defeated, the various people of this realm started exploring the world. Then stuff happened, then the Elven Kingdom and the Human Empire clashed, and the war was only stopped by a common threat by ice-wielding race.
And then they happily kept fighting, with the humans winning. And then a revolt, lead by a human general in disgrace, ended up with the human armies being scattered, and a major spell was enacted, forbidding the humans from organizing into empires that can conquer. Said spell was tied to the aforementioned general's soul. I read it as a hint that he's still alive, otherwise, why is the spell still active?

Anyway, that's where the game is supposed to start - a few centuries later, with humans being scattered...and BTW, they don't remember the spell, because the spell prevents them from doing so. Those that were there at the time are supposedly an exception.
I'll admit I didn't expect that:shock:!

Oh, and along the way they discovered a way to use the energy of living creatures to create magic crystals.I think those are the same that replace money? If so, I wonder whether you can mine them from raw magic or something...if not, the term "blood money" would come to mind:devil:!

Another fun thing: from the description, it seems pure-bloods are good at interaction, magic, and fencing (in which they're well-known to be masters). They need to drink blood, because from too much purification, their blood has grown thin and unstable, or something.
Nobody remembers that there was a war with them, too. I guess the previous war doesn't count:grin:?

Anyway, I'm now wondering whether this counts as a bunch of cliches, or as a really original setting!
 
The Pure-Bloods sound a bit like the Ancients from the Legacy of Kain. They were a non-human race that ended up needing to drink blood and actual vampires were their human servants who were converted with magic.
 
The Pure-Bloods sound a bit like the Ancients from the Legacy of Kain. They were a non-human race that ended up needing to drink blood and actual vampires were their human servants who were converted with magic.
Sounds more or less like them, indeed. I wouldn't be surprised if that was exactly the intention, too, it sure makes attempts to include all kinds of options that might be dear to modern gamers:thumbsup:!
 
OK, I finished it:smile:! I'm still not sure how the process of transferring life energy into crystals works...but whatever.
It turned out half of the 24 classes are magical and half aren't. (Amusingly, they have notes for "roleplaying difficulty"...and it turns out the knight is easier to roleplay than a berserk. I'll leave that on the conscience of the author). Each class has three areas of expertise which you can develop. Activating a skill is an action and usually takes energy. If you use too much energy in one round, you start getting levels of Tiredness. (You can also activate skills at the start of a battle, but this improves the Tiredness you suffer).

There are extensive ways to customize your weapons via materials, spending energy, and so on. Some options improve your attack, defence and damage, some improve your magical attack or defence (and yes, parrying a spell with your sword is most explicitly an option - though it's harder with a sword than with a magical implement of some sort). Spellbooks/wands/holy symbols are treated as weapons in this regard, it seems (and thus they have listed parrying bonuses:wink:).
For all that, armours aren't different types, unless made of different materials. I find that unexplicable, except as a game mechanic...but there you go.
Ammo for thrown weapons isn't tracked, unless you're using a special kind of missile. So, you can shoot all day, but the Dragon-Slaying arrow is one of a kind.

The mechanics include 3 actions. Each action can result in reactions (still not sure whether you can stack reactions, BTW). A successful attack might lead to additional statuses.
It's too crunchy for a one-shot and I'm not planning to run a whole campaign (it reminds me of 4e, both in a good and in a bad way), so this is just a purchase "for my collection". But it was fun to read. (And I'm not going to write a similarly tanking review on Bulgarian forums:shade:).

As a final note, there's basically no advice for the Referee. Ah well, this ranks as "just as unexplainable as the decision on armours" in my book. Guess I wasn't really in the target group for this game, anyway:grin:!
 
I just want to say this is a fascinating insight into non-Anglophone games book culture. I don't have much else to add other than this has been a very informative and interesting thread.
I'm glad it was useful to anyone:thumbsup:!
And hey, I figured I owe it to the fine people on the Pub. I've learned a lot about gaming from similar threads in other countries (which, to me, includes Anglophone ones).
 
Raise, oh thread, from the dust and silence of deathly corridors in unknown lands...


A couple short updates, people.
I bought recently a gamebook that's well over 600 pages. Seems like mastodons like this are becoming the new vogue in my place. It's actually the third one over 300 pages I've seen lately...out of five. And all the smaller ones were written in another country (Fighting Fantasy:thumbsup:).

Also, I stand to purchase this Saturday between 3,3% and 6,6% of the print run of a Bulgarian RPG. Which means I'm still deciding whether to buy just one, or two copies...
Yes, the author has only printed 30 in total:grin:!

BTW, I told him to put it on a POD site. It's actually pretty decent, he sent me the PDF for free:grin:! Roll-under d100, opposed rolls, one action and one reaction, initiative is by declaring before the other guy...magic only exists when you go out of your mind...:shade:

Best of all is the title, "On That Other World". Which doesn't mean much, but it's also a way to say politely "the world of dead souls".
I really need to read it in more detail now...:angel:
Yes, he already sent me the file. I think it might be actually free, not just "if you purchase the print". I shall ask I caught him on Facebook and asked, it is free in PDF! In fact, it's got a FB page.
(The actual book is 30 BGN, so about 15 Euro).


Links for convenience.

Book
https://www.mediafire.com/.../%25D0%259D%25D0%25B0.../file

Charsheet:
https://www.mediafire.com/.../%25D0%2598%25D0%25B3.../file

Maps ( Skarg Skarg :grin:)
https://www.mediafire.com/.../%25D0%2593%25D0%25B5.../file

Old maps
https://www.mediafire.com/.../%25D0%2593%25D0%25B5.../file
 
Thank you for sharing! :grin: You are my primary gaming link to the mysterious land that houses Glagolitic and Cyrillic. Who knows, you might end up writing the definitive book on the subject, being a living witness to its regional history over the pop culture ages! :shade::drink:

Oh wow, print run of thirty... :shock: How big of a book are we talking about? Is it a coffee table in its own right?
 
Thank you for sharing! :grin: You are my primary gaming link to the mysterious land that houses Glagolitic and Cyrillic. Who knows, you might end up writing the definitive book on the subject, being a living witness to its regional history over the pop culture ages! :shade::drink:
Why not...as long as you are aware that someone would be here 20 minutes after it was published and telling you "that's wrong, it wasn't like that"...:grin:

Oh wow, print run of thirty... :shock: How big of a book are we talking about? Is it a coffee table in its own right?
Actually, the PDF has 263 pages, as you can see (I copied the links, above). No idea if it's A4 or A5, but odds are, one of those two were used...statistically speaking:thumbsup:.

Didn't bother asking him about the format, since it wouldn't matter - I'm buying it either way, because how often can you buy a book* that's only got 30 copies in total:shade:? There's some rare books owned by Pub users, but that's still going to be a collector's item!
Actually, I suspect a few of you would have wanted copies if you were able to read it...

Maybe I should ask him to give those books** numbers...I'm literally going to be handed the books by the author, so I am going to ask him to sign. (And I'm then going to run a game for him and others, so he has nowhere to run:tongue:!)

*Non-OGL:devil:!
**I'm going to call a friend tomorrow, the same who wanted Courageous Chronicles...so I guess he's probably going to want a copy of On That Other World RPG, too!
 
Why not...as long as you are aware that someone would be here 20 minutes after it was published and telling you "that's wrong, it wasn't like that"...:grin:


Actually, the PDF has 263 pages, as you can see (I copied the links, above). No idea if it's A4 or A5, but odds are, one of those two were used...statistically speaking:thumbsup:.

Didn't bother asking him about the format, since it wouldn't matter - I'm buying it either way, because how often can you buy a book* that's only got 30 copies in total:shade:? There's some rare books owned by Pub users, but that's still going to be a collector's item!
Actually, I suspect a few of you would have wanted copies if you were able to read it...

Maybe I should ask him to give those books** numbers...I'm literally going to be handed the books by the author, so I am going to ask him to sign. (And I'm then going to run a game for him and others, so he has nowhere to run:tongue:!)

*Non-OGL:devil:!
**I'm going to call a friend tomorrow, the same who wanted Courageous Chronicles...so I guess he's probably going to want a copy of On That Other World RPG, too!
Update - I'm liking the RPG more and more. I mean, the only thing I dislike so far is "he tries to balance smaller and bigger weapons mechanically" and "he uses the 'participating in stories' spiel that would give CRKrueger CRKrueger a stroke'"...

...but then the mechanics themselves are totally IC-oriented. Basic example: you have "abstract tests" and "specific tests" (sounds smoother in the original language). Both are roll-under, the difference isn't mechanical...
Specific tests are those based on physical attributes... and the player rolls the dice:devil:.
Abstract tests are those based on mental attributes and the GM rolls the dice, then narrates accordingly:thumbsup:.

No third-person omniscient narrator for this game...:grin:
 
Hmm, I both enjoy those maps . . . and am somewhat horrified by them.

Someone seems to have made a fairly detailed whole-world map with large-scale terrain . . . who seems to think the terrain may be irrelevant, because then most of the maps have these node circles with pictures covering the points of interest?
 
Hmm, I both enjoy those maps . . . and am somewhat horrified by them.

Someone seems to have made a fairly detailed whole-world map with large-scale terrain . . . who seems to think the terrain may be irrelevant, because then most of the maps have these node circles with pictures covering the points of interest?
I'll let him know your observation. Having met him yesterday, I suspect the author might simply lack your experience in making maps:thumbsup:.


OTOH, that's the highest-quality RPG book I've seen published in Bulgaria, including the first one to be a hardcover:grin:!
 
Ok, cool. To perhaps be more clear, care was clearly given to show the terrain covering multiple continents, and to think about what it would be like in each place, even though it's at a pretty large scale, with no roads or towns showing. Terrain maps excite me, because I love exploring and travelling and interacting with terrain and the places that are sensibly located in that world. But then, the nodes of interest, suggest that the places where you'd find the most concentration of populated interesting places, don't have any terrain maps (unless there are smaller-scale maps with terrain for all those places), which suggests that the game isn't going to really include terrain or map layouts as part of gameplay.

It's possible that's a mistaken impression, though.

(And, part of mapped play I like, assuming it's a low-tech game, includes the players of PCs not generally having access to detailed accurate terrain maps.)
 
Ok, cool. To perhaps be more clear, care was clearly given to show the terrain covering multiple continents, and to think about what it would be like in each place, even though it's at a pretty large scale, with no roads or towns showing. Terrain maps excite me, because I love exploring and travelling and interacting with terrain and the places that are sensibly located in that world. But then, the nodes of interest, suggest that the places where you'd find the most concentration of populated interesting places, don't have any terrain maps (unless there are smaller-scale maps with terrain for all those places), which suggests that the game isn't going to really include terrain or map layouts as part of gameplay.

It's possible that's a mistaken impression, though.

(And, part of mapped play I like, assuming it's a low-tech game, includes the players of PCs not generally having access to detailed accurate terrain maps.)
Well, I did hit him up on FB, so if he replies, I'll let you know:thumbsup:!

(He did fine in my H+I one-shot:grin:).
 
Skarg Skarg - I have an answer! Translated, it amounts to:
"I don't really understand (what he means). Yes, there are circles around the pictures to imitate a magnifying glass, but they are in the backgound, I think they're not obscuring them.
The idea is to be like looking at them through a microscope."
 
:shock: :thought:

Ok, so he has no idea about what it would mean to actually use map terrain details in play.
I told him to register for the forum, so you could explain it directly to him. Maybe he should start a new topic?
 
Gotta agree with Skarg Skarg, AsenRg. Though to be sure, I do like the style of the maps over all. He just needs to tweak some things to make the map a better tool.
 
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