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Post by thealmightymudworm on Sept 15, 2021 1:53:43 GMT
This is one of these times when I feel slightly daft posting something because a lot of people on here must have seen it already (and chosen not to post it). Still, not everyone will have done and it's surely worth discussing on here.
There aren't that many startling new facts, admittedly, but it's good to have confirmation that SJ has been writing a book and is clearly confident of completing it.
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Post by bloodbeasthandler on Sept 15, 2021 20:01:20 GMT
Yeah there's a few things in there to comment on.
Initial sales of Deathtrap Dungeon were 85,000 copies. I don't remember if this fact is in You are the Hero or not. But anyway it's good to be reminded what a smashing commercial success the books were.
Olly Mc makes the point (and SJ agrees with him) made on thee boards too – that the books were not written for little children but more generally for D and D players.
Steve J also mentions a conscious decision was made to shadow what was going on with RPGs - the like RPGs the FF books were moving into genres - sci-fi. superheroes etc.
A desire to do Sorcery!5. (could this be the new book he's writing?) Clear inspiration of the Hammer Films on House of Hell. Also influenced by the magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland.
Spoke about Icon books thinking about doing hardbacks... but from what he says it seems he doesn’t reckon Scholastic will be doing anything like this. We get new book for 40th anniversary or FFFest 4.
Some Good questions from the interviewer for example at 13:32 - 'are you consciously writing for the fans or are you writing how you did when first wrote them?' SJ talks about a lesson learned from the earlier books eg Maze of Zagor , but I would have liked to have seen him elaborate more on that.
And Balthus Dire as a favourite villain/character. (I wonder if he’s in the book SJ is writing...)
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Post by The Count on Sept 18, 2021 20:17:10 GMT
Unfortunately, he's not a great speaker so if he said anything interesting or exciting not covered above by BBH, it was easily missed.
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Post by bloodbeasthandler on Sept 19, 2021 16:48:05 GMT
The questions were good but not all of them got answered as fully as they might have been - sometimes it was the questions with more than one aspect to them where this happened.
For example at 7:44 we didn't get an answer to 'where would you go with House of Hell 2?' Rather SJ spoke about the HoH of 1984 and what influenced it.
9:30 No answer to hopes for what might happen with FF Fest 4.
15:10 question is not really answered. – (the one asking for interesting anecdotes from roleplaying sessions that made it to the books). I think what the questioner here is looking for is an answer similar to those Jamie Thomson gives – that the RPG campaigns he was involved in based in Orb contributed incidents and characters for Way of the Tiger. And the ‘ring for Service' anecdote from the Albie Fiore game does not appear in the FF books as far as i understand it – though there is a troublesome leprechaun in Citadel of Chaos. Maybe that is what he meant?
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Post by sleepyscholar on Sept 20, 2021 2:16:47 GMT
The questions were good but not all of them got answered as fully as they might have been - sometimes it was the questions with more than one aspect to them where this happened. For example at 7:44 we didn't get an answer to 'where would you go with House of Hell 2?' Rather SJ spoke about the HoH of 1984 and what influenced it. 9:30 No answer to hopes for what might happen with FF Fest 4. 15:10 question is not really answered. – (the one asking for interesting anecdotes from roleplaying sessions that made it to the books). I think what the questioner here is looking for is an answer similar to those Jamie Thomson gives – that the RPG campaigns he was involved in based in Orb contributed incidents and characters for Way of the Tiger. And the ‘ring for Service' anecdote from the Albie Fiore game does not appear in the FF books as far as i understand it – though there is a troublesome leprechaun in Citadel of Chaos. Maybe that is what he meant? One problem for Steve in answering those RPG question is that, according to my understanding, he would be trying to remember something from 40 years ago. I never heard anything to suggest that he was was an active role-player even when I was at Games Workshop 1985-6. In contrast, Jamie has been regularly gaming throughout. For quite a while between 1987 and 1991 I was playing in the weekly Tekumel game ('the Thursday game') that Jamie was in. For some of that time, I think Jamie also came to 'the Tuesday game' held at my place. So he was playing at least once a week. And I know from recent contact that he's still playing pretty regularly. I think there's a difference between a real obsessive role-player like Jamie (and like I was), and someone who has played a few role-playing games at some time -- which is a surprisingly large chunk of the population, at least if the Stranger Things effect is to be believed. So when Steve talks about the Service character, he's just remembering an anecdote from his gaming days, rather than necessarily illuminating its impact on FF.
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