Escape from Firetop Mountain - an Amateur FF Micro-adventure
Aug 17, 2023 5:14:18 GMT
kieran likes this
Post by Gabe Fandango on Aug 17, 2023 5:14:18 GMT
I've recently "finished" my very first gamebook. It was actually something I started writing back in my student days, in handwritten hardcopy. Recently, I came across the old manuscript and decided to covert it to softcopy. Of course, I also had to more or less "re-write" every single section, because the original draft was written by a kid (and one who frankly couldn't write very coherently in English - it wasn't my Mother Tongue). I'm not sure it's really accurate to call it a rewrite - the content and design of the book pretty much remained as it was, but I basically reworded all the sentences and paragraphs to make the English less broken, and added an extra line here or there to patch up some missing loopholes. The end result is something like what Terry Pratchett described his book "The Carpet People" to be: something that's not entirely written by young me or old me.
The book was meant to be part of a "series" of sorts. It's an idea similar to the "companion adventures" of the Lone Wolf series published under Mongoose (although kid me thought of the idea before Mongoose did it), with the PC of each mini-adventure being a minor character of the main series. I wrote them mostly in sequence of the original FF series, although don't think I ever got further than more than a dozen adventures or so, and I'm pretty sure I skipped a few books that I didn't like (the first being Starship Traveller). I'm not even sure I'd be able to find half of the other manuscripts today.
Anyway, the first (and only) book I've recently "finished" features a minor character from "The Warlock of Firetop Mountain" as the PC - namely, the bearded prisoner rescued by the Hero from his cell and now trying to escape from Firetop Mountain. As described in the title, it's a micro-adventure, only 50 sections in total. Difficulty level is probably fairly low (although I admit I didn't give it much of a playtest), with only a single (avoidable) enemy with double-digit SKILL, and only 1 pass-or-die stat test and no hidden sections/numbered items mechanisms. A catch is that the PC starts with a SKILL penalty (from not having a weapon) and at half his initial STAMINA (due to malnourishment and starvation) because he was a prisoner. Another mechanism that I retained from TWoFM is that the PC is only allowed to eat when instructed by the text, so he'd would not only have to hunt for food but also appropriate chances to use them. Other than that, it's pretty straightforward.
You can access it here in either of the 2 links below:
At ffproject:
www.ffproject.com/download/ESCAPEFIRETOP.PDF
At FightingFantasy.net:
fightingfantasy.net/gamebooks/startbook.cgi?Book=Escape%20from%20Firetop%20Mountain&Author=GabeFandango
I'd appreciate very much if some of you who can spare the free time can give it a look and provide some feedback - and let me know if there might be enough interest for it to be worth the effort of me to try and hunt down the the manuscripts of the other micro-adventures for similar conversion.
Thanks.
The book was meant to be part of a "series" of sorts. It's an idea similar to the "companion adventures" of the Lone Wolf series published under Mongoose (although kid me thought of the idea before Mongoose did it), with the PC of each mini-adventure being a minor character of the main series. I wrote them mostly in sequence of the original FF series, although don't think I ever got further than more than a dozen adventures or so, and I'm pretty sure I skipped a few books that I didn't like (the first being Starship Traveller). I'm not even sure I'd be able to find half of the other manuscripts today.
Anyway, the first (and only) book I've recently "finished" features a minor character from "The Warlock of Firetop Mountain" as the PC - namely, the bearded prisoner rescued by the Hero from his cell and now trying to escape from Firetop Mountain. As described in the title, it's a micro-adventure, only 50 sections in total. Difficulty level is probably fairly low (although I admit I didn't give it much of a playtest), with only a single (avoidable) enemy with double-digit SKILL, and only 1 pass-or-die stat test and no hidden sections/numbered items mechanisms. A catch is that the PC starts with a SKILL penalty (from not having a weapon) and at half his initial STAMINA (due to malnourishment and starvation) because he was a prisoner. Another mechanism that I retained from TWoFM is that the PC is only allowed to eat when instructed by the text, so he'd would not only have to hunt for food but also appropriate chances to use them. Other than that, it's pretty straightforward.
You can access it here in either of the 2 links below:
At ffproject:
www.ffproject.com/download/ESCAPEFIRETOP.PDF
At FightingFantasy.net:
fightingfantasy.net/gamebooks/startbook.cgi?Book=Escape%20from%20Firetop%20Mountain&Author=GabeFandango
I'd appreciate very much if some of you who can spare the free time can give it a look and provide some feedback - and let me know if there might be enough interest for it to be worth the effort of me to try and hunt down the the manuscripts of the other micro-adventures for similar conversion.
Thanks.
It'll have to remain as it is.