David Walters

David is new to writing fantasy gaming material, but he is no stranger to the genre, having written seven novels so far. Read on to learn about him and his work.

TELL US A BIT ABOUT YOURSELF

I am David Walters, author of six kindle books (the Dragonwarrior trilogy, the Samurai’s Apprentice trilogy and City of Masks). I’m 36, married and have a son – we all live in Edinburgh, Scotland. I can’t wait until he’s old enough to be introduced to my gamebook collection – I sure hope he is interested!

HOW DID YOU GET INTO GAMING?

My very first experience was with fighting fantasy books when I was seven. I borrowed a few from a ‘mobile library’ van that used to visit my countryside school every other month. I loved the books and quickly got sick of waiting for the van so started spending my pocket money on buying the books - the first one was Steve Jackson’s Creature of Havoc. I remember wondering if I had bought a book from the right series, as it was far harder than the previous books I had read and I could not get very far in it!

Fortunately it did not put me off, and following on from that I got into the Warhammer series at school, and then into other RPGs included Dungeons and Dragons.

WHAT IS IT YOU FIND SO APPEALING ABOUT GAMING?

Gaming is a chance to use your imagination, to escape the reality of everyday life and step out of your skin for a while. I am a cautious person by nature, and it is fun to take risks and do heroic deeds in a safe environment, or simply be someone else for a while.

It is also great to have a laugh with friends and have a common bond from sharing something only your group has experienced together.

SHARE A FAVOURITE GAMING MOMENT WITH US

I remember playing the Star Wars RPG with a group of friends. It was getting to a climactic scene in the campaign where x-wings were flying in to attack a key base of the Empire. The Gamesmaster was mimicking the radio chatter of the lead x-wing and wanted to say ‘cover your wing-men, we are going in’. Unfortunately what he said was ‘cover your women, we are going in’.

We couldn’t stop laughing after that, and the end to the campaign was not quite so tense thereafter.

WHAT ARE YOU CURRENTLY PLAYING?

Nothing at the moment – I’m too busy writing, but I really do miss it. I am reading the new advanced fighting fantasy rules though, and I’m waiting for Crown of Kings campaign to arrive through my letterbox.

CAN YOU TELL US WHAT YOUR FAVOURITE GAMES ARE?

I love the Way of the Tiger gamebooks by Mark Smith and Jamie Thomson. They obviously had an effect on me as I write my novels with a strong far-eastern theme. They were in a really detailed setting (the world of Orb), and you could play the same ninja character through all the books in an involving story. The authors also wrote Talisman of Death and Sword of the Samurai, both of which were great.

I also like the Crown of Kings books, again another series where you could play as the one character, in this case as a sorcerer, and the magic system was fun.

I liked the Dragonlance setting too, with its interesting characters and settings, although the final age was a bit disappointing. The orders of high sorcery were my favourites, and draconians were great bad guys.

WHAT WAS THE LAST GAME YOU PLAYED?

I devised my own rules for an RPG based on my Dragonwarrior novel, and GM’d that. It really helped me flesh out my ideas for the novels.

TELL US ABOUT THAT SYSTEM.

I experimented with using a deck of card instead of a dice-based system - I figured a deck of cards was just as common place in the home as dice, and seemed a little less random based on which order you played your cards.

Basically, each player had paper stats and was dealt a hand of 7 cards which could be replenished during gameplay as attribute tests were made. Each player had a certain class based on their Dragonwarrior order (Fire, Shadow or Air), and these corresponded to different playing suits which acted as 'trumps' in certain situations, along with the numerical value of the card. The fourth suit was trumps for their enemies.

One thing not having dice did was help the players to focus on their character rather than dice rolls, and to feel like they had a little more control over key events ('if they played their cards right')!

WHICH PRODUCTS HAVE YOU HAD YOUR WORK PUBLISHED IN?

My work is kindle-only at the moment. I’ve read a few gamebooks on the kindle and online, and I really think the new digital format can invigorate the genre (provided we can get away from some of the old ‘instant death’ thinking of old gamebooks).

ARE YOU WORKING ON ANY GAMING-RELATED PROJECTS AT THE MOMENT?

I’m writing my first entry for the Windhammer competition. Gamebooks inspired me to be the author I am today, so I want to try writing one for this completion and see how it measures up.

It would be a bit too obvious to continue my fantasy world from City of Masks, so instead I’m going to try a tricky dystopian future story that is forming in my head. I like a challenge! If the format gels with me, I may write some commercial gamebooks in the near future.

DO YOU HAVE ANY WEBPAGES OR SOCIAL NETWORK ACCOUNTS WHERE FANS CAN FIND YOU?

I’m on twitter as @davidwaltersx, and Facebook as David Walters author. I also am on amazon on the following link: http://www.amazon.com/David-Walters/e/B005NWQY4G/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0

I have a minimal web presence beyond that at the moment, as I want to focus my attention on more writing, and let my stories speak for themselves.

Matt Forbeck

Matt is a prolific freelancer who has been published by many different companies. Read on for more!

TELL US A BIT ABOUT YOURSELF

My name is Matt Forbeck, and I've been a game designer and writer for over 20 years. I started out writing for tabletop games like Dungeons & Dragons, but these days I write mostly novels and comics and work on computer games here and there. My latest novel isBrave New World: Revolution, which is based on the RPG I wrote for Pinnacle/AEG back in 1999. I also write the Magic: The Gathering comic for IDW.

My big project for this year is my 12 for '12 project, in which I'm writing a dozen short novels this year. I've been funding them a trilogy at a time on Kickstarter, and so far it's been fantastic fun. The first trilogy was based on my Brave New World dark supers RPG. The second one — Shotguns & Sorcery — takes place in a fantasy noir setting I originally developed for d20.

The third one, Dangerous Games, is a trio of thrillers set at Gen Con, the largest tabletop games convention in the western hemisphere. The Kickstarter for that just launched and runs through the middle of June.

Beyond that, I live in Beloit, Wisconsin, with my wife, who's a school social worker who helps homeless students. We have five kids, including a set of quadruplets, who will turn 10 next month.

HOW DID YOU GET INTO GAMING?

I started playing blue-book D&D with the kids who lived across the street from me, back when I was twelve years old. I never looked back.

WHAT IS IT YOU FIND SO APPEALING ABOUT GAMING?

I like having a good reason to hang out with friends and family and actually interact with them. My kids are old enough now to start playing all sorts of cool games with me, and it's wonderful to watch their minds work as they absorb how a game functions and then start to develop strategies for playing it.

SHARE A FAVOURITE GAMING MOMENT WITH US

I brought my eldest son, Marty, to Gary Con I, at which he got to play in his first D&D game ever. Frank Mentzer, the former VP at TSR, ran an original white-box D&D session using the first published RPG module, The Palace of the Vampire Queen. We had a wonderful, old-school time.

WHAT ARE YOU CURRENTLY PLAYING?

I'll play anything once, but I don't play a whole lot of games more than that. As a designer, I like to pick games apart and see what makes them tick, but I'm not a hardcore fan of any single game because of that. I lose games all the time because I'm more interested in seeing what happens if I try something rather than working up a winning strategy.

Despite that, my kids love playing Munchkin with me, as well as Zombie Dice and Apples to Apples. I'll play whatever they ask me to. I also played a lot of Magic: The Gathering: Duels of the Planeswalkers to prepare me for writing the Magic comic.

CAN YOU TELL US WHAT YOUR FAVOURITE GAMES ARE?

My all-time favorite is Space Hulk, which is a brilliant gem of fun gameplay and elegant mechanics. Sadly, Games Workshop doesn't like to keep it in print.

For RPGs, I always wind up going back to D&D in any of its several incarnations. So much of what we consider standards in games these days came from it, and it's great to revisit it and see how and why those elements resonated with so many people.

WHAT WAS THE LAST GAME YOU PLAYED?

Either Super Munchkin or Starcraft II.

WHICH PRODUCTS HAVE YOU HAD YOUR WORK PUBLISHED IN?

Oh, wow, that's a huge list. I stopped counting at somewhere over 200 different gaming products, and that was years back. I'm probably best known for my work on Deadlands and Brave New World back when I was the president of Pinnacle Entertainment Group. I also worked on the WildStorms CCG, The Lord of the Rings RPG, a number of D&D books, and lots more.

My most recent game is the Marvel Heroic Roleplaying game. I was part of the initial development team, but I handed that part off to the rest of the crew early on. Cam Banks did most of the heavy lifting not that one.

ARE YOU WORKING ON ANY GAMING-RELATED PROJECTS AT THE MOMENT?

I have a few things in stages too early to talk about at the moment. The latest computer game I worked on — Ghost Recon Online — is in beta at the moment. Also, I just released Brave New World: Revolution, the first novel in that trilogy, to the public.

DO YOU HAVE ANY WEBPAGES OR SOCIAL NETWORK ACCOUNTS WHERE FANS CAN FIND YOU?

Sure. You can find me at www.Forbeck.com, on Twitter at @mforbeck, and on Facebook as Matt Forbeck. I'm always happy to hear from people who enjoy my work.

Andrew Drage

Andrew is an author who has recently contributed a title to Tin Man Games' Gamebook Adventures series on iOS and Android.

TELL US A BIT ABOUT YOURSELF

Whilst I work in market research as a developer and analyst for a living, my passion has always been for writing and games design (like you!) -My academic background is one of entomology and statistics, but didn't pursue this further as I didn't want to be an over-qualified PhD who couldn't find work… Although as it transpired at the time, I didn't find work anyway and so jumped on the IT bandwagon in the late nineties and have worked in this area every since.

HOW DID YOU GET INTO GAMING?

Um… Probably not long after I discovered oxygen haha, I was playing games. By the time I was seven or eight, I was already making my own, and by ten I was running role-playing games clubs… Although I'm thirty-seven now, I really don't think I've changed much since then (for better or for worse!); and yes, my life continues to revolve around writing and games.

WHAT IS IT YOU FIND SO APPEALING ABOUT GAMING?

Where to begin? Well put it this way, I don't spend a lot of time in the "real world" because to put it bluntly, it bores me. Gaming not only opens up universes of imagination, allows me to explore ideas and worlds, learn and experience new things, and challenge myself, but it's my chosen way to "relax". I often spend time in the company of friends for instance, but am renowned for being the one who always wants to play some sort of game haha. I hardly watch tv (except for the news and documentaries) and typically watch only a handful of movies a year. I'd much rather be playing a game!

SHARE A FAVOURITE GAMING MOMENT WITH US

Wow. I'm not even sure what answer to give for this, since there's so many awesome experiences from the last thirty odd years, it's hard to settle on one thing. Do I talk about the various role-playing clubs I ran in "my youth" with up to thirty members? Do I talk about winning an award at a Dungeons and Dragons convention when I was ten? Or the tournaments I used to run at the Pancake Parlour when I was about twelve, with up to twenty players? Or the live role-playing day-long battles I used to run at a nearby reserve when I was in my teens? Or the hundreds of "physical", "miniature" and "material" games I used to make and run around the same time, supported by magazines I used to write with reviews, articles and stories, and for which I ran a "class" at school in year nine? Or GMing role-playing campaigns with three separate groups of friends throughout year twelve and still managing to get top marks? Or the sixty-hour long Dungeons and Dragons sessions I used to run when I was about twenty? Or our group winning so many awards at role-playing conventions in the nineties that we had GMs start requesting to run things with our group in it? Or running a Call of Cthulhu campaign where we did nothing but eat, sleep and role-play for a whole week? Or something more recent, such as running Blood Bowl leagues that included the game creators/contributors themselves? Or running my own creations at conventions to great acclaim? Or releasing my own works to the world? Hmmm, I don't think I can really answer this question haha.

WHAT WAS THE AWARD YOU WON FOR DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS?

The award I won at a Dungeons and Dragons convention when I was ten was... "Best costume" haha. Not that my costume was anywhere near the best; I still recall the presence that one team, "The Pillage People", had when they turned up all decked out in elaborate medieval costume (on later reflection, I suspect that they were SCA members or something). I think I was given the award because the judges were impressed that I turned up on as a lone ten year old in costume (some of which had been scavenged from show-bags I think) which I continued to wear throughout the event, somewhat oblivious to the fact that hardly anyone else did!   

WHAT ARE YOU CURRENTLY PLAYING?

Sadly, I don't get nearly as much time these days as I'd like… But that's not to say I'm not playing anything (I'd need a lobotomy for that to happen). I still play in two Blood Bowl leagues for instance (both Skaven teams currently haha) and lately, I've been enjoying the Blood Sword gamebooks that I missed when I was younger (my battle strategy seems to work quite well; put the Trickster in melee with a big baddie and just defend to draw their attacks, meanwhile your Enchanter prepares a Nemesis Bolt to blast them to kingdom come). Two computer games I've been enjoying recently are Etherlords II (a modern Magic the Gathering rip-off, but done so well and better balanced), and the Elven Legacy series which I can't recommend enough if you're into turn-based fantasy battles with a decent AI challenge. My Call of Cthulhu campaign(s) have been on hold since early last year though, as I just don't have the time at the moment to run it; much to the chagrin of my players… Occasionally I'll run tournaments though; I'm known for being quite competitive haha.

CAN YOU TELL US WHAT YOUR FAVOURITE GAMES ARE?

Favourite role-playing game has to be Call of Cthulhu. I've played a hell of a lot of different systems, but this still beats them all (IMHO) for its elegant simplicity (even material written in the very first edition can still be easily run with the latest edition; unlike Dungeons and Dragons for instance that I gave up on soon after 3^rd edition came out), the way the system supports the ideas/world implicit in Lovecraft's writing (and others of the "Lovecraft circle") and the fact that the adventures written for it are about "story and atmosphere" not "dungeon-crawls to accumulate loot".

Favorite tabletop game probably is Blood Bowl, although I'm not particularly experienced in a great number of them (Blood Bowl was cheaper in that it didn't require so many pieces, the games have a definitive end-point and you can have leagues and ladders, and best of all, you can do permanent damage to your mates' best players that affect their team ever after!)

I've also spent a lot of time playing Magic the Gathering over the years (soon after it came out, I traded a dual-land for five swamps as I was playing black at the time; whoops!), and the computer games that come to mind that rocked my world over the years are the SSI "Gold Box" series (Pools of Radiance et al), the Mario Party series, the Resident Evil series and the Space Quest series. Oh and I have to mention Turrican I and II for the C64; man they were awesome!

I should also give credit to Dungeons and Dragons (even though I'm pretty much just 1^st/2^nd edition and usually set my campaigns in Greyhawk), since I did spend, er, the better part of twenty years playing it. My attic is full of boxes of the stuff, that I should probably sell on ebay or something haha as it's just collecting dust now.

WHAT WAS THE LAST GAME YOU PLAYED?

My party died in the second Blood Sword book I was playing last night. Damn you Witch-King, I shall have my revenge!

WHICH PRODUCTS HAVE YOU HAD YOUR WORK PUBLISHED IN?

Not as much as perhaps I should have done by now (typically I've been too busy making and playing games for that). But yes, I'm starting to get "some runs on the board". -This includes two published fiction novels now (The Dark Horde which is a supernatural horror and Evermore: An Introduction which a kinda biography with fantasy elements), a digital gamebook (Gamebook Adventures: Infinite Universe which is a sci-fi comedy/parody), editing and design for the first four Gamebook Adventures titles, and many drawers full of other writing and game designs… Some of these should see release one day (and are being worked on now, but still probably a while away from release). There's also the odd article/story I've done here and there for role-playing or writing publications over the years, but nothing worth saying much about really.

YOUR GAMEBOOK ADVENTURES STORY (INFINITE UNIVERSE) IS AN EPIC STORY, HOW DID YOU GO ABOUT WRITING/DEVELOPING IT?

170,000 odd words is pretty epic for a gamebook haha. When asked a similar question by the renowned "Lloyd of Gamebooks" I said:

I set out to create something that was the “spiritual successor” to the Space Fighter gamebooks I wrote as a child. And in deciding to take on the sci-fi genre; both because it was something that (Gamebook Adventures) fans were asking for and something I wanted to do; I decided that my take was going to be “stupid or wacky sci-fi” rather than hard, serious or gritty sci-fi. So time travel, faster-than-light interstellar journeys, laser weapons, space ships and aliens were all going to part of the humorous mix; never mind whether the scientific consensus deemed it plausible or not, it’s a gamebook after all right? And so the emphasis was to be on fun not scientific plausibility.

But in working out how I was going to execute the story, I grappled with the problem of just how do you set a story in an imagined far-future where the character understands the world but the reader doesn’t? For example, in a “typical” fantasy you don’t have to explain what a sword is, what a horse is, what a tavern is, even what dwarves and orcs are etc. But in a sci-fi world where there is no “typical” sci-fi setting, you have to explain everything for the sake of the reader as there isn’t much in the way of “established norms” of the genre. -The sci-fi universe of Star Wars is completely different from Star Trek for example, which is in turn completely different from Foundation, which is completely different from Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

So my solution was to have the character come from our world and time, to be projected into the far future. This way you can justify explaining the world in the narrative as it’s new to the character as well as the reader. So away I went, creating an epic sci-fi tale and got to about 500 sections before I had a “creative crisis”. I considered that not only was my story “too epic” (in that it was taking too long to actually get to the “real story”), but also it took too long to get to the actual sci-fi bits, and consequently readers might drop off before they got to this… So after cutting out some 250 sections (they may return in another form someday), I re-engineered the story so that you were still a character from our time, but now you actually started in the far future in the midst of sci-fi action. How did I justify this in the narrative? Easy: Your character begins with their memory having been erased such that you have no memory of your past, how you got there or even who you are. Much of the way I initially began the gamebook would still be used by virtue of travelling back in time to re-experience your past. It was these elements, combined with the story being very very loosely based on the first Space Fighter gamebook I wrote that was called Rebel Base, that basically provided the crux of the story… Well sort of, I kept embellishing it with ever more crazy ideas as I’m inclined to do haha. 

ARE YOU WORKING ON ANY GAMING-RELATED PROJECTS AT THE MOMENT?

Yeah three at the moment, plus two more in the "potential pipeline" depending on a few different things (but let's not say too much about that yet hey?) -Two of the current projects are Gamebook Adventures related, and another is an iOS game based on one of the games I created circa 1990. It will be awesome to see that game released but there's a way to go yet, so I'll stick to my habit of only talking about things once they've happened; you never know what can happen between now and then ;)

DO YOU HAVE ANY WEBPAGES OR SOCIAL NETWORK ACCOUNTS WHERE FANS CAN FIND YOU?

My (main) website, with a blog, extracts, reviews etc is:

www.thebrewin.com

You can also follow me on twitter: @BrewinEvermore

…And if you're game, I have a facebook group that is mostly comprised of my facebook friends where things can be a bit crazy sometimes:

http://www.facebook.com/groups/404946216188132/

Scott Malthouse

Scott Malthouse is a well-know internet blogger who talks mostly about Tunnels and Trolls. He has recently released his own gaming system as well.

TELL US A BIT ABOUT YOURSELF

Well, I'm 24 years old and I live in Leeds, UK. I did a degree in journalism and currently work in digital marketing. I'm a big comic book nerd and I really love pulp heroes like The Shadow and The Spider. Bruce Campbell is my god.

HOW DID YOU GET INTO GAMING?

Really my interest in tabletop games began with the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks. My step-dad bought a stack of them second-hand at a university book shop. Most of the pages were yellowed and you could see where previous readers had made notes, but nevertheless they sparked my imagination something fierce. After that, really it was Warhammer 40K which eventually led to me playing D&D 3rd edition when it was first released. It was a whole new experience for me and I knew I wanted more of it.

WHAT IS IT YOU FIND SO APPEALING ABOUT GAMING?

I'm usually the DM, so for me it's the ability to craft worlds with their own inhabitants, history and politics. But it's also great to spend quality time with my friends, essentially making up stories and telling jokes. It's something about the level of interactivity that not even MMORPGs can emulate. I like MMOs, but give me a good old tabletop game over World of Warcraft any day.

SHARE A FAVOURITE GAMING MOMENT WITH US

This moment is alwas brought up in our home games and it's something the players will never live down. In a D&D 4e session, there was a tree in a temple atrium with a dagger stuck in it. The atrium was filling with demented clerics who were proving a match for the players. They were toying with the idea of removing the dagger in case it was magical and could help against the clerics. However, one of the players realised that if the dagger was removed, the one removing it would be diseased and brought to the brink of death. Things were looking bad, yet for some reason the fighter, who was protecting the party's cleric, decided to run to the other side of the room and remove the dagger. Everyone was baffled and everything went to hell pretty fast. The encounter ended with all but one, I believe, unconscious on the ground. To this day we don't know what came over the fighter, but he gets ridiculed for his stupididy all the time.

WHAT ARE YOU CURRENTLY PLAYING?

Right now I'm wrapping up a two-and-a-half year D&D 4e campaign. In a week or so we'll be picking a new game and I know we've got quite a few lined up, such as Tunnels & Trolls, Call of Cthulhu and Space 1889.

CAN YOU TELL US WHAT YOUR FAVOURITE GAMES ARE?

My favourite game as a GM is definitely Call of Cthulhu. I love creating tension and seeing how an investigation plays out. Something about it really strikes a chord with me. Plus I love Lovecraft. As a player, I adore Tunnels & Trolls for its excellent system and humour. I also love Swords and Wizardry for an OD&D fix. Three Sixteen is cracking if we feel like all-out action.

WHAT WAS THE LAST GAME YOU PLAYED?

That would be D&D 4e last week.

WHICH PRODUCTS HAVE YOU HAD YOUR WORK PUBLISHED IN?

Periodical-wise, I've written adventures for Elder Tunnels by Peryton Publishing a few times. For the lastest issue, which was released early May, I wrote an article on my Tunnels & Trolls campaign setting called Peakvale, which is sort of a living setting that all my new published T&T material is set in. It's like King Arthur crossed with Doctor Who and the Daily Mail. It's weird.

Aside from that, I've published an RPG system called Unbelievably Simple Role-playing (USR), which is a free generic system. Last year I also joined forces with Peryton Publishing and released a T&T adventure called It Came from Beyond the Stars!. I also released a solo T&T adventure called Depths of the Devilmancer.

ARE YOU WORKING ON ANY GAMING-RELATED PROJECTS AT THE MOMENT?

So many! The trouble is, once I have an idea I really want to go ahead with it. Off the back of the USR system I released early this year, I'm working on a bunch of games: Derring-Do! will be a pulp hero game, DemonLord is a series of solo adventures for USR, Dwellers is more of a sci-fi time travel game and I'm also toying with the idea of a space opera game called USR Galactic. Aside from USR, I'm working on the next Peakvale GM adventure and a T&T megasolo. I doubt most of these will see the light of day this year, but I hope to have at least the first DemonLord book out and Derring-Do released by the end of the year. The Peakvale adventure, however, will be submitted to the publisher this month.

DO YOU HAVE ANY WEBPAGES OR SOCIAL NETWORK ACCOUNTS WHERE FANS CAN FIND YOU?

Sure, my blog is www.trollishdelver.blogspot.com and you can find me on twitter @scottmalt and Google Plus https://plus.google.com/112651739533171362407/posts

Dave Morris

TELL US A BIT ABOUT YOURSELF

I'm male, white, middle class, middle aged, and English. Hollywood's stereotypical villain, in other words. I like books (favourite authors Austen, Dickens, Graham Greene, Susanna Clarke, Robert Harris, Stella Gibbons, Andrew Miller), comics (Watchmen, B.P.R.D., Hellboy, Sandman, 100 Bullets, Lucifer, Hellblazer), movies (Blade Runner, Lawrence of Arabia, Rear Window, Tess, The Prestige, Dean Spanley, A Matter of Life and Death), TV drama (Fringe, Deadwood, The Shield, Breaking Bad, The Wire). And games, of which we will now speak.

HOW DID YOU GET INTO GAMING?

Professionally? Just out of college, I co-published a roleplaying game called Mortal Combat, it got the attention of the Games Workshop guys, I started doing some boardgame design for them. It was like being an unpaid and unsupervised intern, but fun. Then the gamebook craze came along and I wrote a stack of them, and more importantly smuggled a role-playing game in amongst them (that was Dragon Warriors), then moved into videogame design at Eidos initially with Jamie Thomson. For a while Jamie and I had our own games development company, now we're back in creative writing and design with our company Spark Furnace.

WHAT IS IT YOU FIND SO APPEALING ABOUT GAMING?

I guess it's a guy thing. I'm sure our wives and girlfriends don't get it when I say I have friends coming round for a game. “I'll cook a meal.” Nope, no meal, no talk, we just want crisps and sandwiches, thanks. Anything else is a waste of good gaming time. Then we get home and our wives say, “How was everybody?” and we all say, “Don't know really. They seemed fine. We only talk about the game.”

Seriously, I like solving problems, I like socializing, I like creative thinking and I like logical thinking. Games tick all those boxes. But actually I'm not that much of a gamehead. I get in a couple of game sessions a month, that's all.

Your question was about playing games, but working in game development fulfils the same needs. What I really like is when you have a really great team, and it gets to be like Fight Club - not the punching part, I mean, but the way it works as a group mind in the second half of the movie. When a game development project hits that gestalt it's exhilarating. But you need the right team.

SHARE A FAVOURITE GAMING MOMENT WITH US

There are many moments I could talk about, but you'd need to know the people involved for them to make any sense.

WHAT ARE YOU CURRENTLY PLAYING?

GURPS 4^th edition. I'd love to play Skyrim but I can't trust myself not to starve to death in front of the machine.

CAN YOU TELL US WHAT YOUR FAVOURITE GAMES ARE?

Roleplaying: Empire of the Petal Throne

Boardgames: Tales of the Arabian Nights, Condottiere, Adel Verpflichtet, Wise and Otherwise, Dune, Carcassonne, Gunslinger.

Videogames: Outcast, POP Sands of Time, Max Payne 1, The Witcher, Age of Empires, Warcraft 2, Grim Fandango, Alone in the Dark, Half-Life

Online: Fallen London, Uniwar

WHAT WAS THE LAST GAME YOU PLAYED?

Face to face: Legend (the Dragon Warriors world) using GURPS.

On a PC: Drankensang.

On iPad: Uniwar.

On Playstation: GTA Vice City.

WHICH PRODUCTS HAVE YOU HAD YOUR WORK PUBLISHED IN?

Other than published games and books, you mean? Develop, White Dwarf, The Huffington Post, Imazine.

THE VARIOUS WORLDS YOU HAVE CREATED HAVE A MODEST BUT FANATICAL FOLLOWING. HOW DID YOU COME UP WITH THE CONCEPTS FOR THE DIFFERENT SETTINGS AND RULES SYSTEMS?

If I’m going to use fantastic elements in building a world, I want those elements to remain mysterious. That’s why Legend, the world of Dragon Warriors, is low fantasy. It is supposed to reflect the world the way a typical superstitious person in the Middle Ages would imagine it. I’ve never read Lord of the Rings, so I’m not drawing on a tradition of “Good” vs “Evil”, and I can’t abide the D&D idea of alignment, which just strikes me as ethics for the nursery. My characters do things for the same reasons people do things in the real world: greed, love, revenge, loyalty. I’m quite nice that, after a quarter century, George R R Martin has come along to popularize this whole murky, gritty, “realistic” strain of fantasy!

ARE YOU WORKING ON ANY GAMING-RELATED PROJECTS AT THE MOMENT?

I've just finished a reworking of Frankenstein as an interactive digital book. Not sure that I'd call that game-related. It's not a game, but I'm sure there's an element of “gamification” of the storytelling process. It reached the Top 10 in both UK and US App Store books, which doesn't normally happen to choose-your-own type gamebooks, so I must have done something right.

Next up, something different involving drama and interactivity, but not a game per se.

TELL US ABOUT THE PROCESS YOU USED TO RE-IMAGINE FRANKENSTEIN AS AN INTERACTIVE FICTION WORK, AND WHY YOU DECIDED TO DO IT.

That goes back a few years. Jamie and I realized that gamebooks would work well as apps because we could put all the nuts and bolts under the hood. That opens up a whole casual market that might be interested in interactive stories but who aren’t gamers and could never be bothered to keep tabs of codewords and items and hit points.

In pitching it to publishers, we soon found that they weren’t interested in the old Fighting Fantasy type of gamebooks. That’s fine by me – I’ve written dozens of those, don’t need to write any more, and they’ve been superseded by videogames anyway. I’d always rather do something new, and for the last ten years I’d been experimenting with a few TV dramas for Flextech and NBC that used interactivity to create a relationship with the characters rather than getting the viewer to make authorial choices or to play a character.

So my idea was to take a classic novel (the idea there was to grab attention for this, otherwise it would get overlooked) and to rework it so that the first person narration was directed at the reader. The reader’s choices would affect what the narrator reveals, and even steer his/her attitudes over the course of the story, but not fundamentally drag the plot off in a wildly different direction. Frankenstein was one of several suitable classic novels that I pitched to Profile Books.

Originally I thought that our company Spark Furnace would need to hire the coders too, but Profile found an app development company called Inkle who had written a markup language for gamebooks. This was great because it meant that I could define all the variables and put the branching options into the manuscript as I wrote. So I didn’t need to explain to a coder what I wanted, I could do it all the logic stuff myself. Inkle found some really nice pictures from the 18^th and 19^th century – I didn’t want any graphics that illustrated the text, just mood stuff. It’s a great way to write a book app like this, because five minutes after sending the latest version over, I would have it working in the app.

I shouldn’t say this, perhaps, but it also reminded me what I like about working on gamebooks, which is that, as the writer, you are completely in charge. With a regular novel, you get lots of editorial feedback from the publisher. But no editor could have read the manuscript and understood how it was all going to splice together – they would have needed my flowcharts too, not to mention twenty-eight years’ experience in interactive fiction! So I can point to Frankenstein and justly say that’s all me, from conception to design to execution. And it got into the Top 10 book apps in the UK and USA. Not bad going for a “gamebook”.

YOUR FANS WILL KILL ME IF I DON'T ASK THIS QUESTION: ANY CHANCE OF SEEING THE LAST 6 FABLED LANDS GAMEBOOKS, AND ANY CHANCE WE MAY SEE WAY OF THE TIGER REPRINTED IN THE NEAR-FUTURE?
“Reprinted” may be the wrong word. Way of the Tiger will definitely come out on digital devices, and if those are successful we will look at doing a collector’s edition in print that would collect all the books in one volume.


Fabled Lands books 1-6 will be released for iOS and Android quite soon – this summer, we hope. If those are successful, we’ll certainly complete the series. Whenever I say this, though, I get complaints from people who don’t want to read the books on e-readers. Fair enough, but the print market for gamebooks is never going to bring them back, and catering only to the nostalgia market of people who read these books as kids is a hiding to nothing. We have to go out and get new readers – a lot of new readers. Then, as with Way of the Tiger, we can issue a single-volume print edition of the whole twelve FL books for the collectors.


DO YOU HAVE ANY WEBPAGES OR SOCIAL NETWORK ACCOUNTS WHERE FANS CAN FIND YOU?

I find the concept of fans a bit scary. One of my closest friends is Tim Harford, whom I met originally because he was a player ofDragon Warriors, but almost the first thing he said to me was, “We don't use your rules, just your world.” So I knew he was safe to have as a friend. Anyone who is interested to see what I have to say can find me on Twitter (@MirabilisDave) or on my blogs(http://fabledlands.blogspot.co.uk/ and http://mirabilis-yearofwonders.blogspot.co.uk/ ) but they'll be disappointed if they come expecting it to be all about games.

Tom Nelson

Tom Nelson is well-known for his work on miniature figures.

TELL US A BIT ABOUT YOURSELF

My name is Tom Nelson. I live in Minneapolis, MN. but I am originally from Seattle, WA. I've been married to my wife Kim (also an OSGer) for almost 13 years and have a 12 year old daughter. Not only am I a gamer and miniature painter, but I also play drums and sing for a local Irish Pub band called The Serfs, with some fellow gamers.

HOW DID YOU GET INTO GAMING?

I was 15 years old when some highschool friends introduced me to 2E AD&D. This lead to playing some World of Darkness games (Vampire and Werewolf), Cyberpunk, and the diceless Amber game base on Roger Zelazny's books. 

WHAT IS IT YOU FIND SO APPEALING ABOUT GAMING?

I love the escapism of it. Playing different people with strange magic's or warrior priests dedicated to their god. But most of all it's hanging out with our friends during our once a week game night, or with the friends that can only meet up once a month, running my 2E AD&D campaign that's been ongoing for well over 3 years now. 

SHARE A FAVOURITE GAMING MOMENT WITH US

This was back in Seattle. My friend Weston had converted the WEG Star Wars game into GURPS. It took him 6-8 months to do this and he was excited to run his game. I was playing an Iotran bounty hunter. We started out in Mos Eisley Cantina. I used my data pad to find out which of the patrons were wanted by the Empire. I found one guy that was wanted by both the Empire AND the Rebellion. I told Wes that I wanted to make a called shot to his head so I could take him in for the bounty. He was very nervous and asked me if I really wanted to do that. I said, "Yes". So he said with a sigh, "Alright!". I proceeded to make the called shot roll and killed him! I was thrilled but Wes was pissed! He threw his papers and yelled, "This was your contact for the adventure and you just blew his head off!". 

All of us laughed at him as he started GMing by the seat if his pants for the rest of the game. This is one of the reasons I write down bits and pieces of where I want the characters to go. Otherwise I let the players decide what they do. Makes for a more enjoyable game.

WHAT ARE YOU CURRENTLY PLAYING?

Our Thursday night group is playing Vampire: The Dark Ages. I'm playing a Gangrel that was as a human a Druid from Gaul before the Romans invaded. 

Our once a month game is 2E AD&D that I run. It's loosely based on George RR Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" (Game of Thrones) series with some LotR and my own monsters thrown in.

CAN YOU TELL US WHAT YOUR FAVOURITE GAMES ARE?

Board games would be RISK, Betrayal at House on the Hill, and Silent Death. RPG's would be 2E AD&D, Star Wars (WEG version), and MERP (Middle Earth Role Playing from ICE).

WHAT WAS THE LAST GAME YOU PLAYED?

Vampire: Dark Ages

WHICH PRODUCTS HAVE YOU HAD YOUR WORK PUBLISHED IN?

I've had some of my miniatures that I painted on a calendar, and a Barsoom blog by Clovis Cithog. But my proudest one is having my version of Sandor "The Hound" Clegane right below Matt Verzani's on the Darksword Miniatures website. That really blew my mind. 

ARE YOU WORKING ON ANY GAMING-RELATED PROJECTS AT THE MOMENT?

I am currently working on some commissions for two avid Warhammer 40K players. One here in MN and the other in TX. Patriotic Space Marines! They are all red, white, and blue. And the other guys has Orkz. LOL I always have something on my painting table that I'm working on for the games we play or for contest winners on my Facebook page.

DO YOU HAVE ANY WEBPAGES OR SOCIAL NETWORK ACCOUNTS WHERE FANS CAN FIND YOU? 

Absolutely! You can find me on Facebook (www.facebook.com/midwestminiatureguy), Twitter, and my webpage (http://www.midwestminiatureguy.webs.com)

Mike Nystul

Todays interview is with Mike Nystul, an author who has worked on various role-playing products since the 1990s. Interesting fact: Nystul's Magic Aura, a spell in D&D, is named after him!

TELL US A BIT ABOUT YOURSELF

I have been a gamer for most of my life and a professional designer for more than 25 years. Yikes. That's a lot of time but it never felt like it. It was just a natural part of my lifestyle and my primary social outlet. I'm a sometime teacher and dad of two. Over the past few years I have also developed an infatuation with Improv comedy. I love movies and have contemplated making a few of my own. So far all I have is a few false starts in that direction. 

HOW DID YOU GET INTO GAMING?

My dad brought home a Dragontooth Orc from the very first GenCon. I was hooked and even though I was pretty young I became the GM who usually ran for my family and friends. At one point, when I was just out of high school, there was a game being run in my world every day of the week, mostly by me but with the help of a few other DMs, including my mother. Eventually I went "pro" and worked both as a freelancer and in house for companies like FASA, Mayfair Games and TSR. 

WHAT ARE YOU CURRENTLY PLAYING?

Usually Pathfinder but I like to try out new systems from time to time. I dropped out of the hobby when my kids were young so I feel like I have a lot of catching up to do. I also tend to run homebrews for pickup games. I do a lot where I improvise a system with a D12 and few simple guidelines to provide just enough structure to give the game tension. 


CAN YOU TELL US WHAT YOUR FAVOURITE GAMES ARE?

D&D was always there but I seem to go through infatuations with other systems. I was big into Stormbringer and Call of Cthulhu in high school. After that there was Champions and Fantasy Hero. I settled into a LARP period for a while but have come full circle back to the dungeoneering I loved as a kid. 

WHAT WAS THE LAST GAME YOU PLAYED?

Played? Savage Worlds. It was a Indiana Jones meets John Carter kind of a thing. I dug it. Fun system, fun world. I also play with Jeff Dee whenever I can. His V&V stuff is top notch. His Cavemaster rpg is pretty amazing by the way. Well worth looking into. It just became available on RPG Now. 

WHICH PRODUCTS HAVE YOU HAD YOUR WORK PUBLISHED IN?

Let's see (I'm sure I will forget a few) in no particular order: Dragon Magazine, White Wolf Magazine, Champions, Fantasy Hero, In Nomine, Torg, BattleTech, MechWarrior, Shadowrun, DC Heroes, Underground, Dungeons and Dragons. 


ARE YOU WORKING ON ANY GAMING-RELATED PROJECTS AT THE MOMENT?

Yes, several. I'm doing a Pathfinder convertion of Jeff Dee and Talzhemir's game Quicksilver. I am designing a horror RPG called SOMA as a collaboration with Joel Biske. I'm currently involved in a Kickstarter for Nystul's Infinite Dungeon. There are also several things I can't talk about (yet). It's a good time for me - I love being busy.

DO YOU HAVE ANY WEBPAGES OR SOCIAL NETWORK ACCOUNTS WHERE FANS CAN FIND YOU?

Yes. I have a "Mike Nystul" page on Facebook where I try to keep folks up to date on what I'm up to.

Margaret Weis

Today I have the great pleasure in bringing you an interview with Margaret Weis. Margaret was the co-author of the first six Dragonlance novels, which are some of my favourtie Dungeons and Dragons related books. She now runs Margaret Weis Productions, which is responsible for bringing you the Marvel Heroic RPG, Smallville and Supernatural.

HOW DID YOU GET INTO GAMING?

I read about TSR in Publisher's Weekly back in the early eighties. I thought the game sounded like it would be fun to play with my kids. A friend ran a D&D game for us. We loved it. 

WHAT IS IT YOU FIND SO APPEALING ABOUT GAMING?

The use of your imagination! The idea of people telling a story together. The fun of sharing a game with friends and family.

SHARE A FAVOURITE GAMING MOMENT WITH US

My favorite game of all time was a game at a convention. I was "guest gamer". The party consisted of five kender and a gnome. We had SO MUCH FUN! The DM was awesome. The kender ran amuck, of course. We did actually meet a dragon and killed it, more by accident than anything else. 

WHAT ARE YOU CURRENTLY PLAYING?

Sadly all my gaming friends moved away. I did have a chance to play Serenity at Gary Con. Lots of fun. 

CAN YOU TELL US WHAT YOUR FAVOURITE GAMES ARE?

My favorite now is the new Marvel Heroic RPG by company has just released.:)

WHAT WAS THE LAST GAME YOU PLAYED?

Serenity at Gary Con.

WHICH PRODUCTS HAVE YOU HAD YOUR WORK PUBLISHED IN?

Lots of projects published. Too many to name!

CAN YOU TELL US A BIT ABOUT THE WRITING/GAMING PROCESS INVOLVED WITH DRAGONLANCE, AND WHAT IT WAS LIKE AT TSR DURING THOSE DAYS?

TSR was a wild and crazy place to work. Not really work so much as being paid to do something we loved. Some down sides, of course. The company was always teetering on the verge of financial ruin, so we really didn't know if we'd have jobs from one day to the next. 

The writing/gaming process involved with Dragonlance would take a book to talk about!

HAVE YOU EVER PLAYED THE DRAGONLANCE MODULES?

I play-tested the first module once. I think I was Goldmoon. The character of Bupu came out of that play-test session. 

WHAT WOULD YOU SAY HAS BEEN YOUR MOST FAVOURITE NOVEL OR SERIES OF NOVELS TO WORK ON?

Every series is fun to work on. Right now I'm loving my current series, The Dragon Brigade!

ARE YOU WORKING ON ANY GAMING-RELATED PROJECTS AT THE MOMENT?

The Marvel Heroic RPG with Margaret Weis Productions.

DO YOU HAVE ANY WEBPAGES OR SOCIAL NETWORK ACCOUNTS WHERE FANS CAN FIND YOU? 

I'm on Facebook and Margaretweis.com.

Gill Pearce

Today's interview is with artist and cartographer, Gill Pearce. I worked with Gill on the Fabled Lands RPG, which she drew the map for. She is the wife of Darren Pearce, who we interviewed a few days ago.

TELL US A BIT ABOUT YOURSELF

My name is Gill Pearce, I’m 40 years old, I live with my husband Darren Pearce in the UK, I’m mad about roleplaying and I like cats. Correct that, I have a feline obsession which will one day result in me turning into a crazy old cat lady

HOW DID YOU GET INTO GAMING?

A friend of mine got me into gaming when I was 14. I was introduced to the second edition Dungeons and Dragons boxset and never looked back from that point.

WHAT IS IT YOU FIND SO APPEALING ABOUT GAMING?

I enjoy the social aspect of gaming and being able to kick off and do stuff you normally can’t do, such as casting lightning bolts of screaming death..that kind of thing. It’s a subtle form of escapism for me.

SHARE A FAVOURITE GAMING MOMENT WITH US

Oh my, there was this one time..at band camp..Seriously there have been quite a few! Running up the arm of a Cyclops and stabbing it through the eye was fun as was the time I introduced a dubious character called Reva Flynn (from Darren’s home brew Wyrden setting) and now have one of our regular players twitching every time she is mentioned. Really though, those moments that stick in my mind are those bits in a game where every player is going OMG what now, and our characters are in so much trouble we are laughing and horrified all at once!

WHAT ARE YOU CURRENTLY PLAYING?

Well, last night I was playing in a Savage Worlds fantasy game, demonstrating how the subtle art of negotiation can go sadly wrong. Tonight it could well be 4^th Edition Dungeons and Dragons. We have a mix of games going on atm, including Deadlands reloaded, D&D, various Savage Worlds games and Warhammer FRP (2^nd edition) 

CAN YOU TELL US WHAT YOUR FAVOURITE GAMES ARE?

I don’t have to pick one do I? I have many game systems I love. I will always have a soft spot for Warhammer FRP (2^nd edition) and Savage worlds, I adore Deadlands. I like the special effects in Dungeons and Dragons 4^th Edition. I do have a lasting affection for Seventh Sea as well.

WHAT WAS THE LAST GAME YOU PLAYED?

Savage worlds fantasy, in one of Darrens homebrew worlds! 

WHICH PRODUCTS HAVE YOU HAD YOUR WORK PUBLISHED IN?

I think I’d be better naming publishers as I have been working as a freelancer for about 15 years now. Dark Quest Games, Mongoose Publishing, Cubicle 7, Greywood Publishing, Chaosium, Beyond Belief Games, Savage Mojo, Moon Designs and a fair few others. I’ve also been published outside of the rpg industry via Mercia books, Sterling games ltd, Schiffer and CPG books.


HOW DID YOU GET INTO FANTASY CARTOGRAPHY?

Aha! Good question Shane!

Well actually it was by accident. Mongoose needed some maps of a greek galleon doing for an adventure for Signs and Portents years ago and the art director at the time suggested I should have a go. The words went along the lines of, there are many good artists out there, but not that many good cartographers. 

That project sort of signaled the turning point in my freelancer career, as after a few more maps I began getting cartography work from other companies until in recent years I tend to do more maps than illustrations. The maps have got more challenging as well like this one from Moon Designs http://www.hellionsart.com/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=497 which is one of the most complex I have done to date ( I have now branched out into isometric 3d maps) along with Pavis from Glorantha which was HUGE!

I always loved Karen Wynn Fonstads work on Middle Earth etc and it was an epic moment for me when my work was compared favourably to hers, I also find a strange balance now between the maps I do and my personal study (currently working part time on a history degree), as I do like to get things right!

ARE YOU WORKING ON ANY GAMING-RELATED PROJECTS AT THE MOMENT?

Yes, I am working for Moon Designs, helping map Glorantha, absolutely fascinating work. I am also working for Savage Mojo producing maps for Quantum Sliders and also art for “Project Sunthing” as it is known atm, it is going to be seriously epic! I am also involved in cartography projects for a couple of independent companies as well. 


Gill has since confirmed that "Project Sunthing" is actually called "Set Rising", a setting for Savage Mojo's Suzerain.

DO YOU HAVE ANY WEBPAGES OR SOCIAL NETWORK ACCOUNTS WHERE FANS CAN FIND YOU?

Yes, you can find me on Facebook, Google Plus and LinkedIn and via my website www.hellionsart.com