Trailbrazers solo, Cthulhu Japan, Sussurus Tomb Battlemap

Age of Cthulhu 6 A Dream of Japan $8.99 DriveThru http://bit.ly/dreamofjapan	Trailblazers! T&T Solo $1.57 DriveThru http://bit.ly/TTsoloTB	Battlemap Sussurus Tomb $4.95 DriveThru http://bit.ly/SussTomb

Stuart Lloyd is changing the way we play Tunnels & Trolls solos and he is changing the way I look at T&T as a whole.  (Stuart is also reporting daily from the front lines of a gamebook renaissance and revolution, but I don't have time to go into that right now)

Rather than moping back to Edition 5 of T&T (which would be my primary instinct when writing a solo game)  Mr Lloyd takes 7.5 with all it's suggested talents, he embraces the opportunities for customised skill checks (SRs), adapts to the new types/classes and tackles in-book spell-use head-on.  Text sections provide options to perform "stunts" which make even the most mundane encounter memorable to play.  The situations in Trailblazers! are refreshingly original.  The plot can switch from the lowly to the epic - from scrambling around about to saving the day - of this stuff heroes are born.

There's a sprinkling of humour and chagrin, very much in the style of older T&T solitaire games, so T&T old school regulars will like this.  The replayability factor is very high.  (Do not be discouraged by the charming public domain art!  This is high class content! High-production values of the mind!) - I should also add that his solos are easy on the ink cartridge and his PDF prices are kept extremely low.    Play Trailblazers! as part of series - pick up the first two booklets from his range on DriveThru.

I do feel obliged to say that I'm honoured for his thanks in the foreword - although I'm not sure for which favour owe this gratitude - I'm just backing the winning team here! ;)
 

Trailblazers! T&T Solo $1.57 DriveThru

http://bit.ly/TTsoloTB

I'm bursting to draw your attention to A Dream of Japan from Goodman Games, partly because (as you may know, dear reader, I'm a sucker for good line-art)  Brad "BKM" McDevitt adorns this adventure with some exquisite point-of-view pictures (think D&D Tomb of Horrors player pull-out). His Deviant Art page has a snippet of sample art.

I've been skim reading the adventure and I'd say it comes pretty close to being a perfect CoC mystery.  My only issue is that, like with nearly all CoC adventures, it needs a fairly resourceful Keeper to usher the investigators along the right path.  However, in this adventure there is a fail-safe - the investigators have been manipulated, possibly since birth (!) by unseen forces, so the Keeper now has a licence for contrivance.

This adventure is a perfect opportunity to plunge the players into a superstitions world, that's just alien enough (the Orient) to make the investigators paranoid about every lucky penny they find.  This adventure looks like it has the makings to be a classic - and perhaps even a whole campaign.  It has some really nice twists, great art (the maps are good too).  Designed for Chaosium/BRP Call of Cthulhu (5) but could be easily adapted or sourced for other games set in the '20's.

Age of Cthulhu 6 A Dream of Japan (Goodman Games)

$8.99 DriveThru

http://bit.ly/dreamofjapan

In Zseze's World The Sussurus Tomb Battlemap the quality of the computer art is arrestingly beautiful.  Make sure you print onto something glossy which does these tiles justice!  The sections in the PDFs have wide margins which is always a good thing if you don't want to fiddle too much with print settings.  Extra poster size jpgs will be ideal for use in computer programs, tablets, and for your own modifications.

Slick professional, eye-bleedingly good.

Zseze's World The Sussurus Tomb Battlemap
$4.95 DriveThru

http://bit.ly/SussTomb

Right.  Those will keep us all busy for a while!

Happy Easter and all that.  Alien eggs all around. :)

*Face-hugger squeal...*

The Art of Russ Nicholson Dicing With Dragons Part 2

As mentioned in the previous post and others, Russ Nichsolson art style had formative effects upon my perception of fantasy worlds and gaming in general, notably his illustrations in Warlock of Firetop Mountain and Citadel of Chaos, which is apt to mention because it's 30 years since those interactive gamebooks first raised the standard of  solo dungeoneering.  AD&D fans will know him better from Fiend Folio  -in which his black and white ink work truly shines.  Gamebook fans have also been treated to his work yet again in the re-released of the Fabled Lands books, which like, a handful of Fighting Fantasy titles are available to play on the iPhone and iPad (Fighting Fantasy is also sold in Kindle formats).  

Incidentally, I still have some particularly early Puffin copies of Warlock of Firetop mountain here.

One of the original reasons for wanting to post my scans of Russ Nicholson most fabulous drawings from Dicing With Dragons (by Ian Livingstone, 1982) was to share with the current generation of Fighting Fantasy readers images from what was the forerunner to Livingstone's Eye of the Dragon , published in 2005.  Since many of the younger readers of Eye of the Dragon may never have seen a copy of Dicing with Dragons, I felt that this would be a good opportunity to share some of the similar scenes taken from a different artistic perspective to the stylishly realistic dark sketches of Martin McKenna.  Nicholson reminds me of Grimm's fairy tales grown-up, as if drawn by Beardsley with a touch of Rackham with a peppering of the Pre-Raphaelite. Wood grain and gem work abound, enemies dressed in swathes of cloth suggest the exotic and alien.  The caves feel dirty and dusty.  The gremlins, goblins and orcs always have a sinister cruel aspect - the teeth and curved knives feel sharp.  

Clickable thumbnails. :)

 

Russ Nicholson is still a very active artist - his blog can be found here.
(Permission was given by the artist for the images to be used in this post)

The Art of Russ Nicholson Dicing With Dragons Part 1

There's a celebration going on here and thereabouts, because it's 30 years since the first of the Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks were published.

*Simultaneous cheer and groan of wincing self-reflective age recognition*

The interior art of that first book, The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, was by Russ Nicholson, whose inked line art also graced the pages of Fiend Folio, The Fabled Lands and many other fundamental UK RPG-related titles in the 1980's.  A gritty savage beauty burst from the pages of Firetop Mountain and Citadel of Chaos.  It was refreshingly different from the Heavy Metal magazine -Conan and Gor influenced- clichéd covers of the time.

Considerably rarer than the many reprints of those early gamebooks is the rather infamous Dicing with Dragons - An Introduction to Role-Playing Games, authored by Ian Livingstone (1982, Routledge & Kegan Paul).   I find Mr Nicholson's freehand illustrations in Dicing With Dragons, with all of their details, especially inspiring when thinking about the hobby.  What is interesting in the frontispiece is that we see an armed traveller, a wayfarer -an "adventurer"(!) even - with a quarterstaff and patchwork leather armour - possibly similar to the invisible hero of the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks (those which were set in the fantasy genre).

Generally, in the early Fighting Fantasy gamebooks, the hero, who lives by their wits, is leather armour-clad and is commonly on foot - about as far from the heroic knight in shining armour on horseback, or the half-naked helmeted barbarian, as you can get. Since "YOU" (yes, you, in capitals) "...are the hero", I understand that most of the scenes in those books are depicted from the "point of the view" of the reader, so that you rarely see how your fantasy persona is dressed.  Ian Livingstone's introductory solo adventure in Dicing With Dragons is thematically and dice-mechanically very close to the Fighting Fantasy books.  This solo adventure was recently rewritten and published as a new FF title in it's own right, Eye of the Dragon.  So naturally, I assumed long ago that this lone figure (and the one depicted in the chapter header of the Solo Adventure) is pretty much as close as I could get to what a Fighting Fantasy hero, with his customised trappings, might look like.

In this post is art from the chapter headers for Dicing With Dragons - in Part Two - I will be including illustrations from the solo adventure.

Incidentally, Russ is still producing fine works of fantasy art.  I am very grateful for his permission to reproduce the art from Dicing With Dragons here.  You can follow his exploits on his blog: The Gallery: Russ Nicholson

Please indulge me whilst I fill this entry with black and white line-art goodness. (Clickable thumbnails)