GHOSTS OF RPG PAST AND FUTURE

My very first experience of roleplaying was Fighting Fantasy’s The Warlock of Firetop Mountain. Many more gamebooks followed and when I first became aware of Dungeons & Dragons, I assumed that the modules were similarly set out. Coincidentally, my very first step into Dungeons & Dragons was a module called Thunderdelve Mountain: A solo adventure set out with multiple choices very much like a gamebook. As a way to ease myself into D&D, Thunderdelve Mountain seemed like a good choice.

Being a naïve country boy I assumed that the rules would be contained within the module, I was dismayed to find that there was no such thing. Mark James (my childhood friend who shared my passion for adventure) and I spent a week on holidays divining the rules from what tables and references we had and we extrapolated from there. Our biggest hurdle was Armor Class; to that point, we had never encountered integers within a roleplaying game, but once the to-hit tables made sense to us, it was as if a door had been opened. Another obstacle was that as country kids, we had no access to polyhedral dice, just d6’s out of myriad Snakes and Ladders, Ludo and Monopoly sets.

We had to make do with what we had: our first d20 was 4d6-4 for example (a score of 1,1,1,1 was re-rolled). I also spent many hours trying to construct a d12 dodecahedron by attempting to glue 12 balsawood pentagons together. 2d6 be damned!

Ah, such is the minutiae of necessity and I am digressing.

Soon after, I was fortunate enough to buy TSR’s Blizzard Pass and play the Maze of the Riddling Minotaur a few times. This was of course after we got the red Basic Set and the blue Expert Rules. We were armed with our own polyhedral dice and were a little more experienced then. Our joy in a more complicated ‘gamebook’ was immense. Because of our predilection of using the d6, we even experimented with Tunnels & Trolls, with varying results. I have always been enamoured with their racial multipliers; the possibilities of races were endless!

I have travelled a long way since those days, but I still remember Thunderdelve Mountain and those other modules fondly.

Of course, I have 2010 and onwards packed with many, many, many Adventure, Dungeons and Danger Modules. But I thought to ask you what you thought of gamebooks and solo adventure modules? What ones do you own? Which ones are you missing from your collections? Or do you avoid them like the plague?

I have also made a Christmas poll I would like you all to take part in. It is entitled: Solo Adventures for Pathfinder or perhaps a gamebook. and it asks two questions:

1. Would you play a Pathfinder Roleplaying Game ‘solo game module?’
2. Would you like to see a return of the gamebook?

Polling closes 23:59, 31st January 2010.

I am taking a small break over Christmas until the first week of 2010. I am back into Temple of the Kraken then and I should have a finish/release date not long after that.

Merry Christmas to everyone, everywhere!

Andrew Gale
SAGAWORK STUDIOS.