5/30/2023 0 Comments Fabled lands book 1 pdfWhatever I work on, people ask me about more Fabled Lands books. His then-wife Debbie typed up the text of the book (no OCR in them days) and I then rewrote it, adding some scenes and details of my own to make it tally with events in our campaign and to introduce the fantasy element that's not present, of course, in Dr van Gulik's books. I had an excuse for wasting my time: Jamie's birthday was coming up, so I decided to print one copy and give it to him as a present. (A lesson in archetypes there, I suspect.)Īs if I didn't already have enough to do (I was finishing up Blood Sword and probably working on some TV tie-ins such as Knightmare) I took it upon myself to rewrite the novel, setting it in Taikava fief in western Tsolyanu instead of Tang Dynasty China. All the other characters in the novel, such as Sergeant Hoong Liang, had direct one-to-one matches among the player-characters. Jamie Thomson played the fiefholder Lord Jadhak hiVriddi, who neatly filled the Judge Dee role. Towards the end of the 1990s I read Robert van Gulik's novel The Haunted Monastery and realized it was an amazingly good fit to our Tekumel roleplaying campaign at the time. A quarter of a century on from that meeting, I'd like to think game publishers would be more willing to entertain left-field ideas, though I'm not sure how often that's true! To fully realize those possibilities, though, we have to be prepared to let go some of the control that we have come to expect, both as designers and as players. New kinds of interactivity promise a world of possibilities that we have hardly begun to explore. "Players don't like games without a clearly defined objective." ![]() I almost thought he might be considering it. Played that way, the ultimate aim of the game is to make the Daleks into an opponent you can't beat."įor a long while he said nothing. Eventually you might find you've nurtured them to the point where they can take anything you throw at them. Or you can test them with various threats and see how they learn and develop. Or you can trash their city and watch the little buggers get stomped. You can just observe the Daleks going about their duties, like your own little formicarium. The aim of the game, you see, is whatever you want it to be. And their society is like a type of insect hive. They're paranoid, inquisitive, power-hungry and they hate everything. The Daleks are prime candidates for A-Life because their psychology is so simple. "I see it's one of these Artificial Life things," he said. Pretty soon they don't have any trouble dealing with that kind of monster-and what they've learned will help them in other ways, too." The Daleks kill it and take it to their labs. Then you try something different: sending in just one monster to begin with. The point is, say you do that a few times. You could just send in so many monsters, raiders, and natural disasters that the Daleks would be wiped out right at the start. "No, your resources are unrestricted, up to whatever the game engine can handle. This at least sounded like familiar territory. Or you could spawn lots of mutant monsters to overrun the Dalek city." You can step in and help the Thals if you want. There's another race, the Thals, who are their ancient enemies." Natural disasters like meteor showers can occur. Various mutants live in the jungle around the city. "There are all kinds of threats to the Daleks. But you don't play the Daleks in this game." ![]() "Well, it's certainly possible for the Daleks to get those upgrades. "So you have to get upgrades to let them travel outside the city." ![]() "Yep, got it." said the Eidos executive I was explaining this to, who may or may not have been a famous gamebook pioneer. At the start of the game they pick up power by induction, so they can't leave the city." "The Daleks have been mutated by nuclear war and can only move about in mechanized travel machines. "It's set on Skaro, the Dalek planet," I began. And I was pretty sure Terry Nation, who created the Daleks and had joint control of the rights with the BBC, would be keen to hear any ideas for exploiting them. That show was pretty much dead and buried back then, so getting the rights wasn't a complete impossibility. It would of course have been a spinoff from the BBC's series Doctor Who. So here's a blast from the distant past, one of the game design concepts I was spitballing with and/or pitching back in the mid-'90s at Eidos Interactive: Dalek City.
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