'Fabled Lands, Blood Sword and Fighting Fantasy - the joy of game books!' Two Shelves of Gaming - Episode 12.

Warning! This episode contains a couple sections of poor audio and a mnemonic malfunction. Greetings podlisteners, I thought I would try something a bit different for this episode. I thought I would try and record things in the great outdoors. ‘But, why?’ I hear you ask. Today’s episode scratches the surface of fantasy game books with some passing attention given to the Fabled Lands game book series. The thinking being, this book series convey a sense of the vast almost endless possibilities an adventurer can have while wandering far and wide over the land. Thus I thought I would do a small wander across the section of the Slovak / Hungarian border I am currently staying at in order to get the juices flowing as I attempt another stream of conscious unscripted podcast. In this episode I talk briefly about my relationship with game books starting with Choose Your Own Adventure and Interplanetary Spy, before moving on to Fighting Fantasy and chronicling the sad tale of how – and why – I decided to throw them out in one cruel snap decision (one which I rue to this day). My reintroduction to game books came via one of my visits to a local Merseyside charity shop in the late 90s in which I stumbled across the first two Dragon Warrior game books as created by Dave Morris and Oliver Johnson. Believe it or not this was the first time I’d heard of, yet alone, seen the game. Yep, it’s true folks. The reason is simple; at the time this system came out I was no longer an active Fantasy Game Booker. Thus any of the times I would have gone into a book store that held FF, or other game books, I probably wouldn’t have perused that section. Hence, they were not on my radar at any level. Nor do I recall seeing them advertised in any of the White Dwarf magazines I irregularly bought. Regardless, it was this chance 2ndhand purchase that led me to ultimate investigate the other works of Dave Morris and associates which has caused me to purchase many of the Fabled Lands and Blood Swords series. In the case of Fabled Lands there’s no way I would have been aware of their existence as I was living in the Czech Republic when the first of them was released – remember kids, pre-internet era – I just wasn’t aware of what was happening in the wider gaming community. Yet alone able to keep track of things from mid-90s Central Europe. Needless to say I’ve been making up for lost time and have been eagerly purchasing both series which are available as print on demand. Overall I think these are well crafted products with a nice spin on the fantasy game book concept. Also they’ve kick started my interest in FF too – if only I hadn’t chucked them all out back in the 90s *weeps* Finally on a technical note, my idea to record outdoors suffers from very loud wind noise in a couple of sections. Apologies, it’s annoying and makes things difficult to hear. Also I forget what year it’s going to be (!) although I rectify this latter fault with a jarring sound edit. Happy New Year gamers! https://fabledlands.blogspot.com/