Gamebooks

[Richard]

I'll do some too, I just won't have time until June.

[Barrington Boots]

Fighting Fantasy have just posted that Russ Nicholson has passed away. What awful news.

[JohnW]

Fighting Fantasy have just posted that Russ Nicholson has passed away. What awful news.

If I didn't periodically read this thread than I'd have forgotten all about Russ Nicholson.
I've been looking again at his work and appreciating what a major talent the man was.

[Richard]

What a great shame. His work was phenomenal. His illustrations were so detailed and macabre, I loved them when I was a kid, and I still love them now. He added so much to these books.

[sheridan]

2000AD and Fighting Fantasy - the two great pillars of British childhood geekdom in the early 1980s, and few exemplify the latter as much as Russ Nicholson did.

[Barrington Boots]

Absolutely. I can safely say that Fighting Fantasy artwork hugely shaped my life: I can distinctly remember the Christmas where I was given a box of aniseed balls and two books: a PG Wodehouse, and Forest of Doom. I loved both but the latter had me absolutely hooked.

I was a Star Wars nerd and an avid reader of Battle at the time, but the grotesque and fantastic art in FF books led me towards 2000ad, D&D, and then heavy metal music, all of which ended up defining so much of my world, my friendships, my marriage. It all kickstarted the path I ended up on.

It's all a bit of a rambling way to say that Russ Nicholson was a real talent and his work has a special place in my heart. Gone but never forgotten.

[sheridan]

I avoided also mentioning Star Wars by specifying British, but it could easily have been the crosspiece to the pillars - and I can't think of any further additions in that very slightly pre-Warhammer world...

[Barrington Boots]

Oh yeah, I'm not really sure why I mentioned that. I suppose because I was into sci-fi and comics back then, but it felt like FF and 2000ad took it to another level. The art was less sanitised and more twisted, it felt exciting.

I remember poring over Russ Nicholson's work in White Dwarf, all twisted goblinoid faces and bloody carnage. That British style of fantasy artwork always had an edge of nastiness that elevated it, for me, over the big US guys like Larry Elmore or Clyde Caldwell. I've always felt there's a stark difference between American stuff like D&D and British fantasy like Warhammer - one's all wizards, Dragons and Unicorns, and in the other everyone lives in the mud and things come out the forest and eat you.

[sheridan]

No, it's fine - I almost put Star Wars, but decided against it, on a whim!

[Barrington Boots]

I got Kev Crossley to sign my copy of Blood of the Zombies at Lawless - it's been on my shelf for over a decade unplayed and finally had a go at it this week.

It's pretty rubbish, in all honesty, and the main part of that comes from the combat. There's no SKILL or LUCK in this book (making it very Un-FF-ish) and you basically only fight zombies (I also fought some mutant rats, but they counted as zombies, more or less). When you fight zombies, you roll your weapon damage and kill that many zombies, then all the others do 1 damage to you.
It's very quick, but in practice very uninteresting: once you've got a decent weapon like a gun (2d6+5 damage when I got a gangster tommy gun out of a violin case, no less) you auto-kill small groups of zombies without bothering to roll and those fights are hugely anticlimactic, but when you meet a group of 20 or so zombies and all you've got is a D6 damage baseball bat you're totally doomed to take loads of damage and even having a decent weapon can leave you taking 10 stamina damage in a round.
After dying over and over I read a tip that there's no max stamina, so I maxed my stamina out and every time I got a healing item just increased my stamina over the base 24, but still died. It's not fun. In the end I stopped tracking stamina and was on -36 stamina when I just gave up due to the general monotony of it. I can't imagine getting to the end and finding I hadn't exterminated literally every zombie in the book.

Knowing that you need to kill every zombie to win encourages exploration - instead of trying to avoid traps and enemies you're literally opening every door you can to try and find them all.  Plotwise it's set in the modern day, and you're stuck in a castle where some dude is trying to create an army of zombies etc etc.. it's all very Resident Evil. The video game feel is further enhanced by constantly finding boxes of bullets and shotgun shells, but the game never asks you to keep track of your ammo... was this a rule that got scrapped? There's also a huge number of weapons and items to find and carry around, most of which are useless. You can also change clothes a lot, which has no bearing on the game at all either. It actually reminded me a bit of Dead Rising.

Bizarrely the rooms and sometimes zombies or photos of people are often described in great detail to no end. There's a lot of in-jokes in the game (such as being able to find copies of Owl and Weasel or The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, and even a birthday card for Zagor) so I wonder if Livingstone is describing actual places and people.

The book reads a bit like either an attempt to reboot the series, as it deviates so heavily from the classic ones in so many ways, or a video game translated into book form. It's all a bit of a flop with repetitive enemies, the need to explore everywhere means it is incredibly long, and without cheating is literally impossible according to online commentary I have read about it.

The art is amazing and really good stuff from Kev Crossley. That's the best thing about this.

[Richard]

That all sounds terrible!

[Barrington Boots]

Yeah, I cannot recommend it on any level really. I finished it this morning on -90 Stamina. I probably could have done better with some better dice rolls, but not by much. Apparently the app version gives you 2d6+40 starting stamina and there's tons more healing items.

There's a terrible bit at the end where you fight the main bad guy hand to hand, but because there's no skill you're just taking it in turns rolling 1d6-3 damage for each combatant. That went on for a while.

Huge miss by Ian Livingstone. Definitely don't play this one.

[Blue Cactus]

I've had one go at Blood of the Zombies and also found it pretty tedious. The only thing I really remember (I think) is being blown up by a grenade I had thrown, and being kind of relieved.

I haven't posted in this thread for a while but wanted to mention that the three books you sent me have all been played, Barrington, and thoroughly enjoyable they are too. Even Scorpion Swamp was better than I remember!

I also wanted to mention that my wife gave me a present this year of a game book in a series called Bloodsword, with the incredible title The Battlepits of Krarth, a reprint of an 80s series, which looks pretty good! And artwork by the great Russ Nicholson too. Looking forward to giving it a go.

[Barrington Boots]

Really glad you've played and enjoyed them Cactus! I think I was middling about Scorpion Swamp but having read a few real stinkers of late I remember it a lot more fondly.

Battlepits of Karth sounds wicked! I've got a huge pile of gamebooks to get through but let us know if its any good as I'd like to give it a go sometime soon.

[Richard]

I googled the art for that book and it looks amazing!