Dear all,
Thank you so much for all your orders of Legendary Kingdoms. We’ve had far more orders than we anticipated (especially from the international community – thanks world). In order to keep track and post it out we’ve gone all professional and now have proper postage services. As of today, copies of Legendary Kingdoms are flying out into the Royal Mail postage system and should be with you shortly – either next week if you are in the UK, or the week after if you live anywhere else.
Apologies for the delay, but we wanted to make sure that we could deal with all these orders in a safe and systematic way. From today, you can expect all orders to be processed by the next working day. We officially start shipping at 15:30 today, so feel free to check your account this evening to see if it is completed.
Thanks all. And good luck in your adventures!
James Cleverley says
Got my confirmation email today, wooh! Excited to explore the Valley of Bones next week!
Oliver Drozd says
Received my copy today. Looking forward to getting started.
Jon Lunn says
Good Luck, Oliver!
Kingravel says
Hello Oliver,
I wasn’t able to find an email address, so please allow me to post my first impressions of your gamebook here.
I started my first adventure yesterday and wanted to come back here to congratulate you and share my enthusiasm! You really manage to create an immersive experience, both by your very atmospheric writing and by the excellent idea of pre-made party-members with their own backgrounds. The game drew me in right from paragraph 1 and I really enjoy all the choices and possibilities it gives me from the beginning. It’s also a very good idea to make the first part of the game more restricted as it’s a great introduction to the game’s systems.
The luck factor – bane of all gamebook-players – is my only problem, but that goes for all gamebooks. Some mild form of a “save” possibility that would allow me to go back to an earlier point of my adventure would be great. Some newer gamebooks – like the great “Destiny Quest”-series, “Riders of the Black Sun”, “Heroes of Urowen” and some others – allow the player to simply go back some steps in the adventure if they die. While I always loved Fabled Lands I really hated the dire consequences of some decisions, basically leading to sudden deaths. While “resurrection deals” helped to survive you still lost all your stuff. So I made some houserules in FL, allowing me to “save” my game at inns (only) by paying a considerable sum of money. I know it’s cheating and I know I shouldn’t do it in Legendary Kingdoms, but when I fought with these darn spiders deep under the arena and lost valiant Sar Jessica not due to the big ugly spiders themselves but because of the tiny ones inflicting 1 damage per round, I just had to reroll. So, to make things short: Should I cover my face in shame because I tend to “optimize” the outcome of my dice throws now and then – or may I continue playing without a bad conscience?
Anyway – I really enjoy my adventures so far. I’m not very far in yet, but I already wonder how battles will work and how my party and their relations develop. That feeling of leading a group of adventurers is really well captured. And I love this very special feeling of promise and wonder, the impression of a wide and foreign world full of adventures and possibilities awaiting me. It’s exactly the same feeling I have when I play Fabled Lands. That’s the highest praise I can give to a gamebook.
Oliver Hulme says
Hi Alexander,
So pleased you are enjoying the book. Believe it or not, I did start out with the idea of making the game diceless, but it ended up making the game either trite (asking you to pass checks you can’t fail) or too hard (you have to complete tasks in exactly the right way, or get blocked). No doubt there is a happy medium I didn’t find.
In terms of death and resurrection, I considered putting in a way back from death but decided in the end that having a party of adventurers (and being able to recruit to that party) made it irrelevant. Coming back to life never really sat well with me, as it meant that the rich could basically live forever and villains are conceivably immortal, or at least should be if they are acting intelligently.
In my head I envisioned that the first playthrough for a player would end in disaster. The second playthrough would be like an extended scout through the world, finding out the lay of the land, so to speak. The third playthrough is where you go for it, well enough informed to overcome the hazards before you, and to have a plan about what order to do things in order to complete the main quest. There’s a lot of layers in LK that only become apparent when you get deep into it, so there is a pleasure in playing hardcore, because the game rewards as much as it punishes.
That said, this is a gamebook, and if you are able to resist the temptation to flick back to an earlier choice or ‘autopass’ an important roll … well, you’re a stronger person than I! It’s your game, so enjoy it how you want to. I promise not to come round and tell you off for not playing exactly by the book!
Good luck in your adventures. I’m writing Book 2 today, actually, so this has come as lovely morale boost.
Best Regards,
Oliver
Alexandre Correia says
Got my copy yesterday. Super excited to explore the world you’ve created.
Regards from sunny Lagos
Alex
Jon Lunn says
Thanks Alexandre,
Good luck!