By the mid 90s the golden age of the adventure gamebook craze was drawing to a close. Sales were falling, popularity was waning. Many saw this as the inevitable consequence of the rise of home computer games - an explanation I never understood as I played both computer games and adventure gamebooks avidly from the mid 80s onwards. These final days saw the release of one of the most ambitious and surely one of the greatest series of all. Fabled Lands.
By '95/96 I was in my late teens. I'm not sure if I grew out of gamebooks or if they simply stopped releasing them. Probably the latter, given that I'm writing this review and showing an interest in 2015. I spotted the first two books in the series in a newsagent and as soon as I recognised the names of veterans Dave Morris and Jamie Thomson I bought them.
The structure and format was something I had never experienced at the time in a game book - a free roaming sand box adventure. You decided the goals, quests and approach. You could charge round as a mighty warrior, play as a mage, a noble priest or a cunning morally ambiguous rogue (which is incidentally how I almost always end up playing). You could buy houses, come and go as you please. You could trade, and make accumulation of wealth your primary goal. You could become involved in political machinations. You could purchase a ship and hire a crew and sail off to far distant adventures, focus on magical studies and artifacts. Gameplay included a rank and stats system, depending on your activities you could advance your character in more than just wealth. You can rely on more than just brute force to achieve your ends, charisma and thievery will get your far in the world of Harkuna.
One the greatest features of the series is codewords. This ingenious system allows the game to track your actions in other areas of not only the book, but the entire series. This means that not only are you in a free roaming world, you are in one where your choices have consequences. Turning to a certain section of the book will have a different outcome depending on the codewords you may have accumulated on your travels. People and events will play out differently.
The first book `The War Torn Kingdom' is one of the strongest in the series. The difficulty here is just right. There is a threat to your character early on (I personally feel the threat of death is vital to atmosphere in gamebooks), but progress through a few quests and you soon find yourself advancing and the money rolling in. Quests can generally be obtained in towns, guilds, listening in taverns for rumour, or through random adventuring. There is so much to do. And from there you can adventure on to the other books, all of which have their own merits and unique setting. I particularly enjoy The Plains of Howling Darkness (book 4) and The Court of Hidden Faces (book 5).
The original releases were striking A4 size with card boards and fold out maps. These recent reprints may be print on demand and not quite the artifacts the originals were, but they are affordable and more than adequate plus I am happy to say contain the original illustrations of the legendary Russ Nicholson.
If you are a gamebook fan, Fabled Lands is a unique experience and should be a mandatory purchase. My only real disappointment with the series is that it was originally planned for 12 books and only 6 were ever written before the series was dropped by the publishers. Just maybe, with the re-release of the originals enough interest may gather for the authors to consider finishing the series..
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