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The door opens into a windowless room that has a circular table and six chairs in the centre. All the walls are lined from floor to ceiling with shelves that are crammed full of board games, computer games and even 25 issues of an old games magazine with the strange name Owl & Weasel. One shelf has a row of books with distinctive green spines and fantastical-sounding titles like The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, but most shelves display row upon row of board games. On a high shelf, nestled between a pile of board games and a box file labelled Games Night Newsletters, you see a silver two-handled cup. You lift the trophy down and see it is inscribed with the words "The Pagoda Cup". There are six names etched on the back of the cup over a period of 27 years. If you want to open some of the boxed games, turn to 297. If you would rather leave the room and walk further up the corridor, turn to 129.

From Ian Livingstone's 2012 gamebook, Blood of the Zombies.

The Hills Are Alive

It's been a bit of a funny time of late for our gaming group, as one regular member has had to relocate to the other end of the country, and another spent a few weeks touring South America, so we've not been able to put together a regular roleplaying campaign. That might be a bit of a blessing in disguise though, as it's allowed us to try out some other games we might have overlooked if we were in full campaign mode.

We've played a few games of the new Wizards of the Coast board game Lords of Waterdeep. I was a bit hesitant at first as I'd played a couple of the recent Dungeons & Dragons board games and while they're fun enough -- sort of light versions of D&D4, concentrating on the good bits of that game and cutting out all the dodgy stuff -- they're not that engaging. I also find it difficult to work up any enthusiasm for a product associated with the Forgotten Realms, surely the most dull of the classic -- I use the term with reluctance -- D&D settings.

It turns out that while Lords of Waterdeep is published under the D&D brand, it's quite a different kettle of ixitxachitls in terms of gameplay. I'm not a big enough enthusiast of board games to be able to identify its lineage, but it reminds me of a fantasy-themed Monopoly coupled with the mission structure of the old -- and brilliant -- Shadowrun collectable card game. The combination is quite a lot of fun and I would be more than happy to play it again, even with the bland Realms trappings. At least Elminster or Drizzle haven't turned up in our games yet.

We also played a bit of Kingdom Builder, a game which is fast and fun to play, but the English translation of the original German rules is so poor that we found ourselves better off using the French translation. It strikes me as a bit limited in scope, but it's a good way to while away an hour or so with friends.

The past couple of Fridays have seen us return to roleplaying with a couple of games of James Raggi's Lamentations of the Flame Princess, with me as the GM. I've never been a big D&D enthusiast, and I did not react well to our abortive D&D4 campaign. I'm happier with Pathfinder, but I did not enjoy running it; my preferred level of complexity is somewhere around the BECMI level, and LotFP sits right about there, making a few tweaks to some of the wonky mechanics that have always put me off running the otherwise similarly simple Labyrinth lord.

I ran the included adventure last week and we enjoyed it enough to play again last night. I have developed a bit of a -- mostly unfair -- reputation in our group for a certain type of adventure, and without revealing too much for those who haven't played "A Stranger Storm", I rolled my eyes when I read through and got to the climax of the scenario. Of course, my players all thought I'd written the thing myself when they got to the end, and I'm still not sure they believed me when I told them I was running it as written.

Last night's adventure was written by my own hand, although "written" is perhaps too strong a word. I had an adventure hook in my mind and a couple of hand-drawn maps, and that's it; I've not often gone into a game with so little prepared in advance, but I found it worked well, and the light nature of the LotFP rules made that easier. I was again accused of being up to my old tricks as the player-characters butted heads with what they assume to be inbred hill-dwelling cannibals, and I can't really put up much of a defence in this case.

Again, everyone seemed to enjoy the game, although the slow character advancement was a shock to a group more used to Pathfinder; that said, most of their earned experience has been from killing monsters so far, as they've shown an extraordinary aptitude for overlooking loot. We finished the evening with the party deep inside an abandoned silver mine, surrounded by the corpses of hill people and with an ominous moaning coming from further on down the tunnel; I don't know if this cliffhanger will be resolved, as we may well be playing Stuart's conversion of The Shamutanti Hills next week, and I'm looking forward to treading those old paths once again.

Urban Arcana

I played a lot of Shadowrun in my teens, and most of our games were set in a futuristic Seattle, so I'm no stranger to urban role-playing games. I've never played in an urban setting in a fantasy game, though, and that's an itch I'd like to scratch one day, perhaps by visiting one of the following fine destinations:

Port Blacksand: Long before Freeport, there was the City of Thieves. After the ancient coastal city of Carsepolis was destroyed in the wars against Chaos, it was abandoned for decades, until pirates and thieves started taking refuge in the ruins, and things developed -- some might say worsened -- from there. The settlement passed through many hands over the centuries, until a bold pirate named Azzur sailed into port, conquered the city and installed himself as ruler. Now Blacksand is a chaotic place, with a single ruler but untold numbers of factions, great and small, vying for power. It is ostensibly a civilised human settlement, but ogres and trolls wander the streets wearing the uniform of the city watch. Lord Azzur himself is rarely seen, and may no longer even be in charge. A grizzled hermit lives in a shack under one of the city's bridges, a man claimed by some to be one of the world's most powerful mages, but if so, why is he there? And below the busy, grubby streets of Blacksand lie the ruined, haunted streets of Old Carsepolis, complete with forgotten temples to strange gods of the sea...

Honourable mention goes to that other great city of the Fighting Fantasy setting, Kharé. A Lankhmar-esque place that is easy to enter, but difficult to leave, Kharé may not be a city at all, but rather a prison in disguise.

Irilian: Published in White Dwarf #42 to #47 -- before it became a miniatures catalogue, etc, etc -- as an ambitious and elaborate attempt to map and detail a complete fantasy city, something they would later try again with Marienburg for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. What makes Irilian interesting is that it is no list of locations and NPCs, an approach which could quickly become dry and dull. Rather it is presented as a small campaign, with the players being introduced to various parts of the city as they progress through a series of linked adventures, so one scenario might occur in the merchant district, while the next would happen in and around the temple district, and so on. It's a fascinating and effective approach, the city as a sandbox, and one which makes it easier to absorb the sheer volume of information presented in thirty-ish pages of the Dwarf's then-characteristic 6pt text. My only criticism is the insistence on inventing a local language for the city that is the same as English, just with annoying alternative spellings -- "Commandere Aef Hors" for the city's cavalry leader -- that will have the GM reaching for the glossary every five minutes during the game.

Sigil: The ultimate port city, sitting as it does at the heart of the multiverse. The interesting thing about Planescape for me is not the dimension-hopping crossover aspect, as I tend to think that Spelljammer does this in a more evocative manner. Rather the point of interest is the central hub of Sigil itself, a place literally at the crossroads of everything. I see no reason to jump about the many planes of the D&D cosmology when there's such a rich, thriving and unpredictable setting right there in what could so easily be discarded as a mere base of operations. One gets the feeling that anything could happen in Blacksand, but in Sigil the safeties are off, and "anything could happen" takes on a whole new meaning in a city in which gangs of street thugs go to war with each other over matters of epistemology and metaphysics.

Those are my favourites. What about yours?