This, and it’s absolutely everything I want so far from a gamebook, 700 references of dungeoncrawling goodness, well written, a decently thought out but simple mechanic system and beatifully presented. Mind you I am only about 20 references into exploring it – however I doubt it’s gonna go far wrong.

(No my minions, we don’t have permission to encode and publish it. One day, my adventure hungry little friends, one day…). Until then , buy your own: https://bluefoxcomics.com/products/arcane-rites-cult-of-the-pajoli-book-1-paperback

Ok, so, so far this isn’t exactly 2000A.D. of the Gamebook World, and I am hardly Tharg the Mighty. Here we are though. Zarjazz.

So it’s June 17th, 2022. I am sat almost butt naked except for my towel (yup, always know where your towel is) in my studio flat in a small town on the south coast of England wondering where on earth I can take this creaking web machine next. Having just succesfully flogged the idea of doing a blog to a good Fighting Fantasy companion (Rene Batsford, hopefully we will see his first offering with news of his upcoming gamebook shortly), it occurred to me that perhaps I should ‘smell the shit I’m shovelling’ and have a go at it myself.

Despite my handle being Beeblbrox, Tharg seems more appropriate I guess given I am attempting to bring far out adventure stories to your puny planet, as a theme for this blog. And hey, I gather in your primitive network you call the internet ‘mashups’ are all the rage these days. Personally I find them utterly abominable preferring Universe Integrity to my fiction but then, I’m not just doing this for me I guess.

Most basic stuff regarding site origins and inspirations can be found in the Creditations Page or the About Page… so I will attempt not to repeat myself here, and try to make this up to date and relevant. TBH I imagine, knowing me, that a lot of my posts will be obscure and irrelevant and sometimes even semi-psychotic – such is the price of being Hoopy. At least I haven’t crashed my starship into a sun lately anyway.

There are so many things I wish to add to the site one of my biggest problems is knowing where to actually focus myself at any one time. All I DO know is that about 6 years ago – maybe 10, it occurred to me that I am NEVER going to see the site I wish to see developed all by myself, and have so far spent a long time in an *almost* fruitless attempt at ‘acquiring and building a presence on the web with a view to teambuilding and forward processing collaborative goals’.

Excuse me I just choked on corporate buzzwords for a moment.

So, many will know me by now as a cantankerous old git with questionable ethics and an occasionally humerous outlook. Like many on that there internet I had pie in the sky notions of ‘my ideas’ being received with rapturous welcome and was appropriately sorely and sourly disappointed when I was more or less told ‘take a ticket and join the queue’, this was followed by what I can only describe as a VERY long sulk interspersed with ever more desperate attempts to get some more work done here.

And, thanks to my (real life) neighbour of 8 years now, it has gradually started sinking in that that is part of my problem – too much work and not enough play. Work IS a 4 letter word. Who the hell wants to join or even read about a crew where all you’re promised is endless internship, grind and slog? For the privilidge of hearing ‘meh, that was OK’ if you’re lucky at the end of it?

Not me that’s for sure, and I’m damn well sure it isn’t you either.

So to confound a famous quote ‘since brevity is the soul of wit, I shall be endeavouring to provide more art and less matter’ in the future. Or something like that anyway.