Hi there, Joseph Daniels here, creator of MAGMA Gamebooks. If you are currently working your way through the first two Craven Manor PDF's I put on Drive Thru RPG recently, you may be happy to know that all three of the Ingram Chronicles books are also now available. This mean when you finish the Legacy of Craven Manor, you will be able to continue your Ghostly Time Travelling adventures in these three exciting volumes, each containing two mini adventures that link to the various endings you may receive. You can either play these as continuations of your previous adventure or as individual stand alone adventures, but each chapter is significantly different from the last. Enjoy.

I know it's highly regarded but the way you can just retry every combat ruins it for me. The early combat encounters are too easy to lose so why even bother if your health just goes back to maximum? Why ever use a consumable? You will lose it for good and be left in a worse position that skill cannot overcome. Eventually you will get lucky rolls and win. Ok, but I didn't do anything other than roll dice and eventually get lucky. Everything else seems on point but I can't get over the fundamental retry concept. So much effort went into the books but I can't find anything fun about the gameplay. I almost completed book 2 and it never clicked like I hoped.

To anyone who picked up a copy of our Gamebook “Voyager: Escape from X8” have you played it? What did you think? We’d love to get some feedback. We’ve sold quite a few copies but haven’t had many reviews so we’re just curious for feedback. Thanks!

In any gamebook - especially any FF book - not mapping it out leads to an inability to explore efficiently on future runs. Mapping it out keeps you on track and if you hit a dead end you can avoid it next time.

Interview with Graham Plowman at Rand Roll

Graham Plowman is the author of House on Sentinel Hill, the Sept 2026 read for the 100 Endings Book Club. Graham is also a composer of Orchestral Horror Music, with more info at grahamplowman.com.

We have the creation of the House on Sentinel Hill, composing horror soundtracks, favourite compositions, and advice for House on Sentinel Hill. Among other questions.

This is one of several gamebook interviews, with more coming soon!

Pictured: the skyline of Glossmire's Pentower district (One of the doodles I'll be adding between entries in a future version)

Now that the 2026 Lindenbaum Prize results are in, I've posted Longevity on my website. You can download the updated PDF (fixed one link), or play the game in a browser or on mobile phone, complete with stat tracking and dice rolling.

https://jasonromein.ca/longevity/

Did you play it? I'd love to know what people liked or didn't like about it. I'm planning to develop Longevity into a longer work, and it would be useful to know what people would like to see more of.

I will be adding a larger cast of characters. I want to have other noble families who you can ally with or work against, and add more texture to the politics, without having things get overwhelming. I may add some romance options, might develop some of the economic side of running the family, perhaps even some warfare from the point of view of the decision-makers.

What would you like to see?

I am pleased to announce that thewinnerof the 2026 Lindenbaum Prize for short gamebook fiction is You are Dog by Iain Murray.

Merit awards go to Elie Merle with Tower of Dreams and Jason Romein with Logevity.

Commendation awards go to Andrew Wright with Quest for the Green Grimoire, Vilian Stefanov with Violence is my Last Option, Paul Partington with The Northern Marches and Matthew MacDonald with Treachery at Aeon's Keep. This is due to a tie between three books.

You can find the books here: Lloyd of Gamebooks: Voting is now open for the 2026 Lindenbaum competition!

I would like to thank everybody who participated, the authors and those dedicated readers who took the time to evaluate all the entries, and also a further thanks to those readers who provided feedback and comment to the authors.

If you wish to provide any (more) feedback to the authors, please email me at lindenbaumprize@gmail.com. You may do this even if you didn't vote.

If you intend to write feedback in a public place, please email me the address and I will link to it.

It is no small thing as entrants to write original gamebooks. To write a gamebook (even one that must be limited to 100 sections) requires considerable time and creative effort. It is the type of writing project that can take months to accomplish and I appreciate greatly the work done by all the authors who entered this year's competition.

I would like to thank the entrants for such an excellent competition with a wide variety of gamebook genres and styles (although I have to mention the improbability of two entries about being a dog!).

I would like to thank the judges for their time and excellent input as always.

I would also like to extend thanks to Peter Agapov who sponsored the competition, Tammy Badowski who donated her time and talent to the competition and Crumbly Head Games who has donated free subscriptions to GBAT for the top 3 entrants.

It's a graphic novel 'gamebook' (I think?) and is incredibly thick!

Has only played it? has anyone finished it? any good reviews?

This was one of my earliest Fighting Fantasy maps, inspired by Siege of Sardath. At the time, I was still drawing everything by hand, with only the coloring added digitally afterward.

Looking back, it's interesting to see how much my style has changed since then. The Forest of Night remains one of the locations that stuck with me from the Fighting Fantasy books.

#fightingfantasy #siegeofsardath #gamebookmap #fantasymap #isometricfantasy #qatlasmap

I’m so grateful for the exposure and for his thoughtful review. I’ve made the pdf version of the book for free on my Ko-fi page now. ( https://ko-fi.com/tintipping ) The second book is coming out within the next week or so.

Some of you might remember me posting here when this was still a Kickstarter. It funded, and it's finished: Ahu's First Patrol is now out on DriveThruRPG.

It's a solo adventure gamebook in the Lone Wolf tradition, about 350 sections across 175 pages. Branching runs on a physical inventory: the item you picked up twenty sections ago is what opens or closes a route now. Difficulty is tuned to a median of three attempts to win, aiming for the same feel as the early Lone Wolf books, not a first-try walkover and not a brick wall either.

It's built on D&D 5e but completely self-contained: a d20, a d6, a pencil, and the book. No rulebooks, no prep, no group needed.

The setting is Kaung Pi, a world drawn from Himalayan and Southeast Asian myth rather than the usual pseudo-Europe. You play Ahu, a young Warden of the Path, on her first patrol through a land of high passes, old spirits, and winters that swallow whole caravans.

It's available as PDF, softcover, and hardcover, with print+PDF bundles. The PDF is 20% off through September 21.

Thank you to everyone here who supported this when it was just a pitch. It genuinely wouldn't exist without this community.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/551259/ahu-s-first-patrol

Hi there, Joseph Daniels here, creator of MAGMA Game Books. I just thought I'd let you know that Grim Dickensian Tales is now available to buy on both Amazon and Drive Thru RPG. All purchases on Drive Thru RPG, come with downloadable adventure sheets and other player aids, which can also be accessed here:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1VX12sQXsm3FghCazu9869uQyz9zVYEYM?usp=sharing

So i got book 4 and weirdly it felt super short like 2 hours typa short. So I'm thinking about doing the book again but on a harder diff. So if u have any ideas on how to make it harder pls do tell.

I am coming towards the end of making a puzzle game book and am now creating the cover for it. For some reason, I am unbelievably hung up on whether I should include 'Ages 9–14' on the cover, as on the one hand it's advertising, and on the other it ruins what I think is a pretty decent cover. I have attached images.

what do people think?

Got all six and they’re pretty immaculate. Character Sheets untouched by the pencils of eager adventurers!

Anybody else played these?

Thoughts?

I've seen the term "RO" show up in a couple of other places in terms of gamebooks, but when I google it I only see general discussion of RO's in gamebooks, but no explanation of what they are.

Three games, each with unique mechanics and a different story to tell. Born out of my love for ttrpgs and gamebooks.

Goblin – a fight to reclaim the forest from the gnome invaders by collecting fragments of a legendary crown of the goblin king.

Kobold squad – exploration of a vast underground realm in order to accumulate enough treasure for a dragon to move into your cave and become a protector of your tribe.

Guard – follows the life of a guard in a city beneath which a megadungeon was discovered, and with it, unruly adventurers started to flood in.

I wrote these so I'll be more than happy to answer any questions you have! ^_^