Fabled Lands

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Fabled Lands is a series of Choose Your Own Adventure gamebooks that were written by Dave Morris and Jamie Thomson. It was first released in the mid-nineties, and, to this day, is probably the most elaborate gamebook series ever written.

See, it differed from other gamebooks at the time by giving you a Wide Open Sandbox to have fun in. Each book would allow you to explore a different area in the series's fantasy world (the titular Fabled Lands), and all the books were connected to one another so you could literally go from one book to the other on the same playthrough. The more books you had, the more of the world you could explore and the more adventures you could have. Also you could travel between books in any order you wanted. Heck, you didn't even have to start with the first book unless you wanted to.

Unfortunately, Morris and Thomson underestimated the production costs, and only six of a planned twelve books were ever published, but There Was Much Rejoicing when this was announced.

The gameplay complexity fell somewhere between Fighting Fantasy and Dungeons and Dragons. There were 6 stats to keep track of (as opposed to FF's 3), but players only needed a pair of regular 6-sided dice (as opposed to DND's specialized dice). Also, (unlike DND) the series was meant for a single player rather than a group of people.

Oh, a Java version of the first 6 books is available here which has all the blessings of the original authors, go play it, now!...

...aaaaand the series is now back in print, with the prospect of having all 12 books released (if the first 6 sell well enough). So, anybody who enjoyed the series (whether in its original format or the Java version) and would like a chance to fully explore its realm should...well, Thompson and Morris can probably say it better than anyone on this wiki could.

In 2011 a Tabletop RPG based on the series was released. The RPG features slightly expanded rules and a series of supplements detailing the various lands - the first (about Sokara) has since been published.

Tropes used in Fabled Lands include:
  • A Homeowner Is You: You can buy a townhouse in each town. They're susceptible to random events, though.
    • You can even get your own castle in Book 5.
  • An Adventurer Is You: You can choose your name, gender and class, or take a pick from one of six pre-defined characters.
  • The Blank: The leader of Uttaku, in The Court of Hidden Faces, is whoever is born without a face, once a generation.
  • Characterisation Marches On: In the original gamebooks Grieve Marlock comes across as a brutal dictator; the RPG gives him a much more sympathetic light as a man of honour and genuine patriotism while the Royalists are treated less sympathetically turning the Sokaran Civil War from Black and White Morality to Grey and Grey Morality.
  • Choose Your Own Adventure: And how! Once you've crash landed on your country of choice you can go off, and well, Choose Your Own Adventure.
  • Class and Level System: Kind of, you can choose a class at the beginning of your play-through, and each one is better at something then the other. You have a sort of level, or Rank; there's no Experience Points system, but certain specific achievements or victories grant you a rank increase or the chance thereof.
  • Cult: You encounter a rather messed-up one in The War-Torn Kingdom. Given the nature of the gameplay, you can either fight them or become a member.
  • Deadly Decadent Court: The Court of Hidden Faces, from the book of the same name is this taken to the extreme.
  • Death Is Cheap: It certainly is if you remember to pay for a resurrection (which is only cheap if your patron god is the god of death or war. And if you've remembered to leave some money aside to pay for all the equipment you just lost. Hmmmm....maybe it's not that cheap after all.
  • The Dev Team Thinks of Everything: If you have the title Saviour of Vervayens, they'll give you certain items for free at their market. Attempt to sell these free items back to them and they'll run you out of town.
  • Digital Piracy Is Evil: Notably averted by the free Java based version of the books, which were given the OK by the original writers.
  • Disc One Nuke: Starting in a higher book and moving to Sokara allows you to steamroller the early quests.
  • Damsel in Distress
  • Expy: The High King is loosely based on King Arthur.
    • Kaschuf the Deathless is loosely based on Koschei.
  • The Fair Folk: Messing with faeries is a very bad idea, most of the time.
  • Fantasy Character Classes Your choices at the beginning of the game are
    • Warrior
    • Mage
    • Priest
    • Rogue
    • Troubadour
    • Wayfarer
  • Fantasy Counterpart Culture: Each book focused on a particular culture, most of which were heavily influenced by a specific real world culture:
    • Golnir, from the second book is Ye Olde Merry England, with dragons and knights.
    • While not a country per se, the Great Steppes from The Plains of Howling Darkness are based on Siberia and Mongolia, with Mongols that are actually an outcast Akatsurese tribe.
    • Uttaku is the Byzantine Empire, but with loads more backstabbing, a fundamentalist religion, and a court society based on masks.
    • Akatsurai is feudal Japan, complete with samurai.
    • Sokara is a fantasy medieval version of the English Civil War, with a military dictator and the rightful heir to the throne in hiding.
    • Atticala was going to be based upon ancient Greece, while the Feathered Lands were going to be based on several South American cultures.
  • Girl in the Tower
  • Global Currency: Shards.
  • Global Currency Exception: The Fair Folk trade in Mithrals, the currency of the Underworld. It's possible to trade items for Mithrals at Fairfolk markets in Golnir.
  • Guide Dang It: Getting Savior of Vervayens Isle requires starting in the correct book (which is a bad idea unless you're specifically going for the title, due to the difficulty of travel if you're unprepared) and getting exactly the right rolls to land on the island and save it.
  • Hub Level: Most players make Yellowport their main base of operations. It's an extremely safe and central location, and it's one of the only places where you can both stash items in complete safety and have them readily available if you're resurrected.
  • In Medias Res: You start off on a boat, in the middle of the sea, without any water or food left, when suddenly you see land! You manage to crash there, and begin your adventure.
  • Infinity+1 Sword: The White Sword, which adds a whopping +8 to your Combat skill. As an added bonus, it can never be lost through robbery, imprisonment or death.
  • Killed Off for Real: There are places where you are killed in such a way that you cannot be resurrected. More often, you're just permanently sealed in a can somewhere, and nobody ever comes to release you.
  • Level Grinding: There are some areas where you can go back and forth to find encounters that provide increased Rank, money (or stuff to sell for money), or increases to your stats. Most players look down on excessively grinding infinite loops, however; the point of the game is to get out there, adventure, and experience the Fabled Lands rather than get yourself repeatedly sold into slavery to pump up your muscles.
    • To be fair, Stat Grinding is extremely limited, as the game's rules only allow each of the six stats to go to a maximum of 12. Defence, however, is linked to level, so Level Grinding will increase that as much as desired.
  • Lost Forever: Almost anything can be Lost Forever, so don't get too attached to your awesome equipment. A special prize, however, goes to the Savior of Vervayens Isle title; you can only get it if you start off in Book 3, and only if you're dumped on the isle by the Random Number God. If you don't get it then, you'll never get it.
  • Made a Slave: You can be enslaved in Uttaku for any number of reasons.
  • Mundane Utility: In the steppes, there is a lake that was cursed to be permanently frozen solid, in order to keep the setting’s King Arthur expy sealed away beneath it. So what do the Uttaku do? Set up a mining operation, of course, where they carve out chunks of the unmelting ice and export it so the nobles back home can use it to keep cool.
  • Our Dragons Are Different: Several different types including 'generic' firebreathing, flying western dragons, sea dragons and (in Akatsurai) oriental style dragons. At least some of them are intelligent and capable of speech.
  • The Rival: Lauria, if you choose the Rogue class.
  • Scenery Porn
  • Storming the Castle: At one point in an inter-book quest, you have to help the rightful heir to the throne take an important castle, that is stopping his army from attacking. Kind of subverts this though, as the only way for you to get into the castle is to sneak in, then let some other characters storm it for you.
  • To Hell and Back: It's entirely possible to get on the ship of the death god, of course you can only leave if your patron god is that of death or war. If not, well, you're dead. There was also supposed to be a whole book dedicated to exploring the underworld, and you could find entrances to it throughout the world. Sadly, the series ended before it got that far.
  • Uncancelled: The first 4 books have been republished! And, if sales go well, we'll be getting All 12!!! Read more about it here.
  • Vestigial Empire: Uttaku.
  • When Trees Attack: The Red Garden, Uttaku's execution grounds. You'll probably find yourself there several times if you go to Uttaku. It's actually not as dangerous as the Uttakin think it is.
  • Wide Open Sandbox: Compared to other gamebooks, heck, compared to some video games, this series is huge, with six different, but interconnected countries, you could do whatever you wanted to pretty much. Considering that the creators originally planned twelves books, this could have been much bigger...and might still be yet.
  • Wretched Hive of Scum and Villainy: Smogmaw. Think a tropical fantasy version of Mos Eisley.
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