Review: Gamebook La Torre del Elefante

In today's post, the first of 2022, I will talk about the Spanish language gamebook La Torre del Elefante, based in the homonimous work by Robert E. Howard and published by the creative group Leyendas de Hiboria, which can be acquired at their store in printed and pdf formats.

Creative group Leyendas de Hiboria

 

First of all I will allow the auhors of the gamebook to present themselves:

This project was gestated from a series of passions by David Palmer. First one, the original Conan by Robert E. Howard and the comicbook series Conan the barbarian and The savage sword of Conan by Marvel and Conan: the legend and Conan King by Dark Horse. The second one, the pleasure of writing to entertain. The third one, boardgames with roleplaying elements and, specially, the sandbox ones.

What sparked this was reading gamebooks like Fabled Lands and Legendary Kingdoms, which had been a twist for the format. Next was to try it with a loose adaptation of one of the most celebrated Howard works: The Tower of the Elephant, the first one of the collection Leyendas de Hiboria which will allow readers to live adventures in Conan's era.

The collection will have two lines sharing numbering: the Gold Series (inaugurated with La Torre del Elefante), with sandbox-like gamebooks with character choosing, character's sheet, dice rolling, experience and other roleplaying elements, with hundreds of decisions and situations triggered by good or bad luck. The Silver Series will have gamebooks needing only the book to play, with a novel system of chance and life count.

In year 2022 we anticipate to publish at least the first of the Silver Series (the adaptation of the tale The phoenix in the sword by Howard, in which you will be able to play Conan himself or his terrible nemesis Thot-Amon) and the second one of the Gold Series, an original story os slaves, pirates, boardings, sharks and some hidden treasures, titled Cimarrones en la Costa Negra.

We don't rule out to edit books we like, as the one we recently published, an essay by David Palmer with the title revealing its contents: Dentro del Laberinto. Aproximación al clásico de Jim Henson.

The crew of Leyendas de Hiboria is formed by the already mentioned David Palmer and JSiL, tasked with design and layout. We also have the external collaboration of illustrators like Benito Gallego or José Ángel Elizalde.

We assiduously update our website (www.leyendasdehiboria.es) with information about the state of our projects and downloads, as well as some readings interesting us. We are also present at Twitter (@Lhiboria), Facebook (/leyendasdehiboria), Discord (/rqvZahmY5r) and Telegram (/leyendasdehiboria).

A Cimmerian salute!

What are gamebooks?

Before start talking about La Torre del Elefante maybe it's oportune to explain you what is a gamebook and which are its origins.

Unlike novels or other similar works and its linear plot, gamebooks offer its readers the chance to star a fiction deciding about the plot course choosing between the many options given by the text, in some cases even rolling dice if the playing character is defined by characteristics which may influence the development of the action (as in roleplaying games).

Because there's no lineal plot the adventure isn't divided by chapters that are read one after another, instead theses are organized in numbered sections the reader will jump in as noted in the gamebook instructions until reaching one of the planned ends, whether it is successful or calamitous (it could be possible that the starring character die if the gamebook contemplates that possibility).

Consider the Consequences!

Night of January 16th

Hopscotch (Rayuela)

Once whe have seen what are gamebooks and its basic mechanics it's time to search for its origins because, surprisingly, these are not related to fantasy or science fiction works: it's considered that the first work of interactive fiction is the romantic novel Consider the Consequences!, published in the United States in 1930.

After this first work other interactive fictions appeared, like the theatrical play Night of January 16th, premiered in 1934 and in which part of the members of the audience participate as jurors deciding a guilty veredict in a murder case or the Hopscotch (Rayuela) novel by Julio Cortázar.

Choose Your Own Adventure

Fighting Fantasy

Lone wolf

And within the ludic interactive fiction from the 1970s decade onwards had appeared many book series, like Choose Your Own Adventure, Fighting Fantasy, Lone Wolf o Legendary Kigdoms and Fabled Lands, both mentioned in the presentation of Leyendas de Hiboria.

Robert E. Howard, Conan and The Tower of The Elephant

Robert E. Howard

The Tower of the Elephant

Weird Tales - March 1933

After this brief introduction to gamebooks it's time to talk about the literary original work inspiring this gamebook and its author, the North American writer Robert E. Howard.

Howard is one of the creators of the sword and sorcery literary genre, characterised by stories in which starring characters face he dangers of worlds where supernatural elements, magic and romace abound, with more personal plots differing from high fantasy works, more centered in saving the world of the claws of an evil dark lord willing to conquer it.

One of the main characters created by Howard in the genre is Conan the Barbarian, starring stories mainly published in the Weird Tales pulp magazine between December 1932 and October 1936, with many reissues and continuations as well as other media adaptations and serving as inspiration for other works, like comics, cinema with films starred by Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jason Momoa and many games based in the character and the Hyborian Age.

The Tower of the Elephant, story published in the March 1933 issue of Weird Tales (Publication: Weird Tales, March 1933 - The Internet Speculative Fiction Database | Weird Tales v21n03 [1933 03] (sas) - Internet Archive), is the work chosen by Leyendas de Hiboria to set up the first of their gamebooks. In this tale Conan is in the city of Arenjun ⁽¹⁾ and hears of a jewel known as "The Heart of the Elephant", kept inside the tower of the sorcerer Yara and which the Cimmerian will try to steal with the help of Taurus of Nemedia, discovering the secret hiding inside the tower. Patrice Louinet, one of the directors of the Robert E. Howard Foundation and expert on Howard considers The Tower of the Elephant one of his best works ⁽²⁾.

(1) At least as identified by L. Sprague de Camp in his introduction to the collected edition published by Lancer Books in 1967, Howard only refers to it as "City of Thieves" in a letter addressed to P. Schuyler Miller and John Drury Clark, creators of the first chronology of Conan adventures and the first map of the Hyborian Age.

(2) Patrice Louinet. Hyborian Genesis Part 1: Notes on the Creation of the Conan Stories, pages 441 y 442, The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian; 2002, Wandering Star Books; 2003, Del Rey | Patrice Louinet. La Génesis de Hiboria (1ª parte) Notas sobre la creación de los relatos de Conan, páginas 528 y 529, Conan de Cimmeria, Volumen I (1932 - 1933); 2004, Timun Mas.

Most of the tales starring Conan, as well as some of the other characters created by Howard, are under public domain in the United States and in the countries with a copyright term of the author's life plus 80 years or less, so these can be found in English in many online repositories:

• Robert Ervin Howard - Wikisource, the free online library
• Books by Howard, Robert E. (Robert Ervin) (sorted by popularity) - Project Gutenberg
• Faded Page
• Internet Archive
• Roy Glashan's Library: The Works of Robert E. Howard
• Robert E. Howard (Howard, Robert E. (Robert Ervin), 1906-1936) | The Online Books Page

To obtain a list of Howard's bibliography and its editions in many countries you may consult Howard Works - The Online Robert E. Howard Bibliography

The gamebook La Torre del Elefante

Having introduced gamebooks and Robert E. Howard works it's time to speak, at last, about La Torre del Elefante:

It's a gamebook with nearly 170 pages written by David Palmer, with a cover illustrated by Benito Gallego (Web | DeviantArt | Behance | Blog | Tebeosfera), inside illustrations by José Ángel Elizalde Núñez (Web | Twitter) and maps and layout carried out by JSiL.

The plot of the adventure is organized in 988 different sections allowing readers to enter the city of Hazor (and not Arenjun as L. Sprague de Camp named it), wander its streets and, luckily, discover the secrets hidden in the tower of sorcerer Yara, where it's said the jewel known as "The Heart of the Elephant" is hidden...

To get it the reader chosses a protagonist between four already created adventurer characters (Leyendas de Hiboria says that in future gamebooks readers also will hav the chance of creating their own characters): it may be male or female and being born in the kingdoms of Nemedia, Zingara, Argos or Zembabwei.

The adventurers are defined by a set of attributes, as in roleplaying games, used with the ruleset of the gamebook provided its text asks for it.

The ruleset (which can be freely downloaded along the character sheet from this link) uses attribute tests carried out with three six-sided dice rolls using the following mechanism:

• When rolling, the lowest dice is discarded and the numbers obtained in the other two are added up.
• The previous mechanic has the following exceptions:
• If an outcome of 1 is obtained in one of the three dices the highest one is discarded.
• If after the previous case you have a dice with an outcome of 6 you can roll a dice again (logically the reader will roll the lowest dice anf if you obtain a 1 no other dice will be discarded).
• The roll outcome is added to the aattribute value used in the test (specified in its description), if the number is equal or more than the difficulty number the character will be successful.
• Numbers are rounded up if needed.
• In combat, besides using basic rules, you also use the following ones:
• The starring character always attacks first.
• If the starring character attacks with two weapons, after rolling a 6 he can reroll a second dice.
• The attacking character uses the Strength attribute.
• The defending character uses the Defense attribute.
• If the attack total number is higher than the defense then the difference is substracted from Health as damage points.
• After a combat ending in victory the starring character earns Menace (experience points, which can be used to improve the character attributes) and, sometimes, Renown (which can be used to reroll dice).
• The starring character can also pick up and carry equipment (up to 12 objects), which can improve attributes and are marked in the gamebook in bold text.

In addition to everything described above the gamebook also have a list of keys which allows to establish if the starring character remembers visited places and people he has talked with (these are marked with an X in the appropiate sections in the character sheet whenever the text indicates it so), the marking of sections of the gamebook so the starring characters remembers them (marked with an X in the gamebook or the character sheet) and the chance of saving the game before doing something which might be dangerous (yes, like in a computer game but in paper), although if you abuse of this option the final score of the adventure can decrease a lot.

I have played La Torre del Elefante a couple of times, in both occasions my character died without entering Yara's tower, but is already known that the Hyborian Age is dangerous and not all people can be Conan. I can tell you that I enjoyed what I have read and played and consider that this gamebook can be the perfect substitute of the more classic roleplaying adventure in case you cannot bring together your usual gaming group, if you are also fans of Howard writings and the Sword and Sorcery stories I think you may like the other adventures Leyendas de Hiboria wants to publish.

Hiboria card game

Sample cards - Hiboria

To finish today's post I remind you that the creators of Leyendas de Hiboria also has made available the Hiboria card game completely freely in Print & Play format (Ecosia and Google searches to know more about this matter).

This version is the Spanish translation, plus some fan expansions. of Conan, the original card game created in 2004 by Jason Robinette, which nowadays is discontinued.

I have to admit that I am not a great fan of collectible card games (in some few cases I usually use the cards offered as additions to some roleplaying games and little else), but I think You might be interested on it, wether for themselves or as a supporting feature of the gamebooks offered by Leyendas de Hiboria and, who knows, perhaps its gaming stats can be used as a quick roleplaying game...

This entry it's also available in the following languages:
Castellano Català