The 100 Endings Book Club begins with Heart of Ice for September.
Disclaimer. I'm an affiliate for DriveThru RPG.
Heart of Ice
Heart of Ice by Dave Morris is a diceless gamebook with 454 sections. It's our September book (and the first one) for the 100 Endings Book Club.
The rules take up a page so it's beginner friendly. It's set in a post-apocalyptic earth which has frozen over thanks to a weather AI.
It was originally printed in 1994 (as one of the Virtual Reality series), and is one in the series of Critical IF books. My copy is illustrated on the cover by Jon Hodgson, with interior illustrations by Russ Nicholson.
Dave Morris is a veteran gamebook author who has written and co-written many gamebooks and series, including Fabled Lands, VulcanVerse, Blood Sword, Golden Dragons, ones for HeroQuest, Transformers, Knightmare and more. He even has a Wikipedia page.
Dave is also the author of the Dragon Warriors RPG along with Oliver Johnson. It was published in small paperbacks in the 1980s and has a digital format available as pay-what-you-want. I did a solo actual play of Dragon Warriors last year.
September Options for 100 Endings Book Club
The simple option is Heart of Ice in physical gamebook format. It's also available in several digital formats, including Kindle and on DriveThru Rpg as a pdf. There's a mobile version by Haroldware Solutions for Android and iOS. It's also available on Steam (as Heart of Ice) by Infinite Zone, which has some mixed feedback.
If you've played Heart of Ice to death or didn't enjoy it, then another option is one of the other Critical IF books in the same series (also by Dave Morris). I'll be giving Down Among the Dead Men a try. There's also Once Upon a Time in Arabia and Necklace of Skulls.
The Fantastic Fights podcast has a playthrough in a Bonus Episode (10th April 2022).
Variants to Try
There aren't many rules to Heart of Ice and no dice, so not many rules variations to try. Easy mode would be to take more skills, ignore carrying limits or have more life points.
One thing you do get to choose is your Character, from the 7 presets of Explorer, Bounty Hunter, Spy, Trader, Visionary, Scientist and Mutant. The other option is to make your own, choosing 4 of the 12 different skills.
Here are 4 variant Characters based on 4 basic D&D Classes. What combination would you choose?
- Fighter - Close Combat, Piloting, Shooting, Survival. Plus a Barysal Gun with 6 charges.
- Thief - Agility, Cunning, Roguery, Streetwise
- Wizard - Cybernetics, ESP, Lore, Paradoxing. Plus a psionic focus
- Cleric - Close Combat, Lore, Paradoxing +1 (dependent on deity!). Plus a psionic focus (maybe in a shape of a symbol)
Finishing Up
Feel free to join us on the Rand Roll Discord or at the Gamebooks subreddit.
Vote for October in a week or two. With the theme being Horror.
