I've been playing the Warlock of Firetop Mountain roguelike recently, based on the influential but very simple early-80s Fighting Fantasy gamebook of the same name. It got me thinking about the potential of turning gamebooks and their settings into roguelikes. I'm going to focus on one in particular here, but I'll be very happy to hear alternative suggestions as well as thoughts on this one.
I can see why The Warlock of Firetop Mountain would be chosen as the source material - it's a straightforward dungeon crawl with no flowery extra features, no magic system to speak of, and a generic (therefore easily variable) setting - but the more I think about it, the more I think others might be a better fit. For me, the Lone Wolf series springs to mind.
I think the adventures of the Lone Wolf character would work well. His unlockable (in the books) Kai Disciplines fit into roguelike format without too much difficulty. Some, such as Weaponskill and Animal Kinship, don't require much imagination. Others (Sixth Sense and Mind Over Matter) might need more thought but still shouldn't be difficult. Sixth Sense could easily be enemy detection or magic mapping, and For Mind Over Matter I imagine maybe the Morrowind use of telekinesis - using switches etc/picking up items/whatever at a distance, or not using up a turn to do so.
The setting could be kept open world-ish for an ambitious game but could easily be condensed into a series of dungeons - escaping the Kai Monastery massacre, Ruanon, the Maakengorge caverns, the ice fortress Ikaya, the gargantual sewer complex of the Baga-Darooz, any number of Darklands citadels... The setting itself is also a nice deviation from standard fantasy conventions. In place of kobolds, orcs and trolls we have giaks, vordaks, helghast, drakkarim, xagash, crypt spawn - a whole compendium of foes that aren't just reskins of fantasy standards but actually have their own distinctive creature identities.
Playing the hero character might seem to tempt the
hero trap but a lot of Lone Wolf's missions involve secrecy. Getting out of the ruined monastery without revealing that you survived the battle, getting to Durenor before the Darklords realise what you're doing, capturing Vonotar (which is a lot easier if he doesn't know you're coming). If that's still to heroic it's easy enough to use one of nameless junior Kai Lords who Lone Wolf recruits between adventures.
There's also the potential for class choices. The Kai (e.g. Lone Wolf himself) are basically rangers with a hint of the monk to them; the Knights of the White Mountain are paladins; the Brotherhood of the Crystal Star are magicians; the Herbwardens of Bautar are essentially alchemists.
Anywhere from relatively basic and simple to ambitious and elaborate could work really well with the Lone Wolf setting, I think. Sadly I can't programme. I don't even know what code looks like, and I don't think a rich and engaging roguelike based on a favourite book series would be a good project for Baby's First Code Experiment.
So...anyone else familiar with this and have thoughts about the idea, even if it has to remain hypothetical? (Though if you want to make it, knock yourself out!) Any other people who used to read gamebooks and have a particular book/series they can imagine as a roguelike?
