Fable: The Balverine Order

Fable is a first-person role-playing game set in the city realm of Albion. The city is full of riches and poverty; magic works, but industry is coming. The royal family who run the city have a dark past, and its secrets rule the present. Past versions of the game have been set in, loosely, medieval and renaissance times. The new version, launched to coincide with the book, will take the city into the industrial revolution, launching a war between industry and magic.

The game is unique for the richness of the created universe and for the way the actions of the character are reflected in its appearance and the responses of NPCs to it: if you eat a lot you become fat, if you get into a lot of fights you get scarred and people become wary of you. The interaction of player and game, the richness of the world, makes the franchise unusually appropriate for a tie-in novel, and the novel will include an interactive element.