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Post by bloodbeasthandler on Mar 7, 2021 17:22:09 GMT
I’ve been online reading some reviews for gamebooks on specifically gamebook-oriented blogs or the more general sites like Goodreads and one of the things that stands out with some reviewers is their emphasis on ‘originality’. If they read something they believe has been ‘done before’, it’s labelled unoriginal and gets a black mark for it. And when I say done before I mean I’m seeing stuff like this:
[about Black Vein Prophecy]: The "you wake up without memory or knowledge of who you are" trope has already been played, and in a ridiculously awesome way, in Steve Jackson's Creature of Havoc.
And
Black Vein Prophecy drags out the old "you wake up somewhere with amnesia" cliché.
How about this for Talisman of Death...
One of the mid-range FIGHTING FANTASY adventures. The authors are Jamie Thomson and Mark Smith. This one's set on a different world, called Orb, and the adventurer is transported there from Earth at the outset in order to fight evil.
One of the first things that becomes apparent is that the author mines the work of J. R. R. Tolkien for inspiration. Here are just a few of the similar situations:
A band of adventurers are being pursued through huge underground caverns by an army of goblins, led by something huge and demonic. Cf. the Mines of Moria and the Balrog in The Fellowship of the Ring.
The hero is crossing a moorland when he's approached and surrounded by horse-riding warriors who stop him and question his presence. Cf. Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli surrounded by the riders of Rohan in The Two Towers.
The hero is transporting a magical artifact and is often ambushed by horse-riding wraiths who want it for themselves. Cf. the Ringwraiths in Lord of the Rings.
Said magical artifact must be destroyed by taking it to the top of a remote mountain. It gets heavier and more dangerous the closer the hero gets. Cf. Frodo and the ring in Return of the King.
The hero encounters a huge and wily red dragon sleeping atop a mountain of treasure. Cf. Bilbo and Smaug in The Hobbit.
The mid-part of the adventure sidesteps these cliches and is my favourite part of the book. There are multiple possibilities for advancement and the hero must enlist the help of various thieves, rogues and strangers in order to win back his stolen talisman. The ensuing skullduggery, backstabbing and rooftop antics are pretty engaging. Unfortunately, the monster fights are pretty routine, and only the battle with Hawkana, the high priestess, proves anything of a challenge, and the story as a whole is just too cliched to make it one of the better in the series.
I wonder how many readers of the books above even noticed these things? At the time I certainly didn't.
I think in general FF books were quite original and varied, not least because of all the different writers who were employed.
Is this quest for originality particularly strong in science-fiction and fantasy fans in general, or only strong amongst critics and people who post their thoughts on review sites?
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kieran
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Post by kieran on Mar 7, 2021 17:51:23 GMT
A lot of the LOTR similarities did stand out to me on reading Talisman of Death as a child (not that I'd read LOTR at the time but I'd watched the Ralph Bakshi movie loads). Some of the ones you quoted seem a stretch though - surrounded by horse riders, really? Does that scene even happen in the book? But certainly the Talisman getting heavier and you being pursued by wraith-like riders stood out.
The Black Vein Prophecy thing didn't stand out to me because I read BVP years before COH. At any rate, I feel BVP uses the amnesia trope very differently. Plus how many books basically have a premise of "slay the evil wizard"? Why pick on a book for being more similar to one of the more unique books than the more generic multitude?
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sylas
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Post by sylas on Mar 7, 2021 18:11:37 GMT
I was aware of these as they were pointed by Mark Lain (Malthus Dire) in his reviews and on Facebook, though I think others had done before already. The Black Vein Prophecy comparison I feel is the most unfair as other than paragraph 1, the rest of the adventure is nothing like Creature of Havoc.
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Post by bloodbeasthandler on Mar 7, 2021 18:16:43 GMT
- surrounded by horse riders, really? Does that scene even happen in the book? The Warrior women of Fell-Kyrinla I think he's referring to here. The Black Vein Prophecy thing didn't stand out to me because I read BVP years before COH. At any rate, I feel BVP uses the amnesia trope very differently. Plus how many books basically have a premise of "slay the evil wizard"? Why pick on a book for being more similar to one of the more unique books than the more generic multitude? Come to that how many books have you read where the protagonist has amnesia? I think I've read ... umm.... two? No wait it's three - I read 'We can remember it for you wholsesale' two days ago. Although I may have read others but can't remember them for some reason, maybe medical. Also I understand that the writers didn't even read Creature of Havoc. And the books were 4 years apart too. As you say, the 'slay the evil wizard' is far more common but even then, I'm not too bothered about how common it is, as long as it's done well.
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kieran
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Post by kieran on Mar 7, 2021 18:20:53 GMT
The Warrior women of Fell-Kyrinla I think he's referring to here. Ah I know, I meant does such a scene happen in The Two Towers book as opposed to in the Peter Jackson movie which came out years after Talisman of Death? Plus even if it did, getting surrounded by horse-riders happens in so many books and movies.
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sylas
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Post by sylas on Mar 7, 2021 19:08:41 GMT
Come to think of it, saying Black Vein Prophecy as being unoriginal sounds very judgmental. The one aspect that isn't original is the amnesia thing (as already pointed out), and only one other gamebook did that previously. Almost everything else about it is rather unique (I can think of at least 5 different aspects if you're after justification).
So the bigger question would be, how many FF gamebooks can say the same? A handful, maybe not even that? And that is precisely what makes Black Vein Prophecy original after all.
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Post by bloodbeasthandler on Mar 7, 2021 19:41:39 GMT
I think claims of 'lack of originality' get put out by reviewers almost without thinking. Look at this one from Fantasy Book Review for Stormslayer. [they gave it a 9/10 by the way so the reviewer liked it...] www.fantasybookreview.co.uk/Jonathan-Green/Stormslayer.htmlThe story feels a little lacking in originality at times but the numbered paragraphs are descriptive and well written
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Post by bloodbeasthandler on Mar 7, 2021 19:45:50 GMT
Come to think of it, saying Black Vein Prophecy as being unoriginal sounds very judgmental. The one aspect that isn't original is the amnesia thing (as already pointed out), and only one other gamebook did that previously. Almost everything else about it is rather unique (I can think of at least 5 different aspects if you're after justification). So the bigger question would be, how many FF gamebooks can say the same? A handful, maybe not even that? And that is precisely what makes Black Vein Prophecy original after all. If you want to see those quotes I gave above in context, go to goodreads and look up Black Vein Prophecy. The one-star reviews.
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sylas
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Post by sylas on Mar 7, 2021 19:56:54 GMT
Come to think of it, saying Black Vein Prophecy as being unoriginal sounds very judgmental. The one aspect that isn't original is the amnesia thing (as already pointed out), and only one other gamebook did that previously. Almost everything else about it is rather unique (I can think of at least 5 different aspects if you're after justification). So the bigger question would be, how many FF gamebooks can say the same? A handful, maybe not even that? And that is precisely what makes Black Vein Prophecy original after all. If you want to see those quotes I gave above in context, go to goodreads and look up Black Vein Prophecy. The one-star reviews. No need really. They are exactly what you expect them to be: unconstructive, inconclusive, and unjustified. Sometimes people can fall in love with their own opinions so much that they ignore every reasonable argument made against it.
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Post by dragonwarrior8 on Mar 7, 2021 20:56:35 GMT
Im with Kieran on the wraith-like riders as that immediately stood out to me as coming straight from Lord of the Rings. The being surrounded by horse-riders didnt though and that seems like a pretty big stretch. However, Ive come across a couple of gamebooks that have a wizard corrupting the mind of a king and ruling by proxy and I can never help but draw Saruman/Theoden parallels.
This is a bit topical for me at the moment as I have just finished the Warlock magazine adventure "The Dervish Stone" and ooooooo boy. Anyone here who has played this probably knows exactly what I am talking about. George Lucas is owed some serious royalties.
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Post by vastariner on Mar 7, 2021 23:47:14 GMT
I'd never read LOTR so never noticed the similarity.
But as I've pointed out with Sorcery!, there's an element of convergent evolution. There are only so many ways you can achieve certain effects when in a mediaevalpunk world. If you have people pursuing you, there are really only two conveyances of choice; horse or dragon. And dragon would imbalance the task.
And if you are on a quest, there are only so many places the object can be found. Deep in a dungeon, or a forest, or a mountain range. You're not going to have astral projection onto a moon. I suppose you could have the whole thing take place in your mind but that is done occasionally in FF.
I remember one story in the Victor comic where the hero had to find seven keys to unlock a door to find the long-lost king of his oppressed kingdom - and the room inside had a mirror, as only the true heir could get the seven keys. Is that similar to Gundobad? Sort of. But the execution is completely different.
And there is a big difference between the BVP amnesia and CoH amnesia. The former is a consequence of your father's deeds - and you would recover your memory had it not been for the tomb invasion (you are getting it back touching the symbols and spells do pop back to you when certain things trigger them). CoH is because you are no longer yourself, you are a creature. The BVP is far more subtle. Had you remembered your past self, then you'd be your father's child, a sorcerer tainted by evil, another Feior. The apple not falling far from the tree. Because you do not, you are a blank slate. Hence you are master of your own destiny - once you find the true path, of course.
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sylas
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Post by sylas on Mar 8, 2021 0:50:36 GMT
And there is a big difference between the BVP amnesia and CoH amnesia. The former is a consequence of your father's deeds - and you would recover your memory had it not been for the tomb invasion (you are getting it back touching the symbols and spells do pop back to you when certain things trigger them). CoH is because you are no longer yourself, you are a creature. The BVP is far more subtle. Had you remembered your past self, then you'd be your father's child, a sorcerer tainted by evil, another Feior. The apple not falling far from the tree. Because you do not, you are a blank slate. Hence you are master of your own destiny - once you find the true path, of course. You know, I've read BVP about ten times and I've never realized that the tomb-robber had that degree of impact. An act of chance that decided the fate of the kingdom (I'm reminded of the rat in Avengers: Endgame). The layers in this adventure are incredible!
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Post by a moderator on Mar 8, 2021 0:55:48 GMT
I wonder if Sky Lord was original enough for these reviewers.
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Post by sleepyscholar on Mar 8, 2021 1:32:17 GMT
By chance, my last academic paper was about the idea of 'archontic'* fiction, which develops the pretty well-established idea that all fiction builds on and uses what has come before. No less a critic than Northrop Frye points out the absurdity of copyright pretending that fictional works are original (copyright is a whole extra issue, of course), by drawing attention to the way that Chaucer, Shakespeare and Milton all repurpose existing stories in order to produce their own.
There's barely such a thing as an 'original' story in the naïve terms some of the reviewers seem to be employing. All stories employ elements that have been employed before, and in some cases, the elements are recognisable from their prior source, and this generates a large part of their effect. If The Dervish Stone channels Indiana Jones (and doesn't the 'Stone of Shanhara' slightly remind you of 'The Sword of Shannara'?), then the way in which it plays upon the association is a part of its art. If it is nothing more than a call-out which adds nothing, then it may stand out as 'unoriginal'. But if the idea is recontextualised in such a way that you can enjoy the ideas again, then isn't that a good thing? It was good enough for Shakespeare, after all!
The good people on Dumbreads (have I got that the right way round?) didn't enjoy the books they are criticising. And that's fair enough. At least one of the books they are attacking is best described as, what was it? Vegemite? Everyone has stuff they like and associations that work. The only problem comes in that they feel they have to explain their dislike analytically, and they don't possess the analytic skills to do so. Given that virtually the whole fantasy genre explodes archontically* from The Lord of the Rings, it's absurd to go through any work of fantasy literature and just point out the parallels. This even applies to Moorcock's Elric stories, which were deliberately written as anti-Tolkien stories. The important thing is how the tropes are used in the new context.
And I'll add to this that so-called 'unoriginality' is generally regarded as a positive thing in many cases. In the case of music, how many songs are based on a 12-bar blues progression? Why? Because the very accumulation of music using it gives that progression a sort of heft. Is it possible to do a bad, unoriginal 12-bar blues? Yes, of course. But it isn't necessarily the use of the 12-bar progression that makes it so, it's the lack of any of a number of additional features. [Incidentally, I use this example because I dislike the blues progression, and have done so since about 1980.] In the case of genre fiction, readers are looking for familiar features. That's what a genre is! Dungeons & Dragons was the most popular RPG because it mashed up a load of elements from fantasy, not because it was original. Empire of the Petal Throne, which TSR released shortly after D&D, was far more original, deriving as it did from the more sciencey end of pulp fantasy, and with a drastically more distinctive and complex background. But it was a commercial failure, a niche, beloved of the likes of Dave Morris, Oliver Johnson, Jamie Thomson and me (and, significantly, all of those mentioned played it in the same game!)
So anyway, essay aside, my point about the reviewers is that you shouldn't be too hard on them. They don't like the books, which is their prerogative. But they feel pressured to explain why not, and that can be difficult. Claiming 'unoriginality' is an easy way out. It doesn't mean what it says. Instead they are saying 'I liked this idea better in LoTR and I don't think it's deployed well here' or 'Warlock was fun but I didn't need to have it smashed into the Arabian Nights'.
*It's not necessary to know what this means, especially as it comes from Derrida, but let's just say that the idea is that novels are not unique creations, but belong to archives which are constantly being added to.
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Post by The Count on Mar 8, 2021 1:43:44 GMT
Yet all these reviewers saying things are unoriginal are themselves unoriginal, and very lazy...
BVP is one of the most original titles in the series. I'm guessing a lot of those saying its been done before have never actually read the book, or at best have read it once over a decade ago.
The LOTR parallels (Ringwraith expys and the talisman substituting for the ring) in ToD are quite obvious, though big red dragons existed before Smaug and were a fantasy staple long before Tolkien wrote the Hobbit, and in the West anyway were taken from artistic interpretations of the Biblical Revelations.
It reminds me of those music forums where everyone inexplicably likes the same songs and albums and share the same negative opinions of other things.
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Post by sleepyscholar on Mar 8, 2021 2:00:21 GMT
It reminds me of those music forums where everyone inexplicably likes the same songs and albums and share the same negative opinions of other things. I am on a few guitar/gear forums and it is interesting to see this phenomenon, though I will add that you never get a complete consensus. Even on a Radiohead fan site you're going to get someone piping up to say they think Paranoid Android is a mess. And on the more general sites, it's inevitable that some wannabe revolutionary will pop up to declare that The Beatles were a bunch of talentless copyists. The way that popular evaluations of stuff vary, interests me a lot, not just for personal reasons (my books seem to have benefited from time) but from an academic point of view. I observe the way FF fans (of various generations) rate the different books, or Doctor Who fans vote for their favourite story. There are also the variations depending on level of fan involvement. Favourite Doctor Who stories among fans are not so likely to correspond to the favourites of the general audience.
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Post by The Count on Mar 8, 2021 2:37:29 GMT
It reminds me of those music forums where everyone inexplicably likes the same songs and albums and share the same negative opinions of other things. I am on a few guitar/gear forums and it is interesting to see this phenomenon, though I will add that you never get a complete consensus. Even on a Radiohead fan site you're going to get someone piping up to say they think Paranoid Android is a mess. And on the more general sites, it's inevitable that some wannabe revolutionary will pop up to declare that The Beatles were a bunch of talentless copyists. The way that popular evaluations of stuff vary, interests me a lot, not just for personal reasons (my books seem to have benefited from time) but from an academic point of view. I observe the way FF fans (of various generations) rate the different books, or Doctor Who fans vote for their favourite story. There are also the variations depending on level of fan involvement. Favourite Doctor Who stories among fans are not so likely to correspond to the favourites of the general audience. I was a member of a lot of forums between 1998 and 2010, and witnessed some truly bizarre behaviour. Strangely enough, those most militant in their fandom were the first ones to beg for illegal downloads of material and tended to not actually pay for anything. On one forum, people were so deranged at times that death threats for saying you liked another artist or disliked certain songs / albums were a regular occurrence, one member was discovered as having 37 different active accounts (as well as several other inactive and banned aliases), and the webmaster had to call the police after his boyfriend was targeted at work when a high profile poster got banned.
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Post by sleepyscholar on Mar 8, 2021 3:57:23 GMT
You can understand why, up until the 90s, when media studies people got in on the act, pretty well all the academic research into fans came from psychologists and sociologists trying to explore aberrant behaviour. And in fact, as I often suggest, if you look at those behaviours (and I participated in a few myself, in RPG fandom in the 80s) you can see the seeds of what happened when social media took off.
But in a way that last example demonstrates that this is not just a 'thing about fans, who are weird'. It demonstrates what happens when people start being active in social environments with certain characteristics. It's just that fans had constructed such environments long before the Internet made it feasible to offer them to everyone and even monetise them.
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Post by philsadler on Mar 8, 2021 7:28:03 GMT
Im with Kieran on the wraith-like riders as that immediately stood out to me as coming straight from Lord of the Rings. The being surrounded by horse-riders didnt though and that seems like a pretty big stretch. However, Ive come across a couple of gamebooks that have a wizard corrupting the mind of a king and ruling by proxy and I can never help but draw Saruman/Theoden parallels. This is a bit topical for me at the moment as I have just finished the Warlock magazine adventure "The Dervish Stone" and ooooooo boy. Anyone here who has played this probably knows exactly what I am talking about. George Lucas is owed some serious royalties.
Lucas took several of his ideas from an old Japanese film The Hidden Fortress.
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Post by Peter on Mar 8, 2021 8:18:33 GMT
I think claims of 'lack of originality' get put out by reviewers almost without thinking. Look at this one from Fantasy Book Review for Stormslayer. [they gave it a 9/10 by the way so the reviewer liked it...] www.fantasybookreview.co.uk/Jonathan-Green/Stormslayer.htmlThe story feels a little lacking in originality at times but the numbered paragraphs are descriptive and well written
According to that website, this book seems to be part of "Jonathan Green's Fighting Fantasy Series", which includes Armies of Death, Appointment with FEAR and The Trolltooth Wars (exclamation mark!). I am gradually getting the impression that reviewers tend to look at the first few pages, or watch the first 10-15 mins, and base their review on that. District 9 was a case in point, with reviews suggesting it is a film about advanced aliens visiting Earth, when only the opening scenes reflect this and the rest of the film is an in-your-face commentary on apartheid.
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kieran
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Post by kieran on Mar 8, 2021 11:31:08 GMT
Im with Kieran on the wraith-like riders as that immediately stood out to me as coming straight from Lord of the Rings. The being surrounded by horse-riders didnt though and that seems like a pretty big stretch. However, Ive come across a couple of gamebooks that have a wizard corrupting the mind of a king and ruling by proxy and I can never help but draw Saruman/Theoden parallels. This is a bit topical for me at the moment as I have just finished the Warlock magazine adventure "The Dervish Stone" and ooooooo boy. Anyone here who has played this probably knows exactly what I am talking about. George Lucas is owed some serious royalties.
Lucas took several of his ideas from an old Japanese film The Hidden Fortress.
As well as various westerns, Edgar Rice Burroughs novels and WW2 films (The Dambusters most notably), before lovingly sprinkling some Daoist philosophy over the top. But the merit of Star Wars isn't in its originality, but how Lucas brought it all together in such a coherent and entertaining package which developed its own mythos different to anything contained in its many inspirations. I haven't read the Dervish Stone, but not sure it was quite as successful! Harry Potter is another series that isn't exactly original (elements of JRR Tolkien, Jill Murphy and Ursula Le Guin abound), but manages to rise above that unoriginality to develop its own identity. However, unoriginality can definitely be bad if it's just lazy. Going back to Star Wars, The Force Awakens, while entertaining, was a pretty cynical exercise in nostalgia manipulation with no real voice of its own. Which is probably why Disney had no idea how to build on it - opting first to develop a voice that, it turned out, many fans hated (The Last Jedi) before panicking and doubling down on the nostalgia manipulation (Rise of Skywalker).
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Post by bloodbeasthandler on Mar 8, 2021 11:40:09 GMT
One of the things I was thinking about was whether this thirst for 'originality' was particularly strong in sci-fi and fantasy literature compared to other forms of entertainment. And how much it affected and continues to affect FF. What got me wondering in the first place was the talk about 'oh, there'd already been an FF book about armies' plus some of these online reviews I've seen. Even as we speak, the billionth police procedural series is going into production and the trillionth hospital drama episode has just been aired. Endless bodies found besides canals, serial killers on the loose, subdural haematomas and 'goddammit nurse get me 30cc's of methamphetamine! We're losing 'em!!!' Yet if two books in a series of dozens has a plot device including memory loss, or even more absurdly one in which YOU command troops in a battle(!) - there's a problem with the originality. Where is this 'problem' stemming from? Is it the publishers who don't know what they are on about and when the book is being pitched hear only the word 'army' and remember hearing the same word 4 years ago and recoil from it? Self-imposed pressure by the authors worrying about what their peers or the all-powerful critics will say? ....The good people on Dumbreads (have I got that the right way round?) didn't enjoy the books they are criticising. And that's fair enough. At least one of the books they are attacking is best described as, what was it? Vegemite? Everyone has stuff they like and associations that work. The only problem comes in that they feel they have to explain their dislike analytically, and they don't possess the analytic skills to do so. ....So anyway, essay aside, my point about the reviewers is that you shouldn't be too hard on them. They don't like the books, which is their prerogative. But they feel pressured to explain why not, and that can be difficult. Claiming 'unoriginality' is an easy way out. It doesn't mean what it says. Instead they are saying 'I liked this idea better in LoTR and I don't think it's deployed well here' or ' Warlock was fun but I didn't need to have it smashed into the Arabian Nights'. This post has answered my questions to some extent. When I read that bit I've put in bold, whilst accepting it as probably true, the less charitable part of me is filled not with sympathy but with irritation or even scorn and a desire to 'set them right'. My initial urge was to go round these sites on a crusade pouring scorn and acid all over these sorts of reviews. I won't of course, unless this lockdown goes on much longer in which case I can't promise to rule anything out. I think it's because I see what they are saying as being unfounded and unjustified and destructive. Not constructive. Also it's not someone gobbing off in a pub to friends with their words dissipating into the air, but it's a written account which is then affixed to that book and seen by potentially lots of people for years. Your second point there is something I'll try to take on board, as I will that whole section you wrote.
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Post by vastariner on Mar 8, 2021 11:47:31 GMT
And there is a big difference between the BVP amnesia and CoH amnesia. The former is a consequence of your father's deeds - and you would recover your memory had it not been for the tomb invasion (you are getting it back touching the symbols and spells do pop back to you when certain things trigger them). CoH is because you are no longer yourself, you are a creature. The BVP is far more subtle. Had you remembered your past self, then you'd be your father's child, a sorcerer tainted by evil, another Feior. The apple not falling far from the tree. Because you do not, you are a blank slate. Hence you are master of your own destiny - once you find the true path, of course. You know, I've read BVP about ten times and I've never realized that the tomb-robber had that degree of impact. An act of chance that decided the fate of the kingdom (I'm reminded of the rat in Avengers: Endgame). The layers in this adventure are incredible! And it was tomb explorers that changed the fate of the creature in CoH OH MY GOD THEY ARE LITERALLY EXACTLY THE SAME
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Post by bloodbeasthandler on Mar 8, 2021 12:07:13 GMT
Im with Kieran on the wraith-like riders as that immediately stood out to me as coming straight from Lord of the Rings. The being surrounded by horse-riders didnt though and that seems like a pretty big stretch. However, Ive come across a couple of gamebooks that have a wizard corrupting the mind of a king and ruling by proxy and I can never help but draw Saruman/Theoden parallels. This is a bit topical for me at the moment as I have just finished the Warlock magazine adventure "The Dervish Stone" and ooooooo boy. Anyone here who has played this probably knows exactly what I am talking about. George Lucas is owed some serious royalties.
Lucas took several of his ideas from an old Japanese film The Hidden Fortress.
And good for him, I say. The Japanese influence is also to be seen in the Spaghetti Westerns like a Fistful of Dollars. Even more clear is the link between Kurosawa's Seven Samurai and the Magnificent Seven. As long as the writers acknowledge and salute their predecessors, I'm perfectly fine with it. A good story is a good story and can be applied anywhere. With a bit of tinkering, the underlying themes of Shakespeare's MacBeth could just as easily be applied to almost any time or place. Beowulf becomes Eaters of the Dead becomes The 13th Warrior.
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kieran
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Post by kieran on Mar 8, 2021 12:46:18 GMT
The Japanese influence is also to be seen in the Spaghetti Westerns like a Fistful of Dollars... As long as the writers acknowledge and salute their predecessors, I'm perfectly fine with it. My understanding is Leone never accepted Fistful of Dollars was based in any way on Yojimbo, but was forced by Kurosawa's lawyers to put an acknowledgement in.
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Post by bloodbeasthandler on Mar 8, 2021 13:01:34 GMT
The Japanese influence is also to be seen in the Spaghetti Westerns like a Fistful of Dollars... As long as the writers acknowledge and salute their predecessors, I'm perfectly fine with it. My understanding is Leone never accepted Fistful of Dollars was based in any way on Yojimbo, but was forced by Kurosawa's lawyers to put an acknowledgement in. Thanks Kieran, I didn't know that. Check out these two 'reviews' of Slaves of the Abyss. Both of these are the entire 'review', by the way. I'm not editing and cutting. And one touches upon the 'originality' theme I'm on about. I'm assuming these aren't parodies by the way. Review number one... ready? Quite annoying since you aren't aware that you might be on the wrong path before the end of the book.That's it. And the second one: Interesting entry at times, but in other aspects, very similar to other adventures, 2 times, if tbe dice gods do not go for you, you could be finishing early,
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Post by bloodbeasthandler on Mar 8, 2021 13:55:24 GMT
You know, I've read BVP about ten times and I've never realized that the tomb-robber had that degree of impact. An act of chance that decided the fate of the kingdom (I'm reminded of the rat in Avengers: Endgame). The layers in this adventure are incredible! And it was tomb explorers that changed the fate of the creature in CoH OH MY GOD THEY ARE LITERALLY EXACTLY THE SAME Pfft yeah in both bopks you play carbon?-based life forms breathing oxygen and being subject to gravity on the world of titan i mean we’ve seen all this before and theirs magic and the final enemie’s a wizard [yawn!] so its the same old usual boring tropes of fantasy like on one of them a wizard merging with a statue [double yawn!] and in the other the protagonist being a monster [triple yawn!] which weve all seen beofre a million times if i could give them nought stars out of five i would but it doesnt let me
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Post by sleepyscholar on Mar 8, 2021 15:05:41 GMT
Im with Kieran on the wraith-like riders as that immediately stood out to me as coming straight from Lord of the Rings. The being surrounded by horse-riders didnt though and that seems like a pretty big stretch. However, Ive come across a couple of gamebooks that have a wizard corrupting the mind of a king and ruling by proxy and I can never help but draw Saruman/Theoden parallels. This is a bit topical for me at the moment as I have just finished the Warlock magazine adventure "The Dervish Stone" and ooooooo boy. Anyone here who has played this probably knows exactly what I am talking about. George Lucas is owed some serious royalties.
Lucas took several of his ideas from an old Japanese film The Hidden Fortress.
Actually I show my students a fantastic sequence from that film, where Princess Leia the Hime-sama gets to see a local fire festival. They've been hiding the treasure in a cart covered by wood, and they get pressured to chuck it in the fire. R2D2 and C3PO resist, but Solo (or should I say Mifune) realises that they'll arouse too much suspicion if they don't, so they ram the cart right into the bonfire. Sadly, Lucas didn't ape this sequence... (Incidentally, I show the sequence to put in context the -- highly recommended -- film about traditional British culture, Arcadia, which I show them. Arcadia still freaks them out though. We British are very weird.) There's a story about Kurosawa being told that Seven Samurai had been completely ripped off as The Magnificent Seven. He shrugged, and said 'That's all right, I got it from John Ford...'
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Post by sleepyscholar on Mar 8, 2021 15:11:25 GMT
The Japanese influence is also to be seen in the Spaghetti Westerns like a Fistful of Dollars... As long as the writers acknowledge and salute their predecessors, I'm perfectly fine with it. My understanding is Leone never accepted Fistful of Dollars was based in any way on Yojimbo, but was forced by Kurosawa's lawyers to put an acknowledgement in. In that case, my opinion of Leone has gone down drastically. There is no question that Fistful of Dollars is Yojimbo, and none the worse for it.
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Post by sleepyscholar on Mar 8, 2021 15:19:10 GMT
When I read that bit I've put in bold, whilst accepting it as probably true, the less charitable part of me is filled not with sympathy but with irritation or even scorn and a desire to 'set them right'. My initial urge was to go round these sites on a crusade pouring scorn and acid all over these sorts of reviews. Yeah, I know I'm being all Zen and reasonable about this, but that's just something I've learned to do in order to prevent precisely the same reaction you describe from leading me into a pointless shouting match. I will also note that despite writing earlier that I didn't like blues progressions, I've spent a chunk of today watching Wilko Johnson videos, and wondering whether one of my bands might do some Dr Feelgood. Kieran mentioned that Lucas applied Taoism to Star Wars. I'm not completely convinced of that (I don't think Lucas knew what Taoism is), and I think he was more applying what someone had told him about Zen (and of course Ch'an was massively influenced by philosophical Taoism, so you could argue that in the end it does boil down to Taoism). But anyway, the point I wanted to make is that in the circular symbol at the centre of the tai ji (which you may recognise I was hinting at with the cover of Black Vein Prophecy) there is a dot of yang in the midst of yin and a dot of yin in the midst of yang. I always found that a brilliantly observed and simply expressed truth.
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