Poll: Best Paul Mason / Steve Williams gamebook

[petch]

This should be interesting. The fact that Slaves of the Abyss finished very top of the rankings thread would suggest it is the heavy favourite here, however forum members have in the past cited both Black Vein Prophecy and The Crimson Tide as among their favourite books in the series, Magehunter has rarity value as well as quality, and the Riddling Reaver clearly has his fans as he won the character battle last year. Could an upset be on the cards?

Poll closes at 10pm Monday 24th.

[nathanh]

Tricky one. I've only played Slaves and Prophecy. Both are intriguing and mysterious. Both are quite spiteful towards the player, but only Prophecy feels unfairly so. The story is probably marginally better in Prophecy, although rather difficult to follow. Slaves has one of the best failure paragraphs in FF. Overall, Slaves wins it. Both good books though.

[The Count]

Black Vein Prophecy is exquisite and gets my vote, however I expect Slaves to win this

[terrysalt]

All of his books are great but the body swapping in Magehunter is cool so it gets my vote.

[vastariner]

Tight between the first two. The lack of an unfair roll tilted it towards SotA for me. BVP has the better overall story, but SotA is the better adventure; you get clues as to who you are and what you should do in BVP, but SotA is very much an average adventurer way outside their wheelhouse, but still plugging along nevertheless. It's like in the Morte d'Arthur. The Grail is achieved by

SPOILER: Click to show

two of the absolute best knights, Sir Galahad and Sir Perceval, but also a plodder, Sir Bors. About his only storyline is on the quest itself, where he resists a number of temptations that want to take him on illusory side-quests. He's either suffused with faith or outrageously bloody-minded. But either way he is, at best, a second-division knight who suddenly finds himself in the Champions League. You're expecting Lancelot but he blotted his copybook.

[terrysalt]

I haven't read it but I hope the most important character in all Arthurian lore, Dennis the political peasant, is featured prominently in Morte d'Arthur.

[CharlesX]

Jan 22, 2022 12:03:06 GMT terrysalt said:

I haven't read it but I hope the most important character in all Arthurian lore, Dennis the political peasant, is featured prominently in Morte d'Arthur.

Is that a reference to Monty Python \ Oink! \ Viz or an FF comic strip etc. or just random comedy?
  I don't recall there being a Dennis in the Roger Lancelyn Green I've read  .

[terrysalt]

Monty Python.

[kieran]

Magehunter for me: great villain, well-written companion, a fun concept, body swapping shenanigans, loads of atmosphere. The best part is trying to work out how to employ the treatise of mage hunting (designed for a world where mages are rare and evil) in a world where they're common and can be good as well as evil. It has its flaws: the final battle is too hard, the fish out of water concept doesn't work for a reader who's fairly familiar with Titan and I wish it allowed for more exploration - though this last element is a backhanded compliment given that there's so much of interest off the one true path.

Slaves is well-written, great story and characters, fairly designed but ridiculously linear with a pointless time track.

Black Vein Prophecy is probably the most intriguing and atmospheric book in the series. Even after you beat it, there's still questions to be asked. It's too hard and some odd things can happen if you make choices the writers didn't expect ("Um, why am I a general now?") but definitely memorable.

Crimson Tide goes for a much more personal quest and takes a lot of unconventional approaches to the extent that even the win conditions aren't very clear. Not completely successful but certainly interesting.

Riddling Reaver is a great read though I wonder if it's all that much fun to play given how much of it is the Reaver causing as much frustration as possible.

[sylas]

Black Vein Prophecy for me though I am aware it's a pretty marmite adventure; those who get it regard it as a masterpiece for the most part, but it's also very hard to follow making it understandable if others have very opposing views.

Slaves of the Abyss is also great and has broader appeal among FF readers. I'd be surprised if it didn't win the vote.

The Crimson Tide I appreciate for its cleverness and final solution. However, like Black Vein Prophecy before it, it is very difficult to follow and no real indication of whether or not you are on the correct path or even a meaningful one. Due to the way in which it is meant to be solved, I find it the hardest of the bunch which lessens my enjoyment of it overall.

Magehunter is the second hardest book to navigate after Chasms of Malice. Of Paul Mason's books, this one probably has the fewest of plot twists and therefore the easiest to follow. Despite that, the bodyswapping is somewhat frustrating at times and the story isn't as intriguing as the others. I don't really like the art in this one either which is a shame as I am normally a fan of Russ Nicholson.

The Riddling Reaver. I love this book! If you get the right players for it (those who appreciate puzzles and brainteasers) it's so much fun. The story itself is structured well with very imaginative encounters and various ways to reach later parts of the book. The Reaver himself is one of my favourite FF villains and he's right in the thick of the adventure on many occasions whether you know it or not. The only reason I didn't choose this one is due to it needing a bunch of players and a good DM to run it so, solo adventures win in that regard.

[petch]

My gut feeling that there could be an upset here was way off. Sylas put it well: Black Vein Prophecy and The Crimson Tide seem to be divisive books, but their advocates are passionate about them. I thought that there might just be enough of their champions on the forum - the marmite-lovers, if you like - to run things close here. As it was, though, Slaves of the Abyss smashed the record previously held by Deathtrap Dungeon and Daggers of Darkness for the biggest winning margin in these polls so far, and in doing so has the opportunity to go for the double by competing to win the final of these polls on top of already finishing top of the rankings thread.

[sleepyscholar]

Shame, really. I voted for Magehunter, natch. Interesting, given your comments about BVP and TCT, that it was Magehunter that ended up with the same score as BVP.

Very happy to see the conversation diverge into Monty Python & The Holy Grail along the way, though. There's a heavily Dennis-influenced character in BVP, after all.

[petch]

I went for Magehunter here too, which actually ended up ruining my streak as prior to this poll every book I'd voted for went on to win their respective polls. In my little mind, this made me a discerning gamebook connoisseur, but in reality it probably just makes me a blandly conventional dullard.

[bloodbeasthandler]

Jan 22, 2022 13:39:00 GMT kieran said:

Crimson Tide goes for a much more personal quest and takes a lot of unconventional approaches to the extent that even the win conditions aren't very clear. Not completely successful but certainly interesting.

You can't fault Crimson Tide for its ambition, that's for sure. 
A thought just now occurred to me - I wonder how it would have turned out if it had been set up like a Fabled Lands book. 
'Sandbox' style environment, codewords all over the place, but keeping those alternative endings in.

Would that work better? 

[kieran]

Jan 25, 2022 18:22:46 GMT bloodbeasthandler said:

Would that work better? 

Quite possibly. Or a few of the Virtual Reality Books (2, 4 and 6) have a sort of semi-sandbox approach where there is an overlying narrative but you spend a lot of time exploring and doing side quests. That would maybe have suited Crimson Tide.

[bloodbeasthandler]

I like that the books tie into one another in some way and that the names often mean something (in Chinese or Greek or whatnot).

There is a sense of continuity from Riddling Reaver through to Magehunter (like the rulers of Kallamehr: Bluestone -> Carolina -> Asiah Albudur, and nice little asides like the storyteller al-Fakik in FF57 relating the events of FF32 (in paragraph 39).

And there are Easter eggs like the evil wizard Abdul Alazrad mentioned in Magehunter who surely can have had nothing to with writing the Necronomicon, can he?
There's probably a thread all of its own for this subject and at some point I might sit down with a pen and paper and note down everything I find.

[sleepyscholar]

Jan 25, 2022 23:30:41 GMT bloodbeasthandler said:

There is a sense of continuity from Riddling Reaver through to Magehunter (like the rulers of Kallamehr: Bluestone -> Carolina -> Asiah Albudur, and nice little asides like the storyteller al-Fakik in FF57 relating the events of FF32 (in paragraph 39).

In the context of this poll, surely it is significant that Al-Fakik tells the set-up to Slaves, but when it comes time for the actual story, his 'head falls forward onto his chest. Moments later a rasping snore emerges.' Could this be a comment on the quality of that book?

[kieran]

Jan 25, 2022 23:30:41 GMT bloodbeasthandler said:

like the rulers of Kallamehr: Bluestone -> Carolina -> Asiah Albudur

As an aside, I've often wondered how Asiah became ruler. It's possibly explained somewhere in Magehunter but in Slaves it seems that Madhaerios is the heir apparent.

[bloodbeasthandler]

Jan 25, 2022 23:44:31 GMT sleepyscholar said:

Jan 25, 2022 23:30:41 GMT bloodbeasthandler said:

There is a sense of continuity from Riddling Reaver through to Magehunter (like the rulers of Kallamehr: Bluestone -> Carolina -> Asiah Albudur, and nice little asides like the storyteller al-Fakik in FF57 relating the events of FF32 (in paragraph 39).

In the context of this poll, surely it is significant that Al-Fakik tells the set-up to Slaves, but when it comes time for the actual story, his 'head falls forward onto his chest. Moments later a rasping snore emerges.' Could this be a comment on the quality of that book?

I doubt it! 
He lives in one of the most run-down parts of town near the docks, has lost his front door, and is the sort of person who spits on his own floor. When he wakes up he thinks he's being burgled and goes for you with a knife. 

The man's a mess, a crackhead, or off his head on whatever it is they smoke in Kallamehr. I don't rate him as a literary critic so pay no attention to him.   

[sleepyscholar]

Jan 26, 2022 18:39:24 GMT bloodbeasthandler said:

Jan 25, 2022 23:44:31 GMT sleepyscholar said:

In the context of this poll, surely it is significant that Al-Fakik tells the set-up to Slaves, but when it comes time for the actual story, his 'head falls forward onto his chest. Moments later a rasping snore emerges.' Could this be a comment on the quality of that book?

I doubt it! 
He lives in one of the most run-down parts of town near the docks, has lost his front door, and is the sort of person who spits on his own floor. When he wakes up he thinks he's being burgled and goes for you with a knife. 

The man's a mess, a crackhead, or off his head on whatever it is they smoke in Kallamehr. I don't rate him as a literary critic so pay no attention to him.   

Yes, but he's not a literary critic: he's the one telling the story!

[sleepyscholar]

Jan 26, 2022 11:10:48 GMT kieran said:

Jan 25, 2022 23:30:41 GMT bloodbeasthandler said:

like the rulers of Kallamehr: Bluestone -> Carolina -> Asiah Albudur

As an aside, I've often wondered how Asiah became ruler. It's possibly explained somewhere in Magehunter but in Slaves it seems that Madhaerios is the heir apparent.

That, as they always say when they can't remember something about their own work, is a whole other story!

[a moderator]

Jan 26, 2022 23:48:07 GMT sleepyscholar said:

Jan 26, 2022 18:39:24 GMT bloodbeasthandler said:

I doubt it! 
He lives in one of the most run-down parts of town near the docks, has lost his front door, and is the sort of person who spits on his own floor. When he wakes up he thinks he's being burgled and goes for you with a knife. 

The man's a mess, a crackhead, or off his head on whatever it is they smoke in Kallamehr. I don't rate him as a literary critic so pay no attention to him.   

Yes, but he's not a literary critic: he's the one telling the story!

Isn't there some form of literary criticism inherent in deciding which story to tell?