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Post by sleepyscholar on May 7, 2022 8:23:32 GMT
Ah. Well, I'm an Asian, I'm not that familiar with western sitcoms (or most things in western pop culture, for that matter). Still, you have a great name, for which I salute you.
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Post by petch on May 7, 2022 8:35:35 GMT
If you reckon being a monk is a successful ending in Crimson Tide I can reckon killing the mercenary leader is successful . The fact it was never your intention makes it more delicious. I can see this developing into a thread flame war so I will not elaborate or reply any further on this point. I think we've both set out our cases.
Similarly, when Steve W and I co-wrote The Riddling Reaver, I told Robin Waterfield, who was editing it, that I regarded the Reaver as the hero of the story, and the player characters as the villains. That's brilliant, I never considered that. I'm going to have to reread The Riddling Reaver now, reimagining the Reaver as a Kurtz-type figure with the player characters travelling into their own hearts of darkness.
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Post by nathanh on May 7, 2022 9:32:15 GMT
There's a failure paragraph in Slaves of the Abyss where you stay to protect the random village. Is it implicit in this ending that the baddie will eventually get you and the village? If not, i.e. the rest of the land is doomed but the village is kept safe, then this could be considered an acceptable ending. Authorial intent is obviously that it isn't, but that's either based on knowledge your character doesn't necessarily have, or moral judgements that the player and protagonist might not agree with. From the hero's perspective, there is nobody else to protect these people whereas the nation as a whole has an entire army and a bunch of heroes to save them. But, it was my assumption that if you stay to protect the village you will fail even to protect them, so this is definitely a bad ending.
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Post by CharlesX on May 7, 2022 9:56:16 GMT
There's a failure paragraph in Slaves of the Abyss where you stay to protect the random village. Is it implicit in this ending that the baddie will eventually get you and the village? If not, i.e. the rest of the land is doomed but the village is kept safe, then this could be considered an acceptable ending. Authorial intent is obviously that it isn't, but that's either based on knowledge your character doesn't necessarily have, or moral judgements that the player and protagonist might not agree with. From the hero's perspective, there is nobody else to protect these people whereas the nation as a whole has an entire army and a bunch of heroes to save them. But, it was my assumption that if you stay to protect the village you will fail even to protect them, so this is definitely a bad ending. I have seen this paragraph and both the tone and the wording heavily suggest it is a big mistake to stick around to protect the villagers, words like "pathetically", as you say the player can always disregard the author's intent but both in that and pretty much impartially it seems very much like a fail outcome.
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Post by bloodbeasthandler on May 7, 2022 15:03:42 GMT
A man cannot live under the same sky as his father's murderer. "Valour pleases you, Crom, so grant me one request. Grant me revenge!And if you do not listen, then to Hell with you!" For the most part, we have been conditioned in FF to accept para 400 as the one and only victory ending, so when ambiguous endings do come up, we tend to err on the side of them being failures. It can be one of FF’s strengths that there is such a variation in authors and such room for ‘standalone books’ that we can have books that deal with concepts like revenge, and looking back I wish there was more of that sort of thing. If the series had continued, I think there would have been. After all with 2 or 3 books coming out a year, there was plenty of space for writers to explore other themes. If it is intelligently done, there is a place for exploring moral dilemmas. How far should loyalty extend? Do you sacrifice the few for the many? And so on...
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Post by CharlesX on May 7, 2022 15:12:23 GMT
A man cannot live under the same sky as his father's murderer. "Valour pleases you, Crom, so grant me one request. Grant me revenge!And if you do not listen, then to Hell with you!" For the most part, we have been conditioned in FF to accept para 400 as the one and only victory ending, so when ambiguous endings do come up, we tend to err on the side of them being failures. It can be one of FF’s strengths that there is such a variation in authors and such room for ‘standalone books’ that we can have books that deal with concepts like revenge, and looking back I wish there was more of that sort of thing. If the series had continued, I think there would have been. After all with 2 or 3 books coming out a year, there was plenty of space for writers to explore other themes. If it is intelligently done, there is a place for exploring moral dilemmas. How far should loyalty extend? Do you sacrifice the few for the many? And so on... SFAIK the series is continuing especially with the new J & L coming out, there was a long break (during which You Are The Hero partly filled the void) but I don't think FF has been cancelled at any point since it started, and it's returning now. I think Livingstone's FF has been distinctly disappointing, Higson and Pratchett's, as non-descript as anything else, and Green chose to emphasise gameplay and world-building over philosophy and such things. Livingstone's work so far hasn't filled me with confidence, but Jackson is a big unknown, and if the two are successful, who knows where FF could go?
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Post by bloodbeasthandler on May 7, 2022 15:28:05 GMT
SFAIK the series is continuing especially with the new J & L coming out, there was a long break (during which You Are The Hero partly filled the void) but I don't think FF has been cancelled at any point since it started, and it's returning now. Yes, I see what you mean. But there was the hiatus from 1995 to 2002 when Wizard reintroduced them... and until 2005 they were all reprints (and even then Eye of the Dragon was a resurrection of another previously seen mini-adventure, wasn't it?) When I said "If the series had continued..." I was rather meaning 'If the series had continued as it had been...'. In its heyday we were getting... what.. six or seven new titles a year? And even during the death-throes of the series - 1995 - we saw three new ones - Magehunter, Revenge of the Vampire, Curse of the Mummy.
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Post by CharlesX on May 7, 2022 16:08:03 GMT
Beneath Nightmare Castle has the ending where you save the townspeople but don't smash Xakhaz or the Sorceress, but as Peter points out the fact it says "you have failed" is a good indicator it is not a successful outcome, and I don't think I'd regard it as such. Prove me wrong. It also has possibly the most out-there gamebook ending where you are teleported somewhere on the other side of the universe!
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Post by CharlesX on May 7, 2022 20:17:06 GMT
How about the City Of Thieves reference where you go to bed in Zanbar Bone's tower (because you are a stupid idiot), get poison-gassed in the middle of the night, die instantly, become an undead Spirit Stalker in the service of Zanbar Bone?
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sylas
Baron
"Don't just adventure for treasure; treasure the adventure!"
Posts: 1,679
Favourite Gamebook Series: Fighting Fantasy, Way of the Tiger
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Post by sylas on May 7, 2022 20:31:54 GMT
Beneath Nightmare Castle has the ending where you save the townspeople but don't smash Xakhaz or the Sorceress, but as Peter points out the fact it says "you have failed" is a good indicator it is not a successful outcome, and I don't think I'd regard it as such. Prove me wrong. It also has possibly the most out-there gamebook ending where you are teleported somewhere on the other side of the universe! Getting to smash the Sorceress would have been a good solid ending Xakhaz, not so much.
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