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Post by tyrion on Feb 17, 2023 18:16:40 GMT
I'm willing to bet the authors usually didn't put that much thought into this... Surely they had no idea that, 40 years later, some people would still be reading the books and debating about them. IMO, what is fair or not in those situations likely depends on you, the context, and the author's opinion, but since it's not always possible to get the author's opinion, it'll probably just depend on you and the context. I think everybody will agree that if you didn't obtain a key with the number "123" written on it, and you use knowledge from previous playthroughs to unlock a door by going to paragraph 123 even though you didn't obtain the key in this playthrough, that's not legit. You just don't have the key. But if you remember from a previous playthrough that Yaztromo won the troll ears eating contest by eating 400 of them, and answer correctly even though you didn't get the information in this playthrough, I'd say that's legit. The typical FF introduction does encourage you to take notes and use prior knowledge in your next attempts, after all. Your character could have gotten the information before the book's adventure took place. And deciding that your character knows some pop culture trivia can make sense (unlike deciding he can unlock a door without the key, because he remembers a number). That would defeat the whole point of khare then wouldn't it? You could just wander around and breeze through to the north gate, whereupon you go, 'ah yes, I know the correct spell' and off you go.
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Post by pip on Feb 17, 2023 18:32:01 GMT
I'm not talking about Khare or Citadel. The example solely refers to the pop culture quiz in Crypt of the Sorcerer. I'm making a point about how it depends on the context (and what you, the reader, considers legit or not).
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Post by tyrion on Feb 17, 2023 18:51:32 GMT
I'd still contend that you are supposed to gather the required information in the same way that you are supposed to gather certain items. I take the instruction to make a map and take notes bit in the introduction as knowing whether to turn left or right etc (i.e. random decisions), not if you know how many scales the great serpent of the chaos wastes has.
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Post by Wizard Slayer on Feb 20, 2023 12:07:44 GMT
Your character could have gotten the information before the book's adventure took place. And deciding that your character knows some pop culture trivia can make sense (unlike deciding he can unlock a door without the key, because he remembers a number). Only two of the questions are "pop culture", which also happen to be the two you can learn the answers without diversion or cost. Crypt was a bit of a sidetrack though. I'm more interested in examples like House of Hell - a not realistically guessable password that would require a couple of otherwise avoidable penalties to learn.
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Post by CharlesX on Feb 20, 2023 12:57:38 GMT
Perhaps flipping this a little bit, you could say that if you only have three of the special weapon numbers in Eye Of The Dragon, working out the fourth by process of elimination is technically cheating, though this would have to be on basis your adventurer was an idiot . I say Siege Of Sardath does it well - if you miss the clue to knock on the door three times, you have the chance of a special clue. I don't recall whether you have to learn the obscure string of letters for a Dark Elf reply to a greeting but its one you'd never guess. OTOH Jackson is a real master at giving you fake passwords which will kill you!
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