Post by CharlesX on Apr 30, 2023 19:07:53 GMT
The stats and dice rolling aspect of FF brings another dimension to the books which completely fails if they are impossible to play by the rules (or it's so miserable that you'd only do it as a bet). Livingstone is right of course that almost everyone cheats, but not that everyone cheats all the time, many/most of us at least want the option of completing the books by the rules.
It's a richer experience with the possibility (but hopefully a low to low-ish possibility) of dying even making perfect choices, giving a sense of jeopardy. Perhaps a string of dice rolls might make you change tactics from your intended walkthrough, adding some variation.
As soulreaver said, the FF system is not one which lends itself to having a possible but not trivial run-through on all potential stats. So we can forgive books which are essentially brick walls for SKILL 7ers. (I'd never describe Vault of the Vampire as a bad book because it can be completed in a sane number of playthroughs playing by the rules.) But it's not impossible to do if the author makes an effort. For example, Steve Jackson (US) demonstrated that in his books with different missions (SS) or different gradations or kinds of victory (DotD, RC), not to mention in DotD you get an extra SKILL point for losing your training 'fight' with Cyrano, and there's that opportunity to re-roll your stats completely in the merman baths. That's definitely a plus point, and VotV would be even better if it had some comparable touches.
Conversely it's just unforgivable for books to be (near-)impossible on ALL stats. It's just not that hard to do it properly, so it seems careless or even spiteful.
The original 'one true path' promise was a good one. If you start an adventure with great stats and fall over the finish line at the end with your LUCK on 4 and STAMINA on 1, you should be thinking "Hmm, must have missed a few tricks in this that would have made it easier. I'll find them next playthrough." not "At last, 50 playthroughs after finding out the best route I've finally fluked it, never again."
Edit: non-chance difficulty is more of a judgment call/matter of taste. In general, as has been said, being penalised for failing to do illogical things is always bad. Or at least, we expect there to be a few traps where doing the most logical thing costs a few STAMINA points. But if you repeatedly miss a vital clue because you're failing to dive into acid or kick a bear in the crotch and have no way of knowing that's the wrong choice, that's a problem.
As a principle, I'd suggest that if you put in some sort of puzzle to be worked through which is essential or near-essential, the ratio of your likely readership who can figure it out vs those who are stumped should be (very) high. Inviting people to enjoy an exciting romp based on the cover and title of your book only to cause them misery by slapping them with algebra and lateral thinking halfway through is unkind. Perhaps even more so if the puzzle is very open and you have to be on the author's weird wavelength.
Very much agree with the remarks above the line about chance difficulty. As regards non-chance difficulty, my feelings would be similar to yours - rather than feeling an adventure game is a chore where you try a million things, then try something out-of-the blue, it works (until the next hundred hard points) but you're still left wondering where the logic was, a player should have some sense of logic about it, a sense of enjoyment and narrative flow, and preferably some consistency and an element of storytelling. So, I would say the Monkey Island video games were some of the best of these (and as well, in Monkey Island you cannot be 'killed' except for a single time when you can die and respawn at the exact same point), and I would unfortunately say some of the CYOA were some of the worst, with many of them clearly having had very little effort into development at all. I would say CYOA was a mixed bag, not just childish and inane, because many of them are very dark, perhaps overly so for their kid audience.
As far as gamebooks that are too easy go, I would say some of my favourite gamebooks are those CYOA with many good endings, so long as they are done well. Gamebooks should avoid filler such as "do you want to give up?" or very cliched options like "do you stay and fight or abandon your friends?", although even that can be done well, as one of my favourite Endless Quest is Spell Of The Winter Wizard which is a bit traditional. As you effectively point out those gamebooks which don't involve random elements have the advantage the player will not be cursing that they don't have to make absolutely ridiculous dice rolls, but there is definitely an art about it the same.