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Post by pip on Aug 1, 2023 14:13:45 GMT
I love The Crimson Tide, and can hardly imagine how frustrating it would be to have your carefully crafted gameplay ruined by an editor randomly deciding "Let's give this opponent a Skill score of 12 instead of 6, just because I can. Did I playtest this, or did I give it any careful consideration? No, but 12 is cooler than 6.". By the time I played this one, I was already accustomed to nearly impossible gamebooks like Crypt of the Sorcerer, and had already given up on the random aspect of FF (something I never was too interested in to begin with, I always loved trying to figure out the true path, but failing repeatedly because of tough random dice rolls? Meh.) So it never really bothered me that much, because I had stopped bothering playing fights legitimately...
Ian Livingstone's previous philosophy of "You cheat, don't you? So let's make it nearly impossible to beat, since you won't play by the rules anyway.", which must have influenced the editor here, is like a serpent eating its tail. If you make it impossible, of course we're going to cheat.
Keeping that in mind, this is a wonderful book to figure out, I love how your character grows up throughout the story, and the use of codewords here is among the most original puzzles featured in the series.
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Post by CharlesX on Aug 1, 2023 14:24:29 GMT
Well, this has been mentioned before, but the Skill 12 Mudworm is both on a weird route that would not allow a proper victory let alone be somewhere close to the true path, but might even be a clever move to encourage readers to use the true path (wishful thinking?). I don't think it's the worst error I've seen in any gamebook. I don't necessarily think Pip is correct above on the basis most other routes and more importantly the proper victory can be achieved and an extremely dark albeit not impossible route seems legitimate if not particularly escapist or fashionable. This might not be a popular view, though & I think it's more likely the editor didn't know what he was doing (like Sir Ian ).
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Post by pip on Aug 1, 2023 14:40:51 GMT
TBH I forgot what the true path was here (it's been too long), so if fighting the Mudworm prevents you from reaching the best ending anyway, then yes, I suppose it's still a drag but is not as bad.
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sylas
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Post by sylas on Aug 1, 2023 15:13:13 GMT
TBH I forgot what the true path was here (it's been too long), so if fighting the Mudworm prevents you from reaching the best ending anyway, then yes, I suppose it's still a drag but is not as bad. Fighting the Mudworm is not critical to reaching the best ending fortunately.
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Post by slloyd14 on Aug 1, 2023 15:52:15 GMT
TBH I forgot what the true path was here (it's been too long), so if fighting the Mudworm prevents you from reaching the best ending anyway, then yes, I suppose it's still a drag but is not as bad. Fighting the Mudworm is not critical to reaching the best ending fortunately. Correct. You can go on the road and then distract some mercenaries. Unfortunately this means losing 2 stamina so if your initial roll is 2, you can't win.
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Post by slloyd14 on Aug 1, 2023 15:54:52 GMT
I completely agree about Bloodbones. The hiatus gave JG time to reflect, take feedback on board and work on his craft, which lead to him probably tweaking a few numbers and adding a few bonuses.
He knew exactly how to balance a book by Howl of the Werewolf which also carried over into Stormslayer and Night of the Necromancer.
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Post by CharlesX on Aug 1, 2023 16:28:32 GMT
I completely agree about Bloodbones. The hiatus gave JG time to reflect, take feedback on board and work on his craft, which lead to him probably tweaking a few numbers and adding a few bonuses. He knew exactly how to balance a book by Howl of the Werewolf which also carried over into Stormslayer and Night of the Necromancer. As far as FF goes, yeah. I'll be up-front I haven't read many 2010s and 2020s dice-based gamebooks by Jon Green, but his Alice in Wonderland and Oz gamebooks are unbalanced in gameplay terms as well as certain puzzles and inconsistencies. Elaborating, I reckon his Curioser and Curioser and Over the Rainbow were too sadistic in terms of being much more disadvantageous than beneficial.
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Post by sylas on Aug 1, 2023 20:57:10 GMT
I completely agree about Bloodbones. The hiatus gave JG time to reflect, take feedback on board and work on his craft, which lead to him probably tweaking a few numbers and adding a few bonuses. He knew exactly how to balance a book by Howl of the Werewolf which also carried over into Stormslayer and Night of the Necromancer. As far as FF goes, yeah. I'll be up-front I haven't read many 2010s and 2020s dice-based gamebooks by Jon Green, but his Alice in Wonderland and Oz gamebooks are unbalanced in gameplay terms as well as certain puzzles and inconsistencies. Elaborating, I reckon his Curioser and Curioser and Over the Rainbow were too sadistic in terms of being much more disadvantageous than beneficial. Alice is actually one of the most balanced gamebooks when it comes to character creation. Curiouser is a disadvantage but there's nothing stopping you from not using it. The chess puzzle is the only major flaw that I can see, but gameplay and combats are all winnable with almost no matter what stats you choose to begin with.
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Post by CharlesX on Aug 2, 2023 5:16:45 GMT
As far as FF goes, yeah. I'll be up-front I haven't read many 2010s and 2020s dice-based gamebooks by Jon Green, but his Alice in Wonderland and Oz gamebooks are unbalanced in gameplay terms as well as certain puzzles and inconsistencies. Elaborating, I reckon his Curioser and Curioser and Over the Rainbow were too sadistic in terms of being much more disadvantageous than beneficial. Alice is actually one of the most balanced gamebooks when it comes to character creation. Curiouser is a disadvantage but there's nothing stopping you from not using it. The chess puzzle is the only major flaw that I can see, but gameplay and combats are all winnable with almost no matter what stats you choose to begin with. My point is more that with Alice the tray is too beneficial, the highest of the codewords ('Phantasm') when squaring off at the end can only be attained with heavy difficulty (arguably an inconsistency, like his Temple Of The Spider-God where you are asked if you have something (sacrificial knife?) where it is not just hard or very hard but impossible you do, so long as you're after proper victory), the battles are easy after you have the tray. It was you who remarked in the Oz thread you thought his Oz was too easy.
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Post by petch on Aug 2, 2023 11:02:56 GMT
27 - The Citadel of Chaos
I still find it quite remarkable that this is only the second Fighting Fantasy book ever released. The only indication of the series' immaturity I can see is the slightly barebones descriptive work from Jackson - he would later go on to develop a more confident, fleshed out writing style. Apart from that, everything about this is just so accomplished. It's perfectly balanced, and actually coheres to the (usually erroneous) claim in the rules sections of those early books that 'the one true way involves a minimum of risk and any player, no matter how weak on initial dice rolls, should be able to get through fairly easily'. There is such a way, but it's not easy to find, and requires a few compulsory spells in your initial spell selection, which shows the care that Jackson put into planning his dungeon. Speaking of spells, the magic system employed here is brilliant. I'm not sure that FF ever topped it with a better way of using magic - and I'll reiterate, this is the second book. It's straightforward in its application, providing you with a Magic stat that allows you to pick the corresponding number of spells, but shines with a well considered list of spells and includes in the adventure itself numerous ways to use each, making any selection potentially viable.
It's not just the magic system that I think is best-in-series. It also has what I consider to be the greatest single climactic encounter in FF. I've enthused about the Balthus Dire fight before in my 'Best boss fights' thread, and because I'm feeling too lazy to try to reword what I said there in a different way, I'm just going to copy and paste it here as I think it still sums up my thoughts rather neatly:
It's such a brilliantly, intricately and deviously crafted encounter that I remember being convinced for a period as a youngster that it was impossible to beat him other than by fighting him. When I finally worked out how to do it, it was a revelation. It's lengthy, complex, requires the forethought of the correct spell selection needed to survive, and intelligent choices throughout or he can beat you in multiple frustrating yet entertaining ways. And of course, if you really can't do it the more cerebral way, you can always strongarm your way through by battling him as an alternative, which is how fights against high Skill opponents really should have been used in the series until certain authors (looking at you, Ian) made mandatory rock hard battles on the path to victory almost the norm. I don't think FF ever bettered it as a final boss fight, which given how much the series, and gamebooks as a whole, were in their infancy at the time, is a pretty remarkable achievement.
26 - Seas of Blood
Being an FF aficionado can be exhausting. Only last month, I thwarted the diabolical schemes of five different evil wizards, saved the world on no less than three occasions, and earned the love, adulation and undying gratitude of Libra knows how many villages and hamlets. Boooooring. Surely there must be more to life than constantly being such an all round great guy. Plaintive sigh.
What's that, you say? A chance for a completely different kind of adventure? One motivated entirely by vanity and avarice? One where you get to forcibly abduct innocent people and sell them into slavery? Well, I'm not sure about that last thing, I mean I did only just renew my standing order to Amnesty International the other day...oh, what the hell. Sign me up.
It starts with a wager. When I was at school, my two friends Mark and Ben made a bet with each other around who could eat the most disgusting thing. This escalated until they were caught by one of the dinnerladies eating mud from off of the ground of the playing field. The bet in Seas of Blood is very nearly as stupid. Yourself and fellow massive bastard Abdul the Butcher decide to put your own lives, as well as those of your respective crews, at risk in an utter pricks' plan to race to distant Nippur, sacking and pillaging as you go to accumulate the highest total of loot, in order to prove once and for all who is the biggest complete arsehole to sail the seas.
There's a significant step up in difficulty here from the comparative ease of Chapman's previous two sci-fi flavoured entries, as there are lots of places you can sail to in order to ransack your booty, but only a specific few that will allow you to accumulate enough to outdo your rival. It's an appealing open structure that allows you to experiment with plotting different routes through the Inland Sea, visiting different islands or coastal towns to discover where hides the richest pickings. Andrew Chapman may not have been the most talented of writers to have contributed to FF, but what he lacks in descriptive flair he more than makes up for with his ability to design a cracking set piece, and thanks to the wide variety of places you can go on offer here, Seas of Blood is full of them. Highlights for me are surviving an encounter with an alluring witch who transforms your crew into livestock (one of its many nicely incorporated Homeric references), trying your hand at the several games of skill and chance available at the seedy gambling pits at Calah, and a fantastic final encounter with a Cyclops that eschews the normal combat rules of FF in favour of something much more original and creative. Exploring it all is a joy, and makes Seas of Blood black-hearted, grog-swilling, morally bankrupt fun.
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Post by CharlesX on Aug 2, 2023 11:07:56 GMT
I agree with Petch's high regard about both gamebooks! Seas Of Blood's biggest problem is its difficulty, and for me that isn't enough to make it a bottom half gamebook.
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Post by King Gillibran on Aug 2, 2023 13:12:37 GMT
I totally agree with your comments on Citadel of Chaos. Citadel of Chaos is definitly one of my favourite books and I still cant believe it was only book 2. Though some of the other best of Fighting Fantasy happened then. Books 5, 6, and 10 especially stand out with me.
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sylas
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Post by sylas on Aug 2, 2023 14:51:09 GMT
Alice is actually one of the most balanced gamebooks when it comes to character creation. Curiouser is a disadvantage but there's nothing stopping you from not using it. The chess puzzle is the only major flaw that I can see, but gameplay and combats are all winnable with almost no matter what stats you choose to begin with. My point is more that with Alice the tray is too beneficial, the highest of the codewords ('Phantasm') when squaring off at the end can only be attained with heavy difficulty (arguably an inconsistency, like his Temple Of The Spider-God where you are asked if you have something (sacrificial knife?) where it is not just hard or very hard but impossible you do, so long as you're after proper victory), the battles are easy after you have the tray. It was you who remarked in the Oz thread you thought his Oz was too easy. -Yeah the tray is kinda broken but I don't feel it takes away from the overall design of the adventure and some opponents can still be deadly to fight against. -Phantasm too improbable to get? Good job you don't have to have it to win. Maybe it's not meant to be included for a 'proper victory'. -I remarked that Oz was too easy? I suppose I did. I still stand by that.
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Post by thealmightymudworm on Aug 2, 2023 21:12:35 GMT
TBH I forgot what the true path was here (it's been too long), so if fighting the Mudworm prevents you from reaching the best ending anyway, then yes, I suppose it's still a drag but is not as bad. That's right, the stats of the *cough* almighty mudworm are as irrelevant as those of the House of Hell kitchen ghoul really. It's just a little embarrassing (as sleepyscholar noted) that these things are supposed to be regularly cropping up in the paddy fields without causing death en masse. Also YOU (a child with a sharpened twig) are supposed to have killed one already according to the Background. Fighting the Mudworm is not critical to reaching the best ending fortunately. Correct. You can go on the road and then distract some mercenaries. Unfortunately this means losing 2 stamina so if your initial roll is 2, you can't win. Yes the true path involves a necessary 2 STAMINA point loss, although if you agree with my interpretation of the rules that problem can be circumvented to give even a minimum stats character a fighting chance.
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Post by thealmightymudworm on Aug 3, 2023 3:34:52 GMT
29 - The Crimson TideI think I struggled with the ranking of this one more than I did any other book, and that's because it's a title that I wanted to love a lot more than I actually did. I wanted to love it because of its fantastic writing. In many ways it's the gold standard for the heights the writing in the series could achieve. Just as a small example of this, take reference 72, from which the book takes its title and which I think is my favourite fail ending in all FF. If you have a copy of the book handy, grab it. Have a quick look at it now. It's bloody great. Edgar Allan Poe would have been proud of its brutal, chilling economy of language. I wanted to love it because of its ambition. Taking place over many years, your character develops and matures, not just physically with the gradual enhancing of your raw attributes that that brings, but as a person, moulded to an extent by the decisions that you the player make for them. Do you want them to be completely fixated on pursuing that crimson tide of revenge? You can do that. Or, you can abandon it and become a monk, or a gladiator, or just return to your simple life as a peasant. It's rare to see actual character development in FF, let alone give the player control of shaping it. I wanted to love it because of its heart. The Crimson Tide is not alone in starting with the killing of the protagonist's family or friends, but it is unique in making the player question whether single-mindedly hunting down and slaying those responsible will allow them to heal. In the black and white worlds of other titles, you kill the villain, you are avenged, game over. The Crimson Tide is mature enough to introduce shades of grey and moral ambiguity. I wanted to love it because of its setting. Taking place in the aftermath of the events of Black Vein Prophecy, Mason is once again confident enough in the sophistication of his readership to understand that that book's conclusion, where good ruler overthrows bad ruler, doesn't automatically make everything instantly a-ok, and the lands are rife with unrest, civil war, marauding bands and political vacuums. The reason I didn't love it as much as I wanted to was down to its complexity and difficulty. That's unusual, because these are normally positives in my book; a well concealed, intricate solution to a title shows that care and intelligence have been put into its planning. It's just that the difficulty of The Crimson Tide is so slippery that it caused me no small amount of frustration. The key to solving it is in the collection of code words. That's nothing new to FF, code words had been used before. Usually, however, they're treated as a substitute for a key item - as in, you reach a reference, it asks you whether you have such-and-such a word written down on your Adventure Sheet, if so, turn to x. Paul Mason, being the great defier of FF convention that he is, takes them and uses them in a completely different and original way. So, in my numerous failed attempts at the book, I had been travelling along different paths, collecting different code words, and getting nowhere, when suddenly I realised I had not seen any instruction as to what to do with these words. And that's when it struck me, in a moment of Joycian epiphany: 'Oh Christ yeah, it's spelling out a phrase isn't it?'. It was simultaneously exasperating and a moment of grudging admiration for the cleverness of the solution that had been eluding me. The problem is, even once I'd worked that out, I still couldn't fricking do it. Such is the labyrinthine complexity of the book's design, I was repeatedly finding myself wandering aimlessly, desperately trying to find the exact combination of code words from the multitude of ones available that the book demanded. I get the impression that the correct code words are supposed to have been placed strategically at key points of your character's road to maturity, but unless I'm missing something, that didn't seem to marry up with where they actually are. I mean, I get why learning inner calm at the monastery would be such a moment for example, but why is one hidden behind the encounter with the Death's Messenger? Further, at the point in the text when you actually put the phrase together and apply its instruction, what you've learned doesn't really correspond to what is happening at that time. When I did finally manage to solve it, it just left me with the impression that the book was so focussed on concealing such a fiendishly complicated puzzle, it forgot to implement it in a meaningful way. And the process of actually trying to solve it was so draining that at some point I forgot all of its very admirable qualities, and was enduring rather than enjoying it. Oh and it also has a messed up Mudworm fight too. I too have very mixed feelings about The Crimson Tide as I've mentioned elsewhere. On first encounter I just failed to complete it. I'm pretty sure this was partly due to the fact that I wasn't keeping a proper Adventure Sheet at the time. Why would that be necessary? After all, in other books like Moonrunner which was the previous book I'd played, I could easily remember whether or not the words rotkod, esproc, cainam... etc had been mentioned, so why would it be important to write these down?
There's a double problem: including a puzzle which requires a lot of persistence, excellent comprehension skills and some algebra in a series for which the fanship includes 9 year olds (some of whom are not that brilliant) which feels a bit like including a key plot based around Shakesperian sonnets in a Transformers movie. But also the puzzle is well shrouded so that you can miss that there's something to look for at all. Most of the words in the book are the subject of straightforward call-backs, (never, art, arena, silk, green, magic...) including some of the words which are also in the message (offers, sword and to, I think). Perhaps the most maddening part is the scholar's puzzle: it's a tricky little calculation which it's very tempting to just cheat your way past, but even if you attempt an answer, you discover he was just bluffing anyway. So on your next playthrough you know you can just say anything and needn't write it down. (In fairness: the Notes section at the end of the Introduction does say "You should make sure that you copy the words down correctly, and that you list them in the order in which you come across them." but making this a bit more prominent might have helped!)
On the other hand, if you do get it, it's a much subtler and rewarding read than most.
Personally I don't think the Death's Messenger bit is particularly difficult to understand. There is a battle within yourself, presumably whilst you are dreaming, as to whether your lust for revenge is all encompassing or you remain open-minded. It's not a physical fight as you find your STAMINA fully restored even if you lose.
Perhaps the best way to understand the whole sentence leading to the showdown with Pantu is that if you have achieved personal development to the point of controlling your own lust for revenge you are aware of the presence of a manipulative agent of havoc and death. You recognise him as a danger and an enemy, even more so than the mercenary leader himself.
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Post by slloyd14 on Aug 3, 2023 7:00:37 GMT
TBH I forgot what the true path was here (it's been too long), so if fighting the Mudworm prevents you from reaching the best ending anyway, then yes, I suppose it's still a drag but is not as bad. That's right, the stats of the *cough* almighty mudworm are as irrelevant as those of the House of Hell kitchen ghoul really. It's just a little embarrassing (as sleepyscholar noted) that these things are supposed to be regularly cropping up in the paddy fields without causing death en masse. Also YOU (a child with a sharpened twig) are supposed to have killed one already according to the Background. Correct. You can go on the road and then distract some mercenaries. Unfortunately this means losing 2 stamina so if your initial roll is 2, you can't win. Yes the true path involves a necessary 2 STAMINA point loss, although if you agree with my interpretation of the rules that problem can be circumvented to give even a minimum stats character a fighting chance. I loved that method. I forgot about the going back to 1 route, but Paul Mason does like sending people back to 1 in his books. Another possible clue that it might be part of the true path is that you don't reach 18 if you finish in one go.
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Post by kieran on Aug 3, 2023 8:11:47 GMT
You recognise him as a danger and an enemy, even more so than the mercenary leader himself. I assumed obtaining all the codewords is evidence you have reached a higher state of enlightenment and awareness. Or as Ross might say:
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Post by petch on Aug 3, 2023 11:58:45 GMT
25 - Sorcery!: The Crown of KingsDelivering on what an audience expects from the final part of a saga can't be easy. It has to seem bigger, better than what has come before. It has to pick up the plot strands started by previous instalments and tie them off in a satisfying way. And it has to have a suitably memorable conclusion that makes everything leading up to it seem worthwhile. Fortunately, The Crown of Kings manages to deliver on all of those things. It's massive, for a start, coming in at a whopping 800 paragraphs (admittedly, as with the other Sorcery! books, a lot of those are taken up with spell effects, but even so the point remains: it's huge). Mampang Fortress is presented as being intimidatingly impregnable but also full of life and activity. There's a sense of your mission getting ever more desperate and dangerous the further you advance in - in the outer areas, there's room for humour (in the form of a guards' latrine that makes the portaloos at Glastonbury look palatial) and depending on the actions you take you may be able to have a bit of a chill, a chat and even a gamble with some of the outermost sentries. But as you pass through the Throben Doors, matters become more serious and deadly as you reach the areas where the stronghold's most fearsome guardians lurk. Those warnings and clues you may have accumulated in your journey through the previous books finally come into play; adversaries such as the Sleepless Ram have picked up an almost mythical status by the time you at last encounter them, and that ZED spell, sitting so tantalisingly at the end of the Spell Book, finally sees some use. Its climax is as clever as it is unexpected. Jackson could have ended the whole thing with a huge epic boss fight, and he'd certainly proved he was capable of delivering a great one earlier in the series (see: The Shamutanti Hills's Manticore, or any of the encounters with the seven serpents). Instead, he opts to completely pull the rug out from under the player's feet and go for an ending sequence that contains a false anticlimax, a feeling that all is lost with the player's capture and incarceration, a sacrifice of a recurring NPC (poor Jann ) and time travel. Memorable it most certainly is, and is a brilliant way to bring Jackson's epic to a close. 24 - Master of ChaosMoving on from one of FF's most exciting conclusions to one of its most notable openings, the proposal that starts Master of Chaos's action is so reckless as to be almost suicidal, but at least it makes for a cracking introduction. Having first voluntarily submitted to being press-ganged into servitude on a slaving vessel (the brutality of which is reinforced by a large Stamina deduction in the second sentence of reference 1!), our hero is then left all but naked on the streets of Ashkyos, with no resources but needing to equip themselves to take on a dangerous journey across hostile desert land to a ruined city swarming with chaos mutants. Cue 'and you thought you had it hard' quip. It's in the opening section of Ashkyos where Master of Chaos really shines, where you find yourself in the unusual situation of not having so much as even a backpack, with only your guile to procure your basic adventuring equipment. You're up against a time limit of sorts as well, since there's a rather nicely implemented Notoriety system where if you draw too much attention to yourself, the local militia will notice you and you may be forced to flee the city prematurely before you have had a chance to adequately prepare yourself for the journey ahead. This provides a neat risk/reward mechanic; for example, you know that fighting in front of the crowds in the gladiatorial arena will net you a lot of gold for supplies, but it will almost certainly also get you noticed. You can beg, you can steal, you can take on quests, you can get your talking mongoose sidekick to do some acrobatics for loose change (speaking of which, Jesper, if you manage to get him, steals every scene that he's in). It's another adventure that runs over several different acts, but there's a nice natural flow to how they unfold - how well you manage to prepare yourself in this opening section has a direct impact on your chances of survival in the overland journey. The desert is convincingly presented as exceptionally treacherous terrain, but you can make it easier for yourself if you stocked up well with provisions, or managed to save up enough money to buy a camel or get a ticket for a riverboat cruise for part of the way. The warped chaos pits of Kabesh is well done enough but perhaps not the most remarkable finish you'll find in the series - luckily, everything leading up to it is great.
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Post by CharlesX on Aug 3, 2023 12:35:53 GMT
I know Jann dies for sure if you cast ZED spell without asking Jann about it, I'm not sure whether he still dies if you have asked him, and I don't have Sorcery!4 COK with me? I rather like the ending in Master Of Chaos with the powerful Elf appearing out-of-the-blue, so takes all kinds.
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Post by kieran on Aug 3, 2023 12:42:12 GMT
I know Jann dies for sure if you cast ZED spell without asking Jann about it, I'm not sure whether he still dies if you have asked him, and I don't have Sorcery!4 COK with me?
I believe he dies either way. The only way to keep him alive is to play as a warrior and use the genie to escape.
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Post by petch on Aug 3, 2023 12:49:46 GMT
I know Jann dies for sure if you cast ZED spell without asking Jann about it, I'm not sure whether he still dies if you have asked him, and I don't have Sorcery!4 COK with me?
I believe he dies either way. The only way to keep him alive is to play as a warrior and use the genie to escape. Ah, thanks for that. For some reason I had it in my head that he dies whatever you do. Nice to know there's a way that the wee guy can survive.
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Post by kieran on Aug 3, 2023 13:53:54 GMT
I believe he dies either way. The only way to keep him alive is to play as a warrior and use the genie to escape. Ah, thanks for that. For some reason I had it in my head that he dies whatever you do. Nice to know there's a way that the wee guy can survive. I used to always play as a warrior when I was a child and I hated the way the Svinn priest magics him away. 'Who asked you, buddy?!'
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Post by pip on Aug 3, 2023 14:48:57 GMT
Jann, aka the pest who follows you, you have a hard time getting rid of, prevents you from using magic, and attempts to lure you into a game over situation? It's been a while, but from what I remember, I certainly don't feel bad about him dying.
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Post by kieran on Aug 3, 2023 15:12:24 GMT
Jann, aka the pest who follows you, you have a hard time getting rid of, prevents you from using magic, and attempts to lure you into a game over situation? It's been a while, but from what I remember, I certainly don't feel bad about him dying. Aw, he meant well. It's not his fault humans are so fragile!
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Post by CharlesX on Aug 3, 2023 18:08:35 GMT
Jann, aka the pest who follows you, you have a hard time getting rid of, prevents you from using magic, and attempts to lure you into a game over situation? It's been a while, but from what I remember, I certainly don't feel bad about him dying. Aw, he meant well. It's not his fault humans are so fragile! Well, he tells you the secret of ZED spell even knowing it will kill him, so perhaps he's following some convoluted True Neutral alignment logic .
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Post by petch on Aug 4, 2023 14:09:49 GMT
23 - Freeway Fighter
Judging by its poor performance in previous 'best of' threads, I think it's fair to say that this is another book where my finger is off of the pulse, or perhaps I should say foot off of the accelerator, of popular opinion. That's understandable; sophisticated this most certainly is not, and calling it a Mad Max tribute is overgenerous - it's an out and out rip-off. But since this ranking is based on nothing more than my own stupid opinions, I have to be honest: I bloody loved this.
In terms of structure, this is recognisably Livingstone: linear, hard fights, lots of deaths by missing an item from a shopping list, etc etc. What distinguishes it from his other books (obviously) is its completely different genre and setting. It's refreshing to see him try something different from his usual fantasy output, and I think he pulls it off in an exciting way. Just look at that Adventure Sheet, for starters. You get a separate sheet, for your Dodge, that you can soup up with like missiles and mods and stuff? Cool!
By the way, if this is making it sound like I enjoyed this book because I'm some kind of petrolhead, I'm really not. I have about as much knowledge of cars as a medieval yeoman. A couple of years back, I went to hire a car for a family holiday, and the guy from the car hire place sat with me as I took it out on a test run.
'Nice runner isn't it mate?' he said, clearly very enthusiastic about his job.
'Yeah, a nice runner,' I replied, knowing full well I had no frame of reference for what would differentiate a 'nice' runner from a 'not nice' one.
'What litre do you reckon she is?'
What? 'Ooh, I wouldn't like to say.'
'No go on, have a guess. It'll surprise you. What litre do you reckon?'
Christ, he's not taking no for an answer. I'm desperately picturing a measuring jug in my head, trying to work out how many litres a car engine, any car engine, might be. 'I dunno, maybe, like...twenty?'
He stopped talking to me after that. I suppose at least that was one advantage to him realising that I was a blithering idiot.
So yeah, a car enthusiast I am not - but Ian very obviously is, and that passion translates to the page. The drag race bit has already been mentioned further up in the thread, and while if you overanalyse it it is a bit nonsensical (as many others have observed before, burning a load of petrol in a race to win some more petrol in a world where petrol is an incredibly valuable and limited commodity is kinda daft), I really don't care. It's just terrifically exhilarating. Livingstone isn't going for realism here, he just wants to deliver a pacy, different and exciting post-apocalytic romp which I think he delivers brilliantly, and that's why for me Freeway Fighter is the pick of the sci-fi books.
22 - Secrets of Salamonis
In one of the most long-awaited comebacks since Abba, Steve Jackson proves that despite a 36 year (!) hiatus from his last published Fighting Fantasy book, he hasn't lost his touch with this cracker (ably assisted in writing duties by Jon Green). Always looking to innovate with new ideas in his books, there are several here that seem so straightforward but work so well it made me wonder why no one has tried them before. Most of these ideas, incidentally, come from the central conceit that your avatar here is a wet behind the ears, fresh-faced young piece of meat looking to establish themselves in the adventuring game. It's a concept that is much more effective than any of the other books previously published by Scholastic in trying to appeal to that evasive new young reader demographic that they seem so keen on - let's give them someone their own age to play as. Yet Jackson doesn't neglect the older long-term fans either with a whole raft of references to older books: an extended dream sequence throwback to The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, a visit to Thugruff's training camp from Creature of Havoc, an optional ending that segues directly into the beginning of The Citadel of Chaos, and a clear sense that the adventure is placed in the run-up to the events that kick off The Trolltooth Wars (this working particularly well as despite the overall tone of the book being quite lighthearted, there's an overarching pathos that the lives of the characters present in the book, including the hero him or herself, are about to be horribly disrupted by war). It's like a Pixar film in a way - ostensibly aimed at the kids but sophisticated enough to be enjoyed by everyone, with references for the mums and dads that would just go over the kids' heads.
Since you are a fledgling adventurer, you start things off with predefined stats. This was one of those so-simple-it-seems-obvious ideas, but in doing so it allows Jackson to balance his book and avoid the issue that plagues the majority of other books in the series (primarily, if you roll a low Skill you might as well give up and start again). While good in theory, there are a couple of areas where this doesn't quite work - namely, that a couple of the options available to you in the early part of the book for learning Special Skills are all but gated out due to the fact that they contain mandatory fights against Skill 8 opponents, and with your reduced stats you have very little chance of overcoming them (with one of these being that aforementioned visit to Thugruff, sadly). Talking of Special Skills, it's a shame their usage isn't balanced better either, with two of them (Lucky and Spelling) clearly being so much more helpful than any of the others. While I'm picking holes, there was one more bugbear I had with the book, and that's to do with the list of items you need to collect for the endgame. Most of them can be found in a reasonably thorough exploration, but one of them (the Alicorn) is only obtainable if you set out on a particular quest alone. However the text in the book strongly recommends to you that since this is a particularly dangerous quest you are better off tackling it with allies, but by doing so it locks you out of being able to acquire this vital item. I'm all for books having tricky to find true paths, but for a book to out and out lie to you? That's just mean.
Still, these are all just minor niggles when compared to Secrets of Salamonis's biggest strength, and that's its ingenious structure of miniquests that takes up the bulk of the book. It works perfectly with the central notion of your being an adventuring novice who needs to prove themselves by taking on odd jobs, provides variety and player agency in selecting which ones they think look most fun to tackle, and a whole breadth of replayability in the possibility to take on different quests in future playthroughs (and in different orders too, as the outcomes for success for particular quests can be altered depending on what you have done beforehand). 36 years it may have been, but on this evidence, it was definitely worth the wait. Here's hoping Steve doesn't leave us waiting anywhere near as long for his next one!
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kieran
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Favourite Gamebook Series: Fighting Fantasy
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Post by kieran on Aug 4, 2023 14:24:20 GMT
By the way, if this is making it sound like I enjoyed this book because I'm some kind of petrolhead, I'm really not. I have about as much knowledge of cars as a medieval yeoman. A couple of years back, I went to hire a car for a family holiday, and the guy from the car hire place sat with me as I took it out on a test run. 'Nice runner isn't it mate?' he said, clearly very enthusiastic about his job. 'Yeah, a nice runner,' I replied, knowing full well I had no frame of reference for what would differentiate a 'nice' runner from a 'not nice' one. 'What litre do you reckon she is?' What? 'Ooh, I wouldn't like to say.' 'No go on, have a guess. It'll surprise you. What litre do you reckon?' Christ, he's not taking no for an answer. I'm desperately picturing a measuring jug in my head, trying to work out how many litres a car engine, any car engine, might be. 'I dunno, maybe, like...twenty?' He stopped talking to me after that. I suppose at least that was one advantage to him realising that I was a blithering idiot. This made me genuinely LOL. Glad there's someone out there who knows even less about cars than me! Does anyone know how much involvement Green actually had? I've also heard a few mentions of him also assisting with Gates of Death and Crystal of Storms, but not sure where this came from or what his level of involvement was.
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Post by pip on Aug 4, 2023 15:18:49 GMT
I'd need to replay Freeway Fighter (something I haven't done in many years) to have a fresh opinion, but yes, I'm surprised to see it ranked so high. What I remember about it is how subpar the art was (I remember reading the artist had a ridiculous deadline to deal with here, so I won't blame him, but the art is still what it is) and some lame game over situations like just running out of gas.
I liked Secrets of Salamonis a lot, Steve Jackson seemingly did it again with his habit of cleverly pushing FF boundaries. Although I'm also curious about Jon Green's involvement, was this really a SJ book with involvement from JG, or the other way around? I love SJ, but if it was the latter, we all know putting his name on the cover would be a lot more bankable.
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CharlesX
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Post by CharlesX on Aug 4, 2023 15:32:03 GMT
I would love to see many more FF with the Secrets Of Salamonis template; one of my biggest problems is a number of non-serious technical errors, and that along with gameplay criticism such as your well-written one could be addressed. If it isn't perfect, it's surely really good. Freeway Fighter also has more than one technical error. Most people would enjoy Freeway Fighter more for the setting and feeling than the way its designed, which is the wrong side of nothing special. I don't know whether Freeway Fighter didn't fall into Livingstone's phase at that time of being crazy-hard - because the editors changed the numbers? Because Livingstone's maths was bad? Or because Livingstone felt like being good? Whatever, I for one wouldn't enjoy it half as much if it weren't so playable. I like Mad Max but wouldn't know a car from a truck in the Fast And Furious universe (I haven't seen most).
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Post by slloyd14 on Aug 4, 2023 17:04:32 GMT
By the way, if this is making it sound like I enjoyed this book because I'm some kind of petrolhead, I'm really not. I have about as much knowledge of cars as a medieval yeoman. A couple of years back, I went to hire a car for a family holiday, and the guy from the car hire place sat with me as I took it out on a test run. 'Nice runner isn't it mate?' he said, clearly very enthusiastic about his job. 'Yeah, a nice runner,' I replied, knowing full well I had no frame of reference for what would differentiate a 'nice' runner from a 'not nice' one. 'What litre do you reckon she is?' What? 'Ooh, I wouldn't like to say.' 'No go on, have a guess. It'll surprise you. What litre do you reckon?' Christ, he's not taking no for an answer. I'm desperately picturing a measuring jug in my head, trying to work out how many litres a car engine, any car engine, might be. 'I dunno, maybe, like...twenty?' He stopped talking to me after that. I suppose at least that was one advantage to him realising that I was a blithering idiot. This made me genuinely LOL. Glad there's someone out there who knows even less about cars than me! Does anyone know how much involvement Green actually had? I've also heard a few mentions of him also assisting with Gates of Death and Crystal of Storms, but not sure where this came from or what his level of involvement was. As far as Gates of Death and Crystal of Storms, I believe JG's involvement was purely to do with the game system.
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