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Post by philsadler on Apr 30, 2017 5:55:19 GMT
I wouldn't if I were you. It's a terrible newbie book that n00bs only include because they've been told they should. It's a very bad book and the only reason it's famous is because it's the first one. I personally would avoid it like all of the bad books: Forest of Doom, Mage Hunter and so on. I'm sorry but newbies very rarely think about recommendations, all they do is repeat what they've heard.
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Post by philsadler on Apr 29, 2017 12:28:38 GMT
The Black Pit trap (or whatever it was called) in Creature of Havoc. Whatever it did to you we shall never know because Jackson said it was a good thing you weren't conscious when you got to the bottom. Of course there's always the good old 'being eaten alive' by the ghoul or the 'being taken to hell' by the death spider endings.
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Post by philsadler on Apr 28, 2017 5:17:37 GMT
1.) House of Hell (only FF to scare me when I was young but I still loved it so much that I wrote my own sequel).
2.) Deathtrap Dungeon (very unfair but not because of stupid dice rolls but rather stupidly tough monsters such as two skill 11 opponents - really?! - but still such a great book. So just 'roll' a very tough character and enjoy. I also wrote my own prequel to this).
3.) Dead of Night
4.) Night Dragon
5.) Midnight Rogue (so different from the 'normal' FF books. I would consider a sequel to this)
Honourable mentions:
Caverns of the Snow Witch (ludicrously tough and unfair towards the end but still nice and devious and not too much in the way of 'roll a certain number or die, nor test your luck or die. I would also consider a sequel to this).
Revenge of the Vampire (bugged I know, but so lovely and tough and great illustrations and memorable monsters)
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Post by philsadler on Apr 26, 2017 13:39:54 GMT
Crypt of the Sorcerer The book has an obscenely difficult final boss I still remember getting to that boss the first time after all these years. It was a book I came to know very well because of how many times I restarted it due to silly things or random deaths. The final boss was such a joke that even now I assume it must have been 1 of 3 things: 1.) A mistake by the author 2.) A mistake by the publisher 3.) A load of bullshit The high skill is of course absurd, but double that with the fact that you will almost certainly be a point or 2 lower yourself skill-wise and it becomes a joke. Triple it when you add his ridiculous instant death ability which would be just as stupid on a skill 8 enemy at that point (or perhaps any point). After all, sooner or later even a skill 12 will be hit by a skill 8. Take all of that into account and it becomes a big pile of horse manure.
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Post by philsadler on Apr 26, 2017 13:34:41 GMT
Masks of Mayhem. However, the Orb is essential to win and you only have a 1 in 6 chance of obtaining it.That really is very poor design.
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Post by philsadler on Apr 25, 2017 6:09:54 GMT
21) Trial of Champions - 46 Attempts!!! (12/20/12) - in books like this, once I have discovered the correct route and success is dependent on luck and the RNGs alone, I will mostly just carry out all the necessary dice rolls rather than read my way through.23) Masks of Mayhem - 36 Attempts - (12/23/13) - Luck boosted by Potion of Fortune. Again, I just mostly go through the motions with dice rolls once I get the correct route mapped out. Many attempts just to gain the Orb (1 in 6 chance)26) Crypt of the Sorcerer - 22 Attempts - (12/24/12) - from this point forward, I decided to use a system where I would re-roll stats on each attempt but would only replace a previous stat with a newly rolled stat IF the newly rolled stat was higher. This meant that I ended up with maximum stats eventually. Also, for this adventure alone I decided to count the Skill bonuses from the Chainmail and the Defender Shield as Attack Strength bonuses (from attempt 21 onward). I made the exception to my 'fairness' rule on this one adventure because of the insane difficulty of the battle with Razaak (I really don't know what Ian Livingstone was thinking when he wrote this... )Thanks for posting this. Is Trial of the Champions really so bad that it all just comes down to pure luck? That's terrible design. Masks of Mayhem: is this just as bad? Is the Orb essential? Crypt of the Sorcerer is nicely written as a book but truly pathetic as a game, and the final boss is the biggest insult in all of FF.
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Post by philsadler on Apr 22, 2017 5:47:20 GMT
- Deathtrap Dungeon and Trial of Champions - Why don't any of your rivals pick anything up? Don't they know they're in an Ian Livingstone book? Haha! I always wondered that! That's why in my very own 'Deathtrap' I would have the reader come across empty boxes, fight scenes or obviously ransacked rooms. You can't write like that too much though because although it adds to the 'realistic' atmosphere, too much of it would be boring for the reader.
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Post by philsadler on Apr 22, 2017 5:44:30 GMT
Would it be interesting if by taking time to explore everything , you couldn´t meet Commander Loth and an End of Storie with Salomonis taken by the Dark Forces?! That's a bit of a sore point. There was going to be a time limit, with defeat guaranteed if the player took too long exploring, but there were complaints from some of the other writers, so the timekeeping element was ditched, and all the work I'd put into calculating how long it would take to travel between different locations went to waste. Well in one of my books I was going to have a weapon selection system and tons of weapons of different types and strengths all through the game. I researched hundreds of swords, daggers, axes, pole-arms and hammers, only to decide that I didn't want to use the idea. Only 3 days down the drain.
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Post by philsadler on Apr 22, 2017 5:42:09 GMT
Oh I love death paragraphs if they're memorable and well-written. Kind of makes even the failures seem a bit rewarding. I think that Creature of Havoc had the best of these scenes.
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Post by philsadler on Apr 19, 2017 6:51:08 GMT
Freddy Uther's Cool King's Yellow Orangutan's Usually Really Mad Onion's Terrible Hateful Evil Rabbit
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Post by philsadler on Apr 18, 2017 15:27:55 GMT
Hi all - old-time newbie here (new to the forums at least :-)). I just wanted to thank Champskees for these solutions. I'm currently recollecting all the FF books (still missing the ultra-rare 'Magehunter' and 'Revenge of the Vampire') and I'm playing through them in order - and without cheating at all (took me 56 attempts to beat 'Masks of Mayhem' for obvious reasons :-)). :-D) Hey. I'm always interested in any statistics regarding FF books. Would it be OK for you to post a list here of how many attempts it took your for each book?
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Post by philsadler on Apr 18, 2017 15:24:04 GMT
Woah. I'm looking forward to your SS book. How far along are you?
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Post by philsadler on Mar 31, 2017 18:10:31 GMT
I bet they cost a lot.
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Post by philsadler on Mar 30, 2017 15:06:24 GMT
Oh yes. I have Pinball Fx2 and Pinball Arcade on Steam and love the both of them. I never really played the tables in real life because I just didn't understand them back then.
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Post by philsadler on Mar 29, 2017 11:36:01 GMT
Just found and corrected a few small errors:
Desert Lizard Man had no stamina (should have been 8) Giant Spider skill 7 (used to be 6) Sword Tree's stamina up from 9 to 12 Tangle-weed 7/6 down from 8/13 Tyrannosaurus 12/12 to Tyrannosaurus (Young)
Nothing game-breaking (well I'm not too sure about that naughty Desert Lizard Man, but the odds of meeting him or any of those others are about 500-1).
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Post by philsadler on Mar 27, 2017 19:02:52 GMT
'Port of Peril' sounds like a slightly dangerous alcoholic drink.
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Post by philsadler on Mar 27, 2017 11:13:36 GMT
I could have sworn the new title was going to be "The Demon Prince." Someone said this on Facebook. Either way TDP is a better title.
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Post by philsadler on Mar 25, 2017 12:27:51 GMT
Thanks. I got that monster from 'It Follows'.
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Post by philsadler on Mar 23, 2017 14:53:47 GMT
Thanks for your work!
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Post by philsadler on Feb 20, 2017 19:08:43 GMT
Wait, Ian has a playtesting stage? I thought he gave up on that in 1987. Well he has several stages to work through: 1. Are there enough skill 11 opponents? 2. Is the adventure linear enough? 3. Are there enough doors to open? 4. Are there enough left-right options? 5. Is the shopping list of essential items long enough? 6. Is the final boss ludicrous enough? [And most important of all] 7. Is there a companion who gets killed early enough (perhaps even earlier than Mungo who lasted 1 reference)?
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Post by philsadler on Jan 24, 2017 16:59:40 GMT
I try! Yes, I think there's some pretty good and interesting fights in there. After all, almost anything is better than a boring skill 7 stamina 8 goblin.
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Post by philsadler on Jan 13, 2017 16:04:07 GMT
Of course you can!
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Post by philsadler on Jan 6, 2017 20:41:59 GMT
I wish I had handwriting like that! Back on topic; all of these maps from both of you look very nice.
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Post by philsadler on Jan 3, 2017 9:55:17 GMT
Just had a really nice reply on Fighting Fantasy Project: www.ffproject.com/gcomf5t3s0.htm"Phil Sadler... I must say playing a few of your games, Ive really enjoyed them. I judge a gamebook on various things, but one of the main things is how good the deaths/bad endings are, and yours are biblical... They have been interesting, unusual, grotesque, cruel and at times insulting the character for his poor choice... loved it. I like the fact on some of the deaths, the paragraph ends before you die and the horrible fate is unspoken"
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Post by philsadler on Dec 28, 2016 23:23:07 GMT
And don't forget the classic Livingstone moment of "If you read a stupid number on a a stupid boulder in the middle of nowhere then you're an idiot. If you didn't then you're an even bigger idiot." Also what about all of those thrilling decisions:
"You are walking along and you come across a door: do you want to open the door or not open the door?" (Either way you're a dead man.)
"You come across a treasure chest. Do you open it or ignore it like a moron?"
Oh well, it doesn't matter what his new book's like it simply could never be as bad as Eye of the Dragon.
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Post by philsadler on Dec 21, 2016 20:42:20 GMT
Spectral Stalkers Black Vein Prophecy
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Post by philsadler on Dec 19, 2016 23:32:00 GMT
I might be wrong but I'm sure in one of the books there was either a rule or an event where if your SKILL was reduced to 0, you were effectively dead or incapable of movement and your adventure would be over. I don't know if this should apply in all cases though. There's a monster in Out of the Pit called a Mist Vampire. It's description says that it reduces your skill by 1 when it hits you. It also says that it will kill you if your skill reaches 0.
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Post by philsadler on Dec 19, 2016 12:38:22 GMT
Well the books I have in my "too play" section are:
Bloodbones Stormslayer Siege of Sardeth Tower of Destruction Spectral Stalkers Black Vein Prophecy Master of Chaos Fangs of Fury Slaves of the Abyss Masks of Mayehm
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Post by philsadler on Dec 17, 2016 0:44:41 GMT
Bloody funny! Makes me want to actually play the book instead of just reading about it.
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Post by philsadler on Dec 16, 2016 13:29:34 GMT
Sounds good!
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