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Post by a moderator on Apr 23, 2024 21:00:19 GMT
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Post by a moderator on Apr 21, 2024 0:18:06 GMT
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Post by a moderator on Apr 6, 2024 15:04:06 GMT
Tangential discussion of Usborne books moved to dedicated thread here.
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Post by a moderator on Mar 29, 2024 16:23:52 GMT
The belt is not part of this puzzle. It is a hint that you need to check the red urn to find one of the groups of letters you do need. The correct order of the letters is: narn-ison-etof-ores-eeou-rend. With correct spacing and punctuation, this reads Narn is one to foresee our end. Which provides the number 124 (one to fore).
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Post by a moderator on Feb 2, 2024 21:36:13 GMT
Rebel Planet has the peculiar quirk that losing your weapon not only carries no penalty, but actually improves your chances in combat, as winning an Attack Round while fighting bare-handed gives you a 1 in 6 chance of automatic victory.
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Post by a moderator on Feb 2, 2024 9:52:13 GMT
Katarina Heydrich with Lord Mortis Lady Lotmora is displeased that anybody should attempt to hook her husband up with "that Mortvanian hussy".
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Post by a moderator on Feb 2, 2024 0:34:11 GMT
The review seems to be guilty of the classic 'the jokes do not appeal to my sense of humour: therefore nobody will find it funny' misconception.
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Post by a moderator on Feb 1, 2024 17:11:33 GMT
Yes, that was Terror of the Vervoids. Bonnie sure did more than her fair share of screaming, possibly overtaking Susan in that regard. Well, Victoria screamed more than some as well. My recollection is Bonnie's screams could be cheesy and inelegant (possibly by comparison - Victoria had a charming voice and personality, which was why it was so frustrating she was a demure also-ran), perhaps in spite of her background as an athletic dancer and singer. For the Terror of the Vervoids cliffhanger in question, the director asked Bonnie to pitch her screams to harmonise with the theme music.
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Post by a moderator on Jan 30, 2024 15:27:34 GMT
Not sure the ponytail works for me, like Monkey Island I think ponytails look a little off. In view of some of the threads you've created in the past, I'm going to advise against a poll on what hairdo would best suit Balthus Dire.
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Post by a moderator on Jan 28, 2024 13:14:20 GMT
You also get a short term companion, in Amber, who survives through to the end. The second to manage this after Bigleg? (I'm not counting the crew of the Starship Traveller.)
Stubb, surely? Bigleg is the one who dies in the intro to Forest. (It can also be inferred that Stubb dies between Caverns and Forest, since he joins Bigleg's expedition and all indications are that everyone on it gets massacred, but the hero of Caverns doesn't know that, and ends the book believing that Stubb is still alive and well.)[/pedant]
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Post by a moderator on Jan 26, 2024 14:28:17 GMT
Trial Of Champions is fun but I have to agree with the majority of FF audience its middling, not a classic up there above Citadel Of Chaos. I liked it when I was young because it reminded me of Deathtrap Dungeon and Livingstone cliches hadn't got on my nerves yet. And yet so many people in the 'Hopes for FF in 2024 and beyond' thread are clamouring for another sequel to Deathtrap Dungeon from an Ian whose writing has gone downhill since the days when he churned out Trial. Is an (almost certainly) inferior follow-up to a mediocre sequel really the best hope for keeping the range going?
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Post by a moderator on Jan 26, 2024 11:06:59 GMT
67. Slaves of the Abyss – 2.96 (another of my favs, wow) So general, some in line with consensus but some real surprises in there. Based on reviews I've seen, Slaves seems very unpopular with inattentive readers. I'm not saying that everybody who dislikes it just isn't paying attention, but a lot of the criticisms I've seen are based more in the reader's failure to put two and two together than in actual flaws. For example, consider the following possible sequence of events from early in the book: - A servant drops a bit of paper near you.
- You read it and find message warning that you are being watched.
- Reading the message distracts you, causing you to make a social blunder and draw attention to yourself.
- You hear that one of the servants has died in a bizarre and horrific manner.
I've seen a review in which the death of the servant is held up as an example of how Slaves is full of random nonsense that has nothing to do with the plot. Sorry, but if you can't even work out what was going on there, perhaps you'd be better off with the Skylark books.
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Post by a moderator on Jan 26, 2024 10:45:12 GMT
I've always spelt traveler wrong (with 2 x L's), and I've just realised it is all Steve's fault That's not a right/wrong thing, it's a British English/American English thing.
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Post by a moderator on Jan 20, 2024 14:39:40 GMT
It definitely feels like wizard was the intended playstyle and warrior was thrown in for the people who didn't buy the spellbook. SFAIK most editions have the spellbook at the back (both my older and modern versions do), and the Warrior option was possibly partly an attempt to add replay value; that doesn't fully allow for cynicism. The Sorcery Spell Book was included in the back of Serpents and Crown, and all reprints of Hills and Kharé that came out after Serpents, but for around a year after initial publication (during which at least one reprint of Hills came out) it was only available as a separate volume.
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Post by a moderator on Jan 18, 2024 23:46:02 GMT
(There's some other guy who completed the Proteus line recently, but has yet to record an attempt at Lone Wolf 12.) Hmmm. Well, Gamebook Odyssey just finished Proteus, but it's covered all the Magnakai books, so you can't mean him. I can think of one other viable candidate, but he liked Return to the Icefinger Mountains, so his judgement is clearly suspect.
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Post by a moderator on Jan 18, 2024 15:07:24 GMT
but if it's Claw of the Fleshless King (closest thing to sounding like it has a genuine SKELETON in the title), who knows how to even check whether it's a 534-section monstrosity? I remember Claw of the Fleshless King, it was very short - 50 sections I think as it was an entry for one of the competitions on the official website. Fun little sequel to Talisman of Death. Not that any of that helps us find a copy of course! Encounters include a Horned Demon on one path and a Life-Stealer on another (throwing in a Skill 12 enemy early to weed out the low-to-average-statted no-hopers), but I don't remember anything particularly skeletal. BTW, Per, are you familiar with Murray's FF blog?
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Post by a moderator on Jan 17, 2024 1:25:49 GMT
I think the local fly-posters who keep putting up signs (many of them featuring pictures of Karl himself) calling for people to get organised for the violent overthrow of capitalism might disagree with you there, sleepyscholar . Local to where? Hull. Marxism may be no big deal in Japan, but here it's still popular with agitators.
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Post by a moderator on Jan 16, 2024 23:30:49 GMT
I think the local fly-posters who keep putting up signs (many of them featuring pictures of Karl himself) calling for people to get organised for the violent overthrow of capitalism might disagree with you there, sleepyscholar.
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Post by a moderator on Jan 15, 2024 13:51:17 GMT
I'm still trying to beat this one - haven't been tempted to use the guide above yet, though I have checked the stats table and can see why I'm struggling (though I am playing the revised version - which I believe is a bit easier?) A bit easier, yes. More of a vague hint than a spoiler, but hiding it just in case... There's a place where you would be advised to do as Damontir did when he passed the same way.
He may be mad, but he's not stupid.
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Post by a moderator on Jan 15, 2024 0:27:49 GMT
the Barbarian (who wears cool if anachronistic shades) He's wearing an eyepatch over his right eye.
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Post by a moderator on Jan 14, 2024 0:18:22 GMT
Seems to me that a thread about finding fan-authored adventures belongs in the sub-forum about fan-written adventures.
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Post by a moderator on Jan 14, 2024 0:15:37 GMT
Yeah, but as we all know so well, it's phenomenally tough to find anyone else willing to write Fighting Fantasy gamebooks. I mean, the original series was all Ian and Steve, and it's not as if fans have ever written any for themselves, is it? Jon Green wrote a second golden age of FF but moved on because royalties rights and flexibility were better in other gamebooks. Fan-written gamebooks are fine for sharing with friends but like self-published work don't tend to reach a mass audience. Perhaps someone who has written published Fighting Fantasy gamebooks before could pick up this guantlet by writing some more. Even someone, you know, on this site (like Jon Green ). Probably not someone who objected to the way non-Steve-and-Ian authors' rights were being handled long before Jon Green made it fashionable.
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Post by a moderator on Jan 9, 2024 13:43:24 GMT
I was often mystified by the cliffhanger where the 7th Doctor seemingly has no reason to go down a steep drop other than the sort of curiosity that is like "I've never dropped a plugged in toaster in my bath before, I wonder what will happen if I do?" Yes, that was weird. It was like he looked at his watch and was like 'Oops, time for the cliffhanger, better literally hang myself off a cliff.' The originally-scripted cliffhanger was Ace and Mel's first encounter with the dragon, but somebody thought that having a literally cliff-hanging cliffhanger was too meta an opportunity to pass up. Talking of meta, the query with which the unexpectedly philosophical guard bamboozles the Doctor is more or less a direct quotation from the first academic treatise on Doctor Who to be published, John Tulloch and Manuel Alvarado's Doctor Who - The Unfolding Text.
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Post by a moderator on Jan 7, 2024 0:00:10 GMT
If people will excuse the impertinence of posting in the thread after CharlesX has hammered the stake in, here are the final scores. Week 52 scoring 1st: terrysalt – 22 (stats bonus 2 + victory bonus 10 + most fights won bonus 5 + risk bonus 5) 2nd: evilwizard – 19 (stats bonus 4 + victory bonus 10 + risk bonus 5) 3rd: hallucination - 16 (stats bonus 1 + victory bonus 10 + most fights won bonus 5) 4th: trialmaster – 2 (stats bonus 2)
Running totals 1st: evilwizard - 735 2nd: terrysalt - 722 3rd: hallucination - 650 4th: King Gillibran - 287 5th: kieran - 213 6th: trialmaster - 97 7th: kalieum - 78 8th: peasantscribbler - 76 9th: juniorhornet - 45
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Post by a moderator on Jan 6, 2024 13:53:24 GMT
Going by memories from 15+ years ago, Outsider! is also lengthy and difficult, so your suggested change is a bit like saying, "No, Spellbreaker is too hard. I think we should make Crypt of the Sorcerer an alternative option."
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Post by a moderator on Jan 5, 2024 18:43:20 GMT
Now that sounds like a life goal! "I spent decades of my life reading into and making notes about two vast science-fiction franchises so I could write a gamebook that doesn't appeal to Germans because they don't know Dr Who and doesn't appeal to Brits because they don't know Perry Rhodan!" Talking of crossovers with limited overlap between fandoms, there is one official Star Trek novel that's apparently also a tie-in with a largely forgotten comedy series that had the actor who played Spock's father as a regular. Anyway, Deathtrap Dungeon...
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Post by a moderator on Jan 5, 2024 16:10:05 GMT
If you decide you want to complete your sets, you get knifed by squirrels behind the old crematorium. If you don't, you are electrocuted trying to squeeze past an electric heater in a used sporting goods store. Drat. I guessed You get bitten by a rabid badger and expire in agony. and A disgruntled eBay vendor expresses his displeasure at the decrease in sales by sending you anthrax instead of your next purchase.
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Post by a moderator on Jan 5, 2024 13:15:59 GMT
For many years I had completist tendencies when it came to gamebook collecting. If I had one book in a series, I would make an effort to acquire all the others.
Heather McElhatton brought out a follow-up to PLM, and now I don't mind having incomplete sets.
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Post by a moderator on Jan 4, 2024 21:27:50 GMT
Now played Tales From The Bird Islands a few times. Doesn't have enough birds . Do you now regret having chosen it as a favourite without having first read it?
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Post by a moderator on Jan 4, 2024 21:12:44 GMT
One of my complaints about the abovementioned book reminded me of what is one of my least favourite gamebooks, and I don’t think I’ve ever commented on that particular book since reading it, so now seems as good a time as any to say a bit about it. Before I turn my attention to the book itself, I should point out that I read an advance copy, sent out for review purposes. Not sent to me – I am most definitely not among the target audience (indeed, all indications are that I’m not among the subset of humans the author thinks deserve to exist) – but judging by the condition the book was in when I found it in the charity shop, and the state it was in after just a couple of reads (and no, I didn’t inflict any kind of violence upon it, no matter how awful it got), it seems likely that the original recipient didn’t even open it, let alone read any of it, so now may be the first time that this particular review copy has actually achieved the purpose for which it was designed. Still, the reason I mention this is that there exists a possibility that changes were made to the text between the issuing of the advance copies and the book’s publication, so some of what’s wrong with the book as I read it may not apply to the version that was sold in bookshops. Disclaimer over: time to focus on the book itself. Back in 2008, Heather McElhatton’s debut novel Pretty Little Mistakes came out, with a publicity campaign intended to ‘propel it to the top of the charts’. I don’t know if the advertising achieved that goal, but the book did get mentioned in one of the Yahoo! groups dedicated to gamebooks, so it wasn’t completely ineffective. The front cover of my copy has the tagline: The back cover and first page both go on to state that there are, in fact, more than 150 endings. Which is not entirely accurate. There are 99 endings (two of them virtually identical), plus one path that loops back to section 1 (you basically get reincarnated as yourself). As for ‘Which one will you choose?’, that implies rather more reader agency than is actually present in the book. Yes, you occasionally get to make decisions, but often the book forces courses of action upon you. You can choose whether or not to go to college, but when the ‘medical student’ path hits your character with a heavy workload, you automatically end up becoming a meth addict. In another part of the book, being in the same room as a stranger you dislike inevitably leads to your character having sex with him and becoming pregnant. And so on. Additionally, while the decisions you do get to make will ultimately determine which ending you reach, there is rarely any logical connection between what you choose to do and how you fare. For example, the final choice on one branch concerns whether or not you take advantage of an opportunity to make some money by insider trading. Here’s a little challenge for you: guess at the possible outcomes to this decision, then look at the spoilers below to find out what actually happens, and see how close you got… If you break the law to make a profit You become a children’s TV star, and an outraged parent shoots you dead after you get involved in a sex scandal. If you don’t risk it You go on holiday and get eaten by a shark. Perhaps aiming at some greater depth, the book sometimes details what happens to your character after death. However, the nature of existence in this book is just as dependent upon authorial whim as the ways in which you can end up dying. How you chose to lead your life (when the book actually gave you the option) has little bearing on whether you end up paying for your misdeeds or get yelled at by an irritable insect god for being incompetent or whatever other arbitrary fate Ms McElhatton chooses to inflict upon you. I could go on about the unlikeable viewpoint character, the bigotry, the hypocrisy, the forcing together of unrelated paths through the book, or the crass ‘adult’ content, but ranting about the book is just souring my mood, so I'll quit before it gets any worse. There was nothing pretty about the mistakes I made by buying and reading this book.
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