kieran
Baron
Posts: 2,458
Favourite Gamebook Series: Fighting Fantasy
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Post by kieran on Dec 30, 2015 11:20:18 GMT
Even if I rolled well enough to beat Lord Razaak, I could not deliver the killing blow. I would kneel before him and ask to bask in his majesty.
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Post by dragonwarrior8 on Sept 6, 2019 1:21:09 GMT
Almost 4 years since anyone posted in this thread but I just finished this one and had to say holy smokes this book is incredible! Both in terms of design and atmosphere this is top notch. The replayability here is also very high with the different skills and the two different routes to take. This just passed House of Hell for me as the best book in the series so far.
With first the great Talisman of Death and now this, Thomson and Smith are fast becoming my favorite authors. In fact I had to take a peek at what else they have done and they sure look like they have been involved with some very highly thought of series. I am now greatly looking forward to Falcon, Way of the Tiger and Fabled Lands (and Keep of the Lich Lord of course). I know its only been two books but for me they seem to flat out know what they are doing to put it mildly.
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Post by schlendrian on Sept 6, 2019 6:34:14 GMT
Though not my first gamebook, this was my first FF, and it holds a special place in my heart. It captures the samurai atmosphere really well and has very memorable encounters (storming the castle of that evil daiymio, the hub). The special rules are fun and I do think that you do have decent chances with low skill characters. So yeah, I agree, this is one of the best entries in the series and Thomson and Smith along the best authors.
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Post by babbagefart on Sept 8, 2019 22:03:31 GMT
I am now greatly looking forward to Falcon, Way of the Tiger and Fabled Lands (and Keep of the Lich Lord of course). I know its only been two books but for me they seem to flat out know what they are doing to put it mildly. In my opinion the Way of the Tiger books were excellent. Haven't read the newer ones but the original six books I loved.
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Post by gmchampskees on Sept 8, 2019 23:22:17 GMT
I am now greatly looking forward to Falcon, Way of the Tiger and Fabled Lands (and Keep of the Lich Lord of course). I know its only been two books but for me they seem to flat out know what they are doing to put it mildly. In my opinion the Way of the Tiger books were excellent. Haven't read the newer ones but the original six books I loved. I acquired Book 0 and Book 7. I think they are written mostly by a different guy (Walters?), 0 is good, 7 is essential imo as it wraps up so many of the plot arcs in the series. Didn't realise they did Falcon, might have to give it a try when I have some spare time. The worst book I have read from them is probably KotLL and even that is a solid entry.
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kieran
Baron
Posts: 2,458
Favourite Gamebook Series: Fighting Fantasy
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Post by kieran on Sept 9, 2019 9:40:04 GMT
The worst book I have read from them is probably KotLL and even that is a solid entry. Well KotLL is Thomson with Dave Morris rather than Smith. I think Smith and Thomson are excellent evocative writers and they've come up with some great world building, interesting characters and engaging set pieces. If I had to criticise them, I would say they can be pretty sloppy as gamebook designers. Often their books have a lot of errors (not so much their FF books where they perhaps benefited from a good editor). Smith is worse than Thomson on this score - his Coils of Hate is pretty much unplayable. While not so serious, a lot of their other books are riddled with minor errors that seriously hurt playability: Green Blood, Overlord, Duel Master 3 and The Crystal Maze (Thomson with Morris this time, who usually keeps a tighter ship) are examples that spring to mind. I wouldn't say any of these are bad books, but their errors stop them from being the great books they could have been. Probably a related issue is that their books often feel like they were never play-tested. Even aside from the errors in Overlord for instance, it still requires a lot of very lucky dice rolls to beat the thing - the other Way of the Tiger books are similar.
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Post by cyranotheswordfish on Jun 6, 2020 12:30:24 GMT
Ok, here's my take on this one. Found it harder to wirte about than TKotLL, if I'm honest The Book Set in the land of Hachiman (a region of Khul remarkably similar to Feudal Japan), Sword of the Samurai casts you as the Shogun’s champion on a mission to recover the sword ‘Singing Death’, which has been stolen by Ikiru, Master of Shadows – a fairly standard plot, but with a nice bit of Japanese flavour to set it apart from the more classical fantasy adventures seen so far in the series.
I will start by going over the structure of the adventure, as it will prove pertinent in several more specific areas of critique. Basically, the first paragraph offers you a choice of two routes which end up serving more or less as two mini-adventures, as they do not converge at all until the climax of the book. The routes are quite different from each other in terms of specific encounters, but share a broadly similar structure: both start with you dealing with other subjects of the Shogun in the context of some sort of affront or challenge to the authority of your liege, before moving more into the realms of mythology in terms of the creatures you meet.
Nearly all the encounters on either path are quite interesting, with the only exception being the forest section which in my opinion feels too brief. The problem is the way they seem to be unequally divided between so as to make the two routes very different in length. The shorter route itself exacerbates this by letting you just skip through it’s opening section, which also happens to be it’s largest and most enjoyable, meaning you end up arriving at the endgame in what feels like no time at all, which rather lessens the sense of journey. The skippable section in question is well designed in terms how you it plays out differently depending on whether you approach part of it with or without a particular ally or certain foreknowledge, although the paragraphs used up by achieving this could have been used to alleviate the brevity of the route somewhat. I would also say that the longer route not only feels like more of an epic journey due to it’s more appropriate length, but also includes, on the whole, the more interesting encounters, although this is totally a case of personal preference.
When the paths do converge, the book takes an unexpected turn by placing you in ‘The Tourney of the Plains’, in which you attempt to win allies before participating in a sort of gladiatorial combat against various foul and demonic creatures. I personally feel that this section, from a narrative perspective, pushes the mythology of the book just a little too far and feels like a bit of a non-sequitur. However, in and of itself, it is a well-designed and enjoyable section, so it’s inclusion isn’t really a negative point. The final showdown with is Ikiruactually quite good, despite Ikiru himself being a bit one-dimensional (although he does feel genuinely quite menacing). Whilst nothing like some of the more excellent boss battles elsewhere in the series, you are subjected to enough of a tribulation so that the battle actually feels fairly epic – I found myself particularly able to imagine it as an effective film scene. In fact, I would say that several sections from this book are easy to picture vividly in your head, which is a credit to how well they are written.
Atmosphere is a plus point in this book - not only is it's distinct Japanes feel consistently maintained throughout, but the nature of certain sections (an particular the village with the... secret) is pwoerfully converyed through the text. Additionaly, the more climactic encounters are made to feel so due to the concise but effective descriptions of your own actions in particular injecting a sense of pace. On the other hand, however, your actual travelling is sometimes lacking in description – fair enough not to devote excessive words and paragraphs to uneventful trekking, but the author goes a bit too far the other way in places, making it feel as if you are sometimes teleporting from place to place, rather than completing what is presumably a fairly arduous journey.
One final point: whilst characterisation is not the book’s strongest point, with characterisation being generally adequate for the encounters in which it is relevant, but nothing more, I would like to give a mention to a slightly-hard-to-work-out ally you can obtain temporarily, who really does have a well-developed personality for a character who doesn’t actually have any bearing on the overall plot.
The Game
The ‘two-paths’ structure to the story mentioned above also offers two very different levels of challenge as well as two different ways to experience the adventure. Simply put, one path (the longer one) is much harder than the other in just about every conceivable way: it features tougher combats, more instant-death paragraphs and also lessens your chances of navigating the end game by virtue of including more ways of reducing your Honour score (see below) and fewer ways of increasing it, which becomes very relevant in the closing stages of the book.
It is this third point which I take some issue with in terms of the book’s difficulty structure. Whilst I would usually argue that not every path through a book needs to be balanced against others – indeed, the point is to find the optimum path – in this case, finding the best path is fairly trivial so I feel it would have made more sense if the harder path offered greater reward in return from greater risk. As things stand, it feels somewhat like a challenge mode, rather than an option a player might reasonably take once they know what is in store for them (although it is also the more interesting route in terms of reading).
Binary difficulty choice aside, the book has a generally fair level of difficulty overall, with instant deaths and other penalties only generally being inflicted on you when you do something obviously risky or foolish (or in the case of Honour penalties, against your whole being character). The final sections are designed to be tough if you have made poor choices along your way and continue to do so, but equally, good play sees them become considerably easier, although not to the point of them becoming outright easy, although as mentioned before, your choice of path at the beginning has probably a bit too much of an effect. A quick note in terms of ‘the one true path’: I don’t think it’s possible to fail the book due to missing an item, which is pretty unusual for a FF book, although whichever way you make your way through the book, however, you will need fairly decent stats. You can probably sum up the overall difficulty of the book as 'potentially tough, but by no means unfair."
I would also like to praise the book for it’s implementation of it’s two special mechanics: Honour and Special Skills. Honour is what it says on the tin and works because it’s kept simple. Being noble increases your honour and being underhand or cowardly decreases it (and if it goes too low, you are literally forced to kill yourself!) – the system is fairly transparent and you can normally tell if a decision would be dishonourable and there’s no subversion of the system by, for example, having requiring you to act dishonourably in order to win the book: whilst this could have been interesting narratively, it would probably just feel like an unfair trick in gameplay terms. The payoff for remaining honourable is well implemented, as comes into play at key moments in the closing phases of the book and hence feels important as a result.
The Special Skills are well handled too, which is unusual for Fighting Fantasy. This, I feel, is due to two differences to the form they usually appear in: firstly, you choose one of four skills, rather than three of six or eight; and secondly, two of the options are more or less just bonuses in combat, with the other two having more situational uses in the text. The upshot is they all feel useful in different ways and have a number of opportunities to affect how encounters play out, whereas in other books there tend to be a couple of essentially useless picks. Equally, no one skill feels to be objectively the best choice and this well-constructed implementation gives the book some replayability.
To conclude: this is a good book and well worth playing, although not perfect by any means. I would like to clarify, however, that despite my criticisms of the two-path structure, both options are perfectly enjoyable and playable, just unevenly so. It’s by no means a deal-breaker and playing this book will invariably be a good use of your time.
Next in my list is Portal of Evil so I hope to have write-up of that one sorted before long.
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vagsancho
Knight
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Favourite Gamebook Series: CRYPT OF THE SORCERER
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Post by vagsancho on Jun 6, 2020 13:16:33 GMT
Good book. Or maybe, very good book. A lot of very heavy encounters... And when i say very heavy it is because for me each one of these had the weight to could be the evil villain of the book. Like for example: Tatsu DAI ONI Eleanor Ki Rin But Ikiru is also a very good villain. Very good book.
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Post by a moderator on Jun 6, 2020 14:00:35 GMT
A quick note in terms of ‘the one true path’: I don’t think it’s possible to fail the book due to missing an item It is, but only in a very specific set of circumstances. If you choose Karumijutsu as your special skill, and try using it to escape when the Undead Samurai starts summoning reinforcements, subject to a Luck roll (one of the few instances where being Lucky is bad for you), you don't get the ivory horn necessary for recruiting the Sabre-toothed Tiger, and will be killed by the Dai-Oni's minions.
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Post by schlendrian on Jun 6, 2020 18:20:58 GMT
Well put, Cyrano - I feel exactly the same about the atmospheric writing, there are scenes which I can still see before my inner eye despite not having read it in quite a while.
A thought on your approach: I get the feeling you try very hard to avoid spoilers to a point where you lose me. I have no idea which one is the longer and the shorter route and similarily I'm not quite sure which ally you mean... I do think in a review you don't need to be so vague over all
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Post by cyranotheswordfish on Jun 6, 2020 18:30:22 GMT
Yeah, I suppose if there's one place I don't need to worry about spoilers so much it'd be this forum - thanks for the tip! The ally in question was Moichi btw
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Post by schlendrian on Jun 6, 2020 18:35:18 GMT
I thought of him right after I hit the "Reply" button
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Post by tyrion on Jun 6, 2020 20:19:10 GMT
Nice review, I hope you continue to do more, it is refreshing to have another take on decades old books.I think you hit the nail on the head with the two path approach - one is fairly reasonable, the other you could do with high stats. It's like unlocking 'God mode' on computer games.
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Post by stevendoig on Jun 6, 2020 22:01:00 GMT
I am really enjoying your posts! Portal of Evil is a favourite if mine, so looking forward to that!
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vagsancho
Knight
Posts: 809
Favourite Gamebook Series: CRYPT OF THE SORCERER
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Post by vagsancho on Jun 7, 2020 0:55:17 GMT
The HUB is probably the most epic place of all fighting fantasy books.
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kieran
Baron
Posts: 2,458
Favourite Gamebook Series: Fighting Fantasy
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Post by kieran on Jun 7, 2020 15:46:32 GMT
Equally, no one skill feels to be objectively the best choice and this well-constructed implementation gives the book some replayability. I think on the shorter path, archery is a bit overpowered since it has a lot of uses. Heroic Leaping on the other hand may well cause you to miss an otherwise unmissable essential item and I don't think it has much use otherwise.
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Post by vastariner on Mar 13, 2022 16:47:19 GMT
OK, having done the easy path, the hard path would be impossible for anyone with less than Sk11, given that there are so many bonuses at the end if you have a high Honour score, which is unattainable on the hard path.
It's so unbalanced that I wonder if the hard path was originally longer, whether Mark & Jamie had had the idea for a WOTT or standalone gamebook, and had to adapt it to FF, which meant cutting it down to 400 paragraphs. Each path is meant to get you three allies for the Tourney of the Plains, plus a fourth possible depending on honour, but, to get those three on the tough path, means losing at least Sk1 - and it's impossible to get to the right honour level. Certainly something seems to have gone wrong, as, if you get to the Tourney, and you choose one of those allies for the Final Battle, then you are given the option of the Ki-Rin at each step, despite it being unattainable. Maybe there are honour points that should be given for winning a couple of the big fights there?
Also, re the Planes, I wonder if these are analogous to the DND planes...
Lawful good: Ineffable Holiness - probably the most obvious Lawful neutral: Eternal Tower - presumably the Golden Company fights according to a code of honour, but the Tower has no moral inclinations, it is because it is Lawful evil: Pinnacle of Ultimate Height - Tatsu wants to kill you but is bound by laws
Pure neutral: Elder Plains - nothing but animals
Chaotic good: Enchanted Wood - Eleanor seems to want to help, but magic is wild Chaotic neutral: Endless Sands - nature is playing a bad trick Chaotic evil: Primordial Mire - dank, sulphurous, snakes, a murderous invisible underworld
It also sort of works going horizontally, rather than vertically; the Golden Company could be Chaotic Good, defending the Tower against evil oppressors; and the Endless Sands could be Neutral Evil, as the phoenix wants to attack you but will obey an artifact.
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kieran
Baron
Posts: 2,458
Favourite Gamebook Series: Fighting Fantasy
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Post by kieran on Mar 13, 2022 18:39:25 GMT
I like the idea of matching the planes to alignments.
I always thought that not being able to get enough Honour on the second path to get the Ki-Rin or to help against Ikiru is deliberate. Choosing that path is essentially choosing Hard Mode and it remains harder even after it converges with the other path.
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Post by vastariner on Mar 13, 2022 20:45:31 GMT
But then why give you the option to use the Ki-Rin if you've done the hard path? If you choose, say, the sabre-toothed tiger as your first representative, your later choices are consistent with that particular path and exclude those on the other path. Surely Mark & Jamie expected the Ki-Rin to be an option from the hard path but forgot to make sure the Honour points added up.
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kieran
Baron
Posts: 2,458
Favourite Gamebook Series: Fighting Fantasy
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Post by kieran on Mar 13, 2022 21:08:41 GMT
But then why give you the option to use the Ki-Rin if you've done the hard path? If you choose, say, the sabre-toothed tiger as your first representative, your later choices are consistent with that particular path and exclude those on the other path. You're absolutely right, never picked up on that before! I guess so. As I said earlier in this thread, their books have a tendency towards sloppy mistakes in general, so I guess this is just another example of that.
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Post by vastariner on Mar 14, 2022 11:25:46 GMT
As an aside on the allies, you are not penalized if you choose the wrong ally against Graalsch, so long as you picked up the correct ally somewhere - it just makes it more difficult. It's not like e.g. the gravity bomb in Space Assassin where the wrong order is fatal. And, also interestingly, if I'm right about the D&D-type alignment... ...all the Lawful allies are on the easy path, and the Chaotic ones are on the hard.
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kieran
Baron
Posts: 2,458
Favourite Gamebook Series: Fighting Fantasy
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Post by kieran on Mar 14, 2022 11:54:04 GMT
As an aside on the allies, you are not penalized if you choose the wrong ally against Graalsch, so long as you picked up the correct ally somewhere - it just makes it more difficult. It's not like e.g. the gravity bomb in Space Assassin where the wrong order is fatal. And, also interestingly, if I'm right about the D&D-type alignment... ...all the Lawful allies are on the easy path, and the Chaotic ones are on the hard. That's interesting as the easy path features you dealing with a lord wanting to set up his own shogunate and a dragon who obeys the rules of a riddle contest (so arguably lawful villains) while the hard path is more filled with "crazies" who just want to kill (eg the Rokuro-Kubi and the Kappa).
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IoannesKantakouzenos
Traveller
Being slowly eaten alive by a Ghoul
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Favourite Gamebook Series: Fighting Fantasy (Aventuras Fantásticas)
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Post by IoannesKantakouzenos on Jun 7, 2022 14:38:05 GMT
This book has indeed a certain mystic aura for me (this one and, for some strange reason, Space Assassin) and I still like to return to it even though it's written in pen and pencil from top to bottom. On the dubbed "easy path", I always send Moichi away because I don't want to "kill" the guy, even if it makes my life harder later on - go figure.
This book had yet another typo (guess the chaps at Verbo weren't that professional when they were translating the book to Portuguese) and called Ginsei a "rorin", which plagued me for years on end - have I mentioned I'm quite odd?
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Post by soulreaver on Apr 17, 2023 3:58:28 GMT
I really like the atmosphere that this book goes for, of a mysterious, mystical but quietly sinister Japan-analogue. But man, does it have some serious issues when it comes to anything related to your armour! First of all, there are two opportunities to lose your armour (one in a well, one by having kappa pilfer it at a riverbank). But the two have totally different rules on how to handle that loss. If you lose your armour in the well, you take 4 Stamina damage in subsequent combats if you get hit, while if you lose it at the river, it's 3. So which is it? Then there's the honour penalty. Lose your armour at the river? That's a 2 Honour penalty. Lose it in the well? No penalty. It could be that the penalty at the river is because you lost the armour AND ran away, as there's a 1 honour penalty if you just run away from this encounter without losing your armour, but why do you not lose it for losing your armour in the well? Who knows. Then there's the fact that you can get another set of armour later in the story on this path - but there's no reference to this removing the penalty you suffered earlier for losing your armour... ...or the fact that if you reach the river having lost your armour in the well, the text doesn't account for that possibility and asks if you want to take off your armour before trying to cross the river, with no option for trying to cross it armour-less. Then there's the fact that, after throwing your armour across the bank at the river and the kappa start to head towards it, you've got 3 options on what to do next: one option abandons your armour and tells you the associated penalties for losing it (ie, suffer more damage and honour loss), another one has the text describe how you lose the armour but doesn't actually tell you the penalties for doing so (ie, no honour loss, and the damage penalty is only mentioned in a way that makes it sound like it only applies for one combat), and the third option never mentions your armour in any way at all ever again. I remember running into this section when I played this as a teenager and realizing it was a mess, and it's only on closer analysis that I can see just how much of a mess it is. (Just to top it off, on a different path, there are two paragraphs that refer to obtaining another, better set of armour. It's the same set of armour in both, but in one case you get a SKILL bonus, while in the other you get a LUCK bonus. Again, almost certainly an error here). I'm curious as to what you think about the Honour penalty... I believe there should be a 1 Honour penalty for losing the armour in any way (even if it's to save yourself from drowning in the well - after all, this is a setting of 'honour before reason') with a separate 1 Honour penalty applied if you run away from the situation without even trying to fight/resolve the situation (which does indeed happen if you don't lose the armour and try to run away from the situation). Does that sound right?
Also does anyone have any thoughts on the Skill penalty you can suffer from the paper dragon (that 'curses' your eyes to roll around randomly)? There's a reference to suffering this penalty until you can remove the curse, but no opportunity to do so ever presents itself in the text. A clever misdirection or did the writers forget to add in a cure? If they forgot it it would explain why that path seems unduly harsh...
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kieran
Baron
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Favourite Gamebook Series: Fighting Fantasy
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Post by kieran on Apr 17, 2023 10:43:08 GMT
I'm curious as to what you think about the Honour penalty... I believe there should be a 1 Honour penalty for losing the armour in any way (even if it's to save yourself from drowning in the well - after all, this is a setting of 'honour before reason') with a separate 1 Honour penalty applied if you run away from the situation without even trying to fight/resolve the situation (which does indeed happen if you don't lose the armour and try to run away from the situation). Does that sound right?
That could work. I wonder though is the disparity in Honour penalties intentional. There's no real shame involved at the well, you just need to ditch your armour to survive. However, fleeing an enemy is always shameful and being sooo cowardly that you need to abandon your armour to do so makes it doubly so, hence why it's only a 1 Honour penalty if you keep your armour and flee. So losing your armour is only shameful in the context of cowardice.
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Post by Wizard Slayer on Apr 17, 2023 12:05:57 GMT
I agree. Dumping it in water when you'll clearly otherwise drown shouldn't be seen as dishonourable, but at the river you're letting an enemy take your armour without putting up a fight.
The rest is a bit of a mess though it's true. I wonder if it's related to the book having two authors?
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Post by soulreaver on Apr 17, 2023 22:38:02 GMT
I feel that getting an Honour penalty for losing your armour - even if it's for your own survival - is actually very thematic.
The setting requires you to answer a challenge to you/your lord regardless of how strong your opponent is, and in fact even obligates you to kill yourself if you don't act with sufficient honour. Matters of honour don't seem to factor in your chances of survival. It's all pretty uncompromising.
I feel that losing your armour would be considered dishonourable as it was a gift from your lord (as 105 also suggests), which is the case regardless of WHY you lost the armour (and admittedly, for example falling into a well and almost drowning isn't the most dignified/honourable situation to get yourself into in the first place). Whether you try to get your armour back is irrelevant in the end - you got yourself into a situation where you lost your Lord's gift, and you failed to get it back. If you didn't even try, that would just make it even more dishonourable (as per 105) as you're also running away in addition to losing the armour.
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Per
Traveller
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Post by Per on Apr 9, 2024 21:51:36 GMT
Just to top it off, on a different path, there are two paragraphs that refer to obtaining another, better set of armour. It's the same set of armour in both, but in one case you get a SKILL bonus, while in the other you get a LUCK bonus. Again, almost certainly an error here). In the English Puffin edition, 1987 printing, 305 and 355 both read Skill. (356 has a Luck bonus for regaining your swords.) The other oddities are there as well as many others. If you retreat from the ford in 213, then there's no mention of you crossing the river elsewhere. Also you lose Honour for not keeping the road 'n' ford safe, but this is clearly not a heavily trafficked thoroughfare, and of course there's no outcome where you don't actually leave the Kappa in charge of the ford. Additionally, if you jump over them and then flee, if they miss you with a thrown trident, you lose Honour, but if they hit, you don't. You don't gain Honour by accepting Ginsei's challenge or cowing the Kappa, maybe because you're in the wilderness and nobody's there to record your deeds, but of course you can still lose Honour at every turn. If you throw your breastplate across the river of unspecified width, it follows a trajectory such that someone can extend only an arm from the water and catch it neatly. Were you skipping it across the surface? Things like this make me wonder if the author or authors had a mental image of the situation such that what's ended up on the page made perfect sense in their minds, or they were just putting down some words. Flipping through the book I'm annoyed by the constant near-duplication of various segments. Surely some could have been slightly rewritten to work with various preceding developments, or had minor variations at the beginning accounted for in the sections that would point to them. The illustrations in the book seem to have a slightly unusual distribution. Most of them, 23 out of 30, are found in the first half of the book, with plenty of cases of spreads with illustrations following directly on each other, and one with three (75, 76, 78). Then after the Kappa in 201, there are a few in the next hundred: 220, 250, 294. After that there's a huge gap until a concentration of four more at the end: 378, 379, 385, 397.
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Per
Traveller
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Post by Per on Apr 11, 2024 21:46:27 GMT
I also take issue with the Tatsu's second riddle. Surely the answer to this riddle is "secret"? Its a much better answer! In a Let's Play thread on rpg.net, "riddle" and "secret" got equal votes from the participants, and the moderator helpfully selected the correct answer for them. Amusingly, before either of those were suggested as answers, people proposed "illusion", "mirage", "question" and "mystery". The secret of Singing Death cannot be shared "freely", so you solve this conundrum by having someone tell you under compulsion. Does that mean you could have forced it out of the Shogun by somehow making it a point of honour that he grant you any favour, or would the magic have seen through that? Clearly it's assumed you can demonstrate knowledge of the secret to claim the sword while potentially in the presence of people who may not know it, so could the Shogun have acted it out even without the blade present, or does each wielder only get to say it once? "So, I'm not saying this is or isn't related to any sacred weaponry, just that if a horde of demons happened to assault the throne room and I had the sword, you might have seen things go down something like... *ahem* HARMONY!" *dramatic gesture towards imaginary scabbard* After all if, say, Moichi was with you and he didn't know the secret, would the sword have "disappeared from the world of men" as soon as you called out to it? The Shogun appears to think Ikiru doesn't know the secret, and that if he did, he would be able to gain the sword's power. The Dai-Oni, who knows the secret, implies that Ikiru does as well, and that only a second condition of a "noble heart" prevents him from using it - but adds a "yet", as if that could change. Ikiru himself is meditating on the sword, and if we rule out that he's trying to become noble and presumably much less of a problem, he might be thinking there is a deeper secret that, if uncovered, makes the sword fine with being used for evil, or that the enchantment could be brute-forced. Which appears most likely? The brass key isn't used, is it? Then there's the fact that you can get another set of armour later in the story on this path - but there's no reference to this removing the penalty you suffered earlier for losing your armour... 313 does say the penalty applies until you find new armour, however 105 does not.
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Post by CharlesX on Apr 13, 2024 14:38:57 GMT
I also take issue with the Tatsu's second riddle. Surely the answer to this riddle is "secret"? Its a much better answer! In a Let's Play thread on rpg.net, "riddle" and "secret" got equal votes from the participants, and the moderator helpfully selected the correct answer for them. Amusingly, before either of those were suggested as answers, people proposed "illusion", "mirage", "question" and "mystery". The secret of Singing Death cannot be shared "freely", so you solve this conundrum by having someone tell you under compulsion. Does that mean you could have forced it out of the Shogun by somehow making it a point of honour that he grant you any favour, or would the magic have seen through that? Clearly it's assumed you can demonstrate knowledge of the secret to claim the sword while potentially in the presence of people who may not know it, so could the Shogun have acted it out even without the blade present, or does each wielder only get to say it once? "So, I'm not saying this is or isn't related to any sacred weaponry, just that if a horde of demons happened to assault the throne room and I had the sword, you might have seen things go down something like... *ahem* HARMONY!" *dramatic gesture towards imaginary scabbard* After all if, say, Moichi was with you and he didn't know the secret, would the sword have "disappeared from the world of men" as soon as you called out to it? The Shogun appears to think Ikiru doesn't know the secret, and that if he did, he would be able to gain the sword's power. The Dai-Oni, who knows the secret, implies that Ikiru does as well, and that only a second condition of a "noble heart" prevents him from using it - but adds a "yet", as if that could change. Ikiru himself is meditating on the sword, and if we rule out that he's trying to become noble and presumably much less of a problem, he might be thinking there is a deeper secret that, if uncovered, makes the sword fine with being used for evil, or that the enchantment could be brute-forced. Which appears most likely? The brass key isn't used, is it? Then there's the fact that you can get another set of armour later in the story on this path - but there's no reference to this removing the penalty you suffered earlier for losing your armour... 313 does say the penalty applies until you find new armour, however 105 does not. In one of the Knightmare gamebooks Granitas asks a riddle where his preferred answer is "feather" but if you answer "kite" you lose some life force but he accepts it after some sympathy from Treguard (I don't have the book with me, unfortunately). Doing that in a more teen-orientated gamebook would - might - take away from the atmosphere, although I could imagine either being fully acceptable (like outwitting the Holy Grail guard of the bridge).
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