vagsancho
Knight
Posts: 809
Favourite Gamebook Series: CRYPT OF THE SORCERER
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Post by vagsancho on Jul 23, 2015 14:56:42 GMT
Not one of my favourites. One of my worse FF books. Bad Atmosphere. Not interesting. A thousand miles from Livingstones's Mastarpieces Crypt of the Sorcerer, City of Thieves and Deathtrap Dungeon.
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Post by deadshadowrunner on Jul 24, 2015 11:32:00 GMT
One of my worse FF books. Bad Atmosphere. Not interesting. What are some of the better FF books you wrote then?
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Post by hynreck on Jul 24, 2015 13:54:05 GMT
I'm not sure the world is ready for a gamebook written by vagsancho. Maybe that new exoplanet they discovered recently would though. (I hear it's full of supermen)
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Post by johnbrawn1972 on Oct 31, 2017 14:25:39 GMT
This is the next of my 99p buys and easily the most disappointing so far. There is an element of Rings Of Kether here but at least there is the time limit so there is a sense of something being on the line rather than just being a space policeman.
After an exploration of some of the main lines to take I think the main choices in the Champskees solution are about right ie cutting the circuits and solving the puzzles and then taking the bike. This seems to avoid the main traps.
I quite like how there are no limits to the attribute increases you come across so presumably in the future everyone is aggregative in some sense.
This has nothing like the postmodern feel of Robot Commando or the open architecture aspect.
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Post by Charles X. on Aug 1, 2021 18:57:27 GMT
I remember buying this book partly because it had a cool cover. A cool blurb. Even, the bones of a cool plot. But no, another drossy sci-fi FF. Way too random, unchallenging except for the very out-of-the-blue roll 3 times, don't roll doubles. I think the artwork in the book was passable. If I had to use one word to describe this book, it would be "forgettable". I guess that's better than whatever expletive(s) I might use for Gates Of Death.
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Post by vastariner on Nov 11, 2022 14:53:26 GMT
Some thoughts from a recent replay.
1. I went a route that I had not remembered before and still succeeded. It's a forgiving book. If you don't know where to go next, something happens and you end up there anyway, it seems. It's not necessarily a bad thing and you can have some fun re-exploring, but it comes across more as CYOA than FF.
2. Talking of CYOA, there are not many fights, most are easy, and lots of the paragraphs are directed turning rather than options. It doesn't feel very sandbox.
3. Some of the choices are ones that make sense when you read the first paragraph of the Road Not Taken. Stuff that you should know as part of the background, rather than justifying what may have been a lucky guess. Classic example: Rogue Tracers never tell anyone their missions. Is that made clear before you get asked that question? Again it's a sort of CYOA approach where your response is retrospectively justified as the sort of common knowledge you should have.
4. It was an easy win because you can go above initial Stamina, so going into a fight on -2 Sk was not so bad.
5. You can make an ally of a café owner but he does not give you anything to eat? Huh.
6. The idea of a downtrodden Han Dold Cityesque Earth is quite fun and atmospheric; the name Gromulan though...oh dear.
7. The Illusoscope thing was pretty clever as it allowed for variations in scene and the sort of mediaevalism that goes down so well - and the final option is something that is at least an answer that you should have got from the illusions earlier in the book.
8. Also quite fun is the thing with all sci-fi - what was correctly foreseen? Personal screens on aerial transport is one. The name Zipcar another. But cars are not 'automatic' or self-driving - you have to hire or steal one if you want one.
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kieran
Baron
Posts: 2,458
Favourite Gamebook Series: Fighting Fantasy
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Post by kieran on Nov 11, 2022 15:50:58 GMT
If you don't know where to go next, something happens and you end up there anyway, it seems. It's not necessarily a bad thing and you can have some fun re-exploring, but it comes across more as CYOA than FF. Some of the Lone Wolf books (eg Kingdoms of Terror) have a similar design. Instead of asking you to choose between X, Y or Z, you get an opportunity to do X and then if you don't take it you then get an option to do Y and so on. I quite like it actually, it can be nice to discover whole new sequences you wouldn't have expected existed because you've always just done Option X in the past. Does this perhaps fit with Earth being a backwater that mostly relies on public transport? There probably isn't the demand to justify manufacture of self-driving cars compared to cheaper models.
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Post by vastariner on Nov 12, 2022 0:12:08 GMT
The book does say that the lack of demand means there are no hire cars. But it's the same sort of weird economy that you get in Star Wars. In Lucasverse you have humint androids and interstellar spaceships - yet they still have slaves. Similarly, you'd think self-driving cars would be basic cheap tech in a galaxy that also has interstellar travel.
See also the computers of Rebel Planet.
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Post by CharlesX on Mar 24, 2023 16:36:54 GMT
After mentioning I was disappointed in Star Strider, although I like the artwork, the concept and several things about it, I suggest it might be a ripe for one of these "What would you change" threads we haven't had for a bit. Obviously the short answer is "loads", it might be key to change it so it were more fast-paced like Blade Runner, instead of being even more slow than most sci-fi FFs. The robots aren't particularly well-characterised, most are servants or bodyguards. From a gameplay pov I would scrap the "roll 4 times and don't get doubles", which is random to the point of view of being silly, I say replace it with a single roll not to get doubles or better yet roll 3 dice, get above 3. Having a 1 in 36 chance of knocking a robot out is also too long and I would say should be both 12 and 2 on 2 dice. I would also cap Stamina. Where Star Strider is a let-down is where the blurb, introduction and artwork portray an interesting world but nothing is fleshed-out and the universe is too gamelike and simplistic.
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Post by a moderator on Mar 25, 2023 23:08:05 GMT
Losing some (or most) of the arbitrary Instant Deaths towards the end of the book would be an improvement, IMO.
If the 'the tunnel you just tried to enter is an illusion: you get fatally impaled on spikes' death is to be retained, at least put the fake tunnel somewhere that there is no tunnel according to the map provided, so attentive players have a chance to twig that it's a trap.
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Post by aeris2001x2 on May 1, 2023 7:05:14 GMT
Can't believe this and Chasms of Malice both written by same guy. Rings of Kether was a thousand times better than this.
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Post by a moderator on May 2, 2023 0:19:23 GMT
It's undeniably flawed, but a few interesting ideas here and there mean that I rate it above some less buggy but more uninspired books
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IoannesKantakouzenos
Traveller
Being slowly eaten alive by a Ghoul
Posts: 105
Favourite Gamebook Series: Fighting Fantasy (Aventuras Fantásticas)
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Post by IoannesKantakouzenos on May 2, 2023 16:57:33 GMT
Not that bad, like a moderator said has some nice ideas. However not that great also (Groms addicted to snails? Please).
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roidhun
Wanderer
Ironic, self-deprecating nerd and geek extraordinnaire.
Posts: 78
Favourite Gamebook Series: The Legends of Skyfall (Yes, really!)
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Post by roidhun on Aug 16, 2023 8:24:27 GMT
Wow. Lot of negativity here.
The writing isn't exactly deserving of any awards for excellence, no. But what's not to love about a book where you get to pit yourself against fiendish alien rotters in the London Underground? Shades of the classic Jon Pertwee Doctor Who story The Web Of Fear there!
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Post by a moderator on Aug 17, 2023 0:11:06 GMT
Wow. Lot of negativity here. The writing isn't exactly deserving of any awards for excellence, no. But what's not to love about a book where you get to pit yourself against fiendish alien rotters in the London Underground? Shades of the classic Jon Pertwee Doctor Who story The Web Of Fear there! [pedant]Patrick Troughton.[/pedant]
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roidhun
Wanderer
Ironic, self-deprecating nerd and geek extraordinnaire.
Posts: 78
Favourite Gamebook Series: The Legends of Skyfall (Yes, really!)
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Post by roidhun on Aug 17, 2023 0:46:39 GMT
Wow. Lot of negativity here. The writing isn't exactly deserving of any awards for excellence, no. But what's not to love about a book where you get to pit yourself against fiendish alien rotters in the London Underground? Shades of the classic Jon Pertwee Doctor Who story The Web Of Fear there! [pedant]Patrick Troughton.[/pedant] Aargh! You're right, of course. It's just that The Web Of Fear introduced Nicholas Courtney as Colonel (later Brigadier) Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart. And most people think of him in connection with Jon Pertwee because of all their bickering dialogue. ( "Military Intelligence is a contradiction in terms!" and so on.)
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