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Post by CharlesX on Oct 21, 2021 22:42:24 GMT
I've long been interested in the theory of parallel worlds, in which a different turning-point occurred in history, but I'm struggling to think of any gamebook which pick up on this theme, non-FF or not. It could easily be argued the fantastic worlds of FF are alternate realities, not to be excluded because they are not H. Turtledove length fully-realised formal worlds, in which case House Of Hell would qualify. Sky Lord includes the option to travel I think in the 12th Dimension or something (don't have Sky Lord & DKDC) playing a guessing game about what that is is more interesting than playing Sky Lord. Again, FFs set in a slightly unlikely future such as Freeway Fighter and Blood Of The Zombies are arguably alternate worlds. I haven't played Spectral Stalkers for ages but I think it's about a Doctor Who like ability to fly around the universe.
Some of my favourite FF are Portal Of Evil and Robot Commando; their very childlike, very out-there science is more Irwin Allen (Lost In Space) than Isaac Asimov.
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Post by a moderator on Oct 22, 2021 2:55:54 GMT
Several of Smith and Thomson's Falcon gamebooks touch on this - usually in 'fail' endings where you don't prevent the villain from altering history, and reality changes to match the new timeline. However, the fourth book in the series, Lost in Time, includes a couple of sequences set in parallel worlds (one of them the one created when your counterpart in that reality made a hash of book 1).
One path through Choose Your Own Adventure book 47, Outlaws of Sherwood Forest includes a bizarre scene in which you have a brief conversation with a character who looks just like you. A different path shows the same encounter from the other side, except that in that one 'you' realise that you're meeting a version of yourself who made a different decision right at the start of the adventure.
There are a couple of rather freaky bits in Life's Lottery where the barrier between parallel worlds seems to have worn a bit thin. One plot strand has you and your brother running an organisation that does team-building exercises for corporate groups. A certain combination of decisions brings you to the point where you and your latest clients make camp in the mountains during a long trek, and wake in the morning to find that duplicates of everyone's boots have inexplicably appeared. A different combination of decisions has the same trek unexpectedly becoming much more hazardous than anticipated because everyone's footwear mysteriously vanishes overnight...
I haven't played the Marvel Super Heroes gamebook One Thing After Another, but judging by a review that got me interested in the book, that involves a lot of travel through parallel realities and encountering alternate versions of your character.
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Post by vastariner on Oct 22, 2021 8:12:26 GMT
There's a one-off paragraph in Phantoms of Fear which suggests Titan is an alternative/deep history Earth...
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Post by bloodbeasthandler on Oct 22, 2021 18:33:02 GMT
Sky Lord includes the option to travel I think in the 12th Dimension or something (don't have Sky Lord & DKDC) playing a guessing game about what that is is more interesting than playing Sky Lord. That's just an example of the sort of humour in the book. The author probably picked the number 12 by rolling a dice and adding his shoe size. Means absolutely nothing and has no real effect on the story. I shouldn't devote a single braincell and synapse to thinking about it if I were you. Did you ever read the Time Machine books? Book 2 (Search for the Dinosaurs) has you meet another adventurer, very similar to yourself, who gives you some bad advice that can end you up back in your current timeline in a bookshop. This other traveller (named Karl) was reading through the book in a bookstore without buying it, and the process of him flicking through the book brings him into your adventure. Sort of thing. I doubt I've explained that very well. There's some multi-dimensional threads in Superpowered (Click Your Poison) where some portals open up and doppelgangers come through. Do you think Assassins of Allansia counts? Is it meant to be a prelude to Deathtrap Dungeon or.. since the start is not compatible with the introduction of FF6, is it a parallel universe? Did Ian intend that? Or did he simply not read the start of his own book? All in all I'm very wary of the whole parallel worlds 'thing' unless I can be sure that the lot was planned from the start. Because I think what it usually means is that the writer coming up with the parallel world/universe is basically ignorant of what has come before, cannot be bothered reading it all, or has forgotten it, feels the canon is stifling, or is arrogant enough to trample all over someone else's ideas and is merely exploiting the franchise. |
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Post by sleepyscholar on Oct 23, 2021 7:07:52 GMT
Sky Lord includes the option to travel I think in the 12th Dimension or something (don't have Sky Lord & DKDC) playing a guessing game about what that is is more interesting than playing Sky Lord. That's just an example of the sort of humour in the book. The author probably picked the number 12 by rolling a dice and adding his shoe size. Means absolutely nothing and has no real effect on the story. I shouldn't devote a single braincell and synapse to thinking about it if I were you. M-Theory argues for 11 dimensions (including time), I believe, though of course that's 'dimension' in the technical sense rather than the 'parallel universe' sense. But my appreciation of Nigel Tufnell makes me wonder whether Sharp might not have been proposing M-Theory in a Tufnell universe. All in all I'm very wary of the whole parallel worlds 'thing' unless I can be sure that the lot was planned from the start. Because I think what it usually means is that the writer coming up with the parallel world/universe is basically ignorant of what has come before, cannot be bothered reading it all, or has forgotten it, feels the canon is stifling, or is arrogant enough to trample all over someone else's ideas and is merely exploiting the franchise. Much of that describes me when I started writing FF; I don't think someone in that situation would actually care enough about the 'canon' to even bother with the fig leaf of parallel worlds. Ironically, I think much use of parallel worlds in fiction is done in order to achieve the effect that lies at the heart of FF and indeed all gamebooks: this constant sense of alternative possibilities. As a fictional device, though, I think it's risky because it can undermine any sense of importance in the story. If a plot can be erased with the click of your fingers, why care about the plot? The TV Loki suffered from some of this, I felt. On the other hand I think Groundhog Day worked, largely thanks to the constraint of the time loop. |
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kieran
Baron
Posts: 2,462
Favourite Gamebook Series: Fighting Fantasy
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Post by kieran on Oct 23, 2021 9:26:39 GMT
Or did he simply not read the start of his own book? That! |
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Post by bloodbeasthandler on Oct 23, 2021 11:56:08 GMT
Some combining of your post with extracts from your F-Fantazine interview hopefully not taken out of context. The main theme of this is 'canon' and its place in FF and elsewhere. I don't think someone in that situation would actually care enough about the 'canon' to even bother with the fig leaf of parallel worlds. Yep. And that is what editors and ‘loremasters’ like the late Christopher Tolkien are there for. To sift the would-be writers and to say ‘No!’ if needs be. The Lone Wolf novels fail utterly for me mostly because (aside from Joe Dever’s initial input into the first few books) they were written by someone who didn’t care about the setting, who used it as a platform for his own ideas and characters (who he thought were far more interesting), and had the main character act like an idiot. It’s a destructive form of subversion. The only person who gets to 'kill off' Lady Carolina or have a comet smash into Kallamehr ought to be you, the originator. Or failing that, a writer who has read, absorbed and enjoyed all the books and is keen to capture the spirit of them in new books. The aim must be to play with the toys nicely rather than grab them break them or hold them over a fire and warp them into other shapes. The appalling cluster-f**k that is modern Star Wars should be a warning as to what happens to beloved things put into the hands of uncaring owners. Much of that describes me when I started writing FF; [snip] The desire to go somewhere different, try to do something a little different. Blaze our own trail. ... Looking back though I think it’s more valuable to do something a little out-there in a mainstream series like FF, than to pick up one’s toys and leave for a smaller playground. I couldn’t agree more. Indeed the blazing of trails by all the authors was essential at the time in order to populate Titan with new places, to flesh them out. (In contrast to Joe Dever’s great setting of Magnamund where everything was already mapped out either in the books or his own mind). It is one of the strengths of FF that the world as pulled together by Marc G in the book ‘Titan’ leaves gaps and ‘hooks’ to be thought about and expanded upon by other writers. There was evidently a place on Titan for an Arabian Nights style setting as well as ones with a Far Eastern feel. But on the last few words of yours there... if the playground game is ‘Cops and Robbers’, then a newcomer to the game really needs get on board with that and be a cop or a robber... at least at first or until everyone gets bored. That's not a criticism aimed at you and your books, Paul, but rather at what's happening with some other 'franchises'. In a way, for FF I think I’d prefer it didn’t have the Whoniverse tendency, though I know all those Titan fans will hate me for this. What I mean is that I’d be happier to see FF as just a range of fantasy books without such a hard tie-in to a branded background. That, after all, was how it worked in the early days. Titan was a later imposition. In a way, you can see Magehunter as a plea for writers not to have to make continuity a fundamental characteristic of their work. Even though I am a bit of a continuity nut (bringing back the Isles of the Dawn plus characters, bringing back Kallamehr). . The sci-fi books were all one-offs and weren’t really as popular as the fantasy ones for whatever reason. I’m not totally ideologically opposed to one-off books fantasy or otherwise. Having said that I have to admit I was irritated that Legend of Zagor was not set on Titan but in Amarilla - a location which I didn't know or care about. But better that a book be a one-off than someone come up with ideas at variance with FF but then plonk them in Allansia. |
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Post by sleepyscholar on Oct 23, 2021 13:48:06 GMT
Wow! Forced to face the music for flip comments made years ago: how's that for canon continuity! But no, it's fair enough. You do reveal the ambiguous feeling I have for the tyranny of canon. And since I did that interview, we've had the travesty that is the Chibnall Who. But on reflection, I don't object to what Chibnall did because it 'breaks the canon', I object to it because it's derivative, stupid and boring. But better that a book be a one-off than someone come up with ideas at variance with FF but then plonk them in Allansia. You mean like having an adventure set in a background with magic utterly at odds with that of Titan, but then smashing the two together like some crazed toddler? As I mentioned in the interview, Titan was retrofitted to the FF books, and as you said, Marc was savvy enough to do so with plenty of creative wiggle-room. I think the strength of Doctor Who is that it not only allows adventure in different times and on different planets, but it can shift, and even combine, genres. I watched a few episodes of DC's Legends of Tomorrow, which is a pretty shameless attempt at an American (superhero) version of Doctor Who, and for all the gloss, it is notably lacking in the spark of what kept Doctor Who going for 58 years (and yes it did continue during the Time War, sorry, the cancellation period, in many forms including the books edited by one Peter Darvill-Evans). And actually this is also what FF does. Howl of the Werewolf, which I don't think I'm being controversial in claiming is one of the most highly acclaimed FF books, is clearly in a different genre from Warlock of Firetop Mountain. With Magehunter, I wanted to take the genre I'd already played with -- Arabian Nights -- and collide it with a Germanic Witchfinder General vibe. And for me, all that matters is whether or not that succeeded in producing a compelling setting and dynamic to the story -- and a good FF challenge. I am suspicious of the fan tendency towards solidification of a canon. The same thing happens in the music world, where fans of bands punish those bands mercilessly for deviating from the formula. And yet people have the cheek to criticise Status Quo or the Rolling Stones for carrying on doing the same thing (it's no coincidence that I'm a fan of Radiohead, who reinvented themselves after their most successful album -- without any change of personnel). Much of the best Doctor Who was written by people who were not fans of the show, and who didn't care two hoots about the canon. And in the early 70s, for example, the producers didn't care about it either. When canon did start to have an impact on the show (the John Nathan-Turner period), the quality rapidly took a turn for the worse. I guess I was lucky. I started doing stuff for FF around the time Marc was putting Titan together (and he was in the same office as me and Steve W for a while as well) so I was privy to how it was being done, and never regarded it as in any way sacrosanct -- or in any way fundamental to FF, which already existed in a joyfully diverse mish-mash. I do agree that an FF writer should look at what has been done, and think very seriously before doing something at odds with that, but I think that's more a matter of quality than anything else. In many cases, a desire to smash stuff up ('Hey! Let's destroy Gallifrey! (again)') is more than anything an infantile urge best rejected because it's not that interesting, rather than for what it does with 'canon'. Other infantile urges might lead to fun results, though... |
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Post by peasantscribbler on Oct 23, 2021 15:17:48 GMT
Or did he simply not read the start of his own book? That! I agree that this is what is ultimately responsible for the continuity error. That said, there is a sense in which the continuity error is introduced by the player and not by the text of Deathtrap Dungeon or Assassins of Allansia. The background section of DD simply states that one of the barbarians enters third. At this point, this could be either Throm or not-Throm. If the player turns right at the beginning and eventually finds not-Throm's corpse, then he or she has created an FF universe in which not-Throm entered the dungeon third. If the player turns left at the beginning and eventually encounters Throm, then one can assume (with confirmation from AoA) that the player has created an FF universe in which Throm entered the dungeon third. If FF has an inclination to eliminate the possibility of creating a continuity error (and there is no evidence that they have such an inclination), I would prefer that they edit DD to have the player enter last. With that change, we could assume that Throm enters third and not-Throm enters fifth. Having Throm enter third instead of sixth eliminates the necessity of having Throm somehow pass you before you encounter him (h/t to the Count for identifying this particular plot problem with DD). So, having the player enter last could solve two problems. Plus, I think it makes more dramatic sense. |
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Post by a moderator on Oct 23, 2021 16:27:27 GMT
The aim must be to play with the toys nicely rather than grab them break them or hold them over a fire and warp them into other shapes. Unless a lot has changed since the playtesting, I don't think you're going to be very happy with the mini-adventure in Fighting Fantazine 17. |
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Post by bloodbeasthandler on Oct 23, 2021 17:59:53 GMT
I agree that this is what is ultimately responsible for the continuity error. That said, there is a sense in which the continuity error is introduced by the player and not by the text of Deathtrap Dungeon or Assassins of Allansia. The background section of DD simply states that one of the barbarians enters third. At this point, this could be either Throm or not-Throm. If the player turns right at the beginning and eventually finds not-Throm's corpse, then he or she has created an FF universe in which not-Throm entered the dungeon third. If the player turns left at the beginning and eventually encounters Throm, then one can assume (with confirmation from AoA) that the player has created an FF universe in which Throm entered the dungeon third. If FF has an inclination to eliminate the possibility of creating a continuity error (and there is no evidence that they have such an inclination), I would prefer that they edit DD to have the player enter last. With that change, we could assume that Throm enters third and not-Throm enters fifth. Having Throm enter third instead of sixth eliminates the necessity of having Throm somehow pass you before you encounter him (h/t to the Count for identifying this particular plot problem with DD). So, having the player enter last could solve two problems. Plus, I think it makes more dramatic sense. How do you reconcile the introduction of Deathtrap Dungeon with the end of Assassins of Allansia? I mean the part of the introduction in DD talking about how you got to Fang and where you stayed before entering the dungeon. They are not compatible are they? The words in the introduction of a gamebook are as important as any of the numbered paragraphs that follow it. This little case study sums up nicely what happens in these sorts of instances. Fans tie themselves in knots to explain how two mutually exclusive things can be true at the same time and then integrated into the existing canon of earlier books. And the reasons for all this? The author couldn't be bothered to read an earlier book from cover to cover (In this case his own book!) and a lack of attention to detail. |
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Post by peasantscribbler on Oct 23, 2021 18:44:12 GMT
Fair question. I may be missing something, but I was working under the following assumption: the player who enters the dungeon at the end of AoA is a totally different person from the player of DD. That is, the player who enters at the end of AoA is the ninja (assassin) who enters the dungeon fourth in DD. |
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Post by bloodbeasthandler on Oct 23, 2021 19:07:20 GMT
Fair question. I may be missing something, but I was working under the following assumption: the player who enters the dungeon at the end of AoA is a totally different person from the player of DD. That is, the player who enters at the end of AoA is the ninja (assassin) who enters the dungeon fourth in DD. Have you got the book to hand? Go to para 145. Then choose para 25. Maybe I'm the one who made the mistake here and I ought to take back what I've said? |
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Post by peasantscribbler on Oct 23, 2021 20:18:17 GMT
Looks like my theory is a bit of a stretch. The counterpart to section 25 is section 276, in which you are given the chance to represent Lord Azzur in the dungeon, having bested all of his assassins. Somehow I thought there was a section somewhere between 276 and 400 in which Lord Azzur kits you out, but alas that was a figment of my imagination and no such section exists. All this time I've been crediting Livingstone with a decent twist ending, but now I'm not so sure he deserves it.
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Post by The Count on Oct 23, 2021 21:42:46 GMT
It is blatantly obvious that the YOU of the dismal AoA is not the same YOU from the overrated DD.
Throm is clearly a very popular name among cheap plastic shade wearing generic barbarians in Titan. Just like there several examples of famous people with the same name: two Mel's in the Spice Girls, two minor celebrities called Michelle Williams (a backing singer and a supporting actress), two Kate Hudsons (one who is famous for being the daughter of a famous actress, one is a busty songstress that holds the female record for most US Billboard Hot 100 #1s from the same album under her stage name), two Chris Evans (a hunky super hero actor who even the guys want and an exceedingly unattractive ginger tv and radio host), two drummers called Roger Taylor (Queeen & Duran Duran), three JKs (the female author, a 90s singer and a former kids presenter and radio host), two lingerie models called Danielle Lloyd, and around 5,000 people in the UK called John Smith.
So after finishing AoA, YOU die in DD as does that Throm, maybe becoming one of the stone statues or servants of the trailmasters, or the silly old man who pulls up the basket lift, or rotting in the pit or drowning in the bore beasts pool. Then, several years later, the YOU who is a different YOU kills another throwaway Throm and potentially becomes the first person to ever get through it.
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Post by sleepyscholar on Oct 24, 2021 1:27:15 GMT
It is blatantly obvious that the YOU of the dismal AoA is not the same YOU from the overrated DD. Throm is clearly a very popular name among cheap plastic shade wearing generic barbarians in Titan. Just like there several examples of famous people with the same name: two Mel's in the Spice Girls, two minor celebrities called Michelle Williams (a backing singer and a supporting actress), two Kate Hudsons (one who is famous for being the daughter of a famous actress, one is a busty songstress that holds the female record for most US Billboard Hot 100 #1s from the same album under her stage name), two Chris Evans (a hunky super hero actor who even the guys want and an exceedingly unattractive ginger tv and radio host), two drummers called Roger Taylor (Queeen & Duran Duran), three JKs (the female author, a 90s singer and a former kids presenter and radio host), two lingerie models called Danielle Lloyd, and around 5,000 people in the UK called John Smith. So after finishing AoA, YOU die in DD as does that Throm, maybe becoming one of the stone statues or servants of the trailmasters, or the silly old man who pulls up the basket lift, or rotting in the pit or drowning in the bore beasts pool. Then, several years later, the YOU who is a different YOU kills another throwaway Throm and potentially becomes the first person to ever get through it. Ah, I should have pointed out earlier: in the Great FF Continuity Guide, which all FF authors are given and tested on in the manner of London taxi drivers and The Knowledge, it expressly states that in Titan, all barbarians are called Throm. |
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kieran
Baron
Posts: 2,462
Favourite Gamebook Series: Fighting Fantasy
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Post by kieran on Oct 24, 2021 9:34:02 GMT
Having Throm enter third instead of sixth eliminates the necessity of having Throm somehow pass you before you encounter him (h/t to the Count for identifying this particular plot problem with DD). I don't really see it as much of a problem to be honest - it's easy to assume that he simply took the other route from the goblin room and thus overtook you. Perhaps you left a bootprint indicating which exit you took and he decided to avoid you for now. A bigger issue is how did the ninja and elf get past the goblins without killing them. Maybe they somehow snuck past them, the goblins were out on patrol or they took the passage with the boulder trap without triggering it. If we have to accommodate the probably less stealthy Throm also avoiding the goblins, it gets very unwieldy! |
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Post by bloodbeasthandler on Oct 24, 2021 13:46:05 GMT
Wow! Forced to face the music for flip comments made years ago: how's that for canon continuity! But no, it's fair enough. You do reveal the ambiguous feeling I have for the tyranny of canon. Ambiguous, yes. It can be a tyranny, an overcomplicated and intimidating mess of knots, a strait-jacket ... or a springboard, a framework... with some of the heavy-lifting already done and a ready-made audience [including die-hard fans] already ‘invested’ in it. You mean like having an adventure set in a background with magic utterly at odds with that of Titan, but then smashing the two together like some crazed toddler? Ha! And actually this is also what FF does. Howl of the Werewolf, which I don't think I'm being controversial in claiming is one of the most highly acclaimed FF books, is clearly in a different genre from Warlock of Firetop Mountain. With Magehunter, I wanted to take the genre I'd already played with -- Arabian Nights -- and collide it with a Germanic Witchfinder General vibe. And for me, all that matters is whether or not that succeeded in producing a compelling setting and dynamic to the story -- and a good FF challenge. And by all means collide other genres into it. Hammer or Lovecraftian horror might give us weird goings on in the sewers under Kallamehr; we could have a whodunit; or an adventurer could be brought in as one of a band of 1930's style ‘untouchables’ to fight organised crime (the rot probably goes right to the top to those murderous snobs in the bath-house  ); maybe even something like a western could be written out in the desert. If done well (and you mention the importance of quality later on in your post) all these could work in this setting. BUT.... I am suspicious of the fan tendency towards solidification of a canon. I fear I may be one of those people. Taking Kallamehr again as an example and looking at the map in RR page 46... If you enter the city by the Mehr Gate and head straight on, you’ll be on Sallakesh Street, turning right at the big junction and bearing left will bring you to the Square of Patriarchs via Pariah Way. That to me is as 'set in stone' as the door, set of stairs, and apartments at 221B Baker Street with V.R. shot on one wall. Or come to think of it, as sure as if you leave London heading westwards on the A40 and turn right at Oxford onto the A34 it will take you towards Bicester. We don’t need name-dropping of characters and places merely for the sake of it to show how knowledgeable the writer is about the setting, but I would expect anyone writing another FF set in Kallamehr to have read ALL the FF books where it is mentioned, thereby getting a feel for it and a knowledge of the city. If the writer doesn’t want to do that (and it’s not too great a thing to ask, is it?) then why not go elsewhere and write about a path less-travelled? Changes can be made - they might have got rid of the ivy climbing up Rangor Tower and health and safety forced the authorities to replace the Devlin with a Sun Jewel. But the tower has a set number of floors and its location is on the seafront. Full stop. That pretty much sums up my mentality. I do agree that an FF writer should look at what has been done, and think very seriously before doing something at odds with that, but I think that's more a matter of quality than anything else. I’ll have to give this more thought but for me, to be of good quality is partially dependent on adherence to truth (or in this case canon). I could not take a WW2 film about the fall of France in 1940 seriously if they’ve got Tiger Tanks on one side and French soldiers attacking them with bazookas on the other, for example, no matter how good the acting or special effects. It shows a lack of research and interest in the truth... and thus a lack of care and respect for the subject. What else are they getting wrong? Why can’t they make the effort? Having said that, if someone has a stab at writing a book about a something (say the historical 'War of the Wizards' mentioned in Titan) and in my opinion utterly botches it (ie low quality), then I’d have no qualms about ignoring it, or someone redoing it ‘properly’ and by doing so ‘de-canonising’ it. In many cases, a desire to smash stuff up ('Hey! Let's destroy Gallifrey! (again)') is more than anything an infantile urge best rejected because it's not that interesting, rather than for what it does with 'canon'. Other infantile urges might lead to fun results, though... I don’t know enough about modern Dr Who because I deliberately stopped watching it a while ago (having seen the writing on the wall) I had a rant all written out but have deleted it. Suffice to say I don’t give these people the benefit of the doubt any more, and they need chucking out. |
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Post by a moderator on Oct 24, 2021 14:37:43 GMT
Taking Kallamehr again as an example and looking at the map in RR page 46... If you enter the city by the Mehr Gate and head straight on, you’ll be on Sallakesh Street, turning right at the big junction and bearing left will bring you to the Square of Patriarchs via Pariah Way. That to me is as 'set in stone' as the door, set of stairs, and apartments at 221B Baker Street with V.R. shot on one wall. Or come to think of it, as sure as if you leave London heading westwards on the A40 and turn right at Oxford onto the A34 it will take you towards Bicester. We don’t need name-dropping of characters and places merely for the sake of it to show how knowledgeable the writer is about the setting, but I would expect anyone writing another FF set in Kallamehr to have read ALL the FF books where it is mentioned, thereby getting a feel for it and a knowledge of the city. If the writer doesn’t want to do that (and it’s not too great a thing to ask, is it?) then why not go elsewhere and write about a path less-travelled? This reminds me of some unfun I had at the official FF forum back in the noughties. I'd come up with an idea for a multi-player scenario set in Port Blacksand, in which the characters were all members of the City Guard, tasked with finding out who had stolen a valuable item from Lord Azzur's palace, and how. Back then, anything of that nature needed to be approved (by someone whose name rhymed with 'grave dolt'), so I submitted the outline and waited for a response. And it got the thumbs up, but was then posted to the 'collaborative fan fiction' section of the forum rather than the 'multi-player adventure' section. Despite reservations (a mystery story with multiple authors, only one of whom knew the solution?), I decided to try and make a go of it. Even after my hopes of demonstrating that a mystery could be engaging even without murders were dashed by the first new contributor, who promptly added a brutal killing to the set-up. But then some others joined in to make things worse. First there was the individual who really, really wanted the investigating guard (the switch to fanfic also pared the team of guards down to just one) to get into a fight to the death against Sourbelly. The Sourbelly who is definitely alive at the start of City of Thieves, and possibly dead by the end of it. Obvious potential for continuity issues there. I managed to circuvent that problem by using Nicodemus as a deus ex machina, imposing the sorcerous equivalent of a restraining order to make it impossible for the two characters to get within striking distance of each other. And then came the incident that (IIRC) caused the whole thing to crash and burn. A writer had the hero enter a street that doesn't exist. In Port Blacksand, the most exhaustively mapped city of all Fighting Fantasy. I politely pointed out that there was no such street, and suggested a street that was on the map, in the relevant area of the city, as an alternative. But the writer in question felt that editing one word in the offending post was far too much hard work, and opted instead for a page-long rant about how it didn't matter that there was no such street in Port Blacksand because Port Blacksand wasn't real, which meant that this writer was free to make up anything they wanted about it and nobody else had any right to disagree with anything they came up with. Such a pity that the subsequent deletion of the forum meant that literature of this calibre was lost to posterity. |
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Post by sleepyscholar on Oct 24, 2021 16:05:56 GMT
I’ll have to give this more thought but for me, to be of good quality is partially dependent on adherence to truth (or in this case canon). I could not take a WW2 film about the fall of France in 1940 seriously if they’ve got Tiger Tanks on one side and French soldiers attacking them with bazookas on the other, for example, no matter how good the acting or special effects. It shows a lack of research and interest in the truth... and thus a lack of care and respect for the subject. What else are they getting wrong? Why can’t they make the effort? Good choice of example, since I was a teenage wargamer, and used to get really pissed off at the fact that every World War 2 film had the wrong tanks in. The thing is, on the one hand, the people making the movie -- and most of those viewing it -- didn't care about that stuff; on the other, the practicalities of actually getting a bunch of functioning Panzer IIs and IIIs would add such a ludicrous amount to the cost. Having said that, I am probably with you that there is no excuse for a movie in which the tanks are CGI generated, and yet still Tigers. |
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Post by sleepyscholar on Oct 24, 2021 16:15:51 GMT
Taking Kallamehr again as an example and looking at the map in RR page 46... If you enter the city by the Mehr Gate and head straight on, you’ll be on Sallakesh Street, turning right at the big junction and bearing left will bring you to the Square of Patriarchs via Pariah Way. That to me is as 'set in stone' as the door, set of stairs, and apartments at 221B Baker Street with V.R. shot on one wall. Or come to think of it, as sure as if you leave London heading westwards on the A40 and turn right at Oxford onto the A34 it will take you towards Bicester. We don’t need name-dropping of characters and places merely for the sake of it to show how knowledgeable the writer is about the setting, but I would expect anyone writing another FF set in Kallamehr to have read ALL the FF books where it is mentioned, thereby getting a feel for it and a knowledge of the city. If the writer doesn’t want to do that (and it’s not too great a thing to ask, is it?) then why not go elsewhere and write about a path less-travelled? This reminds me of some unfun I had at the official FF forum back in the noughties. I'd come up with an idea for a multi-player scenario set in Port Blacksand, in which the characters were all members of the City Guard, tasked with finding out who had stolen a valuable item from Lord Azzur's palace, and how. Back then, anything of that nature needed to be approved (by someone whose name rhymed with 'grave dolt'), so I submitted the outline and waited for a response. And it got the thumbs up, but was then posted to the 'collaborative fan fiction' section of the forum rather than the 'multi-player adventure' section. Despite reservations (a mystery story with multiple authors, only one of whom knew the solution?), I decided to try and make a go of it. Even after my hopes of demonstrating that a mystery could be engaging even without murders were dashed by the first new contributor, who promptly added a brutal killing to the set-up. But then some others joined in to make things worse. First there was the individual who really, really wanted the investigating guard (the switch to fanfic also pared the team of guards down to just one) to get into a fight to the death against Sourbelly. The Sourbelly who is definitely alive at the start of City of Thieves, and possibly dead by the end of it. Obvious potential for continuity issues there. I managed to circuvent that problem by using Nicodemus as a deus ex machina, imposing the sorcerous equivalent of a restraining order to make it impossible for the two characters to get within striking distance of each other. And then came the incident that (IIRC) caused the whole thing to crash and burn. A writer had the hero enter a street that doesn't exist. In Port Blacksand, the most exhaustively mapped city of all Fighting Fantasy. I politely pointed out that there was no such street, and suggested a street that was on the map, in the relevant area of the city, as an alternative. But the writer in question felt that editing one word in the offending post was far too much hard work, and opted instead for a page-long rant about how it didn't matter that there was no such street in Port Blacksand because Port Blacksand wasn't real, which meant that this writer was free to make up anything they wanted about it and nobody else had any right to disagree with anything they came up with. Such a pity that the subsequent deletion of the forum meant that literature of this calibre was lost to posterity. Actually, my feeling about this is that it demonstrates what a mistake it is to map something fully. My other feeling about it is that you always seem to get twerps in open collaborations. I have observed that while fans are most insistent on the canon being set in stone, they are also often the most eager to smash it to pieces (again Doctor Who is a pertinent example here during the Wilderness Years, when Gallifrey was first destroyed in the first Time War). I absolutely understand the urge to take a setting and do something distinctive with it. Sadly, for a lot of people 'do something distinctive' translates as 'smash it up'. Even for me as a callow youth, in the case of Titan, I had no interest in smashing in up, but did like the idea of grabbing a blank bit and making it my own. This was what the fake-street guy in the case above was doing (though apparently too stupid to recognise that you can't do that when there's a map, unless you find some interesting workaround). But as long as we glorify the crime of murder, and regard stories in which the universe is at stake as being inherently more interesting than stories in which one person's future is at stake*, we are going to have people crushing interesting endeavours of the type you attempted. * No prizes for guessing that I actually regard the latter as more interesting. |
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kieran
Baron
Posts: 2,462
Favourite Gamebook Series: Fighting Fantasy
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Post by kieran on Oct 24, 2021 17:35:19 GMT
I'd come up with an idea for a multi-player scenario set in Port Blacksand, in which the characters were all members of the City Guard, tasked with finding out who had stolen a valuable item from Lord Azzur's palace, and how. I remember you trying that properly on a different forum but sadly I think it fizzled out before we got any further. Any thoughts about giving it another go here or adapting it into a solo gamebook? |
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Post by a moderator on Oct 24, 2021 21:43:24 GMT
I have been working on a solo gamebook version. Currently on hold, as I'd need to do a closer reading of The Port of Peril than I have the stomach for right now in order to be sure that nothing in my solo contradicts any details about Blacksand established in TPoP.
While the later version of the multi-player adventure you remember did end up unfinished, the actions of some of the more clueless players furnished me with plenty of off-page incident for the solo variant.
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); maybe even something like a western could be written out in the desert. If done well (and you mention the importance of quality later on in your post) all these could work in this setting.