Biggest Disappointment(s) in FF

[a moderator]

Attempting to combat thread drift in Progressive stats playthroughs...

Dec 9, 2021 16:40:52 GMT jmisbest said:

Dec 9, 2021 8:15:59 GMT terrysalt said:

Puffin books are done. On to the single most disappointing book in the series.

In my opinion Eye of The Dragon is only(?) the 5th most disappointing of The 70 or so Regular Books in the series, but we are allowed our opinions. What do you think of The 4 FF Books that in my opinion are worse then Eye of The Dragon?

In 4th place is Phantoms of Fear but only if your trying to win with Power not Artefacts, in 3rd place is Sorcery Book 4 but only if your playing as A Warrior, in 2nd place is Black Vein Prophecy and in 1st place is Blood of The Zombies

Bear in mind that, while it is disappointing when a new book in a series turns out to be poor, there’s more to disappointment than just badness. It’s about hopes and expectations not being fulfilled, so the biggest disappointments are likely to be the books that promised more than they delivered.


Starship Traveller saw FF branching out into a whole new genre – but was the shortest book yet released, with a ship’s crew devoid of personality, a 2-dimensional approach to space travel, underdeveloped planets, and a maze duller than the one so many readers of The Warlock of Firetop Mountain hated. Would that be the first real disappointment in the run?


The Crown of Kings was the climax to Steve Jackson’s Sorcery! Trial of Champions was the first official sequel in the main range. Warlock magazine and Titan – the Fighting Fantasy World had been priming the fans for Creature of Havoc and Crypt of the Sorcerer for months. How many of those books lived up to the anticipation?


How about Return to Firetop Mountain? The 10th anniversary special, also marking the return to the range of one of the series’ original authors, heading back into familiar territory and promising a rematch against the series’ first major villain. Was that a suitable celebration?


Eye of the Dragon and Bloodbones carried more weight of expectation than most: the first FF book in a decade, and the ‘lost’ adventure denied to fans since the Puffin run came to an end. Was there any way for them not to disappoint on some level?


More recently, The Gates of Death and Crystal of Storms brought new writers to the range for the first time this century, and haven’t met with the most positive of responses.


So, what were the big disappointments in FF for you? And why?

[terrysalt]

It's as Greenspine says. For me Blood wasn't disappointing because I didn't expect anything from it. I heard about Eye and got excited about FF returning and then had that excitement crushed.

[CharlesX]

Revenge Of The Vampire, which in spite of its Martin cliches/tropes could have been so much better, if someone had spent half a day proofreading it. There was a later edition of ROTV which corrected one very minor error according to Titannica, why couldn't they have got the guys who did COTM?
   All the recent Livingstone books have been disappointing. Assassins Of Allansia might be the best of a very average pile, but it has a gameplay issue in terms of it being technically impossible to get the pirate's anti-poison earring, and continuity issues in relation with DD. Livingstone's POP is a ROTV like mess in terms of game rule specifications, where at least EOTD is consistent.

[a moderator]

Dec 9, 2021 19:21:52 GMT CharlesX said:

There was a later edition of ROTV which corrected one very minor error according to Titannica, why couldn't they have got the guys who did COTM?

Perhaps because they were a different publisher, and made the edit 12 years before Curse was revised. And given that those behind the changes to Curse introduced new bugs by forgetting to change every reference to some of the Skill scores they decreased, I'm not convinced that they'd have done that great a job even if they had been brought in to fix Revenge.

Oh, and while it would obviously have been better to fix all of the errors in Revenge, the one that got put right wasn't that minor. It denied readers one opportunity to get a magic sword, and as one of the transposed sections could only be reached via a 'multiply the number associated with the item by x' route, the fix wasn't as straightforward as 'switch around the numbers for the two options'.

[kieran]

For me, rather than be a disappointment, Eye exceeded my low expectations somewhat as I liked it much better than the Dicing with Dragons version.

The biggest disappointment for me as a child was Black Vein Prophecy. I thought the cover and title were so cool but then found the book weird and depressing. Of course, I've changed my mind about it a lot since then.

Of the books I first played in my late teens and older, I was a bit disappointed by Masks of Mayhem which I thought would be a lot better than it was though I can't really remember why my expectations were so high in the first place.

[sleepyscholar]

Dec 10, 2021 20:55:09 GMT kieran said:

For me, rather than be a disappointment, Eye exceeded my low expectations somewhat as I liked it much better than the Dicing with Dragons version.

The biggest disappointment for me as a child was Black Vein Prophecy. I thought the cover and title were so cool but then found the book weird and depressing. Of course, I've changed my mind about it a lot since then.

Of the books I first played in my late teens and older, I was a bit disappointed by Masks of Mayhem which I thought would be a lot better than it was though I can't really remember why my expectations were so high in the first place.

You thought the cover was cool?

You deserved all you got, then!



Incidentally: I should stress that the cover was the author's fault, not poor Terry Oakes, who did his best with a bad brief.

[kieran]

Dec 11, 2021 8:45:59 GMT sleepyscholar said:

You thought the cover was cool?

Oh absolutely. Anything with mysterious hooded folk was the most awesome thing in the world to me back then. Stealer of Souls did it for me for the same reason. No, I have no idea why.
These days I like the contents of BVP much more than the cover though I still don't find the cover that bad.

[The Count]

The errors in the later books where it was clear that noone checked anything
Starship Traveller makes you go through a lot of pointless bookkeeping and is an unfinished, tedious mess
Gates saw an unfamous "celebrity" author brought in to dumb down the series to the point where a toddler could complete it - and a toddler wouldn't find it funny either.
Revenge is so badly bugged it is unplayable if you don't know the way round the errors
The titular Caverns and Snow Witch are almost irrelevant to the book which is ultimately a soul sapping linear slog around every location ever mentioned in every other book
Spellbreaker is near impossible
Stormslayer, Night of the Necromancer and Howl of the Werewolf swap insane difficulty for excessive complexity and bookkeeping
Sorcery has too many things that makes no sense, and ends with a massive whimper. And that is without taking into account the fact Anal and sounds like an item on a brothel menu, not a place
Assassins is another linear slog and contains the most disgusting "art" in any FF book

I had low expectations for Blood given it being seemingly written to cash in on the modern zombie tropes and it is FF in name only so it being tedious and impossible is almost an improvement

[The Count]

Dec 11, 2021 9:17:02 GMT kieran said:

Dec 11, 2021 8:45:59 GMT sleepyscholar said:

You thought the cover was cool?

Oh absolutely. Anything with mysterious hooded folk was the most awesome thing in the world to me back then. Stealer of Souls did it for me for the same reason. No, I have no idea why.
These days I like the contents of BVP much more than the cover though I still don't find the cover that bad.

I still love the cover for BVP. I might even buy a print of it and get it framed

[The Count]

I forgot one

Keep of the Lich-Lord is disappointing when you realise that it can easily be completed in under 40 paragraphs by bumbling straight to the end, making over 90% of the book pointless

[sleepyscholar]

Dec 11, 2021 17:27:38 GMT The Count said:

And that is without taking into account the fact Anal and sounds like an item on a brothel menu, not a place

You wouldn't let it lie!

[sleepyscholar]

Dec 11, 2021 17:28:35 GMT The Count said:

Dec 11, 2021 9:17:02 GMT kieran said:

Oh absolutely. Anything with mysterious hooded folk was the most awesome thing in the world to me back then. Stealer of Souls did it for me for the same reason. No, I have no idea why.
These days I like the contents of BVP much more than the cover though I still don't find the cover that bad.

I still love the cover for BVP. I might even buy a print of it and get it framed

You have to admit, though, that 'conceptual' is entirely the wrong approach for an FF cover brief. It led to the head-scratching Crimson Tide cover too.
On the other hand, the BVP cover would be great if I ever got a prog rock band up and running, and needed an album cover.

[CharlesX]

I was disappointed with the Change mechanism in Howl, which is set seriously easy. And I suppose with the Fear mechanism in House, where you unfairly have to roll at least 3 or you can't win.
   Going back to Howl, I'd even suggest reprints add to the difficulty level of the gamebook, which would be rare, even a first, for FF (where they effectively did that in the FOD Tin Man medium setting, that was an app, so, not the same). I'd suggest they did something like that for the Sharcle fight in EOTD (even if they added skill/attack strength bonuses), but, you know, that would be less funny  .

[bloodbeasthandler]

Dec 11, 2021 17:27:38 GMT The Count said:

I had low expectations for Blood given it being seemingly written to cash in on the modern zombie tropes and it is FF in name only so it being tedious and impossible is almost an improvement

Modern zombie trope. Yep. And I've nothing against authors looking to cash in on trends. Good luck to them. I personally like the 'trope' truth be told. 
BUT
What did we get with that book?

A satire on consumerism where zombies and the living alike converge on a shopping centre and fight it out in Primark and Costa Coffee? 
How about an exploration of different ways people might organise themselves during and after an apocalyptic event, like in Day of the Triffids?
Or a book based on the realities and practicalities of day to survival in such an environment? Get some rest or stay awake? Run or fight? Stay in the city or head for the hills? Trust that gang of people who have just turned up in the car or avoid them? 

None of the above. Just the book equivalent of the arcade game 'Operation Wolf' [scroll along...blam blam blam... power up ((ZX Spectrum electronic sound spirialling upwards)).. scroll along.. blam blam blam... boss fight...etc. ] see them bodies hit the floor! Awesum! Oh you didn't kill all the zombies? Well, you LOSE. [spiralling downwards 'failure' sound effect].

The book has the 'IQ' of a breeze block. And it's impossible to win anyway because no-one could be bothered to test it.


Carelessness in execution, dumbing down, infantilisation, catering to lowest common-denominators... 

And yes, I know what I sound like when I write things like this. 

[bloodbeasthandler]

The biggest disappointment has been the Scholastic era and their handling of the books.

Same old re-releases accompanied by on average not very good new ones. Yes there were some duds in the 80's and 90's, but a below-average new book is a greater source of disappointment these days because you know new releases are going to be few and far between.

The original books' targets were people getting involved in roleplaying and by aiming for them, they caught and fired the imaginations of a lot of 9-12 year olds. Now the 9 - 12 year olds ARE the target.

The artwork is generally sub-standard and I wonder about editors who okayed some of those illustrations. Like the copy and paste ones from House of Hell. 

Same old problems with the rules. Dear oh dear, it's not hard is it? To test, to check, to clarify?

Fingers crossed for Steve Jackson's book showing everyone how things ought to be done.

[tyrion]

Dec 12, 2021 7:39:59 GMT CharlesX said:

And I suppose with the Fear mechanism in House, where you unfairly have to roll at least 3 or you can't win.
 

I don't know why people bang on about this. It's not like there aren't other books where you need to roll high stats to win.

[a moderator]

I think it's the fine line between 'highly improbable' (you could get freakishly lucky and always roll low for Razaak's Attack Strength and high for your own, etc.) and 'impossible'.