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Post by CharlesX on Mar 21, 2022 15:57:03 GMT
I've sometimes been amazed how much an adventurer seems to carry in FF, particularly the Green\Martin\Livingstone epics where one has to carry masses of things, and provisions, and a sword. As an aside, I've been to museums and a regular medieval sword would be too heavy for me to lift, let alone fight with. In Midnight Rogue, you can only carry so many objects (forget the number), and I think this is reasonable, I think Portal Of Evil or at least one other FF has a similar rule but I'm not sure. I like this rule, I think FF should be like a D & D game where you are an action hero, not learning by rote, playing a video\board game or second-guessing obscure puzzles. It's also the way many other gamebook series deal with carrying things, such as Virtual Reality Gamebooks, Fabled Lands, I think Golden Dragon might do as well. Yet few (published book-length) FF have implemented such rules, and none after Curse Of The Mummy. Another example is the Brain Slayer Amulet, which costs 2 skill to wear. So, what are other people's thoughts, should there be more rules about encumbrance? There are definitely some people who prefer the Island Of The Undead style gamebooks where your hero hikes around like a bodyguard going up a mountain, but I'm not one of them. Something else I like is those books where you are limited in the number of provisions you can carry, as well.
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Post by vastariner on Mar 21, 2022 17:46:34 GMT
The FF books were a tradeoff between ease of play and realism. I can see why there were no encumbrance rules as that would have made things more complex and more difficult to play without separate pen and paper. E.g. even a simple "you may carry six items" would lead to debates; take IotLK, for instance, would you be carrying the monkey?
I do agree however that maybe that sort of simple instruction may have helped. Not least because, if you're caught suddenly in combat, you might have 2-3 weapons from which to choose, and would they all be readily to hand?
Sorcery! got ridiculous by the end, you would look like a wandering tinker with your jewel-studded medallion, nose plugs, flute, sun jewel, green-haired wig over your cloth skullcap, galehorn slung over one shoulder, sword over the other, and shield over your third (now you see the problem), mirror tucked in your belt, beeswax with your medical potion and your locket in your backpack, yellow powder, sand, stone dust, and pebbles in your pouch (careful not to mix those up), perhaps with assorted teeth. The idea of being able to cast JIG on demand and somehow grab the flute at the right time is remote.
Indeed, Sorcery! would definitely have been helped with an encumbrance limit; it would have forced you to be choosy over spell items.
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Post by tyrion on Mar 21, 2022 18:08:09 GMT
In my gamebooks you are allowed to carry ten items (not including armour). This does mean you have to be picky about what you carry around with you, and it also means I have to be careful about what items are useful or nearly essential. Sometimes I will write that an item doesn't count for encumbrance -such as a map, which you can tuck into your belt, or a dog that follows you round.
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Post by sleepyscholar on Mar 22, 2022 6:57:40 GMT
Encumbrance is one of those RPG rules that seems like a good (ie 'realistic') idea at the time. But it's a rabbit hole, and not one that has much down it apart from soil and rabbit droppings.
One very practical reason FF doesn't limit encumbrance is because objects are used as code words.
Another is because however silly it seems to allow people to lug all this stuff about, all but the most complex rules will end up with silliness of their own. The 'how many objects?' sort of encumbrance rule makes no distinction between a gold ring and a marble bust... unless you add extra rules ('The marble bust counts as three items of encumbrance...') and how far along that road do you go before the rules are so tedious that most people will ignore them anyway?
As you say, Virtual Reality had a limited number of items. I just went back and had a look at the paragraphs I wrote of my own Virtual Reality, which of course never made it as the series was cancelled. It's obvious to me that I wasn't thinking about the limits when writing the book. Possible items include a letter, a dart, a peachwood sword, a staff, a steel sword, a calligraphy set, a bow, a jade statuette in the shape of a hawk, a sheaf of paper, and an ivory seal. A wide range of encumbrance there, and yet the rules count them all as equal.
Incidentally, I really regret not finishing that book and I can't remember the story now, so there's no chance. My skimpy notes on it contain such gnomic gems as: 'Ducks hanging'. Fans of Black Vein Prophecy would have enjoyed all the codewords being in Chinese, I suspect.
Anyway, my point is that worrying about encumbrance is a pain for the author, and adds little to the interest of the book for the reader, save for a very specific sort of resource-allocation gamery. This may be an unusual state of affairs, but I side firmly with Ian and Steve on this one.
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Post by vastariner on Mar 22, 2022 7:49:00 GMT
One very practical reason FF doesn't limit encumbrance is because objects are used as code words. And Sorcery! was the opposite - objects were a limit on what magic you could use. The manticore fight would have been a lot easier if you had a sun jewel, for instance...
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Post by Wilf on Mar 22, 2022 13:16:29 GMT
Easier to assume that there's a sorcerer out there who earns a living making backpacks from the same magic cloth as Pouches Of Unlimited Contents.
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Post by bloodbeasthandler on Mar 22, 2022 18:27:51 GMT
Lone Wolf did a pretty good job with its adventure sheet. Eight backpack items, up to two weapons, and the 'special items' section which is where the rings and pendants and a lot of the other little items [with certain exceptions like the magic sword] were recorded.
That's about as far as I'd want to take encumbrance rules.
I wouldn't be interested in keeping a running total of Encumbrance Points with each and every item given a value and the adventurer being able to carry a certain amount maximum.
If the writer wants to incorporate weight and encumbrance into the book, then that's fine. Do it in the text. Let's say the reader is looking to jump over a pit. The author could put 'Are you carrying the alabaster statue and the cannon ball? If so turn to...' Or impose a modifier to a dice roll if you are wearing platemail etc.
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Post by nathanh on Mar 22, 2022 18:39:56 GMT
I think generally it's not a good idea to limit items in gamebooks, unless you really commit to it and use items principally as power-ups rather than progress coupons.
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Post by dragonwarrior8 on Mar 23, 2022 13:49:40 GMT
Lone Wolf did a pretty good job with its adventure sheet. Eight backpack items, up to two weapons, and the 'special items' section which is where the rings and pendants and a lot of the other little items [with certain exceptions like the magic sword] were recorded. That's about as far as I'd want to take encumbrance rules. I wouldn't be interested in keeping a running total of Encumbrance Points with each and every item given a value and the adventurer being able to carry a certain amount maximum. If the writer wants to incorporate weight and encumbrance into the book, then that's fine. Do it in the text. Let's say the reader is looking to jump over a pit. The author could put 'Are you carrying the alabaster statue and the cannon ball? If so turn to...' Or impose a modifier to a dice roll if you are wearing platemail etc. I was thinking the same as this. Lone Wolf is the series that stands out to me as having done well with this concept. The World of Lone Wolf even added an herb pouch. Even the most popular video games today, where all the number crunching is done for you behind the scenes, allow you to carry ridiculous amounts of kit. Some, like The Elder Scrolls series, try to limit what you can carry with a Carry Weight system like bloodbeasthandler points to, but even that isn't very realistic, as they set the maximum so high (even before you find magical items such as the "Boots of Carrying") that you still find yourself carrying far more than would be possible. And even if you exceed the maximum, you can still move, just at a slower rate. I guess they decided that having fun was the most important thing and I can't really argue with that. I sometimes wonder what it looks like from your enemies perspective (in both gamebooks and video games) when your character dies. Do you explode in a shower of 12 swords, 8 daggers, 5 shields, 3 sets of armour, and 2 dozen rings and pendants? That wandering orc hit the jackpot with you!
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sylas
Baron
"Don't just adventure for treasure; treasure the adventure!"
Posts: 1,678
Favourite Gamebook Series: Fighting Fantasy, Way of the Tiger
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Post by sylas on Mar 24, 2022 0:22:30 GMT
Not usually necessary to limit carried items unless used as a strategic tool which can lead to more decision making. Also I'm not fond of the idea of having too many items to pick up either. Don't want too much to carry? Fine, but don't make 10+ useless items suddenly available for free then (I'm looking at you Port of Peril).
As a general rule when I run FF rpgs, I make encumbrance a half of your Initial Stamina (not including negligible items such as rings and keys, clothing etc) so that strong characters can be a bit more useful and don't ever allow a Pouch of Unlimited Contents.
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Post by terrysalt on Mar 25, 2022 6:09:16 GMT
Trying to play Blood Sword with a single character is a quick lesson in just how annoying inventory limits can be.
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