How Many Amateur Adventures Have You Read?

[a moderator]

Just to give a bit of context to whatever comes out of the recent deluge of polls for ranking amateur FF adventures.

I'd also be interested to know how thoroughly people have played the amateur adventures they've read - I know that my experience of different titles on the list that I have tried varies from 'had a couple of goes, didn't get very far' up to 'helped playtest it, so I've gone through just about every conceivable sequence of decisions'.

[CharlesX]

I * guess * I can take this as some recognition for my big, clumsy polls, if not praise?

   I have read Wight Christmas, Kill The Beast, and Lair Of The Troglodytes, not many. I skimread Outsider! (as in, didn't play but just read the introduction and ref one) and thought it seemed very good. Possibly my negative memories of Kill The Beast and Lair Of The Troglodytes deterred me from reading more, as many seem OK or more than OK from first impressions.

   My poll is limited to those on Titannica, others such Keiran's Princess Zamarra are probably worthy.

[kieran]

By my count, 44 though my memory of some of them is very vague

[a moderator]

Nov 6, 2023 15:57:07 GMT CharlesX said:

I * guess * I can take this as some recognition for my big, clumsy polls, if not praise?

Personally, I'd call it damage limitation.

There are 21 adventures listed in the 'A through B' poll. Right now it has 6 votes from 5 people. So do four of the five voters think the 20 adventures for which they didn't vote are no good, while the other only considers 19 of them to be rubbish? Or is the lack of votes for at least some of the 0-rated adventures more an indication of their being unread than absence of merit?

[CharlesX]

Nov 6, 2023 16:31:45 GMT a moderator said:

Nov 6, 2023 15:57:07 GMT CharlesX said:

I * guess * I can take this as some recognition for my big, clumsy polls, if not praise?

Personally, I'd call it damage limitation.

There are 21 adventures listed in the 'A through B' poll. Right now it has 6 votes from 5 people. So do four of the five voters think the 20 adventures for which they didn't vote are no good, while the other only considers 19 of them to be rubbish? Or is the lack of votes for at least some of the 0-rated adventures more an indication of their being unread than absence of merit?

People probably won't vote for their favourite (not best) FF if they haven't read them, that doesn't mean they're rubbish. Yes, most people haven't read lots of Amateur FF.

[a moderator]

Poll results get misinterpreted and misused all the time. If Unread Masterpiece gets 0 votes because nobody here has read it, and Borderline Unplayable Hackwork Riding on the Coattails of a 'Classic' FF Gamebook gets 3 votes thanks to nostalgia, some people will nevertheless take that as meaning (or use it to 'prove') that Hackwork is among the greatest amateur FFs ever written and Masterpiece is a waste of bytes. 

[Per]

I counted 18 for me, which is a bunch, but I still don't feel qualified to vote in any of the polls containing 2-3 adventures I read and many more I didn't. (A couple more zine adventures and I'll advance to the 20-29 category, yay!)