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Post by CharlesX on May 13, 2024 19:10:15 GMT
Why are games designers (British ones especially including many wargames designers) so hell-bent on using numbered cubes as the sole form of random number generators? I've had enough of that 2d6 bell curve. Joe Dever tricked people into using a D10 with his Random Number Table and good on him for doing so. Here is a question: What do people actually want from gamebook combat? And another one: What are the memorable combats from FF books? For me it is usually the combats that aren't just rolling dice back and forth for 3 minutes. Think of the confrontation with Balthus Dire and the fight against the cyclops in FF16. Even tangling with the Bloodbeast in Deathtrap Dungeon has a bit more to it - avoiding the tongue, maybe needing to use a backup weapon like a dagger, taking precautions against the toxic fumes etc. And now think what an anticlimax it would have been to fight the Riddling Reaver with him being given stats of SKILL 13 STAMINA 26 ATTACKS 3 or whatever. Inspiration from cinema - the Indiana Jones films have got some good over-the-top stuff in them - the Temple of Doom with Indy struggling with the assassin who is trying to garotte him in the bedchamber, or the fight against the big slave-driver who ends up getting fed into that grinder. Maybe the books should aim for THAT sort of encounter? I am aware that it would take up more paragraphs... but then not all the fights have to be like that. And we could probably do with fewer combats overall in the books - because some encounters just feel like the editor saying 'oi! chuck a monster in to fight.. this is meant to be FIGHTING fantasy you know!'. A number of good points raised here ![:)](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/smiley/smiley.png) . At least if those numbered cubes weren't unmarked d6s there would be some variance. I used to like those adventure books like Asterix and Famous Five, that came with plastic cases including several simple gameplay paraphernalia and their own d6 with different pictures matching the gamebooks theme on each side. The gamebooks themselves were pretty simplistic if enjoyable for a kid, but FF stuck to a very store-bought D&D formula (even if it worked, on the whole). The Random Number Table never worked, because even throwing a die (which is a seriously inaccurate way of getting random numbers) was far more effective, and those were in the days when nobody had heard of or used RNGs, so I remember getting a d10 from a toy store somewhere (probably luckily, as it wasn't a gaming one such as Games Workshop and I wasn't into gaming stores). Often the memorable combats in FF aren't the so-called bosses but rather the average or even below-average enemies that could kill you because your Stamina is down, like a video game where mid-game can be harder than the final stage. Yes, I always hated a slugfest where you both had high Stamina and few special moves. FF can be very combat-heavy which is easy to dislike at times. Some FF such as Creature Of Havoc and Phantoms Of Fear definitely have strong writing which is the equal of most literature, I think players would like all three, writing, different RPG\gaming elements and straight fighting. Combining heavy fighting\testing with low or very low chance of success tends to lessen enjoyment of gamebooks, as well as arguably narrower, lower-level literature.
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Post by Pete Byrdie on May 13, 2024 19:49:48 GMT
On the subject of dice (apparently I've got something to say about everything today), it occurred to me that fewer people might have access to D6s these days. When I were a lad, everyone had a stack of board games somewhere. I think Queen Victoria had decreed every household should at least have Monopoly, or something. At least, that's where I got my first gamebook playing dice from. Alas, the days of the Empire are past, and games consoles don't come with dice I'm told.
Then it occurred to me, actually everyone has a device that will roll whatever dice they want. I only have to ask Chrome 'Roll 2d12' and they appear, virtually rolling across my phone screen (not as satisfying as the real thing). Also, whereas I wouldn't have known where to get dice from as a kid (apart from Monopoly sets), I understand the Amazons, who in my day mostly just rode about Scythia causing problems for greek heroes, now deliver just about anything you want, usually by two sunsets.
So, in theory, folk have almost as much access to polyhedral dice as to D6s. That could open up a whole new approach to gamebooks. Has anyone had the courage to make a gamebook requiring D12s or anything?
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Post by sleepyscholar on May 14, 2024 4:50:14 GMT
Why are games designers (British ones especially including many wargames designers) so hell-bent on using numbered cubes as the sole form of random number generators? 1984: British games designer Ian Marsh does his Doctor Who roleplaying game for Games Workshop, driven by a card-based mechanic (the cards are kept in a box that looks like the Tardis, drawn from one end and replaced at the other). Unfortunately, Games Workshop discovers that the Doctor Who license they thought they had as a result of the board game does not apply to the role-playing game, and they have been gazumped by US company FASA, who labour under the misapprehension that Doctor Who is a hard SF show. But that's by-the-by. There have been non-dice games, even by British designers (my first iteration of the Water Margin involved character creation by choosing cards rather than rolling dice), and there have been games that used other dice than d6. But, when Dragon Warriors (an example of the latter, by British designers) was released, I tempered my enthusiasm in my review with the criticism that it was a mass-market game using polyhedral dice. These immediately marked it as a niche thing. Dungeons & Dragons used polyhedral dice, but that didn't mean its systems were superior to the d6 based games that succeeded it. There are other ways to deploy those d6 (that everyone already has in their house, and which therefore constitute a selling point for a mass-market book/game). The aforementioned Ian Marsh in 1991 finally got his Doctor Who game published, this time by Virgin, thanks to the fact that his former GW boss, Peter Darvill-Evans, was now in charge of the Doctor Who book line. His card mechanic had fallen by the wayside, and so had the 2d10 'top flat system' that he and I had come up with (so named because it was devised when we were sharing the top flat of a house in Putney). Instead his 'beat the difference' system was based on subtraction. Nowadays (when I don't actually roleplay) I'm inclined to think that our anxieties about neat mechanics, bell curves and the like, actually got in the way of clear thinking about what it is we want to achieve, and how we might go about it (as delineated in yours, and Peter Byrdie's following post). When I occasionally contemplate the idea of playing an RPG again (weirdly I was recently invited to join one after an academic conference I'm attending next week), I find that what puts me off is the prospect of having to faff about with rules.
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Post by vastariner on May 14, 2024 10:32:36 GMT
Even if it were true, it would make a mockery of the challenge of the books, because if it's possible to win with any level scores, someone who happened to get high scores would be walking it. Which is a challenge to the writer - find a mechanism that allows a low stat character to win. Item that boosts stats by ≥2 Init each, if they are below 9/18/9, would be a start. Then everything can be calibrated for Sk12 adventurer. Or even a bonus "training" bit for weaker characters to get them ready. One real problem with it is not so much the minimum character promise but why a minimum character would be doing the adventure anyway. 7/14 chap is never going to be an adventurer or a warrior. If it's the sort of accidental adventure like Spectral Stalkers it does make sense. But YOU are the one to walk through Kakhabad? REALLY? Glandragor would be a better option...
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Post by sleepyscholar on May 14, 2024 10:58:48 GMT
Even if it were true, it would make a mockery of the challenge of the books, because if it's possible to win with any level scores, someone who happened to get high scores would be walking it. Which is a challenge to the writer - find a mechanism that allows a low stat character to win. Item that boosts stats by ≥2 Init each, if they are below 9/18/9, would be a start. Then everything can be calibrated for Sk12 adventurer. Or even a bonus "training" bit for weaker characters to get them ready. One real problem with it is not so much the minimum character promise but why a minimum character would be doing the adventure anyway. 7/14 chap is never going to be an adventurer or a warrior. If it's the sort of accidental adventure like Spectral Stalkers it does make sense. But YOU are the one to walk through Kakhabad? REALLY? Glandragor would be a better option... Exactly. Personally I felt the claim that the books can be completed by any level of skill never seemed to make sense either within the story or as a particularly attractive feature of the books. And I very much doubt that most authors put any more effort than I did into making it a reality. There were more important things to be concerned about in writing the books.
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Post by CharlesX on May 14, 2024 12:32:22 GMT
I always thought it was pretty clear. Obviously it wasn't 'pretty clear' to *cough* some of the authors. On House of Hell I can't speak to Steve's intentions, but what I can say was that on those occasions I actually wrote rolegame scenarios, when I came to run them I often found that I had been overly harsh in designing them, and what had seemed a good idea in design was actually less interesting in practice. So as a referee I enjoyed having to think on my feet and find ways of helping characters out of fatal situations in exciting ways that didn't feel like deus ex machina (and ideally that the players felt was their ingenuity). Now this doesn't quite map on to FF, because there you have an element of the experience which is explicitly puzzle-based, and which is undermined by anything that smacks of cheating (anyone tried using Chat GPT to solve crossword clues?). But my point is that from at least one author's point of view, the combats aren't really part of the puzzle element of the FF experience. They are part of the game element, which operates according to a slightly different aesthetic standard. The point of the combats is a fair challenge, and to me, at least, it's more up to the reader to decide what is and isn't fair. I know it's not on the winning route, but by way of an example, changing the SKILL level of the Mudworm in The Crimson Tide would not be cheating, not only because the author's intention has been loudly trumpeted, but because it's evidently absurd and unreasonable within the diegesis. Let's be honest about this, the 'you can win with any level of SKILL, STAMINA and LUCK' line is bollocks. I don't know why it's there. Even if it were true, it would make a mockery of the challenge of the books, because if it's possible to win with any level scores, someone who happened to get high scores would be walking it. As I say, I think the combats are there to provide a game challenge, and sense of excitement, and this is really something that the reader can regulate. I think in some ways the books would be better if readers were able to choose their scores (and this practice is not unknown, eh?). It might have been better if the scores were for different characteristics (Fighting, Cunning, Agility, Charm: you know the sort of thing), and readers could divvy up a fixed stock of points. This way the replay value would come from finding different routes through the books for different characters. Instead both SKILL and STAMINA, and to a certain extent LUCK, are unequivocally positive combat-related stats. There's not much interesting difference in aesthetic terms between a high SKILL, medium STAMINA character and a medium SKILL, high STAMINA character. It will slightly affect the combats, but since the combats are so mechanical anyway, it's not going to have a significant effect on the experience. In other words, what I'm saying is that the problem this thread is about was baked into FF from the beginning because insufficient thought was given to how gamebooks would work... but then, there wasn't a lot to go on in those days, was there? T&T and Underworld Oracle was pretty much all I'd seen in 1982. My guess is J&L have\had a different definition of "winning without too much trouble" where odds of 10% qualify, meaning a high stats character would still face a real risk, and more, that to them a .1% (or lower) chance of success is 'not bad' (short hint: it is). That they've had to reword it again and again is only evidence it is ill-thought-out. Personally if it were true (that is there weren't FF such as Crypt Of The Sorceror and Spellbreaker, which seem polarising) it might appeal to some CYOA-orientated readers, but actually writing it is unnecessary and pretentious for the readers and a strange straitjacket for the authors.
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kieran
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Post by kieran on May 15, 2024 10:42:09 GMT
7/14 chap is never going to be an adventurer or a warrior. . There's a line in the background of Master of Chaos where it's said that giants speak of YOU with fear. Becomes quite amusing if playing a 7/14.
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trialmaster
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Post by trialmaster on May 15, 2024 11:22:14 GMT
7/14 chap is never going to be an adventurer or a warrior. . There's a line in the background of Master of Chaos where it's said that giants speak of YOU with fear. Becomes quite amusing if playing a 7/14.
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trialmaster
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Post by trialmaster on May 15, 2024 11:25:03 GMT
Maybe as a Sk 7 St 14 character you are an old, grizzled veteran still trying to live on past glories!
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Post by CharlesX on May 15, 2024 11:49:48 GMT
7/14 chap is never going to be an adventurer or a warrior. . There's a line in the background of Master of Chaos where it's said that giants speak of YOU with fear. Becomes quite amusing if playing a 7/14. 7/14 Adventurer was clearly called David and had a slingshot and some stones to hand!
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Post by Pete Byrdie on May 15, 2024 14:05:22 GMT
There's a line in the background of Master of Chaos where it's said that giants speak of YOU with fear. Becomes quite amusing if playing a 7/14. 7\14 Adventurer was clearly called David and had a slingshot and some stones to hand! If David had to roll against a 7 SKILL to kill Goliath the Israelites would all have been speaking Philistine a few years later. At least, they would if I was rolling for David.
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Post by CharlesX on May 16, 2024 12:51:42 GMT
And you get stuff like the absurdity of drinking a potion in the midst of combat Well, Warlock of Firetop Mountain is the only book that lets you away with that - it was possibly an oversight by the authors that they corrected for the later books, but it certainly makes that Iron Cyclops fight much more manageable. I think in Rings Of Kether and Space Assassin you can use Energy Tablets\Pep Pills at any time, the books may even say "even when in combat". It's slightly less unrealistic than drinking a potion but still something of a stretch. I've always lol when I've visualized when my hero has been told something like "you have 30 seconds, you may use this action to quickly eat a provision" (not quite the same point, I know). Returning to topic, TWOFM included the rule you may only eat provisions when specified. This realism was dropped for most FF, probably because it detracted from those action-orientated, game-like FF.
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Post by scouserob on May 16, 2024 14:05:28 GMT
I think in Rings Of Kether and Space Assassin you can use Energy Tablets\Pep Pills at any time, the books may even say "even when in combat". The Rings of Kether says regarding its Energy Tablets: Each Tablet will restore 6 points to your STAMINA and can be taken at any time. Space Assassin says the same regarding its Pep Pills.
So yeah, popping one mid-combat is fine.
This isn't too bad in Blaster Combat were I can imagine you ducking behind cover and taking one, or even firing with one hand and chucking a tablet in your mouth with the other. Hand to hand combat seems a bit more difficult to picture, especially when you are described as rolling around fighting on the floor. Maybe take a breath, back off, and make an 80s action movie style witticism whilst you take your pill?
It also makes the cap to your Initial Stamina a bit pointless as you effectively have your Current Stamina + (6 * Current Energy Tablets) at any time. (Assuming you don't forget to take them when you run low.)
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kieran
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Post by kieran on May 16, 2024 15:11:35 GMT
I think in Rings Of Kether and Space Assassin you can use Energy Tablets\Pep Pills at any time, the books may even say "even when in combat". It's slightly less unrealistic than drinking a potion but still something of a stretch. Ah good point. I always see provisions/potions/pills etc as more of a gameplay mechanism than something to be viewed as realistic in any way. A bit like the gamebook equivalent of walking over a roast chicken in Streets of Rage to restore your health bar.
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Post by Pete Byrdie on May 16, 2024 19:04:13 GMT
It's only tangential, but I think it was Bob Worldbuilder who did experiments drinking 4oz 'health potions' in a six second D&D combat round. I don't rightly remember exactly how that went, but if he managed it, he barely did so. I don't know if there's a particular amount of time an FF combat round is supposed to last (I think it says in the AFF books), and of course, drinking a potion should be an action in combat, whereas in FF you're in the middle of a fight you can't just back away from. Point is, however you look at it, your potion is likely to have to circumvent the sword blade that's going through you chest on its way to your stomach.
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Post by CharlesX on May 16, 2024 19:54:14 GMT
I think in Rings Of Kether and Space Assassin you can use Energy Tablets\Pep Pills at any time, the books may even say "even when in combat". It's slightly less unrealistic than drinking a potion but still something of a stretch. Ah good point. I always see provisions/potions/pills etc as more of a gameplay mechanism than something to be viewed as realistic in any way. A bit like the gamebook equivalent of walking over a roast chicken in Streets of Rage to restore your health bar. Most (maybe not every single one) would agree, but for me it adds to the feeling of immersion if my character is reviving himself with healing herbs or potion rather than 'magic chicken\pork chop'. Though OTOH as you remark it doesn't impact on gameplay more than not. One exception is Brandy or Grog or something that revives your Stamina while giving you an Attack Strength penalty for a little while. That's more PC than the magic and pills some of the religious crowd do not like.
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Post by Wizard Slayer on May 17, 2024 10:53:40 GMT
I never think of Stamina as just cuts and bruises. More an overall 'this is how much longer you can last' kind of thing. After all you lose points when injured, but also when tired or sick or hungry.
So if I have a fight and lose 4 Stamina, instead of thinking of it as getting two cuts I think of it as being a bit pummelled and knackered after a fight, so a taking a rest and a meal gives some time for recovery.
Overall though I don't overthink these things. Combat etc in Fighting Fantasy is just a simplistic mechanism to give some fun and make it more interesting and unpredictable than a Choose Your Own Adventure book.
This is probably also a bit off topic!
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Post by hallucination on May 17, 2024 18:40:36 GMT
Do I let skill bonus exceed Initial levels? Sometimes. I mean, I don’t have one play style. Sometimes I play very strictly by the rules - no naughty skill increases allowed. Sometimes I just read the books CYOA-styles, assuming that battles and other rolls go my favour. Sometimes I adopt other things in-between. FF has the flexibility to be flexible — and that’s something I’ve appreciated since I played/read these adventures as a kid
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Post by Pete Byrdie on May 17, 2024 19:58:24 GMT
Do I let skill bonus exceed Initial levels? Sometimes. I mean, I don’t have one play style. Sometimes I play very strictly by the rules - no naughty skill increases allowed. Sometimes I just read the books CYOA-styles, assuming that battles and other rolls go my favour. Sometimes I adopt other things in-between. FF has the flexibility to be flexible — and that’s something I’ve appreciated since I played/read these adventures as a kid Ultimately, once you buy the book, it's yours to enjoy however you see fit. You may have bought it to play over and over exactly by the rules until you win, or it may have been just the right size to prop up the leg of that wobbly table, and everything in-between. I think, now that we have the Internet to share experiences, and we know some books are virtually unwinnable by the rules, or there may be one encounter or one unique mechanic that makes it virtually unwinnable, we're mature enough to decide (I doubt there are a great many fourteen year old FF players around) for ourselves what we think is reasonable, gamebook by gamebook.
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Post by hallucination on May 17, 2024 20:00:59 GMT
Hear, hear
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Post by sleepyscholar on May 20, 2024 13:04:00 GMT
It's only tangential, but I think it was Bob Worldbuilder who did experiments drinking 4oz 'health potions' in a six second D&D combat round. I don't rightly remember exactly how that went, but if he managed it, he barely did so. I don't know if there's a particular amount of time an FF combat round is supposed to last (I think it says in the AFF books), and of course, drinking a potion should be an action in combat, whereas in FF you're in the middle of a fight you can't just back away from. Point is, however you look at it, your potion is likely to have to circumvent the sword blade that's going through you chest on its way to your stomach. I'm old enough to remember when D&D combat rounds were one minute long... We all moved a lot more slowly in those days. The AFF combat round turns out to be a bit of a fraught proposition. I had bits in my Wailing World scenario where the timing of a combat related to the timing of someone doing something else (involving movement, I seem to recall), and it turned out to be more difficult to fix than I expected (which is to say, in the end the good folk at GM Warlock had to fix it). As those 1-minute rounds demonstrate, timing of actions has always been a problem in games. The simpler the game, the more abstract the mechanics. The more abstract the mechanics, the less credible the timing feels. The original D&D idea was sort of sound (you jockey around, trading blows for a minute, and all that action is abstracted into a single combat roll), but viscerally, you imagine your roll as representing a blow aimed at your opponent, and tend to forget the 'jockeying around', so it felt absurd that you only got a single action in a whole minute. But it does make the idea that you might be able to duck away from your opponent, take a swig from a flask, and duck back in, fractionally more credible.
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tom
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Post by tom on Jun 4, 2024 12:50:09 GMT
Re the Kris knife Jackson’s books never end with a difficult combat reliant on unlikely dice rolls to win. It’s not his style. So I can’t imagine for one minute he didn’t intend the Kris knife bonus to go over your initial skill. Be good if he would clarify though. Has he never been asked this question?
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Post by CharlesX on Jun 4, 2024 13:05:01 GMT
Re the Kris knife Jackson’s books never end with a difficult combat reliant on unlikely dice rolls to win. It’s not his style. So I can’t imagine for one minute he didn’t intend the Kris knife bonus to go over your initial skill. Be good if he would clarify though. Has he never been asked this question? Unfortunately it's also Jackson's style to be mysterious and cruel at times, so I don't believe he would clarify even if asked at FF fests etc. Unlike say Jon Green, who has clarified what is meant by an "insect" for Bloodbones. I'd agree Jackson treats Skill with more care than Livingstone who hands out lots of (largely useless) current Skill bonuses imho without particular thought.
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sylas
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Post by sylas on Jun 5, 2024 14:44:33 GMT
Re the Kris knife Jackson’s books never end with a difficult combat reliant on unlikely dice rolls to win. It’s not his style. So I can’t imagine for one minute he didn’t intend the Kris knife bonus to go over your initial skill. Be good if he would clarify though. Has he never been asked this question? Unfortunately it's also Jackson's style to be mysterious and cruel at times, so I don't believe he would clarify even if asked at FF fests etc. Unlike say Jon Green, who has clarified what is meant by an "insect" for Bloodbones. I'd agree Jackson treats Skill with more care than Livingstone who hands out lots of (largely useless) current Skill bonuses imho without particular thought.
I'm doing my best to remedy that ![;)](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/smiley/wink.png)
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Post by thealmightymudworm on Jun 7, 2024 4:05:45 GMT
It's interesting to see that the runaway winner at the moment is "Where the author's intentions are clear...", because I'd like to know some examples of where that's obviously the case? Otherwise it's more like people trying to convince themselves that they're still playing by the rules as written and just making up for an author 'error'. House of Hell is definitely not a case where it's clear Steve Jackson meant for it to go above the initial score. Because you start with a -3 deficit already, he might simply have been meaning to account for any Skill points the player may have lost, not bothering to check if they really could have lost that many by that stage and erring on the side of caution. People might claim that otherwise a low Skill player has virtually no chance, but a sub-9 Fear player also has zero chance. Was that the intent? If it was, maybe the same was meant for low Skill players. If it wasn't, do we ignore that score as well? But also if it wasn't, that again suggests that Steve wasn't too rigorous in checking how stats can change throughout the correct path, and might well have thought that an additional -3 loss could be incurred. Finally, look at Champskee's probability scores. Sticking to the rule, an 11/18/10 player still has a 20% chance of completing it, and Skill 12 players can often be better than evens. It's difficult, but hardly insurmountable. Whereas ignoring the rule means only players with really low stats have a worse than even chance of winning. For many players it's practically a foregone conclusion to win, and even a 7/18/8 will win a third of the time. Did Steve mean for House of Hell to be easy, or did he mean for it to be hard? Citadel, Starship and F.E.A.R. were easy, but Creature of Havoc was far less so, meaning it's hard to claim that it's clear Steve intended for the Kris knife bonus to take the player above their Initial Skill. I would say those who take the Kris knife bonus in the non-rules way would be fooling themselves some if they voted "when the author's intentions are clear" Well I think it's pretty clear myself. To recap: – It's a matter of interpretation that 'add 6 to SKILL' means increase SKILL rather than add it like & in addition to adding 2d6 to reach Attack Strength. – It makes no intuitive sense for the Kris knife to compensate for a crippling injury when facing one specific foe, but otherwise be no more effective than a letter opener. – Steve J just doesn't use harsh statistics to kill adventurers. This isn't about being generous across the board – he likes making finding the right path (very) difficult – just that death by cubes isn't his thing. You mentioned Citadel, Starship and Appointment – we could add in Secrets – all of which have a 95-100% chance of winning from the start. Creature is a bit harsher, granted, but it's not in the same league as HoH on the harder interpretation. Taking Joe Average characters of Sk 9 St 18 L 10 & Sk 10 St 18 L 9, both of them have a little over a 1 in 3 chance with perfect decision making. So you expect to need to play the book about three times to get a win once you know it. This is something a normal person might do. The same characters in House with harsh Kris knife rules get 2.1% and 1% respectively. So you expect to play 70 or 80 times with perfect decisions? This is activity for maniacs only. You're right of course that the Fear roll can give you a 0% chance before you reach paragraph 1, but I'm absolutely sure that's an error. Actually I don't believe any of the FF authors including IL would do that on purpose. It is easier to lose track of a new stat than the established SS&L. So I don't think people need to be "fooling themselves". I understand though that people aren't going to agree on interpretations. I'm of the opinion that the STAMINA instructions in Freeway Fighter are clearly a misprint and they're supposed to be 2d6 + 12 as usual, not 2d6 + 24. If I played Freeway Fighter by the rules I would probably interpret them that way. (I'm in no hurry to play Freeway again any time soon though, so it's a pretty safe thing to say!) But not everyone (anyone?) was persuaded of this.
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Post by Wizard Slayer on Jun 7, 2024 9:28:02 GMT
It makes no intuitive sense for the Kris knife to compensate for a crippling injury when facing one specific foe, but otherwise be no more effective than a letter opener. The Skill bonus of e.g. a suit of chainmail has always been able to compensate for the Skill penalty of a twisted ankle when rolling against that attribute to jump a narrow ravine. In Fighting Fantasy, intuition is the last thing to call on in relation to Skill ![:D](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/smiley/grin.png) As for Kris knife vs letter-opener, the former has a blade that can injure the Hell Demon and the latter hasn't. Aside from that, there's no obvious reason given in the book why the Kris should make the player a better fighter. Steve J just doesn't use harsh statistics to kill adventurers. This isn't about being generous across the board – he likes making finding the right path (very) difficult – just that death by cubes isn't his thing. Creature of Havoc starts out with the very realistic possibility of unavoidable death because of how the dice fall. So it was his thing at least once. Steve Jackson has always been the most experimental FF author, to my mind at least. He's tried out so many things it can't be definitively claimed that there's no way he wouldn't ever have gone with a massively difficult final combat. In the context of the book as well, unlike most other FF the player isn't a battle-hardened warrior with a sword and leather armour, veteran of a hundred combats. They're a regular Joe or Jane who'd just been trying to make their appointment the next day, now facing off against a Hell Demon who can break an arm with a single swipe of its claws. It's not entirely off the wall that the author thought "You know, this should be one hell of a difficult fight, pun intended. Yes it was, Ian!" It is easier to lose track of a new stat than the established SS&L. Indeed, which is my main contention against the idea that it was clearly a mistake by Steve and he meant nothing else. Because it means that when he wrote that paragraph, he completely forgot the need to add "...even if this takes you over your Initial Skill". So I don't think people need to be "fooling themselves". I understand though that people aren't going to agree on interpretations. That's entirely my point though. The fact that it's open to interpretation is what means it isn't clear, but instead ambiguous. But the poll suggests some people need everyone to believe that they only play by the rules... ![:D](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/smiley/grin.png)
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Post by Per on Jun 7, 2024 10:34:27 GMT
But the poll suggests some people need everyone to believe that they only play by the rules... Hm? Of 16 replies, I see a single "never", 14 that fudge to some (mostly smaller) degree, and one "other".
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Post by CharlesX on Jun 7, 2024 11:54:02 GMT
But the poll suggests some people need everyone to believe that they only play by the rules... Hm? Of 16 replies, I see a single "never", 14 that fudge to some (mostly smaller) degree, and one "other". Whatever happened to "it's only a game"? A law court wouldn't invoke multi-hundred year-old laws that are still technically legal (you know, that we have to have archery lessons on a Sunday or a farmer from Lincolnshire can kill someone for stealing his pig), so if someone gets more fun out of applying the Kris Knife bonus or the Potion Of Heroism bonus in Dead Of Night (which we haven't discussed, but makes a wonderful entire new path through the gamebook suddenly more playable) I don't see why they shouldn't. If Wizard Slayer is so keen to play by the rules perhaps he should disallow the reference link in Creature Of Havoc because that doesn't appear in the text (making any victory impossible) - but it's arguably as much of a guess\benefit of the doubt that's the author's intent as the Kris Knife.
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Post by CharlesX on Jun 7, 2024 13:06:26 GMT
So I don't think people need to be "fooling themselves". I understand though that people aren't going to agree on interpretations. I'm of the opinion that the STAMINA instructions in Freeway Fighter are clearly a misprint and they're supposed to be 2d6 + 12 as usual, not 2d6 + 24. If I played Freeway Fighter by the rules I would probably interpret them that way. (I'm in no hurry to play Freeway again any time soon though, so it's a pretty safe thing to say!) But not everyone (anyone?) was persuaded of this. I believe it might well be\almost certainly is true but speaking for myself as Sir Ian works on the basis players tend to cheat and this is even within the rules I don't see why players shouldn't play as written. If there were some weird rogue copy of Blood Of The Zombies which added an extra zero to the Players Stamina I would probably play that more than the 'original' and even regard it as more canon than Sir Ian's one which he put seriously inadequate thought into. Actually, that's probably why foreign copies of Blood Of The Zombies have very slightly more Stamina, as I struggle to imagine it being Sir Ian's wish.
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Post by scouserob on Jun 7, 2024 13:38:36 GMT
I’m of the opinion that the STAMINA instructions in Freeway Fighter are clearly a misprint and they're supposed to be 2d6 + 12 as usual, not 2d6 + 24. If I played Freeway Fighter by the rules I would probably interpret them that way. (I'm in no hurry to play Freeway again any time soon though, so it's a pretty safe thing to say!) But not everyone (anyone?) was persuaded of this. I thought that the extra 12 Stamina was intentional due to the higher damage done during blaster combat. (3.5 Stamina average). 175% extra average damage. 150% increase in maximum Stamina 186% increase in minimum Stamina. Seems possible. Yeah, there are also hand to hand combats but as they tend to end in knockouts after 6 Stamina is lost they may be less of a factor.
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