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Post by mlvoss on Jul 26, 2015 3:03:32 GMT
Hey Guys (And girls)
This is not a story as of yet, I was just wondering what everybody considered to be the three most boring aspects of any gamebook adventure? Was thinking of finishing off an idea I have had for a few years but wanted a few opinions first.
Regards,
Mark
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Post by deadshadowrunner on Jul 26, 2015 6:47:16 GMT
I'm sorry,I do not get what you mean. Are you talking about themes? Mechanics? Types of choices?
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Post by a moderator on Jul 26, 2015 13:46:11 GMT
Paths on which nothing interesting happens. Arbitrary rolls of the dice that determine whether you live or die. Especially when the odds of failure are worse than 1 in 6 (e.g. finding the orb in Masks of Mayhem, Harpoon Flies in Crypt of the Sorcerer, getting a Heal-All or passing the Inquisitor's second test in Spellbreaker...) Villains with no personality beyond 'evil'.
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vagsancho
Knight
Posts: 809
Favourite Gamebook Series: CRYPT OF THE SORCERER
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Post by vagsancho on Jul 26, 2015 14:12:21 GMT
Villains with no personality beyond 'evil'. That does not exist. It is our fault when we can not see the good in one person. Xakhaz, Hitler and even Razaak, as the will for evil, also have goodness within them.
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Post by mlvoss on Jul 27, 2015 4:26:06 GMT
Thanks for the response guys, thats exactly what I was thinking of.
To answer your question deadshadowrunner, I am talking about all of the things you listed. What ever people think are boring or tedious in a book.
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Post by deadshadowrunner on Jul 27, 2015 4:52:41 GMT
Sections ending in one choice.A waste of sections,unless it is used for suspense.
Any character without personality.They are just annoying.See most of Livingstone's characters for examples,only exception is Throm.(No comment please vagsancho)
Having to do something long and tedious.Some examples are adding up the position of letters in the alphabet,mainly used by John Green, and having to decode every speech you encounter in the dungeon in Creature of Havoc.
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kieran
Baron
Posts: 2,457
Favourite Gamebook Series: Fighting Fantasy
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Post by kieran on Jul 27, 2015 10:41:33 GMT
I think Keith Martin is the worst for that actually. It's especially annoying in Island of the Undead where everyone has names like Caxzhelotlketl. I used to find the translations in CoH tedious too but I now find I can read them fairly quickly.
Anyway, my three: 1. Cumbersome extra rules and abilities. Night Dragon and Legend of Zagor are ridiculous when it comes to the amount of stuff you have to keep track of. 2. Overuse of the hub and spoke design so you feel you have to explore everywhere in one sitting. 3. Dying on one dice roll.
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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 Jul 27, 2015 20:06:50 GMT
story: having to do endless calculations or codebreaking while reading; prose that does not provoke imagination; choices made having zero effect on outcome.
gameplay: the arbitrary dice rolls already mentioned, fancy equipment or gold that has no purpose (e.g. Knights of Doom has loads and gold you can collect lots of but have nothing to spend it on), unbalanced combats (especially ones that give you the hardest fights early on when you have nothing useful to fight them with).
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Post by mlvoss on Jul 28, 2015 9:41:50 GMT
Those are all very valid points guys and to also touch on a point. Without some of those ideas people can always say that I book could feel to bland or basic.
Trouble is what to actually keep or add in it to make it stand out.
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kieran
Baron
Posts: 2,457
Favourite Gamebook Series: Fighting Fantasy
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Post by kieran on Jul 28, 2015 10:57:27 GMT
I guess it's a case of everything in moderation. Puzzles are fine, just don't make them take forever to work out. The hub & spoke design is fine so long as you don't expect people to explore everywhere and in the right order. The odd death on one dice roll is ok so long as it's avoidable etc.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
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Post by Deleted on Jul 28, 2015 21:33:46 GMT
Don't let it all deter you in any way, do write your adventure how you feel it should be written.
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Post by lorianprince on Aug 11, 2015 18:25:29 GMT
To much randomness and no skill involved...
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Post by Paul Mc on Dec 17, 2015 4:49:26 GMT
Not necessarily the most boring things but my pet hates with gamebooks. Although I can be guilty myself when I write.
1. Adventures where dying due to Stamina falling to 0 is much more likely than an arbitrary death. While it should be possible for that to happen and there be a likelyhood of stamina falling to 0, I prefer to die by dying... especially if the instant death paragraphs are interesting.
2. Unavoidable luck tests for something that doesn't really affect the adventure. Oh you're lucky which means you have found 2 gold pieces or you have managed to avoid fighting someone with a skill of 5. However you have lost a luck point which you may need for something much more serious later in the adventure.
3.The phrase "Your adventure ends here" really annoys me, especially when what you have just read makes it obvious. "The guillotine drops down and slices your head from your body... Your adventure ends here" REALLY!!! Being beheaded has ended my adventure, well I never. There is no need to write that sentence the narrative of the instant death should do the work for you.
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Post by Pete Byrdie on Dec 17, 2015 11:46:57 GMT
1. Adventures where dying due to Stamina falling to 0 is much more likely than an arbitrary death. While it should be possible for that to happen and there be a likelyhood of stamina falling to 0, I prefer to die by dying... especially if the instant death paragraphs are interesting. I'm sure I've been killed before from an obligatory loss of 1 STAMINA point from banging my knee or hurting my hand. If I were that weak, I would barely be able to lift a sword. Yet, if I had a SKILL of 11 or 12 I'd still easily defeat a SKILL 6 goblin. 2. Unavoidable luck tests for something that doesn't really affect the adventure. Oh you're lucky which means you have found 2 gold pieces or you have managed to avoid fighting someone with a skill of 5. However you have lost a luck point which you may need for something much more serious later in the adventure. I can't stand the LUCK characteristic. I see no real need for it whatsoever, and trying to find a sensible way to use it when writing an adventure is tricky.
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Post by Pete Byrdie on Dec 17, 2015 12:10:25 GMT
For me, by far the most boring part of a gamebook is when you have to replay the correct path over and over to get past an unavoidable imbalanced battle. I don't think there's any real excuse for it.
Second most dull is to have paths that are not interesting enough to explore, maybe because they don't have enough of their own items and interesting opponents and challenges, perhaps because they're not on the correct path.
I think the attitude with which to write an adventure should be to have an easily achievable, but not easily discernible, correct path, but not to fill it full of your favourite ideas, because a good adventure needs scope for challenging and thrilling exploration throughout.
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vagsancho
Knight
Posts: 809
Favourite Gamebook Series: CRYPT OF THE SORCERER
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Post by vagsancho on Dec 17, 2015 12:17:43 GMT
Seas of Blood, Appointment with Fear, Star Strider. Not to my taste.
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Post by hynreck on Dec 17, 2015 13:57:25 GMT
*Slow claps*
...beside trolls, I agree with Paul Mc about the "Your adventure ends here" bit as being annoying. A small detail, sure, but I think the art of constructing a proper sentence/paragraph is something important and shouldn't be lost in the wild currents of today's brainless autocorrectors, internet memes and shortcuts, or whatever else there is. Not that they needed those to make such redundancy back then. But I'm going for a general flavor here, I guess. <_< What? Don't look at me, I can barely distinguish left from right. Or is it the other way around?
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Post by Paul Mc on Dec 17, 2015 15:28:08 GMT
An example is this, here's an arbitrary death from city of thieves.
"The Hag laughs as she watches you in the throes of your nightmare. From out of her clothing she pulls a dagger with a long shimmering blade. You are helpless and unable to stop her plunging the dagger into your chest. Tonight her stew-pot will contain more than rat meat. Your adventure ends here."
I think it would have made the ending more dramatic and a better read if the author stopped writing at 'rat meat'. I'm very well aware from reading the paragraph that my adventure has ended rather badly, however the previous sentence about the rat meat is a much punchier way to round off the death rather than "your adventure ends here".
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Post by hynreck on Dec 17, 2015 17:38:32 GMT
Good one. But before the adventure ends here bit, I thought I had a slim chance of surviving being stabbed and cooked, you know. I mean, people give blood as a donation, right? Why can't we give away a bit of our meat for a starving witch? She's got to eat, I've done a good deed; I can just go on my merry way to beat Zambar Bone to a bloody pulp. Oh wait- He doesn't have blood. I guess I should say grind his bones to dust, but somehow that sounds too nasty...
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kieran
Baron
Posts: 2,457
Favourite Gamebook Series: Fighting Fantasy
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Post by kieran on Dec 17, 2015 21:24:59 GMT
Oh come on, you can't lose "Your adventure ends here", it's such a lovable trope of the genre.
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Post by a moderator on Dec 17, 2015 22:39:50 GMT
I do remember introducing someone to gamebooks with Crypt of the Sorcerer (not the best one with which to start, I know, but it was the only one I had with me at the time), and upon finding no direction to a new paragraph at the end of section 393, he just carried on into 394, and got confused. I wonder if a 'Your adventure ends here' would have prevented that mistake.
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Post by thealmightymudworm on Dec 17, 2015 23:19:10 GMT
An example is this, here's an arbitrary death from city of thieves [...] Good one. But before the adventure ends here bit, I thought I had a slim chance of surviving being stabbed and cooked, you know. Really all you have to do after being eaten is: -Gain a psychic hold over the hag (before she's finished digesting you) -Convince her her hair would look nice decorated with lotus flowers -Have her headbutt Zanbar Bone in the face Job done. For me, by far the most boring part of a gamebook is when you have to replay the correct path over and over to get past an unavoidable imbalanced battle. I don't think there's any real excuse for it. Yes, I've suggested before that once you've found the route which requires the least luck in a gamebook you shouldn't really be getting 'diced' more than half the time. Others might disagree about the exact percentage (I just hate losing) but repeatedly playing a book using dice when your chances are at best 0.2% must be a sign of insanity. (See also greatlordofthedark here. I assume he's somewhere with rubber wallpaper by now.)
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Post by Pete Byrdie on Dec 18, 2015 11:04:14 GMT
For me, by far the most boring part of a gamebook is when you have to replay the correct path over and over to get past an unavoidable imbalanced battle. I don't think there's any real excuse for it. Yes, I've suggested before that once you've found the route which requires the least luck in a gamebook you shouldn't really be getting 'diced' more than half the time. Others might disagree about the exact percentage (I just hate losing) but repeatedly playing a book using dice when your chances are at best 0.2% must be a sign of insanity. (See also greatlordofthedark here. I assume he's somewhere with rubber wallpaper by now.) I read somewhere that Ian Livingstone has said he assumed players of his gamebooks cheated. While that may be true for many players, and I'm sure we've all cheated from time to time, it's not his place to judge us or punish us for that. Once a person has bought that book, they have the right to enjoy it however they wish. Livingstone's responsibility, if he wishes to be fair, is to ensure the book is reasonably achievable by people playing according to the rules devised by him.
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Post by hynreck on Dec 18, 2015 13:23:32 GMT
I do remember introducing someone to gamebooks with Crypt of the Sorcerer (not the best one with which to start, I know, but it was the only one I had with me at the time), and upon finding no direction to a new paragraph at the end of section 393, he just carried on into 394, and got confused. I wonder if a 'Your adventure ends here' would have prevented that mistake. Unless your friend is easily confused (and I suppose you told him of the possibility of death) then, of course, the paragraph needs to be clear that you died or lost and that there is no possibility of going on. If it isn't clear, standing on its own, then yes, the "Your adventure ends here" bit would indeed seem appropriate as a section closer.
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Post by Paul Mc on Dec 19, 2015 12:19:38 GMT
Out of interest does could anyone tell me Ref 393 of Crypt of Sorcerer as I haven't got the book. I want to see how obvious or not it is that your adventure ends on that reference
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kieran
Baron
Posts: 2,457
Favourite Gamebook Series: Fighting Fantasy
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Post by kieran on Dec 19, 2015 22:01:07 GMT
Well it ends with you being throttled to death so I suppose it depends on how debilitating you presume death is.
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Post by thealmightymudworm on Jan 4, 2016 1:12:00 GMT
Yes, I've suggested before that once you've found the route which requires the least luck in a gamebook you shouldn't really be getting 'diced' more than half the time. Others might disagree about the exact percentage (I just hate losing) but repeatedly playing a book using dice when your chances are at best 0.2% must be a sign of insanity. (See also greatlordofthedark here. I assume he's somewhere with rubber wallpaper by now.) I read somewhere that Ian Livingstone has said he assumed players of his gamebooks cheated. While that may be true for many players, and I'm sure we've all cheated from time to time, it's not his place to judge us or punish us for that. Once a person has bought that book, they have the right to enjoy it however they wish. Livingstone's responsibility, if he wishes to be fair, is to ensure the book is reasonably achievable by people playing according to the rules devised by him. The annoying thing is that messing up the chances of making it through specifically punishes those who aren't cheating. Cheaters can sail through umpteen hardcore battles and tests while rule-followers get the whipping-boy treatment. It just comes across as lazy (or daft if done deliberately). Anti-cheating devices are another matter. I'm mostly indifferent to this sort of thing: 'Do you want to use the num-num of Wib-Wob?' Yes'That's funny, because Wib-Wob is famous for not having a num-num. You die, scrabbling around for the item you don't have.' ...because if you hit that you're clearly not attempting to engage with the book at all. It's still a bit annoying though. As you say, it's not really the author's business to put pop-up reader-spankings in their book. The ones where you have to 'fail' a roll or the suchlike to have a chance of winning are a different matter. If you were warned off cheating and/or the book was part of a series in which there was no good reason to cheat it would be one thing, but randomly mixing books that it's impossible to win whilst cheating in amongst books that it's impossible to win without cheating is a bit annoying. It reminds me of that line in the The Golden ChildOld Man: Remember to stay on the path! Jarrell: I heard you the first time! Let's just hope the path stays under me! [The bridge he was on suddenly explodes] Jarrell: I thought you said to stay on the path! Old Man: Yes, but you must know when to break the rules!I do remember introducing someone to gamebooks with Crypt of the Sorcerer (not the best one with which to start, I know, but it was the only one I had with me at the time), and upon finding no direction to a new paragraph at the end of section 393, he just carried on into 394, and got confused. I wonder if a 'Your adventure ends here' would have prevented that mistake. Unless your friend is easily confused (and I suppose you told him of the possibility of death) then, of course, the paragraph needs to be clear that you died or lost and that there is no possibility of going on. If it isn't clear, standing on its own, then yes, the "Your adventure ends here" bit would indeed seem appropriate as a section closer. Slightly off topic, but this reminded me of something that made me laugh over 20 years ago. Many people think that the word 'dice' means the singular as well as the plural, but of course it's actually 'die'. Someone I met at school, who didn't know this or have much grasp of how sentences work, admitted that he found FF particularly difficult for some time because whenever he read 'Roll one die...' he'd take one of his dice, roll it, and if the single-spot side came up he'd dutifully turn back to paragraph 1 and start over, thinking his character had died. He did this religiously, even though it frequently made absolutely no sense. You can imagine... Your aim is true and the javelin pierces its thick hide. Roll one die. Deduct this number from your opponent's STAMINA*Rolls 1* 'B***er! Must have overstrained myself!' Now that's dedication to trying to play by the rules.
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Post by philsadler on Feb 29, 2016 11:41:38 GMT
Any opponent that has a skill of less than 7 should have an ability to make up for it or it just becomes a worthless fight.
Any opponent that has a skill of more than 9 should have a way to weaken it or it just becomes to difficult for an average player.
Pointless TYL rolls: Test your Luck. If you are Lucky, nothing happens. If you are Unlucky, someone tickles you with a feather. Lose 1 Stamina point due to laughing.
References with no options.
Death by random dice: roll a die - did you roll a 4? You are dead.
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Post by Pete Byrdie on Feb 29, 2016 23:52:41 GMT
In spite of its success, and this probably isn't the forum on which to say this, the Fighting Fantasy system is in some ways a bit naff.
The player's SKILL score is too variable. 7 is a pointless wimp and 12 too high in most cases.
STAMINA is also quite variable. And the values of the SKILL and STAMINA scores rarely have a bearing on any decisions a player might make, especially if they've found the correct path. They have no tactical value.
The LUCK score is a burden masquerading as an aid. It offers the only tactical choice usually available in battle, and it's a choice one would not be inclined to make.
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Post by thealmightymudworm on Mar 17, 2016 23:33:19 GMT
(also wrt fightingfantazine.proboards.com/post/6704/thread) In spite of its success, and this probably isn't the forum on which to say this, the Fighting Fantasy system is in some ways a bit naff. The player's SKILL score is too variable. 7 is a pointless wimp and 12 too high in most cases. STAMINA is also quite variable. And the values of the SKILL and STAMINA scores rarely have a bearing on any decisions a player might make, especially if they've found the correct path. They have no tactical value. The LUCK score is a burden masquerading as an aid. It offers the only tactical choice usually available in battle, and it's a choice one would not be inclined to make. Of these three, I think it's probably just the first one that I really agree with. It's something that's mentioned from time to time: an adventure (and especially a final showdown) statistically tough enough to seem risky for a Skill 12er leaves a Skill 7er without a hope in hell. Some of the adventures have tried to fix this or even use it as an opportunity paths of differing difficulty to victory, eg Sword of the Samurai. In Demons of the Deep you may find yourself re-rolling all your stats at the merman baths. Also if you defeat Cyrano you get a bonus of a Skill point; but if you lose to him you get a bonus of two. Still, it's an awkward problem to lumber all authors with coming up with solutions to. It's probably a side-effect of the creators knowing that players would probably have cubic (6-sided) dice available, but not tetrahedral (4-sided) ones as holding players to an 8-11 range would be preferable. Then again halving a dice roll (and adding 7) for a range of 8-10 would be fine. ( Ascent of Darkness in Fantazine 11 holds Skill and Luck to a range of 2 possibilities before selecting a potential boost for one.) Fiddling with Skill might be mis-targeted though. It's not the Skill tests which usually unbalance adventures but the combats*. Perhaps something that affected just Attack Strength like rolling three dice instead of two every time would do the trick? Stamina is less of an issue partly because of the stabilising effect of using two dice. I think there's a 5 out of 6 chance that your Stamina ends up as being between 16 and 22, which is a significant difference not a huge, destabilising one like Skill. I don't have any problem with using Luck in combat, but agree that it's something you only occasionally want to do because it's usually going for broke. You typically either use it when you're very likely to die without it, or when you're in the final battle and assuming that Luck points won't matter afterwards. Then again with eg the injured Unicorn in ScS which has Sk 11 St 4, spending 1 point makes sense if you get the chance. As you said it is your only possible tactic, your only decision, during a fight so I'd be loth to give it up. Possibly some more options might have been added for the more sophisticated player to feel more involved. For example maybe you could decide to 'lunge' at the beginning of a round, for example, which would increase your Attack Strength but leave you open to a more severe hit if you lost? *With the odd exception. I seem to remember someone on TUFFF pointing out that there's a bar game you can play for gold an unlimited number of times by trying to roll less than or equal to your Skill, and if it's 12 you can just declare you now have, say, 9 billion gold pieces.
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