Mechanics for hidden numbers?

[thealmightymudworm]

This is maybe an odd question, but has anyone ever tried to list off all the different ways of getting to hidden numbers in the FF and other gamebooks? Is it necessary to have some to make a good FF book? In which books is it done particularly well?

Obviously there's your classic...
"You put the little painting in your backpack. It would be more attractive if some maniac hadn't scrawled '52' over it, but don't think about that too much, it's just to help you picture it."

Then there's
"Remember, if you encounter a magic lock, utter the spell 'Owty-Tfif'. That'll sort it."

"Have you met a friend who could help? If numbers were letters... [Do they mean my lovely dwarven mate Eb?]"

"If you ever encounter the phrase 'Please don't delete this Mr Subeditor', deduct 20 and read on."

"Or you may know of another option [if you've Googled 'what the hell is going on with The Crimson Tide?' and got someone to help you through the maths bit]."

And, sadly...
"Taking all of this information together, using the knowledge of music you have no reason to have, assume these clocks are 24 hours because why not, then just add all the numbers together even though there's no reason to do that either, and divide by the airspeed of an unladen African swallow."

[kieran]

May 5, 2020 4:05:06 GMT thealmightymudworm said:

This is maybe an odd question, but has anyone ever tried to list off all the different ways of getting to hidden numbers in the FF and other gamebooks? Is it necessary to have some to make a good FF book? In which books is it done particularly well?

Obviously there's your classic...
"You put the little painting in your backpack. It would be more attractive if some maniac hadn't scrawled '52' over it, but don't think about that too much, it's just to help you picture it."

Then there's
"Remember, if you encounter a magic lock, utter the spell 'Owty-Tfif'. That'll sort it."

"Have you met a friend who could help? If numbers were letters... [Do they mean my lovely dwarven mate Eb?]"

"If you ever encounter the phrase 'Please don't delete this Mr Subeditor', deduct 20 and read on."

"Or you may know of another option [if you've Googled 'what the hell is going on with The Crimson Tide?' and got someone to help you through the maths bit]."

And, sadly...
"Taking all of this information together, using the knowledge of music you have no reason to have, assume these clocks are 24 hours because why not, then just add all the numbers together even though there's no reason to do that either, and divide by the airspeed of an unladen African swallow."

That last one made me chuckle. I hate those puzzles in Tower of Destruction.

There are puzzles which are a bit more fair of course, like the second trialmaster in Trial of Champions who tells you exactly what you need to do to get to the right reference with no room for interpretation. Not sure if that's a different mechanic or just a better handled version of your last example.

[philsadler]

I was thinking recently about all the ways you could get needed numbers into a book and came up with this list:

1. Lock combinations: 253
2. Times: 12:23
3. Years: 1488
4. Dates: 8/8/72
5. Addresses: 14
6. Coordinates: 22.93
7. Ages: 16
8. Measurements: 220F
9. Distances: 38M
10. Heights: 6F 7
11. Lengths: 99I
12. Weights: 400KG
13. Lucky numbers: 33
14. Favourite numbers: 77
15. Page numbers: 31
16. Page count: 900
17. Amount of chapters: 14
18. Wages
19. Amounts of things

[aggsol]

They could also be hidden in the illustrations as well.

[philsadler]

May 5, 2020 12:57:16 GMT aggsol said:

They could also be hidden in the illustrations as well.

Ah. I seem to remember Steve doing that in one of his Sorcery books.

[a moderator]

A couple of the books used acrostics, too.

[bloodbeasthandler]

Names - the name of the traitor in FF23 suggests a number. 

Prices - cost of a warhammer, 'how much did you pay for that vase?' etc. 

Is this the sort of thing you mean? 

[bloodbeasthandler]

May 5, 2020 12:57:16 GMT aggsol said:

They could also be hidden in the illustrations as well.

Always an excellent place to hide any sort of clue. 

The puzzle to unlock the demon ISTU, the locket and the portrait in Sorcery 1 and 4, the untidy university professor's desk in FF18 come to mind among others. 
 

[a moderator]

Some smug show-off in Fighting Fantazine 16 said:

If the original Fighting Fantasy range hadn’t ended when it did, we’d probably have wound up having to note down the likes of ‘14-carat gold ring with a diameter of 25mm, inset with 32 opals and a 7-faceted ruby’.

Oh, and the author of the mini-adventure in FFZ 9 went to ridiculous lengths to conceal a section number.

[vastariner]

Religion. The Temple of the Five Suns in Rebel Planet.

[a moderator]

Irrelevant random nonsense deleted. Please do not make contextually meaningless posts.

[vagsancho]

God told me once:
What is meaningless to one can be no meaningless to other.

[schlendrian]

If God had a problem with greenspines action, I trust he would apply for a moderatorial role on the forum.

On topic, as it hasn't been mentioned. There's also the possibility of "hiding" a number by splitting it up. Like the three keys in Warlock all contributing to the needed paragraph number. I do think that after Starship Traveller there aren't that many examples of this anymore, just books where you need a lot of different numbers in succession, but I may be mistaken.

[stevendoig]

you need two items to get a number for masks of mayhem ( though as one of the numbers is 'one' its pretty crappy)

[Wilf]

And Siege Of Sardath requires you to add up the numbers on your rings at the end.

[Peter]

Adding together Stardates and Sector co-ordinates.

Maybe not so useful in an Allansia setting, admittedly.

Although, astronomers might carry that type of information.  And the inkle version of Sorcery refers to the influence of the stars' alignments on magic use.

[vastariner]

Initial letters of the lines in a fascistic chant. Because aliens would obviously adapt their tongue to English for the purpose of giving a clue to their enemies.

[a moderator]

May 12, 2020 13:12:19 GMT vastariner said:

Initial letters of the lines in a fascistic chant. Because aliens would obviously adapt their tongue to English for the purpose of giving a clue to their enemies.

That's one of the instances I had in mind when I mentioned acrostics around a dozen posts back.

As for the Arcadian chant, it's more likely that the chant is in Arcadian and all humans have been forced to learn the language of their alien overlords. For the purposes of the gamebook it's been translated into English (or whichever language the book's been translated into), and the translator has presumably gone for a rather free translation ("The phrase rendered 'No messing about, no subtle ploy' literally means 'Just get on with it and rip the stinking mammals' faces off', but that didn't rhyme or scan, and would have made a mess of the hidden message, hence the rephrasing.") 

If anyone here has a non-English edition of Rebel Planet I'd be interested to see how much the meaning of the verse was altered to make it work in other languages.

[vastariner]

I'm also intrigued as to how the Arcadians had their no. 1 supersecretsecurecomputer with the sort of co,bination lock on it that you can find on any standard briefcase.

Then again the US nuclear code is 000000. I assume they thought that, if anyone actually got that far, it was game over.

[thealmightymudworm]

Thanks everyone.  Sorry for wandering off.

There are such a variety of these it's difficult to know how to classify them.
One way (perhaps the least fun way) is to do it purely functionally, in terms of moving from one bit of a book to another.

-Simple note
You are pretty explicitly given a number in one reference and told to consult it in another one.
Examples: Too many to consider, notably in IL books.
-Invisible ink note
As above, except the number is hidden in some way, but you can see it easily once it's pointed out and might have noticed it to start with.
Examples: The skeleton conjuring spell in DoD (derd-nuh-eno or whatever) and, as mentioned above, the traitor's name in MoM is basically give in the Background.
-Multiple notes
You need several numbers in combination. Naturally combines with false notes where the combination leads you to a fail paragraph.
Examples: Keys in TWoFM, co-ordinates in ST and I think ingredients to make a potion in Siege...?
-One ref puzzles
You don't need to have been given any information before a reference, you are just asked solve the puzzle in it.
Examples: Lots, eg the Istu cube mentioned above in Siege, the chest containing Siegfried's armour in VotV and the number in 'left' but not 'little soft felt elf' in PoE.
-Triggers
Sort of the opposite of one-ref puzzles: especially your classic "when you read the phrase 'blahdeblah', deduct 20". Someone reading the section without being primed doesn't even now there was another option available.
Examples: As in CoH, subeditors allowing.
-Keys to unknown locks
A bit like triggers, but the para from which you head to a new section explicitly presents you with a task to perform to get the hidden number, it's just impossible without being given a piece of information first (which is meaningless on its own, unlike a simple note).
Examples: The XEN religion in FoF. Knowing the name of the religion means that you can plug it into a letters-to-numbers cypher. A non exit in reverse indeed.
-Switchboard
These are when you turn to another number from a section based on the text, but nothing so clear-cut as a trigger. When you turn to that previously noted number, there are a few different from and to paragraphs listed.
Examples: I'm specifically thinking about the Charm of Destruction in KotLL here. If you wanted to tear up some undead, you could turn to a paragraph and be relayed on to another if you'd chosen wisely. But there was no strong indication that this was definitely a good time to use it.
(I tried the same technique on a grander scale in my Scorpion Swamp pastiche Murderous Mire for using spells. It nearly drove me insane.)
-Altered notes
You are given a number, but it's a false note. However, you need it so that it can be converted into a genuine note.
Examples: I think the amulet in Siege has something like this, maybe?
-Fully-hidden instructions
Like multiple invisible ink notes or something, you are given a set of instructions you have to put together yourself – possibly without even a trigger in the relevant section.
Examples: Yes I'm thinking of The Crimson Tide. When you're flirting with the king ("Would you like to look at my big sword, my liege?" "Why yes, that is an impressive sword. Are you any good at using it?") Paul Mason does helpfully throw in "Or you may know of another option.", but that's not much of a clue. Especially if you've got "When king offers wood..." or "When king offers spider monk.." on your adventure sheet.

What other possibilities are there? I'm sure I haven't covered them all.

So do people think that these are an essential part of a good FF book? I do think they add a bit of excitement and an extra dimension to the experience, perhaps especially trigger-type mechanics where you might read a paragraph a second time and feel smug at the expense of your stupid past self. What are the best books which don't use any?


Classifying them by the type of challenge (language, maths, observation, memory etc) might be even harder. Does anyone fancy a go at that?

I think it's probably pretty unusual to have a hidden number based on an illustration alone. Not unusual to have info tucked away in one, but you usually get an option to pick which you could do randomly/blindly – eg as in spotting a shapeshifter in HotW, I think. Or you can self-declare (eg in FoF 'oh yes, I totally have 35 white cubes').

[schlendrian]

An alternative is the keyword system as in Fabled Lands (Green likes to use them as well). They are usually of the "simple note" type, so very simple on the mechanics side, but offer the interesting possibility of trying to guess by the word what their effect is going to be

[Wilf]

I like the one in Knights Of Doom that's a combination of the above. It's all very well spotting the hidden number when you get the first clue, but you then need all the other clues that hold the other numbers, and one of them is particularly well hidden...

[cyranotheswordfish]

May 18, 2020 18:31:49 GMT thealmightymudworm said:

I think it's probably pretty unusual to have a hidden number based on an illustration alone.

The second clue in Rebel Planet, I guess?

How would you classify the entire lock in that book? Multiple notes, I guess, but it's not so much combining multiple numbers and combining 2 and solving another sort of mini-puzzle (the palindrome clue)

[schlendrian]

So, now we can add:

Hiding the number in a completely different book

[Paul Gray]

There was a FF book (pardon me for not remembering which) where faerie/other dimension was overlayed the existing one. The paras in italics denoted the ability (but not necessity) to go to the other dimension, in which you had to skip into correctly (go in too early or too late and death, exit too early/late etc).
What I liked about it most was A. The italicised numbers were subtly different, you had to pay attention. B. You had to have common/story sense as to when to use it, not automatically the first time it's an option.

[Wilf]

Phantoms Of Fear. Also, the Cretan Chronicles series.

[The Count]

Most of my favourite books involve some kind of hidden number deduction puzzle:
Siege of Sardath - Potion, actions after potion, using essential items
Phantoms of Fear - Dream World / Reality, item path, Trial of Ghosts, Pixies riddle
The Crimson Tide - codeword and riddle
Vault of the Vampire - Book of Secrets, decoding the chest


While I don't think they are essential, (Scorpion Swamp for example doesn't have any and it is hugely enjoyable,) if implemented well, they can elevate a mediocre book into a good book and a good book into a great book - the secret passage finding and language translation in Creature of Havoc is what stops it being another Caverns like slog. However, if done badly, they are detrimental - the far too difficult, ill conceived and sloppy puzzles in Tower of Destruction stop it from being in my Top 10 and gets it slated in the general fandom.