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Post by tyrion on Aug 9, 2020 12:02:47 GMT
The only way Wailing World, or indeed Slaves through to Magehunter, could be published (assuming that the condition of ceding copyright is still there) would be with the Livingstone/Jackson-owned elements removed. So no references to Titan stuff, and the system would be FF with the numbers filed off. And that takes away much of the appeal, doesn't it? I'd give it a read...with Ability, Power, and Fortune stats, on the planet Tinat... Quite. A series of gamebooks written by Paul Mason set in the world of Goliath, in which our hero has hit points and can see if fortune is with him, would certainly attract my interest. It could include such cities as Al-kalmehr and agents of the gods like the ravaging jester. A republished magehunter, even with the titan elements removed, would still be worth it, even if to replace the tattered original that can't be replaced due to the cost of second hand copies.
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Post by bloodbeasthandler on Aug 9, 2020 12:35:47 GMT
Quite. A series of gamebooks written by Paul Mason set in the world of Goliath, in which our hero has hit points and can see if fortune is with him, would certainly attract my interest. It could include such cities as Al-kalmehr and agents of the gods like the ravaging jester. Speaking for myself, I suspect that such 'get arounds' would serve to irritate me greatly. Every time I would see them, they would be reminders of the copyrighting issue Paul M has just outlined and I'd end up saying to myself, 'Why didn't they just let him write 'Kallamehr' ffs?' Probably. A great pity since that part of Titan is so full of potential and I would dearly like to see it expanded by its originator.
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Post by sleepyscholar on Aug 9, 2020 13:11:04 GMT
The only way Wailing World, or indeed Slaves through to Magehunter, could be published (assuming that the condition of ceding copyright is still there) would be with the Livingstone/Jackson-owned elements removed. So no references to Titan stuff, and the system would be FF with the numbers filed off. And that takes away much of the appeal, doesn't it? I'd give it a read...with Ability, Power, and Fortune stats, on the planet Tinat... Actually Wailing World would probably be the easiest to remove from Titan, since I set it (initially at least) in Lagash, precisely because I wanted a generic fantasy background with none of my usually cultural hi-jinks and connections. This was so that I could slip in a) my rules changes: a choice of character roles; and b) the extreme weirdness that comprised the latter part of the book. 'Lagash', 'Marad' and 'Kish' could easily be changed to 'Archul', 'Dorn' and 'Anotheroffthetopofmyheadcrappyfantasyname' without having any material effect on the story whatsoever. The difficulty would be writing the thing, with decades of fan reaction sapping my conviction that my 'clever' approach to an underground maze would actually work as a story. I mean, this was a book which derived from a picture by Ian Miller (the original cover rough for Magehunter), which I had rejected because I'd been browbeaten into sticking a monster on the cover, and it really didn't suit the book. And Miller is a fantastic artist, so I felt guilty for rejecting a well-realised image, and thought I should therefore write a book around it.
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Post by sleepyscholar on Aug 9, 2020 13:15:12 GMT
Quite. A series of gamebooks written by Paul Mason set in the world of Goliath, in which our hero has hit points and can see if fortune is with him, would certainly attract my interest. It could include such cities as Al-kalmehr and agents of the gods like the ravaging jester. Speaking for myself, I suspect that such 'get arounds' would serve to irritate me greatly. Every time I would see them, they would be reminders of the copyrighting issue Paul M has just outlined and I'd end up saying to myself, 'Why didn't they just let him write 'Kallamehr' ffs?' Probably. A great pity since that part of Titan is so full of potential and I would dearly like to see it expanded by its originator. I'm with you on this (I hinted at it with my comment about what would be lost if you took the FF out of the books). Wailing World is the only one that might work, since I was making a deliberate break with all my previous stuff in Titan, and the location was more or less chosen by sticking a pin in the map.
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Post by bloodbeasthandler on Aug 9, 2020 15:05:19 GMT
... a Lovecraftian monster called the Maijem Nosoth, a deliberately obvious anagram of Jamie... The pleasure that Jamie T obviously took in his fictional descriptions of his colleagues in his news updates in Warlock Magazine (writing things like ‘in between mouthfuls of human flesh, the gore-spattered abomination that is Ian Livingstone choked out a description of his latest gamebook to me....’ ...etc) I suspect he enjoyed his cameo as a repulsive creature in your book Slaves of the Abyss? Was the whistle as a method to distract the Maijem Nosoth an in-joke too? Is Jamie particularly distracted and made irritable by noise? That was an interesting point bloodbeasthandler made about the RPG origins of FF and how it affected the books. Could you identify which of the authors were roleplayers and which weren't? I have not properly marshalled my thoughts, but I’m certain that I do not have a way of always telling who the RPGers are. But sometimes I’d say it’s obvious who they are. (non FF) David Tant’s books, (the Skyfall series), have got D&D written all over them (notwithstanding the author’s description on page 2 which describes him as playing the game from 1978). As have Paul Vernon’s books – Treachery in Drakenwood and Fortress of the Firelord, as well as J H Brennan’s stat-filled Sagas of the Demonspawn series. I would tend to associate RPGers with writing NPCs in a more nuanced way, giving them motivations and personality as we see in Way of the Tiger and so in Talisman of Death. But then again, a good writer of ‘normal’ fiction could do this too, surely? I would like to say that another indicator might be linearity vs a greater freedom of action and movement but that’s no good either. Joe Dever, an early exponent of D&D in the UK, wrote engaging and imaginative but often relatively linear adventures. For him the over-arching saga seemed to be the main thing. Compare with the Fabled Lands 'sandbox' by Dave Morris. Ian Livingstone’s books are linear too and he used to play D and D didn't he? Roleplaying campaigns can be ‘railroaded’ or not, but either way they are still rpgs and people enjoy them. Even if I didn’t know that Keith Martin was in fact Carl Sargent I’d still have a good idea we are dealing with a roleplayer. His books have the feel of a campaign where the PCs gather information, equipment and supplies and then decide what to deal with and in what order. I had assumed that ALL of the FF writers back in the 80's and 90's had at least dipped their toes in some form of RPG, even say Robin Waterfield who came at the books with a background in the classics and as an editor... so is it the case that some never did? That would surprise me a bit, I must say.
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Post by bloodbeasthandler on Aug 9, 2020 16:10:48 GMT
I mentioned it once but that moment you have quoted from talisman is unlike any other in ff (to my knowledge). A few years ago while reading it I was genuinely fooled ( I stress for a few seconds!! .) that the event was actually happening to me! I'm probably not making myself clear but there is something so 'tangible' about that scene. Yeah, it is so well done. But are you sure it didn't actually happen to you Doigy? Maybe in a Glasgow pub in the mid 90's? I know what it can be like up there... Think back now... para 368
Tyutchev's pool cue is almost as tall as you are and he wields it negligently in one hand. Cassandra's broken bottle of Buckfast glows coldly. Each time she hits you must subtract 3 STAMINA points.
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Post by sleepyscholar on Aug 9, 2020 16:21:08 GMT
... a Lovecraftian monster called the Maijem Nosoth, a deliberately obvious anagram of Jamie... The pleasure that Jamie T obviously took in his fictional descriptions of his colleagues in his news updates in Warlock Magazine (writing things like ‘in between mouthfuls of human flesh, the gore-spattered abomination that is Ian Livingstone choked out a description of his latest gamebook to me....’ ...etc) I suspect he enjoyed his cameo as a repulsive creature in your book Slaves of the Abyss? Was the whistle as a method to distract the Maijem Nosoth an in-joke too? Is Jamie particularly distracted and made irritable by noise? That was an interesting point bloodbeasthandler made about the RPG origins of FF and how it affected the books. Could you identify which of the authors were roleplayers and which weren't? I have not properly marshalled my thoughts, but I’m certain that I do not have a way of always telling who the RPGers are. But sometimes I’d say it’s obvious who they are. (non FF) David Tant’s books, (the Skyfall series), have got D&D written all over them (notwithstanding the author’s description on page 2 which describes him as playing the game from 1978). As have Paul Vernon’s books – Treachery in Drakenwood and Fortress of the Firelord, as well as J H Brennan’s stat-filled Sagas of the Demonspawn series. I would tend to associate RPGers with writing NPCs in a more nuanced way, giving them motivations and personality as we see in Way of the Tiger and so in Talisman of Death. But then again, a good writer of ‘normal’ fiction could do this too, surely? I would like to say that another indicator might be linearity vs a greater freedom of action and movement but that’s no good either. Joe Dever, an early exponent of D&D in the UK, wrote engaging and imaginative but often relatively linear adventures. For him the over-arching saga seemed to be the main thing. Compare with the Fabled Lands 'sandbox' by Dave Morris. Ian Livingstone’s books are linear too and he used to play D and D didn't he? Roleplaying campaigns can be ‘railroaded’ or not, but either way they are still rpgs and people enjoy them. Even if I didn’t know that Keith Martin was in fact Carl Sargent I’d still have a good idea we are dealing with a roleplayer. His books have the feel of a campaign where the PCs gather information, equipment and supplies and then decide what to deal with and in what order. I had assumed that ALL of the FF writers back in the 80's and 90's had at least dipped their toes in some form of RPG, even say Robin Waterfield who came at the books with a background in the classics and as an editor... so is it the case that some never did? That would surprise me a bit, I must say.
I'm not sure that Jamie ever did read Slaves of the Abyss (or the original appearance of the Maijem Nosoth, which was in Warlock magazine). And as far as I can recall, the whistle was not an in-joke. My theory would have been that it's in the 'game' aspect that the RPGers would reveal themselves, but I may be wrong about that. And actually you've made the key point: Livingstone wasn't really a role-player (not such that us hard core rolegaming fans would acknowledge, anyway). But he was a gamer. Even after I'd left Games Workshop, our paths crossed again when I was production editor on Games International, which Ian got interested in (and chummy with the editor, Brian Walker). I got the impression that in terms of personal enjoyment, Ian was actually far more interested in board games than in rolegames. Robin Waterfield was the main example I was thinking about of someone who didn't come from gaming. Lovely bloke, and a fine editor, he was also sharp enough to figure out gamebooks in order to write them. But I don't think he ever played rolegames. It may be that the key distinction isn't whether someone was a gamer or not, but what their attitude to gaming was. Some gamers are very much 'follow the rules' types, whereas us hardcore 80s hobbyists started caring much more about more theoretical and aesthetic concerns. I think the former approach may be more productive for FF. I think you owe it to the readers to design the book with good balance. I just used to try to do everything in my head and fly by the seat of my pants, and FF fans have exposed the failings of that approach in forensic detail over the years. (Fair disclosure with regard to me writing about fans: I am now an academic, and my alleged field of research is 'fan studies'. But don't worry, as at the moment I'm researching fans of James Joyce).
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Post by bloodbeasthandler on Aug 9, 2020 22:44:23 GMT
My theory would have been that it's in the 'game' aspect that the RPGers would reveal themselves, but I may be wrong about that. And actually you've made the key point: Livingstone wasn't really a role-player (not such that us hard core rolegaming fans would acknowledge, anyway). But he was a gamer. Even after I'd left Games Workshop, our paths crossed again when I was production editor on Games International, which Ian got interested in (and chummy with the editor, Brian Walker). I got the impression that in terms of personal enjoyment, Ian was actually far more interested in board games than in rolegames. And yet gamer or not, Ian’s books are among the most slap-dash of all when it comes to adherence to rules and lack of playtesting, in a way that would not be thinkable in the creation of a boardgame. You may see elsewhere on these boards the virtual mathematical impossibility of completing some of his books, like FF26 ‘Crypt of the Sorceror’ or his later effort ‘Blood of the Zombies’ even when starting with maximum possible stats. A lot of his books require SKILL 11 or 12 to complete. Another of his recent books is Port of Peril. The rules as usual state that ‘your stamina score may never exceed its initial value unless specifically instructed on the page’. And what do we see on the very first paragraph but an instruction to add 1 stamina point as a result of eating a tomato sandwich (so... we are automatically at initial levels already...there's no instruction to add to initial stamina... so... do we add it? Or not? Ummm... so why's he written that, then?). This is not to mention the SKILL bonuses that come up in the FF books and the confusion that usually reigns over whether they add to initial skill or attack strength or not. It may be that the key distinction isn't whether someone was a gamer or not, but what their attitude to gaming was. Some gamers are very much 'follow the rules' types, whereas us hardcore 80s hobbyists started caring much more about more theoretical and aesthetic concerns. I think the former approach may be more productive for FF. I think you owe it to the readers to design the book with good balance. I just used to try to do everything in my head and fly by the seat of my pants, and FF fans have exposed the failings of that approach in forensic detail over the years. (Fair disclosure with regard to me writing about fans: I am now an academic, and my alleged field of research is 'fan studies'. But don't worry, as at the moment I'm researching fans of James Joyce). You might be right. With FF, the book is the umpire, or DM or GM or whatever... there can be no feedback or discussion between author and reader so ideally the book needs to be well-designed and to have taken all those variables like skill stamina and luck levels (and their probable attrition) into account. As for balance and how to pitch the strength of monsters and whatnot, the writer is struggling straight off the bat with the SKILL score being anything from 7 to 12. Same thing with Joe Dever’s Lone Wolf where starting Combat Skill could vary from 10 to 19. Is this a hangover from D&D where those 3d6 for stats rolls could leave you with a Strength 3 Hitpoints 1 weakling about to go into a dungeon?
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Post by The Count on Aug 9, 2020 23:34:04 GMT
I mentioned it once but that moment you have quoted from talisman is unlike any other in ff (to my knowledge). A few years ago while reading it I was genuinely fooled ( I stress for a few seconds!! .) that the event was actually happening to me! I'm probably not making myself clear but there is something so 'tangible' about that scene. Yeah, it is so well done. But are you sure it didn't actually happen to you Doigy? Maybe in a Glasgow pub in the mid 90's? I know what it can be like up there... Think back now... para 368
Tyutchev's pool cue is almost as tall as you are and he wields it negligently in one hand. Cassandra's broken bottle of Buckfast glows coldly. Each time she hits you must subtract 3 STAMINA points. I don't remember any pubs ever serving bucky... if you had said metz however (what happened to that by the way...) then you'd have the scene just right
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Post by The Count on Aug 9, 2020 23:44:17 GMT
On topic: I'm not sure Jonathan Green came from an RPG background - I think he came straight from Tolkien to Warhammer power gaming (see Knights of Doom) and his work for GW implies the same - no denying he has a rich imagination and gift for prose, but his books read as novels with ( to his mind irritating) FF rulrs inserted against his will. Same for Gascoigne (sp?) and whoever wrote Midnight Rogue as neither Battleblade nor Rogue reads like something that hasn't been copied from a basic RPG sample adventure from a giveaway flyer instead of the advanced one you find on P133 of the dungeon manual...
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Post by sleepyscholar on Aug 10, 2020 2:43:41 GMT
On topic: I'm not sure Jonathan Green came from an RPG background - I think he came straight from Tolkien to Warhammer power gaming (see Knights of Doom) and his work for GW implies the same - no denying he has a rich imagination and gift for prose, but his books read as novels with ( to his mind irritating) FF rulrs inserted against his will. Same for Gascoigne (sp?) and whoever wrote Midnight Rogue as neither Battleblade nor Rogue reads like something that hasn't been copied from a basic RPG sample adventure from a giveaway flyer instead of the advanced one you find on P133 of the dungeon manual... You may be right about Jon Green. He did get a job at GW, I think, but it was after they had completely turned into the warhammerTM company. You're quite wrong about Marc, though. I know for a fact that he was playing and active at school, and he went on to co-edit the legendary DragonLords fanzine. In fact at some point in the last couple of years he did an interview for the Grognard Files. One problem there may be, that I hinted at in my previous post, is that those of us True Believers in role-playing in those days looked down on gamebooks. Remember I only got a route in to writing them by doing a set of RPG adventures (and even then I was probably riding the coat-tails of Steve W, who had previously done text adventure Tower of Despair for GW with Jamie). All the weird stuff in Slaves of the Abyss was either Steve's bizarre imagination, or me trying to cover my embarrassment at slumming it in gamebooks. It was only as I wrote more that I started to get a deeper grasp of the possibilities of the medium, and appreciated gamebooks more. Role-player snobbery could definitely get in the way. There may (warning: amateur psychologist at work) have been some of this affecting Marc's work.
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Post by sleepyscholar on Aug 10, 2020 2:59:47 GMT
And yet gamer or not, Ian’s books are among the most slap-dash of all when it comes to adherence to rules and lack of playtesting, in a way that would not be thinkable in the creation of a boardgame. You may see elsewhere on these boards the virtual mathematical impossibility of completing some of his books, like FF26 ‘Crypt of the Sorceror’ or his later effort ‘Blood of the Zombies’ even when starting with maximum possible stats. A lot of his books require SKILL 11 or 12 to complete. Is this a hangover from D&D where those 3d6 for stats rolls could leave you with a Strength 3 Hitpoints 1 weakling about to go into a dungeon? Yes, it is a hangover. Bonkers, isn't it? For your first point, you've reminded me of the line about D&D commonly uttered by Gary Gygax, which I heard from the man himself one Gamesfair: 'I only roll the dice for the sound it makes'. Like many people who said something like this, I guess he thought this was clever. But once you take a look at it, what he's really saying is 'I'm brilliant, so I should never follow the rules' (in this case rules the guy wrote himself). Which begs the question of why go through the pretence of having the rules at all? Oh, they're for the little people. Notably Gygax, like Livingstone, was someone who got early into role-playing games (note: Gygax didn't invent it, he picked it up from Arneson's campaign, which in turn derived from a Napoleonic wargame-run-wild) but never quite grasped that they were a whole different beast. Gygax's Role-Playing Mastery is testimony to how little he understood about the way role-playing games work. Personally, I think role-playing rules are there to establish some sort of sense of fairness between the ref and the players: to undermine that niggling feeling that the ref is just a wannabe novelist inflicting his* story on the players. And even though -- as has been documented -- I always cheated when playing FF books, I still think that the rules, and a balance in the way the whole system operates, is at the heart of gamebooks. Gamebook readers do not want to feel like they are being dicked around with (just look at the reaction to that 'Luck roll you have to fail' in one of my books!), and rightly so. *pronoun used advisedly
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Post by tyrion on Aug 10, 2020 8:49:13 GMT
Well Gygax did write Tomb of horrors as a way of punishing players who thought they were too good.
There is a marked difference between the earlier Jon Green efforts and the later ones. Wasn't Spellbreaker written while he was at university? As one review put it: the author hates you. It wasn't till after puffin ff finished that he wrote for black library (GW publishing division). Then he came back to write ff for the wizard editions with a far different approach.
I think his love of gamebooks is obvious with the You are the hero history and his latest ACE gamebooks.
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Post by kieran on Aug 10, 2020 9:15:14 GMT
Then he came back to write ff for the wizard editions with a far different approach. Although Bloodbones is more in the mold of his Puffin gamebooks (though not quite as ridiculous). But I guess he just decided not to tinker with his original design when it was to be re-released (bar putting it back up to 400 sections). Even his Sonic the Hedgehog gamebooks in the 90s were ridiculously hard! He has thankfully moved away from that these days. Regarding Ian's RPG credentials, he did write Dicing with Dragons where he reviews pretty much every RPG going at the time so he certainly knew his stuff about the hobby. Not sure if the two Aussie authors (Andrew Chapman and Martin Allen) had an RPG background. If I recall correctly, Chapman just came across a copy of Warlock of Firetop Mountain and thought "hey, I could do something like this". Then he asked Allen to help him when he was writing Clash of the Princes. Then again, the magic system for Clash of the Princes suggests a familiarity with the genre.
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Post by sleepyscholar on Aug 10, 2020 15:29:50 GMT
Regarding Ian's RPG credentials, he did write Dicing with Dragons where he reviews pretty much every RPG going at the time so he certainly knew his stuff about the hobby. Many of us who were around at the time would beg to differ with you on that. There was a reason why us fanzine editors (and that includes Marc, for example) took the piss out of him. The detailed knowledge that went into Dicing With Dragons was that of a games retailer. Replace the word 'hobby' with the word 'business' and I would have no quibbles.
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Post by kieran on Aug 10, 2020 15:42:39 GMT
Regarding Ian's RPG credentials, he did write Dicing with Dragons where he reviews pretty much every RPG going at the time so he certainly knew his stuff about the hobby. Many of us who were around at the time would beg to differ with you on that. There was a reason why us fanzine editors (and that includes Marc, for example) took the piss out of him. The detailed knowledge that went into Dicing With Dragons was that of a games retailer. Replace the word 'hobby' with the word 'business' and I would have no quibbles. Fair enough. There is certainly a kind of "catalogue" vibe to the book now you mention it.
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Post by vastariner on Aug 11, 2020 10:09:41 GMT
And yet gamer or not, Ian’s books are among the most slap-dash of all when it comes to adherence to rules and lack of playtesting, in a way that would not be thinkable in the creation of a boardgame. You may see elsewhere on these boards the virtual mathematical impossibility of completing some of his books, like FF26 ‘Crypt of the Sorceror’ or his later effort ‘Blood of the Zombies’ even when starting with maximum possible stats. A lot of his books require SKILL 11 or 12 to complete. Is this a hangover from D&D where those 3d6 for stats rolls could leave you with a Strength 3 Hitpoints 1 weakling about to go into a dungeon? Yes, it is a hangover. Bonkers, isn't it? For your first point, you've reminded me of the line about D&D commonly uttered by Gary Gygax, which I heard from the man himself one Gamesfair: 'I only roll the dice for the sound it makes'. Like many people who said something like this, I guess he thought this was clever. But once you take a look at it, what he's really saying is 'I'm brilliant, so I should never follow the rules' (in this case rules the guy wrote himself). Which begs the question of why go through the pretence of having the rules at all? And even though -- as has been documented -- I always cheated when playing FF books, I still think that the rules, and a balance in the way the whole system operates, is at the heart of gamebooks. This got me thinking on something I'd never turned my mind to. Why have the dice at all?
The Virtual Reality books showed that you could have compelling gamebooks without the need for a stochastic determiner. Starship Traveller is winnable without a dice roll. I would need to check but I'd be interested in how many fights in Sorcery! are truly unavoidable if you are playing as Wizard (I think even the manticore can be trapped behind spells rather than killed with sword).
Going back to the source, the dice in D&D have two roles; one is to randomize so that an adventure can be re-played. And there is patently much more re-playability factor in an RPG than in a book, where the player can't look at all the available options, and has to rely on the DM.
The other is as a sort of penalty. If you make a daft decision you have a dice roll to see if it succeeds. Again in an RPG you might not be able to see how daft that decision is, you just get the result. You might be ridiculously unlucky with a roll. In a book though you have a good idea of how difficult the thing is - rolling against Skill with a +2 penalty for instance. It's there in front of you. In an RPG? No.
So were the dice in FF simply because they were there in RPGs? A holdover as part of the background? I've mentioned before the character rolling is somewhat pointless, you would never get an adventurer with Sk7 in real life, they'd be squished by a goblin in no time let alone Zagor. The main use of dice in FF is for the fights, and that's obviously needed in FIGHTING Fantasy. But there are better ways of doing fights (e.g. the one at the end of Seas of Blood) rather than a dice grind. (Indeed, the Cretan Chronicles way is pretty decent, they're over quickly). Main problem with the SoB fighting system is it would eat up references.
I do like the idea though that a fight is a penalty for not being able to avoid it using smarts. Because then it's your fault you fail. If the major fail in a book is stamina loss from unavoidable and impossible fights, that's a failure of book design, and hugely unsatisfactory from a reading experience. A smattering of unavoidable fights (and one of the best is in Slaves of the Abyss against the cave-dweller - there's a mad sense of panic in that one) can make the book seem an achievement though, you get to feel your narrow escapes (albeit with St14 minimum - which would often be the highest in the book apart from maybe the Big Boss - it's rare you get scrapped down to narrow survival) but really fights should be kept as low as possible, and, perhaps, even finish early (in standard bar-room brawl-type scenarios the patrons you are beating up would probably tap out rather than fight to the death). Really, the fewer dice rolls, the better the book.
The main exception is Creature of Havoc because the dice rolls at the start are themselves part of the adventure. And at least it's a quick fail if they go wrong. Are there any gamebooks where a dice roll sends you to random locations in a winnable way? So that you do have a re-play value to see the adventures you missed out on? (Even then you do not NEED dice for that.)
The best use of dice rolls though must be Magehunter, where you may end up in a weakling body that requires you to husband your limited skill and stamina. That's one of the very few times when a low skill is realistic in an FF book. (House of Hell and, to an extent, Black Vein Prophecy too.) And that makes it the most satisfying experience when you do pick your way through it.
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Post by kieran on Aug 11, 2020 10:59:25 GMT
The Virtual Reality books showed that you could have compelling gamebooks without the need for a stochastic determiner. If Virtual Reality had a weakness though, it is that it really struggled to make combat exciting. There's a fight in Green Blood where you have to choose where to strike your opponent. First few tries you will lose, but then metaknowledge will carry you through subsequent attempts. Dice rolling is definitely more fun. An even worse example is the final fight in Down Among the Dead Men which is something like "You fight your opponent. If you have Skill X, you lose only 2 Life Points. If you lack this Skill, you lose 7 Life Points. If you survive, you overcome him. Turn to Y." It's an extremely anticlimactic end to an otherwise great gamebook. That said, books definitely don't always need dice, but I think when combat is a factor it helps a lot. The first Endless Quest book had a lot of combat encounters, but they amounted to whether the author decided your character would be able to overcome the particular monster or not. It wasn't very satisfying. After this book, combat became quite rare in the series, often casting you as a child who had to avoid a straight fight if at all possible. I wouldn't consider these books bad (in fact I am a big fan of the series), but the lack of dice did limit the stories it could tell. As you say, the Seas of Blood approach isn't very feasible and would be much more of a grind than a few dice rolls anyway. Also, I for one don't mind a bit of randomness. Something like a Stephen Thraves approach is excessive as are Luke Sharp's "roll a double and die!" moments, but I think FF for the most part struck a good balance.
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Post by a moderator on Aug 11, 2020 12:54:49 GMT
Are there any gamebooks where a dice roll sends you to random locations in a winnable way? So that you do have a re-play value to see the adventures you missed out on? (Even then you do not NEED dice for that.) There's travel by Aleph in Spectral Stalkers. The book becomes more difficult if the randomness causes you to miss certain locations, but the rolls determining where you end up never guarantee failure.
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Post by sleepyscholar on Aug 12, 2020 2:02:39 GMT
I think the dice perform another function, one which kieran has hinted at: they are dramatic punctuation. This was their role in role-playing games, and I think it is also their role in gamebooks. Back in the days when I was part of the leading edge of roleplaying theory (and there's a very big tongue there in a very large cheek) the idea of diceless games was frequently floated. And the advocates of dicelessness often phrased their advocacy in quite elitist terms: using the dice was dismissed as being a holdover from kid's boardgames etc, dicelessness was superior because it allowed the referee more power to be a true auteur etc. Naturally, there was also many theorists who suggested ditching the rules entirely, or as I might dub them, the Advocates of Pointlessness.
So Dave Morris came up with Virtual Reality, which might suggest that he is against the dice. Right? No, wrong. Abandoning the dice was a matter of practicality: I suspect he calculated that the gamebooks would be that much easier to play if you didn't have to carry dice with you. Bear in mind that he regretted designing Dragon Warriors with funny-shaped dice. He admitted this pretty early on (I wrote a review saying it should have been D6 in about 1986, and Dave conceded that I was right at the time).
I think the function the dice perform is basically aesthetic. As kieran pointed out, the climax of a diceless book can* feel like a let down. Rolling the dice provide a focus for the reader's feeling that an exciting, risky event is taking place. And that the book isn't just a contest between reader and writer: it's a contest between the reader and Fate! (How many times did the back cover blurb claim something along these lines?)
Any gamer knows that the dice do generate something special. Just ask Dave Morris about the time in our Tekumel game when Karunaz was up against a ludicrously powerful opponent: "Your only chance is if you roll a 1" (on a D20) he said. "OK, I'll do that then," I replied, and promptly did. Sure, it's just luck, but it's luck which is memorable, and is still talked about 30 years after the event.
Having said this, I think if you look at the criticism of my books, there's a whole subset that are justified because I was too cavalier in viewing the dice roll only as dramatic punctuation, and failing to also back it up with decent odds. I think both are required. Nowadays I think it would be relatively easy to create a computer model for a gamebook which would allow you to analyse all the paths pretty well perfectly (I did some operational research at university, so I was aware of critical path analysis, but still plotted gamebooks by the seat of my pants for want of time and resources). I assume some posters here have developed such models. But the model on its own wouldn't guarantee a great gamebook, because there has to be aesthetic judgement in the application.
*Not always: I don't think Heart of Ice suffers in this respect.
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