Joshua Randall
Legend
Considerably more complex than Lone Wolf, in fact. LW has only two stats: Combat Skill (CS) and Endurance Points (EP); fights are resolved by comparing your CS to the enemy's, rolling d10, and cross-referencing the result to see how much EP each combatant loses.Joshua Dyal said:TolkienQuest was based on a slimmed up version of MERP (which in turn was a slimmed up version of Rolemaster.) As a gamebook, it certainly had a much more detailed "system" than Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks; more along the lines of Lone Wolf.
In TolkienQuest you have various maneuvers you can make, from a simple attack, to "running past", to casting a spell. You could even use the full MERP rules to play the gamebook! I never tried that, however.
Also, you carry over your stats and equipment from book to book (similar to Lone Wolf). This means that by the second or third book in the TolkienQuest series, you are considerably more powerful.
I think that one is called Night of the Nazgul. If you play it as your first book, it is hard. You're on a time limit for reaching Hobbiton before the Nazgul get there. You've also got to cross the Brandywine, preferably not via the main bridge as it's guarded by (another?) Nazgul. You can actually fight the ring-wraith, and if you win, the book asks you to check your math because what you've accomplished is well nigh impossible. (I actually did beat the bastard once by repeatedly "running past" and then casting fireball on him.) Alternatively you can go through the woods and meet up with Tom Bombadil, who will shepherd you to a safe crossing.And naturally, they were set in Middle-earth -- I had one in which I was sent by some rangers at Bree to Hobbiton right about the time Frodo was leaving Hobbiton
Secret of Weathertop or somesuch. My favorite of the three. You start out in the ruins outside, and first have to find a way into the dungeon. You can go down the hill and consult with some friendly dwarves, or you can just wander around fighting bandits and wild animals. Eventually you enter Weathertop and meet up with a hobbit fellow-adventurer. There's a lot to explore, and plenty of enemies to fight. You can even swap riddles with a wight!and I had one in which I was investigating Weathertop
Yup, a bitchy elf princess wants you to help her find her brother, who has been abducted by the forces of eeeeevil. I believe he is found enwebbed by the giant spiders, but only after tons of searching. The best part of this book is repeatedly fighting the rabid squirrels who attack in about every other passage.and there was a third that I had in which I was wandering around in Mirkwood meeting Radagast, wood-elves, and the villages of woodmen. I can't remember the details of that one, but I think I was supposed to be rescueing someone who was lost?
Right. There was a section of the book with passages corresponding to each hex (e.g. 3A or 7E), and another section of the book with numbered passages (e.g. 103 or 88). Sometimes the hexes would send you to a numbered passage, and the numbered passages would send you to another numbered passage or back to the hex map. It was kind of aggravating, but also fun. You were supposed to use the (included?) grease pencil or crayon to track your path, but I usually just stuck a penny on the map. Of course, many times I jostled the penny away from its location and had to spend several minutes figuring out where I was supposed to be....you mostly progressed by moving along a hex-map and looking up the corresponding section for that hex.
I still have all three of the TolkienQuest books described above. Were there any others?
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