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Part of the gamebook shtick is that you have to play like a complete ingenue (regardless of your character’s age or sex). Everything is just as it seems, everyone is honest, and you are shocked and surprised when the unexpected happens.

The path from Wealwood directly to Delmer always ends in failure. (It doesn't matter how we get past the gnolls.) So let's rewind and choose to go from Wealwood to somewhere else on Seagate Island. --- 137, redux Where should we land? (2) Delmer (57) Freeton (80) “the uninhabited southern...

Sounds like just the job for this crew. Hah! It's the classic fantasy genre gibberish language (when they didn't bother to hire a language consultant, which is quite rare): "Random blather random blather PROPER NOUN random blather." -- can mean everything from: "PROPER NOUN is your friend."...

But of course. Indeed, and there is even a numbered section for what happens when you arrive in Freeton having come from Delmer! So I am truly baffled why after we visit Wendel, we cannot go to Freeton. Apparently we are so depressed by Wendel's story that we give up altogether...

Possibly? I don't know his psychology, but in addition to kids, there are always "outsiders" in society who rebel against social norms. Often their rebellion is considered shocking and, yes, even childish in their time... and later seen as brilliant and artistic. See: basically any "crazy" or...

Commentary: The gnolls arrived in Delmer "nearly a month ago"... If you suspect that I will use this temporal comment as part of a later rant, you are absolutely right. --- "How could Arno have perverted so many dedicated and powerful fighters?" Point of order: Paladins were not Fighters by...

69 Wendel's tale, which takes until the next morning to relate, is even more depressing than Thayne's tale, but involves less mead consumption and less wand-touching. The gnolls arrived in Delmer "nearly a month ago" and have imposed a strict curfew on the village. Wendel has heard that Arno's...

Why not both? (!) The Arkhosian Dragonborn send themselves back in time partially as an escape valve for the war with Bael Turath. If the worst happens to Arkhosia, well, at least their descendants in the past will survive. The Turathi find out about it and build (or steal!) the time travel...

It’s almost like the younger generations deliberately create pastimes and modes of entertainment that are outrageous to the older generations, as a way to rebel and to tweak their elders. Nah. That couldn’t be it. Must be Satan at work.

Murphy’s Laws of DMing: (1) Whether the PCs fight or talk to a monster/NPC is inversely related to how much information and interest you (the DM) have on that monster’s/NPC’s fight-y or talk-y bits. (37) The curve for “percent chance the PCs will fight a monster/NPC that has valuable...

In the USA one very high profile political figure got her start in this “trick children into saying what you want them to say” nonsense. I shall say no more given it crosses the politics line. But: Lives were ruined. None of it explicitly had to do with D&D, but it was the same insanity.

Literally yes. It was part of the Spellplague powered realms shaking event. I kinda want to grab my FRPG / FRCS and see what they say. Might do that tomorrow.

Exactly. Nobody is saying “don’t test your stuff”. We are saying that haphazard “tests” that are really some combination of popularity contests and marketing stunts — don’t make for better game products.

Commentary: The last time we saw Wendel was when we brought "our dying mother" to him. In OUR Carr Delling's story, she was already dead. Just one of those minor gamebook continuity errors that are impossible to eradicate fully. --- We want Wendel "to describe how Arno manipulated the...

206 Wendel is the only person we want to see in Delmer. [We don't want to show off in front of Ulrik? Damn!] The last time we saw Wendel was when we brought "our dying mother" to him. He wasn't able to save her but he did protect her body from an angry mob who wanted to burn the witch. We...

I'll rewind and assume we succeeded on our Charismexterity check. --- 30, redux "Roll 2 dice and add the result to your charisma score." (13) if 19 or more (130) if less --- 13 We understand enough of the gnoll dialect [Language Matters!] to realize that they are boasting about what...

HECK YEAH! I'm curious -- do these books consider something like "lost 1 PA because of your frontal lobotomy" an "ailment" that gets cured? Obviously an extreme example, but I guess what I wonder is -- can you ever go from book N to book N+1 with a FP/PA/Awareness that got worse? Clearly the...

Those are not guidelines for the frequency and magnitude of how many FP to give out. They are the usual haphazard lazy game "design" that we keep getting these days because we don't demand better. "Give out enough, or if not enough, give out more" isn't a design. It's hand-waving. This is a...

No, but dating back to the 1950s, properly written market research surveys with imposed structured data, could be analyzed. That fact that mankind has lost both the knowledge and will to do market research the right way, kind of explains why most products are so terrible now.

The implication to me is that we are just barely using the oars to guide the boat as it drifts in to shore. That is why "your oar slaps the water" is such a big deal. You didn't mean to do that. THIS! This is the attention to detail that a Real AD&D Player of Yore brought to the table. 😁 In...