[AD&D Gamebook] Sceptre of Power (Kingdom of Sorcery, book 1 of 3)

[Joshua Randall]

Commentary:

Ah, the long-lived J.R.R. Tolkien style elves -- the bane of D&D world-building since its inception.You can't build up a mysterious past that no-one understands when there is a centuries old elf lady handy who was present when all the mysterious stuff went down.

And at age 200, Estla is still a spring chicken. According to the AD&D DMG (page 12), wood elves can reach the "venerable" age of 1,101 - 1,350 years old.

200 years old makes Estla on the low end of "mature" -- just out of young adulthood, in fact. She's about the equivalent of a 30 year old human. Thus there should be plenty of older elves running around, including her parents and grandparents.

In the context of this book, there should be no mystery about what happened to the Empire of Bhukod because 500 years ago is less than middle aged for every elf subrace in the AD&D DMG.

To take a real-world analogy of a time "pretty long ago, but definitely within living memory of a middle-aged human": it would be similar to asking me, Joshua, what it was like growing up in the 1980s.

I could tell you about the most dramatic things that made the news, the general tone of the Cold War between the USA and USSR, major political developments in the USA, etc. All from memory. All without looking at a single written document.

If your story's plot depends on no-one remembering the 1980s, Joshua blows up that plot all by himself.

If your gamebook's plot depends on no-one remembering Ancient Bhukod, one middle-aged elf blows up that plot all by herself.

Fantasy races who live much longer than a normal human lifespan ruin your worldbuilding and book plotting.

 

[Joshua Randall]

135

Estla grabs our hand. We feel the connection, but we're still blocking her. [Involuntarily?] She tells us to knock it off and we can once again choose to admit our suspicious nature (196) or continue to deny it (173).

[This is a repeated pattern in gamebooks in general and in this one in particular. “Are you sure you want to make the correct choice?” Yes, I am. I’ve already said I want to let Estla read my aura. Stop trying to trick me into changing my mind.]

[It strikes me now that these passages are the gamebook version of what Justin Alexander calls “roll to failure” , and it’s a bad GM-ing practice.]

---

196

We admit that we're suspicious of Thayne because he seems to know more about our father than he's letting on.

[Keep this statement in mind: Carr is COMPLETELY REASONABLY experiencing doubts about the situation because SOMEONE HAS WITHHELD INFORMATION FROM HIM.]

Estla, rather than allay our suspicions with the truth, puts us off with vagueness and mysterious talk about how we can stay until we're ready "to do what must be done".

[Estla has to be vague because at this point in the book, the story can't know what happened to Landor, given that there is no Beldon to force the quantum state to collapse into murdered-or-disappeared.]

Thayne says he will teach us as many spells as he can before Estla thinks "it's time", and that if we're smart the spells we learn will allow us to "hold [our] own against whatever forces stand between [us] and [our] father's legacy."

[If Thayne thinks that some 1st level magic-user spells are going to let us "hold our own" against Beldon, then Thayne is another WIS 3 goober.]

The first spell we can learn from Thayne is either Armor (101) or Light (130) -- and we're not rolling randomly; we do get to choose.

We already know what Light does from our other path, so we'll choose Armor.

 

[Joshua Randall]

101

We like the sound of the Armor spell, so Thayne pulls a piece of blessed leather from his cloak, pricks his finger with a sharp dagger, and then makes a repetitive gesture with that bleeding finger on the leather while saying an elven spellword.

When he's done, he pushes his finger hard against the knife, and nothing happens. Armor at work!

We make an INT test vs. 21. On a success (33) we learn the spell as demonstrated by Thayne's inability to cut us; on a failure (125) we decide to jam the knife into our inner arm instead of a finger, hit an artery, and bleed out. One of the last thoughts we have is of "the dangers of magic in the hands of a fool."

[Bah! This is less “the dangers of magic” than it is “foolishly risky braggadocio from a WIS 3 teenager”. I could tolerate a failure where Carr takes HP damage or even loses DEX because of a nasty cut to his hand when the Armor spell doesn’t work, but “oops you’re dead” is too extreme here.]

 

[Joshua Randall]

We next choose between Detect Magic and Read Magic and we get to turn to (55) to discuss it with Thayne. He regrets there won't be time to teach us both, because both are useful, but ultimately we have to choose between being able to find our father's "magical treasure" at all (Detect Magic, 83) vs. being able understand what we find (Read Magic, 134).

[This is a misleading and meaningless fake choice. We're never going to find Landor's spellbooks because they aren't at the College Arcane. So Read Magic is useless. And what we do find, the Sceptre of Bhukod, is not in a location that we even know exists nor can we access it, so Detect Magic with its 1" path, 6" long (so 10 yards X 60 yards at 'outdoor' scale) is useless too. And probably Detect Magic wouldn’t work on the sceptre at all, assuming it’s of Artifact power level.]

---

134

Read Magic seems a little more useful [and is a requirement to be a functioning magic-user in AD&D], plus we originally set the condition that Thayne had to teach us enough magic to be able to understand our father’s spell books, so the next morning we rush to Thayne and ask him to teach us.

Thayne hands us a rose quartz prism on a fine gold chain -- the material component for this spell. We make an INT test vs. 22.

On a failure we can't follow Thayne's time-compressed instruction and we don’t get to add Read Magic to our spellbook.

On a success, within the confines of one day, we are able to "spot the differences among such written languages as ancient High Elven, Archaic Common, classical Wizard's Scrawl, mirror writing, and other scripts."

[Here the author shows off his anthropology chops. Nice. Also: Language matters!]

We then ask Thayne how to cast the spell and use the prism. He spreads out a yellowed parchment which we recognize as a combination of Wizard's Scrawl and mirror writing. We dangle the prism so that the last rays of the setting sun refract over the parchment.

"Speak to me in my native language," we command. The words on the parchment swirl into the Common tongue.

And it's a map of some pirate tunnels beneath Freeton.

[Err… a map doesn't require translation. A map is a picture.]

Thayne says he already collected "his rewards" from those tunnels, so he's either a pirate or stole from pirates! He then congratulates us on our success, tells us to keep the prism, and tomorrow we can learn either Find Familiar (225) or Sleep (117).

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

Thayne readily agrees and sets off immediately: his camp is "nearly at the center of Seagate Island" and we want to be there by nightfall.

[Given the average hiking pace of a fit human is -- nah, just messing with you.]

At dusk we reach section (5)...

I'll take the hint. We arrive at dusk. There is no mention of the month of the year, but in the best case it would be summer and the sun sets at 10pm. When we arrived near Freeton after a week's treck across Seagate Island we looked over the city from a ledge "in the morning". Let's assume a best case and we saw Freeton in the early morning in the distance, then arrived in the city proper before noon (so we're hungry and consider taking a meal), then that means that getting to the middle of the Central Plateau takes at most 10 hours of walk. Seagate is therefore both 80 miles and 25 miles wide. Most realistically, it means OUR WIS 3 Carr got lost a lot of time while crossing the 25 miles island and it took him a week to do a single days journey across the island.

It also put Team Dalris effort to locate him for 15 years to shame.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

Commentary:

Ah, the long-lived J.R.R. Tolkien style elves -- the bane of D&D world-building since its inception.You can't build up a mysterious past that no-one understands when there is a centuries old elf lady handy who was present when all the mysterious stuff went down.

I was going to comment on this anyway...

In the context of this book, there should be no mystery about what happened to the Empire of Bhukod because 500 years ago is less than middle aged for every elf subrace in the AD&D DMG.

To take a real-world analogy of a time "pretty long ago, but definitely within living memory of a middle-aged human": it would be similar to asking me, Joshua, what it was like growing up in the 1980s.

Actually, it's more akin to have the mystery of the disappearance of Tikandia akin to saying that "The State of East Germany is a matter of legend, it fell sometimes in the '80s, and nobody knows why. Its location and lore has been thoroughly lost, and leaders of the world have been searching for pieces of a tremendous artifact called the Berlin Wall, whose location and function is impossible to pinpoint.

Fantasy races who live much longer than a normal human lifespan ruin your worldbuilding and book plotting.

And it was totally predictable because JRR Tolkien did mention the elves bearing grudges or recalling very old event. Elrond recalls the last alliance, thousands of years ago.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

[If Thayne thinks that some 1st level magic-user spells are going to let us "hold our own" against Beldon, then Thayne is another WIS 3 goober.]

The first spell we can learn from Thayne is either Armor (101) or Light (130) -- and we're not rolling randomly; we do get to choose.

We already know what Light does from our other path, so we'll choose Armor.

Well, he is WIS 3, but he's at least a more competent teacher than the Academy's. Who in their sane mind selects random courses for students? Offering elective courses is great, but random topic assignments doesn't make a syllabus.

"Speak to me in my native language," we command. The words on the parchment swirl into the Common tongue.

And it's a map of some pirate tunnels beneath Freeton.

[Err… a map doesn't require translation. A map is a picture.]

Nitpick alert: a modern map is. A map in ancient times could be just an itinerary, a set of direcitons, like to go from X to Y, walk 2 days east to reach the village of Y, then one day north and stop at the W inn, before resuming east for one day. So presumably there could be some reading required. On the other hand, it's a pretty bad example to pick.

 

[Joshua Randall]

I'll take the hint. We arrive at dusk. [… snip math …] Seagate is therefore both 80 miles and 25 miles wide.

Truly, you have a dizzying intellect.

I’m teasing. I actually love this part of fandom: where we tease out information and turn it into something amazing. Now, where were you when I drew my childhood map! I could’ve used more accurate measurements.

Actually, it's more akin to have the mystery of the disappearance of Tikandia akin to saying that "The State of East Germany is a matter of legend, it fell sometimes in the '80s, and nobody knows why. Its location and lore has been thoroughly lost

You’re right: that is a much better example. And it truly illustrates the ridiculousness of the “mystery” of Ancient Bhukod.

Nitpick alert: a modern map is. A map in ancient times could be just an itinerary, a set of direcitons

HaHAH! Nitpicking my nitpicking is fair play.

 

[Joshua Randall]

Sleep is Sleep and while Thayne isn't a budding psycho killer like Arno, the spell-learnin' itself follows the same pattern (failure: we get put to sleep; success: we almost put Thayne to sleep, but he resists because of half-elf racial superiority).

But what happens when we try to learn Find Familiar?

---

225

"Remembering the very few things [we] learned about magic from [our] mother…."

[Woah woah woah. Hang on a minute. Didn’t Marla forbid us to learn magic? She did, but she must have meant we're only forbidden to learn magic from someone else. Of course, of course. She was going to teach us when we're old enough. Yeah, that must be it.]

… we ask Thayne if Find Familiar lets the magic-user summon "his or her magical assistant." ["Assistant" must sound better than "servant".]

Thayne nods and explains the spell -- pretty much the same explanation that Beldon gives. However, unlike Beldon, Thayne will let us cast the spell for realz!

We gather all the ingredients and we're about to start, but Thayne insists we pay the 100 GP cost of the spell with Landor's money pouch.

Not doled out 4 GP at a time. The pouch itself.

[First of all, the 100 GP is the cost of the rare incense and herbs, which we already gathered. There's not a separate pile of gold coins that you tip into the big brazier. Second of all, how is a money pouch worth infinity GP a fair trade for 100 GP worth of sharp, soft grass?]

We have until nightfall to mull Thayne's generous offer.

(205) if we change our mind, in which case Thayne teaches us Sleep instead; or
(172) to go forward with Find Familiar

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

This is an extremely jerk move to try to abuse a mathematically challenged 15 years old out of his Father's magical pouch of Infinite Wealth by offering an extremely unfair bargain, I say. Also, we need to cling to it for the many time creating infinite matter and energy will be forgotten by a book like your average flying carpet.