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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Joshua Randall" data-source="post: 9567952" data-attributes="member: 7737">Gamebooks with several possible stories are excellent, but extremely rare for the reasons you stated. I was fascinated to discover that Landor's fate is indeterminate at the beginning of the story and only becomes determined once you head down one of the paths.So early on when I ranted about whether Landor was murdered by Beldon / assassinated by Oram's goons / died under torture in Oram's dungeons / is simply missing / disappeared (literally, magically) -- at least two of those were possible within this gamebook! It does not seem that either of the Oram-related possibilities can become reified within Sceptre of Power. We'll have to see what future books hold. (And I'm not being coy this time: I truly don't remember.)Apparently yes. This fits the typical young adult story trope where the protagonist's ancestry makes him or her extra, super, duper special.This gives a new and somewhat icky gloss on Dalris's claim that she "studied magic" with Landor. Studied magic... and what else?Fair point. But we know from Dalris's boast the she lives on the same mounds as the ancient Bhukodians on the continent of Tikandia. So there are old burial grounds everywhere, and Landor could've put his tower on top of any of them.(I was surprised you didn't joke that the college was built in Freeton because pirates drove down property values, making the land more affordable -- so there. I did it for you.)Bhukod and, for some reason, Kandia are the ancient civilization / geographies.Tikandia is the new name. (Why stick a "Ti" prefix on the old name? No idea.)Here's an artist's rendition of the geographical relationship among these places. I assure you that any resemblance to the real world is entirely your imagination. I drew this freehand! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":P" title="Stick out tongue    :P"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":P" />[ATTACH=full]394484[/ATTACH]I still get pretty annoyed with these. It feels like the author is screwing with me, dragging things out passage after passage to get my hopes up that I've avoided death, only to slam death down upon me 3, 4, 5 passages later.Yes, the Tomb of Horrors style arbitrary unpredictable instant death is equally objectionable.I would like my deaths to be due to bad rolls or bad choices. But it has to be an informed bad choice: not flip a coin for which door you open or which free stew you eat.Some conversation with Thayne is unavoidable, but you can keep it as short as possible and speedrun to the sceptre as you described.Well, obviously. This isn't the Kingdom of Non-Sorcery trilogy! It'll be interesting to read "The Story So Far" in book 2, assuming I ever stop posting about book 1 here.</blockquote>

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