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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Joshua Randall" data-source="post: 9572252" data-attributes="member: 7737">135Estla 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 <a href="https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/38798/roleplaying-games/gm-dont-list-2-rolling-to-failure" target="_blank">what Justin Alexander calls “roll to failure”</a> , and it’s a bad GM-ing practice.]---196We 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.</blockquote>

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