Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Joshua Randall" data-source="post: 9631700" data-attributes="member: 7737">Correct on both counts. I keep “remembering” that HP matter in the Kingdom of Sorcery trilogy, and I keep being wrong.Right! The system in Kingdom of Sorcery (such as it is) is not robust enough to have combat as a viable and entertaining option.Contrast this with the Lone Wolf series: all those orange circles are combat encounters, and each one of those requires several dice rolls to resolve; the relative danger level of the combat depends upon a variety of factors including LW’s starting Combat Skill, the Kai abilities the player selected, the weapon LW wields (well, does it match up with Weaponskill, anyway), etc. Some of the combats have wrinkles around whether you fight groups of enemies one at a time or en mass.Even in Fighting Fantasy #1, the combat system is already more robust than anything in Kingdom of Sorcery. FF allows you to use your Luck attribute to influence the outcome of a “round”. You may be able to Escape (flee from) the combat, at the cost of taking a hit as you go — this rule is almost verbatim how AD&D works, so FF more accurately models AD&D combat than the AD&D gamebooks do!The Kingdom of Sorcery gamebooks could have done more to make combat more entertaining and HP more relevant. There are a few instances of multi-round combat, in which you’re not instantly dead after your first failed ability test. We could imagine such passages re-written in a flow as follows:<ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Enter combat. Choose whether to cast a spell or fight with your stupidly long staff.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Round 1. INT test for the spell or DEX test for the staff.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">On a failure, take some HP damage; if you’re still alive, go to 5.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">On a success, you win! Or if the foe is particularly tough, go to 5 anyway.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Round 2. Harder INT/DEX test as you try to finish off the foe.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">On a failure, you’re dead. (Sorry, but you had two chances and you failed them both.)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">On a success, take some HP damage (you are here because you failed or the foe is tough). If you’re still alive, you win.</li> </ol>This would be a workable system within these gamebooks’ constructs, but would require a LOT more numbered passages.It depends what we are used to. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> Carr’s journeys are closer to Choose Your Own Adventure than they are to Lone Wolf, so if you are used to LW then Kingdom of Sorcery would feel way less game-y. But if you came to Kingdom of Sorcery straight from CYOA, it might’ve been mind blowing.I am now curious how the number of skill checks in a Kingdom of Sorcery book compares on a percentage basis with the number of “skill checks” in a FF or LW book. I’d have to count up all the instances when you’re instructed to roll dice, and make some estimate of how long combat lasts in FF/LW….We determined he’s 6th level based on the spells he has prepared (maximum 3rd level). However, I may need to revisit Carr’s level based on some other clues I picked up while doing my grad school style close reading of this book…. (Cue mysterious music.)I enjoyed this gamebook a lot more before I read it so closely and critiqued it. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f923.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":ROFLMAO:" title="ROFL    :ROFLMAO:"  data-smilie="18"data-shortname=":ROFLMAO:" />But if I put myself back in a 13-year-old’s shoes, who is reading-slash-playing the book for fun, with sense of wonder dialed up to 10 and sarcastic observational humor dialed down to 0, then it’s more satisfying. The book does have an Empire Strikes Back feel to it (to continue our Star Wars comparisons!) in that the enemy are mostly successful while the heroes are mostly unsuccessful — which raises the stakes for the third and final book.<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Thayne dies.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Everyone who didn’t escape College Arcane dies.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Dalris almost gets seduced by a gross bird demon. (This scene still shocks and amazes me to this day!)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The Sceptre of Bhukod is shown to be impotent when needed most.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Arno has the latest and greatest magical artifact and Carr doesn’t.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Wealwood gets invaded and Perth is forced to flee.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The book ends with the Rebel Alliance (err, Team Good Guys) confined to a small island while Team Evil controls the mainland.</li> </ul>In fairness, so are all gamebooks.FF and LW books have fewer visible dead ends because they sprinkle in enough combat that those can also be (literally) dead ends. If you fight the Dragon and the Warlock back-to-back in Firetop Mountain without the necessary countermeasures, that is almost assuredly Your Journey Ends Here. If you fight the Gourgaz on the bridge in Flight from the Dark and you didn’t “luckily” roll a Lone Wolf with CS 19, Weaponskill - Sword, and Mindshield, then that is almost assuredly Your Journey Ends Here. You can also randomly die to strings of unlucky rolls even in easy combats. (Which makes combat always dangerous and to be avoided if possible, which again models the AD&D ethos!)But even leaving combat aside, FF and LW books have plenty of “guess the right choice” situations. FF is notorious for its “turn left or right” passages, where there is absolutely nothing to recommend one direction over the other. LW has a few of those, too: you can die mere steps from King Ulnar’s throne room in Flight from the Dark and you can quite literally make the wrong left-or-right choice and die mere steps from the climax of Chasm of Doom.I think it’s important to put gamebooks in their place and time. The world was very different in the 1980s. There was no internet. Videogames were in their infancy (and kinda stank). The culture of immediate gratification wasn’t as strong as it is now. You waited months or years for the next gamebook in the series to show up at the bookstore or in the pages of the Scholastic mail-order catalog at school. And what did you do in the meantime? You replayed the gamebooks you owned, over and over again, trying to find a legitimate (heh) path each time.(Or you read other books or played outside or played actual AD&D or whatever.)Yes, that is infuriating and worse than it needs to be. Some amount of content can be intentionally scattered across various paths to encourage and to reward replaying the gamebook. But usually that content would be interesting tidbits, not critical pieces of information to make sense of the plot.What’s infuriating about The Sorcerer’s Crown is that you are punished for making otherwise reasonable choices about where to seek knowledge. Carr himself says that he needs to talk to the other wizards at College Arcane, who are QUITE REASONABLY presented as the most knowledgeable about mystical matters such as demon lords and magic crowns. Yet it turns out there are no wizards at College Arcane (they’re all dead or fled) and that going there signs your own death warrant.Why is some plot critical information in Wendel’s hut in a book that Landor randomly left here?Why is Shanif the Marid “hidden” behind a sign that reads DO NOT APPROACH - DANGER - DEATH?One could imagine a re-write of this book that takes the background about the twin crowns as given and makes discovering more about their nature and/or about how to defeat Pazuzu as the call(s) to adventure. After all, Carr is a magic-user: he OUGHT to be a seeker of knowledge over and above a warrior. Then the book could feature a journey to College Arcane where everyone is NOT already dead, but you’d have to discern who is trustworthy vs. who is an agent of Arno. It could feature some legitimate reason to go into Yellow Marsh — maybe you learn about the location of the tomb from someone else? — to consult with Shanif. It could feature scenes in which you must carefully seek out uncorrupted paladins in Saven in order to consult their religious texts that shed light on how to confront demon lords.In other words: the fun info-dumps could be the rewards you claim for “correctly” playing the book rather than weird random asides, many on paths that inevitably lead to death!Or as you put it:100%, as the kids say.</blockquote>

Verification