Friday, May 19, 2017

Coils of Hate - cutting the Gordian Knot

Hello all - this is about the free reboot of Coils of Hate that I have created with Mark Smith's permission. It contains all the best bits of the original with more added on. And it's freeeee!

In case you don't know, Coils of Hate was the 3rd Virtual Reality Adventure, written in 1993 by Mark Smith. It was set in the city of Godorno, a fantasy analogue of rennaisance Venice. You are a member of the Judain religion, a group persecuted by the overlord of the city. One day, you are forced to flee Godorno. However, eventually you return (if you don't it's game over) and find that Hate itself has become a physical form and is bent on destroying the city.

As Dave Morris writes, the book had a really strong atmosphere, but it also needed the flowcharts sorted out. They were a tangled knot which lacked logic at times. Of course, someone could have tried to unravel the knot to make it easier or, like the Gordian Knot, someone could have just cut it. That was my approach. Instead of making sense of what was given, I went through the books, took all the stuff I thought I should keep, added my own threads to link these pieces together and retied it to make the creation I have to offer you (for free!).

Ironically, I had to remove the bit where you get the codeword Gordian, however. As Per Jorner points out in his review, it is quite unrealistic to be carrying around a huge chain used to link together a bunch of prisoners.

I will be writing more about Coils of Hate and how I wrote the reboot in the future. For now, enjoy the new version (for FREEEEE!).

6 comments:

  1. Thank you for this Stuart!

    ---Gaetano Abbondanza----

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  2. What a lovely job!!!

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  3. Really appreciate this, thank you. I read this decades ago and it left a very strong impression, it was great to revisit it.

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