tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-417337570309175061.post8851035927852287865..comments2024-03-07T13:47:29.810+00:00Comments on Lloyd of Gamebooks: Gamebooks that are dangerous vs gamebooks that feel dangerousStuart Lloydhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15100216520313336932noreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-417337570309175061.post-48098867981725772812016-08-25T01:04:50.665+01:002016-08-25T01:04:50.665+01:00I am currently playing that Grailquest book. Bit o...I am currently playing that Grailquest book. Bit of a spolier, but all for the good, i s'pose. Hope Merlin doesn't find out :P<br /><br />But speaking seriously, that's frustrating. It would have been so easy to give the player a sporting chance, even based on a dice roll. Hell, even making the cotteage look decrepit on the map would have done. And it wouldn't bother me so much if the restart dynamic was like the one in the last book: you start anew, new life points, alright, but you had your given equipment and that was it. Now you have this shopping thing (which i didn't like much in the first place tbh) and you just have to hope to score as much for your money and thus being able to purchase roughly the same stuff.<br />P.S. Regarding the first Grailquest book, of course, it would have bothered me considerably to lose the luckstone. But honestly, the luckstone makes dying achievable only if you are extremely unlucky, so not much harm done there.<br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-417337570309175061.post-92137034766170042212013-03-09T01:14:37.254+00:002013-03-09T01:14:37.254+00:00Gamebooks thar are not dangerous and don't fee...Gamebooks thar are not dangerous and don't feel dangerous are simply gameBOOKS.<br />Nithing bad about them: they are simply a different kind of entertainment where youdon't need to threaten death to generate a good experience in the reader.<br />They are not my type, but...Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-417337570309175061.post-15186252443813297902013-01-21T13:26:42.007+00:002013-01-21T13:26:42.007+00:00Fantastic post Stuart and very interesting to read...Fantastic post Stuart and very interesting to read the comments (especially Dave's comments that are always fascinating).<br /><br />In regards of Grailquest it's an interesting to ponder on your comments, and I can certainly see your points, however I've personally got a different take on it: To me, Grailquest is about seeing how little I can die. I know it's going to have ridiculous deaths, but those deaths are "part of the journey" (providing, and this is an important point, each restart is easy to manage and quickly gets me back to where I was). When playing through them I'd try to beat my "fewest deaths score" (or the "Deathometer" if you will that came in later). This is a similar scenario to Deathtrap Dungeon to me I guess: I know I'm going to die lots... Fabled Lands is a different experience altogether: each character tends to exist once for example and do different things. I think they're both good in their different ways / styles of play, but it certainly helps to have the right expectation of what sort of experience you're getting :)Brewinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12026886409452507224noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-417337570309175061.post-65086099010368446272013-01-20T21:43:22.280+00:002013-01-20T21:43:22.280+00:00It looks like all four scenarios Lloyd mentioned h...It looks like all four scenarios Lloyd mentioned have their drawbacks. I've been kicking around a few ideas. One is to think of a gamebook as a movie, like Gladiator. The hero can only die at the near-end. Otherwise, the player wouldn't get a full story. Imagine if Russell Crowe died in one of the first few battles; the audience wouldn't get a feature length film.<br /><br />A problem there is the Special Olympics ("let me win") setup when players know they're safe until the end. However, this can be helped by telling them ahead of time that story is priority, and the're shooting for a good ending. Just jam all the death paragraphs into the third act. Health is rigged so it can never reach zero, but near the end, too little health means the fatigued hero lowers his/her guard in a major end battle leading to a bad ending--like what happens to Russell Crowe.<br /><br />Another problem is the frustration of starting over after so much work. But having more paths for replayability helps there, and now the player knows how much health is needed for the end check.<br /><br />Another approach: death is everywhere, but upon dying, you make a new character who starts where the previous one died. This hero follows the "path of destruction", blood trail, opened doors, etc, encountering nothing along the way (b/c the previous hero cleared it). The player loses items though, b/c they've been looted off the first hero. Obviously, the environment must be well contrived for this to work. Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08066491674143564553noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-417337570309175061.post-20015376282130130732013-01-20T18:42:31.314+00:002013-01-20T18:42:31.314+00:00Save isn't going to be easy in the format we&#...Save isn't going to be easy in the format we're using (EPUB3) which just remembers the point you've currently got to. You can reset the whole book but there are no save points as such. I'm not doing that to stop cheating, it's just a limitation of the system - honest :-)<br /><br />The tweak I was considering wouldn't be too hard to implement. I'd just add a line at all points where you lose 1 hit to say that only happens if [hits]>1. I have to go through all the books and put the logic code in anyway. But I take your point that this feature could rob players of that nail-biting sense of being on their last legs. Hmm...Dave Morrishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14468228790874490693noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-417337570309175061.post-28351386399156778322013-01-20T17:52:08.712+00:002013-01-20T17:52:08.712+00:00Dave is very good at laying out the 'logic'...Dave is very good at laying out the 'logic' of a gamebook for you to follow and in this case if you do die, it is probably you're own stupid fault for not listening to advice, which makes the gamebook very fair. Stuart Lloydhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15100216520313336932noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-417337570309175061.post-9739775960502527412013-01-20T17:48:57.988+00:002013-01-20T17:48:57.988+00:00In paper gamebooks, cheating was like a retroactiv...In paper gamebooks, cheating was like a retroactive save where you went back to a point if you didn't like what you read. I suppose the best way to simulate that is to allow the player to go back to any previously read entry they like. Or you could warn people to save at certain points.<br /><br />The previously lost hit points thing might get complicated from a flavour and gameplay point. I suppose there will be minimum amount of damage that you set but then there is a flavour case of whether someone can die from a minor wound when on their last legs etc. and it will involve you going through all of your books and listing all the minor damage paragraphs. Personally, I accept that gamebook systems have to be highly abstract and so I would rather just know when to save rather than have the gamebook give me mercy. I think it would rob the gamebook of a sense of tension because when you are on your last hit point, all decisions could be deadly so you have to think very carefully. Stuart Lloydhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15100216520313336932noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-417337570309175061.post-37182527473639618022013-01-20T13:01:03.935+00:002013-01-20T13:01:03.935+00:00This was a very timely post as I am currently revi...This was a very timely post as I am currently revising some of my old gamebooks as ebooks, and the question of giving the player adequate warning of danger is even more important when there's no opportunity to cheat.<br /><br />The PC game Ecstatica was particularly good at that Rincewind effect you mention. I remember being butted off a cliff by a minotaur and being about to quit and load a save game when I saw that, far from being dead, I was now lying on a ledge that I hadn't noticed a little way down the cliff. So the designer used events like that (which certainly made the heart leap) to provide clues when you were stuck.<br /><br />Another thing I would say is that instant death without warning is bad, but so is the death of a thousand cuts where your hit points get worn away. My thinking about those small hit point penalties is that they are there to let you know you've done something dumb. Which is okay as far as giving you a sense of the adventure being harder - "Must be more careful, I'm down to 4 hits" kind of thing. But as the author of the gamebook, you don't want your player to die of attrition, because that just means he'll make one tiny mistake, lose his last hit point, and suddenly the adventure ends in a very undramatic way! So I'm thinking about changing it in the e-gamebooks so that you never lose your last hit point just for a minor mistake. But will that rob the adventure of a sense of tension? What does everybody think?Dave Morrishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14468228790874490693noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-417337570309175061.post-6410518710536698212013-01-20T10:44:38.877+00:002013-01-20T10:44:38.877+00:00Half the fun in Fabled Lands is calculating the ri...Half the fun in Fabled Lands is calculating the risks, preparing yourself for situations that are just about survivable, and just about profitable enough to be worth the risk. Yeah, you can wandering into deadly wildlands... but it's probably worth doing a little back and forth trading between point A and point B first, so that you can afford to invest in a resurrection deal, and a Luck blessing, and maybe a magic wand to shore up that poor Magic score...<br /><br />True, that's a little easier when you know the books well. But the books' introduction does specifically say 'cities are safer than wilderness areas... if you're not very strong, stick to the well-travelled areas'. Well, I'm paraphrasing, but it more or less says that. <br /><br />Speaking of Dave Morris, actually, I suddenly remember a similar instruction in the first of his Knightmare gamebooks, where the book's intro said something like 'Never go left, because left is the direction of EVIL... If you have no other clues to guide you, always go right...'<br /><br />I played Blood of the Zombies recently - app, not book - and that was frustratingly hard. As there's no longer a 'Skill' score in the book, my thinking goes, 'Okay, Stamina loss will be inevitable in combat... so the safest route is surely to avoid combat whenever possible' But no! Prepare yourself for a BIT OF A SPOILER...<br /><br />...<br /><br /><br />... but you have to kill every single zombie in the castle if you want to win! So, presumably, you have to slog through every single stamina-sapping combat in the book. Kind of makes that scuffle with Razaak the Undying (in Crypt of the Sorcerer) suddenly look rather balanced and even-handed.<br />Paul Grestyhttp://pwgresty.wordpress.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-417337570309175061.post-86902157320984445062013-01-20T08:39:57.307+00:002013-01-20T08:39:57.307+00:00I guess what I'm trying to say is that if a ga...I guess what I'm trying to say is that if a gamebook is going to be very dangerous with lots of instant deaths then unless that sense of danger is conveyed in the text, it will be frustrating for the player.Stuart Lloydhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15100216520313336932noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-417337570309175061.post-84015906567654946832013-01-20T08:38:53.367+00:002013-01-20T08:38:53.367+00:00That's a good point. I guess I meant to talk ...That's a good point. I guess I meant to talk more about situations within gamebooks and how they feel. For example, looking at a map of a village in Grailquest does not convey much of a sense of danger so it might be a surprise to have a village collapse on your head. However, opening any door in Deathrapo Dungeon might spell your doom, so that always feels dangerous. However, some situations such as the alchemist's shop in Talisman of Death might not feel dangerous but it can result in you losing stamina unexpectedly.Stuart Lloydhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15100216520313336932noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-417337570309175061.post-13660026915295160692013-01-20T01:31:39.252+00:002013-01-20T01:31:39.252+00:00Tbh I never even thought authors wrote gamebooks i...Tbh I never even thought authors wrote gamebooks in a style that WASN'T dangerous while feeling dangerous. To me it kind of goes without saying. Deathtrap Dungeon was one of the first proper gamebooks I read and that's probably why I love it so much. You've got to make the players feel on edge and make careful decisions but of course allow them to succeed from time to time so it's rewarding and not too much of a trial-and-error issue.Jennyhttp://www.youtube.com/user/mountainpeak11noreply@blogger.com