Wednesday, May 2, 2012

My wishlist for the AFF2 Crown of the Kings Campaign

2nd edition Advanced Fighting Fantasy really cleaned up all of the problems that the 1st edition had which meant that the only problem I had with it was that I wanted more.  Fighting Fantazine has produced an AFF2 adventures in its previous two issues (one of which is by yours truly) and Andrew Wright  is producing another one (as he said in his interview).

There is also a new campaign out from Arion games - none other than The Crown of the Kings , available for £16.99.

If there was a solo Fighting Fantasy Adventure that should become an RPG scenario Crown of the Kings should be it - from the trekking across the hostile lands of The Old World to exploring the dangerous streets of Khare or the Mental Mampang Citadel, few gamebooks offer the scope of the Crown of the Kings.

It also makes more sense from a flavour point of view - would the king really send a lone hero with virtually no equipment (and you can tell the king is tight when you require sand and pebbles to cast some spells and he can't even spare any of them) on a dangerous mission where the fate of the Old World is at stake?  Sure he can't send an army but he could send a small group and equip them properly.

Here is a list of other things that I hope the campaign will include:

The Archmage is a badass


The final battle in the Crown of the Kings is a little anticlimatic.  Sure, the Netherworld Demon can kill you easily at full power, but before that, it's a skill 7, stamina 7 wimp that can be killed with a HOT or ZAP spell.  I want an awesome final battle.

More streamlined weapon and armour rules


If you go through all four books, you might end up with a confusing array of combat modifiers thanks to miscellaneous weapons and armour that you have picked up.  This will probably be solved because of the new system.

More chance to explore


Another good thing about the Crown of the Kings being an RPG is that the players won't be forced along a particular path if they don't want to be.

A chance to use ALL the sorcery spells


The Sorcery! series was very ambitious with its brilliant idea 48 coded spells and it pulled it off, for the most part.  One frustrating thing was that if you wanted to cast a spell, you only had five options, one of which was probably not a real spell anyway.  Most of the time, I just wanted to cast ZAP to take someone out, but I couldn't.

A chance to explore the lethal parts

This is more relevant in the Crown of the Kings where Mampang is a deadly place.  Hopefully, the players can come up with solutions to get around the deadly traps and guards.

To be honest, there is very little that needs to be added to the Crown of the Kings to make it better and I eagerly await the arrival of the book where I will review it.  You can buy it yourself from Cubicle 7 for £16.99.  So do so now :).

3 comments:

  1. This is where i get nervous.....

    I tried to approach it so that whatever the party contains, they can get through, and that there are options to go around many problems.

    The Archmage is much tougher, that i can assure you!

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  2. Thanks for the reply, Graham! I'm glad to hear that the Archmage is tougher. You have a good sense of what needs to be improved when it came to converting AFF to AFF2 so I'm sure you've done the same for Sorcery!

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  3. I'm really looking forward to this. I only hope that Graham has avoided the mistakes made in the d20 conversions. Coming to the wonderfully and appropriately named (by Steve Jackson) Cantopani, and meeting 'Ryan of Brice' and 'Farrel the overseer' was awful - why couldn't the authors of the d20 versions have put a bit of effort into making the names appropriate (and I don't mean like 'Mayne Road' in Khare!).

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