Reviews using my gamebook player types system

In this post, I will review four gamebooks using my gamebook player system.  Three are very old and very well known and the fourth is Destiny Quest, which I reviewed in May.  Please comment if you have an improvement for the system or if you think that I have left something out.

The Warlock of Firetop Mountain

Explorer appeal


There are plenty of places to visit and you can choose to attack or not attack some of the denizens.  The maze after the river is a black mark against it as since there is very little that is actually interesting in the maze, it does not count as explorer appeal.

5/10

Puzzle solver appeal


A lot of the problems you come across cannot be solved and have to overcome with trial and error.  There is no clue as to which keys to the warlock's chest are the correct keys.  You have no idea which lever to the portcullis is correct or whether or not you should look at the paintings.

0/10

Champion appeal


Since you can only use gold pieces once, the amount of gold you get in this book is more of a measure of success than a useful item.  There are also items that boost your stats such as a magic sword (that adds to your initial skill but only if you leave your old sword behind) and an iron helm (that adds to your attack strength).  It is not too difficult to kill Zagor if you know the secret, but it is far more difficult to get the treasure.

6/10

Storyteller appeal

There's not much narrative, character development or character interaction.

2/10

Fabled Lands - The War Torn Kingdom

Explorer appeal

You get a huge place to travel around.  You can either side with or try to kill the King and it links in with five other books (and potentially eleven)

10/10

Puzzle solver appeal

There is an overall strategy that you can develop to do well at Fabled Lands, but there are no actual puzzles in the book.

7/10


Edit:  I originally put 5 but I think 5 was a little harsh for this so I've changed it to 7.

Champion appeal

You can measure your success by your level, your stats, the amount of money you have, your titles, the number of quests you have completed, the number of codewords you have and a hundred other things.  There's just no overall victory.

9/10

Storyteller appeal

There are a few stories such as the war between the king and his deposer, what happens to a thief you meet in Yellowport, a secret that a scorpian man shaman has but no overaching plot.  There are plenty of characters, but none are too deep.

7/10

Lone Wolf 1 - Flight from the Dark

Explorer appeal


Your aim is to cross the enemy countryside to get to your capital city and you can make many choices in which direction to take.  You meet a lot of interesting characters and explore quite a few places.  In addition, you are given the option of doing very unheroic things such as running away when innocents are in danger.

7/10

Puzzle solver appeal


I couldn't see any puzzles in the book.

0/10

Champion appeal


You cannot increase your stats and most of the items you get are mundane weapons, food or money.  You get to improve your character by picking a new skill in the next book.  Most of the champion appeal happens over the whole series.

6/10

Storyteller appeal

The Lone Wolf series' strength is its storytelling.  The world is immersive and detailed.  The prose is full of action and descriptive.  However, you are forced along a particular storyline.

10/10

Destiny Quest

Explorer appeal


You pick a location on a map and then go to it to see what happens.  This very open ended format gives you lots of choice.  Also, every combat you fight involves lots of decisions.  In some of the quests, you can choose to take sides which provides variety.  However, the consequences of such decisions are usually very similar.

8/10

Puzzle solver appeal


There are some numerical puzzles, but most of the puzzle solving involves working out the best way to defeat each opponent.

10/10

Champion appeal


The whole point of the game is getting the best character.  This has great appeal to champions.

9/10

Storyteller appeal


You are in a very immersing world with great characters.  However, the story has the same general path and ending despite your choices.

6/10

Destiny Quest review

A new gamebook was published and I rejoiced.  Destiny Quest hit the market and soon it was all over the web.  I first noticed it when Andrew Wright interviewed Michael J. Ward about its creation (more about that later). 


Two posts here and here showed just how big the book is.  And it is a behemoth of a book, split into three acts, each one jam packed with different encounters.  


In Destiny Quest, you play a character who has no memory of your origin and your identity.  All you have is a dark mark on your arm and a sword that has been bequeathed to you by a dying squire, ready to be trained by a wizard known as Avian Dale.  Somehow, you have survived a bloody battle and the squire tells you to take his identity and train under Avian yourself.

So there is a big mystery from the start, which is always a plus.

The story takes you on a path of discovery about who you are and this becomes intertwined with the Legion of Shadow which starts to invade the land at the end of act one.  Act two involves you trying to find out how to stop the legion and act three is the climax where you face the legion itself.  As well as the main story line, each quest is its own contained story which takes elements from all media from fairytales to cinema to Lovecraft.  A particular favourite of mine is the quest involving a castle full of vampires and the great description of the double sword wielding Witch Hunter Eldias 'Glad you could join the party' Falks and his apprentice who takes out a load of vampires by pouring holy water into a cauldron of soup and then tipping the soup all over the vampires.  Inspired.

Where you go and what you do is determined by selecting different quests on a map and turning to the relevant paragraphs.  There is a different map for each act.  Quests are colour coded by difficulty.  There are also legendary monster quests which involve fighting one powerful opponent.  Finally, each act  has a boss monster quest which is the quest that you need to complete to move onto the next quest.

Which brings us onto the quests themselves.  The main reward from each quest is to get better items and help your character grow, increasing their stats.

Your stats are speed which makes it easy for you to hit an opponent, brawn and magic to determine the damage you do (you choose which one you use) and armour reduces the damage you take.  Finally, you have health, which if it reaches zero, means that you have to go back to the map and choose another quest.

That's right, you don't have to start from the beginning if your health reaches zero.  From a rules perspective, this makes the gamebook much more enjoyable as you do not have to repeat the first act every time your health reaches zero.  And, as I discovered later in the book, this was also done for story reasons.

Combat is similar to how Fighting Fatasy combat is resolved but with extra bits.  You roll two dice and add the result to your speed.  You do the same for your opponent.  The winner adds the result of one die roll to their brawn or magic then subtracts their opponent's armour score from the value to determine how much damage they deal.  That's the basic outline.


All the quests involve battling various monsters.  There are some puzzles and non combat decisions that you need to make, but their consequences make little difference to the storyline.  Instead, most of the decisions are made during combat and how to develop your character.


After each combat, you are given a selection of items where you may take one or more.  At first, the items just increase your speed, brawn, magic or armour, but eventually, you get items which give you special abilites which allow you to manipulate dice rolls or change your stats for a round of combat.

This leads to the decision making.  When you have several abilities, every round in combat becomes a complex decision making exercise.  Should you use your charm ability to change a die roll which you add to speed or damage?  Should I use a health potion now or risk another round?  The number of options available to you combined with the fact that every quest provides a different opponent with a different strategy makes every combat a complex and engaging tactical exercise.  There were a few occasions where it was good if I lost an attack round.  For example, the combats where I had an ability which let me reflect damage back to my opponent.

After the combat, you usually have the option of taking one of two or three items (occasionally, you can take all of them) which also adds to the variability of the game.  As well as simply selecting an item, you also need to think about which direction you want to take your character in.  At the end of act one, you select a path from warrior, mage or rogue and each one requires high values in each stat.  I quickly decided that I needed to land hits well, so I concentrated on increasing my speed.  This made rogue the natural choice for me.

As well as deciding on a path, you can then get a career which gives you additional abilities and more options.  I chose the pickpocket career which allowed me to choose all the items left behind if I wanted to.

Destiny Quest has been compared to a MMORPG.  It is like an RPG computer game, but it is better than RPG games that I have played for two reasons:


1)  All of your combats are challenging yet fair and give you a meaningful reward.  In RPGs, I spent a lot of time hacking my way through an army of mooks that were no threat to me.  This definately does not happen in Destiny Quest.

2)  In Destiny Quest, you choose a location and you are there with the turn of a page.  I have spent too much time in RPGs running through empty corridors to return an object I just found which means that all of the time I spent on Destiny Quest was meaningful and entertaining.

In his interview with Andrew Wright, Michael said that he made a herculean effort and spent immense amounts of time playtesting this book and it certainly shows.  Every combat and every item is balanced.  There are no overwhelmingly powerful opponents as long as you make some sensible decisions about your items (focus on either magic or brawn - don't try to increase both).

The format kept me hooked.  I wanted to do just one more quest so I could find an item that increased my speed by one more point so that I could finally take on that quest where I was killed.  The entertaining and immersing stories made it feel more than just a stat boosting exercise (also mentioned here).

I thought Destiny Quest was great.  Michael has been very clever with the way he set out the quests as he can create some add ons for the book in the form of more quests or more shops.  He has already done this on his website.  


Destiny Quest will give you many entertaining and challenging hours and I look forward to the new quests and another book.  

Fabled Lands - War Torn Kingdom Review

Wouldn't this have been a better title screen for The Plains
of 'Owilng Darkness?  (Thankyou, I'm here all week).

After my first journey into Fabled Lands in which I took advantage of being a merchant and killing pirates to get lots of money and go up in rank faster, I was left feeling a little empty.  There were no challenges any more - all my ability scores were high for the books, I was of a very high rank (and therefore had a very high defence score making me extremely difficult to hit in combat) and I had several tens of thousands of shards.

Feeling left without a challenge, I decided to play Fabled Lands properly in order to enjoy it fully for what it is - a big world to explore and create your own narrative in - and to review it for this blog.  

It is a little known fact that
The War Torn Kingdom has
a yellow sub theme.

I'm only reviewing the War Torn Kingdom today, so, with that and my previous rampage in mind, I decided to make some rules for myself.

1)  I will not take advantage of any infinite loops in the book.

2)  I will stay in Sokara (i.e. book 1) as I am just reviewing book 1 and I do not want to take advantage of any of the things in the other books, even if there are some tasks that you cannot complete unless you get information or items from other books.  I want to see how far a starting character can go in just one book.




So, how did my journey go?

I decided to be a wayfarer.  While not having the broken levelling up ability a warrior has, I would still be a good combatant while still being able to look after myself in the wilds.  I was also quite a decent thief.  However, anything involving magic, the supernatural or charming people would not go well.

What's yellow and above
our heads? The sky. 

The War Torn Kingdom starts with me in a small boat, drifting through the sea on brink of death.  You have your map, an heirloom, which you have already memorised.  I'm on the brink of death, but eventually, I crash into the shore of Isle of Druids and meet a crazy old man who tells me to follow him where he will show me the gates of the world...

It's Ok, old man.  I'll take a look around here first.  


I checked out the village near the coast and went to the temple of Lacuna, the nature Goddess.  However, becoming an initiate costed 30 shards and I only had 16, so I entered the forests, thinking that I would be right at home there.

It required a scouting roll of 10 to not get lost.  With a scouting score of 6, all I needed to do was roll a 5 or more.

I got lost twice and lost 4 stamina points each time.  Not wanting to die prematurely, I went to the inn and spent 4 shards to restore them both times.

What's yellow, smelly and busy?
Yellowport.

Yes, barkeep, I got lost again.  Why don't you try it rather than swilling that bilge water you call ale?


I succeeded a third time, met a tree who liked me because I was a wayfarer.  I then found another city where a druid gave me a staff to deliver to another forest, because I was a wayfarer.  It was time to leave the isle of druids.  I left through the Yellowport arch an was greeted by the disgusting smell of the sulphur saturated stinking river.


Exploring the city at night, I was confronted by a thug who I easily killed and took 15 shards from.  That was the only time I did that.  

I then went to the tavern where I bought a round of drinks in order to glean some rumours.

Here you go, friend.  I hear this is a nice place to visit.

What's yellow and should be thrown
into the blessed srings?  A vial of
yellow dust.

I was told by a scholar that it certainly was not a nice place to visit and that he was annoyed because the scorpion people had stolen the Book of Seven Sages.  If I return it to him, he'll reward me.  With a quest to complete and an insatiable curiosity, I decided to leave Yellowport and explore the countryside.  I headed to the Forest of Larun in order to deliver the staff.  After passing a sanctity test of 9, I handed the staff to a druid who handed me another staff and told me to take it back to the Isle of Druids.  I returned to Yellowport, hitched a lift on a boat and gave the druid a staff.  In return, he let me train with the best druids and wayfarers.

I'm no longer an outcast.  I have reached the heady rank of commoner.  


I had many other adventures.  I got beaten into submission by a group of rat men.  I tracked some ghosts down only to find out that they were people.  I took the book from the Scorpion Men.  I fought some knights.  And much much more...


The verdict


From a gameplay view, The War Torn Kingdom is second to none.  In my other posts, I have already talked about the huge variety of things to do and the many rewards, but there are other subtle touches that makes the game balanced and playable.

What's yellow and doesn't
appear in this book?
The Yellow Dragon Knight.

First of all, the difficulties for the tasks are calculated well.  The first tasks that you will face will have a difficulty of 9 or 10.  Even if you have a 2 in the required characteristic, investing in a stat boosting potion and a blessing should make them doable.

The book is not too lethal either.  A lot of tasks are not combat based and you have the chance of escaping many combats.  For example, you can avoid combat with the thug if you make a charisma roll at a difficulty of 8.  Some combats are not lethal even if you lose them.  For example, if you lose a combat against rat men in the sewers, they just beat you and take all of your items and money rather than kill you.  The dragon knights in the dragon castle challenge you to non lethal combat for a wager of your weapons and armour.

This is all good as at the beginning of the book, you will not have enough resources or knowledge to buy things such as stat boosting equipment and potions, blessings and resurrection deals and so your life might be painfully short if failing all of your challenges had lethal consequences.

The game will also never grind to a halt if it all goes wrong.  If you need money for passage on a ship to complete a quest, you can sell most of your items.  If you sell an item and realise that you need it later, you can probably buy it from elsewhere.  If you get all of your possessions stolen, you can store a spare set of equipment in a house or cache so that you can start out again.  If you are terrible at combat, then you can find other ways of getting money other than combat.

What's yellow and wet?  The Lake of the Sea Dragon.

For example, after I had been beaten to within an inch of my life (my stamina was reduced to 1) and had all of my possessions stolen by the rat people, I left Yellowport and headed north where I came across the ghosts taking an offering.  Not wanting to fight them, I tracked them with my scouting skill, where I discovered that they were people.  The villagers gave me 80 shards.  I also managed to catch a smolder fish which I sold in the village by the lake of the Sea Dragon.  I used the money to buy an ordinary weapon and some leather armour.  I then went to the castle of the dragon knights where I beat two of them in combat in order
to get two suits of heavy plate mail, one of which I sold for
1440 shards.  I had recovered from that set back.

The Yellow Dragon Knight in
another role.

The game is hugely replayable.  Once you get used to the area, you could try it as another character.  However, as soon as you incorporate it with the other books then the potential for different adventures increases exponentially.  Playing this book along with the other books opens up new areas in all books.  For example, there is a door in the Forest of Larun in book 1 which can only be entered if you learn the password in book 3.


Since all of the books are made up of several small quests, there is little chance for characterisation or an overarching storyline, but as I have said before, thinking of your own story adds an extra dimension to the gameplay.

I would recommend that you buy all of the Fabled Lands books and enjoy being immersed in the world that Fabled Lands has to offer.  For more  information about Fabled Lands, go here.  To buy Fabled Lands from Amazon, go here.


BONUS


More profession rules


I was just thinking of how to add more dimension to gaining a profession.  Here is another way of doing it.

How about a rule where you can gain a profession every x levels if you have an ability score which allows it.

The abilities linked to the professions are:

Charisma - Troubadour
Combat - Warrior
Magic - Mage
Sanctity - Priest
Scouting - Wayfarer
Thievery - Rogue

For example, you can gain an extra profession at level 5 and then at level 9 but you can only gain a profession if the ability linked to that profession is 6 or higher without any items to boost it. This means that the player does not have to make a difficult decision between losing a level and gaining a profession, which some people may not like.  This idea is for all of the people who don't want to take a penalty.

You can change the rank number, the ability requirements and also limit the number of professions if you wish.

This also opens up the optional rule that if your unmodified ability score for your profession drops below 6, you are not allowed to count as having that profession until it has increased again.

Or for every ability score you have at 6 or more, you can count as having the related profession.  Or maybe, for your second profession, the score has to be 7, for your third, it has to be 8 etc.

The dimension for extra challenges and rewards are limitless.

Finally, just for flavour, here are some profession titles for characters with dual professions.

Priest/Mage:  Miracle worker                  
Priest/Rogue:  Inquisitor
Priest/Troubadour:  Preacher
Priest/Warrior:  Paladin
Priest/Wayfarer:  Druid.
Mage/Rogue:  Trickster
Mage/Troubadour:  Bard
Mage/Warrior:  Warlock
Mage/Wayfarer: Wiseman/Wisewoman
Rogue/Troubadour:  Spy
Rogue/Warrior:  Bandit
Rogue/Wayfarer:  Vagrant
Troubadour/Warrior:  Spreader of sagas.
Troubadour/Wayfarer:  Keeper of folklore.
Warrior/Wayfarer:  Ranger





My Fabled Lands review - the game system

Double 6 for Fabled Lands?

I'm posting this on Friday as I'll be away this weekend.

So there is a lot to explore in the Fabled Lands, but what is the gaming system like?  What characteristics are measured?  What rewards and penalties can you get?  Are the die rolls fair or is Fabled Lands made impossible by difficult tasks?

You begin the game as a lowly first rank character.  Your rank goes up when you complete quests and overcome great odds.  A higher rank character is harder to hit in combat and is better at succeeding at certain tasks that are especially difficult.

An example of an adventure sheet.

In addition to rank, you have six primary ability scores.  The descriptions are taken from the book:

Charisma - the knack of befriending people.
Combat - the skill of fighting.
Magic - the art of casting spells.
Sanctity - the gift of divine power and wisdom.
Scouting - the techniques of tracking and wilderness lore.
Thievery - the talent for stealth and lock picking.

You also have a stamina score, which determines how much damage you can take before you die.  You start this book with 9 stamina points.

The last statistic is your defence score which determines how hard it is for you to be hit in combat. 

Your defence = your combat score + your armour's defence score + your rank.

What would you like to do when 
you grow up?

You then have to choose your profession which determines your six primary ability scores.  You could choose to be a priest, a mage, a rogue, a troubador, a warrior and a wayfarer.  Each profession has a high score in one of the primary abilities with medium and low scores in other abilities. 

Your profession also determines how certain characters in the book respond to you and which quests you can embark on.

The citizens of a small nation used
actual shards as currency.  They are
also famous for bandaging their
hands a lot.  

Finally, you can carry up to 12 items of equipment.  You start with a weapon, some armour, a map of the lands you are about to explore and 16 shards (the currency, which are not actual shards, they're coins).

Tasks are given a difficulty and require a certain ability.  You roll two dice and add the result to your ability.  If the result is higher than the difficulty, then you have succeeded in the task.  If it is equal to or lower than the difficulty then you have failed in the task.

Combat is similar.  If the sum of your combat score and the result of two dice is higher than your opponent's defence, then you reduce your opponent's stamina by the result of that score minus your opponent's defence.  Your opponent then attacks you in the same way.

I didn't know that would happen.

Sometimes, however, you do not know what action you are going to take by rolling against this ability.  Combat, thievery and charisma are quite clear through their connotations but when you are prompted to use magic, you may not be told what effect you will produce.  This is not a huge thing as succeeding at a magic roll always produces a positive effect (it would be mean if you succeeded at a magic roll only to be told that it was the wrong effect when you didn't know what you were doing) but there is no spell system and so you can't really work out what your plan is unless you are told what you could do before hand.

He's got a high sanctity score.
Whatever that means.

Sanctity has the same problem - after a while, it becomes clear that sanctity can be used to destroy undead, banish spirits and lift curses amongst other things (including getting you barred from the a wizards' school for being too closed minded).

He's go a high scouting score
He should stay outdoors.

Scouting covers climbing, tracking and finding your way - it is a general outdoor skill.

It takes a few experiments to work out which ability will be useful in which situation, but eventually, you will find out which tasks require which ability.  Once you know this, it will be easier to pick quests that you will    succeed at.

From the point of view of someone who writes amateur gamebooks, a lack of clear rules on what your abilities can do, which situation requires them and how difficult the task should be means that it can either be easy or hard to write an amateur gamebook involving this system.  If you are the sort of person who worries about making a system tight and waterproof and knowing exactly what kind of spell a magic roll with a difficulty of 10 can cast, then it will be quite difficult.  I think the best way to approach an amateur Fabled Lands adventure is to work out what you wnat the character to do first and then apply the difficulties and the abilities to it.  Of course, the RPG could clear up some of those problems.

So the system isn't too complicated - it is mainly based on your ability scores so it shouldn't take too long to get started.  However, you will soon realise that the Fabled Lands series is like chess - easy to master the basics but this opens up an infinite variety of strategies and approaches.

Where does the horsey thing go again?

The difficulty is quite appropriate for you assumed level and the consequences of failure are rarely instant death, depending on your quest.  Quests with high stakes and high rewards (an increase in rank) are a lot more dangerous.  For example, slaying the provost marshal of Yellowport might get you sold into slavery and being stripped of your possessions if you get caught.

Most quests can be completed in a variety of ways which means you could complete a task with a roll against magic or thievery.  Or you could just fight your opponents.  This means that all professions havea good chance of completing several quests.  The rub is in finding out which quests are best suited to your abilities.

1 Item slot.
Scouting +1.

There is plenty of opportunity to increase your ability scores.  The most common way to do so is to buy items that raise a particular ability score.  For example, an amber wand increases your magic score by 1.  You can only use one item to increase each ability score.  However, these items take up an item slot in your inventory which leads to some interesting decisions.  Should I take the wand or leave the slot open in case I find something more powerful?

May give you magic +1.

If you are lucky, you can also find places and people who train you in certain statistics.  For example, there is a monastary in Cities of Gold and Glory where you can increase your magic score.  However, it will only increase if you can roll higher than your magic score on one die.  This means that the better you are, the less chance you have to learn something new and you will get to a point where you will have learnt all you can from your studies.

If you are really lucky and you complete certain quests, you can increase any ability score you like, no questions asked.  This is when you have to very careful in your decision.  Opportunities like this don't come along every day.

You can go from outcast
to duke.

If you do something fantastic, then you will be able to go up in rank.  The immediate benefit of this is that your stamina score increases by 1-6 but there are also critical tests of strength and character which are determined by a roll against your rank.  For example, if you slay the provost marshall in his own base, you will be pursued by a horde of his soldiers.  You need to roll on your rank or less on 1 die (modified if you are a rogue, wayfarer or troubador) to see if you can elude them.

Other rewards include being given a title which may garner favour with certain people, given a blessing which will allow you to reroll a failed ability roll for one ability (good if you want to complete a quest where there is a task which requires an ability you are weak in) or protects you from storm, being given a resurrection detail which allows you to continue with the same character if you are killed or being made an initate to a religion which is a type of title.
The main benefit to that is that blessings and resurrection deals are cheaper from temples of the same religion.

Would you store a
treasure horde in here?

If you are really after material rewards, you can collect a horde of valuable items and money, but beware!  You can only carry twelve items and there are very few places that are completely safe to store items.  You can't carry all your money around as you could get your purse stolen but merchant guilds charge you to withdraw money and every time you visit a house you have bought, it may have been burgled or it may have burnt down.

In addition to possesions you could carry around, you could also buy a house in most settlements and a boat in ports along with trade goods with the idea of selling them for a higher price.  Or you could invest some money with a merchants' guild in the hope that your investment pays off.

I've probably forgotten some way of getting rich, famous and powerful but that is because there are so many ways to achieve all of these things.   If the huge list above is not enough for you, then nothing will be. 

The Dragon knights aren't as
belligerent as this one.  Apart from
the black dragon knight.

You can also pick up codewords which are markers to show that you have been part of certain events.  For example, you get the codeword anvil if you defeat the dragon knights three times in a non lethal combat.  This is an indicator that the knights are sick of you being much better than them and that they will not accept any challenges from you any more.  Conveniently, all the codewords are written down on the adventure sheet at the back and you just have to tick the box for the relevent codeword.  All codewords in book 1 begin with an 'a'.  In book 2, they all begin with a 'b' and so on.   


Your choice of profession provides a very different playing experience in the books.  In the War Torn Kingdom, each profession has their own quest to complete that no other profession can, but it does not stop there.  Since your ability scores are different, then you will want to do the quests that can be completed with socres that you have high values in.  For example, you are not going to go to the Castle of the Dragon Knights and challenge them to combat if you are a mage unless you have found a way to increase your combat score.  This adds to the already huge replayability factor in the book.

Don't get trapped in a
gamebook Skinner box.

The scope of the book is so big that there are bugs and infinite loops which could be exploited.  For example, if your combat score was high enough, you could kill an infinite number of thugs in Yellowport in a sort of Groundhog Day style loop in order to get 15 shards each time but it is not really in the spirit of the book to take advantage of these.  If anything, it distracts you from the more interesting challenges in the book.  And is it really fun to do the same thing over and over again?

Harry started Fabled Lands in
1984 and has killed over a
million thugs for 15 shards a
kill.  He left them in his house.
It has just been burgled.

To be honest, if you want to exploit an infinite loop in a gamebook, it would be more expedient to just write whatever values you want in your
adventure sheet.  It's not a computer game, so you can manipulate it and you won't be cheating anyone else (this won't apply if you are playing a multiplayer gamebook).  So if you're going to cheat, do it smartly.

Sure, he's invincible and he can kill
you with a thought but is he
actually having fun?

Also, if you change your stats or get an infinite amount of money and buy all of the best equipment then the book will just become too easy and it will lose its thrill.

You could also adjust your situation to make the gamebook more challenging.  You could start with no possessions or not have a profession.  You could reduce your stats by a certain value or start book 2 as a level 1 character.

The best way to play this book is to explore, explore, explore.  Sure, you're going to come across situations that you are ill equipped or prepared for but the best way to play Fabled Lands is to create a narrative for yourself, not to 'win' as there is no big end to the book.  Instead of trying to grab victory, you should just sit back and enjoy the experience.  

I should know because I have done both as my next two posts will illustrate.

What has Fabled Lands taught me about game systems?

Give heroes many tools to complete their tasks.  

Unlucky?  That's good.

There is nothing more frustrating in a gamebook to have a tiny chance of winning despite everything you do.  This is usually done by having to succeed at lots of difficult rolls or combats.  In some gamebooks, you are required to fail certain rolls in order to win.                                                      

Fabled Lands goes out of its way to help you succeed.  Your character will not be good at everything and there are so many tasks that you will almost certainly come across something that requires an ability that isn't your speciality.

However, the book provides ways in which you can succeed.  First of all, most quests give you many ways to complete their tasks, each one requiring a roll against a different ability, or if you are lucky it may just require an item, a codeword or some money.  So you are able to complete at least a few tasks, get more rewards and become better at succeeding at the harder tasks.  

Secondly, if you do come across a task which requires an ability that you are not very good at, there are many ways to make your roll easier.  There are many ways to increase your abilities.  You can increase them permanently through rewards for tasks or by buying ability boosting items or you could increase them temporarily through potions.  You can also obtain blessings which allow you to reroll a failed ability roll.  

There are plenty of religions to join.

In case you are worried that it all goes badly and you do end up on the wrong end of a spear, then you are able to become initiated to a temple and make resurrection arrangements at a temple, at a lower cost if you are an initate.  You will wake up in your temple.  You would have lost all of your gear, but you are alive again.  You are also able to store spare equipment in a cache or house, so you can still pick up all the basics after you have died and continue your adventure.          

It is important in gamebooks to make tasks challenging but if the player fails them, then the penalties should not be too crushing so that the player can recover.  Then they should be given means to succeed through their decisions and strategy and if it goes wrong, at least to reduce the effects of their penalties.  There is nothing more frustrating than dying horribly for failing a single roll or by making a single decision where you think that the consequences are going to be good.

Make the system work for the gamebook, not the gamebook for the system

I have looked at dozens of RPG sourcebooks and I can't begin to imagine how difficult it must be to have such a wide variety in the skills and abilities of characters and be able to come up with a consistent system which allows the DM to be able to look up an appropriate skill or ability to roll against with the correct difficulty to almost every eventuality (which is good because player characters probably try to attempt all kinds of crazy stuff).  It must take ages to come up with a consistent system.

Did Dave Morris and Jamie Thomson come up with a
table like this?  (From SRD DnD)

I am a little unsure as to whether in Fabled Lands, the difficulties assigned to each task are consistent.  That is, I am unsure if the authors made a big list of tasks and assigned a difficulty to each one with the relevant ability that should be rolled against.  They must have decided on which ability covers which task but I think it would have been unnecessary to make a list of difficulties.   Rather, I think they
decided on the difficulty of a task based on which book it was in.    

He's as confused as anyone about 
what his rank actually is. 

Book 1 is for a rank 1 character, book 2 is for a rank 2 character etc.  The difficulties and combats seem appropriate for each book.  For example, the Black Dragon Knight, clad in full plate armour (+6 defence) and made out to be quite a formidable opponent in book 1 1 has a combat score of 5, a defence score of 9 and stamina score of 11.  However, a drunken mutineer in book 3 has a combat of 6 a defence of 9 and a stamina of 9.  So a drunk mutineer can take a knight in plate mail apparently.



Looking for a ghoul in a huge city requires a scouting roll against a difficulty of 9 in book 1 but trying to follow three mutineers through a city in book 3 requires a scouting roll against a difficulty of 14.  

In a gamebook I think it is better that the tasks are do able rather than consistent with some system.  After all, if the tasks were all consistent in their difficulty, then book 1 may be full of tasks that are impossible and it will just be frustrating for the reader.

Questions gamebook authors do not have to consider:
What happens if I cast magic missile on this door?
What happens if I cast magic missile on my dinner?
What happens if I cast magic missile on this cat?*

Also, unlike tabletop RPGS where players tell a human DM what they want to do and the DM has to come up with the consequences of pretty much any idea for an action, gamebooks offer a limited range of options where other alternatives are not considered.  It is because of this reason that coming up with a comprehensive and consistent game system for a gamebook is not necessary. Is it consistent that a knight, Sir Leo in book 4 has a defence of 20 when a dragon in book 2 has a defence of 11?  No.  Is it important because heroes in book 2 will have a lower combat score than heroes in book 4?  Absolutely.
The inconsistencies may annoy hardcore world builders but I am grateful that all the difficulties are balanced by book.

They're both invulnerable.  Sit back.
It's going to be a long fight.

This is now leading into what makes a good system for a gamebook, which needs a whole new post of its own.  On quick reflection, I believe that you need a system to be quick and simple or it will direct attention away from the story and make the reader focus on die rolling and book keeping.  When I mean quick, I mean that most tasks can be determined with a quick roll of a die.  When I say simple, I mean that there are few things to memorise.

Fabled Lands meets this criteria as the rules are 7 pages long.  The authors deal with the problems of determining difficulty of tasks so that you don't have to.  The rules are definitely simple.  Most of the time, the system is also quick as when you roll dice, you do so once for a result.  However, some combats can drag on if both you and your opponent have high defence scores compared to your combat scores as this means that you will be unable to hit each other.  There is no way to overcome this stalemate.  This topic is discussed here.  So Fabled Lands falls a bit in this respect.

Fabled Lands offers all of these goals
to your player.   

A good system can also provide options to the player.  Fabled Lands definitely provides options.  You can accomplish most tasks with more than one ability.  you can buy many many items and you have many choices of career and which abilities you can focus on improving.  There is also an encumbrance limit which forces you to make decisions.

A good system would also be able to allow the player to progress.  Fabled Lands does this.  My first post in the series lists the many rewards that you can obtain.

Overall, the Fabled Lands system is excellent.  There are tiny flaws (infinite loops but with tiny rewards, difficulty based on book rather than how hard the task should be and the high defence problem) but they will not take away from the enjoyment of the six (and hopefully twelve) huge interlinked gamebook series.  It has  taught me a lot about what a good gamebook system should be like.

Go to the Fabled Lands Blog in order to order the Fabled Lands books in many different media and to read the latest news on the creations of Dave Morris and Jamie Thomson.

*No cats were harmed in the writing of this blog post.

It's OK, Midori.  No one would harm a cute cat like you.