@C-Star:

MHO regarding politicians, judging by the way the system of democracy works and the general demographics of the world:

Politicians need to optimise the number of votes they obtain in order to be successful. To do so, a pretty face plus a lot of apparent passion is much more significant than competent know-how of what to do in a given situation. I'm guessing that most politicians just make promises which sound good, and they themselves may mean well, but the promises themselves will simply be disasters if actually carried out. So once they assume office, these promises have to be corrected by more technical people. In other words, the politician is merely a cover for the decisions made on a more fundamental level, the same way a celebrity endorsing an advertised product is never responsible for producing the product itself.

C-Star
Sun Jan 27 20:38:47 2013
General Chat

Then... who actually makes the decisions?

Aiken
Mon Jan 28 10:08:12 2013
General Chat

<bcyy>/ <C-Star> You are describing the basic premise of "Yes Minister" a classic English 80s sitcom. It's answer is "the civil service".

I believe the formal term for this theory is "public choice economics".

bcyy
Thu Jan 31 01:30:53 2013
General Chat

I'd have said "experts in respective fields", but Aiken's answer is more pragmatic.

IMHO the sitcom got it pretty right. It is hard to imagine a person to be an expert at practically every aspect regarding how to run a country. In fact, it usually takes a lifetime of toil to master any *one* aspect of how a country works. I just don't believe that some genius would be able to master it all *and* have enough energy left to campaign for office.

I've had people tell me more than once how tedious it is to have a government observer on their team - they have a lot of power, but they don't understand *anything*. You have to explain how to add one plus one every step of the way in words that fit their vocabulary (which isn't a lot to work on, judging by what I've been told).

SCC Sun Feb 3 09:45:37 2013 General Chat	No Golem's Gauntlet yet? Regards
	Yes, it's there now, sorry about the delay.

ffproject
Mon Feb 4 22:13:48 2013
News

Two more gamebooks added to the Downloads page - later than I intended, but they are here now.

The Ravages Of Fate by Ulysses Ai. Note that this is the unedited version (the Windhammer entry was reduced in size to comply with the competition rules).

Golem Gauntlet by Simon Christopher Chapman.

Princess Ivy XIII Tue Feb 5 11:55:33 2013 General Chat	Loved those two in the Windhammer competition. Would be great if they could come as online games too.
	This is quite possible, though as usual I'm not really thinking beyond the next one (which will almost certainly be Return To G15-275).

Tammy
Tue Feb 5 16:32:40 2013
General Chat

"For a brief moment there is a feeling of floating, and being disembodied, then nothing. Your adventure is over."

Brilliant.

Fiver the Great
Fri Feb 8 05:45:35 2013
General Chat

Hey guys.

I've been a lurker in this place for a while now. Quietly I've managed to make my way through several of the game books posted, and would like to give kudos to some of the amazing work I've read.

Wrong way Go Back is amazing series, and The Diamond key drew me into the site.
Outsider! is brutally awesome.
Devil's Flight and Soul Tracker are intense.
Hunger of the Wolf was hardcore.

I figured some positive encouragement was in order after having enjoyed so many adventures. Also, however, I was wondering if anyone knew of a gamebook revolving around super heroes? I know that there was one published and later republished named Appointment with FEAR, but being a blind player restricts my access to print gamebooks.

pi4t
Tue Feb 12 13:21:03 2013
Devil's Flight

Section 161 of Devil's Flight seems to have a broken Fear point, which isn't added to the player's stats.

SCC
Thu Feb 14 06:55:38 2013
General Chat

Tammy, I'm glad you liked Golem's Gauntlet. It was a lot of fun to write and I felt it harkened back to the old Sorcery! series by Steve Jackson. Sadly, because there were so many entries in the Windhammer competition this year I suspect it wasn't played by many people due to its placement in the list. Not to worry - there's always next year!

pi4t Thu Feb 14 14:43:02 2013 Above The Waves	And another broken link, I'm afraid: Above the Waves section 13 doesn't link you anywhere, making it impossible to proceed. From the text, this doesn't seem intentional.
	And many months later, I've finally fixed it. Thanks for bringing to my attention, sorry to you and anyone else inconvenienced.

C-Star
Fri Feb 15 12:36:10 2013
Hellfire

Speaking of pages that link nowhere...

SPOILER

END SPOILER

Phil Sadler
Fri Feb 15 19:40:00 2013
Hellfire

There's no way out of the time loop.

C-Star
Sat Feb 16 18:52:04 2013
Hellfire

Oh, so it's just a strange death. Thanks, I always wondered about that time loop after I beat the book.

Robert Douglas
Tue Feb 19 18:28:00 2013
General Chat

The agoraphobia (did I spell that right?) part of Jack Frost Finnegan is actually based on me - shame the professional covert agent part isn't! But I wouldn't mind going off to live, far from civilization. Jack's home was really based on a personal fantasy of mine. Although a log cabin would be good enough for me. Somewhere to escape from all the nonsense that's happening....

Writing's going well with second instalment of Sean Calibre. Rough draft has reached about halfway (still have to type some of it out, though) and have it loosely planned out to the conclusion.

Just been playing Left 4 Dead - and couldn't help but be reminded about 'Blood of the Zombies'. It all stems from Night of the Living Dead (Dawn, Day, etc) movie franchise. It's funny how the content of cert 18 (higher in other countries) films influenced certain gamebooks for age ten upwards!

I spotted one film trailer on Youtube, but it's more a comedy: of how a zombie teenager falls in love with a survivor! As a result, he starts to become more human, and then his friends are 'infected' with the love virus...

ZOMBIE-FEST!

pi4t
Mon Feb 25 12:13:43 2013
The Golden Crate

Argh. I hate to ask for help, but I can't figure our The Golden Crate.

SPOILER

END SPOILER

Also, I think there may be either an error, or an example of Ulysses Ai's sense of humour, in the training you can recieve. The - advanced - energy whip course gives only a +1 attack strength bonus when using an energy whip, which is less than the cheaper basic defence course (+1 initial-and-current skill at all times, including non battle tests). Also, there's a minor exploit in Planet of the Spiders in that it's quite possible to

SPOILER

END SPOILER

pi4t
Mon Feb 25 12:29:36 2013
The Golden Crate

Correction: I feel stupid now. Reading back several pages of the guestbook, I see that I had in fact been told the solution, but just scanned that section rather than reading it properly, so hadn't noticed!

pi4t
Thu Feb 28 14:28:17 2013
Contractual Obligation

I've also discovered a minor bug which seems to be in the writing of Contractual Obligation. If you

SPOILER

END SPOILER

That's more addressed to Ulysses Ai than the admin of the site, obviously.

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