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Mage Tue Oct 19 03:52:56 2021 Tomb Of The Ancients 
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Starting with an easy one for the rest my unfamiliar playthroughs... |
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Mage Tue Oct 19 07:05:38 2021 New Day Rising
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A mildly amusing diversion. |
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Mage Wed Oct 20 00:46:44 2021 Above The Waves
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Never realized there was a book using Virtual Reality series rules here. Hope there's more of these. |
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Mage Wed Oct 20 06:04:38 2021 Escape Neuburg Keep
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Hey, the title is so misleading!
SPOILER
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Yoz Ben Wed Oct 20 18:51:36 2021 Contractual Obligation |
I'm late to the party, but what a great site! I thoroughly enjoy the WWGB series so far, incredibly well written! I believe the obvious comparison to the Hitchhiker Series has been made before, but I have to repeat it, meaning it a very big compliment. Great parody of SciFi, Fantasy, and FF tropes, both in the stories' contents and through the mechanics! I also love how later entries in the series poke fun at stuff that happened earlier. I have to say I was disappointed though when at the end of Contractual Obligation
SPOILER
I for one would have enjoyed to see the genre's sexism subverted further (take, for example, the hypersexualization of any and all female characters, or "the princess" as a trophy but not a person, or the treemaidens' fear of spiders, or ...), not just by overdoing the trope, but also destabilizing it with other means. I mean, honestly, I think I have yet to find a gamebook that offers a hero (YOU!) that isn't silently assumed to be male and heterosexual (and probably white, which usually doesn't come up though. I guess because in those settings Black people are simply not even thought to exist). Playing with such implicit assumptions baked into genre conventions should be actually a rich field for comedy in such an approach as WWGB. There's of course a humourous approach to this in the series when it comes up, but also much reinforcing tired tropes (yeah sure, overdoing tropes is part of the fun - but subverting them is too)... I'm interested and looking forward to how that's handled in the following entries! I've read mention of a planned story where the hero is an Orc, turning some of the "common wisdom" about orcs on its head? Has that happened? Heaven't found it yet, looking forward to that one, too, if it exists. The Golden Crate was my favourite so far. So good! Lots of different locations, lots to discover on paths that may lead somewhere or not, and it doesn't matter if they do because the writing makes exploring so much fun. Lots of possibilities to improve a character that can be taken on to the next book, strengthening the connection between the episodes. Lots of red herrings, too. I love that you're still given a whole story to play/read that just turns out differently when you make a "wrong" choice earlier on, instead of giving you insta-death all the time. Even going through all those varied settings slightly differently on the alternative paths - wow! That surely makes the "game side" harder, but does wonders for the "story side"... Lots to explore for sure. Great read! I've found the entries in the series I've read so far to be quite varied, too, both in setting and in game mechanics. Contractual Obligation was rather straightforward, as Bob said above. You see the puzzle, you know what item to use (if you've come across it). Kind of like an easy point-and-click adventure (well not THAT easy! It's still text, and by Ulysses Ai!). |
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Yoz Ben Wed Oct 20 18:54:54 2021 Contractual Obligation |
Those points where paths diverge by the sequence in which one does seemingly unconnected things are my only gripe with the series. Of course that is kind of realistic, life is full of chance circumstances we can't influence or even perceive. But from a game perspective, I strongly dislike that I can't get around that with exploring or wits or smashing, only with either luck (not LUCK) or cheating. Also, I can think of several alternative mechanisms, depending on the situation - LUCK rolls for example. Or a possibility to circle back to this point later. LucasArts Adventures used to let you do the conversation topics unchanged in any order you wanted where it was about flavour and info, but when there was a fork in the path during conversation, you would be given slightly different conversation options based on what you had chosen earlier, thus giving you a clue there actually WAS a fork. But all in all I guess there were as many non sequitur in any of those cherished old adventures as in a WWGB book. Which is a tremendous thing to accomplish while still providing a great story with a complex path structure. The original WWGB was great, too, as far as I'm concerned. I read about plans to re-write it, but that was posted years ago so maybe I've played the rewritten version? Great introduction to the series! I'm glad it didn't matter in which order I searched the areas of the ship's bar, though. That might have turned me off and I would have missed out on what is some seriously funny writing and great worldbuilding. Chapeau! |
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Yoz Ben Wed Oct 20 21:36:40 2021 A Day In The Life |
I enjoyed this... a LOT! Five out of five for originality alone. Easily one of my favourites just because this little crude drunken gem stands out so nicely from the more common "raid dungeon, kill dragon" fare, showing what else there is possible in the format. I enjoyed Outsider! and A New Day a lot, too, don't even start to get me wrong. I have to say I love all those innovative approaches though, keeping it fresh either by means of innovative mechanics, or the choice of the subject matter (as here). Thanks for this piece! |
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Yoz Ben Wed Oct 20 22:22:15 2021 Contractual Obligation |
Well, after posting, in The Dead World I came across the sections about
SPOILER
And then after finishing Dead World, I come onto the start for Return To G15-275, with the image suggesting a fork in the road. Or, space, ok. So, all topics I brought up have been covered. How about that for coincidences. Very well written, again, and beautifully imaginative. Thank you! |
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Yoz Ben Wed Oct 20 22:38:11 2021 Outsider! |
Great epic story! I had to play out all paths I could find, not wanting to miss any of it. Not that I know too much about it, my experience being mainly the FF books I could source at our local library back when I was a kid, but: This is easily one of the best, as far as I'm concerned. Much more of a real story than what I remember from those FF books, and I even enjoyed those life advice passages. Simply a complete and accomplished YA fantasy novel, in the form of CYOA. Great stuff. Thanks for this! |
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Mage Thu Oct 21 02:01:33 2021 Garden Of Bones
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Another one down! |
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Mage Thu Oct 21 04:21:53 2021 The Ravages Of Fate
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Troll-slayer! |
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RogueOne Thu Oct 21 18:44:07 2021 A Princess Of Zamarra
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Complete! |
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Twilight Princessa Thu Oct 21 20:57:30 2021 A Princess Of Zamarra 
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well crap some damned elf bandit stole my ring and that was the end of it. well, it's not like i wanted to work for a murdery betrayin wizard anyways. |
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Mariah Arcade Thu Oct 21 22:03:14 2021 House Of Horror
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It was terribly enjoyable, I am definitely going to read more of these! *Spoiler* I liked that ghost lady a lot lol. -Mariah <3 |
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Wenn Tru Fri Oct 22 00:47:01 2021 Any Port In A Storm
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It was fun!!! I will play this again definitely :) |
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Mage Fri Oct 22 01:04:40 2021 Golem Gauntlet
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I've run the gauntlet! |
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Ulysses Fri Oct 22 01:11:19 2021 Contractual Obligation |
Hi Yoz Ben. Thanks for those compliments! To answer a few of your questions: - The original WWGB was never rewritten. The issue as I recall it was that too many of the choices were based on luck (e.g. do you want to go left or right down these identical corridors). But it's a short adventure anyway. - The orc story was one that I started but haven't touched for years after pausing gamebook writing. It was turning out to be very long, and complicated and throughly awesome, although I might have a different view if I read it now. It would be a shame to never finish it, but if I was to resume writing gamebooks again that particular title would be 6th of 7. - As an update on the WWGB series, at the end of Return to G15-275 there are three endings which I originally intended as all valid, creating three starting scenarios for the final episode. I subsequently changed my mind about that, and started on a multidimensional adventure that would bring all of the alternate realities back into the singular storyline. Therefore, if I was to finish the WWGB series it would be: the shortish (150) multidimensional adventure, the final episode that would be the biggest and most complicated as it brings together all of the threads from the previous adventures, and then the secret additional episode about taking a honeymoon on a gamepark planet where YOU are the hero. - Incidently, the 7 gamebooks and the writing priority I mentioned above are the three episoides of the WWGB (all about one third done), the sequel to Ravages of Fate (about half done), the sequal to the sequel to the Ravages of Fate (planned), the orc adventure (one third done), and a bigger and better version of deathtrap dungeon (one third done). As you can see, I am very good at starting things and not finishing them. I am also not planning to resume gamebook writing anytime soon, but I haven't given up on the idea completely. I still write a lot, I am just writing other things. - A general comment about the WWGB main character; it will probably be no surprise that the entire series, and even the individual episodes to some extent are unplanned. The main character was conceived as the most mundane and common trope of all: the loser who aspires to get together with the object of his attraction. From there, I just asked myself 'what would be funny?' While I wouldn't recommend analysing the character or trope very deeply, I would say that as the stories are written from his perspective, the female characters are objects because his attraction to them is more about what he defines as success for himself, i.e. 'getting the girl' which is an entirely self-centred pursuit that does not involve knowing or even caring about the female characters at all. Even his ultimate goal of pursuing a relationship with a shapeshifter (who can take whatever form HE wants) underlines that his pursuit is entirely about his own self and he has little awareness of the female characters as people. This is not to say that I wrote the series with this in mind or to make this point, that's just how I see the juvenile male mind working (or at least it's how my mind mind worked when I was a teenager). Hopefully it's quite clear that the main character of WWGB series is immature, no matter how much SKILL he has. The remaining episodes (if they are ever completed) do contain more complete female characters with their own independent concerns and choices, but again not because I was trying to grow the main character, I'm still just following what I think is funny and trying to do something different with each episode. |
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Cyber Baby Fri Oct 22 05:13:46 2021 The Word Fell Silent
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WTF, CyberJudas. Frik you, man! |
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Power of the hoe Fri Oct 22 05:16:34 2021 A Princess Of Zamarra |
i too want to be a ork
SPOILER
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Mage Fri Oct 22 05:41:34 2021 A Day In The Life
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K... |
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