As a body of work, Russ's illustrations for Lords of the Rising Sun comprise the high point in the FL series for me, in large part because of the bold brush-stroke inking that reminds me of the work of Chic Stone. My favourite of all of the Book 6 pictures is this one showing four floors of a palace (or is it?) that has been invaded by a dragon (or is it?). You'll have to play the adventure to find out:
‘The dragon has entered the palace!’ screams a footman. The courtiers fly to and fro in panic while you marshal the best of the paladins and lead them down the long staircase. The dragon squats in the vast hall below chewing the palace’s valiant defenders in its maws. Its head alone is longer than your ship! You give the order to attack, leading the paladins down the staircase in a reckless charge. The dragon bares its fangs and spits venom. Make COMBAT and CHARISMA rolls, both at a Difficulty of 15...
Not to sound like a pedant (especially given that my gripe here could be totally incorrect), but wouldn't the dragon's "maws" suggest that it has multiple mouths? Perhaps jaws would be a better fit.
ReplyDeleteActually, Hamza, that's a very good point, as as I'm currently typesetting the new edition I'm able to make the change right now. Thanks!
DeleteGlad to help.
DeleteNow that you are re-editing those two books, my wet dream would be if you ditched your current "password" system of the old books.
ReplyDeleteWould be much more awesome if you would get a two digit number together with the password. Then when the password needs to be applied, you have to add the PW number onto the number of the current section to proceed. No cheating possible.
But more importantly, when the PW is about a specific quest item you aquired, you wouldn't even have to mention that the item can be used AT ALL.
The reader would just have to figure out that this item can be used in this context, add the two numbers and continue. That's a kind of interaction that not even videogames can reach.
I read a book like that when I was child, but I just can't remember what it was.
If heard of something like that being done in a gamebook, Alexander. It was along the lines of, "You can drink this potion at any time. First make a note of the section you are at so that you can return there. Then add 20 to the number you are reading and turn to that section. If the section you reach makes no sense, the potion has no effect."
DeleteFor the sake of making a teflon anti-cheating system, it's a little baroque. And, after all, who am I to say readers shouldn't cheat? I seem to remember Steve Jackson or Ian Livingstone saying how they had put some trick sections in their gamebooks to catch cheaters, but it always struck me that an author's job is not to tell the reader off.
For me it wasn't about cheating, it was more about interacting with the book in a completely new way. I remember one section where a wall was described that looked like there was a door behind the wallpaper. All you could do was turn around, and so I did. Later I found a scraper and when I returned to that first section I was able to use it to scratch out the lines of the door and open it.
ReplyDeleteThat was basic stuff, it was just a childrens book, but I loved that you were never told when to use an item, that there was no direct indication.
I remember there was an entirely visual gamebook - each page was a picture of a room and the only text was the numbers (usually on a door or a set of stairs, etc) that guided you to other rooms. What was interesting was that in some cases the numbers had fallen off the doors or been scratched out, so you had to do some detective work to figure a route through.
DeleteAll in all, though, what you're describing is why object-oriented design is superior to procedural design - and why I like face-to-face role-playing games.
I remember you did something a little similar in one or two of the Heroquest gamebooks, Dave. A wizard never had an option in the text to use his 'Sleep' or 'Pass Through Stone' spells (I may be paraphrasing the names of the spells here). You just had to decide when you wanted to use them.
DeleteThen, when you cast the spell, you checked the spell description at the front of the book, that gave a list of about 4 paragraphs in the text when the spell 'worked normally' (with varying degrees of effectiveness, nonetheless). If you were reading one of those paragraphs when you cast it, great. If not, too bad - the spell didn't work.
It was eerie how those spells always seemed to work for me - almost as if I'd memorised the list of paragraph numbers in the spell description.