VERVAYENS ISLE, AND THE TROUBLE IT BRINGS
The TV Tropes website is fascinating. It bills itself as 'The All-Devouring Pop Culture Wiki,' and that's a pretty accurate description. It highlights recurring narrative devices or production approaches across a wide spectrum of media, ceaselessly noting, never judging. Really, take a look at the page for any long-running series, and see how easy it is to lose an hour there.
TV Tropes has long since outgrown its initial TV-only remit. It was on the TV Tropes Fabled Lands page that I first realised how insanely hard it is to achieve the title of Saviour of Vervayens Isle in Over the Blood-Dark Sea. Spoilers for that book from here on in.
To get that title you have to start in Over the Blood-Dark Sea, and roll 10–12 in the opening paragraph when you roll two dice to determine your starting position. And even then, it's not guaranteed. That'll be why none of my Fabled Lands characters, who tend to start out in The War-Torn Kingdom, have ever had that title, then.
Early on in my planning for The Serpent King's Domain, I decided I wanted to incorporate another avenue to Vervayens Isle (it was suggested in the Fabled Lands Facebook group, too). It's a nice little area that, if my own experience is common, almost never gets played through. Surely, any continuity problems would be simple enough to iron out. Something like:
Do you have the title Saviour of Vervayens Isle? If you do, turn to 632. If not, turn to Over the Blood-Dark Sea 151.Easy, right?
Um… no.
Y'see, a problem occurs because it's possible to visit Vervayens Isle without picking up that title. There's an encounter there (spoiler: the gorgons) that should surprise the player, if he or she comes across it. Loop through that more than once, and you lose any sense of continuity. And, the Saviour of Vervayens Isle title aside, there are no codewords, nor even any tick boxes, to check whether you've been to that island before.
Here it helps that the only route to that island comes in paragraph 1 of one of the books. Because this creates a work-around to check that the player hasn't started in Over the Blood-Dark Sea – that is, to check which book the player has started in. If you've played the demo version of The Serpent King's Domain, you may have acquired the codeword Gloom in paragraph 1. So it's a sure bet that, if you have that codeword, you've never visited Vervayens Isle.
Similarly, if you own the more recent republication of The War-Torn Kingdom, you'll have noticed that you obtain the codeword Auric in paragraph 1 of that book. Again, if you have that codeword, it's certain you didn't start out in Over the Blood-Dark Sea. (I'm hesitant to speak for Dave and Jamie, but if you only own the large-format edition of The War-Torn Kingdom, I'd say it's fine to award yourself the codeword Auric for starting out in that book anyway.)
So if during your travels through The Serpent King's Domain you come across a paragraph that says something like this:
If you have the codeword Auric or Gloom, turn to 582. If not, turn to 147.… then it's really checking if you've been to Vervayens Isle. And if you don't have those codewords, but you've never been to Vervayens Isle, feel free to go there with my blessing anyway, even if you're not strictly playing 'by the book'. That's precisely why that paragraph's in there – to permit access to a location that's impossible to reach otherwise.
I feel this is an important post regarding gamebooks in general, and not only gamebooks.
ReplyDeleteIn the past years I've read some puzzling perspectives on "by-the-book" situations in gamebooks. There's one specific Fighting Fantasy book, for instance, where if you play by the book, a certain (very desirable) outcome is simply impossible to achieve. It's painfully clear that this is due to an error in the book that went past editing; yet, some people are adamant that you must play by the book and that doing otherwise is "cheating", when everyone can see it would be simple common sense. I find this baffling because, when a gamebook contains a flat-out mistake that effectively prevents readers from completing the adventure honestly, erratas and workarounds are published to fix that mistake so that people can "feel better" about what really is tantamount to the aforementioned cheating.
I realize that in these Internet times, every square inch of any work is going to be scrutinized all over in search of any flaws or incongruences, and that people WILL point them out and make a big fuss out of it. So I appreciate Paul's advice about this issue in Fabled Lands, but I can't help feeling that he's probably being overzealous about it. This is, after all, a game. A role-playing game. A game where you take on what is effectively a different life.
Now, what would life be if people never were to break any rules and boundaries, especially those that clearly feel arbitrary and unsubstantiated?
It is by testing and pushing those boundaries that the greatest discoveries, and the greatest experiences, are made.
If people always acted "by the book", mountains would never have been scaled, caves and forests would never have been explored, oceans would never have been crossed.
No password requirement, and no dice roll, ever kept mankind away from exploring that island in the middle of the ocean. Yeah, sometimes you do lack the requirements, and fail. But you don't always turn away just because a rule told you you couldn't go forward... especially if the rule is unclear, unsubstantiated, or open to interpretation.
Gamebooks, and games in general, are great because you can often get more out of them if you just tweak the rules a bit. And as long as all the players agree to the same rules, there can be no "cheating". In video games, you can exploit glitches to do incredible things, things you couldn't do if you strictly play "by the book". You can have lots of fun doing this. And the same happens with gamebooks. Nobody's going to get hurt if you bend the rules a little, and it's even more legitimate if there's a blatant mistake in the text or the rules.
Games are about fun. In Fabled Lands, the fun is in exploration and encounters. What good is that island over there, in the middle of the ocean, if no text allows me to reach it? I can see it; it's there; there's a paragraph for it; am I a cheater for wanting to see it, to explore it? Well, maybe I am; but I won't feel bad for it! And it makes me sad that some people will feel bad for doing something that's supposed to be mindless fun.
Cheat, Efrem, cheat! As I say in the last paragraph of this post - if you don't have those codewords, just go to the island anyway!
DeleteI definitely fall into the category of people that think it's okay to bend the rules in gamebooks. You mentioned a Fighting Fantasy book in the comment above; I guess you're talking about either Creature of Havoc or Revenge of the Vampire (both contain errors that have a big impact on gameplay). Yup, cheat your way through those. Keep a gold piece back for yourself, so you can stay at the inn. No worries.
The reality is that gamebooks are sometimes unclear, or contain errors. That mudworm at the start of The Crimson Tide shouldn't be anywhere near that difficult to beat. Razaak the Necromancer is an unfeasibly tough opponent. And the probability of making it through the first 20 Lone Wolf books without being killed by a falling mast or a jump from a battlement wall is, statistically speaking, pretty insignificant.
So do the fun thing. Cheat, cheat and cheat again!
That was quite the essay, Efrem. Looks like Paul is prompting a lot of thought with just a little post, because here I go . . .
ReplyDeleteThe book itself sounds awesome, and so does the thinking behind it. No complaints there. The fact that this post launches from TV Tropes, though, sends me out on a tangent.
I'm glad to hear that TV Tropes bills itself as "about pop culture." That makes it slightly less annoying than it used to be. The idea of a website "about tropes" was promising when first I heard of it, and I've been disappointed to see it is more of a place for fans to blather about what they find awesome and/or argue over plot points they don't understand.
See, I was looking forward to learning something about writing from them. And it seemed good at the start. You might find an article on "the five-man band," a discussion of the patterns that main characters tend to follow in such a setup (e.g., even with five people, often just one will be a woman). That's informative: you can look at your own writing and see if you're falling into a trope ("Susie here is 'the woman' for your whole universe, huh?), or address the idea in other ways.
And then came the blather.
Now you might find equal literary weight given to an article on "the crowning moment of awesome," defined as "you know, like, how people in a story tend to do one thing that the fans remember for, like, being awesome." It's worthless for understanding storytelling. We don't even know if it IS about storytelling: are we talking about a moment of redemption or transformation for the character's personal journey, or just high levels of pandering to the audience? If it's the former, then aren't there other words we could use to discuss the climax of the story? And if it's the latter . . . likewise.
Apparently people find the site addicting and can't stop reading it when linked there. Some people even feel you should put up a warning label when "this post links to TV Tropes." But given all the existing forum threads and blog discussions and fan sites, I don't know why people would be so excited about another website for fan blather.
Hmm, I'm not so sure. Isn't having this title only accessible by players starting out in book 3 part of the allure of Fabled Lands? That is, every time you play you can have a unique adventure. And that's truly unique, not just by virtue of the odd different dice roll.
ReplyDeleteI wasn't aware of what Paul mentions above, having also never felt inclined to start in book 3, but I love the fact that there's a little secret area hidden away that I've never found (until now). It's not like it contains the one item needed to kill Zagor or anything, so missing it isn't important in that sense.
So go ahead and stick in another in book 7 with my blessing Paul.
The notion of being given permission to cheat (permission that I granted readers of the Blood Sword series, incidentally) is amusing because after all, if you're going to cheat, you can simply give yourself permission. My view is that once you've bought the book you can use it however you like - although, as with cheat codes in videogames, it often ends up being less fun once anything goes. Michael's point illustrates that rather well; it's kind of fun to have played in the world for years and still be discovering Easter eggs like that.
ReplyDeleteAs I recall one of the defenses against cheating in Blood Sword 5 actually required the player to cheat to complete the book. The player was supposed to complete several encounter, each of which would yield a number. The sum of the number would yield the page number to go to after the encounters were completed. In one encounter a number was given as "XX" (instead of 100), so the player was forced to search through the book for the final sum since doing the quest the "right" way was impossible.
DeleteI like how you've turned a bug into a feature there, John. The fact is that Jamie and Oliver, who wrote that part of the book, forgot to put the number in!
DeleteI'm reminded of that Choose Your Own Adventure book where the best ending is literally impossible ON PURPOSE. I'm talking about "Inside UFO 54-40" by Edward Packard. http://io9.gizmodo.com/remember-inside-ufo-54-40-the-unwinnable-choose-your-o-1552187271
ReplyDeleteThe book constantly talks about the planet of Paradise "Ultima" but "No one can choose to visit Ultima... nor can you get here by following directions". There are no options that lead to the ending pages. This was intentional.
I set out to write a choose your own adventure game book , but as I'm a determinist, it turned into a novel
ReplyDeleteWho says you can't have a determinist gamebook, John? Did you never play Green Blood? :-)
DeleteSorry Dave don't know that one ?
DeleteIt's one of the old Virtual Reality gamebooks, John. It's not in print anymore, but here's a link to Per Jorner's review:
Deletehttp://tinyurl.com/z9qt9db
Critics eh ? Could we call that a "Kermodian rant" ? Hello to Jason Isaacs !
DeleteMark's last gamebook, never published but planned as the seventh Virtual Reality title, was set at a masked ball held by Death. I never saw it myself, but the series editor Ian Marsh remembers it well. The curious can go ask him about it at Fighting15s...
DeleteWas Per's review why Mark didn't write anything else, Dave?! I've not read anything about Mark in your previous posts, so I assume there's no chance he'll ever, do an "Oliver" (as you don't call it in the trade) and write something hopefully brilliant.
ReplyDeleteI was going to chip in with some gamebook comments, but I find myself unfunny and overmatched comparative to Per. Here goes anyway.
You'll love any Lone Wolf gamebook if you're a determinist. I see Lone Wolf 29 has just been released, so Joe Dever is evidently a determined determinist. I'm going to buy it anyway because I'm a completeist (not a word). There was another Choose Your Own Adventure that deliberately looped and had no ending. I'm prescribing this for John as aversion therapy.
Taxi!
That wasn't Mark's last gamebook, actually. He wrote Coils of Hate, which Per also reviewed. Mark would be the first to admit Coils worked better as a piece of prose than as a gamebook, but it was a marvellously evocative concept and well worth looking at.
DeleteI did once own all the VR books, Dave. Have recollected yours as CIF and reread. HOI the best, closely followed by DATDM. Two of the best gamebooks of all time. In fact, your ranking of all your gamebooks on a post a year or two back is pretty much spot on I'd say, possibly EOTD and COTV a little higher, if only for personal nostalgic reasons! I assume you've no plans to republish Mark's books? I'll pick them up second hand if they don't break the bank.
DeleteBefore we could republish GB and COH, Andy, we'd have to do a pretty thorough edit job on them. Both suffer from broken flow charts which means that it's possible to get completely stuck. I'd like to do it, as both books have much to admire, but it's quite a task to undertake when it's not my own work. I'd really like to see Mark rework them as novels, as they were perhaps the most novelistic of gamebooks and certainly the most ambitious in terms of replicating all the options available in a roleplaying adventure.
DeleteCompletely understand. Would Mark ever revisit the material though? I wince when I see anything I've written over five years ago and cringe at anything ten years old, and I'm no writer. So any author revisiting something 20 years on would start more or less from scratch and do it only out of love presumably? Has Mark written anything of note since gamebooks? Difficult to tell given the myriad of Smiths on Amazon!
ReplyDeleteHe's pretty busy these days running a sales company, but he has occasionally talked about returning to writing when he retires. I expect, like me, that he'd probably prefer to work on new things than go back to rework old books, though.
DeleteIs he any good at it? Try and get him to flog some of those unsold Falcon books. :)
DeleteI'd buy VR7 on concept alone!
This is off-topic, but I have not been able to get a response from anybody on the matter, so I hope you don't mind.
ReplyDeleteI got a new Android phone and would like to install the Frankenstein App (the Inkle one). When I try to download it, I get a message saying that my device is not compatible with the App. Could it be that my phone is too new for the App? Is the Android version still supported? Is there any way I can play it without going to the dark side (Apple devices)? Thanks in advance.
Hi Guillermo, I have a feeling that Android version doesn't work. You could try the Epub3 version:
Deletehttp://tinyurl.com/jrfoodp
You'll need a fully-Epub3 compatible reader, ie Javascript-enabled. Google Chrome's e-reader is one IIRC. So, ironically, is iBooks!
Thanks for generously sharing the file! Unfortunately, I have bad news. It does not work on either the Chrome ePub reader nor on the most famous ePub3 reader for Android (Gitden). Is there any piece of software that you are 100% positive runs it adequately?
ReplyDeleteUpdate: the App works on Adobe Digital Editions (make sure you get the latest version of the software). It's not a smooth experience, though; I keep getting error messages every time I click on one of the hyperlinks. This is annoying but does not seem to prevent me from navigating the book. Bottom line is: the ePub version really needs an upgrade!
DeleteThanks for the feedback, Guillermo. That Epub3 version is really just a beta. I did get it to run in the Chrome e-reader but that was a while ago (the spec may have changed) and I had to specifically turn on JavaScript. It runs properly in iBooks but that's not a lot of use, I realize, as then you might as well just use Inkle's version.
DeleteIt is frustrating, and when my contract with Profile Books lapses I'll get new versions done for all platforms. That could be years off, though.
The role of cheating in gamebooks is a rather important one, I think, which is why it has prompted some longer responses...
ReplyDeleteIn most video games, you can simply "save" and repeat battling the same foe or attempting the same quest over and over again until you succeed. If you mess up, you can just return to the point at which you saved the game. This in itself could be considered a form of cheating, but is perfectly acceptable in the world of video games. I personally prefer paper, dice and pencil adventures and have yet to find a good balance between cheating and playing by the book.
Dave made an important point that when everything goes, it takes away from and can even ruin the experience. The adventure feels no longer challenging and loses its sense of excitement and element of surprise. If you simply re-roll the dice until you get the desirable result, you essentially strip the book of its game book character and, at best, turn it into a generic CYOA book. You might as well stop rolling the dice at all and simply always assume a favorable result and move on to the preferred section.
However, it is equally frustrating if you keep dying and have to start over at section 1 all the time. FL is tough on starting characters, especially, I think, for those professions with low combat (and, therefore, defense) scores.. (I remember on my first FL adventure being eaten by cannibals just because I wanted to help this guy in the ally...) But even later death is always a possibility (e.g. randomly being turned into a mermaid and never returning again to human form...). To play through all six existing books without dying at any point, I find, is statistically close to impossible. Fortunately, FL allows several ways to keep cheating to a minimum, such as blessings and resurrection deals. However, you can never rule death out and if you have invested a ton of hours into one character, you really don't want him or her to die and start from scratch. Playing one long, continuous adventure with one character is far more enjoyable than playing many short-lived adventures that all end in death. Therefore, I yet have to find a good balance between cheating and playing by the book and would welcome any recommendations.
On a separate note, I want to speak to Efrem's point about using common sense to deal with errors and mistakes in the book that were not intended by the author. I think this really speaks for itself and anyone who says otherwise must be pretty dogmatic and is a slave to the rigidity of his own mind. (However, whether the case regarding Vervayens Isle discussed by Paul above qualifies as such an error that needs fixing could itself be a topic of debate... maybe it is intentional that you cannot access all places with each character, just as some quests are reserved for specific professions). That being said, I think the bigger question is how much you want to bend the rules or even get creative and add your own rules to the gamebook. I have definitely thought about adding some rules and features to the FL series to make it more complex. For example, I think allowing some professions to learn magic spells as they rise in rank would be cool and make the professions more distinguishable. I also think it would be nice to add a new profession, the "druid" (which, I think, already exists in the FL RPG Core Role Book) with the following stats: Charisma 2, Combat 3, Magic 4, Sanctity 4, Scouting 5, Thievery 3). The druid would be a hybrid between wayfarer and mage and priest and would be allowed to accept the quests for mages and wayfarers.
Anyway, these are just some thoughts I had. I am curious and would appreciate to hear what you guys think.
The question of cheating really merits its own post, so thanks for kicking off the debate with some well-considered points, Tobias. Obviously I don't condone cheating in a roleplaying game. That's just disrespectful to the other players. In a gamebook - well, the player is only cheating themselves (themself?) but it begs the question why they feel the need to cheat. We don't want player-characters to die, mostly we just want them to feel a sense of urgency and danger. The idea that you can get killed in a fight supposedly provides that, but if it actually happens it's merely tiresome.
DeleteI'm not including death paras that are just put in to trim the flowchart - that's laziness on the part of the author. There was an early Baldur's Gate game that did that. Quite close to the start of the game you could go north or south. If you went north, you were killed by giant spiders or something. So why even include the option?
But back to death by dice roll. As I've said before, Prof Barker's Adventures on Tekumel gamebooks don't do that. If you lose a fight you might be disarmed, or run away, or be enslaved, or knocked out, or dishonoured. None of those outcomes end the adventure.
And then consider novels. Most of the time we aren't expecting the main character to get killed, but that doesn't mean we don't experience suspense and trepidation on their behalf. There are plenty of humiliations and setbacks that a character can suffer that are plenty dramatic but well short of death. That can work in gamebooks too. In my Frankenstein gamebook app, neither Frankenstein nor the creature can die until the story reaches a satisfying conclusion, but lots of other developments occur that are nail-bitingly exciting. (That's not me being immodest; it's Mrs Shelley's plot, after all.)
Wrt adding new classes to Fabled Lands - be my guest. I can't guarantee they won't break the system, mind you. Jamie and I just figured on those six professions being the most archetypal, as each corresponds to one of the six abilities. So if I was representing a druid I'd just make the guy a priest. But it's all just a matter of taste.
I'd been thinking about new professions for the Fabled Lands books. On the technical side, everything in The Serpent King's Domain (and FL8 onwards, should we go that far) has to be backwards-compatible with the existing six books - so you have to be conscious that those books don't give options for being a Druid, say, or a Healer, or an Astrologer…
DeleteOne way around this would be to present specialisations rather than entirely new professions – these would be Titles, essentially. For your Druid example, you could start as a Wayfarer or a Priest, and at some point you might discover the option to acquire the 'Druid' title. That way, you'd open up the options that are applicable to your base profession (Priest or Wayfarer, here), and future books would also grant options if you have the Druid title.
I'll confess that I haven't put anything like this in The Serpent King's Domain just yet. Thoughts, anybody? Anybody who's coming back to read an older post, that is…
That's the object-oriented approach, certainly. The six professions are root classes but that doesn't rule out innovations in the system as long as new types inherit from those classes.
DeleteI quite like the idea of specializations. I think it would be important to be careful about making sure you couldn't have multiple ones though. I wouldn't use Titles, since they're more about things you have done.
DeleteAnd as for whether to put these in Book 7, I think it's a great idea. If you're going to do it, best to start now. Question is, how much out of your way is it to have these specializations, and enough hooks for them that it feels appropriate?
BTW Paul: Have you read Michael Ward's DestinyQuest books? The second one, in particular, does a great job of taking readers through a jungle environment.
Sticking with my OOD analogy, you can always have polymorphism. If you inherit traits from two or more classes, though, game balance requires that you'd lose out in other ways -- attribute scores, say. But I don't think we're rushing to incorporate specialisations. It's just a customisation option.
DeleteBefore a programmer jumps on this, I meant multiple inheritance, not polymorphism. Oops.
DeleteI think even in Fabled lands 1 it is possible to "cheat" by pretending to do an infinite loop in one of the cities and get infinite money like that.
ReplyDeleteThe question is if you rule it so that you can only get the reward once, or that you have to actually fully read all the sections of the infinite loop, leading to insanity and a lot of ingamebook cash!
I guess that example really is a glitch. We should have used a tickbox to prevent the player looping through that encounter multiple times. Oops.
DeleteMy own rule of thumb is that, if there's no risk, you shouldn't loop endlessly through. Climbing Starspike Island once is fine; that'll give you a point of CHARISMA. Don't do it again and again to max out that stat, though. Similarly, think hard before you fight those bandits near Castle Ravayne a million times (though who hasn't done that to shoot up to 10th Rank at least once, though?).
DeleteI think looping through trading routes is fine. That's what real traders do, after all. There's one in FL3 in particular that is pretty low-risk, and high-profit. Meh, go with it. There are a thousand other ways to make lots of money in Fabled Lands, even if you don't.
Why didn't you opt to use an option like: "If you began your career anywhere except Book 3, go to X"?
ReplyDeleteor:
"If you have been to the Island of Vervayens, even if you do not have the code words" or something?
If, as so many people have said (including the author of this blog), the future of gamebooks is as software, why can't we find a better way to do this without cheating?
Also, it seems that the way you have set this up, if you went to the Island of Vervayens without becoming its saviour, there is no way back? Is that intentional?
The problem with asking the player questions about their history (like "did you start in book 1?") rather than codewords (like "do you have Auric?") is that after playing the books multiple times it's not always easy to recall the specific details of your current character. In an app version that would be no problem, of course, but in print we tend to use codewords or titles to remember that for you.
DeleteAs Paul says, going back to Vervayens without being saviour would loop you through the gorgon encounter, which wouldn't make sense (I guess; I haven't taken another look at it but I trust Paul's judgement) in which case it is a glitch. It's so much easier to patch things like that in software!