Fighting Fantasy LP - Where do we go next?

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What kind of gamebook LP playthrough do you prefer?

I prefer to be able to play without constant restarts: go for an easier book
0
No votes
I'm a glutton for punishments: take a hard book and start with a 12/24/12 character!
2
29%
I don't mind restarting a lot if the plot is deep and interesting and we get to progress further each attempt.
3
43%
I don't mind using house rules to get past a certain bug/die roll/special rule if it's the only thing that makes a book unplayable.
0
No votes
I don't mind the GM using "prods" to point me in the right direction (i.e. Seven Serpents).
0
No votes
I'd like to try some magazine or fan-written FF games
0
No votes
I like books with new rules/mechanisms than just the basic rules.
2
29%
I'd like books that are linked to a previous/later book (Prequel/sequel/recurring characters).
0
No votes
 
Total votes: 7

SGamerz
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Fighting Fantasy LP - Where do we go next?

Post by SGamerz »

Hi guys, as mentioned previously, the list of remaining FF books I have, while still a pretty one, has been narrowed down sufficiently that it's getting hard for me to pick a suitable one. So.....a question: what kind of game would you prefer next?

I've listed the series below and crossed out the ones that have already been run here. I've put one under special highlight (FF46), as I understand the playthrough didn't go very far and was stopped due to frustration of repeated deaths.

Original Series:

FF1: The Warlock of Firetop Mountain (DONE)
FF2: The Citadel of Chaos (DONE)
FF3: The Forest of Doom (DONE)
FF4: Starship Traveller (Difficult - maze + hunt for random number combinations)
FF5: City of Thieves (DONE)
FF6: Deathtrap Dungeon (DONE)
FF7: Island of the Lizard King (DONE)
FF8: Scorpion Swamp (DONE)
FF9: Caverns of the Snow Witch (Difficult - high stats needed)
FF10: House of Hell (Difficult - hidden rooms and sections)
FF11: Talisman of Death (DONE)
FF12: Space Assassin (DONE)
FF13: Freeway Fighter (Difficult - one true path)
FF14: Temple of Terror (Difficult - scavenger hunt)
FF15: The Rings of Kether (DONE)
FF16: Seas of Blood (DONE)
FF17: Appointment with F.E.A.R. (Difficult - hunt for random number combinations)
FF18: Rebel Planet (DONE)
FF19: Demons of the Deep (DONE)
FF20: Sword of the Samurai (Hard, but doable with a few replays)
FF21: Trial of Champions (Extremely Hard - high stats + one true path + mega scavenger hunt)
FF22: Robot Commando (DONE)
FF23: Masks of Mayhem (Fun...but one specific plot token makes this extremely difficult without cheating)
FF24: Creature of Havoc (DONE)
FF25: Beneath Nightmare Castle (DONE)
FF26: Crypt of the Sorcerer (Practically impossible - for masochists :tongue: )
FF27: Star Strider (Actually not too hard....except for a frustrating maze, and Luke Sharp's writing takes some getting used to)
FF28: Phantoms of Fear (Hard, but I think doable...again may need a few playthroughs)
FF29: Midnight Rogue (Weird beginning clue-hunting sequence design can lead to illogical failure....but not too hard, shouldn't take more than 3 attempts to complete unless really unlucky)
FF30: Chasms of Malice (Practically impossible due to one specific new type of combat)
FF31: Battleblade Warrior (Not in my collection)
FF32: Slaves of the Abyss (Fun, and deeper plot than most FF, but really designed for repeated playthroughs than single, highly unlikely to complete on first several attempts....actually it might take you a few playthroughs to figure out what's going on - that goes for most Paul Mason books, btw!)
FF33: Sky Lord (My copy is missing)
FF34: Stealer of Souls (DONE)
FF35: Daggers of Darkness (Difficulty is actually ok...)
FF36: Armies of Death (Mega scavenger/clue hunt + 1 true path makes it hard, also intriguing setup but disappointing Mass Combat rule)
FF37: Portal of Evil (DONE)
FF38: Vault of the Vampire (DONE)
FF39: Fangs of Fury (Easy! - this might be the only remaining book that I rate as such)
FF40: Dead of Night (DONE)
FF41: Master of Chaos (DONE)
FF42: Black Vein Prophecy (See my FF32 comments about Paul Mason books. Also, there's a notorious "bug" about this book, although I'm not sure that's the right word for it.)
FF43: The Keep of the Lich-Lord (DONE)
FF44: Legend of the Shadow Warriors (Not in my collection)
FF45: Spectral Stalkers (DONE)
FF46: Tower of Destruction (??INCOMPLETE)
FF47: The Crimson Tide (See my FF32 comments about Paul Mason books.)
FF48: Moonrunner (DONE)
FF49: Siege of Sardath (Fun but Very Hard - hidden sections and clues, Creature-of-Havoc level)
FF50: Return to Firetop Mountain (Typical Ian Livingstone Scavenger hunt + 1 true path)
FF51: Island of the Undead (Extremely Hard - lots of hidden clues and scavenger hunt)
FF52: Night Dragon (DONE)
FF53: Spellbreaker (Flavourful.....but practically impossible....difficulty rivals Livingstone at his worst)
FF54: Legend of Zagor (Very Hard - typical Livingstone/later Keith Martin fare)
FF55: Deathmoor (Hard but not impossible, will take several playthroughs....but weird and underwhelming end sequence)
FF56: Knights of Doom (Not in my collection)
FF57: Magehunter (See my FF32 comments about Paul Mason books. Also has a few minor bugs, but not game-breaking. Feels over-ambitious.)
FF58: Revenge of the Vampire (Actually not too difficult.....except for a couple of notorious game-breaking bug issues)
FF59: Curse of the Mummy (Not quite as hard as Spellbreaker, but close)

New Wizard Publications:

Eye of the Dragon
Bloodbones
Howl of the Werewolf
Stormslayer
Night of the Necromancer (DONE)
Blood of the Zombies (Not in my collection)

The poll I've set up is not so much to determine a specific book, but rather to give me some idea of your playing preference so that I know which books I can add to my list of options. However, if you have a preference for any one (or more) specific book on the list above, feel free to post it!

A lot of those were plagued by the difficulty factor....but then quite a few difficult ones have been run in the past. There were also some where (by players' agreement) blatant clues were given by the GM on the true path (like the Seven Serpents in the Sorcery Series).

And of course, for books that require high stats (like Trial of Champions....although you'd need more than high stats for that one), it's possible that we can just choose to start with high stats instead of rolling for them (12/24/12), which would at least help us get past combat and stat tests difficulty.

Then there are those books which are mostly fine, but one specific quirk about it makes it unlikely/impossible to be completed, either like one specific stat test (FF42),one specific item (FF23), a certain combat system (FF30) or a specific bug (FF58). If you don't mind just cheating on that particular point, the rest of the book might actually not be too bad.

And last but not least, there's an option that may make the list longer....we can try some of the old Warlock magazine adventure, or maybe some fan-written adventures like those from the Fighting Fantazine or FFproject fan sites.

Look forward to seeing the results.

Comments are welcome too, if you think the polls aren't sufficient to cover what you want (it probably isn't, but it was the best I could come up with). :)
Last edited by SGamerz on Sun Mar 27, 2016 3:23 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Darth Rabbitt
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Post by Darth Rabbitt »

I did do a Drunken Review of House of Hell. Also there is a one true path and high stats required (you need a FEAR of 10+ to survive).
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Post by Mr Shine »

Personally I wouln't mind doing something like Crypt of the Sorcerer on a BZZZT! wrong, try again! basis for every "wrong" decision. IIRC there's about 30 different branching points, many of which are blind, where you have to make the exactly correct choice. Of course even if you solve the book it's topped off with the ulitimate fuck-you boss fight (12 SK, high ST, no way to reduce it with items auto death if he wins 2 consecutive rounds.)
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Post by SlyJohnny »

I have fond memories of Legend of Zagor? It isn't one true path, more of a dungeon crawl with a series of hubs, and there are only a couple of insta-death passages; mostly bad decisions cost lots of Stamina. You're gathering items to combat the big bad, but they're either silver daggers and golden talismans to lower Zagor's Stamina and Skill when you face him, or cool magic items.

Having said that, I had memories of Tower of Destruction being a cakewalk, and when I ran that it turns out there's a ton of unavoidable damage and there doesn't seem to be any monster in the book with a Skill less than 9. So maybe my memory can't be trusted.

Freeway Fighter would probably be the easiest of the "one truth path" ones to just restart from checkpoints, and least onerous. You can go left instead of right on page 276 and have a whole side adventure, and then find out you missed a petrol can by not going to the right, and lose. But at least we wouldn't be retreading old ground each time.

What are the new wizard books like?
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Post by MisterDee »

I'm certainly very interested in doing the hard books with 12/24/12ers (or some sort of randomized-but-generally-high stat sets.) Tower of Destruction must be beaten!

Part of me wants to play Trial of Champions fair and square, rolled stats, restart at beginning when we die, Final Destination. But that's because it's one I couldn't figure out when I was younger for no other reason than that it was hard.

On the other hand, I don't think there are enough dick jokes in the world to name our characters. A compromise that could work would be
that we retain knowledge of the collectable McGuffins needed for the final puzzles, which were numbers, IIRC.
Plus it'd give us a character to reuse for Armies of Death, which is a direct sequel to ToC if I remember it right.

If we want to do something else, I suggest Caverns of the Snow Witch. As I recall, it's fairly linear, so we'll have lots of content for one LP.
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Post by SGamerz »

Darth Rabbitt wrote:I did do a Drunken Review of House of Hell. Also there is a one true path and high stats required (you need a FEAR of 10+ to survive).
I can't believe I forgot to mention the Fear stat constraint. Yeah, that's really more of a killer than anything else in that book, since it means it's hard for you to explore a lot of new places each playthrough because you seem to pick up Fear points just about everywhere.
SlyJohnny wrote:I have fond memories of Legend of Zagor? It isn't one true path, more of a dungeon crawl with a series of hubs, and there are only a couple of insta-death passages; mostly bad decisions cost lots of Stamina. You're gathering items to combat the big bad, but they're either silver daggers and golden talismans to lower Zagor's Stamina and Skill when you face him, or cool magic items.
I've heard rumours/speculations that this one might have been done by Keith Martin instead of Livingstone, which is why I added "typical Livinsgtone/later Keith Martin fare" in my comments. I think the rumours arose out of the different design and writing style of this particular book.

Anyway, when I suggested using 12/24/12 characters to play the harder books, Livingstone was the one on my mind mostly, but I realized that it suit Keith Martin books more. Martin's difficulty really went up in his later books to match Livingstone's, but there's still distinct differences. Livingstone tends to be even more stringent on "true path" in that you generally get insta-killed without going down the exact right path with the exact right item. Keith Martin's Book 46 and 51 (and to a lesser degree 58) generally are super-hard, but the path is technically not as narrow. You get punished/penalized for not taking the optimal path and packing lots of quest items, but usually not immediately fatal....except the End Boss(es) are so strong that you might as well be dead if you don't find all the McGauffins to weaken him to a more manageable state. There are still a few must-have-or-die items, but generally not as much as Livingstone. In that regard, Martin is slightly easier and certainly benefits more from a 12/24/12 PC. However, Martin also uses more complicated puzzles, ranging from mathematics to alphabets to diagrams to (on one occasion at least) music, which probably makes him more frustrating to certain players than Livingstone.
SlyJohnny wrote: What are the new wizard books like?
Well, for a start they're almost all written by Jonathan Green, so if you've read his older works (or followed my Night of the Necromancer LP) you'd have some idea of his writing style.

I think general consensus is that his newer books are an improvement compared to the older ones for the simple reason that they're not as difficult. "Necromancer" was the best of the bunch IMO, but I also like Howl of the Werewolf a lot. Neither it or Storm Slayer are as generous as NotN, but they're definitely far from as unplayable as Spellbreaker. One thing I can say about Green.....his encounters and settings also tend to be fairly memorable on the whole, and Spellbreaker can be pretty fun to read.....just frustrating to play. (Same goes for Knights of Doom from what I heard, although I haven't played it myself.)

Stormslayer also comes with pre-generated character like NotN, and there's an extra minor flavor in that each of them start with a different magic tattoo that gives them a different kind of minor benefit.

Bloodbones, from what I heard, still suffers from the difficulty factor like the older books...probably because it is an older book, written back when the old series was coming to an end and only published much later. I haven't played through it too thoroughly myself, though, so not as familiar with it.

Green, on the whole, seems to be one of the authors who likes to fiddle with new rules and mechanisms, so you can generally looks forward to those, although not all of them are well-executed.

Eye of the Dragon (by Livinsgtone) is....bad. From what I heard, it was actually an expanded version of a much older book, too, which explains why the mechanisms are quite primitive (pure basic rules). It's a classic Livingstone dungeon crawl, although not as deadly as his later books. The dungeon design is pretty basic, and the writing is barebones, and the options are almost "primitive". It's still by no means easy, because there're a few unavoidable fights against high-Skill enemies. The basic plot really stretches one's suspension of disbelief (although admittedly it's a flaw shared by a lot of gamebooks), with the PC willingly drinking poison just so he can take up a quest to find a pair of gems. I'd like to think I'm not too hard to please as a reader, considering I actually enjoyed Stealer of Souls (which a lot of you found boring), and even I found EotD boring. It feels less flavourful even compared to most of his earliest FF books like Warlock.

Anyway....might as well add a few comments on the other authors, for those we've never touched in any of the LPs here:

Paul Mason:

I've made the comment about how his books are all not really suitable for 1-time playthrough, and that opinion still stands, but there're varying degrees of difficulty between those too. The two books co-written with Steve Williams (FF32 and 42) stick closer to a conventional design format, but the 2 written by Paul alone throw the basic format out of the window. On the whole, his books are difficult with regards to finding the true path and figuring out the plot, but Crimson Tide and Magehunter are pretty demanding on your stats, too (although the latter in a most unusual way - it punishes characters with HIGH initial Skill and Stamina).

One thing you can't fault Mason for is originality. Most of his books have a unique premise and concept. And the writing is generally effectively atmospheric.

Luke Sharp:

His books are generally easier than most others simply because he's clearly not a fan of the "true path" system. They simply don't exist in his books. Chasms of Malice is an exception, not just because of the notorious special combat system (50% death rate each combat), but also because there's a final puzzle at the end that requires you to go through a certain encounter earlier. Thankfully, neither of these appeared in his later books. Fangs of Fury as mentioned is extremely generous.....only topped by Keep of the Lich Lord in terms of how easy it is in the entire series.

Like I've mentioned more than once, the writing style is perhaps the most distinct of all FF writers. Extremely brief or non-existent descriptions in most encounters (FF35 has you hunted by a race of assassins called the Mamliks...and you're never told exactly what they are, and the only clues you get are from the illustrations), but then occasionally he'll suddenly bringing a minor amusing/quirky detail out of nowhere.

One thing you'll have to be prepared for in Sharp's book is random die rolls. There are a lot of them, in every book. He prefers to punish you for rolling the wrong random number instead or for failing a stat roll. Thankfully, the punishments are rarely lethal (other than FF30), and usually relatively minor, but there's still the occasional random-death-due-to-random roll, which can be annoying.

Sharp also likes playing with new mechanisms in his books, and most of the concepts look very interesting and full of potential. The trouble is, more often than not, they tend to come out either underdeveloped or bugged in his books. He really gives me the impression of a genius with overly-short attention span, coming up with new toys but not working on them longer enough to make sure they work properly. :tongue:

Robin Waterfield:

Only one of his books have been done here (Rebel Planet). His book design tend to be a more conventional format, although Phantoms of Fear experimented with quite a bit of new stuff. Each of his book seem to be generally nicely balanced in terms of difficulty, BUT they each have one distinct portion where that balance is upset. Rebel Planet had a fun start but became really became really hard towards the final third portion. Deathmoor's quirk is that a lot of the most important choices are actually made in the beginning portion....miss them, and you're effectively doomed without knowing it until you come across unknown reference/item request much later in the book. Phantoms of Fear had an interesting concept of "Dream world", but the dream combat designed is pretty flawed and unbalanced against the player. And one of the plot coupons gives you a 1/6 chance of obtaining it and a 1/6 chance of instant death every time you roll for it! Masks of Mayhem had an essential plot token that relies on a very low random chance (by die roll) to acquire, and also a certain encounter where the PC (again by random die roll) has a very low chance of surviving.

Oh, and both Masks and Deathmoor suffer from being candidates for "most anticlimactic and underwhelming ending section."

One book I really miss is FF44 (Legend of the Shadow Warriors), because Stephen Hand has IMO a very good record (Moonrunner & Dead of Night). If any of you have that and don't mind running it I'd love the chance to play that!
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Post by Darth Rabbitt »

SGamerz wrote:I can't believe I forgot to mention the Fear stat constraint. Yeah, that's really more of a killer than anything else in that book, since it means it's hard for you to explore a lot of new places each playthrough because you seem to pick up Fear points just about everywhere.
It's kind of a massive disincentive to going around getting scared which seems rather unforgivable for a horror gamebook. You don't even get a creepy bad end (which would make up for bad gameplay by actually providing scares), just game over with no text.
Anyway, when I suggested using 12/24/12 characters to play the harder books, Livingstone was the one on my mind mostly, but I realized that it suit Keith Martin books more. Martin's difficulty really went up in his later books to match Livingstone's, but there's still distinct differences. Livingstone tends to be even more stringent on "true path" in that you generally get insta-killed without going down the exact right path with the exact right item. Keith Martin's Book 46 and 51 (and to a lesser degree 58) generally are super-hard, but the path is technically not as narrow. You get punished/penalized for not taking the optimal path and packing lots of quest items, but usually not immediately fatal....except the End Boss(es) are so strong that you might as well be dead if you don't find all the McGauffins to weaken him to a more manageable state. There are still a few must-have-or-die items, but generally not as much as Livingstone. In that regard, Martin is slightly easier and certainly benefits more from a 12/24/12 PC. However, Martin also uses more complicated puzzles, ranging from mathematics to alphabets to diagrams to (on one occasion at least) music, which probably makes him more frustrating to certain players than Livingstone.
Either of them probably require max stats. Ian Livingstone's books are all meatgrinders, although some less so than others.
Bloodbones, from what I heard, still suffers from the difficulty factor like the older books...probably because it is an older book, written back when the old series was coming to an end and only published much later. I haven't played through it too thoroughly myself, though, so not as familiar with it.
Oh yeah, Bloodbones was the one that was in development hell for so long. I'd be fairly interested in that one.
I've made the comment about how his books are all not really suitable for 1-time playthrough, and that opinion still stands, but there're varying degrees of difficulty between those too. The two books co-written with Steve Williams (FF32 and 42) stick closer to a conventional design format, but the 2 written by Paul alone throw the basic format out of the window. On the whole, his books are difficult with regards to finding the true path and figuring out the plot, but Crimson Tide and Magehunter are pretty demanding on your stats, too (although the latter in a most unusual way - it punishes characters with HIGH initial Skill and Stamina).
Is Crimson Tide the one that requires you to fight a like SKILL 12 opponent when it is entirely possible to have a SKILL of 1? I haven't read it but I remember there being some FF book that did that. I kind of want to go through that one just because it's so insane.
Luke Sharp
That description kind of reminds me of Andrew Chapman (when the latter actually writes in his FF books.) Does Sharp have anything as balls-off-the-wall as Cephalo Squirrels?
One book I really miss is FF44 (Legend of the Shadow Warriors), because Stephen Hand has IMO a very good record (Moonrunner & Dead of Night). If any of you have that and don't mind running it I'd love the chance to play that!
Alas, I don't have it.
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Post by angelfromanotherpin »

Darth Rabbitt wrote:Is Crimson Tide the one that requires you to fight a like SKILL 12 opponent when it is entirely possible to have a SKILL of 1?
It did, but it was an editing error.

Crimson Tide is one of those books that has a great premise and kind of terrible execution. You're a kid whose village is atrocitized and to get best ending you have to walk a path between being consumed by rage and just withdrawing from the world entirely. But it turns out that path is a tightrope, because there's no tolerance for error, and by error I mean making the wrong blind choice. It is absolutely meant to be scummed until you find the single correct path, which is a great shame, because it seems like the sort of thing which could easily have had multiple equally valid satisfactory endings which would have been great.
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Post by Darth Rabbitt »

Kind of like Creature of Havoc, then?
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Post by Mr Shine »

I do have Legend of the Shadow Warriors and will run it if you guys like.
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Post by ashimbabbar »

I vote for Curse of the Mummy, the earlier non-nerfed version if possible.

It IS hard but I think the ambiance rocks.
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Post by SGamerz »

Darth Rabbitt wrote:That description kind of reminds me of Andrew Chapman (when the latter actually writes in his FF books.) Does Sharp have anything as balls-off-the-wall as Cephalo Squirrels?
Hmmm.....I admit I don't have much memory of Chapman's books, even though I read all of them. I think it's partly because I'm one of those in the camp that was generally less interested in the Sci-Fi titles. Some of them start to grow on me as I got older (Robot Commando). Were those squirrels in question from FF12? I didn't go back to it much after I read it over a decade ago. I think Seas of Blood is the only Chapman book I'm relatively familiar with.

I just realized Chapman is one of the few multi-book authors whose books have all been done here (along with Steve Jackson #2 and Peter Darvill-Evans....I'm certainly not surprised by these last two).
Darth Rabbitt wrote:Either of them probably require max stats. Ian Livingstone's books are all meatgrinders, although some less so than others.
Sure, not disagreeing, but what I was saying was that for Livingstone you generally need more than high stats. If you lack even 1 of the 10+ plot coupons in Trial of Champions or Crypt of the Sorcerer you're a goner no matter how high your stats are. Whereas if you miss a few of the shiny weapon/armour/plot coupon in FF58 or 46 you're probably dead, but you still have a gambler's chance (with very poor odds) if your stats are sky-high and you have some lucky dice. Keith Marin books do contain must-have plot coupons too, but not as many as Livingstone....he just has more you-probably-need-them-badly-later quest items.
angelfromanotherpin wrote:
Darth Rabbitt wrote:Is Crimson Tide the one that requires you to fight a like SKILL 12 opponent when it is entirely possible to have a SKILL of 1?
It did, but it was an editing error.
Even taking that into regards, the opponent is more or less equivalent to a SKILL 12 opponent in a normal book, since the PC's SKILL can't be higher than 6 at the time. Since it's a mandatory SKILL 6 opponent, the PC still needs to roll a SKILL of 5-6 to have any real chance of getting past that.
Mr Shine wrote:I do have Legend of the Shadow Warriors and will run it if you guys like.
Well, I requested for it, so you know you have at least one player on board.

Seems like there's quite a bit of enthusiasm for the harder books, so I'll see about running one of those. So the next question is....which type of difficulty do we tackle first? There's as Darth put it, the "meat-grinders" in which highest possible stats are recommended. Then there are the "plot-maze" types that requires a lot of doubling back and restarts because you miss something useful earlier/essential and don't really know where you missed them.

(Technically, amonst the meatgrinders are also a number of masochistic masterpieces (Livingstone and early Jonathan Green), which is a combination of BOTH above.)

Meatgrinders:

FF9: Caverns of the Snow Witch
FF21: Trial of Champions
FF26: Crypt of the Sorcerer
FF46: Tower of Destruction (replay)
FF51: Island of the Undead
FF53: Spellbreaker
FF54: Legend of Zagor
FF58: Revenge of the Vampire (Note - major bug issues make it a meatgrinder if you play by the rules)
FF59: Curse of the Mummy

Plot-mazes:

FF10: House of Hell (but also needs optimal stat in one area)
FF13: Freeway Fighter
FF17: Appointment with F.E.A.R.
FF32: Slaves of the Abyss
FF42: Black Vein Prophecy (Note: special stat condition needed. The game is unwinnable with maximum LUCK and high chance of failure with high LUCK.)
FF47: The Crimson Tide (Technically can be considered a meatgrinder too, although it's mainly ONE mandatory fight that's the killer)
FF49: Siege of Sardath
FF57: Magehunter (another iffy one with stat conditions: DON'T play this with max SKILL and STAMINA!)

There' a third category - "Screwed by random chance/dice":

FF23: Masks of Mayhem
FF28: Phantoms of Fear
FF30: Chasms of Malice
FF36: Armies of Death (This also fits under the above categories...but there's a major plot coupon where you need a 50% random die roll to obtain, so I put that under here)

Once we've decided on a category I'll re-set the polls with the list of books in that "basket". :)
Last edited by SGamerz on Tue Mar 29, 2016 10:39 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Sirocco »

I like Legend of Zagor. It even had a board game created after it. :mrgreen:

I don't own nearly as many FF books as you guys -- maybe half a dozen, and I've played another half dozen or so. (I was more a Joe Dever fan in my youth.) So I can't really weigh in with my preference.

But I do like castle crawls like LoZ, so there you have it.
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Post by Darth Rabbitt »

SGamerz wrote:Hmmm.....I admit I don't have much memory of Chapman's books, even though I read all of them. I think it's partly because I'm one of those in the camp that was generally less interested in the Sci-Fi titles. Some of them start to grow on me as I got older (Robot Commando). Were those squirrels in question from FF12? I didn't go back to it much after I read it over a decade ago. I think Seas of Blood is the only Chapman book I'm relatively familiar with.
Yeah. Space Assassin in particular is one of those books that is pretty sparsely written for the most part with occasional flashes of clever writing (I'm pretty fond of the robot captain that is becoming self-aware and basically asks if you think it could be a character in your head--which is of course what the robot is to the reader). It feels like it was a 200 section book that was stretched out to 400 and IIRC that's exactly what it was. I won't defend the maze planet at all (that should have been the coolest thing ever--a planet contained in a giant ship. As-is it's basically the maze portion of Warlock of Firetop Mountain: technically sound but boring.)
I just realized Chapman is one of the few multi-book authors whose books have all been done here (along with Steve Jackson #2 and Peter Darvill-Evans....I'm certainly not surprised by these last two).
I ran all of those (except US Steve's Robot Commando) and mostly in Chapman's case it's that I had all of his books on hand. Space Assassin is very LP friendly and Rings of Kether is decent. Seas of Blood is just too cool conceptually to not run (although it suffers a bit in implementation).
SGamerz wrote:Sure, not disagreeing, but what I was saying was that for Livingstone you generally need more than high stats. If you lack even 1 of the 10+ plot coupons in Trial of Champions or Crypt of the Sorcerer you're a goner no matter how high your stats are. Whereas if you miss a few of the shiny weapon/armour/plot coupon in FF58 or 46 you're probably dead, but you still have a gambler's chance (with very poor odds) if your stats are sky-high and you have some lucky dice. Keith Marin books do contain must-have plot coupons too, but not as many as Livingstone....he just has more you-probably-need-them-badly-later quest items.
Yeah, that's true. The easiest Livingstone book in regards to plot coupons that I'm aware of (Island of the Lizard King) requires one of two (a monkey or a fire sword.)
Seems like there's quite a bit of enthusiasm for the harder books, so I'll see about running one of those. So the next question is....which type of difficulty do we tackle first?
Out of the ones listed below I'd be most interested in Trial of Champions, Legend of Zagor, Freeway Fighter, or The Crimson Tide. Or finally finishing Tower of Destruction.
Pseudo Stupidity wrote:This Applebees fucking sucks, much like all Applebees. I wanted to go to Femboy Hooters (communism).
SGamerz
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Post by SGamerz »

Seems like there are more preferred titles mentioned from the meatgrinder list. I'll be setting up a new poll with the titles in that list for my next upcoming LP.
Last edited by SGamerz on Fri Apr 01, 2016 9:48 am, edited 1 time in total.
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