The Gaming Den

Came across this forum while googling "The Shattered Realm" and been reading LPs here and thought it might be fun to try one myself, if anyone would be interested.

There's an odd overlap between FF books I happen to own and ones that have already been LP'ed here, but there's still "Midnight Rogue", where you play a young thief in the city of Blacksand. IIRC, a nicely straightforwards adventure, with a minimum of getting angry and hurling the book across the room, that I managed to finish myself with a minimum of creative rules interpretation.

Alternatively, there's "Amulet of the Salkti" a Tunnels and Trolls adventure. Memorable for being short (T&T seemed to like putting 2 short 200 section adventures in a book, rather than the usual one longer 400 section ones) and with 2 possible good endings, one much closer to the start than the other (which can make it even shorter). Few arbitrary insta-kills, but the character you have rules for creating isn't really high level enough for the adventure (and doesn't specify what level the authors think is right).

Or there's "Challenge of the Magi", the first of the Duelmaster series, which would require two sets of players and two threads. You play as mages chasing each other around a bunch of different lands accessed by magic (somewhat similar to FFs "Spectral Stalkers"). I really liked these, though there are some balance issues.

EDIT: I'm in Australia, which means I'd likely be reading and replying at odd hours compared to some people.

My vote's for Salkti. It's been forever since I've seen a T&T gamebook, and they had a rep for being crazy in a good way.

I'd be into the mage vs mage one.

SlyJohnny wrote:I'd be into the mage vs mage one.

Find at least one opponent and I'll run it if you want.

Anyone else down?

How bad are the balance issues? Is it totally asymetric?

SlyJohnny wrote:How bad are the balance issues? Is it totally asymetric?

AFAIK, it's totally symmetric, in the sense that both players have exactly the same options, both in chargen and during play. Apparently the delta of effectiveness on those options is bigger than you might like; I never noticed, so I couldn't say.

SlyJohnny wrote:Anyone else down?

How bad are the balance issues? Is it totally asymetric?

There's 15 spells to choose from, each with a brief description that doesn't really say what the effects are. You find out when you cast them at your opponent. Some of them tend to be more powerful than others, and there's an instant win combo. I'm guessing this wasn't intended, the creators probably just wanted the spells to work differently and didn't realise the implications.

Each player only gets to choose 6 of the 15 spells, and each spell has a colour that can only be use in 3 of the 16 sections, and in 6 of them no magic will work.

So if players don't know what's overpowered, they are likely to never actually find out (at least in a single play through0. Alternatively, if players were warned in advance, they could try avoiding places where it would be an issue.

Or the rules could be tweaked a little.

Ok, thinking of doing another LP, wanted to see what books people would be interested in.

I've got a few FF books not done here yet, notably Midnight Rogue and Magehunter.

Also, the Demonspawn series (a fantasy series by the same person as Grailquest, but more adult) and Falcon (a sci-fi time-travel and space thing which I liked, though leaning more to "Choose your own adventure" than FF).

Falcon would be interesting

I'd be in favor of Midnight Rogue, personally.

Like I said before, I have almost all the FF books (including the 2 named here), so I'd personally prefer to play another series that I'm not too familiar with.

I'm fine with any of them honestly. Falcon is good by me. Midnight Rogue was just the first to catch my eye.