[LP] DestinyQuest 2: The Heart of Fire

[Whiysper]

Le poke - so what's the third book like? In what ways is it better than the first two? And in what ways is it bad enough for you to not want to run it? .

[Darth Rabbitt]

I’ll write up the good/bad on it soon, probably by the weekend (but I don’t want to make any promises.) I didn’t do it sooner because the lack of response made me think that no one was interested in hearing more about these books. As for why I’m not running it, it’s because it’s just as wordy as its predecessors and I can’t write up all that text again.

A fourth book has come out (and I have a copy) but I haven’t finished it yet.

[Whiysper]

Heh - yeah, appreciate the point on the verbosity, these are more game-BOOKS than GAME-books, aren't they .

Definitely preferred them to the standard fighting fantasy fare, I must confess - while the worldbuilding was odd in places, actually having it there without having to follow the whole series was nice.

[Darth Rabbitt]

Heh - yeah, appreciate the point on the verbosity, these are more game-BOOKS than GAME-books, aren't they .

In this interview he basically says that's his ideal.

Definitely preferred them to the standard fighting fantasy fare, I must confess - while the worldbuilding was odd in places, actually having it there without having to follow the whole series was nice.

Oh, agreed.

So, book 3:

The Eye of Winter's Fury actually solves a lot of problems from the earlier books. Lorcan doesn't appear (he is mentioned though, and the "man in the shroud" nonsense remains unanswered.) The book actually has penalties for defeat (although they are very lenient, and certain items/events can remove them.)

So you play a specific character: Prince Arran, the younger brother of Prince Lazlo (the Batman expy who trained Patio as a rogue and got murdered offscreen by the Wiccans in the epilogue). He's intended to be killed in a coup d'état by the Church, but the Archdemon Patio saves him. I like to imagine this is because Patio feels he owes the brother of the guy who trained him, but the only thing stated for sure is that he knows he needs his help to stop the BBEG (which honestly Patio doesn't do much with other than help out a couple of times. He doesn't even join the final battle). He does seem to sympathize with Arran though.

Long story short, Arran ends up becoming some sort of undead creature (that's him on the cover) and flees north, where he falls in with the Nords Skards, a pseudo-Norse culture. He ends up becoming Dragonborn I actually forget what the Skard title is for their spiritual destined hero who absorbs dragon souls spirit power and fight the world-eating monster Alduin Jorgamundr.

Skyrim jokes aside (and to be fair "chosen one who defeats monster" isn't a super new story, nor is a pseudo-Norse fantasy setting), the plot actually works well. Arran is given a real backstory and motivation. This means that whenever we're told how our character feels about stuff, it doesn't feel forced. More importantly, since Arran has a set motivation, there's a lot less stuff that feels like railroading asshattery. The events more or less flow naturally into each other (there's nothing like Virgil fucking up in order to allow there to be a third act. There are actually only two acts in the book, although the prologue is long enough that you could probably call it a first act).

The book shares many flaws with the rest of the series (and unfortunately has another sequel bait epilogue despite the author being unclear if he'd get another book out, although at least Arran's story is more satisfactorily resolved than Trellis' or Patio's) but it actually addresses problems from them. As I mentioned last post, I haven't gotten too far in the fourth book but I'm actually cautiously optimistic about it (just burned out on DestinyQuest from the LP).

[Whiysper]

That does sound positive - I may have to see about getting my mitts on it .

Again, thanks for running this one .