Next Fighting Fantasy LP - Unexplored Authors

[SGamerz]

The last time I run a FF LP here, I narrowed the options down to Keith Martin's books after I learned of his passing and ended up hosting the (previously unfinished) Tower of Destruction. So this time I thought I'd narrow it down by authors again....more specifically, I wanted to see if there's any interest in trying the books of authors that we've mostly been ignoring.

The poll isn't completely accurate when it comes to authors whose books we've never attempted: Marc Gascoigne and Martin Allen are missing because I either never got or misplaced the one book they've written (Battleblade Warrior for the former, Sky Lord for latter). Steve Williams technically ought to be listed as well, but both of his books are co-written with Mason (FF32 & 42), so I think all his books are covered anyway. Robin Waterfield technically shouldn't belong there because there's been an LP of one of his books (Rebel Planet), but his books have largely not been attempted either, so I included him.

Any interest in trying any of them?

New house rules on stat-rolling for future FF LPs

For the past few FF LPs, I've been running them with Max-stats PCs (12/24/12) as a way to deal with extremely difficult books). Those work well for books written by Ian Livingstone and Keith Martin, but the difficulty of the books don't always lie in high-stat enemies and passing mandatory stat-tests. A few of these books in my poll actually doom PCs that start with maximum SKILL or LUCK or make them more difficult for such characters, so moving forward, I'd be using a method that I read on one of the blogs that does gamebook playthroughs: manually assigning rolled numbers to chosen stats. Instead of always rolling for SKILL, STAMINA and LUCK in sequence like I used to, I'd just roll 4 dice to start and let the players vote on which dice's result to assign to which stat.

[Thaluikhain]

So, Graeve Davis did Midnight Rogue, which I already own. OTOH, I remember it as being a good one, and a decent return to Blacksand.

Keith P. Phillips did Siege of Sardath, which I think I am totally unfamiliar with.

Robin Waterfield did Masks of Mayhem, Phantoms of Fear and Deathmoor. I own the middle one, but never finished it, all 3 seem interesting.

Luke Sharp did Star Strider, Chasms of Malice, Daggers of Darkness and Fangs of Fury. Don't think I'm familiar with those, but they don't really grab me.

Paul Mason did Slaves of the Abyss, Black Vein Prophecy, The Crimson Tide and Magehunter. I have the last of those, never finished it, and have heard the second isn't great. But all four of those seem inventive and weird, so I think I'll go for him.

He also did "The Riddling Reaver", which was started but not finished as a game here, and I own and rather like, so there's that.

[Mr Shine]

Siege of Sardath is one of my favourites, but it does require going a very specific path to win, and has a couple of early game "fuck you"s that don't materialise until right at the end.

Luke Sharp is just an embarrassment to FF and all his books should be burned in a fire.

I like all of Paul Mason's books, (possibly not including Magehunter, don't really remember it). Crimson Tide has a great metapuzzle, but needs pretty much exactly correct play to make it apparent. BVP is another one where the winning path is on very tight rails.

Midnight Rogue is very linear once you leave Blacksand. Also, If you don't make the right first choice you lose by the RAW for no good reason.

I'd say any of the Waterfield ones would be good, although Masks of Mayhem has at least one dice roll with a less than 50% chance, but is essential, I would cheese that particular roll.

[angelfromanotherpin]

Midnight Rogue is quite good, although it's surprisingly down-to-earth for an FF book.

Siege of Sardath is also one of my favorites. It felt like exactly what an FF book should be, a puzzle that took many attempts but the content was so entertaining that I didn't mind. It probably hasn't aged well.

I have heard good things about Phantoms of Fear, but I know that Deathmoor is the worst sort of 'only one path' design.

Chasms of Malice will random DNS you even if you pick the optimal path.

Black Vein Prophecy and Crimson Tide share a setting, and both have really good high concepts that are let down by baffling design. BVP was kind of like Siege of Sardath, except the content was intriguing rather than entertaining, and you had to fail an early roll to ever succeed. Crimson Tide is 'only one path' bullshit.

[Darth Rabbitt]

I've read Midnight Rogue, Daggers of Darkness and Fangs of Fury, having got them a while back. I enjoyed all of those. And while Graeme Davis hasn't written any other FF books Luke Sharp has (although from what's been said in this thread those others aren't very good). I can't say I'm not curious as to Sharp's other two books but not as much as some of the other authors.

Of the others I've heard of Crimson Tide and Black Vein Prophecy as being "good concept, poor implementation" and it seems that that's fairly accurate from what's been said in this thread so far. Siege of Sardath sounds familiar but I know I haven't read it. Maybe I just heard someone mention it in an earlier thread here.

All in all, I think I'm tied between Robin Waterfield and Paul Mason. If I vote Mason that would tie the two. I'll do that, but also consider me a tie breaker in favor of Waterfield if no one else votes.

[SGamerz]

So, with the tie in the votes and going by what I'm reading from the posts, I'll do a Waterfield book first and probably a Mason one some time after that.