392 lines
36 KiB
Plaintext
392 lines
36 KiB
Plaintext
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Episode: 2266
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Title: HPR2266: Gamebooks: Lone Wolf
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Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2266/hpr2266.mp3
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Transcribed: 2025-10-19 00:37:25
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---
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This in HPR episode 2,266 entitled Gamebooks,
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Loan Wolf and in part of the series, Tabletop Gaming.
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It is hosted by Klaatu and in about 43 minutes long
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and Karimaklin flag.
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The summary is Klaatu talks about the Loan Wolf solo RPG series.
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This episode of HPR is brought to you by AnanasThost.com.
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Get 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code HPR15.
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That's HPR15.
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Better web hosting that's honest and fair at AnanasThost.com.
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Hi everyone, my name is Klaatu, this is the attacker public radio
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and this is an entry into my Tabletop gaming series.
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Which by the way, this probably doesn't need to be said, but maybe it doesn't need to be said.
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This is in no way a series owned by me, so if you have any desire whatsoever to contribute to this series
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or to add a cool game that you have found into this series, you are more than welcome to.
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You don't have to ask HPR Admin for permission, you don't have to ask me for permission.
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This is a completely, this is not in any way, there's no lesson plan here, there's no,
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I don't have an overarching idea of how this all needs to go.
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If you have a game that you want to talk about, throw it into this series in that way,
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people will be able to just kind of go to the gaming series and find all of our gaming chats.
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I mean you don't have to, I'm just putting that up, I'm offering it up to HPR
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to feel free to use the Tabletop gaming series as a label rather than treating it as an actual
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series with an A, B, C kind of linear flow. Okay, so that was that. So in this episode,
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I guess I'm kind of starting a, almost a sub-series here about gaming books and you might think
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what's a gaming book. And a gaming book is a thing that I associate with, it's kind of like
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the 80s, pretty much, that's probably not even correct, but that's the world that I have imagined
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everything existing in, is that gaming books were huge in the 80s. I don't know why I made that
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choice, that decision, but that's my impression. And to be honest, some degree I think I might be
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right, gaming books at some point fell out of fashion. I think the point at which that was
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is the point when video games started taking the stage. I mean, video games were around,
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but I mean, video games started getting good, you know, like early 90s, right? I mean, some
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people would argue, no, no, the 80s, the early 80s, or the mid 80s, whatever. But I mean,
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let's face it, really, the 90s were when video games actually became a thing. You started
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getting the point and click adventures. You started getting really cool platformers with
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actual stories rather than just sort of the put a quarter into the arcade machine and just keep
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playing the same five levels with some, you know, with a faster timing. So at that point, when
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people could start gaming on their computers, I think that the gaming books kind of became
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almost obsolete because a gaming book pretty much serves or can serve one important
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purpose which would be to enable someone to do a solo game. So if you don't have a group of two
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or well, not two, well, maybe two, you know, three or four friends gathered together and you
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want to do some dungeon crawling, you sort of couldn't do that. But gaming books came around and
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put you into a world where actually, yes, you could do that. You could, you could, you could go
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through a whole narrative just by yourself and it really felt like a game. It was a gaming
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experience for one person. And that's really cool. And I kind of started looking for this not because
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I thought, oh, I should check out some gaming books. I just had this vague memory of this book
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series called the white warrior and the black baron. And maybe some of you have heard of it.
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But when I was a kid, I found this, these two books. And one was called the white, the white warrior
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and one was called the black baron. And I mean, that wasn't like the color of their skin. That was
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just their color of their clothes. It wasn't like, it wasn't racist. It was just, it was just
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their clothes. And there was actually another pair of books called the ruby something and the
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emerald something. I like a wizard, I think. But I didn't know about those at the time. I just
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found out about those later. So yeah, I found these, these books and they looked cool, you know,
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because they had like the fantasy art on them. And I was always really into that. So I thought,
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well, I'm going to look at these. So I got them and looked through them and they were just every
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page was a corridor, like a first person view of a corridor. And that was intriguing. So I kind
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of tried to figure it out. I mean, I don't know why I never thought to just read the instructions,
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which were right there in the front of the book. But as a kid, I wasn't super patient with that sort
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of thing. So I kind of like made up my own sort of way of going through this. And there was a
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lot of confusion for me as a kid, because it was sort of the actual books as it turns out. And I
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now know this were both single player and two player. So it was really quite, quite interesting.
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You could, you could either just buy one book and play through it as in single player mode. And
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the way that you do that is you look at the picture. You start at whatever page it tells you to
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start at in the instructions. And you're dropped off in this castle or a maze or something. And you're
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supposed to, in single player mode, mind you, you're supposed to find all of the treasure chests
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around the maze and answer a riddle at each treasure chest. And if you answer the riddle,
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then you get an item, you get some loot to write down on your notepad. And then you continue. And
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if you get all nine treasures and you get out alive and everything, then you survive. If not,
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then you lose. So the other mode to play in was two player mode. And that's if you and a friend
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each had like, if your friend had a black bear in book and you had the white, the white warrior book,
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then you could actually, this is really cool. You could, you'd both start on some page again,
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whatever it tells you in the instructions in the front. And you guys can walk through the corridor
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together, but separately. And if either one of you sees the other one of you, then you go into
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combat mode. And so sometimes you would actually, you know, when you turn a page, you would actually
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see your opponent. And sometimes you would see him head on because you both see each other.
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Sometimes you would see your opponent just from like the side or from the back because he doesn't
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see you yet. And you can go attack him, you know, all kinds of cool stuff. It was really cool.
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And the two player modifier call correctly has nothing to do with treasure chests. You're just
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supposed to kill each other. It's just a find search and destroy mission. And of course,
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the books, you know, the intro to each book gives you each of you your own motivation on why you
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need to kill this person, you know, like in the white warrior one, the black baron is the evil
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person who has come and conquered your land or whatever. Whereas in the black baron one, then the
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white warrior is the evil one who has, well, maybe you would, well, yeah, who's here to steal your
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treasure or something. I don't know. So yeah, it's, you know, you're always playing the good guy
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from your own perspective. And so it was a really, really, really neat idea. And for whatever
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reason, I was just kind of sitting around playing Dungeonier. And I just thought, you know, what
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would be cool is to hunt that book down. I mean, someone on lines got to know what that book series
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was called. And it didn't take me very long to be honest. I was really surprised at how, just
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how quickly I found it. It turns out that the mastermind behind this little four book series
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was called, you know, it was, was named Joe Devar or Joe Devar, DEV ER anyway. And sadly, he
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just passed away two months ago. I mean, it was like just at the turn of the, the new year,
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he passed away. And I know this now because I'm on a mailing list with some people who also
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are sort of Joe Devar, Devar fans. And that's how I found out. But anyway, so Joe was this,
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was a musician in the 70s. And he did that for a while. He was a musician for a while. Until in
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1977, he made the mistake of playing Dungeons and Dragons. And it had just come out. You know,
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this is a new game. And he played it. And he was completely blown away. Quit his whole, you know,
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musician as a day job thing and became a game designer. And he made his first game called,
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well, he won, I guess, he, I guess he was a professional like Dungeons and Dragons player or
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something. Because in 1982, he won the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons World Championship. So he kind of
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became a big, big deal in the gaming world, I guess at that point. That's when he quit and
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devoted his time to writing and doing game design. And the first work that he, that he
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came out with publicly anyway, was flight from the dark. So that's the book I'm going to be
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talking about today, although it's in a series. It's a whole series of books. So the world that
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Joe Dever, Dever, created is known as, or the series I should say is known as the lone wolf series.
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And the lone wolf series begins with flight from the dark. It has about 28 books in it or maybe 20.
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And then there's another series that he did about eight books in that one. So he's done a lot of
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these books. So you've got plenty to choose from. But, but let's talk about just this, this one. We'll
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focus on this one. Because they're all basically the same, you know, that it's all the same mechanic.
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And so flight from the dark starts out with you being a Kai Warrior, K-A-I. You're a Kai Warrior,
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which I gather is a little bit like a samurai. You know, you live in this, this monastery with
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other Kai Warriors. And you're young and you're a new Kai Warrior. So you're not very skilled.
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You don't know a whole lot. One day you're out wandering the forest or the fields or something.
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And you come back to see a black cloud forming from the from the south from the southern regions of
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the land where an ancient evil once dwelt. And now of course the darkness is returning. And not
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only is it returning, but it comes straight for the Kai Warrior monastery and slaughters everyone
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there. Luckily you were out at lunch at the time and didn't get slaughtered. So it's, yeah, it's
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pretty much the standard fantasy opening if you've ever played any fantasy, you know, game where your
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main drive is revenge and that sort of thing. So it's a pretty pretty standard setup. At least you're
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not, you know, going after a prophecy or something. But yeah, it's standard setup, but it's good.
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It's fine. It works. Now the cool thing is once you sort of find this out in the book,
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you are dropped into the role playing part, the part where you get to actually be in the game.
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So you look at the the body is and you discover some some basic supplies like a sword maybe. I
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forget. I think a small satchel of gold pieces, that sort of thing. And then the book drops out of
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the story for a moment and kind of gives you or the book rather drops out of the story and gives you
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the rules of the game. And the rules are fairly simple. You get to keep anything that you find,
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but you have to write it down on a notebook. You have, you know, you will you will choose a random
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number and you'll be endowed with endurance, charisma or strength and health or possibly even
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less than that. It's it's really simple stats. It's not a whole lot of stats to keep track of,
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which is quite appealing. And I'll probably get to why that's appealing later in this series.
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So you don't have a whole lot to manage, but you know, it's it's just really it's your health
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and your strength and then whatever you pick up along the way or or lose along the way.
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In addition to all that, you get some special powers. You get to choose, I think initially two
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powers from sort of what you were trained in as a kai warrior. So those are things like camouflage
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or hunting or sixth sense or tracking or healing weapon skill and then you get to choose like what
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weapons specifically you have skill in. A mind shield, which is kind of like a, you know, mental
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strength against creatures with with with mental powers or the the the other way around mind
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blast animal kinship you can talk to animals mind over matter you can move stuff with your mind
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that sort of thing. So once you sort of create your character, I mean your character is always your
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character, but you know you're you're you're going to be the kai warrior dude and that's who you are
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and that's fine. But once you once you sort of get get all of your stats and gather all of your
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your equipment, you start reading the book and the book is basically if you've ever played a text
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adventure in a on a computer, it's like a text adventure except it's on an e reader or or whatever
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format you find this book in. I just have it on my e reader, but it's it's available also as html
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and pdf's and things like that so you can just read it on your computer too.
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The it it sounds simple and and to give you an idea of how it goes you know it's just kind of like
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you're walking along a road and then you come to a fork in the road and you can go either left or
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to right if you want to go left go to page 35 you want to go right go to page 85 that sort of thing.
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So it sounds kind of like a choose your own adventure right? Well it's not it's not really like a
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choose your own adventure or maybe it is, but maybe I've just always read the wrong choose your
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own adventures. The ones that I've read like as a kid were always super simple and the story is
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all kind of boiled down to like 15 pages you know it was it was always kind of like oh these are
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yeah this this chunk is that one adventure and there's really no there's not really ever any
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sense that two adventure two paths would ever cross. This this book is unbelievably complex.
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You can actually look at a GNU plot or similar flow chart of all the different paths that you
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could possibly take in this and all books in fact because they're all they've all been transcribed
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into XML so some clever person has rendered all of that into flow charts and you can see like
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the paths and how they cross and how they intersect and how they diverge it's amazing it is stunning.
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I have played a flight from the dark or I played several of the books so far not once not necessarily
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twice some in some cases three times and never have they never have I had the same you know I've
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always felt like I was on a different book like to to an astonishing degree I'm not saying like
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you know how sometimes sometimes a DVD back in the day would would come out with like the
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director's cut you know and you'd be watching and suddenly you'd sort of twitch and you'd be like
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you know what isn't this supposed to be a director's cut I'm not saying anything different from this
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and then there's like one little scene that's like oh that was different that was the director's
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cut right there no this is not like that this is like a completely different experience every single
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read through I'm sure you to hit the ceiling at some point but in terms of of really feeling like
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it's a different story between the fact that you've got you know 11-100 different paths to go
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along um you also have I mean you can play it you know your your characters always the same but you
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can play the character totally differently either in your choices you know if you're if you're
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into RPG then you could give your character a little bit more of a backstory and kind of just kind
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of decide that that character's not going to you know I don't know ever run from a fight or
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where that character hates animals or that hate that that character never goes left at crossroads
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you know whatever like you can play it differently each time but then you also have different powers
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that you can choose from so you can actually leverage the different powers on a different playthrough
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and it will it will play differently um a couple of times well the way that the powers work is
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that like let's say that you've got camouflage well let's say you've got hunting a billet no hunting
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tracking let's say you have tracking ability so at at some points you might reach a crossroads
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for instance and I keep using a crossroad because it's an easy analogy to make but you reach a
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crossroad and it says you can go left page 35 right page 85 or if you have tracking turn to page 99
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ah so if you had chosen tracking then you would go to 99 and it would tell you you're seeing
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you're you see certain things on the road that make it look like most traffic has gone right
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and you you detect a foul odor from the left you know so you're you're more likely to go right
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or whatever um or or if you have animal kinsmen ship you know you might be walking along and
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they'll be a crow along the side of the road and you think that would be cool to talk to that
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crow and then you look at the choices and it turns out yes you can either continue or if you have
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animal kinsmen ship you can talk to the crow on page whatever now the flip side of
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that in terms of sort of the the one of the weaker points of the books I guess would be that your
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your powers obviously the book is not fully interacted right I mean it is a script you're
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following a script so if you're walking along and you see something that you think would be great
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to do and the book doesn't give you that option then there's no way to do that um you you know
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if if there's a horse pulling a cart and you think I should talk to that horse to see what's
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going on in the cart um and the book says that you can either get in the cart or you can keep
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walking then those are your two choices obviously so that's you know it's a little bit of a constraint
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in terms of what you you might be used to in an open world video game yeah or it might not be
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just kind of depends um and certainly one could argue that in open world quote unquote open
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video games frequently it only really has the illusion of that anyway right I mean like yes you
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might be able to click on the horse and talk to the horse but if the right if the authors didn't
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think to put anything interesting in that horse's mouth um then all the horse is going to say is
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some kind of like witty remark that the other horse an hour ago also said and that you know you
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it so so there's the illusion of like oh my gosh I can do anything but I mean it's still all a
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script and and the same with the book it's it's scripted it's it's a book um that you can that
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you can play through so in addition to having special powers that kind of make your choices a
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little bit more interesting you also uh do get to collect items along the way and those items will
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come up later in in the books so you know you might find some armor that you can wear well that
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will help you in combat you might find a gemstone that you pick up that could maybe later
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be handy to bargain with when you meet um a wizard or something you know it's it's it's completely
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or it may burn your hand because the oops it came out of the stomach of an ogre and there's stomach
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acid all right all over it you know it really it depends like you you never exactly know
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what you are what you're in for uh in this book and and that's really really great because it's
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it just makes it uh it just makes it so completely um full of variety obviously it's it's just it's
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it's really it's really astonishing how how full of variety they they manage to to make it now of
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course the the other thing that sets it apart from from a choose your own adventure is is the combat
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system and that was that's what makes it I guess really feel like a like an RPG because I mean
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most RPGs maybe you don't get into combat that often but then again you know you usually have
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to achieve something right you have to get over you have to do something so in the book you have
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a lot of combat I mean not too much there's a lot of exploration and that's one of its strengths
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I think um some some game books I've I've I've tried have relied very heavily on especially
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single player um have relied very heavily on combat because that's kind of like the easy thing
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to do you know lead the player to uh corner and attack them and they'll have to to do combat and
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that's kind of like that's the easy way to make it a game or feel like a game um without having to
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write you know a 200 page novel that's not even contiguous 200 pages but this this one really
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does balance it quite well because it he did he he wrote like the series of 20 books or whatever it
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is plus eight of another series um I'm just rounding up and down on those numbers but yeah I see
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he's written a lot so you get a lot you get a great sense of the world you actually you're you're
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exploring you know like part of the part of the book is the exploration it's it's it's it's
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wondering what would happen if you went down that path even though it's kind of dark and dreary
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you might find something interesting and you could get some cool loot that you could then use
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against the undead that you're inevitably going to find when you go up the road the other way
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so yeah it's it's there's a lot of exploration in this there's a lot of lore you know like
|
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finding out about what populates this world uh who who who who got who has history in one area and
|
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|
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what wizard uh has has been around here and what he's doing now and has he been captured and he
|
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just it's it's it's amazing you know what cultures are over here what cultures are there um it's
|
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just it's a lot of fun it's a lot of fun I'm trying to sort of tell you how fun it is without
|
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|
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at the same time being too repetitive so the combat here's how the combat works it's it's it is
|
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probably one of the best combat systems I've ever experienced in a solo game ever um pathfinder card
|
||
|
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game is a close second but I think this one really really gets it right so the way that it works
|
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is that you have a combat skill your character has a combat skill and you get that combat skill
|
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when you roll initially when you're playing you know when you're creating your character but you
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also get that um you also get that uh that skill boosted possibly by either a special power like
|
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if you had chosen a weapon uh weapon mastery in a certain thing and then you found that certain
|
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thing like if you said my character is really good with long swords um and then you end up finding
|
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a long sword hey guess what you're you just got a two bonus on your combat skill and if that long
|
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sword is also uh blessed with you know some kind of power of good from some ancient wizard or
|
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|
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something then hey you might have an extra two points just from the sword itself so the sword has
|
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|
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a plus two you are good with swords that you have a plus two plus your natural combat skill is an
|
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eight so you've got eight nine ten eleven twelve twelve and that's that would be good now when you
|
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go into combat of course someone else has a combat skill of their own um so let's say that uh
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let's say that you encounter someone you've got a twelve combat skill and you've you encounter someone
|
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with a ten so they're not bad they're not great they're not bad um so you subtract the combat skill
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of your enemy from from your combat skill to create your combat ratio so uh twelve minus ten is
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two so the combat ratio is is two and from then on you roll for uh what kind of hit you well what
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kind of what kind of battle you've just experienced or what kind of turn you know each turn how how
|
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much damage has been done and this is done in a combat results table and this is where it's
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truly truly brilliant there are two tables one with negative numbers and one with positive numbers
|
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|
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along the top and that's your combat ratio along the top down the side are random numbers uh one
|
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through zero or one through ten I guess so if you roll for instance a um a three so you've got a
|
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|
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three at a combat ratio of two so you would go to go to the positive uh table so zero one two
|
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|
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along the top and then down the it's on the third row so second column third row they're actually
|
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|
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first one and two actually well nevermind so let's call it the second uh the second column third
|
||
|
|
row and it tells you that if that is what you what do you got yet then your um your enemy has
|
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|
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dealt six damage no sorry has uh has received six damage and you have received three damage
|
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|
|
now let's say you roll a seven that's pretty good so again second second column and then seventh
|
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|
|
row in that case your enemy takes ten damage and you only take one damage and so on so if you
|
||
|
|
had let's say you were still at twelve and then you encountered like a big terrible beast with a
|
||
|
|
really really strong combat skill uh let's call it a um like like a 20 so that would set your
|
||
|
|
combat ratio to negative eight that's not good so now you go to your negative table go to the
|
||
|
|
eight column the negative eight column and then you roll let's say you roll a uh four so at a
|
||
|
|
four combat uh hit you take two damage no sorry your enemy takes two damage and you have taken
|
||
|
|
six damage out um and it's not until you roll like a ten on that you have to roll a ten in order to
|
||
|
|
get your enemy deal gets eight damage and you get zero damage done to you so when the combat
|
||
|
|
ratio is lower you're at uh at a disadvantage obviously you know like you're rolling and
|
||
|
|
and you may do some damage but you might get more damage done to you um but if you're at a high
|
||
|
|
ratio then typically you're gonna do more damage but depending on how you roll you may also take
|
||
|
|
damage so it's it's a fantastic way of doing combat and i'll tell you why because you might not
|
||
|
|
you might not see how brilliant that is you might think that that's just sort of a way to do combat
|
||
|
|
but if you've ever played a solo game then you'll know that when you're when you're doing the solo
|
||
|
|
game you're no matter what no matter how good the AI is in in whatever you're playing during the
|
||
|
|
combat you pretty much are playing two characters like there's just no way around that so you have
|
||
|
|
to roll for your enemy and you have to roll for yourself and that that's okay it works
|
||
|
|
but not as well as this because this is one smooth action you calculate your combat ratio and
|
||
|
|
from then on all you do is roll you roll once you roll one d ten and you're good you've got both
|
||
|
|
values of of damage you do the calculations you know you take the points away and then you keep
|
||
|
|
going in combat it seems like a small thing but i but if you play it if you actually play and try
|
||
|
|
to do both calculations yourself it gets really annoying really fast and it because it just slows
|
||
|
|
you down you know you're not only are you are you controlling your opponent which doesn't seem
|
||
|
|
as fun you know it's just like well i'm rolling for myself oh and now i'm rolling for my opponent
|
||
|
|
it's just kind of like wait why am i rolling for my opponent that should that's AI that should be
|
||
|
|
calculated for me and that's what the combat result table does for you it calculates all that stuff
|
||
|
|
figures out how things are going to go and then all you're doing is rolling and you're rolling
|
||
|
|
for essentially you know how well you did in that round and you find out and then you roll again
|
||
|
|
and so it's it's yeah it's it's a brilliant brilliant way it really really works um i i wish
|
||
|
|
i mean i'm probably going to use the result the the combat table in other games in other game
|
||
|
|
books because it's just such a smooth method of doing combat it really really is it's really nice
|
||
|
|
so that is the combat system in a lone wolf series really well worth checking out
|
||
|
|
uh one of the curiosities of the the series is the the way that it has that that it that it
|
||
|
|
it seeks to be completely self-contained so it ensures that if you bought that book you pretty much
|
||
|
|
that's all you need for the game like you're you're good to go so maybe you'll have um
|
||
|
|
maybe you'll have a dice uh a parrot well a die a detain or maybe you won't and if you don't
|
||
|
|
there's a random number table in the back of the book so you can just kind of close your eyes
|
||
|
|
and you run your finger over this table and you stop your finger and you look at where you
|
||
|
|
where you landed and that's that's the number that you rolled i never have used that i i didn't
|
||
|
|
want to use that i didn't feel like my brain would allow me to believe that that was random uh i
|
||
|
|
have my own uh random dice my own random number generator that i mentioned on uh on on the show about
|
||
|
|
the pocket dice roller uh here on hacker public radio but um it it's still cool that he was seeking
|
||
|
|
to to make the book completely self-contained and i think that's um a very admirable goal
|
||
|
|
because you can't i don't think you should assume that people are gonna just automatically have a
|
||
|
|
detain uh and even if they are they may not it might not you know the reading of book it might
|
||
|
|
not be convenient to roll a detain and whenever i say that people look at me funny it's just like
|
||
|
|
why wouldn't you be able to just roll a detain or why wouldn't you be able to just pull out your
|
||
|
|
phone and and roll an emulated dice and it's just kind of like well that's not what i want to do
|
||
|
|
i want to i want the i want the analog experience but i don't want to have to roll a clunky dice
|
||
|
|
around while i'm reading a book people don't understand that but i don't care now the really
|
||
|
|
really cool thing but yet yet another really really cool thing about this series is that the books
|
||
|
|
so the first book flight from the dark is not is it it's not complete it's it it drops you off
|
||
|
|
at whatever goal you you know you achieve at the end of the book uh which i'm not going to tell you
|
||
|
|
for spoiler purposes but you know you're you get to the point where you get to and that's the end
|
||
|
|
of the book and then you if you want to continue that adventure you have to read the next book
|
||
|
|
fire on the water or fire over water something like that fire on the water and so you so it's
|
||
|
|
it's continuous so you're still playing the same character and you can actually level up a little bit
|
||
|
|
you get um since you've already read one book you get two more uh special traits special powers
|
||
|
|
in the second book uh i think you well you get a little bit of a freshener you know a freshen up
|
||
|
|
here and there like you get well obviously your health gets restored but you you get um i think
|
||
|
|
you probably get some some stuff from the you know you get extra stuff extra loot and things but
|
||
|
|
you also get to carry what you've got in the first book over so you're you know it's not it's not
|
||
|
|
like you're resetting it's it's actually a continuous story now the third book is it's it's
|
||
|
|
is it's own book although it does have a couple a couple of things i mean you're still the same
|
||
|
|
character um and there are some things that carry over into it but um it is it's kind of it's a
|
||
|
|
separate thing that happens a little bit after the second book but um the the more you the more you
|
||
|
|
play pretty much the more you advance so you become more and more powerful now the i guess
|
||
|
|
the the thing about that is that i did start to feel like maybe i was maybe a little bit over
|
||
|
|
powered in some parts like because you know they kind of had to keep the book for for new users
|
||
|
|
the the book had to keep everything at the new level but your level three you know by the time
|
||
|
|
you get to the third book so yeah sometimes i felt like i was maybe doing a lot more damage than
|
||
|
|
probably was fair and that said i didn't care i just i still had a ball it was just so fun um and
|
||
|
|
and there is that sort of that satisfaction that comes from just being indomitable you know just
|
||
|
|
like um really powerful and i've earned it and yes i am going to kill all of you quickly so yeah
|
||
|
|
there there's you know i i'll see how far i take that like uh i don't know when in this series
|
||
|
|
your character you know you have to sort of give up that initial character i think i think there
|
||
|
|
might be two one or two more books in this kind of story arc and then from there i believe there's
|
||
|
|
it crosses over to a different story which maybe at that point you reset your character i'm not sure
|
||
|
|
i haven't gotten there yet um but it's um it is a lot of fun and uh it is it's got a story arc
|
||
|
|
and it's got the sense of leveling and character development uh great combat
|
||
|
|
and it's replayable amazingly i mean like really i really thought that after i played it the first
|
||
|
|
time i thought okay i played the first book first time that's i should probably just go onto
|
||
|
|
the second book but something compelled me to try it again because i just thought i you know
|
||
|
|
i played it as a rogue the first time i'm going to play it as a tank the second time and i did
|
||
|
|
that and it was a completely different experience so yes yes yes replayable replayable replayable
|
||
|
|
it is just a treat to experience you have to try it if you are into gaming and especially
|
||
|
|
if you um are into solo gaming because this is this is the way to do it this is the absolute
|
||
|
|
pinnacle of of solo gaming i think it's just a heck of a lot of fun um it is i should mention
|
||
|
|
it's a game you know it's like really a game don't don't think that you're going to sort of
|
||
|
|
sit in bed one night and sort of read this and kind of you know mostly read it's it's not like
|
||
|
|
that it is a game book you you need a pencil and a pen and a pencil whatever and a pad of paper
|
||
|
|
you need some form of random number generation you're putting the book down a lot and calculate
|
||
|
|
numbers you know it's it's writing loop down that you collect striking stuff off that you lost
|
||
|
|
and and it does throw curveballs at you you know i mean like i kind of i i i had built up a pretty
|
||
|
|
solid arsenal at one point and then something happened you know somehow i got myself into a story
|
||
|
|
arc that i didn't expect and i lost like a lot of my stuff like a lot of my stuff it was in
|
||
|
|
it was horrible i mean like everything was going perfectly fine and then all of a sudden i am
|
||
|
|
i am i i have lost my my bag of holding and i am in a in a river fighting a goblin i mean it was
|
||
|
|
it was absolutely horrible i had nothing left i was i was literally fighting with my hands
|
||
|
|
for like for at least 10 or 12 pages afterwards it was it was the most desperate
|
||
|
|
nail biting just the most tense game experience i'd had in in ages it was just so good
|
||
|
|
and so unexpected that was the thing it was like i'd had everything planned out i knew exactly
|
||
|
|
what was going to happen and then it threw me this curveball so it's it's really really good and
|
||
|
|
the best part about this game book i should mention is that it is free it's available for free
|
||
|
|
online in fact all of the books are available for free online because joe deaver dever joe um
|
||
|
|
graciously allowed all of his books to be published and downloaded free of charge on the internet um
|
||
|
|
he he called it has his his millennium gift to all those devoted readers who had kept the
|
||
|
|
chi flag flying high and so yeah we all benefit from that um you can find all of this stuff at project
|
||
|
|
a on dot org that's project a oh in dot org that is project a oh in dot org if you go there you
|
||
|
|
choose your language go into the site go to books and you can start downloading them like i say
|
||
|
|
they're they're in pdf they're in html and they're in e pub so you can read them in a variety of
|
||
|
|
different ways just start at the beginning and just and just go for it knock yourself out it's well
|
||
|
|
worth it i i cannot um recommend this series highly enough to you it is solid solid gaming
|
||
|
|
and that's all i'll say i think about the series and the book because i think i've if i have
|
||
|
|
a sold it on on you by now then i there's no selling it to you at all uh it's it's well worth it
|
||
|
|
go check it out have fun let me know what you think
|
||
|
|
you've been listening to heka public radio at heka public radio dot org we are a community podcast
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||
|
|
network that releases shows every weekday Monday through Friday today's show like all our shows
|
||
|
|
was contributed by an hbr listener like yourself if you ever thought of recording a podcast then click
|
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on our contributing to find out how easy it really is heka public radio was founded by the digital
|
||
|
|
dot pound and the infonomican computer club and it's part of the binary revolution at binrev.com
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if you have comments on today's show please email the host directly leave a comment on the website
|
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or record a follow up episode yourself unless otherwise stated today's show is released on the
|
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