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Post by pi4t on Feb 21, 2010 12:34:35 GMT
If you were changing the LW books slightly, how would you do it? Here are some suggestions:
Book 1:make Banedon meetable without sixth sense
give the CSP more use
Book 2:tone down the SS a bit
make the magic spear gettable no matter which way you go at 150
Book 3:make the silver helm gettable along either passage
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Post by johntfs on Feb 21, 2010 18:50:18 GMT
Book 1: Meeting Banedon should be somewhat mandatory. He's a critical character throughout the series, even when he's "offstage."
Book 2: I'd kind of like the tunnels in Durenor to be survivable without having to make the choice between having Animal Kinship or leaving Lord-lieutenant Rhygar to die without an effective weapon to defend himself. For that matter, I really don't like it that oyu have to make some pretty specific skill choices (don't take Camouflage without also taking Animal Kinship) just to survive the book.
Book 3: I'd kind of like a path that didn't require saving the magician guy. Because you meet the magician guy right after you've either left the Helghast behind or rescued the Helghast and had it try to eat your face. Assuming that happened, I'd be playing LW as being extremely wary of rescuing random strangers caught by Vonatar.
Book 4: This one's pretty well okay. Though it does sort of reinforce the trope that unless you ARE Lone Wolf, you shouldn't travel with Lone Wolf, 'cause he will get you killed.
Book 5: I'd like a way to get the Oede even without having Limbdeath.
Book 6: Screw it, this one's fine as is. Though I do wish you could meet back up with the generous but slightly crazy mercenary captain in a later book.
Book 7: This is another one that's pretty much fine as is.
Book 8: I want a way to get the Grey Crystal Ring no matter how I enter the one city without losing the Silver Bow.
Book 9: I want a scene where I can personally kill Senator Chil and resolve the Thief's Ring business if I chose that path. Also, I want the question about the S-Swerd to include "...and wish to use it" when facing Kimah
Book 10: I want the Isle of Ghosts to be unavoidable, because it's a really cool bit with some closure regarding Roark. Ditto the S-swerd question in Book 9.
Book 11: Ditto the S-swerd question in Book 9. Also, if I don't already have the S-swerd, I should be able to Keep the IronHeart broadsword for saving Lorkan's entire freaking race from the Chaosmaster, laws or no laws.
Book 12: An easier path to the Kagonite Chainmail that doesn't require failing a roll you're unlikely to fail.
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Post by Oiseau on Feb 21, 2010 19:01:16 GMT
Ohh man, there are so many tweaks you could make, I could fill a book ... Make armors absorb damage instead of increasing EP ... Make Healing/Curing work differently to remove that annoying paragraph-counting rule ... Fix enemy stats all over the land to balance the books better ... Have a starting CS value in a more restricted range ... Reduce the Sommerswerd's game-breaking bonus ... Give other magic weapons their own CS bonuses (Magic Sword, Vashna Dagger, Jewelled Mace, etc) ... Make the Psychic Ring give a permanent Psy-Surge boost ... Book 2, make it possible to meet the mouseman with or without the Magic Spear ... Book 3, fix that ridiculous instant-death Kalkoth who turns out to be the most dangerous beast in all of Magnamund ... Book 4, extend the Maaken visit and remove the instant-death for turning left at one point ... Book 5, extend the final fight vs Haakon ... Book 6, extend the Tekaro sewers and fix the "your-weapon-melts-and-you-die" to consider the Sommerswerd ... Hell, just about every endgame needs revamping, it's obvious to me that Joe Dever held his 350ยง limit so dear, he actually botched a lot of the endings ... Make Intuition warn LW about the Helghast temple in Book 8 and avoid it ... Same for Tagazin's temple in Book 10 (can you believe you have to visit the stupid place as soon as you lay eyes on it?) ... Fix Kimah and Chaos (although that's been done in the reeditions) ... Give Skarn-Ska in Book 13 instead of Book 20 to better balance rookie/veteran issues and have the Sommerswerd return to Durenor (this may be open to debate) ... Make it possible for LW to spend his money more often (the Gold Crowns are mostly useless in all books except 2, 5 and 6) ... More uses for items in general ... I could go on. Yet I love the series anyway. ^_^
Oh ! I forgot ! GET RID OF ALL FALLING MASTS (unavoidable random deaths). Make each one survivable with the correct item, player choice, or Discipline.
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Post by johntfs on Feb 21, 2010 19:31:52 GMT
After careful thought, I've decide that your CS starts at 14 and you pick a number between 1 and 0=10, halve it, round it up and then add it to your initial CS. So you'll have a CS between 15 and 19.
Meanwhile, Endurance is picked with the standard 0 - 9 + 20. A low Endurance is pretty survivable. A low CS kills you in the later books.
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Post by Oiseau on Feb 21, 2010 22:47:41 GMT
I discovered that I like choosing my own starting stats, using two opposing sliding scales : CS goes from 15 to 20 while EP goes from 30 to 20. So I can start with 15/30 for a challenge (high Endurance makes it slightly easier to survive low CS), with 18/24 for an average game, or with 20/20 for an easy run-through (with the penalty being that I can't lose too much Endurance or I'll die). Sometimes I also pick 15/25 just because they're the average scores you'll get if you follow the rules. There's just no way you can live through the books (as a series) with a starting CS of 14 or less, although the first five can be done.
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Post by johntfs on Feb 22, 2010 3:35:00 GMT
One thing I also wish is that the Bow was available as a true weapon during the Kai series.
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Post by askhati on Feb 22, 2010 8:19:11 GMT
More low-power magic weapons, with a variety of different bonuses to make their use more strategic - e.g. use captured Darklord/Drakkarim/Nadziranim weapons, but take pain during combat; more Kai artifacts, like +2 CS Axes or +3 CS Broadswords or a Kai cloak that gives you bonuses when rolling to use Camouflage; magic potions that are Magic - i.e. they contain multiple doses, but as long as there is at least one dose left in the bottle/vial, it recharges over time (e.g. get one doses back for every 3/4 sections without using it); etc...
Also, more non-melee magic weapons in the GM series! Lightning wands, steam-spears, Nadziranim cubes... I WANT TO USE THEM ALL!!!
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Post by johntfs on Feb 22, 2010 12:24:17 GMT
I don't know if all those are tweaks. That sounds more like stuff for a full-fledged RPG instead of just a gamebook series.
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Post by Peregrine on Feb 22, 2010 14:02:09 GMT
I could definitely see Fire on the Water getting a lot of tweaks. Having recently examined the whole book for a little side project of mine, I found all sorts of ways you can mess up and wind up wandering across the Wildlands aimlessly. The Magic Spear situation is the most famous one (and one which I think Project Aon did a good job of fixing, as far as could be done without actually rewriting anything), but there's also the several ways you can lose the chance to recover the Seal of Hammerdal if it leaves your possession -- and not even lose the chance, just... pick the wrong action in a certain section, and then suddenly the right action is no longer an option. You're never even told, 'Oops, you missed your one opportunity.' It's as if Lone Wolf suddenly forgets about the Seal. And then wanders off to Port Bax and his inevitable failure, many sections later.
That's assuming he doesn't die for lack of money, which is very likely. And there are some ways that that problem can pan out that mean it is absolutely inevitable, having passed through a certain section, that you will die several sections later. This kind of "waste your time going down a doomed path" situation is something that's been cited as one of the strengths of Lone Wolf over Fighting Fantasy, but in this one book...
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Post by kolinovic on Feb 22, 2010 16:48:13 GMT
Aside from meeting Banedon, the magic spear issue, and the Zakhan & CM fights, the only tweak I'd have made would have been to encourage JD to write more than 350 sections in some of the books.
I think the Tekaro element of TKOT could have been expanded upon.
The battle in TCOF when you reemerge with the lorestone could have been fleshed out a bit more too.
My biggest gripe though was how Helgedad gets glossed over a bit quickly in TMOD. If you compare how much of Kaag you see in TCOK, for example, you get much more of a feel for the place. Given that I'd spent 11 books waiting for a chance to go to one of the most imaginative cities in fantasy lore, I wanted more!
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Post by Aarontu on Feb 22, 2010 16:54:40 GMT
Book 2 could really use some changes. I'd like to see consequences for choosing the right or wrong person in the "who-dun-it?" scene. It would also be nice if there was a way to get to Port Bax without using the caravan, instead of having to gamble at an unrealistic gambling house or having to ride along a dead-end path until you die. A bit more action back in Holmgard at the end would have been nice, too. As it is, you get back and zap the darklord in a nicely illustrated, but incredibly anticlimactic ending paragraph. Maybe having to lead a charge towards the darklord's pavilion to get close enough to zap him or something; that would have been great.
The Sommerswerd could be toned down a bit (or a lot), or maybe you can only use its +8 bonus once or twice every book or something.
The combat in book 9 needs to be changed. You should be able to throw the dagger if you have the SS, or the combat should just be easier, or there should be more choices of things you can try on him.
Same with book 11. The fight with the Chaosmaster should be a bit easier. I also think it would be great if you could restore some EP after beating the Chaosmaster. It's brutal having to go on to fight those phantom things and then the bad guys at the end without getting any healing!
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Post by Zipp on Feb 22, 2010 17:00:00 GMT
Read my female Lone Wolf MSN run. That says it all. Maybe later, when I'm not getting ready for work, I'll elaborate, but to summarize...
Sommerswerd is unbalanced.
Boss fights aren't fun in LW and need to be.
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Post by pi4t on Feb 22, 2010 18:14:33 GMT
A couple of people have pointed out problems with healing/curing. In the Dark One amateur series it uses the rule that after each combat you restore 1-10 Endurance (though it can't go above the Endurance you had before the start of the combat) instead of +1 per section.
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Post by bittermind on Feb 22, 2010 20:21:19 GMT
A tweak for the New Order books: take out the Kai Weapons.
One of the really fun parts of Flight From the Dark, and most of Fire on the Water, was trying to find, and hang onto, a cool weapon (especially if you had Weaponskill). I always liked Quarterstaves, personally. With the all-new FFTD, and the awesome +1 CS weapons therein, that aspect's even groovier.
But then you get the godly Sommerswerd, with its godly bonus to CS, and it makes no sense using anything else ever again, for the next 18 books. Weaponskill or no Weaponskill.
I was very disappointed the first time I opened Voyage of the Moonstone and read the section on Kai Weapons. I'd really been looking forward to using a variety of weapons. I'd really been looking forward to searching for magic weapons.
No Kai Weapon Quarterstaff, either.
So, my suggested tweak: pull out the Kai Weapon, and scale down all combats accordingly. I'd do that myself, actually, but those blasted Kai Weapons get a lot of mentions in the body of the text, too.
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Post by johntfs on Feb 23, 2010 2:28:38 GMT
A couple of people have pointed out problems with healing/curing. In the Dark One amateur series it uses the rule that after each combat you restore 1-10 Endurance (though it can't go above the Endurance you had before the start of the combat) instead of +1 per section. I quite like that rule. I think I'll keep it for my next play-through. Another thing I'm going to do is use a deck of cards instead of dice or the books' tables. I remove all but three of the face cards and Jokers, leaving Aces through Tens in the deck, along with the Jack of Diamonds, Queen of Hearts and King of Spades. I designate Jack of Diamonds as Kai, the Queen of Hearts as Ishir and the King of Spades as Naar. The Aces count as 1 and the Tens as 10 or zero according to the situation. Once a card is drawn, it is placed in a discard pile. The three Face cards are special, representing the interest of the various gods they represent in the happenings in Aon. Drawn as part of a non-combat (including bowfire) random number check they directly modify the check for good or ill (if an instant death situation would result on a 9, Kai would give you a -2 instead of a +2). Kai grants a +2 (or -2) bonus. Ishir grants +3/-3 and Naar curses you with -4/+4. After a face card is drawn, another card is also drawn and this continues until a non-face card is drawn. If more than one face card is drawn, their bonuses/penalties are totaled and then applied. In combat, the face cards have different effects. The card is drawn and left face up as the God influences the combat. Kai adds +2 to LWs Combat Score throughout the battle. Ishir adds a "phantom" +3 EP to LW and losses are taken from these EP first. Naar adds +4 CS to LW's enemies for the duration of the battle. Once one or more Face cards have been drawn and their influence on a "Die check" or combat has been resolved, the deck, including the cards in the discard pile are reshuffled into the deck. The deck is also reshuffled at the beginning of any new book. |
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