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Post by avarius on Mar 14, 2007 17:10:54 GMT
I stand corrected.
The source of my confusion arose from the fact that Sword Of The Samurai was written by Smith and Thompson (which means it's probably very good).
The more I think about it, the more I wonder why Smith and Thompson's didn't contribute to Fighting Fantasy more often.
My misgivings on Inferno aside, they (S & T) were among a select few that really seemed to understand the 'intangibles' that separated a good gamebook from a great one.
On a totally irrelevant topic- for those here that are interested in such things- I picked up a copy of Final Fantasy 12 yesterday and my initial impressions have been very positive.
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Post by Wolfus on Mar 15, 2007 8:34:22 GMT
I don't like Fighting Fantasy very much because of difficulty. Only one right way and if you miss one stupid hint, you can start over... Just remember the Magic series (Shamamuth, Khare etc...). It's nearly impossible to finish them when you play them for a first time.
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Post by outspaced on Mar 15, 2007 9:35:26 GMT
The source of my confusion arose from the fact that Sword Of The Samurai was written by Smith and Thompson (which means it's probably very good). As an aside, I was looking through Warlock (the Fighting Fantasy magazine) #10 last night, and I noticed that the review of Sword of the Samurai by Paul Cockburn gave it a "not bad" review, whereas he gave Trial of Champions an "amazin'!" review. There's no justice! SotS has long been one of my favourite FF books, since there are two distinct routes one can take to complete the game, one being harder than the other. I also appreciated the setting, which was a nice change from a bog-standard Orcs & Goblins-fest. Because they were too busy writing their own gamebooks! Aside from the two FF they co-wrote (#11 and #20): Falcon x6 Way of the Tiger x6 DuelMaster x8 Thomson co-wrote FF43: Keep of the Lich-lord with Dave Morris Thomson wrote two Eternal Champions gamebooks in the early 1990s. Thomson, Smith and Morris wrote the six Virtual Reality Gamebooks, though Smith allegedly got the series plug pulled early, before Paul Mason got his entry to that series published. Then Thomson and Morris embarked upon the Fabled Lands series, only 6 of the twelve ever being written, sadly. They'd never have found time to fit any more FF books in there as well! ;D
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Post by avarius on Mar 16, 2007 18:02:28 GMT
Trial Of Champions was okay but it was also ( in my opinion) a rather by-the-numbers affair, although Lord Carnuss was suitably bonkers.
As for SOTS, as I've stated before, I have yet to enjoy, but it sounds to me as though Warlock were employing members of the Livingstone/Jackson appreciation society.
I had no idea that Smith and Thompson had been responsible for such sustained output (pertaining to Duelmaster and Falcon).
Mason must have been heartbroken at Smith's assertions that he was not equal to the task at hand. ;D
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Post by outspaced on Mar 16, 2007 18:55:34 GMT
Mason must have been heartbroken at Smith's assertions that he was not equal to the task at hand. ;D Ah, no, that's not what I meant (or, at least, that's not what I have inferred from some veiled, vague statements by Mr Mason on the Gamebooks mailing list). Smith seemed to think that Thomson and Morris were conspiring against him during the writing of that series, which led to the series plug being pulled. I think. Maybe. The fact that Paul Mason's book would have been published next was merely an interesting factoid that I thought I'd drop in to pretend I'm interesting! ;D Oh, it's also worth pointing out that Jamie Thomson was also a writer for Warlock magazine, so I don't know whether the down-rating of SotS was a bit of a joke or not. Certainly, the same issue gave an 'Amazin'!' mark to Asterix to the Rescue, which is an excellent, if rather different, gamebook.
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Post by avarius on Mar 18, 2007 17:46:07 GMT
[quote author=outspaced board=general thread=1084969078 post=1174071334 Ah, no, that's not what I meant (or, at least, that's not what I have inferred from some veiled, vague statements by Mr Mason on the Gamebooks mailing list). Smith seemed to think that Thomson and Morris were conspiring against him during the writing of that series, which led to the series plug being pulled. [/quote] It all sounds rather machiavellian to me, perhaps all of their cloak- and-dagger exploits in the office should be used as the bare bones of a new style of gamebook.
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Post by Wolfus on Mar 22, 2007 8:30:08 GMT
Hey people, who died?
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Post by Doomy on Mar 22, 2007 17:38:00 GMT
I'm still lurking around. Not much going on though.
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Post by beowuuf on Mar 22, 2007 18:13:24 GMT
I think it's one of those weird busy times for everyone - nearly end of the business year, finals and exams on - it's quiet-ish at TotS too
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Post by HuntingWolf on Apr 2, 2007 21:06:55 GMT
We are all already dead.... most of us just don't know it yet.
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Post by GhostofLandar on Jul 21, 2015 5:50:19 GMT
Paul Grant, however, seems to have very, very unusual views on women, seeing as how ALL the women in Lone Wolf's life are goddesses of some description . . . Perhaps he should see a psychiatrist to get asked that age-old question: 'So, tell me about your mother . . .' I've read a different take, in fact you touched on it at some point. Grant/Barnett seems to be an early example of the butt-kicking 105 lb female Mary Sue you see in movies, but not common at the time. He's, to a degree, a forerunner of modern cinema. It's a combination of politics (I'll show those misogynistic young men who made LW such a hit!), which you see with his description of Shianti as having ebony skin (hey, maybe Joe went with that but I don't recall it) and his description of the Zahda's Beastmen as having "Pale faces" (it seemed he was deliberately subverting that problem passage of white-skinned slayer of their kin in Castle Death.) That Barnett seems to be of a particular political persuasion lends credence to this view, his entire take on the Aonian Gods, on Lone Wolf seems subtly and often overtly hostile or conflicted feelings towards traditional (often masculine) social virtues like manliness, Good (with a capital G), moral certitude, honor, or glory. That's not to say Lone Wolf doesn't sometimes question them, even in the gamebooks but Grant strikes a sneering pose throughout. But essentially, there is a class of man who has very conflicted feelings about his manhood (I don't mean orientation or the like, that's not what I'm getting at) and the source of his conflict and often, his anti-authoritarian pose is centered on maleness, and thus he identifies very strongly with women, to the point where he'll take a story about heroic men/males (in the main) like Lone Wolf, Banedon, Grey Star, Rimoah, Samu, Paido, Prarg, Cearmaine, Adamas, Prince Graygor, and countless thousands of others and invent female characters that eclipse the most forceful personalities of the gamebooks and treat revered characters with scorn. I mean, jeez, Lone Wolf ends The Secret of Kazan Oud by cursing Rimoah for killing a character we never heard about until Barnett invented her! (Petra) If Barnett wanted to move beyond just LW, he could easily made Nyxator's spirit the protector of LW, or used conversations with Kai, Ishir, or the Shianti, or the Nuoma who made the Sommerswerd. Instead of the abomination that is Qinefer (a Cloeasian in Sommerlund...) he could have simply expanded on characters we encountered (wait, his treatment of LW and Banedon and even Rimoah give me pause.) We should count ourselves lucky that he didn't get to Prisoners of Time. Serocca would have had 80 percent of book time devoted to her, another 10 percent about how the Villains of Sommerlund weren't so bad, and perhaps 5 percent of Lone Wolf being outclassed and ridiculed by Lorkon and the Beholder.
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