|
Post by askhati on Mar 25, 2011 12:03:13 GMT
Good point, I'll have to remedy my Ceners to match that archetype...
- Hoydez: surrounded by ghouls and chomped - Helz: slightly arrogant and prone to slapping and kicking - Falas: buzzes - Vizil: arrogant even though suffering a nose-bleed
Wait... They do kinda fit the mould, don't they?
|
|
|
Post by Zipp on Mar 26, 2011 6:42:01 GMT
It should be noted that Falas arrogantly buzzes. And Hoydez was pretty arrogant until he was chomped.
|
|
|
Post by zut on Mar 26, 2011 13:49:09 GMT
Yep - Hoydez was arrogantly chomped. Not to stray too far from the topic of the thread: Despite its downsides I must say I do like GM series not a bit less than the others so picking the best book is still hard. I think I'll go with The Darke Crusade - the best parts being: travelling across the Hellswamp, freeing Prarg from Drakkarim, being buried alive (I mean - you don't just infiltrate enemy territory, beat the bad guy, save the day), travelling to Darke (acquiring help on the road), joining the fight... Well, I sort of summed up the whole book but that just shows I enjoyed it from the beginning to the end. It has fair share of everything in it.
|
|
|
Post by Vadron on Mar 27, 2011 5:12:43 GMT
I chose the Captives of Kaag, because it's essentially a "trap-filled fortress" adventure and I've always felt that that's what Dever does best.
I'm mystified as to why books 15 and 18 are leading the polls. The Darke Crusade's idea of Lone Wolf failing his original objective was a nice one, but the second half of the book was simply so mind-numbingly boring that I had completely forgotten what happened in it by my second playthrough (only a couple of months after the first one.)
I could rant for days about Dawn of the Dragons. It pretends to be about "fire-breathing dragons" attacking the monastery, but it's really just about wandering through the Stornlands trying to avoid the soldiers of some Eldenoran prince. When you finally reach the monastery (after at least 80% of the story), you lead a ridiculously short battle against some Lavas. Then, we find ourselves thrown into the Plane of Darkness. Again. For the third time in three books. The first time I fell into that plane, I sort of didn't realize where I was until afterwards. The second time, I was like "Oh, the plane of Darkness again." The third time, it starts to get irritating. I think Dever only put that instance in the book as an excuse for a gratitous boss fight.
The adventure was very long, which suggests that, with the exception of the part where you have to decide how to get from Holona to Varetta, it is a railroad (I haven't played it enough to know.) It simply does not have any redeeming features.
|
|
|
Post by Zipp on Mar 27, 2011 7:25:10 GMT
I think a lot of people were enamored with the plots of those books; if maybe not the actual books themselves...?
|
|
|
Post by egleris on Mar 27, 2011 8:39:40 GMT
Well, I think I can answer those questions. While book 15 in and of itself is not really amazing, and would have fared worse had it been part of the Magnakai series, it does is more interesting than the rest: book 20 is a marathon of boss with no plot and that manages to make the plane of darkness really uninteresting, book 19 is ruined by all the world-hopping and being basically a long, nonsensical chase, and book 13 and 14, beside being very similar infiltration missions (wich mean that both of them look less original just by going back to back) are inferior to the previous infiltration books (3, 7 and 12) and the one later in the series (17) because they're less suggestive and the enemies in them are not only unfairly hard, but also feel a bit out of place in respect to the Magnamund feeling, so it's understandable less people liked them. Book 16 feels alright to me, but it feature the Plane of Darkness pretty heavily, and those sections are really a bit annoying after a while. So, on these consideration, it easy to see what LW 15 has going for it: it feature heavily the creature we're used to associate with Magnamund (drakkar in this case), the plot is good enough, and even if the last session is a bit slow intially, the final big battle - wich are always a rare occurence in the series - more then compensate for it. The book might not be great, but it wins on the basis of a weaker competition. As for book 18, the reason is pretty much the same, only it also is the one that has more of a Magnamund feeling to it; I agree, the dragon should have been fought in Magnamund and not the plane of darkness and the journey was long, but it didn't felt like it was railroaded, in fact it gave the opposite feeling, and that made it feel a bit liberating. Also, it was a chance to revisit a lot of places that Lone Wolf had been to during the series, and that addedd to the experience quite a bit. It was sort of a comprehensive last meeting with all the iconic place in the series, and I can't help but think that, had it been the last book in the series, it would have been a very good conclusion of Lone Wolf's adventures. So, these are my considerations and why I think those books are in those positions. I also think that the poll as a whole do reflect the actual value of the books, more or less; I do am a bit upset that my own favourite is only third, but I can understand that on the basis of hard fights. I hope my explanation clarify why the result are those? If anybody is willing to discuss it, I'm curious to hear other opinions!
|
|
|
Post by ashish on Dec 30, 2017 15:12:14 GMT
Sorry but I think Legacy of Vashna pretty much sucks. For a start, Shamath's unsolveable riddle is an inexcusable bug in the gameplay, forcing the player to cheat. And I hold my hand up and say that I was never able to work out the number puzzles at the end either, and since they lead to insta-death if you get them both wrong, I basically had to cheat there too. The gameplay of this book is really rather linear.... the trek up to the lake and the trying to blend in with the Acolytes is interesting the first time, but on repeated plays it's just dull as you trek through the same sections. there's daft combat skill inflation (I mean Vadovarian bandits? Durncrag birds? With combat skills higher than a Darklord? come on!) When Alyss appeared, it just seemed to me like a token cameo from the Legends novels. I'm still not sure where Shamath is (i.e. what Plane? Did LW end up on the Plane of Darkness or in the Daziarn? Or some elemental plane?) but nothing really happens there apart from some unavoidable combats and that damned riddle. To be honest I kinda got the impression it was a bit of a "filler" book when Dever was short of ideas.
|
|
|
Post by WaitingOnPassword on Jan 6, 2018 20:28:42 GMT
The Plague Lords of Ruel
The Grand Master adventures get off to a pretty good start in this book. The writing, the plot, etc, is all solid and well constructed. But it has, what I feel is a major flaw in the fact that, right at the end, you’re forced to make a dice roll where, if you get too low a number, you instantly die. The idea of falling at the final hurdle is not an inherently bad one. But forcing it upon the reader was a very bad move, one that could very easily turn people off, especially if they’re new to Lone Wolf.
The Captives of Kaag
This is another really good book. I can’t think of any glaring problems with it off-hand.
The Darke Crusade
This is one of my favourite books in the series because the story involves you doing a lot of travelling to get somewhere. I never travelled when I was growing up, so adventures like this one, where the bulk of the book involves you travelling, especially overland, were ones I was heavily drawn to. The story is good, and I especially liked the idea of Magnaarn slowly decaying as the Doomstone of Darke ate away at his life force, and the illustrations do an excellent job of showing what effect the Doomstone has had on him.
The Legacy of Vashna
This is one of the poorer efforts in the Lone Wolf series; I might even go so far as to call it the third worst book in the series, behind books 19 and 20. It’s actually a solid adventure, but things go completely off the rails in the final third, especially with the painfully obvious shoehorning in of Alyss.
The Deathlord of Ixia
This book really isn’t that bad, but it gets killed by the fact that the fights in the later stages of the book get increasingly difficult, to the point that if you do somehow get to the final fight, you can only win it through insane luck on your random numbers or just flat out cheating. And that’s even with the Sommerswerd. If you haven’t got it, forget about winning this one fairly. I really like Joe’s work, but I just don’t get what was going through his mind when putting the final parts of this book together.
Dawn of the Dragons
This is my favourite book of the Grand Master series, by far. And this is entirely down to the fact that, as with The Darke Crusade, the bulk of it involves you doing a lot of travelling, and Joe’s writing in travelling-orientated stories really make the world of Magnamund come alive. This is the same reason why Jungle of Horrors is my favourite Magnakai adventure. Overall, it’s ‘just’ your typical good Lone Wolf gamebook. But the nature of the story makes it a personal favourite.
Wolfs Bane The Curse of Naar
I’m lumping the final two books together because they’re essentially a two-parter, and I hate both of them equally. Simply put, I play Lone Wolf books to ‘travel’ to Magnamund and have adventures there. Not the Plane of Darkness, not the Daziarn Plane; not anywhere else. I understand the Lone Wolf series ending by way of a conflict with Naar himself, of a fashion, and even having the final battle take place on the Plane of Darkness. And I would have been fine with Lone Wolf chasing an agent of Naar to the Plane of Darkness for that final battle, if there wasn’t too much time spent there. But having virtually the entire final two books take place on the Plane of Darkness was a major disappointment.
The whole basis of the Lone Wolf books is the fate of Magnamund; shouldn’t the final battle take place there?
|
|
|
Post by johntfs on Jun 18, 2018 0:42:56 GMT
The Plague Lords of RuelThe Grand Master adventures get off to a pretty good start in this book. The writing, the plot, etc, is all solid and well constructed. But it has, what I feel is a major flaw in the fact that, right at the end, you’re forced to make a dice roll where, if you get too low a number, you instantly die. The idea of falling at the final hurdle is not an inherently bad one. But forcing it upon the reader was a very bad move, one that could very easily turn people off, especially if they’re new to Lone Wolf. One of my new House Rules is that you can avoid that roll by taking some Sabito (if you have some) and just swimming underwater for a goodly while. Otherwise, I agree. The bit with the kids in the Library is nicely creepy. Again I agree. It's just a cool, old-school dungeon crawl, though there is that possible, "Oops, you're dead!" bit at the end again. I loved the scenes in the snow-covered forests. Those were just lovely. Also, while I get why he did it, I kind of wish that Dever had allowed for a bit more variation based on how well (or ill) equipped Lone Wolf was at the "buried alive" point. Something like "pick a number from the RNT. That represent your current Endurance. A 0 counts as 0 unless you managed to raise it. To your Endurance add 2 points for every Meal you have. For potions of Alether, Laumspur and other healing/combat potions except Agdana, take their total bonuses and divide it by 2. So if you had 3 potions of Alether +2 CS, 3 doses of Laumsur +4 EP and a dose of Oede +10 EP, you would add 14 EP to the number you picked from the RNT. I don't know. It was okay. It's one of three books in the GM series where having money is a thing. You don't need those GC in any other book. Given the huge amount of GC available at one point (80 GC, Joe? Really?) I've decided that each "slot" in your Backpack can hold up to 55 GC (if it was 50 or less, then you could use your Belt pouch as a 9th/11th Backpack space and maybe carry that Agdana or +8 Laumspur potions out of Kazan-Oud. I've kind of unofficially decided that the Runic Disc the assassins leave behind wasn't so much an accident as a job offer. Remember those jars of potions you get at Ruel? You might think about emptying that Gallowbrush but keep the jar it came in and then filling it with every Laumspur potion you can find. Ditto the Sabito jar. Oh, and if you got the Kagonite Chainmail in Book 12, be sure to grab the Aganda. This is where you're going to be using that stuff. I like this book, overall. It's pretty epic. I was looking forward to it when I got Book 16 because I remember the bit about how Ixiataaga scared the crap out of even the Darklords. But yeah, this books suffers very much from the Book 11 "...win no matter how low his CS and EP scores are !"
I admit, I like this one too. Aside from the travelogue aspect of it, this one is cool in that after 17 books or so of Lone Wolf saving the world, in this one, the world kind of comes together to help him save his world - the Kai New Order. It actually reminded me the most of my favorite Magnakai adventure, The Kingdoms of Terror (that's the only book in the series where LW isn't on some pretty specific externally imposed mission. He's just trying to see if he can find this Lorestone thing).
Also, the bit where you waste Lutha with the Sommerswerd concludes with Lone Wolf yelling the Lone Wolf version of "That's what you get when you mess with me, [pregnant dog]!"
Also, this is one of the few GM books where it feels like you really might be able to win the book with a beginning character.
I saw these two as thematic reflections of The Prisoners of Time and The Masters of Darkness. Lone Wolf goes into the Dazian/other planets to get what he needs the final Lorestones/the information on how Naar has been doing what he's been doing. Then he heads to the enemy's home turf, taking the fight to them and kicking their furniture around for a change. The extended duel with Wolf's Bane was tense and exciting and I have to admit that going to the Plane of Darkness, drawing the Sommerswerd and watching Naar soil his shorts was immensely satisfying.
As for The Curse of Naar, excepting two unavoidable battles where you needed super-high stats, a lot of it was making good decisions and figuring stuff out. I thought it was kind of cool that you stole Shamath's Potion and then did her a bit of a solid by using it on her enemy.
|
|
kai
Kai Lord
Posts: 59
|
Post by kai on Mar 1, 2019 13:25:13 GMT
The first time I started reading the deathlord of Ixia, I was like "This is so cool!" Then . . . Seriously!!!!!! Even with my freaky cs of 60, (With Kai-Surge), I kept dying. Stupid Tagazin, Chaos-Horde, lavas, Tagazin again, Deathlord, and especially that freaking falling arch at the end. The book is great, but it's near impossible. It took me over 10 tries to beat the deathlord, and then I died via falling arch. My favorite is dotd because not only can you infiltrate an enemy city and kill their leader, you can get a breastplate with +4 ep. Legacy was crappy. I had to look up a walkthrough for the last puzzles.
|
|