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Post by dinefwrwolf on Feb 20, 2021 17:04:36 GMT
Hello Everyone I recently discovered Project Aon after many years and have started a new playthrough. Currently I have got as far as finishing book 12 "The Masters of Darkness". In this thread I will just talk about my playthrough of books 1-5 and if the thread proves interesting to people, I will create another thread for later books. Please no spoilers beyond book 12. I would be very interested to hear how other people got on in their quests. Please be warned, my posts in this thread do contain spoilers regarding books 1-5
Book 1 "Flight From the Dark." I first played this in 1992/3. I really enjoyed it but found it difficult and took several attempts to complete it. Fastforward 28/29 years and I completed it without losing a life. I headed south along the river and avoided the Graveyard of the Ancients. I remembered very little details from my first playthrough but must admit that I did remember the Graveyard of the Ancients being difficult. However most of my decisions on replay were totally without any help from memory. Book 2 "Fire on the Water" One of my favourites in the series. Again I remembered almost nothing, with the exception of knowing that the priest was the would be assassin in the tavern and also that I needed to find a silver spear to deal with the helghast. I completed this losing two lives and had to change my discipline choice to include animal kinship, to communicate with the noodnic as I couldn't think what different choices I could make to get the spear. On reflection, I think one probably has to take the spear out of the wounded man that the szalls say is a helghast and risk combat there ?
Book 3 " The Caverns of Kalte" Back in the '90s I completed this without losing any lives but this time around I lost one life after losing on the random number table shortly after finding the mage from the Brotherhood of the Crystal Star. Despite the fact that I didn't lose many lives, I thought this was a challenging adventure with lots of tough choices, for example the Kalte child hostage situation. It was difficult to know what to do to come out of that scrape alive. Plus there were several successive combat situations near the end which were difficult because of their quick successive nature. Book 4 "The Chasm of Doom" In the '90s this was not one of my favourites but this time around I loved it.On replay I lost one life (can't remember how I did all those years ago) I think that Joe Dever created a very well paced and balanced adventure here. You really have to think how you are going to avoid successive combat situations in book 4 because their cumulative nature is dangerous. I think Joe really got the combat right here, where as a player if you win or lose in the combats it was primarily down to the choices that you made leading up to them. This certainly wasn't true in all of the books (8, 9 and 11 spring to mind !) The race to the Ruanon town gates was very exciting and I loved the mine setion at the end.
Book 5 " Shadow on the Sand" This was perhaps my favourite book in the whole series and on replay I certainly wasn't disappointed - It was brilliant. Joe really makes Vassagonia feel like a real place and my escape from the Vassagonian authorities at the beginning, the journey through the sewers and the race against time to find some Oede in the palace all felt very exciting. In the '90s I took several attempts at completing book 5, this time around I lost one life in the second half of the adventure after falling victim to the random number table. I was sorry to hear of Joe's passing a few years back. I think he truly was the master of the gamebook genre, he really managed to combine challenging, exciting games with great and immersive storytelling. It is great that his works are being preserved here.
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andyc
Kai Lord
Posts: 210
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Post by andyc on Feb 20, 2021 20:29:14 GMT
Great to hear your fresh take on the first five books and you should certainly continue as you read through them. I only rediscovered the books a couple of years back and was impressed by how well they stood up reading them as an adult. The Kai books are indeed very strong and the Magnakai books hold up well as too. Some have found the Grand Master books (13-20) not quite as good, but personally I enjoyed them just as much. A couple of the New Order books (21-28 originally) are arguably the weakest, but that is up for debate now when the full picture is being revealed in the awesome new Finale books (29-32). So keep going, as the grand story is turning out to be MAGNIFICENT!
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andyc
Kai Lord
Posts: 210
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Post by andyc on Feb 20, 2021 20:36:27 GMT
Oh, and if you weren't aware, the official publisher, Holmgard Press has some lovely hardbacks of books 23-26, 30 and just recently 31 for sale. magnamund.com/30 and 31 aren't on Project Aon while the others have some very good bonus adventures. Well worth it if you have the shelf space!
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Post by dinefwrwolf on Feb 21, 2021 19:59:07 GMT
Thanks for the replies andyc. Through discovering Prohect Aon, I have found out about the new books which is great. I look forward to playing them in due course. As regards the later books, I do remember really enjoying book 13 "The Plague Lords of Ruel" and "The Curse of Naar" (20 I think ?). I don't really have strong memories one way or the other about the other later books. I enjoyed them but don't remember all that much about my thoughts on them. I think I had great difficulty actually finding some of the later books for purchase and probably only got as far as about book 23/4. A lot of them seemed to come out at times when I was busy with GCSE's and A-Levels and I probably rushed some of them.
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Post by Ofecks on Feb 21, 2021 21:14:53 GMT
Hey there! Reading posts like these are always interesting. I wish we all could selectively erase memories of media so that we could experience them for the first time again. The downside of that would be being unable to discuss strategy from an experienced standpoint. As you requested, I won't mention anything about the GM series but there might be some spoilers about the books you've gone through already. I remembered very little details from my first playthrough but must admit that I did remember the Graveyard of the Ancients being difficult. However most of my decisions on replay were totally without any help from memory. One of my favorite things about the original editions of book 1 are the many, many routes and things to see and do on your way to the goal. Honestly, I typically take the Graveyard route because it's the only one I've memorized a danger-free path through. I want to say the other two have unavoidable RNT rolls that can get you into trouble (or just plain dead), but the Graveyard is pretty straight-forward with no RNG. One of the more well-hidden secrets in the series is an Alether potion that can be found in this book. You need to be extremely lucky to get to that spot. That's right. To finish the book you either need the Magic Spear or Animal Kinship (and be reading an edition that gives you fair results when you get to that spot!). I typically skip the Spear myself, if I've rolled a LW with lower stats (Low Wolf). That Helghast fight is a doozy. If you're playing with Seventh Sense, that's one of the ones that it considers a Boss Fight. Overall the book is pretty cool and iconic but it's so much more linear than the first. The only major path branches are in Ragadorn and the final leg to Port Bax, whereas book 1 has dozens. Yeah, this book is a welcome return to form after the railroad-y book 2. Sadly, the child hostage scene is not one of those as either option will let you escape safely. Did you find all the treasure in this one? There's also a way to win without a single combat, and even a way to win coming in with zero items and not acquiring or using any along the way. You need to fistfight a Kalkoth without taking any damage, though! Finally, it's the only book that has a failure condition without LW actually dying. I've always wondered how Magnamund's story would change if that were canonical... I agree that the dash to Ruanon while the enemy is pursuing you is one of the highlights of this one. If your LW is statistically beefy and you're looking for trouble, you can certainly find it here, becoming a one-man army during the Battle of Ruanon and elsewhere. Checking my notes, you can get into upwards of 13 fights by the end. But there are also ways to avoid the vast majority of them my making smart choices and finding some out-of-the-way items. That indicates a flexible, well-rounded adventure. I want to make a quick shoutout to not one but TWO sneaky, nearly blind insta-death choices towards the end. Truly devious. Agreed. You can really pad out the length of this book by escaping the sewers without contracting Limbdeath. There's one specific route through there that lets you experience both the sewer and escaping jail. Although, come to think of it, I think there are several ways to get yourself caught while inside the sewer. I just mean getting to the potion shop and not needing Oede. The final showdown at the end is rather disappointing, though. Even if you use the Sommerswerd and are otherwise armed to the teeth with special items from previous adventures. I also wish that you actually suffered a penalty for not having a Blue Stone Triangle or a Prism. Seems like an oversight from Dever. Hopefully you will post your thoughts on the Magnakai series once you're finished. Just a few less-spoilery words about some of them: - Book 6 is one of my favorites of the entire saga. My only complaints are having to choose one side-quest among 3 on the road to Varetta, and an abrupt dead-end near the halfway point that's easy to stumble upon. The feel of this part of Magnamund was written extremely well and has a good feel to it; I wish it had slightly more to do and more route diversions. - Book 7 is horrifying and violent and causes me great anxiety for a variety of reasons. - In Book 9 you can diverge from the standard Lawful-Good intended behavior, and really stir up trouble along the way that's worthy of the multiple Mischievous awards in Seventh Sense. Not to mention the first truly epic boss fight (which was deservedly and thankfully nerfed in later editions), even an Optional SuperBoss™, if one were so inclined. - Speaking of epic fights, there's some amazing ones in book 10 that are all entirely skippable! I might even say easily missable. Having the choice is always good, though. - Book 11 is definitely my least favorite among 1-12 by being both incredibly linear and filled with massive balance problems that are completely unfair to fresh characters. Imagine this being your first LW as a kid and you bang your head against the combat wall until you're forced to cheat to get through it. Cool setting, though.
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Post by dinefwrwolf on Feb 22, 2021 14:18:44 GMT
That was interesting Ofecks. The quote function is not working for me at the moment, so hopefully this post won't be too messy.
Yes book 1 has an amazing amount of paths. I do remember as a lad that I did lots of replays using different methods and that there seemed to be a lot more compared to other gamebooks on the market.
I agree that book 2 is quite linear. In some ways that was part of the challenge, when you do go wrong it may not be obvious when and what you have failed to do.
As regards the hostage situation in book 3, I assumed that being outnumbered by the Kaltians in a chase would have led to death with the wrong choice. I have since seen there is a feature on the site where you can view all the quest routes but as it is essentially a diagram of numbers, it would take a bit of time to study.
I assume the failure condition of Book 3 is not managing to capture Vonotar. If this were canonical, I suppose he would have tried to rope the Kaltians into invading Sommerlund. My guess is that they would have failed or try to kill Vonotar themselves.
I do remember catching limbdeath in my first playthrugh in the '90s of book 5 and also that I was arrested. This time around I evaded arrest but still caught limbdeath. Book 5 is a 2 parter and I do agree that part 2 is much shorter and easier than part 1 (although annoyingly it was then that I lost a life, I cannot specifically remember where.)
I will say more about the Magnakai books when I create that thread but
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Post by dinefwrwolf on Feb 22, 2021 14:27:08 GMT
I will just say that I really liked Book 6. It had a real flavour of the medieval Balkans I think. Book 7 was horrifying and difficult but also magnificent. It was great writing, Joe Dever really created a convincing atmosphere of fear, despair and isolation. It was also relentlessly difficult without being unfair. It reminds me in some ways of the Silent Hill console games which came out a number of years later, even though the setting was completely different. Having said that, I am glad not every book went with that style.
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Post by Ofecks on Feb 22, 2021 17:38:36 GMT
I have since seen there is a feature on the site where you can view all the quest routes but as it is essentially a diagram of numbers, it would take a bit of time to study. I'm really glad they added that feature some time ago. I've spent so long starting at those, plotting routes for Seventh Sense awards, that now when I think about the progression of each adventure, it's in terms of where I am on the flowchart instead of imagining being in the locations and events playing out.
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Post by dinefwrwolf on Feb 23, 2021 13:22:57 GMT
I meant to ask before, Seventh Sense ? What is it ?
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Post by sunsnake on Feb 23, 2021 14:34:51 GMT
I meant to ask before, Seventh Sense ? What is it ? Yeah I am wondering too.
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Post by moonblade on Feb 23, 2021 15:12:39 GMT
I meant to ask before, Seventh Sense ? What is it ? It’s a game state tracker that a lot of people use when playing through the online versions of the books. You can read more about it here: www.projectaon.org/staff/david/index.php
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Post by lorddarkstorm on Feb 23, 2021 15:16:57 GMT
Best to look here: projectaon.proboards.com/thread/2733/new-release-seventh-senseAs Dave's version can only go to book 17 iirc. Also it can crash from time to time, as UrQuan disappeared from the forum a few years ago, and subsequent Windows 10 updates since then have made it slightly unstable it seems. Still the best way to play the books imo, love that it works out all the combat bonuses and subtractions so I don't have to
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Post by Ofecks on Feb 23, 2021 23:00:23 GMT
The question has been answered already, but yeah SS is just playing aid software that parses the Project Aon releases. There are others out there now, like Lone Wolf Saga and Lone Wolf New Order for mobile OS, but the two versions of SS are still unique in that they have very strict rules interpretation and their award (achievements) system.
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Post by GhostofLandar on Mar 24, 2021 5:03:41 GMT
Book 2 "Fire on the Water" One of my favourites in the series. Again I remembered almost nothing, with the exception of knowing that the priest was the would be assassin in the tavern and also that I needed to find a silver spear to deal with the helghast. I completed this losing two lives and had to change my discipline choice to include animal kinship, to communicate with the noodnic as I couldn't think what different choices I could make to get the spear. On reflection, I think one probably has to take the spear out of the wounded man that the szalls say is a helghast and risk combat there ?
Book 3 " The Caverns of Kalte" Back in the '90s I completed this without losing any lives but this time around I lost one life after losing on the random number table shortly after finding the mage from the Brotherhood of the Crystal Star. Despite the fact that I didn't lose many lives, I thought this was a challenging adventure with lots of tough choices, for example the Kalte child hostage situation. It was difficult to know what to do to come out of that scrape alive. Plus there were several successive combat situations near the end which were difficult because of their quick successive nature. Book 4 "The Chasm of Doom" In the '90s this was not one of my favourites but this time around I loved it.On replay I lost one life (can't remember how I did all those years ago) I think that Joe Dever created a very well paced and balanced adventure here. You really have to think how you are going to avoid successive combat situations in book 4 because their cumulative nature is dangerous. I think Joe really got the combat right here, where as a player if you win or lose in the combats it was primarily down to the choices that you made leading up to them. This certainly wasn't true in all of the books (8, 9 and 11 spring to mind !) The race to the Ruanon town gates was very exciting and I loved the mine setion at the end.
Book 5 " Shadow on the Sand" This was perhaps my favourite book in the whole series and on replay I certainly wasn't disappointed - It was brilliant. Joe really makes Vassagonia feel like a real place and my escape from the Vassagonian authorities at the beginning, the journey through the sewers and the race against time to find some Oede in the palace all felt very exciting. In the '90s I took several attempts at completing book 5, this time around I lost one life in the second half of the adventure after falling victim to the random number table.
Chasm of Doom was my introduction to the series. I stumbled upon it and was interested in Choose Your Own Adventure stuff but something more than that since those were for kids even younger than my age, I felt like. Here was a whole setting that felt...it's difficult to describe your consciousness as a child. The world seems larger, far more magical than it does as an adult. Chasm of Doom took me, without any of the work of reading the first three, into this world that felt grounded but suffused with the supernatural and with terror of powers beyond your reckoning. But you had the ability to tilt the balance---but were still very much a human being not a demigod. The suffering and madness of Baron Vanalund, the ruined town depicted in the illustration---these were NOT the fantasy I was accustomed to. This was a well-crafted world that confronted you with real death of your companions and of others. And there was no making things right, only victory in preventing worse atrocities and suffering. Even the death passage where a skeletal hand opens the prison where you've been put if you get caught on way to Maaken is excellent in setting the atmosphere. Fire on the Water I always remember for the journey across land, the feeling of destiny, that illustration and passage where you first take the hilt and hold the Sword of the Sun aloft. But also the horror of the tunnels, Helghast (which were new to us in #2), the feeling of their invincibility (other than to magic), the deaths of Rhygar and his men. Taking to the sea near the end and the attack of the Death Hulk zombie fleet (long before the Warhammer zombie pirates were developed!) was remarkable and made quite the impression.
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