Game News Fabled Lands books a release

[CaesarCzech]

Missed opportunity to be more than just transfer to another medium should have been adaptation extra quests added etc, it feels like instead of using the quests there as sort of basis and then expanding upon them they just copied them, they had the opportunity to basically have quests written for them then just add extra fluff and combat and rolls, IE instead of freeing demigod by either one combat or roll have it involve several fights and have player hard pressed by end only to get rewarded by freeing the demigod and having him help for the last battle. Wasted opportunity.

 

[ntonystinson]

Doesn't look bad at all(haven't played it yet though)

 

[True Ukrainian]

I gave this a shot and its honesty not very good.

There a number of very bullshit mechanics where a random encounter can cost you all your items and money without giving you a chance to roll to save. But that's why there's the stashing system so once you get used to the idea of regularly stashing your items and money in towns, this mechanic becomes tolerable.

The real problems start with how quests are handled. Most quests require a mixture of rolls to complete and the difficulty of the game comes about when the quest requires you to roll on a weak stat. I played a mage and the mage's weakest stat is piety. Several quests required me to roll for piety and sometimes a failed roll requires you to do the whole quest again. Sometimes you are penalized with HP loss or an additional combat, but the game offers only one path through most quests. Preparation by getting blessings so that you can reroll bad dice helps, but then there's a regular random encounter that strips you of blessings, making the whole thing very tedious.

The classes are a lie, because everyone can learn every skill, as long as you have the right stats. And you will need to become some form of Omniman because all your stats are relevant in a game with no alternate paths. So eventually everyone will try to max out their base stats or boost them with items or blessings.

And the dungeons are just a few paragraphs long and feel like a summary rather than an adventure.

 

[Ludwig von Eisenthal]

I gave this a shot and its honesty not very good.

There a number of very bullshit mechanics where a random encounter can cost you all your items and money without giving you a chance to roll to save. But that's why there's the stashing system so once you get used to the idea of regularly stashing your items and money in towns, this mechanic becomes tolerable.

The real problems start with how quests are handled. Most quests require a mixture of rolls to complete and the difficulty of the game comes about when the quest requires you to roll on a weak stat. I played a mage and the mage's weakest stat is piety. Several quests required me to roll for piety and sometimes a failed roll requires you to do the whole quest again. Sometimes you are penalized with HP loss or an additional combat, but the game offers only one path through most quests. Preparation by getting blessings so that you can reroll bad dice helps, but then there's a regular random encounter that strips you of blessings, making the whole thing very tedious.

The classes are a lie, because everyone can learn every skill, as long as you have the right stats. And you will need to become some form of Omniman because all your stats are relevant in a game with no alternate paths. So eventually everyone will try to max out their base stats or boost them with items or blessings.

And the dungeons are just a few paragraphs long and feel like a summary rather than an adventure.

Thank you for your impressions. They confirm my main concerns: FL is a sheer wonder in book form (the short, concise descriptions are part of the brillance), what it achieves is unparalleled to this day. It but if you just transform it in a computer game and don't modernize its basic mechanics it won't work, it will be a very mediocre experience, a very frustrating one even. The books are extremely hard and punishing too, but I find myself cheating now and then, repeating a battle or using a custom "save system" (go back to the last city/inn after I die). Are there free save options in the computer version?

 

[True Ukrainian]

I gave this a shot and its honesty not very good.

There a number of very bullshit mechanics where a random encounter can cost you all your items and money without giving you a chance to roll to save. But that's why there's the stashing system so once you get used to the idea of regularly stashing your items and money in towns, this mechanic becomes tolerable.

The real problems start with how quests are handled. Most quests require a mixture of rolls to complete and the difficulty of the game comes about when the quest requires you to roll on a weak stat. I played a mage and the mage's weakest stat is piety. Several quests required me to roll for piety and sometimes a failed roll requires you to do the whole quest again. Sometimes you are penalized with HP loss or an additional combat, but the game offers only one path through most quests. Preparation by getting blessings so that you can reroll bad dice helps, but then there's a regular random encounter that strips you of blessings, making the whole thing very tedious.

The classes are a lie, because everyone can learn every skill, as long as you have the right stats. And you will need to become some form of Omniman because all your stats are relevant in a game with no alternate paths. So eventually everyone will try to max out their base stats or boost them with items or blessings.

And the dungeons are just a few paragraphs long and feel like a summary rather than an adventure.

Thank you for your impressions. They confirm my main concerns: FL is a sheer wonder in book form (the short, concise descriptions are part of the brillance), what it achieves is unparalleled to this day. It but if you just transform it in a computer game and don't modernize its basic mechanics it won't work, it will be a very mediocre experience, a very frustrating one even. The books are extremely hard and punishing too, but I find myself cheating now and then, repeating a battle or using a custom "save system" (go back to the last city/inn after I die). Are there free save options in the computer version?

You can save whenever you want outside of iron man. So you can cheat by saving before a difficult roll and keep trying it.

 

[Ludwig von Eisenthal]

You can save whenever you want outside of iron man. So you can cheat by saving before a difficult roll and keep trying it.

Ah ok. While that's definitively more player friendly it encourages save scumming. A modern gaming audience expects a game to be finishable and aims for the end, thus needing constant save possibilities. I have the impression that the FL books were never intended to be finshed (they don't have an ending) and regular dying and/or losing important stuff was part of the whole experience. If you explored one part with one character you could explore the other part with the next and so gradually gain more and more knowledge to asses risks properly. I think FL is best experienced if the player goes in without any goals first, just follows the flow of the game, jumps in this wondrous world without thinking to much. It's more about experimenting, trying, adventuring than calculating and planning how to beat the system.

 

[True Ukrainian]

Ah ok. While that's definitively more player friendly it encourages save scumming. A modern gaming audience expects a game to be finishable and aims for the end, thus needing constant save possibilities. I have the impression that the FL books were never intended to be finshed (they don't have an ending) and regular dying and/or losing important stuff was part of the whole experience. If you explored one part with one character you could explore the other part with the next and so gradually gain more and more knowledge to asses risks properly. I think FL is best experienced if the player goes in without any goals first, just follows the flow of the game, jumps in this wondrous world without thinking to much. It's more about experimenting, trying, adventuring than calculating and planning how to beat the system.

The problem is that the game's punishments are too heavy and unfair, especially early on. Take the first "book" you reach after the Isle of Druids. Moving one step out of Yellowport can subject you to a total inventory wipe on a bad roll. There's no indication of what kind of stat you need to survive the wipe. After you learn about blessings, you start stocking up on them to survive the bullshit the game throws at you, but the game has a common random encounter that strips away blessings just to screw with that plan. You can try learning about the dangers of the area by buying drinks at the tavern, but the stories you get don't indicate what stats you will need. Even safe areas can subject you to inventory wipe, like the country fairs in the second "book" where you get drunk and lose half your money.

I would mind it a lot less if the game had difficult combat and punished you for losing battles. But this system disempowers the player because your losses are tied to luck, not your own actions.

 

[Ludwig von Eisenthal]

The problem is that the game's punishments are too heavy and unfair, especially early on. Take the first "book" you reach after the Isle of Druids. Moving one step out of Yellowport can subject you to a total inventory wipe on a bad roll. There's no indication of what kind of stat you need to survive the wipe. After you learn about blessings, you start stocking up on them to survive the bullshit the game throws at you, but the game has a common random encounter that strips away blessings just to screw with that plan. You can try learning about the dangers of the area by buying drinks at the tavern, but the stories you get don't indicate what stats you will need. Even safe areas can subject you to inventory wipe, like the country fairs in the second "book" where you get drunk and lose half your money.

I would mind it a lot less if the game had difficult combat and punished you for losing battles. But this system disempowers the player because your losses are tied to luck, not your own actions.

Yeah I know what you mean. There are incredibly unfair situations in the game where you have absolutely no chance to survive. That's the one thing I don't like about these books, your adventure can find a surprisingly sudden end, "gotcha!" style. After reading some interviews with and posts by the original creators of the series I realized that they don't condemn cheating at all. And I think it's not very realistic to play the game without cheating at all. Hell I think nobody ever played these books without cheating. Still FL is much more forgiving than other gamebook series, the reanimation deals must have been quite an innovation back then. Other gamebook series forced you - technically - to begin the game again from book 1 (I think of the otherwise excellent Grey Wolf-series. If you die after a dozen books and are asked to go back to the beginning, cheating is simply mandatory). In FL you "only" lose all your possessions when you are reanimated (I always used some kind of "Diablo"-cheat as a house rule here: After dying I had to go back to the place where I died to get my items back). But generally these kind of sudden death situations were a very usual thing in the early gamebooks. Modern ones tend to be more lenient (the excellent Riders of the Black Sun for example lets you begin again in the chapter you are in; the equally brillant Destiny Quest-books let you "reload" on the "main map", immediately before the lost combat).

EDIT: One - technically legal - kind of cheating in FL: Start the game in a later book, say book 5 or 6. This way you have clear advantage in the earlier books (higher level, better chances in skill checks etc.). Start the game in a later book and travel back to book 1. Book 2 still is unfair as fuck, but you still stand much better chances. I don't know if that is true for the game though.

 

[True Ukrainian]

You will always start a new game at the isle of druids, but there's an easy mode which apparently mitigates inventory loss and gives you bonus stat points at character creation. Never tried it myself though.

 

[Ludwig von Eisenthal]

You will always start a new game at the isle of druids, but there's an easy mode which apparently mitigates inventory loss and gives you bonus stat points at character creation. Never tried it myself though.

You always start at the Druid Isle? That's a strange decision. It was an important aspect of the original gamebooks to be able to start in every book you liked. This kind of freedom made these books special.