Not in combat, either. I was mostly "cheating"—I didn't even bother making a character sheet or making careful notes about my equipment, or anything, and I didn't roll any dice. I just assumed I won combats, mostly (although not completely) assumed I passed "Test Your Luck" checks, etc. I don't even know what "Kai Disciplines" I had, so I kinda fudged that too and mostly just made decisions without their benefit.
No, I actually lost in the good old fashioned Choose Your Own Adventure fashion; by making choices that led me to a "you failed" result. In City of Thieves, I was locked up in prison for a minimum of five years, in Flight From the Dark, I fell into a pit trap and was killed by enemy hunters.
In both cases, I was surprised by a couple of things: 1) how Spartan and sparse the text was. There's very little description, and stuff just breezes by super fast. I don't remember this from when I read them before, but then again, I was 13-14 or so back when I read these before. And, 2) how random stuff was. In City of Thieves, as you're walking down the street, you just are randomly able to notice this or that store or person, and you can either ignore them and keep walking, or go explore it.
I dunno. Can I outdo these? Almost certainly, if I buckle down and actually write something. But I'm now wondering if I want to? These books haven't aged as well as I thought. Is this really what I want to do?
I'm not sure.
I really wish I had a copy of Night of the Nazgûl so I could see both how they did the system and how they did the hexcrawl. Chances are it'd disappoint me the same way these two did, but it'd be another data point in how to put one of these together successfully, though. I'm really disappointed that I can't buy a copy on Amazon or anywhere else for less than nearly $30. I really doubt it's worth that much. Plus, I'm pretty sure I bought it in the 80s at cover price, which the scan says was $2.95.
That's why I bought a lot of books back then. They were cheap. Even for me, I could afford a couple bucks here and there for what was sure to be hours worth of entertainment.
I do note that the maps are available online, even if the text isn't. And the maps were done as two back to back hexmaps. North to south they were labeled A-H, and east to west they were labeled 1-27—it's mostly an east to west journey, so the map, if it were laid end to end, would be long and thin.
I do seem to recall that the tone of the books was more serious and "adult" if you will, which probably coincides with the more complicated system. But I doubt it was as much so as my 30+ year old memories make it.
EDIT: Here's a scan of a couple of pages, including where the map was embedded in the binding. It looks like I was right. Note that these are the numbered sections; which you had to deal with if the hex you were in had additional choices to make. I recall now the Move on direction given at the bottom; that's how you picked the next hex and moved. Anyway, this small sampling is, I guess, all I'm gonna have without buying another copy of the book. Sigh. I wish I could read the game system again, actually.
http://www.icewebring.com/ICE_Products/M1/images/NightOfTheNazgulMap.pdf
EDIT 2: I read Flight From the Dark a couple more times, and finished it successfully twice. I found a few more "you died" endings, but I just hit back and did something else when that happened. I was more interested in exploring the book and what it offered than in attemping to "win" or not. It's curious to me that there is actually very little description. Half of the time, I don't know what these enemies I'm facing are supposed to be, even.
No comments:
Post a Comment