u/Six_of_1

I just got done with this. I loved the return to south-east Allansia, or should I say south-east Old Allansia. It's essentially a sequel (or rather prequel) to Citadel of Chaos and Creature of Havoc. After 40 years of Salamonis being this important city of learning and riches, we finally got to see it.

Steve likes his books to be experimental, to require meta playing. There's always secret options or turning words into numbers, and this is no exception. And I think in some cases it was poorly executed.

The days system in my opinion is hopelessly broken. It's confusing because there are so many times when it will say the day has changed, but then not officially tell you to change the day. But then other times, it will tell you to change the day. So you wind up with this kind of half-baked system where the day only changes sometimes and not other times, even though the text says you've gone to bed and woken up.

It's just a lot of faffing about for basically one event. That eventually if the text will ask if it's Seaday and when it's Seaday the Shrieker Attack gets triggered to trigger the main quest. Or there's a dream that triggers on Friday but the dream is a waste of time. But I just think this should've been cleaner and less confusing.

For example there's a bit where you spend six months in the tower and you're not told to move the days. But then you spend two weeks escorting the caravan and you move the days two weeks.

I suppose you don't change the days in what is essentially the training section, but in the real-world the days would be moving all the same so it's just confusing. Also so many times it will say to move the day 15 days and that really means move it 1 day doesn't it. Just say move it one day. Because the actual passage of time doesn't matter in the slightest, you're allowed to spend six months in a library and it doesn't seem to affect the Shivering Man quest in the slightest. You're just waiting for it to be Seaday when you get asked.

It annoyed me how the Spelling skill assigns random numbers to the letters, but there's still other codes that work based off the alphabet order. It's inconsistent, why not just have them both work on the same system.

And it annoyed me that the answer to the Shivering Man location was KING SALAMON'S MINE and we have to work that out as a numerical code when the answer could just be MINE. And I'm sure there's another part where the answer is SILVER MINE. It shouldn't be a test of maths or "guess what I'm thinking", if this was really happening then we wouldn't be working out codes we'd just be saying "he's in the mine".

I "cheated" by doing all the training because it annoyed me that the book set arbitrary restrictions on much training you can do before the book tells you you feel ready to start questing. I don't like gamebooks making choices for us to set us off on pre-determined paths, the point is we're supposed to be choosing. I can't remember if this was actually cheating because the book expects us to turn to a lot of paragraphs on our own that we wrote down so I just did that.

I thought the dream-sequences were a big waste of time. Especially having to Test Your Luck in a dream sequence, why am I losing a luck point in a dream?

Is the leprechaun the same one from Citadel of Chaos?

What happened to our backpack, why did it just get handed into the Adventurer's Guild with everything still in it? Who was the person we were chasing with it? Felt like a loose end.

The Lucky skill confers a presumably unintended hack which is that it never says you can't use it in combat. So if you're lucky all the time, then that includes combat, which means you always inflict double damage on opponents and opponents always inflict half damage to you! You become near invincible in combat with Lucky skill.

Thank you, Clare, for making sure her time wasn't wasted. 💐

I just got done with Shadow of the Giants. Was shocked upon putting it back on the shelf at how the gold spine had worn away in the middle just from me holding it normally, exposing a bare white in the middle. Is there a way to avoid this on my next Scholastic, should I wear rubber gloves to stop oils or is it just any handling? How shoddy.

Three months ago I made this post asking how Fabled Lands worked, especially in terms of travelling between the books and if I needed all the books. Thanks to all those who answered that no you don't but recommended which one or two to start with. I went ahead and just bought the collection (the original collection, ie 1-6 but not 7).

I decided rather than jumping out to big quests in the cities, I'd just start where I am and explore the Isle of the Druids. Picked up a few fetch quests for the druids, which gave me a bit of purpose. While I was fetching the wereboar tusk I stumbled upon the skeleton knight who wants a key for his treasure vault, but that went on the backburner because I had no idea where that was.

The real gamechanger in terms of moving up in the world came when I defeated the knight in the forest, which gave me good armour and a good weapon. From there I really felt like I was going places. Racked up some money, sold stuff I didn't need, and decided I liked the idea of Book 3. I couldn't afford a galleon so I got the small boat.

Let me tell you, don't go into book 3 until you can afford the best boat and the best crew. It's just not worth it. As soon as you roll into any pirates, they'll eat you for breakfast. The pirates are tough and you need the best otherwise you'll get wiped out. After a bad encounter I got scared off.

Next up I decided to take down the rat men. That's a nice little quest for starter players. You feel like you're getting stuff done, but I was expecting more of a quest, for the sewers to be more of a dungeon-crawl. The quest was over pretty quickly, you just go down and about three choices later there's the rat king.

Now it was time for the big Book 1 quest, the civil war. I'd already turned against the dictator because his man in Yellowport burnt my townhouse down. So I tracked down the king and took out the Yellowport man for him. Happy to do so. Next up was going up to Book 4 to capture the citadel and become the King's Champion. That felt really epic.

Dipped into Book 2 to follow up on the treasure in the forest, found the key. man that treasure is something, you can just decide how much to take? What if I decide to take 1,000,0000? It doesn't impose any limit on how much is there. So that was me set up for life, money-wise. Bought a galleon and went back to Book 3 to shiver those pirates timbers.

My little foray into Book 4 had hooked me and I spent the next week criss-crossing the plains. Eventually got a bit frustrated with the Pyramid Trap and having to go back and forth and get a second Banner of Shadar because I made the mistake of bringing it to the Pyramid where your stuff gets temporarily taken from you. Also on the way to the City of Ruins a random centaur hypnotised me and I lost all my stuff, including the Obsidian Key to complete the quest. I basically just refused to lose it, it was tucked into my boot or something.

I'd started to get a bit disillusioned with all the backtracking the plains in Book 4 and having to go through all the random encounters every time when you know exactly where you're going from A to B. That's why there's a few teleportation spots for when veterans get sick of that. I was so tempted to just skip to my destination rather than constantly do the scouting rolls to see if I catch a rabbit.

Book 4 burnt me out a bit and I decided I was going to call it quits for the time being, and not go into Books 5 and 6 which had remained untouched. Fabled Lands was incredible but I hadn't signed up to spend the rest of the year on it, I had other gamebooks going unplayed and that felt like a natural place to stop for the time being, hang my wolf pelt up and retire in my Yarimura townhouse.

I've just started watching and I'm halfway through season 2. >!Do Nancy and Steve get back together? I can't stomach her new relationship with Jonathan, I just keep thinking about how badly she treated Steve and how selfish she is. Steve had every right to be hurt because she lied to him and spent the night with Jonathan in her bedroom. If Stranger Things is going to push Nancy and Jonathan as a couple I don't think I can keep watching, I can't stand them. Don't they feel guilty? Am I supposed to be supporting them?!<

The only other show from ages ago I ever listen to is the Chris Morris show. I know Karl popped up on Simon Pegg & Nick Frost's Show but is there loads of episodes of that because I've only ever heard Karl's ones. Are there any other shows to listen to all night waffling about hairy Chinese kids. Doesn't have to be Chinese.

When I was a kid, I only ever did Fighting Fantasy and Lone Wolf.

Now, 30 years after the fact, I'm looking at trying Fabled Lands for the first time. Quite intrigued by the idea of an open-world gamebook and linking back-and-forth between them.

My question is about the linking back-and-forth between the books. How important is that? Can I just buy volume 1 to try it out, or will I be getting lots of dead-ends telling me to turn to something in another volume?

In other English-speaking countries like the UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Canada, it's pretty normal for a mix of shows from other English-speaking countries to be on television. For example the Australian soap opera Neighbours was famously popular in the UK, the UK quiz show The Chase is very popular in New Zealand. What non-American tv shows are popular in America?

It seems to me that Lee's cues are not only always Lies, but they're obvious Lies. They're always him doing weird hobbies he obviously doesn't do. Has he ever been True?