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Any Port In A Storm
Below Zero Point
Tales From The Bird Islands
The Ravages Of Fate
Nye's Song
A Knight's Trial
Return To G15-275
Devil's Flight
Above The Waves
The Curse Of Drumer
The Word Fell Silent
A Strange Week For King Melchion The Despicable
Sharkbait's Revenge
Tomb Of The Ancients
A Midwinter Carol
The Dead World
Waiting For The Light
Contractual Obligation
Garden Of Bones
The Hypertrout
The Golden Crate
In The Footsteps Of A Hero
Soul Tracker
Planet Of The Spiders
Beggars Of Blacksand
The Diamond Key
Wrong Way Go Back
Hunger Of The Wolf
Isle Of The Cyclops
The Cold Heart Of Chaos
The Black Lobster
Impudent Peasant!
Curse Of The Yeti
Bad Moon Rising
Riders Of The Storm
Bodies In The Docks
House Of Horror
Rebels Of The Dark Chasms
Midnight Deep
Lair Of The Troglodytes
Outsider!
The Trial Of Allibor's Tomb
Hellfire

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Outsider!




Peter Parker
Sun Nov 20 06:15:10 2022
Right, finally got around to the Happily ever after ending!

Gavin
Sat Nov 26 12:35:14 2022
Due to New Day Rising one ending is now canonical, though prior to 2012 I would have preferred the Preacher ending. However like Eddie Vedder with Alive, the meaning of my own work changed for me.

jacob mccracken
Wed Apr 19 00:43:44 2023
Skull - non-optimum ending reached
its great i love it

Josh
Wed Jun 7 16:22:47 2023
I think this is probably the best amateur gamebook I've ever read.

Gavin
Sun Jun 11 07:31:47 2023
Thank you

YARD
Tue Aug 8 14:55:27 2023
Star - optimum ending reached
So, this story was written nearly 25 years ago, huh? Back when the author was a little younger than me?

On one hand, I'll admit that the very fact of a playable story persisting like this, in this corner of the internet, for this long, is amazing in and of itself. On the other hand, it makes it even more remarkable that, according to all of the preceding discussion, no-one else has said the things I'm about to say now.

Basically, I discovered the FFProject quite recently, after not playing these stories for well over a decade, and was immediately hooked. After I got to Outsider after binging a handful of shorter stories first, I initially blasted through it in a single evening, getting to the ending
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in the early morning. I realized that the fact
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, as well as the lack of a blue footer which the best endings in other works on here have, clearly meant it was not intended to be ideal, and that I still had plenty more outcomes to try and discover.

After taking a break from FFProject, I came back and finally got (one of) the blue footer, "Congratulations" endings.

I still by far prefer the ending I got then.

Moreover, back when I first finished it, I was really torn between which FFProject I preferred more on here - this one or A Princess Of Zamarra.

By now, it's no contest. I think A Princess Of Zamarra is far superior.


I know, I know, it's not very fair to compare works done 20 years apart, with one more of a trailblazer and the other getting a massive benefit of hindsight. Yet, I must say that the more I tried to get the intended endings, the more things I found to actually, truly hate.

I hate that
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I hate that you get healed 6 points after completing the Copper contract, (or every time you
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), yet you do not get healed at all between the necromancer contract and the Lasombra one, even though "weeks" pass between them? For that matter, you do not get healed in most other instances a lot of time passes between contracts either (i.e. between the Copper contract and the necromancer one, even though it's again a whole lot of time, or between Lasombra and subsequent contracts) but in those instances, you can at least heal somewhat by waiting to use psychic powers (even if you then choose the guild as the safest or the streets as the more potentially rewarding option) or just getting a ton of provisions, while in that case, you can at most use up precious blue potions.

I hate that after discovering the correct way to do the Lasombra quest on the first try
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, before I got the Defender ending, the subsequent attempts of that quest to see if there was anything else had simply shown what a moron Black Aria really is. The supposed reader of philosophers cannot think of any better way to investigate
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than whatever that entry was supposed to be? Nor think of anything more sophisticated to say to
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than just blurting things out? Or indeed, just think to wear gloves (why wasn't he wearing them in the first place if he already stole the uniform!)

I hate that you can outright kill Copper's son, and
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I hate the one-scene zero-context walking plot device named Ariane (seriously, who is she? The only reasonable guess would seem to be
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, but then why does she still show up regardless of the path you take to reach the count?)

I perhaps do not hate, but I am disappointed that no interaction with Morrigan (or with anything else) seems to matter the second time she potentially shows up in the story.

I am even more disappointed that
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YARD
Tue Aug 8 15:29:49 2023
Outsider is so long, and so complicated (in all senses), that I need multiple comments to fit all opinions on it!

Anyway, yeah
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I am also disappointed in that
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Same as the contract, really, which only seems to drain your luck, unless you are trying for that achievement.

For that matter: I am disappointed that
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I also have no idea if "manage to manage it" in the same was intentionally written like that or not.

I should note that 25 (?) years on, there are still undeniable typos in certain entries (326 has "try to interrogation" and 828 misspells "psychic senses"). Hell, in the
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Perhaps not surprising in a story of this length, but unfortunate nevertheless. The second sentence in 324 is...maybe it was intended to read like that, but it's really weird, and I wonder if some other word was intended instead.

Finally, when I simply got the Defender ending, I thought that
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was a downside. Now, I consider it yet another benefit.

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I have to be honest, everything about the current ending is so dumb in context.
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Then again, it's probably nothing next to the fact there is effectively no narrative reason for
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YARD
Tue Aug 8 15:43:22 2023
There are also timeline inconsistencies between endings. I don't really get how come
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Another subtle, yet ridiculously large inconsistency:
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Lastly, I simply do not believe that
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....Yeah. Don't get me wrong, I still find a lot to admire about this gamebook, from the way it designs the combat encounters to all of the dry humour and the sociological observations which are consistently great. It strengths are indeed very strong - so strong that it seems like practically everyone to date chose to overlook its glaring weaknesses.

Gavin
Wed Aug 9 03:33:15 2023
Ariane was a reference to Herman Hesse's Steppenwolf, and was pretty self indulgent admittedly. Aria's lack of tactics are due to the supposed lithe assassin being overtaken by his burly narrator, I wouldn't have any idea what to do either. At the time of the Asssassin's Guild he's supposed to be deep into alcoholic madness, which did not mirror what I was doing in real life at all. I miss the part where he refuses to sleep with anyone else? Does he actually say that? Not endingoing without a massive boss fight would be anticlimactic. Othe rise thanks for taking the time for such detailed analysis, the flaws and mistakes are true enough.

YARD
Thu Aug 10 03:17:24 2023
Ah, so what you encounter in the valley is basically the opening scene of the Berserk manga in reverse? Likewise, it seems like some of the Defenders' moral code has actually been based on that of Apostles from the same?

I must say, one of the things I really like is the way you get a completely different impression of the Defender depending on how you approach him. People really can behave very differently depending on the context, even if the fiction can often forget it.


Likewise, Salome is very sympathetic if you approach her acting smart, and is little different from any other vampire if you pick the dumb options. Not that you can't work she is a vampire when she lets you use the library and explicitly refers to the Embrace, of course. That's one reason I do not feel bad about taking on that bonus contract, unless vampires in Titan actually have the self-control to feed without taking everything their prey needs.

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Speaking of

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And yeah, in two out of the three Arielburg endings

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We are literally told just that. Every other time a woman besides Eddora turns up, he either looks on with outright disdain or goes "She reminds me of Eddora", and it gets predictable very quickly.

And I suppose my point is that the whole Master of Assassins plotline is cool when you first get there as a reward for finally getting past that difficult cat-and-mouse game, but logically it falls apart once you notice that you are supposedly waging this epic battle vs. the ever-growing law enforcement - all while still sitting in the exact same stinking tavern as always! It's like when in "bigger" video games, they are limited somewhat in the locations they can have the player visit - but here, there are no assets to render, and the written word can describe however many locations you like!

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YARD
Thu Aug 10 03:29:23 2023
A couple more questions/comments.

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Similarly

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I am also interested in what triggers the entry where you start searching for the Defender and find out that Anne and the beggar are now in way better place than before (while you lose 2 Luck). Is it a random dice roll, or is it connected to some of your preceding choices?

Gavin
Thu Aug 10 03:35:07 2023
All the material about vampires was ripped wholesale from Vampire The Masquerade. In which context, vampires don't have to obey the prince, the Prince only has as much power as they can enforce, like a medieval prince. I had no norion of Berserk at the time and only know it from TV Tropes now. Otherwise you've put more thought into this than I did, though perhaps our assassin hero is just unimaginative.

YARD
Thu Aug 10 05:34:15 2023
Yeah, I am not much of a manga/anime scene connoisseur myself, and I didn't read that much of Berserk (as opposed to about Berserk) but I do know it is probably the most influential manga of the 1990s, and it famously inspired quite a few things in Dark Souls. (As well as much of the original Drakengard, and many other works I can't name right now.)

Its creator, Miura, also started on it as a teen - I think he was a little younger than you were at the time of finishing Outsider when its publication began. Predictably, its backstory is very much what we would now call edgy, and the very first scene is of protagonist (named Guts, as his mother was already swinging from a tree along a dozen other people, heavily pregnant, before his actual "birth") fucking a blonde woman who transforms into a monster during the act before he shoots her with a gun hidden in his severed arm's metal stump. You can see why I thought there were parallels!

And imo, possibly the most interesting thing about otherwise not-that-distinct medieval Europe dark fantasy is how evil works there. There are four main evil deities there (at least, initially) and they are very reminiscent of Warhammer's Chaos Gods (had to check to make sure Warhammer was first). The thing is, serving any of them in Warhammer will almost certainly cost your sanity soon (along with deformities in some cases) and progression is not only very dangerous for life all along but the ultimate prize, becoming nigh-immortal Demon Prince, may well short-circuit and turn you into a gibbering Chaos Spawn. (serving all four as Chaos Undivided is a little less dangerous, but has no chance of becoming a Prince and will probably turn you into a weak and tormented winged demon once you die.)

Instead, all you are asked to do in Berserk is to sacrifice whoever is closest to you. Once you do that, you become an Apostle - a being that cannot die of old age and can either switch between a human and much stronger and more animalistic form at will, or at least always lives as semi-humanoid, semi-animal. Some can also convert humans into other beings loyal to them (Pseudo-Apostles). You are not asked to do anything afterwards - the only "rule" for the Apostles is Do as thou wilt. This is what makes it really disturbing - with such a low entry barrier, there is so much risk anyone you love can do that, and perhaps the pressure to do it first. In all, it is another overlap I found funny.

Thank you for the kind words! I hope that by the time I get around to submitting a gamebook of my own, it won't disappoint!

Gavin
Thu Aug 10 06:22:01 2023
Baggy Anne and the beggar are always better off, I don't know the other two answers sorry

YARD
Sat Aug 12 11:20:22 2023
Yes, but my point is that you do not always get to see that ref (866) telling you that they are now better off. I just went for a couple more short runs, and some of them do show it, but the others just skip straight to 671 ("You finally come to the realisation that the your usual contacts are unlikely to know the location of Defender. They are the kind of people whom he usually kills, and thus they would be inclined to avoid him".)

Perhaps I might get that yellow text from FFProject telling me the reason why this can happen? I experimented with doing a few things differently, but I'm still not sure what might be behind it.

Also, my previous message, about Berserk and its parallels with your work, got held up by the website's word filter, so you probably haven't seen it yet. If you are interested, you can scroll up a bit.

Lastly, does the Copper's house not have any windows? I just keep wondering how come you have no other option but to go through the front door - and concurrently, how come fighting an indefinite number of Watchmen outside it does not awaken anyone on the inside.

You see 866 only if you fail a hidden PSYCHIC/SKILL test and choose the 'information' option at 881.

YARD
Sun Aug 13 13:18:26 2023
OK, thanks for that explanation.

I also wonder how the thieves' cut for the Fiorentino job was calculated. They ask 300 GP from you, but your actual fee was 2550? Is it because they also want a cut of the profits from his saber's jewels?

It also seems like you always give them 300, regardless of whether you complete it or not. (And if you accept the bribe, it's also 300, and not 1000).

All of those numbers are completely meaningless in-game, of course, but it's an interesting observation.

MPerera
Sun Sep 17 01:20:08 2023
Comet - all challenges completed
Completed all the challenges! It's been a while since I originally played this, so I needed a few playthroughs to remember everything.

Of all the gamebooks on this site, Outsider! in my second favorite (#1 is House of Horror, just because House of Hell was the first FF gamebook I discovered, and it's still my favorite because of that).

Paul
Sun Sep 17 22:47:27 2023
There are things I can nitpick, parts that unbalanced and luck based but holy ****ing the writing is on another level compared to any FF book on this site or otherwise. The gameplay is good but a bit wonky at times, but the writing is leagues and leagues above anyting else



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