Such an excellent work! By now, I have finished 11 gamebooks out of 56 or so that are playable online here, and so far, it is definitely my favourite - and it's not even close!

I really love the characterization of essentially everyone (from the fiercely independent-minded orcs to those in the royal court) and the incredible extent of choices you get. I won many times, and I still discover new things on every run! Just now, I found out how useful the Antler can really be, letting you skip a fight I was convinced was mandatory on that path. I love that the attention to detail even extends to something like that minor interaction between the black stone and the magic tooth.

I do need to point out a significant continuity issue. Essentially, the Fencing skill is less useful than it should have been, because the rapier you are supposed to have (and which is explicitly mentioned in some refs afterwards) is not actually added to your inventory!

Another important continuity issue: sometimes, you get ref 59, the one with this line

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But then Mawrogh is still alive after that. Perhaps it's possible for one to survive that, but shouldn't there at least be a line alluding to that kind of injury? Alternatively, he can only survive when you do everything right to see that happen.

It would also be amazing if the "true ending" (and perhaps even some of the "not the best, not the worst" endings) changed slightly if Mawrogh was still alive at the time, but I suppose it would be up to Kieran whether or not to update this. Same as with the issue pointed out in an earlier comment

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To be fair, it IS a pretty unlikely turn of events to have both still alive at the time. After all, you have to

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So, it's easy to see how taking this sequence of events (which requires both specific choices and specific dice rolls to occur) into account was overlooked. I also wonder if

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Either way, what I find really weird is that even Capula is actually a slightly superior opponent to Grauch, who is meant to have incomparably more combat experience. I guess setting Grauch to 9 skill might be way too brutal for 7 Skill runs (and Skill 8 also fits with that Unlucky bad ending you might get from trusting her abilities too much) but what about buffing her Stamina? When you change forms, your Stamina is altered by 4 points: wouldn't this suggest that if Grauch ever ended up getting the ring, she would be reduced to the tiny 3 Stamina? Granted, Zerraz also has only 7 Stamina, but this can at least be described as the consequence of all the scars he has. I think she should have 4 more than now (11), so that she is not unquestionably the weakest member in-game, if not in-narrative, and to make her less of a pushover on her own. You can always say that her calm spear tactics meant she received the least injuries of the (non-playable) orcs assembled.

Finally, a couple of typos.

22: Probably "dwarves" rather than "dwarfs"?

127: I believe it should be "sheathes", not "sheaths".

143: There's a missing space after the comma.

Thanks once again. You now get a rapier, Mawrogh dies when he is supposed to, you no longer stand alone when Grauch is still alive, and I've fixed the typos (dwarfs is apparently correct though).

YARD
Sat Aug 12 07:29:10 2023
Star - optimum ending reached

Two more typos, both in what I guess is the Laski pathway.

348: Quotation marks are opened but not closed.

379: "another solider".

I haven't tried his path before, and it's surprisingly more viable than I thought. Not one but two skills taught by Perrault allow you to win comfortably here, with the main obstacle probably that one skill check which you can only avoid

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and the other one

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YARD
Sun Aug 13 02:31:18 2023
Star - optimum ending reached

Thanks for the prompt fixes! I went ahead with some testing on this run, and I can confirm that the continuity issues with the two Orcs are gone. (Also makes me wish even more that Mawrogh staying alive was reflected in more subsequent refs, since it's now a very specific outcome that's partly down to luck.)

The Rapier is now present in your inventory too, but it seems that unlike, say, the Magic Helmet, which always works, you have to press "Use" on the Rapier to get any benefit out of it. You then get the weirdness where Capula charges you because she sees you carrying a rapier, but you'll still be fighting her with a dagger unless you explicitly specify that you would be using a rapier. I almost wonder if the rapier should just replace the dagger outright. After all, I don't think there's any real narrative significance to that specific dagger?

YARD
Sun Aug 13 12:45:03 2023

"(dwarfs is apparently correct though)"

I had to look deeper into this, and the history is considerably more complex than I thought. I thought it was only correct as a verb in the real world, but it turns out that the plural form of "dwarf" in fantasy can technically be either, but there has been a shift over time.

In the really old, pre-Tolkien times, it was in fact meant to be "dwarfs".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_White_and_the_Seven_Dwarfs_(1937_film)

But then, Tolkien used "dwarves" in The Hobbit and beyond.

https://scribd.com/document/104079699/THE-HOBBIT-by-J-R-R-Tolkien-Excerpt

It turns out he even had to fight with his editors to get that spelling!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwarves_in_Middle-earth#Spelling

And now, I think dwarves is the far more accepted version. There is even a game on Steam with that title!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/403970/The_Dwarves/

(And it was apparently based on some fantasy book as well.)

Kieran
Fri Sep 8 23:03:12 2023

Fair point regarding sparing Mawrogh from the skeletons. Can't remember now if I mistakenly didn't think it was possible for him to still be about or I just didn't think of him at all - a definite mistake either way.

My idea behind this one was to have a wide array of paths but still have a fairly strong story - it's an approach I also took with my earlier Songs of the Mystics and I think it fit well with writing a sequel to a Luke Sharp book since his books had unusually wide branches for FF.

Kieran
Fri Sep 8 23:13:39 2023

And yes, I prefer 'dwarfs' - Tolkien be damned!

YARD
Sat Sep 9 08:37:12 2023

Hehe, not actually a huge fan of Tolkien myself, let alone some of the legacy he's left on the genre (which, to be fair, might include the plots of the most typical FF books.)

Now, I have to ask: Songs of the Mystics? Revenant Rising?! (Mentioned by you in another thread.) Other than the gamebooks already present on here (including To Catch A Thief , which is apparently the only one that still hasn't been digitized) how many more did you write, and is there a reason why they are apparently only available from elsewhere? It's certainly far more convenient for us, the readers when everything is in one place, at any rate.

Kieran
Sat Sep 9 14:51:22 2023

I like Tolkien, just not how he spells dwarfs!

Revenant Rising and Songs of the Mystics were both written for the Gamebook Adventures app series so I don't own the rights for either one. I think the former can still be obtained as part of the Gamebook Adventures 4-6 compilation. The latter isn't available anywhere as far as I'm aware.

Apart from those, there are a few other 50 sectioner competition entries that I wrote between 18-20: Sanctuary of Souls, Feathers of the Phoenix and Treasures of the Briny Deep. There's also two other Windhammer entries - Behind the Throne (an 100 section Three Musketeers tribute written between Hunger of the Wolf and Waiting for the Light); and The Experiment which is, ultimately, probably best forgotten. I think they're all floating around the

I also wrote two gamebooks for the Fighting Fantazine - Prey of the Hunter (Issue 3) and Hand of Fate (Issue 10). You can download them from the fantazine website.

I have intended to tweak some of these for uploading here but never quite got round to it!

bcyy
Mon Mar 4 14:25:34 2024
Star - optimum ending reached

Nice!

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Thomas
Thu Aug 1 21:56:22 2024
Star - optimum ending reached

Really enjoyed this one. I might try to make it into a game

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