Lone Wolf, Kai Sun Lord
Jul. 15th, 2012 04:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethMy weekend went to Project Aon
http://www.projectaon.org/
They have all the Lone Wolf game books and you can play them online. And it's legal. Which is nice.
I have only up to 14. They stopped being published and went out of print and stuff. It is frustrating when you've only mostly saved the world.
I just played 16, Legacy of Vashna, and found it very frustrating. It's the second book where I had to cheat.
I don't like cheating.
But the first time I got to a battle and there was absolutely no way around it, no alternate routes, I mapped that whole thing and it herded you back to the same battle, and that battle could not be won. Maybe, possibly, the way I used to play it, where I could hit the highest 'random' numbers with my eyes closed. I'd have had to do ten in a row to get close though, which is quite a lot. But with an actual random number generator and the computer doing the battles, no. In fact the only way I found to make a difference to that battle was to have done something different two or more game books before. And it wouldn't let you use poisons or potions or exploding fireseeds or anything else that would have been handy. So you just died a lot.
If there was another way, I would have liked to know.
So I just cheated and said I won. And grumped about it.
(Knowing I would probably go back and play all the books again until I had a better chance when I caught up to it again.)
But this time it was a puzzle. There's two number puzzles in a row, and you have to solve one of them. No other way to win, and only two chances at it. And I absolutely could not figure it out. Actually, there's three puzzles in a row, but even the internet agrees the first one is purely unsolvable as written, and you don't have to solve it anyway if you have a fight instead. It's the last two that are pains. Because I looked and looked and the answer did not occur to me and eventually I gave up and asked google and now I'll never know if staring at it for hours would have worked, but really, I don't think it would have.
I have a shiny IQ. If I can't figure out your kid book number puzzles, they're too damn hard.
*sulk*
And then, to my grand annoyance, it was possible to just die on the penultimate page purely because of a random number roll.
Now that's just being an arse. I mean, punish bad choices, yes, but going 'roll above x to win the whole book, roll below x to die horribly too bad so sad hahahaha', that's just... no. I will cheat on that one with a righteous feeling.
But! Mostly, I rather like the Lone Wolf books. You run around killing big rats and visiting evil cities called Darke or beginning with K or Z. It's sort of uncomplicated.
If I apply my cultural studies brain it's often made of *facepalm*, but if you leave your brain having a rest it's just made of hitting things in the face. *shrugs* (*sighs*)
I like choose your own adventure books. They've got proper stories. Computer games often have a lot of stomping around hitting things and not much by way of narrative. Adventure books know you're probably going to skip the fighting anyway, if you're not in the mood to roll all those fiddly numbers, so the excitement comes from elsewhere.
And a big long series of adventures starring the same people, where you can make friends and see how their lives are doing later, that's just *awesome*.
So I am having happy gaming weekend with occasional hiccups.
Also, the random number generator isn't. I have rolled a statistically improbable number of 0s. Especially when 0 means getting hit in the face again.
... yes, the dice in teh computer are bad luck dice. I should probably go get some of my proper ones out and stop grumbling. :eyeroll:
http://www.projectaon.org/
They have all the Lone Wolf game books and you can play them online. And it's legal. Which is nice.
I have only up to 14. They stopped being published and went out of print and stuff. It is frustrating when you've only mostly saved the world.
I just played 16, Legacy of Vashna, and found it very frustrating. It's the second book where I had to cheat.
I don't like cheating.
But the first time I got to a battle and there was absolutely no way around it, no alternate routes, I mapped that whole thing and it herded you back to the same battle, and that battle could not be won. Maybe, possibly, the way I used to play it, where I could hit the highest 'random' numbers with my eyes closed. I'd have had to do ten in a row to get close though, which is quite a lot. But with an actual random number generator and the computer doing the battles, no. In fact the only way I found to make a difference to that battle was to have done something different two or more game books before. And it wouldn't let you use poisons or potions or exploding fireseeds or anything else that would have been handy. So you just died a lot.
If there was another way, I would have liked to know.
So I just cheated and said I won. And grumped about it.
(Knowing I would probably go back and play all the books again until I had a better chance when I caught up to it again.)
But this time it was a puzzle. There's two number puzzles in a row, and you have to solve one of them. No other way to win, and only two chances at it. And I absolutely could not figure it out. Actually, there's three puzzles in a row, but even the internet agrees the first one is purely unsolvable as written, and you don't have to solve it anyway if you have a fight instead. It's the last two that are pains. Because I looked and looked and the answer did not occur to me and eventually I gave up and asked google and now I'll never know if staring at it for hours would have worked, but really, I don't think it would have.
I have a shiny IQ. If I can't figure out your kid book number puzzles, they're too damn hard.
*sulk*
And then, to my grand annoyance, it was possible to just die on the penultimate page purely because of a random number roll.
Now that's just being an arse. I mean, punish bad choices, yes, but going 'roll above x to win the whole book, roll below x to die horribly too bad so sad hahahaha', that's just... no. I will cheat on that one with a righteous feeling.
But! Mostly, I rather like the Lone Wolf books. You run around killing big rats and visiting evil cities called Darke or beginning with K or Z. It's sort of uncomplicated.
If I apply my cultural studies brain it's often made of *facepalm*, but if you leave your brain having a rest it's just made of hitting things in the face. *shrugs* (*sighs*)
I like choose your own adventure books. They've got proper stories. Computer games often have a lot of stomping around hitting things and not much by way of narrative. Adventure books know you're probably going to skip the fighting anyway, if you're not in the mood to roll all those fiddly numbers, so the excitement comes from elsewhere.
And a big long series of adventures starring the same people, where you can make friends and see how their lives are doing later, that's just *awesome*.
So I am having happy gaming weekend with occasional hiccups.
Also, the random number generator isn't. I have rolled a statistically improbable number of 0s. Especially when 0 means getting hit in the face again.
... yes, the dice in teh computer are bad luck dice. I should probably go get some of my proper ones out and stop grumbling. :eyeroll:
no subject
Date: 2012-07-22 01:29 am (UTC)Played? Read? What's the term? "Did" could mean "wrote" which I did not.