Hi Neophyte.
i wasn't meaning that this was a specifically vi issue at all, just that it
is principely the reason I've stopped playing a lot of if these days, sinse
for every game I tried that I really liked, there seemed to be five or six
others where I ran into those sorts of problems.
This got particularly irritating with games like heroes which had a greeat
concept and very much grabbed my interest.
As to text gamebooks, I mean games based upon the style of the old gamebook
series of the 1980's and early 90's, things like fighting fantasy, lone wolf
and fabled lands.
These are similar to interactive fiction in that they provide a second
person narative, but rather than having a complex program and parza to
handle progression, they use a system of turning to various pages of text
(or with some of the online ones, clicking links), to make choices. Often,
they also feature an abilities and stats system similar to a tabletop rp
game and have turn based combat.
By limiting the choice of player actions, I find it far easier to
concentrate upon the story and world, rather than get stuck behind some over
complex puzle. Traditionally, series like Fighting fantasy have been
slightly pulp fantasy in genre, ---- big swords and big explosions, however
with people now writing gamebooks online, there are some more subtle works
available and works in different genres.
Noteable sites include www.ffproject.orgg, a site which has many gamebooks
online, pluss an in built dice and character sheet system (so you don't need
to write your own).
www.arborell.com, The chronicles of arborell (actually very much a favourite
of mine), a site where an author is trying to do essentially what Tolkien
did, create a world with it's own history, culture and language. There are
several game books (including one very unusual one), pluss many background
novels, historical documents and the like.
www.project.aon.org, a site wwhich allows you to either download or play
online the lone wolf series of gamebooks from the 80's. These are unique in
that the 20 books in the series form episodes in an ongoing story, and you
keep your character and abilities from book to book adding more skills as
you progress and thus getting more choices about where the story goes.
There are several others kicking around, but these I think are probably the
main three, and the three I frequent most.
You can always search the database at www.audiogames.net for the gamebooks
catagory.
Hth.
Beware the Grue!
Dark.
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