Phasers to Stun! Warp Factor 9! Highly illogical Captain! We're playing Starship Traveller, Fighting Fantasy's attempt to do Star Trek. This was a bit of an unusual Fighting Fantasy, with rules not found in any other book. Specifically rules for ship to ship combat, remarkably lethal phaser rules and most notably it got you to generate all of the main officers on your ship; seven in all.
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We're back once again like a renegade time lord with The Castle of Lost Souls by Dave Morris. There's actually two versions of this, a Golden Dragon version and one from White Dwarf. We're going to be doing the latter because it's mechanically stronger and supports evil play better. (Rhi wants to play a moustache twirling villain. Which is what she is in real life, minus the moustache). Those wanting to check out the magazine version of The Castle of Lost Souls for themselves can do so on Dave's blog, where he's kindly made it available for all to enjoy. (Despite not liking the gamebook that much himself. Death of the Author. And possibly the adventurer. We will see). The gamebook revival is great. But it does sometimes feel that there's an over-concentration on the dungeon crawl. Not that there's anything wrong with dungeon crawls. They can be a lot of fun and many of us have fond memories of the format. But it shouldn't come at the exclusion of everything else. Especially in the latter period of the gamebook we saw more and more authors experimenting with the format, trying out different settings and ideas. The time travelling detective mystery Falcon series by Jamie Thomson and Mark Smith, is one of the more unusual settings. For our next gamebook, we move onto Robot Commando, a classic Fighting Fantasy. Giant Robots! Dinosaurs! Giant Robots fighting Dinosaurs. If Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes made a gamebook this is what it would be like.
It's by Steve Jackson, but not the normal Steve Jackson beloved by Fighting Fantasy fans. This is the American Steve Jackson, known for Munchkin and Illuminati. |
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