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Hello, I'm back with another gamebook from the 80s that we can play through together. This time it's Void Racers (1987): The Two-Fisted Fantasy series was one of many lesser-known knock offs of the Fighting Fantasy series. These were gamebooks which were popular throughout the 80s and early 90s, mainly in the UK. Fighting Fantasy was beloved among the nerds that bought them by the millions - Two-Fisted Fantasy not so much.Their print runs were short, the books tended to wind up in the garbage and the few that remain in circulation tend to be in horrible condition. Fighting Fantasy went down when computer games made their product obselete and are cherished objects of nostalgia, whereas Two -Fisted Fantasy went out a couple years earlier admist a sea of lawsuits, firebombings and bizarre union disputes over worker safety and are vritually forgotten today. Void Racers is the last book in the series and is unusual because it's set in space rather than the usual sword and sorcery elf world of Sword of the Bastard Elf. It's still a pretty unpleasant universe, everyone is horrible and nothing works the way it probably should, but instead of elves and pixies there are Americans and robots. It's the distant year 2047 and you are the captain of a spaceship who has to flee across the galaxy to avoid some dire threat or another. Here are the first few pages of the book: We can choose from four species, another difference between this book and most of the gamebooks around at the time. Each has its own abilities and questline: So we come to our first choice. Which species do we play through with? Humans, Cattes, Robots or Crocs? I will go with whichever gets the most votes, and in the next update we'll get ready to set up the crew and ship, and I'll explain some more of what we're doing out in space.
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# ? Sep 15, 2015 14:38 |
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# ? May 2, 2024 22:35 |
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Star Map: Final Starship Manifest: Final crew roster posted:
posted:2047.259 too corrupt to live Inventory: The story: Jumping to 250 for the pre-flight check: Then on to Haldus (403): Hailing frequencies open (284): 491: 119: 81: 180: 550: 443, after a pause to recharge the engines and build a repair kit: We're going to Becrux, but first to deal with this guy: Turning to 132: 87: Back on course to Becrux, we turn to 93: It's 2047.261 so 363: Electing to talk we go to 143: We pass the comms test: We dance (121): 517: We do well at first (99): But it goes sour fast and we get whupped: Going after the robots(43): We have enough energy: Shields down (223): Beaming to Ganymed (401): We have a copy of the expansion pack, Blood and Plunder: This allows us to turn to entry G from where we are: Scouting ahead (J): We invite the bot to join us Our first good character: Then on to 297: 23 (naturally): Everyone trusts the bridge computer, so 158: We're leaving. 583: Before we go on, we failed a CRAPULENCE check! . Turning to 5: Of course we let the computer deal with it: Arriving in Atlas (140): We're late to the party (day 18), so: We scan the cloud (492) Chasing the intruders (189): We win! Turning to 177: We spare the Owle (75): And on to 421: We go for the quarantine and take the shot (46): A hit! Turning to 185: We decide to fight (170): Corpse deployed: 445: The Cattes are destroyed and we're alone again (399): Raiding the Catte hulk (211) We lean on our Owle crewman for info (70) Going after the human (569) We bring him back to the ship (126) In which Caimans ruin everything (558) Picking a system to go to next (507) But first, checking out what we've learned on page 84: We move on to Media (394), arriving on day 24 with a quarter tank: We spend a couple days on repairs and spying (287): And we make first contact in the usual Caiman style (a greasy scam) on 546: We decide to fleece these rubes (236) Restraining ourselves we turn to 482: We chose the Maximum Deal (without benefits). Turning to 378: Sneak attack (427) Unfortunately our valet didn't make it, but we won. 375: Reporting in on page 55: Heading for the alien shuttle(309): We win the fight, just, and get into the shuttle bay on 255: Trusting to folkloric wisdom when dealing with sphinxes, a common space thing apparently (159) We win this indoor Putting the crew back together (200): And of course the obligatory Blood Feast (9): We decide to listen to this dude (351): We want to work out what SuGaBA's deal is (124): Now to get out of here. On 453: The problems with SuGaBA come to a head in jump space (248): We're going to use the virtual interface, but instead of going through the book we're going to try another expansion pack: Turning to the Caiman instructions: SuGaBA hates us for our various actions (we scored 11). We now turn to 99 in the expansion to start the VR fix: Life support (83): We won: We're going straight for the AI (46) Deploying Spud (62): The aftermath (108): We have "Feudal" on our sheet so turning to 315: Not having any of that. Turning to 485: A civil war breaks out, and we win. 241: The ship is now a tyranny. Luckily we're the tyrant. We're about to arrive in Mintaka but time to check in with the eye Gem: 72: Proceeding to 520: We're using the Orgasmotron (594): 273: We badly damage the Decapod as it flees. We then turn our attention to their homeworld (335): We do some looting and chose the Psionic Amplifier. Now seeting a course on 173 We go for Kitalpha (150): Stopping for a break (198): We're broke, so 278: We make some trades and the bot lets us in. Turning to 14: Playing Whist on 135: Putting our crew member "Rwody" "Hugh Mann" to work (533): joins the crew, kind of! We proceed to ruin the place (294) The next morning we get up and head back to the ship (343) However our night of drinking and brawling has allowed the Threshers to catch up! Turning to 666, we're faced with a tough fight: Of course we make a break for it and panic jump immediately (593): We jump to Capella. It only takes one day but it costs us our weapons (353) We use our 10-foot Pole!: Adding 30 we turn to 383: And we take a crewman along, the Owle Mois T'owlet: Mois is here (49): We bring the guy aboard (101): He's not good. Anyway, moving on, we prepare to jump out of this sector (552) We make a rowdy and belligerent speech (331) 463 153 633 We use the Pole again here. Adding 30 we turn to 663: We do what the Pole wants. 680: We win easily! Turning to 736: We use the Orgasmotron. Turning to 672: CRAB does appear on the manifest. 679: We lose. 711: And, finally, we have "SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS". Turning to 797: Endings reached: First possible bad ending (560): Getting too friendly with the wrong kinds of aliens (571): Lost in time and space (206): A good end (797): Bestiary posted:The major alien races: Saint Isaias Boner fucked around with this message at 20:17 on Nov 17, 2015 |
# ? Sep 15, 2015 14:38 |
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Lazy Space Crocodiles sound like the best choice by far
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# ? Sep 15, 2015 14:42 |
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I cast my vote for stupidity and greed. Release the crocs.
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# ? Sep 15, 2015 14:49 |
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inbred space lizards please
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# ? Sep 15, 2015 14:55 |
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Robots
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# ? Sep 15, 2015 15:02 |
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Let's do the crocodile rock.
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# ? Sep 15, 2015 15:15 |
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Go with the space crocs. Since the ship is a pleasure pad we can spend all the time in orgies.
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# ? Sep 15, 2015 15:33 |
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crocs
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# ? Sep 15, 2015 15:37 |
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Goons = crocs. All praise Sobek.
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# ? Sep 15, 2015 16:18 |
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i like when something is described as two fisted because it makes me think of the sexual act of fisting only twice as much
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# ? Sep 15, 2015 16:23 |
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i choose space crocodiles
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# ? Sep 15, 2015 16:25 |
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I was gonna say robots but yeah, let's do decadent space crocs.
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# ? Sep 15, 2015 16:45 |
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Awesome, was looking forward to this! Voting for a Catte run
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# ? Sep 15, 2015 17:31 |
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# ? Sep 15, 2015 17:39 |
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Goddam DISCOBOT It has the best plot and is the most OP character to play, though I think I remember the cats poop in a zero-g litter box which was kinda funny.
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# ? Sep 15, 2015 17:49 |
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there;s no way we'll end up with anything other than a stitched together singular crew abomination Thing if we go HUMAN
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# ? Sep 15, 2015 18:23 |
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Just how inbred are those crocs? Actually, who cares, let's be lizards.
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# ? Sep 15, 2015 18:35 |
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# ? Sep 15, 2015 18:43 |
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SomePacifist posted:Just how inbred are those crocs? Actually, who cares, let's be lizards. beyond hapsburg levels. things are gonna get kooky once we start taking some space radiation and have to roll on the Genetic Damage Chart
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# ? Sep 15, 2015 18:44 |
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Lizards 4 lyfe.
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# ? Sep 15, 2015 18:48 |
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Inbred crocs it is! Now that we've chosen, let's move on to the next step: Actually, let's do this the hard way. The author really wanted the reading public to pick up the advanced rules. Apart from his being rude about the intelligence of anyone using the simple rules I don't think the game is actually winnable if you use them. Luckily the advanced rules came in the box set: We'll refer to these from time to time like we did with the Bestiary in the last adventure. Here is some of the info contained for the Caimans, who we've just picked: and the ship, the Supergalactic: As you can see the ship goes a long way towards making up for the crappiness of the crew, which we will need to select soon. Anyway I rolled the Captain's stats and got a total of 6 for Expertise and 70 for Energy. For any other species this would be a disastrously bad captain, for the Caiman's it's ok. The Caimans have a couple of special rules which are outlined in a bit more detail in the book. I'll discuss that when it comes to it. For now there are a couple more steps before we get started. Firstly, the captain gets a free choice of three items, one of which can be a ship upgrade. Secondly, we need to pick a crew. If you want I have a few ideas for crew and items. I can supply something that will work. I think though that enough of you have played through this before and know what you want to try. So - 1. What three items do we take? (one item can be a ship upgrade) 2. Do you have any preferences for which horrible lizard goes into each crew position? in the meantime, here is our first adventure sheet: Edit: most updates won't be as word heavy as this one, just need to set the game up. Saint Isaias Boner fucked around with this message at 02:43 on Sep 16, 2015 |
# ? Sep 16, 2015 02:34 |
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Items: an electric cattle prod to motivate your servants A gold plated regurgitation stick to help you purge. Ship upgrade: a vomitorium so your people can eat until they're full then throw up and do it again.
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# ? Sep 16, 2015 03:05 |
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Uniform all crew in fancy but stain-resistent togas.
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# ? Sep 16, 2015 03:13 |
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a space bong
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# ? Sep 16, 2015 03:19 |
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Applewhite posted:Items: an electric cattle prod to motivate your servants when'd this become the star citizen thread?
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# ? Sep 16, 2015 03:20 |
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Weapons: Chubbs McKenzie Shields: A drinking bird toy Sensors: Blind Pew Engineer: Ghengis Rex Nav: "Wrongway" Peachfuzz Valet: someone with the exact voice and personality of Starscream, but a lizard.
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# ? Sep 16, 2015 03:22 |
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Looking at the ship I think it's imperative we bring some extra batteries.
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# ? Sep 16, 2015 03:23 |
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Chomp8645 posted:Looking at the ship I think it's imperative we bring some extra batteries. Requisitioned by skinks, but vetoed by the captain to make room for ten cases of Chartreuse.
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# ? Sep 16, 2015 03:24 |
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we need a matter modulator for marvin the martian style earth-shattering kabooms
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# ? Sep 16, 2015 10:21 |
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These are all good. Applewhite's crew suggestions are the usual min-max combination for the Caimans (to the extent you can do that) but they're an unpredictable bunch. I want to avoid scanning all the instructions and tables in (there are a painful amount of them) so I'll tell you about crew here. Each race has a deck of 20-30 crew that can be used as senior officers. Usually they have specific areas of Expertise (for instance Weapons) and that limits where you can place them. Caimans don't have that, they just have a general (low) Expertise that covers everything. This would give them a lot of flexibility except that they're all terrible and once they're in a position they act as though it's their feudal property. You can dismiss a crew member that's a particularly bad fuckup but only by taking a nasty hit to do so. Even once that crew member's dismissed you don't get to select his replacement - we shuffle the deck and take whoever comes up (unless it's a Skink, who gets eaten and we reshuffle). This is to reflect their stupid inheritance system. Bridge places are a vital commodity to be hoarded because they let the crew live in utter luxury and steal things out of the ship banking system. Every race also has what's called a "Command Issue". Every so often every character on the bridge contributes to this issue. Once it accumulates beyond the captain's leadership score you have to check to see if the issue is triggered every time you make a star jump. For the Caimans this score is Crapulence, because the crocs are greedy, wasteful crooks. The score given for Crapulence on each card indicates how corrupt and awful each croc is. You can reduce this score by kicking the worst offenders off the bridge once they've accumulated some crapulence. It'll become clear how this works pretty soon. Here's the card for Blind Pew as a sample: Current crew Weapons: Chubbs McKenzie Shields: A drinking bird toy Sensors: Blind Pew Engineer: Ghengis Rex Nav: "Wrongway" Peachfuzz Valet: someone with the exact voice and personality of Starscream, but a lizard. Possible items (listed so far) Ten cases of Chartreuse (personal) Extra batteries (ship) Space bong (personal) Stain resistant togaforms (ship) Ship vomitorium (ship) Motivational prod (personal) Regurgitation stick (personal) Matter Modulator (personal) Agag posted:Requisitioned by skinks, but vetoed by the captain to make room for ten cases of Chartreuse. All other races have to take a ship upgrade but crocs get the choice not to for exactly this kind of reason. Whether that's a good thing or not depends on the items you pick I guess. Nuclear Pogostick posted:we need a matter modulator for marvin the martian style earth-shattering kabooms Yeah do consider taking a weapon along, it's a violent universe and lots of problems are solved in this game by punching, shooting and stabbing things. I'll keep voting open for a bit and check back later on today.
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# ? Sep 16, 2015 10:31 |
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it's been a while since i played this, but iirc the cloacaing device for the ship is one of the best items in the game. not sure though if you could get it at the start
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# ? Sep 16, 2015 10:42 |
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Hell yes ground floor on a Hermit Skull thread. Will post after ir ead up. E: From what I remember of the series while there are four PLAYABLE races there are plenty of other races we may encounter along the way. The worst of which was a crab empire that was basically like fascists in space. God help us if we dont go in with a friggin death laser on our ship. I say: 1. We get a devastating laser weapon for upgrades 2. We get a bunch of caimains that are dumber than us but fearfully loyal so we have absolute authority. 3. and for personal we take our coveted collection of erotic skink and gecko interspecial scat porn. Which disgusts every other established civilized race but we get giddy joy from. Al Borland fucked around with this message at 11:24 on Sep 16, 2015 |
# ? Sep 16, 2015 11:00 |
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For shields I change my vote to whomever has the highest cowardice score in the deck.
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# ? Sep 16, 2015 11:32 |
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Applewhite posted:For shields I change my vote to whomever has the highest cowardice score in the deck. yeah thats way better than the dippy bird. Dippy bird is clearly meant to be on the weapons fire buttom.
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# ? Sep 16, 2015 12:02 |
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I suggest we bring a Replacement Dippy Bird You never know when one will come in handy.
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# ? Sep 16, 2015 13:18 |
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Our valet should be like woodhouse from archer, including the heroin addiction.
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# ? Sep 16, 2015 13:26 |
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Can we upgrade the ship with a harem or is that included in the libo deck? We should also take a swagger stick or the motivational prod to control the crew and lesser beings and an electro-artificial jaw extender so we can battle with the skill and majesty of our ancestors.
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# ? Sep 16, 2015 13:42 |
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I'm definitely for arming up. Decadent crocodile weapons that look like flintlocks but fire disintegrator beams or whatever. Fancy space saber for the captain.
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# ? Sep 16, 2015 14:32 |
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# ? May 2, 2024 22:35 |
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Hogge Wild posted:it's been a while since i played this, but iirc the cloacaing device for the ship is one of the best items in the game. not sure though if you could get it at the start That is a good (if disgusting) device. Even with the AI crocs tend to be a little worse at doing things than other species so avoiding being shot out of space in the first combat round is helpful. Al Borland posted:From what I remember of the series while there are four PLAYABLE races there are plenty of other races we may encounter along the way. The worst of which was a crab empire that was basically like fascists in space. God help us if we dont go in with a friggin death laser on our ship. Yeah there are a lot of other space aliens out there, and those crabs are horrible. Even if we avoid running into the aliens chasing us and somehow don't come up against the other playable species we won't avoid every other godawful life form. Peebla posted:Can we upgrade the ship with a harem or is that included in the libo deck? It's included but you can always upgrade the reptile brothel as a ship upgrade. The crocs have a thing about their lovely jaws (the flag is what they hope people see them as) so prosthethic jaws are popular amongst insecure or fighty crocs. To keep this moving I think the following crew lineup is the go: Weapons: Chubbs McKenzie and his dippy bird Shields: that weird shutin croc who no one's ever seen for some reason. Sensors: Blind Pew Engineer: Ghengis Rex Nav: "Wrongway" Peachfuzz Valet: Bugglesworth (an ancient skink with a "spice" problem) They'll mostly wind up dead so there'll be a chance to pick replacements. Item choices are a bit all over the place so I'll leave it a little while before posting the update later on. Tonight is the last of the instructions and we finally get to start the adventure and make an actual choice. So far the motivational prod looks to be a little ahead which would serve as the captain's weapon and crew wrangler, nothing else really stands out in the lead right now.
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# ? Sep 16, 2015 17:38 |