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 Adventure concluded! Download a handy PDF copy of the playthrough here: https://goo.gl/F14ulfExpansion content - The Curse of the Cursed Mummy for PC - download it here : https://goo.gl/Vfwm05I threatened to go find another book, and I did. As picked by whoever roamed into this thread, here's 1983's The Wizard of Warlock Tower. It's been rotting in my attic for more than thirty years but it's still more or less in one piece, so let's play it!  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 virtually forgotten today. So far I've run through Sword of the Bastard Elf and Void Racers on these forums. The Wizard of Warlock Tower was a sequel immediately following on from the modest success of Sword of the Bastard Elf (before it was pulled from the shelves it was basically the Dingo Pictures of CYOAs and made a few bucks off of confused grandparents trying to buy their relatives the latest gaming-book). Although it's pretty similar to Sword of the Bastard Elf it has a couple of obvious differences. We'll talk about them as we come to them. First couple of pages:   This book's not in great nick. Anyway, I'm not going to bore you with all the rules. There are literally dozens of pages of rules, charts and dice roll tables. Herman Skull was (is?) nuts. As you can see from this page we're a skeleton so we've got ESPRIT, ESSENCE and FISTS standing in for Skill, Stamina and Luck in the Fighting Fantasy books. Well, there are some differences but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.  This page, though, is kind of important. It's important to try to keep your relationship with the Skeletal Workers Union good, and if you blow them off it'd be a good idea to have reasons. The rules for union membership are simple - pay your dues, don't cross picket lines and don't somehow transform into some kind of non-humanoid bone monster. Here's the adventure sheet. It's where we keep track of the stats. I'll keep this thing updated as the adventure proceeds:  We play as a skeleton worker who's on a quest to get to his necromancer's tower to fix whatever problem's happening there. If you've never played a gamebook before, you don't read the book in order but you jump around to whatever section (or paragraph) the book tells you to. At the end of each section we're usually presented with a choice or a test of one of our stats (and sometimes a fight). Since this is an LP I'd like whoever's reading this thread to make the decisions. We'll do whatever is most popular or interesting. I've played this before so I'll avoid getting us killed for stupid reasons, although by the standards of 80s gamebooks this one is pretty good about not killing you off because you went right instead of left two choices in. Anyway let's go. Character generation is random so I'm going to roll some bones to find what goes into our scroll. I scored a 2 for ESPRIT and a 3 for ESSENCE. For ESPRIT we halve this and add 4, giving us a 5. As per the rules this means we're "Decrepit" and we start in a barrel (the traditional skulking place for decroded skeletons). This isn't all bad. For Essence we multiply our roll by 10 and add 40, giving us 70 essence. I guess it'll do. We still have our 2 FISTs. I filled the sheet in:  We already can see a difference from Sword of the Bastard Elf - we gotta keep track of our skeletal BITS, because those can change. We start in a barrel so have a barrel instead of a torso. Like most of the Two-Fisted Fantasy games this one has cards for keeping track of stuff. This makes better use of the cards than most of the other games in the series but we'll also get to that later. Luckily I have the whole collection still! It's just a bit aged. Here are the cards for our body parts:       Also you might notice there's not much room for items - this is because as a skeleton worker we can only carry ONE item at a time. As we're decrepit our barrel gives us some extra storage. We get to take two instead! We can still only equip one thing though. Things which we're holding in our hand or wearing on our person are Equipment, and anything else is junk. OK, that'll do for now. It's a bit to take in but it'll save some hassle later. Moving on to the story and the first choice in the book:  Turning to 1:  .... sorry, this book's not in as good a condition as I thought. The paper this series was printed on was strange, prone to tearing, decaying and generally falling apart, as if they never wanted to exist in the first place. I'll go rummage around for the missing bits but in the meantime maybe some of you who played this thing in the past can recall what some of the options were and everyone else can vote on those. Our first choice then: 1. What TWO items do we take? 2. What's our first move? Saint Isaias Boner fucked around with this message at 20:55 on Jul 10, 2016 |
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May 27, 2016 00:52
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Final adventure scroll: Our skele:        Our stuff: Equipped:  Wearing:  Spells:  Our army:  *injured (-1 to stats)      The story: EXPANSION content: https://goo.gl/Vfwm05 ->1 ->44 ->249  ->212 ->180 ->26 ->247 ->115 ->291 ->144  ->54 ->136 ->150 ->191 ->265 ->250 ->32 ->141 ->191  ->271 ->18 ->166 ->349 ->252 ->40 ->377 ->364  ->4 ->110 ->126 ->229 ->318 ->125 -> the expansion! ->81 ->194 ->89  ->7 ->219 ->360 ->352 ->312  ->198 ->264 FIN Saint Isaias Boner fucked around with this message at 03:15 on Jul 6, 2016 |
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May 27, 2016 00:52
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Windows 98 posted:I'm assuming that the top right line on the adventure scroll is for naming our character. Can we please name our self Penus McSuckshaft? call yourself whatever you want! the book doesn't check on your name
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May 27, 2016 00:54
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For them's you who don't know how this works it's roughly one update per day. I usually scan in what i got, go to bed, then wake up and check the thread to see what the vote's doing. the update comes in the evening when I have nothing else going on. You don't have to put to put a > in front of your instructions because it's weird to do that to a book. For the items : 3 votes for the shears so we'll take those. 2 for the rat, and one for rope,lantern, poop, shiv, xylophone sticks, holy water and sacramental wine. Rat's winning (and isn't a horrible choice) but the second item will stay open for a bit. For directions : 2 to go North, 2 for direct to the tower, 2 to Bilgeton (where the union shop and maybe that priest is at) and a couple of votes for rummaging around the church/your house for more stuff. 1 vote for weeping hard. Still open. I dont know posted:I just noticed the cover art in this thread is different from the one in the voting thread. Was this actually successful enough to warrant a second printing? Some guy called Ken Oaf has been trying to bootleg these books intermittently since the late 90s. I have no idea what's wrong with him. That cover was one of his. It was the only copy I had to hand at the time, sorry. Putty posted:combine both arms into one beefy trogdor arm this kind of thing is possible but we'll lose a FIST. since we're decrepit it would be a good idea to wait until we have more arms imo but if people want a trogdor arm there's nothing in the union by-laws against it. gbaby posted:>take skeleton arms You already have skeleton arms! you gotta earn your extra skeleton parts in this game. going after Sigbort is legit though
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May 27, 2016 10:26
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Dinosaurmageddon posted:Also lets >go to Monteion! That's Monteton, the dwarf village. It's one of the options branching off from going North
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May 27, 2016 11:39
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Got 4 for the rat, 4 for the sticks and less for everything else. I rolled a dice to pick between rat and sticks and we get the rat. It hardly matters, they're both good. We also get the shears. Most votes are for heading towards Bilgeton, which as far as decisions go could be a lot worse. I'll post the next update tonight based on this info.
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May 27, 2016 16:37
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djwetmouse posted:Is there a skill system? Do you have Herbalism (Knowledge of 80's fast food ad campaigns), a shear proficiency? nah you just know roughly as much about gardening as the author thought a medieval skeleton would know about gardening
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May 27, 2016 16:51
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Outrail posted:I think if we fill it up and pull the spigot to 'piss' wine the right village we get worshipped as a god, but I might be thinking of a different book. This is the right book but that's if you go to the north for a long way first. we're going the other way.
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May 27, 2016 19:03
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Sorry for the delay, the "authorities" are hassling me for information about my "tax arrangements" and won't just take my word for it, so I've had to spend all night looking for "evidence that I have paid any tax at all on income for the past seven years". Anyway it's lucky I did that because I found the scrap of paper I was looking nestled among the mountain of pizza boxes that occupies the southern half of my man cave. Here's the last entry, complete at last: We chose to go to Bilgeton (44), but first here are the items we picked:  and  The garden shears were a good choice. They're a weapon so it means we don't get an ESPRIT penalty in combat. It's not a good weapon so it doesn't give us a bonus. That bit about transplants will come in handy later, I think. The rat is a loyal pet and a good snack. It has mostly situational value and smells atrocious. Luckily skeletons don't have the kinds of olfactory senses that get upset by things like rotting rats. On to Bilgeton, where we find some trouble on the road (44):  Again, sorry, this book is really flaky. I'll go looking for the entry, you guys help me out again if you remember what happens here. It'll save time. Here's the adventure sheet:  Just so you know I will keep the second entry updated like I usually do, if you miss anything and want to catch up just check there. There Bias Two posted:Fun fact: This is actually a left over localization error from the source line of Asian adventure novels, Two Foot Journey I don't know how it got missed but it's definitely a "ten-foot prole" in this one. It could be a joke based on us playing a skeleton worker, or it could be a localisation error, or it could be a rare example of Mr Skull bending in the face of hostility from a pressure group. In this case the local Polish community of Skullthucke-upon-Woad set fire to his house a bunch of times over the insulting and stereotyped "Ten-Foot Polack" character in Sword of the Bastard Elf. Saint Isaias Boner fucked around with this message at 01:46 on May 28, 2016 |
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May 28, 2016 01:27
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Gridlocked posted:I feel like an idiot for not realizing that Skull and SIB are the same guy just with an account name change. I'm just a humble collector of Mr. Skull's work! You guys have a better memory than me, it's one of a few possible 'taur encounters in the book. Compared to most of Skull's books it's very easy to get your poo poo pushed in but luckily we're the kind of skeleton that doesn't worry about that sort of thing. So far we have 2 for going straight in (counting insulting their manhood as part of this stategy) 1 for creeping up on them 2 for shuffling past/attempting to blend in/mind your own business 1 for hiding in a barrel (we can do this because we are partially a barrel)
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May 28, 2016 12:59
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poisonpill posted:So in you playthrough, if one of these choices is hypothetically an insta-death, how far can we rewind? Or will you just do the second most popular choice? I'm pretty bad with the counting and i've gotten by so far because no one is checking, thanks for ruining that for me. Ok so vote stands at 2 creeping up, 2 going straight in, 2 shuffling past or trying not to get involved and 1 for hiding in the barrel until everything goes away. If the insta-death is fun I show it because it hardly gets in the way of things, I will steer us clear of anything that might kill us in ten choices time because that's not all that entertaining.
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May 28, 2016 17:06
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pedo-katty posted:why would we not want to rig a good ending against privileged popular clique elitists with a hard on for prison sentences and authoritarianism mom dom, so what but yes you shouldn't go to jail for those things. other than that this book isn't about the other things except maybe in a subconscious sense
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May 28, 2016 18:26
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I think creeping up narrowly has it here. Update coming soon. E: on second count it's a tie between barging in, creeping up on them or hiding in a barrel. next vote carries it. Saint Isaias Boner fucked around with this message at 20:11 on May 28, 2016 |
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May 28, 2016 20:08
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barrel hide it is! update soon
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May 28, 2016 20:28
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Outrail posted:At some point we need to hide in a dungeon or basement or something and drag an adventurer into the barrel while they're searching for treasure. this is the dream of every decroded skeleton Here's the update: Last time (fully scanned in now): We bravely hide (249):  and that happens. Well, what now? I'll get back to rummaging around for the scraps that seem to have fallen out of every part of this book while you consult your copies and memories for the next move. Saint Isaias Boner fucked around with this message at 00:49 on May 29, 2016 |
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May 28, 2016 23:41
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Fellbat posted:Clearly we need to wait for the elves to kill the bear then replace are own limbs with the right two bear arms. yeah you've played this before. it all goes downhill from here. There's a reason this book was singled out as the most disgusting entry in the series.
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May 29, 2016 00:18
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JiveHonky posted:I already retired from this adventure it never do what I say it's a team effort! 
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May 29, 2016 00:35
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don't give me a ribbing just because mr. skull doesn't find puns patella-ble. I find them quite humerus myself.
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May 29, 2016 00:52
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I counted (properly this time, more or less) I got 4 for pun-ching an elf in the boner 3 for waiting in the barrel until everything goes away 2 for freeing the bear (this means attacking that horseman since he's the only thing holding it back) 2 for popping out of the barrel and stabbing at whatever's closest at the most opportune moment (the applewhite/hogge wild plan)
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May 29, 2016 10:20
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vortmax posted:Wait, do the things you resurrect follow you by default? I can't remember. If not, this isn't a good plan. We'll probably get to this in the next update but yes, everything you resurrect follows you, kind of (or is attached to you).
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May 29, 2016 10:58
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It's a bit hard to tell but it looks like we're leaning towards attacking the elves, because gently caress elves. i'll leave it open another hour or so while I hunt down the pages.
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May 29, 2016 18:56
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I've re-counted and we're going to try to free that bear, and if that means teaming up with a bunch of elves to kill a horseman and a couple of soldiers then that's what's going to happen. Update soon.
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May 29, 2016 21:30
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RandomPauI posted:I hope my vote didn't tip it over because I did want to see what'd happen if we actually convinced the elf hippie to hug the bear regardless of trying to free the bear. don't worry about it. you can't really communicate with fleshies since you can't talk, and those elves are only hippies in the wearing hemp and doing nothing of value sense. Like most elves in these books they're also a bunch of violent thieves.
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May 29, 2016 21:40
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Dinosaurmageddon posted:I want a bastard aelf's bastard sword!!! lol these elves are the same as the type in Sword of the Bastard Elf, the only communion they have with nature is that sometimes they have to take a dump in it. Anyway, moving on with a short update tonight: we're going to attack the humans/hippos and get that bear freed. I found the end of yesterday's page: Stabbing the guard shouldn't be so hard (212):  We get the drop on him but he's far from out. In Two-Fisted Fantasies fighting is best left to warriors, which is something we're not. Although we're armed, a pair of hedge trimmers clutched by a weedy and decrepit skeleton isn't all that threatening to guardsman in armor. The game is full of dick moves like this. Anyway here is how fighting works just quickly (spoilered out for those of you who don't give a drat): Two-Fisted Fantasy rules posted:Combat takes place in rounds. In order: A few useful things to know - being made of bone we don't usually take injuries for losing a round of combat and there's usually a way to throw an unwinnable fight. If you recall Sword of the Bastard Elf the real enemy is running out of ESSENCE - if it reaches 0 it's game over. It's very possible to win a fight and still be in a tight spot. Anyway our choice here is pretty straightforward - we can fight and try to win, which is possible since we have the advantage in FISTS, although it'll probably chew up a bit of ESSENCE. Or we can throw in the towel and trust in this guy's mercy. E: Nothing's changed but i thought you might like the adventure scroll so you can see where we stand:
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May 30, 2016 00:07
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ChrisHansen posted:If we need to, we can absorb the rat for 5 essence, right? yep. also there will be other chances.
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May 30, 2016 00:53
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Ok, we can do this. I ran the numbers and we'll win at a pretty high cost. If the thread is still belligerent when I get up tomorrow we'll kill this fool and go on to the gross bit of the game.
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May 30, 2016 01:31
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There's an angry dude with a sword between you and the corpses! I know you've all played this before but this is the bit where all your powers are revealed and explained. I've run the combat so just hunting around for the pages, should have something for y'all soonish.
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May 30, 2016 09:00
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Well as people seem to generally be in favour of hacking the guard down to size with the garden shears I did just that. Unfortunately in these early days of commanding your powers it takes quite a lot of messing around with corpses to get them to do anything. It's not the sort of thing you can do while someone is trying to hack you to pieces, anyway. I ran the combat. He had 7 ESPRIT, 1 FIST and 3 HEALTH vs our 5 ESPRIT, 2 FISTS and virtually unlimited health (he isn't really able to hurt us with his sword - we're a Jason and the Argonauts style skeleton, not some cheap knock off). It takes 30 of our 70 essence to chisel him down though. Currently we're on 40. With the man dead we can move on to 234:  Several decisions await us here. Firstly - what should we do with all these corpses? There are two of those horsemen and two humans - the third horseman, the goblins, elves and bears all got away. Our choices are usually to resurrect or harvest. When you kill something and you can get at the corpse the book will usually tell you what you can resurrect. You can spend as much ESSENCE as they have ESPRIT to bring them back from the dead, and they'll join your army! You draw their card and add it to your legions of the undead. The sentries and the horses look like this:  But, instead of raising them, if they have something you like, you can harvest them instead. You still pay the cost of resurrecting them, but you flip the card over instead:   It's then up to you if you want to replace an existing part or just tack them on. If you replace an existing limb the bonus you gain from that part is gone and it goes in the trash. If you just add stuff you keep all your bonuses but lose your SWU membership, and that can't be regained. Parts can't be saved for later and also this is a one-time deal - if you resurrect something it can't be harvested later, and vice-versa. Sometimes if you choose to harvest or just rob the corpses you get some extra items, in this case it's a longsword and a tabard. You don't get these items if you resurrect things because they usually need them - for instance if we'd let the elves rob these guys we would probably only have been able to raise regular skellies, who aren't all that useful in an army of the undead.  So what do y'all propose we do with all this stuff and having decided that what should we do next? E: Here's the latest adventure scroll: 
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May 30, 2016 14:34
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should also point out that we get a small ESSENCE saving for using them shears, but if we take the sword we'll have to get rid of (or eat) something we're already carrying. Clothes don't count towards the item limit if you're wearing them.
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May 30, 2016 14:50
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Yolomon Wayne posted:Does that one fist on the 2-fist logo really have a ring on it, or did you shop it to resemble something... well known? yes
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May 30, 2016 14:58
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Mojo Threepwood posted:This has my vote. Do we lose union membership if we weld four extra arms onto a minion? I'm envisioning a General Grievous. if we go full lich we can make a special monster later on but the average goon we reanimate can't be messed with (they have feelings too)
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May 30, 2016 17:27
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Who What Now posted:We only get the bonus of an extra hand with two legs. it's necessary for one of the endings and also helpful wherever there are bunches of skellies around (for instance in Bilgeton).
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May 30, 2016 17:55
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Who What Now posted:Oh, right, thanks for the reminder! And just to be clear, it's only the number of limbs that matter, not their shape, correct? yeop, no more than 2 arms, 2 legs, one head, one torso. They don't care what those things belong to.
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May 30, 2016 18:32
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Ruggan posted:Do the reanimated guys have health? If not, how do they die? Can they run out of essence like us and crumble? Do they need to use at least 1 essence when fighting or can they go 0 effort? If we take the additional arms without replacing, can we wield more weapons or hold more objects? the reanimated guys are just sort of around until they're needed but for fight purposes they're all considered to have 1 FIST and 2 Health unless the card says otherwise. they don't use essence in the same way you do, the stat's there for the large scale battles you can get into. E: aside from the large battles this is as complicated as the rules get, if you're following now I won't have any more rules and tables to drop on you unless we start summoning demons or drinking pixie potions again. this isn't Void Racers Saint Isaias Boner fucked around with this message at 19:47 on May 30, 2016 |
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May 30, 2016 19:36
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Raptor1033 posted:Are we married to having a barrel for a torso? Maybe we can carve some flesh off and have a rib cage of our very own! And of course it'd be a hippandros torso, not the silly human. HJE-Cobra posted:Sadly it looks like you can only harvest an arm from the human guards and only a leg from the horsemen, no torsos to get from these corpses. If I'm reading the cards right. yeah this is right. usually you can only take the part the card is offering. In this case it's an arm or a leg. when you kill a humanoid (that's human, elf, goblin or dwarf) you can always take any basic part if you don't take anything else (regular arms, legs, torso and skull etc). If you swap out ALL your original parts you lose the decrepit status, which is a questionable benefit. Torsos are a little more common in future (if you people really want we can cheat it out and get a new torso here instead of some other part). The barrel is pretty good though. I count 7 votes for taking 1 sword arm and two horse legs and raising one guard, and I assume that includes taking the sword and tabard and eating the rat. This will cost 18 ESSENCE after the rat's chewed up. We get to keep our union membership. 5 for becoming an unholy katamari of body parts, taking the tabard and sword, costing 17 ESSENCE after the rat's gone. This will cost us the union membership but make us a bit more dangerous assuming we don't run out of ESSENCE already. 1 for full army of the dead, raising everything for 26 ESSENCE 1 for raising everything except for one guard, which we will harvest at a cost of 20 ESSENCE once that rat's et. We'll start on the path of modifying ourselves. While I'm digging out the pages to let that happen, where should we go next? Obvious choices are continuing to Bilgeton or heading to Aelfsburg to chase down those pesky elves, but maybe y'all have other ideas now we're starting to get beefy?
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May 30, 2016 20:27
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Microwaves Mom posted:What would the skeleton union say about creating more skeletons haphazardly? indeed Who What Now posted:Is there a benefit to dual-wielding weapons? Take the sword either way, though, because you never know what sort of kooky thing these books might ask for. you can't dual-wield, or at least there's no benefit to it just yet. but the bonus for having two sword arms is cumulative, you'd get +2 esprit if you've got a sword instead of +1
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May 30, 2016 21:28
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Nofixs Dare posted:should start to sing the pregnancy and jail putrid slut slam song it goes with the enfield got triggered by a made up song about heroin song you have to get to Aelfsburg to really get into the singing, so I'll put that down as a vote for Aelfsburg
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May 30, 2016 21:35
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RandomPauI posted:We don't have the essence to raise everyone or take four extra body parts. I don't want to give much away if you haven't read it but there's something coming up soon that will let us recover a bit. If we keep out of trouble the road to Bilgeton is pretty safe from here on out. The Hippandros had spears but they're not incredibly useful to you so the text didn't mention it. Just like in Sword of the Bastard Elf though if you see an item in an illustration and want it, you can search through the deck and see if it's there. Some of the more annoying puzzles are solved that way. As it turns out there's a spear in there:  Throwable means you can chuck it away at the start of combat to fight one round where the enemy can't hit you and you don't lose any ESSENCE. It leaves you without a weapon though. You automatically pick up a thrown weapon at the end of a fight, if you win. E: I'm scanning in the Bilgeton route and it looks like we're replacing one arm, both legs and raising one dude. Update soon. If y'all want the spear instead of the sword or the shears let me know Saint Isaias Boner fucked around with this message at 00:06 on May 31, 2016 |
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May 31, 2016 00:02
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Ok here we go Last page completed (234) We are going to wear the hooves and take a sword arm, and add one sentry to our legion of the damned:   We turn to 80 because the books tells us to: And then we continue on the road to Bilgeton (26) where we find another torn up page:  I wasn't able to figure out which way we were going with the votes last time so for items choose either:
With that decided what do we do about these mysterious shambling skellies? Current adventure scroll: 
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May 31, 2016 01:27
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Outrail posted:Keep the Sword, ditch the shears and keep our ratbro. essence is the force holding you together, the health icons are how smushed up your bones are. Not many things can damage us permanently but some can.
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May 31, 2016 01:39
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