Post originally by Oliver at 2004-06-22 15:23:34
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>Odd that you should choose instant death ... some of Lone Wolf's fatal missteps are handled more realistically in the gamebooks than they would be in an RPG. The scene in Castle Death where a fleeing Lone Wolf has an option to leap into a lethally hot lake is one; most high-level PCs would shrug off plummeting thirty feet into boiling water and then swimming a few hundred feet to shore, but in the book it is (correctly) handled as a suicidally stupid action deserving death.

Precisely. And while in the book, there is no choice but to accept that and go back (either to the start of the story, or, cheating, to the last paragraph) or throw the book into a corner and forget about it, in a table RPG, there's the GM you can get angry at, accuse of arbitrariness, violating the rules etc. Life on Magnamund has always been harsh and foolish choices have always been lethal. Tough choices abound, and in some cases, they are between bad and worse: Look at the issue of whether to give Lord Rhygar the magic spear.

>It also occurs to me, as you imply, that just because I'm playing in Magnamund doesn't mean that I'm going to be copying the gamebook style. A cat-and-mouse game of survival in the Darklands, a surreal exploration of the dreamlike Daziarn, or political maneuvering among the Vakeros would be fascinating and yet very removed from the 80's campaign style.

Precisely. People might be interested much more in experiencing the world some more, from other vantage points. The Stornlands, for example, would pose opportunity for a wide variety of adventures, from riverboat captains (We've seen that can be an exciting job) to brigands, to mercenaries to noblemen engaged in political intrigue.

Or, for a completely off the beaten path experience, let's play a group of Redeemers

>Even staying within the general theme of the books, one could create a VASTLY different campaign by eschewing the Howard-style monsters for another Howard's; there's nothing to say Naar isn't merely yet another guise of Nyarlathotep ...

Ya know, that's a bit the feeling I had when browsing the first volumes of "Legends"... it completely changed the theme, the tonality of some of the events for me, due to the additional supernatural elements added by the author.