| Title | : | Starship Traveller (Fighting Fantasy #4) |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 1840465522 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9781840465525 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 364 |
| Publication | : | First published September 29, 1983 |
Starship Traveller (Fighting Fantasy #4) Reviews
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Въпреки най-вбесяващата възможна игрова схема, при която е невъзможно да стигнеш хубавия финал, без да изчертаеш пълна карта на приключението (запазена марка на поредицата „Битки безброй“), и въпреки потресаващия превод, способен да потресе дори 11-годишен читател, и въпреки кошмаровдъхващата корица... това беше първата ми книга-игра, разтворила портите (адови), през които в следващите шест години се изсипаха още двеста.
С какво бил постлан пътят към портите ли? Майка ми просто се е чудила как да разведри книжното си плъхче, което има температура и е увесило нос в леглото. Без ни най-малко да подозира каква треска ще разгори, каква инфекция... :DDD -
Your quest to find an old Black Hole where two cosmoses meet
May lead to planet Culematter, where PCs rule the streets
(That’s Population Controllers, not Politically Correct
Or Personal Computer, just in case you haven’t checked).
You may also come to Cliba where the Rain Lord pimps the weather;
Or a planet where the young rule, and the old are kept on tethers.
Scavengers, Macommonians and the Ganzig Confederation
All ensure your journey homewards won’t be short of complications. -
An Adventure into Deep Space
12 June 2012
This is the forth Fighting Fantasy book and the first set in a science-fiction setting. While not the only science-fiction adventure that was released, they did tend to be few and far between (the next one is
Space Assassin, book 12, though there is a horror one, but that doesn't count). I must admit that this book was one of the harder ones, and I never managed to finish it when I was a teenager, and this time I had to resort to searching up hints on the internet to finish it.
Starship Traveller is somewhat more complicated than the others as it has three sets of combat rules: one for starships, one for phasers, and one for hand to hand. It is also a book in which you don't necessarily play one character, but rather play the captain of a spaceship, and as such you have a number of other characters under your control. In all intents and purposes, your character is the captain and everybody else pretty much follows your orders.
I noted that some have suggested that in designing this book Steve Jackson leaned towards the Traveller roleplaying game, an RPG that is set in the distant future using an interstellar background. However, other than the name and the setting, there is no indication in this book that it is the Traveller universe. In fact, pretty much all of the book is set in a parallel universe, from which escape is your goal.
What this book reminded me of though was Star Trek. In fact the book seems to be a 'choose your own Star Trek adventure with dice'. Having been sitting down recently watching all of the Deep Space Nine episodes I could not help but overlay all of the characters in Deep Space Nine with the major characters of this book, and as such whenever they mentioned the science officer I would think of Dax, and whenever they mentioned the security chief, I would think of Odo. Unfortunately the security chief in this book does not have Odo's shapeshifting powers.
[image error] -
I'm looking at my old, light blue copy of Starship Traveller, reminiscing on the hours of torture it took to actually get close to the completed campaign. To this day, I have never actually (honestly) beaten the game. This is by far my favourite Jackson game; it lives in my backpack with my pencil case and dice-bag. This game is great fun because instead of being a lone warrior, you have a medical officer, a science officer, spaceship battle, the works. The combat is intense and, at times, palpably unrelenting. Searching the Universe for a solid power source to get you home has never been so frustrating. A fantastic read and a lifelong investment. 5 outta 5.
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Four stars for concept, but -1 for implementation. There were a few times when the text was ambiguous. Also i was actually able to remember some of the specific star-trek episodes they were stealing from and the artwork isn't great.
Edit: Having now tried it a couple of times it is still pretty cool commanding your own starship crew and being able to beam down and fight space battles etc. -
The fourth of the FIGHTING FANTASY franchise diverses into science fiction territory with a thinly-disguised homage to STAR TREK. The player now takes on the role of a captain and his or her crew who accidentally travel through one black hole to find themselves in a parallel universe. The only way out is to find another black hole but the usual adventures with various adversaries await.
This one features plenty of imagination which is countered somewhat by an incredible array of new rules, many of which can be quite tiresome to set up. There are separate skills and stamina for over half a dozen crew members as well as the ship itself. Visiting alien planets can be long-winded as each time you have to choose which of the crew to take with you, and of course combat is more complex and lengthy than usual. It's also a virtually unmapple adventure, which can be frustrating.
On the plus side, the sheer difference to the usual fantasy-themed adventures makes this feel fresh and exciting at times. The rules, although long-winded, do work and allow for some novel situations and strategising. The alien encounters can be unexpected with plenty of twists but the really exciting moments are when your ship itself is attacked by something and you have to figure out how to manage the situation.
For a first run-through, we made increasingly poor decisions and ended up in a no-win situation, having missed earlier clues and ending up in a dead end as a result. Here's to the next time... -
Only the fourth Fighting Fantasy gamebook, and already they're diversifying. Not just into sci-fi, but a radically different approach all round.
You play as the starship captain, but also have crew members, from whom you have to select who accompanies you on away missions. The ship itself also has stats. There is provision for hand to hand combat, phaser combat and ship to ship combat. This makes it a very varied beast.
Pleasingly, there's less reliance on Luck rolls in this book, instead focusing on dice rolls testing against the skill of your various specialists to determine success in endeavours. This feels much more appropriate.
It's all very 'Star Trek'. The transporter technology, command structure and general feel of the alien planets and races all scream Kirk & Co. This, of course, is no bad thing at all. The plot involves the ship plunging through a black hole into another universe, then trying to find the co-ordinates and interface details of another black hole so they can return home. This involves visiting a lot of planets and interacting with a lot of alien races in an attempt to find the required data (and there's a lot of false information and red herrings too). This adds a lot of variety to the book, but inevitably means that each encounter is relatively short before you need to rush off to the next. It's almost like an entire season of 'Star Trek' condensed into a single episode. It would have been nice if this wonderful introductory book could have spawned a few sequels with fewer but more complex encounters.
As these early gamebooks go, this one is a toughie. There's a lot of punishment to be taken, most of it from decisions made rather than combat. In fact, there's less fighting in this than any other Fighting Fantasy title I've tried. It's very difficult to find the required information and took me quite a number of attempts (in fact, I never got EITHER piece of required intel on the several occasions I first tried this book 25+ years ago!).
A unique entry in the series and well worth a go, especially the new App version from Tin Man Games, with its beautiful presentation and lovely new artwork. -
המשימה היא לא למצוא את הקוארדיטנטות בזמן ובמרחב של היקום בשביל לחזור חזרה ליקום שלנו.
המשימה היא לשחק כל כוכב(או שלב, או דמוי פרק ב-"מסע בין כוכבים") בגלקסיה שם. אם מחפשים את הראשון בזמן השני, זה מתחיל להיות ממש מעצבן. כי ברגע שמבקשים ממך לנסות להכניס את הקוארדינטות, אתה לא יודע איפה טעית ואז אתה צריך לחפש בכוח את כל האפשרויות וכל פעם לשלב אותם עם האפשרויות האחרות.
חייב להודות שנהניתי, למרות שלפעמים בגלל שאתה פוקד על חבורה של אנשים, זה טיפה מעצבן לעדכן לכולם בבת אחת את הנקודות.
יש רק בערך שתי פעמים שבהם יש אפשרות להיות בקרב נגד חללית אחרת וגם שם לא בטוח שצריך להכנס לזה(למרות שגם אם לא נלחמים, זה לא עוזר במציאה של הקוארדינטות)
מאוד חמוד ומעביר את הזמן, 3.5 כוכבי מישלן -
After playing the modern reprints of a number of early Fighting Fantasy books, I got hold of this one on eBay, in a Puffin first edition from the early eighties. This one hasn't had a Scholastic reprint.
This one is obviously set in space, which makes it a VERY different kettle of fish from its contemporaries. Instead of battling orcs and trolls as a solo adventurer, you're the captain of a starship, and the rules are pretty different - you have other crewmembers with their own skill and stamina scores, and there's also ship-to-ship combat, so you have weapons strength and shields scores for your ship as well. This makes the game a bit more complex to play, as there's a lot more variables involved.
The game is clearly influenced by the early eighties craze for sci-fi - this was the era of the Star Wars films, the big-screen versions of Star Trek, and a huge range of space-based videogames, and all of these popular themes show up in the book. The plot is even something that Star Trek Voyager handled many years later - your ship gets sucked through a black hole into an unknown sector of space, and you have to guide it home.
You can visit a large range of planets, and you also encounter spacecraft. Apparently you can complete this one without fighting a single battle, but I did get into one or two minor skirmishes. It is, however, a tricky one to finish. Quite apart from the added complexities of the rules, there's two vital bits of information you need to get home - you have to find the black hole's location, and the star date you need to enter it, and these numbers provide you with the passage you need to turn to in order to successfully complete the game. However...rather sneakily, there's several places where you can get provided with the wrong numbers, and finding the right ones is tricky. In one case it's quite easy, but in another, the planet is hard to find in the first place, and secondly, you have to negotiate a pretty complex maze to find the answer. By the time I'd got this far, I was ripping my hair out, and about to resort to looking up a complete solution, but I knew I was onto something by this point, and so I limited myself to looking up the moves required to get out of the maze. I otherwise mostly finished it myself, in about seven attempts. I told you it was hard!
While there was some interesting drama in this, and plenty of locations to explore, I'm not personally convinced the Fighting Fantasy formula works very well in a sci-fi themed book. I'm generally not massively into sci-fi anyway, but I can see that this would have expanded the interest for those who weren't fantasy nerds back in the day. It's cleverly designed and hard work to solve, which will keep you busy if you want to get through it, but I found it more frustrating than satisfying.
I prefer orcs and trolls to aliens and spaceships, I think. You know where you are with those. -
Fighting Fantasy tried to delve into science fiction all too few times, I think. There's nothing wrong with fantasy, but a bunch of lasers and spaceships and aliens is always a great change of pace.
Alas, none of the scifi attempts turned out all that great. I don't know whether this is the reason they didn't try too much, or if it were the opposite - they didn't feel like trying much to begin with.
Steve Jackson is responsible for this first attempt, once again going for some new avenue and experimenting with a whole new canvas. In his previous book - The Citadel of Chaos, which I loved - it worked out great, but this time around it fell rather flat. It's basically a Star Trek -esque visit on various worlds, all of them quick and fairly unremarkable, only scraping the surface of the adventure these worlds could have held in them. You get to roll up a whole crew for yourself, which isn't done all that well in the book and tends to clutter up things with even more numbers to remember and write down.
I never managed to finish it. I suppose I was not all too inspired to give it too many tries, just as the creators of Fighting Fantasy weren't inspired in writing too many scifi books. I wouldn't know. -
Livros-jogos são uma brincadeira legal. Me diverti e dei boas risadas. Para quem não conhece, o livro é um tipo de RPG em que cada ação te leva a uma página com uma ou duas opções. Dependendo das escolhas, tu escapa ou morre.
Neste livro, a missão a la Star Trek te coloca como Capitão de uma espaçonave (a Traveller) e seu objetivo é levar a nave perdida de volta para a Terra. Infelizmente esse livro em especial teve um problema (na p. 246, acho). Cheguei em uma ação do jogo que não explicava corretamente como calcular um rumo a partir dali (ele falava em 2 índices não indicados na ação anterior). Como não estava claro como sair dali a história foi interrompida. Mudei o rumo de propósito para outra página e destrui minha nave. Pareceu mesmo de propósito o beco sem saída do texto. O livro alertou no inicio da brincadeira que dificilmente você se salva na 1ª partida. Achei sacanagem, mas tudo bem. Vou tentar melhor sorte em outro dia. De todo modo recomendo a brincadeira é bem divertida. Em tempo: um bom presente para crianças! -
This is the first SF book in the FF series and from reading this one j can understand why they didn't sell that well.
I've never been a SF fan in any way (I was the only kid at school who didn't like Star Wars) but I was still looking forward to this as a bit of something different.
The biggest difference up front is that the rules of combat are not given until you first get into a fight. Also, you are I charge of a unit rather than just yourself.
Interestingly, even thought his is the 4th book I the series, on FF1 kept to only the core FF stats. In this one you have stats for your ship as well as your unit.
The story of the book is reminiscent of a Star Trek episode and I found it below average overall.
I died when I entered a black hole at the wrong angle and I can't see me revisiting this one any time soon. -
This gamebook is a love poem to Star Trek. As such, it involves exploration of exotic planets and encounters with strange alien species in the pursuit of the correct coordinates that will let the character and his starship find the way back home.
It's very naive, and somewhat refreshing, a little bit like watching a very old science fiction movie, but considering the other gamebooks written by Steve Jackson, I have to say that this is probably his least interesting. All the others I've read (House of Hell, Creature of Havoc, the Sorcery! series, Appointment with F.E.A.R.) are just that much better than this one. Which is still better than any Ian Livingstone gamebook anyways. Worth a try, all in all. -
This one has a distinctly startrek feel to it that keeps you interested. Good book with a good flavor to it. However I can't help feeling that it could have be much better. Its rock solid to finish. Some of the puzzles are real head scratcher's for sure. x
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This is one of the books that got me into Science-Fiction, before I had even heard of or seen Star Trek or Star Wars. Finding out that this kind of stuff existed through this book was like finding my home planet, which ironically I think was what you had to do to complete this book.
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Full review to follow.
Normally I love the fighting fantasy books. This is the worst one so far, but even then "worst" doesn't mean "bad".
It's a fun and entertaining read, but it tends to loop on itself a lot, and is confusing to follow. It's one of the harder stories to solve. -
Comme la plupart des Livres dont vous êtes le héros, j'en garde très peu de souvenir, à part la couverture et le fait que je m'étais bien amusée.
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Čtvrtý gamebook ze série Fighting Fantasy zase zkusil něco jiného - tentokrát žánr sci-fi.
Hrát si na hrdiny, co putují vesmírem, nebylo nic neobvyklého ani v osmdesátých letech, kdy tato kniha původně vyšla. Steve Jackson se možná inspiroval sci-fi dračákem "Traveller" a bezpochyby se inspiroval Star Trekem. Jako kapitán ovládáte svoji velkou vesmírnou loď a pomáhají vám různí důležití důstojníci. S nimi se pak můžete teleportovat na planety a objevovat tak prapodivný mimozemský život. Váš Raketoplán Poutník byl vtáhnut černou dírou do paralelního vesmíru a nyní musíte tímto neprobádaným prostorem plout a najít způsob, jak se dostat zpátky. Takže nyní přátelské i nepřátelské, krásné i ošklivé, upřímné či lstivé tváře nepotkáváte v místnostech zámku či koutech lesa, nyní je budete potkávat na cizích planetách.
V tomto gamebooku jsou různé nové vychytávky, například boj, kterého se účastní více lidí (nebo mimozemšťanů) na obou stranách (přeci jen s sebou taháte ty různé důstojníky) či třeba souboj s fázery, které jsou rychlé a nebezpečné (žádné postupné ubírání životů). Dokonce může dojít i na vesmírnou bitvu mezi loděmi. Novinek je tedy poměrně dost a hezky fungují, nejde o nic složitého. Proto možná zamrzí, že Raketoplán Poutník není příliš dlouhý a moc si jich tedy neužijete.
Seznamovat se s různými planetami, kde obvykle hrozí nějaké to nebezpečí, mě slušně bavilo. Škoda jen, že je vaše posádka poměrně anonymní, nic se o nich nedozvíte. Ale to už je v této sérií gamebooků normální, že si o sobě i jiných postavách musíte v hlavě něco domýšlet (mně během jednoho náročného boje se zabijáckým androidem tragicky zahynula komunikační důstojnice Uhura).
Gamebook není až tak obtížný, ale o znovuhratelnost se tu stará opět jedna vychytávka, kterou nemám rád. Abyste hru mohli úspěšně dokončit, musíte něco ve správnou chvíli najít, tentokrát jde o dvě souřadnice na místo, které vás dostane domů. Opět jsou tyto věci maximálně schované a nedá se k nim vrátit. V Raketoplánu Poutník vás navíc ani knížka neupozorní, že si máte souřadnice někam zapsat. Musím říct, že mě ale docela pobavilo, jak drsné a dramatické je potom finále, pokud tyto souřadnice nezískáte - dojde i na sebevraždy. Věřte mi, že každý si minimálně napoprvé tenhle s chutí napsaný špatný konec přečte.
Celkově je však tahle hrací knížka příjemným vesmírným putováním.
Sedm neoficiálních Star Trek gamebooků z deseti. -
Evoking a mixed reaction from fans, Starship Traveller, the first of only a handful of sci-fi titles in the FF series, is a Star Trek-influenced tour-de-force by series co-founder Steve Jackson. You control not a single character but a crew of characters, each with their own stats. There are three different combat types: hand to hand, phasers and ship to ship. Add to that an array of alien worlds that you can beam down onto, each well-realised and unique, and the range and variety in this book are staggering (even though there are only 340 instead of the standard 400 paragraphs).
It’s also rock-solid hard. You have to search space for some coordinates that will get you home, visiting the different planets for clues. There are many red herrings. I tried five times before completing it, in the end, using an online solution. The solution, intriguingly (and this must be intentional; a kind of joke by Jackson), involves avoiding most of the planets and encounters, and not rolling a single dice.
The artwork, perhaps, is poor (though it’s apparently by Peter Andrew Jones, who has illustrated some classic FF covers) but the atmosphere and - as I say - the range is awesome. I loved it, and the spare, stark, slick style of it all has really stuck in my mind. -
Los libros de lucha ficción eran juegos de rol de consumo individual. Basados en el planteamiento clásico de
Elige tu propia aventura (que luego
Multiaventura llevó un poco más allá), en estos libros había que ir con papel y dado, y estar dispuesto a llevar un recuento de varios estadísticos (vida, fuerza, habilidad) para progresar en la aventura. Eran muy divertidos. Tras el primer recorrido respetando las normas al pie de la letra, de repente, solía pasar que empezábamos a ganar todos los combates y las tiradas de suerte (los libros estaban bien porque aunque perdieras una tirada de suerte aún podías sobrevivir e ir por otro lado de la historia, no eran todas de sí o no).
Cada libro traía varias horas de entretenimiento. Las historias eran arquetípicas (caballero mata monstruos en misión de rescate, universo Mad Max, naves espaciales que desaparecen, misión en ruinas arqueológicas...) pero eso en realidad era un plus porque te situaba perfectamente en la misión ya desde que veías la portada del libro.
En conjunto unos libros que recuerdo con mucho cariño y que merecían mucho la pena. -
Starship Traveller feels very much a homage to classic Star Trek with much of the same terminology (warp, beaming down to planets, your crew of science officers etc.), the basic setup is that your ship ends up in an unexplored universe (Star Trek Voyager-style, though this book pre-dates it by a dozen years) and have to find your way back home. You get to investigate and/ or beam down to multiple planets in search for information. There are two keybits of information you need; a sector and a stardate, once you have both you have the information to jump through a dark hole back to your universe. Unfortunately I kept finding myself stuck in a loop at times visiting the same planets and going through the same choices to try and find myself back on to a path to progress forward.
Not the best gamebook I've read and I'm more of a sci-fi fan than fantasy so it failed to hit the mark for me. -
Read it in Italian and it was very annoying that the translator (I don't know if in the original version it's neutral) took for granted that the reader was male and every time someone addresses the reader is with male pronouns. Not cool. I know it's a very old edition but still, very annoying. I know context is important but I would have find that annoying even reading the book thirty years ago.
Pronouns aside, not so adventurous as I thought it would be. Almost every storyline was boring.
This was my first book-game and even though I didn't like this one specifically, I like the idea behind these kind of books so I will read another one, but not from this series. -
Starship Traveller gets some stick from the Fighting Fantasy fan base due to a few small errors in the book as well as having a short path to victory (once you know what it is), but I have to say that this is still one of my favourite Fighting Fantasy books both when I was a youngster and still now as an adult.
I think it helps that I'm also a fan of the original series of Star Trek, and this book really captures the feel of that television series. In a massive departure from other Fighting Fantasy books (at the time) this was the first to take flight into the science fiction genre (instead of the usual fantasy fare the series is known for).
While the book is a bit shorter than usual (less than 350 paragraphs instead of the standard 400) there are still plenty of other-worldly adventures to be had here as you and you crew explore a parallel universe trying to get home. Many of these feel like episodes from the aforementioned Star Trek.
The book structure is similar to The Warlock of Firetop mountain as it branches every so often and then usually returns back to specific choke-points in the story, and it also borrows the "keys" aspect in which you need to be able to collect the correct black hole coordinates and stardate to be able to find a portal back to your own universe. There is only one correct combination of coordinates out of a possible 9 combinations, so you'll need to explore various planets to find out where the correct ones are located.
I can't remember there ever being another gamebook quite like this one (if someone else does, please let me know!). -
The fourth book in the Fantasy Fighting series. I loved this series when I was younger, although I always cheated, and I never bothered with the whole dice thing, it was a bit complicated for when I just wanted to read, but this was fun to do with my son. We had a good adventure, and inevitably died from our very bad choices. I never did read this particular book when I was younger, so this was a new adventure to me.
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Review in progress...
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Starship Traveller is a fun little romp through space.
You'll visit various planets and get yourself into different situations. The whole thing is weird and wacky but it's fun.
4/5. -
Brave attempt at expanding the concept, but misjudged. Full review:
https://refereeingandreflection.wordp...
