What are you reading?

i agree about the quality or lack there of most modern gaming manuals. however alien shooter:vengeance- probably has one of the best i've ever seen and its only jewel case size. almost 30 pages packed with lots of useful info and humour too(the intentional kind). eg: intelligence (head icon) - the higher your intelligence level is, the less you think like a potato. besides this, you will be able to use better implants.what's shocking is this comes from a european developer.
i almost always read the manual the same night i install a game which gets me into the mood for the following day. online or pdf are good for reference but i almost never read them.

One of my SNES games - a very boring game about a desert war, by the way, I even forgot the title - had an incredibly funny manual. It was definietely intended by the translators this time, but I'm pretty sure the original version's manual wasn't funny at all... my version had mission descriptions like '3. Take the stronghold. 4. Return to base, but don't forget to buy milk on the way back.'

magerette said:

The last game I got with a decent manual was Temple of Elemental Evil. The last rpg I got with turn based combat was ToEE as well--coincidence?

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Probably not. And let's not forget the chocolate chips cookie of the gods recipe !
Have you tried Dominions 3 ? An incredibly deep TB strategy game that was released last year. It comes with a spiral bound 300-page manual, which you will definitely need.

Haven't run across Dominions--I pretty much forget to shop the strategy section anymore since almost everything is real time and/or WWII these days. I'll look it up.

Edit: Just checked it out at Gamespot--it looks quite interesting..("if you're the type of gamer who lets out a groan when he sees a manual the size of a phone book, the game probably isn't for you...") Learning curve: 3 hours.(!)
Thanks Cormac.

Right now I'm reading Well Of Darkness by Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman (Volume 1 of the Sovereign Stone Trilogy).

It's not bad, I like the take on the different races and their relationships with each other, and the story is paced well and interesting.

I'm not a huge fan of the work of Weis or Hickman, but they are both good writers. I've met Margaret several times at conventions and she's really nice to talk to.

magerette said:

Haven't run across Dominions--I pretty much forget to shop the strategy section anymore since almost everything is real time and/or WWII these days. I'll look it up.

Edit: Just checked it out at Gamespot--it looks quite interesting..("if you're the type of gamer who lets out a groan when he sees a manual the size of a phone book, the game probably isn't for you...") Learning curve: 3 hours.(!)
Thanks Cormac.

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Yes, the game is very complex. Fortunately the demo comes with a very comprehensive tutorial which will teach you, if you do decide to try it, the basics of province management and combat (and a bit on magic too).

Spiral-bound manuals ? I don't believe I've EVER seen one !

Only a few days ago I was digging through my chest full with old game manuals and not a single one was like this type !

Is this typical European or what ?


The outcry was immense, by the way, when the gaming mags wrote about plans of the industry to only use DVD cases. Me, I felt like being treated not as a customer, but rather like ... a cash-cow. They want money from me and dare to deliver the least necessary for that. Cutting down production costs in all place ... Well, not all. Except the 3D graphics, of course.

Of course the industry had won. No-one selld games in the so-called "Euro-Boxes" anymore. Everything has at least the height of an DVD box.

And THEN they try to put handbooks into an DVD case that *hardly* fit at all !

But I guess I'm becoming more & more off-topic ... Agree to open a new thread ?

Alrik Fassbauer said:

Spiral-bound manuals ? I don't believe I've EVER seen one !

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I have at least NWN, KotOR and ToEE ... perhaps more but being >3000 miles away from them makes it hard to check

Alrik Fassbauer said:

The outcry was immense, by the way, when the gaming mags wrote about plans of the industry to only use DVD cases.

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We had much hand-wringing here about the move to small boxes ... the use of DVD cases is still spotty here - don't really know why, though. But don't feel bad - we don't get anything better in the boxes than in the DVD cases

Well, I never had the three games you mentioned as full-price games, so I can't say ... don't have KOTOR not at all, and NWN only as a gaming magazine's version. TOEE as extremely low budget version.

Originally Posted by Alrik Fassbauer

Spiral-bound manuals ? I don't believe I've EVER seen one !

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Alrik, you're always getting the short end of the stick!

Spiral bound manuals in my collection:

Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn
Icewind Dale
NWN and NWN Gold
Fallout
Temple of Elemental Evil

All, as you can see, by Bioware, Black Isle or Troika. I think there was an outcry about BG1 not having a spiral bound manual, so that's why the SoA edition did. I also got some 20-sided dice and a cool notepad with that one.

What books are you reading?

Since we got everything covered here (movies, games, music, etc.) but books, I made a new thread. So what are you reading at the moment? Doesn't matter if it's a novel, a comic, a scientific book or poems - tell a bit about it. Would you recommend it? Did you like it?

Im kind of bad at reading, but it's mostly H.P. Lovecraft atm. I downloaded his entire bibliography as HTML and squeezed onto my pocket pc to have with me all the time. I also started to read Star Wars - The Thrawn Trilogy recently.

As a sidenote... Im the kind of person who grows frustrated when I cannot use my brain, so when I go to the gym, travel in my car or even when I take a walk, I am using my pocketpc to play university lectures from the Teaching Company. Mostly sociology, philosophy and psychology right now but I intend to go through some chemistry and physics before the end of the year.

I'll play...

I'm actually between books right now. I just finished a couple and am sort of thinking what to read next:

"Byzantium: The Empire of the New Rome" by Cyril Mango. Byzantium was always one of those white spots on the map for me; I know a fair bit about Russian and Middle Eastern history and the history of antiquity, so Byzantium was always sort of hanging on the edges, but I never actually read anything about it. It was an interesting read, very well written with a wry sense of humor, and covered the kind of stuff that someone who just wants to know what the hell all the fuss was about. I would very much recommend it as a first book on it.

A couple of Neil Gaiman novels and short story collections: "Stardust," "Anansi Boys," and "Smoke and Mirrors." I liked Anansi Boys the best, although not as much as American Gods or Neverwhere. "Stardust" left me a bit cold, and "Smoke and Mirrors" was pretty uneven -- some of the stories were excellent, others were pretty lame.

"Interesting Times" by Terry Pratchett. Not among his best, IMO; I found his take on the Agatean Empire unpleasantly patronizing and Orientalist. Some good gags, but lots of pretty forced ones as well; the joke on Cohen the Barbarian was stretched way past breaking point for one thing. (Although it was a cute idea to discover that his first name was Ghenghiz, as in Ghenghiz Cohen.)

What next? Dunno. A colleague keeps recommending Iain M. Banks, so I might give him a shot. Or perhaps I'll start a single-speed bicycle conversion project instead.

Actually, we had it covered -> http://www.rpgwatch.com/forums/showthread.php?t=150 but at one point the OT forum was a little bit frustrating with that many stickies so someone moved it around

I'm reading Earthsea mostly, right now at The Longest Shore, I love this type of volumes that put several books of a series into a single volume. And rereading a few Pratchet novels, mainly Carpe Diem and The Wyrd Sisters, two of my favorites. Speaking of Interesting Times, while I haven't read it in a while, and wouldn't place among my top 5 of the Discworld series, it has its qualities. I just enjoy the books that change the scenery away from Ankh-Morpork.

I'm currently reading 'Darknesses', the second volume of Modesitt's Corean Chronicles!!

Arma said:

Actually, we had it covered -> http://www.rpgwatch.com/forums/showthread.php?t=150 but at one point the OT forum was a little bit frustrating with that many stickies so someone moved it around

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My mistake, I'm very sorry... I simply didn't see it

I'm reading Earthsea mostly, right now at The Longest Shore, I love this type of volumes that put several books of a series into a single volume. And rereading a few Pratchet novels, mainly Carpe Diem and The Wyrd Sisters, two of my favorites. Speaking of Interesting Times, while I haven't read it in a while, and wouldn't place among my top 5 of the Discworld series, it has its qualities. I just enjoy the books that change the scenery away from Ankh-Morpork.

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What's Earthsea like? It's not overly popular in Germany and no one I know has really read it. I had it in my hands several times at the book store and was playing with the thought to buy it - I'm just not sure if I would like it or not...

Actually, I found them a little slow and boring when I read them many years ago. What is interesting, is that I met the author several years ago too, and she is quite a character!!

I'm reading Flight of the Eisenstein (the forth book in the Warhammer 40K Horus Heresy Series). It's nice to read such a famous (for 40K fans) piece of history but it is starting to lose me a bit as (not to include any spoilers) but they kill off people then simply intoduce carbon copies with different names as they need certaincharacter types to carry the story along Still I'll see it through to the end (just to read those momentous events that I know are coming).

Just finished the last book in Valery Leith's Everien trilogy( The Company of Glass, The Riddled Night, and The Way of the Rose) Very complex and convoluted stuff, but the author does the reader the favor of finally answering all the riddles and tying up all the loose ends in the final installment, which so many seem to avoid doing these days. For anyone who likes sword & sorcery fantasy with a Zelazny touch, I heartily recommend it, though it's a little hard to find these days.

Sounds like something I'd enjoy; I'll check out my local library!!