Has anyone played or used the Lost World solitaire fighting books?

The ones where you each have a book and a card with actions and you call out page numbers and see what reaction you get?

Yeah, I've played with those a few times.

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I'm reading a lot of stuff about virutal worlds these days.

I, Avatar

has some interesting points about "rules" and "roles" that might show up in my posts during the next minor role-playing vs. combat kerfluffle. Fair warning against geekspeak.

Best line in the book so far: "Unlike in The Sims, where participants organize parties and invite the neighbors, in World of Warcraft participants organize parties and go kill the neighbors."

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"rules" and "roles"

Very interesting. I await more with baited breath.

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Yes, please do share the geekspeak (as I'm not sure when/if I'll get to the book).

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Connie, liked, disliked it, quickly got bored with it?

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CaBil, I remember having hours of fun playing the Lost Worlds games. I also enjoyed playing Ace of Aces, a similar kind of game about WWI biplane combat.

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Connie, liked, disliked it, quickly got bored with it?

They're not something that stands up to hours of play, depending on the person you're playing with, but it is fun to run various pairings and see how badly your Halfling gets chopped up by the wraith creature.

I've played the fantasy versions, the Battle Tech versions, and the Ace of Aces version.

They're a good introduction to gaming for people, because they're simple and quick.

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Interesting.

It turns out that a Japanese company licensed Lost Worlds from Flying Buffalo aka FBI, and has a series of 20 or so nice hardcover books, with the art done by name character designers. Downside of course that there are in Japanese, but there are sites that have translations of the books/character sheets.

FBI has sold some of them at gaming conventions, but I have been suggesting that they try anime/manga conventions. They tried it once a local con, but I have been asking if I could rep them at Otakon, the 2nd largest US anime con. Figure that would be a better representation of the interest in it than some local con in the Arizona area, far from the major US anime/manga con centers.

But despite them looking interesting, and having a feel for what might be interesting to anime/manga fans, I never actually have played Lost Worlds. Thought I would see what people thought...

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Hard cover seems a bit excessive for the Lost Worlds game play, because you have to flip back and forth to choose your action, then to see the reaction of the other person. I don't know enough about the Japanese gaming world to figure out if they're aiming at an art thing or a game thing. Also, for effective game play, you need a pile of the books so you can have several different matches.

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Yeah, it looks like the book retail in Japan for @$15, which isn't that bad, but not that cheap either. Considering some of the additional merchendise (model kits, a phone based version of the game) it is probably more an art thing (with a game attached)...

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