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Masks of Mayhem

The Fighting Fantasy gamebooks by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone were blockbusters of the era. Let’s venture into the far-off world of Titan and fight the golems in our newest book Masks of Mayhem!

In 1982, Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone, founders of Games Workshop, released the book ‘The Warlock of Firetop Mountain’. Intended as an introduction to tabletop role-playing games of the era, the book’s choose-your-own-adventure format mixed with simple dice-based combat proved massively successful, giving rise to a full series of books – Fighting Fantasy. With over 65 books in the series by a legion of authors and illustrators, the series’ legacy continues to this day. Come along with us as Cybe and co play through each one – with no prior knowledge, no hints or walkthroughs and no cheating!

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So far I’ve been rather down on Mr Waterfield’s work. I was, as I’m sure you’ll remember, fairly unimpressed with Rebel Planet and Deathmoor. But I do have stronger memories about this book, because this is the ones that I actually owned as a kid. Specifically, this is one that I got at Hamleys on a holiday to London. That, and a very nice comic version of The Hobbit, which I still own to this day, and which is far far far superior to the recent film version. Having said that, so was the Rankin Bass animated film version. But I digress.

I also remember that I’d specifically been keeping an eye open for this book, and that it was either meant to be very difficult or very important, I’m not sure. Either way, it was one that I had been looking for, and I was glad to have found a copy of it. Nowadays though, I’m not so sure. All I know is that it has a very basic system (which I like) and a quest involving preventing an evil sorceress creating an army of golems. Or something.

So, as the ruler of the local kingdom, I’m asked to set my armies to defend the… oh no, of course not. No, I need to go off alone on yet another dangerous quest. Why am I doing this? Actually, the book does explain this. I’ve been advised to go off on my own with just a pointy sword and shiny hat, on the suggestion of my court mage, Ifor Tynin. Remember that name, I’ll be discussing it later.

Our first obstacle is Lake Necros, which has possibly the friendliest name of any lake ever, except perhaps Lake Painful Death. The first thing I do is put together a raft and sail out into the river, only to be immediately eaten by a giant monster. Re-rolling my character (who turns out slightly stronger this time), I instead opt to ride around the edge of the river. While camping on the shore overnight, the giant kraken drags itself to the shore and tries to eat me, which necessitates much chopping of tentacles in order to get rid of the damn thing.

Y’know, you’d think that if the lake had a kraken in it, people wouldn’t only notice it, but would do something about it. Even if that something was to just set it up as a tourist attraction. Anyway, slaying the kraken is such an impressive feat that the spirits of all the stupid sods he’s killed rise from the dead to thank me and offer me assistance later on in the adventure. I wonder if my first character is among the group. Anyway, as much as I want an army of the undead to command, they insist on waiting until just the right section in the book before they’ll do anything.

A few years ago I was on holiday to Dartmoor. At one point, while out in the moors exploring the tors, a vast shroud of mist fell all around us. We could barely see a few feet in front of us. I loved it, because I’m a gothy bastard, and proceeded to stagger around the place shouting “Heathcliff!” for about ten minutes. Anyway, the same thing happens in the book at this point. Although in the book, when my character explores one of the tors, he encounters an angry wraith who attacks him. Upon killing it, he leaves behind a rather nice sword.

As the mist lifts, I find my way to an old abandoned house. At least, I think it’s abandoned, but while I sniff around the place, search through all the boxes and eat their dinner and generally do my best three bears impression, the inhabitant of the house finds me. Rather than being upset, he explains that he knew that I was coming because the voices in his head warned him about me. He then gives me a royal scepter which he seems to have been keeping hidden in the house. It’s all quite confusing, and I back away out of the house very discreetly before turning away and running like all hell.

Past the ruined hut, and we enter a small region known as Fallow Dell, which is a group of small settlements overseen by a lord. I’m on my way to visit the lord of the Dell, when I’m beset by a group of drunks from the local pub. The book tells me that I deal with them using the ‘art of fisticuffs’, a term which I’ve only ever seen used by people who get beaten up by any fight they ever pick.

By the time I get to the lord’s keep, it’s quite late in the evening and he invites me to join him in the banquet hall, where I have some dinner. Meanwhile, the guards inform me that the belongings that they were storing in my room have been stolen by orcs. Wow, what a safe and reputable keep this lord manages! I head off alone to follow the thieves, following their trail, only to soon be surrounded by them and chopped apart. In retrospect, I should probably have waited for the lord to give me a guard or two.

I’d normally be happy to do a quick replay of this book, and continue from where I was, but I’m a little bit rushed at the moment and just don’t have the time. This book is much better than some of Waterfield’s other works, and I rather enjoyed it. There’s nothing really special about it, but it’s a solid enough piece. Except for one thing…

Remember the character I mentioned earlier, Ifor Tynin? Well, it turns out that later in the book, you’re supposed to identify the person who has betrayed you, or something. I dunno, I’m working from memory here. Anyway, you’re told that if you know who has betrayed you, you should know what paragraph to turn to. Turning there means that you’re able to slay the traitor before he can assassinate you. There’s no clues given as to who the traitor is, and even if you’re able to deduce that it’s Ifor, the book doesn’t tell you the paragraph to turn to.

Of course, it’s fairly infamous in Fighting Fantasy knowledge that you need to turn to paragraph forty, because you run the first and surname together to create I-forty-nin. Which seems so simple and easy, except… that because, when I was a kid and actually did get to that part, the ‘nin’ part of the name completely threw me off, and left me turning to paragraph 49.

Yes, I was that stupid.

Cause of death: Meat platter for orcs.

Robot Commando

The Fighting Fantasy gamebooks by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone were blockbusters of the era. Let’s hop into our giant mechs and punch dinosaurs in Robot Commando! Wait is this a real book?…

As you can see from the cover, this book involves giant robots and dinosaurs. In fact, your character owns a dinosaur ranch, and uses the giant robots to herd dinosaurs. This was made about a decade before Jurassic Park reminded us all that trying to put a bunch of giant carnivorous reptiles behind some flimsy fences is not a great idea.

This book has been requested by readers several times, I assume purely because my readers know just how much I dislike the sci-fi Fighting Fantasy collection. No, really, for this blog I’ve already played through Starship Traveller, Rebel Planet, Freeway Fighter, Space Assassin, and they have all been unrelentingly painful.

I mean yeah, the fantasy ones can be very generic at times, but very few of them has ever left me wanting to peel out my own teeth and clean the inside of my skull out with them. Except perhaps Chasms of Malice. But still, people have requested that I play this one. I can think of only two possible reasons. The first is that this is a damn good book and will totally change my mind about sci-fi FF books. The second is that people like to torture me with unfathomable agonising pain.

I suspect that it’s the latter, to be totally honest with you. But enough rambling, let’s get on with the analysis. As you can see from the cover, this book involves giant robots and dinosaurs. In fact, your character owns a dinosaur ranch, and uses the giant robots to herd dinosaurs.

Nontheless, I get home one day from a long day of dinosaur herding to find that the entire country has been drugged with sleeping pills, so that an enemy nation of villainous bad guys can invade. I’ve honestly no idea how they could have drugged the food of every single person in the country, or why I’m not affected as well. Perhaps I had lasagna instead of chicken for dinner the night before. Anyway, despite this game being set in a world far off in the future in which giant robots are a thing and high-tech guns are easily obtainable, my character rushes to fetch his father’s sword from the attic. Ah, I see that we’re working on the Final Fantasy approach to gunfire and swords.

Heading out into the robot’s parking lot, I pick a robot to drive. Eventually settling on a cowboy robot (designed to herd dinosaurs, it is a biped robot which I imagine has a cowboy hat on top of its head), I’m asked to choose my destination. There are two cities I can go, which are named ‘The City of Knowledge’ or ‘The City of Industry’. Urrrgh. This book is going to hurt, isn’t it?

While travelling, I’m attacked by a random Pterandon, which is easily swatted by my robot. When I arrive in the City of Knowledge, I head straight to the medical college, where I start to research a cure for the sleeping sickness. Given that I’m a rancher of dinosaurs, it should come as no surprise that I am also a skilled chemist and am quickly able to find a cure. There’s enough items in the college for me to make a glass bottle of Blue Potion (yes, that’s what it’s actually called), but I have to be careful with it as it will evaporate on contact with the air. Also, I have to give it to the whole country all at once. Seems a bit contrived, don’t you think?

So with my Blue Potion safely tucked away, I decide to check out the military college before I leave town. Yes, there’s a military college. Maybe there’s some info I can use to gather the people together and give them a strategy to defeat the Evil McEviltons who are invading our little country. In fact, there’s a couple of them guarding the military college, apparently having realised that someone might do this very thing. But I’m able to walk right past them, because they assume I’m one of their friends due to the fact that I’m not asleep. Y’know, there’s lucky and there’s just stupid…

The military college is fairly useless for me, as the book I manage to grab and read (on Emergency Procedures, which sadly doesn’t contain any details on what to do in an emergency such as invasion from enemy stormtroopers) has no useful info, and I’m hurried out of the college. But as I leave, I opt to steal the enemy guard’s giant robot, which is a powerful machine that can transform into a fighter jet. Sadly I’ve no idea how to actually use the damn thing, so I’m actually weaker when using it.

Determined to waste yet more time, I go to check out the local museum before I leave town. Inside, I manage to find a Luck Amulet. One that has been scientifically proven to work, the book says. The very concept of this is so mind-boggling that I can’t even put it into words. A scientifically-proven luck amulet. How does that even work? Urgh. Anyway, as I leave the museum I catch sight of a giant robot Tyrannosaurus rampaging around the place. I kill it, pretty much wrecking the fighter jet robot that I’m piloting in the process.

I’m now bored with the City of Knowledge, so I want to head to the City of Industry, perhaps to find a weather control machine that I can hook my Blue Potion up to in order to dispense it across the country, or something. The book tells me of three other cities that I might visit, too – the City of the Jungle (bit of a contradiction in terms there), the City of Storms, and the City of Worship. Yeah, think I’ll stick with the City of Industry.

By the time I get there, I realise that there isn’t a weather machine or anything similar to be found. I head immediately to the fuel-refinery, only to be attacked by two of the enemy’s giant tripod robots (who no doubt are chanting ‘Ulla’ all the meanwhile) and sneak into the refinery, only to be subjected to a hefty dose of radiation. The book then tells me to leave and not return to that area. Le sigh.

Instead, I head to the robot experimentation center, hoping that I’ll be able to find a new robot that I can actually pilot. I’m in luck, because I find a mechanical interface helmet that makes up for my lower skill in this transformer robot. I also manage to find a heat-seeking missile to give my robot, not that this helps much as by this point in the adventure it’s barely holding itself together any more. And I also manage to find a highly powerful ninja warfare suit, which damn near kills me when I put it on, sending me crashing into walls and such like.

I’ve only got two other options in the City of Industry – to check out the sewers, or to ‘just explore’. Gosh, as much fun as wading through toxic sewage sounds, I’ll opt to just wander the city cluelessly instead. Eventually I find myself in the city’s junkyard, where I encounter a gorilla. I spend a few minutes wondering why there’s a gorilla out here, and then choose the option to speak to it. The book then informs me that the gorilla is a pet, and that it will help me repair my robot. The logic in this is bewildering.

So now that my robot is in better shape, and probably full of bananas, I continue to explore until I’m given two choices – go into the sewer tunnels, or head back to the robot experimentation center. Without any real choice, I trudge into the sewers. I stumble through tunnels for literally ages, going around and around until I realize that this entire segment is just one massive maze. Like the maze of Zagor back in Warlock of Firetop Mountain, except significantly less entertaining. And I loathed the maze in Warlock of Firetop Mountain!

Eventually I find a small lift, which seems to offer me a way out of this hell. I click the button to make it go, and it won’t start. I blindly press the other buttons, until I find one of them that makes the lift go up. Then the lift stops going up and starts to go back down again. Very fast. With a loud crash. I die in the crash. Strangely, this segment of the book reminds me of a seafront amusement ride that I remember at Scarborough…

So that’s Robot Commando. I’m sure there’s a lot more to it, but I’ll leave that for people who like this sort of thing. The robots are implimented well enough though, so I can’t fault it on that regard. If you like giant robots and you want to grow up to be a Gundam pilot or something, this should be a good read for you. It should have had more dinosaurs, though. Actually, it should have had a whole lot more fun, but more dinosaurs would be a good start!

In other news, it seems that I won’t be being made redundant after all, as my company want to retain my skills and redeploy me to their new department office. Which is in Leeds, all the way across the country. For the next few weeks, my life is going to be very, very chaotic…

Cause of death: Elevator ride to oblivion.

Trial of Champions

The Fighting Fantasy gamebooks by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone were blockbusters of the era. It’s time step into the gladiatorial arena and see if we can win the Trial of Champions!

Trial of Champions. Ah, memories!

When I was around 9 or 10 years old, my grandmother would drag me to a local weekly car boot sale every other Sunday, which took place on a scrap of unused land a short car drive from home. I hated the experience, which always ended up trudging through boxes of people’s unwanted rubbish with a fortnightly regularity. The only time anything useful ever turned up was when I found a copy of Trial of Champions and Demons of the Deep for sale one day.

The strange thing about Trial of Champions is that it acts as something of a pseudo-sequel for Deathtrap Dungeon. Only this time you are entered into the dungeon in order to win your freedom from slavery, rather than simply because you’re greedy for money and too stupid to start up your own merchant business. I suppose this is what makes adventurers so respected, and why they have such a low survival rate.

The book starts with a tale of you being captured by pirates after having just left Port Blacksand, of course. Where else would you be attacked by pirates? When it comes to Port Blacksand, you’re kinda lucky you’re not kidnapped and sold into slavery by the city guards! Anyway, you’ve been purchased as a slave by Lord Carnuss, the evil brother of the devious Baron Sukumvit, and he plans to make you fight for the honour of representing him in his brother’s annual dungeon challenge.

The Baron has announced that his new, improved dungeon is even more deadly than before. Which, if you remember what it was like last time, seems bloody well impossible anyway. Seriously, why not just round up some ‘contestants’ and chuck them into a giant mincing machine? They’d have about the same chance of survival! Anyway, I may actually stand a chance here – the weeks of slavery have forged me into a brutal and cold-hearted warrior machine-man, with a skill of 11 and a stamina of 22!! Lucky dice rolls – but my luck was a mere 8. Still… Conan, eat your heart out.

My very first choice in the game is if I should eat some of the food that one of the slave pen’s guards is offering me, or try to punch him in the face instead. I’m nowhere near stupid enough to get into a brawl with these guys at this stage, so I chew some food and prepare for the morning to rise, where I will meet others in the arena – or at the book calls it, the Arena OF DEATH!! *horror movie music*

I’m rather disappointed to find that the first day doesn’t include any actual gladiatorial face-thumping yet, but instead we’re told that we should compete in a 100 meter sprint. It’s made a little more interesting in that parts of the floors are covered in burning coals which I need to leap over, but still… I decide to make a name for myself by charging into the front of the race, and I manage to avoid falling behind or dying from exhaustion. These should definitely be Olympic events.

But on the second day… I get to fight!

Curiously, my enemy isn’t a fellow fighting slave, but instead I am set against a giant monster, a Bonecrusher. Having chose a trident and net as my weapons, I am told that I have chosen well and… wait a moment… how did Lord Carnuss get a Bonecrusher monster? Where does he keep it? What does he FEED it? What happens if it kills all the fighters? Will he enter the Bonecrusher as his warrior in the dungeon? Oh, never mind, the damn monster’s near-sighted and can’t stand up once you knock it over, so I gently push him over and am declared winner.

It’s at this point that things start to heat up. Overnight, one of the other slaves is ordered to kill me in the cells, which doesn’t seem very sporting, especially given that he has a skill of ten. Ten! And really, the first fight in the game? Oh boy, it’s going to be one of those FF books… I manage to chop him apart and get a peaceful night’s sleep next to his dead decaying corpse, and on the next day we head into the arena for a series of fun sports events.

Our first olympic event, mastering the spinning blades that threaten to slice my head off or cut my legs out from under me at the same time. I get through this, and move on to the next event – a game of blind man’s buff played with spiked maces. Seriously, who thinks up this kind of stuff?

Blindfolded and waving a spiked morning star around like a swirling madman, I manage to get into a fight with two other slaves, killing them both. Both have skill scores of at least 8, and because this game has no food and no other means to heal up your character thus far, my powerful stamina score of 22 is now down to a mere 10. You want to know a secret? I actually planned to play through this book a few weeks earlier. During this same blindfolded combat sequence, I tried to trip up one of the other competitors – which for me shot with arrows by the guards for my trouble, instant-death. So I scrapped that play-through and decided to do it later instead.

It’s only at this stage do I get to regain any stamina – a puny four points – as I’m lead to my final match against the only other surviving competitor, who is suitably named the ‘Southerner’. See, some books would give me a name for the character or something, but not this one. Names are for the weak. This man is not weak, he has a skill of ten. I whomp him over the head with his skill score of ten until I eventually beat him, emerging from this entire silly gladiatorial games as a mighty victor!

Without any real chance to celebrate or be praised as a mighty warrior who crushes all that stand before me (seriously, I could use some praise and adulation here, folks), I’m shipped off to Fang, under constant close watch from Lord Carnuss’ men. And y’know what? They STILL don’t give me any meals for my journey into the dungeon!! Aaargh!! I get introduced to Carnuss’ brother, the infamous Baron Sukkumvit (really, why is Lord Carnuss described as the ‘evil brother’? Seems they’re both a bit on the crazy evil side if you ask me!) and off I go into the Trial of Champions.

The very first thing I see in the dungeon is a door, with a sign reading “Keep Out” next to it. Naturally, I do what any self-respecting adventurer would do and head straight through this door. What do I find inside? A fire-breathing hell hound which tries to burn me to death and eat me, of course. Evidently curiosity did kill the cat. Still I kill it, find a gold ring in a mass of straw in the back corner of the room, and head on down the corridor.

I am soon parted from my golden ring though (No, they stole my precious!) when I come to a bridge across a large chasm. A sigh demands that I place some gold in a box, and not wanting to risk angering the bridge and possibly wind up facing a vicious Bridge Golem, I drop the ring into the box and toddle along on my way. I soon come to a small table. It has a hole cut into it, and the words “One is on and two is gone” written on it.

The book asks if I wish to reach into the hole. Figuring I’d look awesome with a steel hook for a hand, I stick my hand in and find two buttons inside. One is clearly marked ‘1’ and the other ‘2’. I hit the ‘1’ because I don’t much want my hand to be ‘gone’. Amazingly enough, it works. The wall slides aside, letting me continue along my way.

The next room I have the chance of entering has a broom nailed to it. I step inside, and encounter a witch. I know that she is a witch, because she is standing at a giant bubbling cauldron, and is throwing rats and slugs into it. Good to know witches aren’t being typecast or anything. She looks up at me, sends two vampire bats to me, and makes herself vanish in a puff of smoke. I admit, it would be funnier if she had attacked me with two bats herself (preferably duel-wielding cricket bats – old ladies wielding blunt force weapons tends to be one of the funniest things in the world), but what can ya do, eh?

I manage to knock the two bats out of the way, and the book tells me that I dump their bodies in the cauldron, for some reason or other. I’m then given the chance to explore the room, during which I find a rather unusual box, unusual because it has the face of one of the other Trial of Champion contestants on its lid. The moment I pick up the box, I am pulled into it, freeing the adventurer that was trapped within.

The book asks me to test my luck, which due to being so terribly low, I fail. I assume that a lucky roll would mean that another adventurer would later come around and open the box, freeing me a la 13 Ghosts of Scooby Doo. But with my lack of luck, I am sealed inside the box forever-more, doomed to be a rather unlike-able piece of furniture.

Truly, a tragic end for such a noble adventure.

This is a very neat book, and makes the most of the setting to create its own backstory by making you fight through the trials at the start. It’s very evocative, and also very effective at what it’s trying to do. Where it falls apart a little is that it never really transitions smoothly into the second part (the actual Dungeon), while other books like Cavern of the Snow Witch managed to do so. It could have smoothed this out by making the fight sequences at the start a little easier (once you get into the dungeon, the monsters you’re fighting are far easier than the fighting slaves you fought earlier) and giving you some provisions to stack up on before you enter the dungeon.

Aside from these, I think it’s one of the more involving and enjoyable of the standard FF books, and the early sections show a lot of the brutality and savagery of the world. Worth the read.

Cause of death: 1991 Alice In Chains single to death.

Sword of the Samurai

The Fighting Fantasy gamebooks by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone were blockbusters of the era. Now let us forge the Sword of the Samurai!

The land of Hachian is under siege, beset by tyranny and treachery, and only YOU can save it. Or more accurately, only I can save it. So yeah, Hachiman is pretty much doomed.

Sword of the Samurai was the second Fighting Fantasy book I picked up. Coming off the gothic horror of Vault of the Vampire (my first FF book), it seems I went right into another heavily-atmospheric adventure set in an unusual location. This one is interesting because you play as a samurai. Now, when you’re 9 years old and choose an adventure involving samurai, you don’t really know much about them from a historical perspective. You don’t know that the samurai class were glorified militia in the keep of regional lords, whose job requirements were to perform their lords will, and typically didn’t even serve as warriors following the 17th century.

Despite moral laws such as Bushido, the samurai’s right allowing them to murder any commoner for ‘not showing due respect’ wasn’t repealed until the Meiji restoration, a movement which later culminated in the abolition of the samurai class altogether. In short, the real-world history of the samurai isn’t quite as adventurous as the mythology we have about it today. Nah, when you’re 9 years old, all you know is that samurai are cool guys with katanas. Sword of the Samurai was also one of the few Fighting Fantasy gamebooks that was to have been graced with the honour of becoming a video game, way back in the late 80s when video games still used text and people could be eaten by a grue if they weren’t careful. Sadly I don’t think this game ever actually materialised, although I am aware that Temple of Terror, Seas of Blood and Rebel Planet did make it. It seems that so far, only the two most iconic of the FF series (The Warlock of Firetop Mountain and Deathtrap Dungeon) seem to have made the jump to video gaming with any large degree of success.

The adventure begins with you, the Shogun’s personal retainer, being tasked with recovering the legendary sword Singing Death from the clutches of the evil Ikiru. Exactly how the evil Ikiru managed to get his hands on the legendary sword Singing Death is never explained – maybe he stole it, maybe he won it in the Shogun’s annual singing sword contest.

Either way, you’d think that the Shogun could have picked a better personal retainer, as my skill is only a feeble 7 today. My stamina is no better at 16, although my luck comes out at 11. In an attempt to offset this weakness, I choose to be trained in the special skill of ni-to-kenjutsu, the wielding of two blades at once, which should be able to give me the occasional upper hand in combat if the dice are feeling particularly kind. The game also includes an Honour score, which starts at 3, and if it ever hits zero it’s seppuku-time.

I arm myself and choose to plot my course to recover Singing Death, choosing to ride through the aptly-named Forest of Shadows. I just couldn’t resist with a name like that. We never have such exciting names for things in real-life. There’s a forest here in Hampshire not far from where I live, called ‘The New Forest’ – why couldn’t we call it ‘Forest of Chaos’? Imagine how brilliant this would be for the travel industry too. “Come spend a week or two in sunny Hellforge Plains, before taking a leisurely cruise across the Sea of No Return, to then put your feet up in our lovely hotel in the Valley of Despair”… Sorry, I’m rambling.

As I ride, I notice a village which has been set alight, and so I choose to investigate. As I approach, I am attacked by a man on horseback, who manages to knock my health down to almost half its starting level. Thankfully my duel-wielding skill seems to do well enough, as I’m able to pull through. It seems that the local lord, Lord Tseitsen, has decided to rebel against the Shogun and ordered his samurai to burn a village or two. Oh nice.

Like a total moron, I decide to ride into the middle of the village and shout a challenge to honourable combat to any samurai fool who happens to be listening. Because this is the honourable thing to do. Immediately, three of the buggers line up in front of me, because that’s totally honourable. I manage to cut my way through the first one, but the second crushes me like a bug. The thing is, what these samurai that killed me are doing is actually entirely historically accurate. Listen, I’ll explain.

Bushido, the philosophy of a warrior lifestyle that samurai followed, was very strict and very structured around honour. Part of the requirement that you followed as a samurai was to obey your lord’s orders, even if they were immoral. To refuse an order would mean being stripped of your family name, a sentence that rendered not only yourself, but your descendants as traitors. The only way to make reparations for this crime was to take your own life, in the ritual of seppuku. Failure to do so would often be met by assassination from your lord, as well as death to your spouse, children, grandchildren, and your ancestor’s noble deeds being stricken from the history books. So even though the samurai here are butchering peasants, from the laws of the warrior code, they are doing so with a clear conscience.

But let’s have a look at the lord himself here, Lord Tseitsen. He has decided to declare war on the Shogun, which although it was a notorious and shocking act, was certainly not unknown to have happened. By attacking innocent peasants, he is immediately cast as a villain here. However, during much of Japan’s history, peasants were often put on the front lines of the battlefield by lords who required a quick and inexpensive militia in order to bolster their existing forces. But there’s more to it than that – peasants were always in the front line of warfare due to the simple fact that they farmed rice. Rice wasn’t just a foodstuff, it was one of the key goods of trade during the region. Damaging the Shogun’s ability to produce and trade rice was the historical version of levying trade sanctions, and enforcing those levies with shock and awe tactics.

So not only is Tsitsen ensuring that the Shogun’s armed forces will have less foodstuff to keep them through the long winter’s war, he is also diminishing the reserve combatants AND cutting down on the Shogun’s economic standing. If a Shogun cannot afford to trade with other regions, Tseitsen sends the message that the Shogun is weak, thereby raising more lords to stand against him. It’s certainly not at all nice – if anything, it shows the horrors of warfare. Sorry Shogun, but no single sword is going to help you out of this little predicament.

Nope, sorry, I’m going to replay from the start. Rerolling a character, preferably someone who actually knows how to use a sword (stick ’em with the pointy end). The dice gods hate me, because today they want to mock my attempts – they give me a skill of 8 this time a stamina of 14 and luck of 8. I decide that this time I’ll take the special skill of Karumijutdu, the art of jumping around. I decide that my character is a samurai version of Monkey. You remember Monkey, don’t you? No, of course you don’t – he’s Chinese mythology, not Japanese. Wow, look at me mix up my mythology! May the great Amaterasu forgive me.

This time I decide to travel through the ford to the plains before I get to the mountains, hoping that direction will be free of marauding samurai, or at very least will instead have some kind of monster that is easily impressed by my ability to jump really high. Instead, I came across a group of peasants. This is bound to go well, because peasants loved the samurai. I mean, who wouldn’t love a group of noble-born elite that could kill you for the slightest imaginary insult? Remember what I mentioned earlier, about samurai being given the right to cut down peasants who did not show due respect? Well, a peasant in this particular group didn’t show me due respect – in fact, he shouted out that I was an honourless dog, and insulted the Shogun himself. Erm, in the eyes of a samurai, that’s considered high treason. So I did what I was required by historical accuracy to do… I drew my sword in order to claim their disrespectful, treasonous heads!

The peasants, the honourless dogs that they all were, rose up and attacked. I cut one of them down, but he injured me in the meanwhile. Realising that I was vulnerable, an especially large peasant who was wielding a torch full of burning charcoal charged over and beat me into pulp. Really, I only have myself to blame for this horrible death, because I chose to stick to the requirements of what a real-life samurai would have done, instead of the heroic fantasy options that were also available. You can blame misspent hours playing ‘Legend of the Five Rings’ tabletop RPG for this, my friends.

Anyway, we begin over again, for a third time! I rolled up skill of 10, luck of 10 and stamina of 17. Not too bad, and in satisfaction of this, I have called my noble samurai by the name ‘Jack’. I decide to follow the path which resulted in a somewhat less of a horrible and gruesome death last time, by starting my journey across the fens, heading out on the great quest to recover the Shogun’s missing sword. Along the way, I encounter the merchants and charcoal-burners, one of whom shouts abuse and dishonours the (utterly inept) noble Shogun. As you’ll remember, last time I chose to lop the fool’s head off. This time, I decide to be a compassionate man, and instead only demand that they pledge their loyalty to the Shogun. In doing so, one of the men decides to offer to join me on my journeys, perhaps to help carry my bags. Like any heroic samurai, I pile a whole bunch of bags full of wooden logs on the old man’s creaking back, and ride off into the sunset.

As we arrive at the next village, I am shocked to see that the old man has somehow died. There’s no cause for this (cough), and this is surely an ill omen. Regardless, I head into the village and ask if I may join the elders. I am invited in, and hope that they will offer me aid on my journey. Instead, the elders of the village all proceed to try to kill me, due to them being undead monsters. I quite like this, because they’re Rokuro-Kubi, which sounds like it could be a legitimate Japanese monster. Their heads float in the air, they make weird rattling noises, and they have a skill of 11 and a stamina of 17 and OH GIVE ME A BREAK!!

The amazing thing is – the genuinely astonishing, amazing thing – is that I actually manage to survive this encounter! Yes, despite the fact that this insanely over-powered monster is stronger than I’ll ever be, I manage to barely scrape through with a mere five points of stamina remaining. It’s what happens after that which is… urgh… So I run fleeing from the village, having suceeded in my luck roll. The reward for my luck roll is that I tumble into the river, and because I do not have more than 12 points of stamina, I am pulled down by the water to a horrible watery grave. This is the LUCKY outcome.

I imagine that the unlucky outcome would include having my head spontaneously explode. I mean, after having had a monster with a skill of 11 and a stamina of 17 thrown at you, do you really think ANYONE would survive this encounter with more than 12 stamina points? Really?

Sword of the Samurai is far too hard in terms of combat. Not just because my stats were poor, but because the skill score of all the enemies I encountered even at the early stages of the adventure were high, with the lowest one at 7 and the highest a staggering 10. It’s fine to build up to that kind of difficulty over the course of the adventure, but to start out with that kind of enemy, you just feel far outclassed.

Sadly, I remember the rest of the book being a lot of fun. At later points, I remember you got to speak with dragons, and were able to take part in celestial gladiatorial combat with a variety of spirits and avatars and so forth, which was all very fun, but being unable to get far enough to enjoy it is a major flaw. A word of advice for anyone wanting to write game books – difficulty curves don’t just exist in video games!

That’s it, I am done with Sword of the Samurai. This book is BROKEN. Utterly, completely and urreperably broken. I will not play it again. I will not play it on a boat, in a hat or wearing a coat. I will not play it if I am on fire, sleeping on a log or playing a lyre.

I’m, sadly, forced to give this book my lowest score ever – ritual seppuku.