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Space Assassin

The Fighting Fantasy gamebooks by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone were blockbusters of the era. Join us on the twelfth adventure, as we don the mask of the Space Assassin!

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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The Fighting Fantasy franchise had, uhm, mixed results when it came to science-fiction. And most of those mixtures were awful. Case in point, Space Assassin. You’re an assassin. You’re in space. Try as I might, I just find this one kinda hard to get excited about. The cover is very dark, with a pair of chaps in space-type armour. The font for the title is vaguely sci-fi-ish and when I flick through the pages, I catch sight of a LOT of small artwork pieces of eyes staring out at the reader. A lot of them. It’s actually a little unsettling.

I’ve a fairly decent skill roll of 10, and a stamina of 16. My armour score is a mere 7, which is basically equal to either wearing a wet paper bag or Eldar armour. I don’t think that they’re actually called Eldar any more, but I don’t really care. The game gives me the option of choosing what weapons to take with me at the start, so I stock up on three grenades and an assault rifle type of weapon. With that done, it’s time for our mission briefing.

Cyrus, the evil necromancer scientist, has been sending his army of killer undead mutants to various villages planets in the area, and it’s up to me to stop him. I have to sneak into his dungeon spaceship and track him down… yeah, this is basically the same Fighting Fantasy adventure as any other. None of this is actually any different to the usual Fighting Fantasy adventure – it’s simply a standard fantasy adventure with the thinnest attempt at a sci-fi skin applied.

I manage to smuggle myself into Cyrus’ giant spaceship while it is refueling, although rather than hide out in some cargo crates, my character decides to sneak through one of the external airlocks. This deposits me into a totally unknown area of the ship. I immediately find the body of a dead alien creature, which seems to be clutching a button of some sort. The item it’s holding is incomplete, and I don’t really have any clear idea what it is, so I just write ‘alien button’ on my item sheet, and head through a maintenance hatch to another part of the ship.

If this were a proper space ship, you’d be able to roughly map out some kind of logic to how it is laid out – engineering and systems at the back of the vessel, medical bays near the crew quarters, helm and navigation at the front, that sort of thing. But seeing as this ship is essentially a dungeon with a lick of sci-fi paint, I’m willing that you can find rooms laid out in any order at all. For instance, the first chamber I come to is a brig. I’ve no idea why they’d build a brig so near an airlock, maybe Cyrus’ guards don’t want to have to walk too far before they chuck their prisoners out into space. Either way, I kill the robot guard and open a few of the cells.

In one cell, an old wounded prisoner thanks me for saving him, and tells me to be careful if I’m dealing with the ship’s pilot. He doesn’t tell me anything useful, like “Don’t go into the next cell, because there’s a nasty little monster that will chew part of your armour off”. So I go into the next cell, and encounter a nasty little monster that chews part of my armour off.

I stumble around in corridors for a while longer, and eventually bump into a pair of alien scientists. I know that they are scientists because they are described as wearing lab coats. They beg me not to kill them, and I agree. Then, for some reason, the book states that I order them to strip. I… don’t know why… and I’m not sure I want to know. I take their security keys and head into the secured area, but the game doesn’t lead me to any labs. So I’m not sure what these two scientists were doing so far from their natural habitats.

Either way, I trudge through some more corridors, before coming to a small kitchen area. I have the chance to eat some energy pills (in the future, all meals come in pill-form, and all medicine pills come in a form too horrifying to imagine), but because my stamina is still high, I just head back to the main hallway. I am then confronted by a security robot which asks to see my ID. I would want to hand over the security pass keys that I have taken from the naked scientists, but the book doesn’t give me this option. Instead it asks if I want to bluff the robot. I try this, but the robot simply shoots me. Oh boy. So I shoot the robot to death, and the book asks if I want to examine its smouldering ruin.

I check it out, and in the process I find a security safe which is hidden somewhere in the room. I’m not sure how searching the robot’s body lead me to what is essentially a hidden chest, but sod it. The safe has three buttons on it, and I can press either one. I am NOT given the option of leaving the damn thing alone. Why not? Hell if I know!

So I press the green button, which takes me to a section that simply tells me “turn to (other section)”, which is one of my pet peeves. All this does is annoy me, because it requires you to flick from one page to yet another page with no indication as to why or for what reason. At least put SOMETHING in the text. It doesn’t matter anyway, because the stupid safe explodes in my face and kills me, so the entire thing was doomed from the moment that the book forced me to choose which button to press, even though I didn’t want to press any damn button in the first place.

I don’t like this book at all. I’m tempted to give it another play-through simply so that this article is a little longer, but frankly, I just don’t care for the book and I’m quite happy to leave it as it is.

So instead I’m going to talk a little about literary theory. You see, this book is essentially the same as many other Fighting Fantasy games in terms of content and storyline. The main differences are in terms of the style in which they’re presented – monsters become robots, dungeons become spaceships, and so on. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing – in fact, it can show several key points in literary theory, in particular the ideas of Vladimir Propp and Roland Barthes, who are most commonly known respectively for their Morphology of a Folktale and Death of the Author theories.

In essence, this shows us that the core skeleton of the story remains the same. The only thing that is ever truly different is the additional stylistic and genre-specific signifiers that the story is dressed in. For instance, our bare-bones Fighting Fantasy story is the ‘go and kill an evil wizard who lives in a dungeon’ story. In Vault of the Vampire, we see that same story, but it is dressed in a gothic horror style, with the grandiose castle taking the place of a dungeon, and the vampire taking the part of the wizard. In House of Hell, the structure is changed from actively attempting to seek out your evil wizard to attempting to flee from him, but you still have a ‘dungeon’ to explore in the guise of the house, and the wizard is replaced by the lord of the manor. And here in Space Assassin, you have a very clear one in which a mad scientist plays the antagonist’s role.

This isn’t so much down to being formulaic, all of the FF books have a certain formula to them. The difference between House of Hell and Space Assassin, is that House of Hell presents itself in such a strong stylistic way that you don’t notice the structure beneath it. It is aided by a very strong atmosphere which aids you in suspending your disbelief. Space Assassin, sadly, does not have that sense of atmosphere. Its style is not strong, and as a result you see right through its sci-fi veneer and down to the structure underneath.

From what I’ve found out about this book, it was written before most of the other FF books, back when the only one in the ‘series’ was Warlock of Firetop Mountain. That’s a real shame, because this is one that could have taken a lot from the strong use of atmosphere and style we seen in City of Thieves etc. I’ve also found that this mentions that much of the book needed to be ‘expanded’ (ie, padded out) in order to make the full length, and in general this is never a good sign. In fact, the book’s own author states “I meticulously planned Rings of Kether (unlike its predecessor Space Assassin, which was a rather ad hoc exercise since I’d never written a Gamebook before)”

So yeah, think this is one assassin I’m not going to think about hiring again. Sorry.

Cause of death: Uninspired writing.

Talisman of Death

The Fighting Fantasy gamebooks by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone were blockbusters of the era. Join us on the eleventh adventure, as we seek the sinister Talisman of Death!

I’m sure I read Talisman of Death before, but I just can’t remember when. At several points during my childhood I would comb through local libraries for Fighting Fantasy books, and I strongly suspect that Talisman of Death was one that I borrowed at some point. I never owned a copy, and just can’t remember anything significant about it. That’s about to change, though. This is one of those strange Fighting Fantasy adventures in which you start out as a regular person on planet Earth. It wastes utterly no time in throwing you into the new setting though, by casting you as the chosen earthling who has been selected by a powerful god-entity to save the world of Orb. This whole “earthling thrown into fantasy story” trope is one that we tend not to see a whole lot and it’s quite nice to see it here.

I’ve rolled up a skill of 9, which is not bad for a mere earthling who has probably never wielded a sword in her entire life. I’ve got a luck of 12 and a stamina of 23, so things are starting out looking fairly hopeful. The adventure begins with you being informed by a sinister voice that I have been chosen (but not what I’ve actually been chosen to DO) and I am then immediately chucked into a big empty underground chamber. Nice. I’m already starting to suspect that this is all a big joke being pulled by my university chums.

My time sitting around in a large empty chamber is quickly interrupted by the sudden arrival of a group of adventurers who demand to know what I am doing here. I decide to be honest and tell them that I’m actually an earthling who was chosen by an alien force and dumped in this dark room somewhere for no known reason. I figure that the situation can’t get any worse, but amazingly the group believe my crazy story, and tell me that I have obviously been sent to aid them. Uh, sure.

The wizard of the group (because what half-decent group of adventurers would lack a wizard?) hands me an amulet and tells me that if it falls into the wrong hands then the God of death will be summoned and eat the world for lunch because Gods of death tend to do this kind of thing, and that I am their only hope. Ah, no pressure then. With that, a horde of monsters rush into the chamber and proceed to brutally stamp on the adventurers. With his last breath, the wizard teleports me out of the dungeon. I look around the overworld and start my trek towards wherever the nearest large city happens to be.

No sooner am I on my way, that I catch sight of a group of orcs approaching from the south. I seem to immediately recognise them, despite being an earthling who has never seen an orc in real-life before, but eh, I guess maybe our understanding of orcs are perhaps derived from aliens? Who can say. I choose to avoid them, only to notice another group of dark elves approaching from the north, which causes even more questions. I promptly run from both groups, not wanting to end up being crushed by either ones… but the moment I find somewhere safe to hide, both groups rush over and beat the snot out of each other!

Glad to have escaped this little orc-elf battlefield incident, I rest by a lake to catch a few moment’s breath. As I drink the cool water, one of the nearby trees decides that it wants to grab me and drag me off to… do whatever trees do to their prey. Eat them via osmosis, I suppose. Either way, I whack it with my sword until it changes its mind, and I find that its sap has some interesting healing properties. I pocket some of this sap – if you have any idea how I manage to carry around a handful of tree sap in a backpack, please let me know.

As I continue through the woods, I notice a dark elf scout sniffing along my trail – it seems that the elves made short work of the orcs, and have been pursuing me across the lands. I dive into the river to lose throw off the scent, but this is utterly ineffective and before long I’m running across the open plains with an entire dark elf squadron hot on my heels. Joy. It’s only by the timely intervention of a group of riders that causes the elves to turn and flee. The riders in question, consisting entirely of warrior women with spiky helmets and big swords, demand to know what I am doing in the lands of Rohan (or wherever the hell I’ve wound up).

I ask them to take me to their home city so that I can can find some help. The book asks me if I wish to hand over my sword. I choose to ask if the riders would mind awfully if I held onto it for now, which the book interprets to mean “take out your sword and hit the riders” I… uhh… After being soundly thumped over the head, the riders drag my stupid unconscious body to the city of Greyguilds. The book keeps asking if I want to try to escape from these riders, even though they seem quite nice and didn’t chop my head off when I started randomly waving my sword around earlier. Eventually we arrive in the city of Greyguilds, a noble city of learning which is full of many old men in robes who carry books around. The book then tells me that I am ‘no match’ for these men, obviously for no other reason than to insult me further. Thanks for that, book!

Things seem to go from bad to worse here. It seems that any time I set foot in a city in a Fighting Fantasy book, really awful things happen to me. The less said about Blacksand, the better. So in Greyguilds, I am taken to see the leader of the city, a lovely woman called Hawkete (presumably her brother is named Hawk), who steals the talisman of death from me and has me thrown out into the gutter! Okay book, you’re just trolling me now.

Hoping to recover the talisman, I worked my way through the streets, pausing only to drop into a blacksmiths store to buy a new sword to replace the one that the riders had pried from my grasp earlier. Then, in the middle of an alleyway, a billowing cloaked figure confronts me and tells me that it is a messenger of death and that it wants to take the talisman from me. I calmly tell it that I don’t have the talisman. It calls me a liar and punches me in the gut until I hit it back. This is an extremely difficult fight, because each time it hits me I lose a skill point, meaning that this quickly comes down to a battle of luck.

I’m eventually able to get away from this weird creature, and keep on through the alleys. Shortly afterwards, I hear a group of thieves planning to rob a jewelery store. I drop into the store, intending to tell the owner about this, but end up getting attacked by the thieves instead. The store owner gives me a giant ruby in gratitude, although at this stage a load of bandages would be more useful.

I leave the store and then step in a bear trap.

Let me rephrase that. I step in a bear trap. In the middle of a city street. Someone had set a bear trap. For what possible reason would someone do this? Just… what was the logic of this trap, again?

While I’m lying in the city streets, a group of robed figures walk over to me. They tell me that they are the cultists of the god of death, and that they want the talisman. I roll my eyes, tell them that I don’t bloody well have the talisman. The first robed figure calls me a liar and punches me. I feel a strange sense of deja vu. But then, thankfully, a group of the town’s guard come marching down the street, and the cultists make a quick retreat.

The guards see me as I lay in the street, clutching my bleeding leg that’s stuck in a bear trap. They laugh. Then they walk away, laughing about it. I hate the guards of Greyguild City.

I sit there on the street, stuck in the bear trap, for some hours. Eventually, a man comes up and offers to help me out of the damn thing. He is a scholar and offers me a place to stay for the night. I tell him about my adventures, although by this point in the adventure I’m half expecting him to probably sell me into slavery or something. But to my shock, he is actually rather helpful and tells me that I should check out the local tavern in order to get some leads as to how to get the talisman back. He then gives me a broach to wear so that he will know I’m not a shape-changer in future… wait, does this kind of thing happen often? Does the city of Greyguild often have hordes of changelings walking the street? Has the Dominion taken over? Are the guards mocking me because they are secretly Jem’Hadar?

The term ‘dive’ doesn’t begin to describe the bar that the scholar sends me to visit, ‘miserable and foul-smelling’ might be a good start. I buy a pint and I’m offered the chance to talk to the surly guys in the corner ‘who look like thieves’. I don’t quite know what a thief in the world of Orb looks like, but they look like it. Possibly because they’re wearing masks, have bags with dollar signs on their sides, and are stealing each other’s wallets constantly. I try to ask them if they would be interested in a job, and they seem vaguely curious and ask me to drop by the Thieves Guild tomorrow morning to make a booking. I’d never have thought thieves were so specific with their paperwork!

I leave the tavern, and I’m promptly told that I can have a point of luck for getting out of the place alive. Urrgh… seriously, where did my life go wrong? Most people feel lucky if they win the lottery, I feel lucky if I go for a pint of beer and don’t get stabbed in the face.

Whatever luck I did have instantly runs out a few minutes later. I’m walking happily down a street, when a robed man crashes through a nearby window and into the middle of the road. People from inside the building start to flee in panic. I have no idea how, but the people inside this particular building seem to have found an Ice Demon, which is now out of control and running amok. The ice demon’s cold aura immediately hurts me. Then its fists do.

And try as I might, the dice simply aren’t with me on this fight. Before long, the ice demon has punched me into little pieces.

Talisman of Death is a very strange book. Not in a bad way, but in a very atmospheric and entertaining way. It’s not going for the slightly surrealist atmosphere you’ll find in some of the earlier Fighting Fantasy books, but it has its own sense of strange comedy and is often very entertaining to read. This was a decent and enjoyable book, I wouldn’t rate it high enough to consider it a must-have, but it is a nice enough read in itself.

Cause of death: Ice Golem Smash!

Caverns of the Snow Witch

The Fighting Fantasy gamebooks by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone were blockbusters of the era. Join us on the ninth adventure, into the frostbitten Caverns of the Snow Witch!

Within the Icefinger Mountains, the Snow Witch is plotting evil things. So I need to go there and put an end to her nefarious schemes, preferably with a stern application of axe to head. Caverns of the Snow Witch is another of the games I never got a chance to play as a child. Not sure why, I’m sure it was just down to there having been other books I chose instead. Hell, I chose Island of the Lizard King over this when I was a kid. We begin by rolling up our statistics, and sadly I end up with a skill of only 7 – looks like this won’t end well).

Our adventure begins with me in the employ of a trader named ‘Big Jim’, whose caravans are travelling into the frozen north in order to barter with the locals. On the travel, we stumble across a small village which seems to have been butchered by a large creature, possibly a yeti. Big Jim offers me a bag of 50 gold to kill the beast. Fifty? Is that all? Come on mate, be a little more generous than that! I’d earned that much in my first hour or trudging through Deathtrap Dungeon! I start to track down the beast, following its tracks until I come to a crevasse in the mountainside. I decide to go around it and stumble across a mammoth. He then tramples all over me, because it has a skill of 10 and is a mammoth and I have a mere skill of 7 and am a squishy adventurer.

Wow. Dead in two pages. That has to be some kind of record. Re-roll, then. This time, I re-roll a 7 on skill…. sod this, re-roll again. I get an 8 for skill…. These dice hate me. After changing dice and rolling once again, I finally settle on the last result, which is a skill of 9. Stamina of 19, luck of 11. Back we go, then. Rather than go around the crevasse, this time I choose to head over a narrow ice bridge, and have to test my luck to avoid falling off to an almost certain death. Once I step off the bridge, I am beset by large white wolves, who I dispatch without too much trouble thanks to a lovely non-sucky skill rating. Right, that’s a better start to our adventure – let’s hope it holds up!

I stumble through the snowfall when a blizzard starts up. Rather than inundate me a series of expansions for their Warcraft MMORPG and loot boxes, this blizzard is more likely to shear the skin from my bones. I opt to dig a makeshift cave to shelter in, and the book instructs me to then eat 2 whole meals to keep warm but not to regain any of the damage I took from the wolves earlier. Oh, how lovely, I see that this is going to be one of those ‘punish the player’ type of books after all. Eventually the blizzard dies down, probably after announcing one too many Diablo mobile games, and we are safe to resume our travels.

It isn’t too long before I manage to stumble across a hut, I barge on in without even knockingand steal the poor hut dweller’s most prized possessions (namely a warhammer and a spear), even going as far as to eat his porridge (but choosing not to sleep in the bed). I guess that have no hesitation to do this, because the book frames me as a ruthless git. I feel even less guilty about this when I follow the hut dweller’s footprints through the snow, only to discover that he has been trailing the same beast as me – only not quite as skilfully, as he is torn apart by the brutal yeti. I draw my sword and attack the yeti – time to avenge your death, porridge man!

This is a bloody close fight, and really nasty. It has a build-up that asks if I have a spear (I do) and if I have frostbite in an arm (I don’t), which gives me the impression that there’s a lot of factors that could result in instant death. No matter how well I try, my stamina plummets to 4, but I’m barely able to scrape through a victory. Can I just say again… fifty gold? For this? I should be getting at least three times that! Fifty gold maybe for the yeti’s hide itself on its own, but for killing one, I should be showered with wealth, adulation and porridge.

Oh yeah, remember that poor man who’s lying bleeding to death in the snow as a result of being a yeti chew-toy? Well, he has a monologue to deliver to me first! Y’know, if this was a modern video game, his death would incorporate a cut-scene. He tells me of the snow witch, who is planning to entrap the world in an eternal winter. Normally I wouldn’t care, because when this kind of things happen, we have four plucky earth kids and a lion who take care of things, but without any handy Jesus-lions around, it’s up to me to save the world again. Thankfully the man has marked the entrance of her crystal caverns, which apparently hold far more treasure than that pathetic 50 gold pieces I’ve been offered so far.

Anyway, having put his death scene on hold for about ten minutes so that he can give a dramatic monologue, the man then dies and I press on in my adventure, and I soon arrive at the entrance to the titular Caverns of the Snow Witch. Which means we’re well and truly into good ol’ dungeon crawler territory. I head left at the T-junction and almost immediately run into an elven guard, but I have the chance to bluff my way past by giving him a friendly nod and walking on casually past him. Huh. Didn’t think that would really work! Given that taking the left corridor has served me well, I decide to keep at it by following the next left turn, but this instead results in my falling into an ice pit and taking some damage.

I remain stuck in the pit for a while, until a pair of goblins decide to pop along and throw me a rope. I climb out of the pit, whereupon the goblins decide to take me prisoner. While it may have been a good idea to sneak into the Witch’s lair under cover as her prisoner, the book makes it quite clear that I will die if I do, so I opt instead to break open a can of kung-fu on the gobbos. After punching them repeatedly, I head back down the tunnel, presumably being quite careful to step over the ice pit this time.

The cave opens up into a puzzle room. There are two small pools in the room – one contains a spear, the other contains a sword. A frozen orc lays in the room, pointing at the sword. I find a poem carved on the wall telling me to choose one of them, “Sword or spear, strength or fear, how will you choose, win or lose.” Right, we obviously need to pick one of these – the orc could either by pointing towards the sword as if to say “I should have chosen that, but I did not and now I’m dead” or “That sword has done this to me, so do not choose it” but there’s no indication as to which is which. The only real clue I have is that ‘spear’ kinda sounds like ‘fear’… and because the Green Lantern is chosen for his ability to overcome great fear, I choose to pull the spear from the pool. Immediately my mind is assailed by terrifying images and horrific scenes, which cause me to lose a skill point. Remind me never to base my decisions on comic book characters again.

I instead give up and search through the orc’s backpack, where I find a stuffed rat (anyone got any ideas why the orc has this in the first place) and some mouldy bread. The book asks if I want to eat mouldy bread… I can’t think of any reason that I should do something like this, so for a laugh I decide to nom on some mouldy bread. As I do so, the bread crumbles to reveal an iron key! I abandon this pointless and silly puzzle and head down the corridor, discovering a minstrel who is playing his harp and mourning that none of the foolish monsters in this dungeon appreciate his music. Uhhh what.

I leave this strange and silly man, and find my way into a large cavern which seems to double as a temple. There’s a large number of the Snow Witch’s minions bowing to her statue in worship, and I decide that the most convenient way through is to join them. My luck seems to run out at this point, because they immediately notice I’m not singing, and start to gang up on me. I can’t fight them all off, so they drag me towards the centre of the temple and sic an ice demon on me. Even though it has ice breath, I’m able to crush it without too much difficulty and win the fear of the worshippers, who are too terrified to stand in my way. Why an ice demon is less powerful than a yeti, I don’t know. Nevertheless, onwards!

Sticking with my ‘keep going left’ plan, I eventually find a dwarf who has fallen down a pit. I help him out of it, and he gives me a slingshot with a few shots, and the words “beware the white rat”, for whatever good that will do. I don’t know if this will do any good, but it does feel nice to help someone out. I next arrive in a room in which I’m confronted by the Snow Witch’s servant, an old mage with a magic prism who creates two illusions of himself and attacks me. Trusting in my ‘choose left’ strategy, I attack the left mage, only to find out it’s an illusion. I then do the sensible thing that I should have done in the first place, and slash all three with one swing of my sword, and shatter the mage’s magic prism. Somehow, this is more entertaining than the very silly evil wizard in the second Conan the Barbarian movie.

From the prism, a genie emerges and promises that he will repay me for freeing him at some point in the future before vanishing. It would actually be kinda helpful if the genie would restore my stamina now, but… nope, he’s gone. Fine, fine. From that chamber, I head to the left (of course) through a tunnel, which is immediately sealed shut behind me with a portcullis. I manage to find a locked door, so I’m rather glad to have that iron key from before, as otherwise I’d be trapped forever. I feel that I’m getting quite close to the end of the adventure, because my next challenge is one of the Snow Witch’s personal guards, a crystal warrior. Indestructible unless I have the warhammer that I took from the trapper’s hut earlier… oh, how lucky I have that! Yeah, so lucky… Sadly, I’m not quite so lucky in the actual combat, as the Witch’s personal guards are far beyond my own combat abilities, and it proceeds to rip me into pieces with its crystal talons.

Slight problem here… When you meet the Crystal Warrior the player is asked if they possess a warhammer. If they do, they must proceed to battle the creature. If they don’t, they are sent to another section and asked whether they have a Genie friend who can help them to avoid the fight, which means avoiding any loss of time or stamina. So bringing the warhammer along is actually a penalty.

Overall this is a fair but very challenging book. I love the woodcut-style artwork, and although the adventure is fairly linear, you feel that it covers a lot and takes you on quite an enjoyable ride. The sequence with the yeti hunt serves as a nice ‘prologue’ for the main dungeon crawl, giving it all a nice framing for the adventure.

The difficulty of the combat is fairly steep though, and even though it’s fair in general if you make the ‘right’ choices, making the ‘wrong’ choice can be very harshly met at times, like when I ran into that happy charming mammoth. I get the impression that this is a book that demands a very high skill rating to be able to survive, though, but it is overall a fairly enjoyable story.

Cause of death: Killed by a crystal warrior, but it’s really the genie’s fault for abandoning me.

Scorpion Swamp

The Fighting Fantasy gamebooks by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone were blockbusters of the era. Join us on the eighth adventure, into the sinister Scorpion Swamp!

Oh boy. I thought this would work out better than it did.

Scorpion Swamp was a book that I remember being very easy. But I was a kid at the time, and cheated on these books a lot. Either way, I thought this would still be pretty easy. I was wrong! WRONG, I say!

First, a little on the history of this book. It was written (along with Demons of the Deep and Robot Commando) by Steve Jackson – the American Steve Jackson, not the British one. I’ll call him Steve 2, just to avoid confusion. Steve 2’s games tend to have a strong sense of comedy, as can be seen in the multi-award winning Munchkin card game.

Anyway, this is a very different type of Fighting Fantasy book. The main aim is to make a map of the Scorpion Swamp. That means you, the player, has to map the thing. Your actual reason for going into the swamp is determined by which quest you want to take – and you have a choice of three quests. This will make more sense as we go on, so let’s get to it.

I began the game being given a magic ring by an old lady. The ring in question would ensure I could navigate through the swamp, working kinda like a compass. I’m pretty sure that the old lady had this planned in advance. Anyway, the book itself starts your choices in the local tavern, where you are advised by the local villager that if you are to go into the swamp, it’d be best to have a good reason, so maybe you should have a quest. How meta.

Anyway, I jump at the chance to have a quest. He tells me of three wizards who live in the village. Nicey Goodiepants, who serves the forces of good. Evilnasty McBabyeater, who serves the forces of evil. And serving the neutral space between, we have Poomchukker. The thing is, the name ‘Poomchukker’ is just terrifying. Definitely the name of sheer evil. If Sauron had chanced his name to Poomchukker, not a single army would have stood against him. I’m not even joking, Poomchukker brings to mind the idea of a man who lives in a plant pot the size of a double-story house, who has 37 cats and uses his phenomenal magic powers to make a wide variety of cheese. And if that just seems whimsical and merry to you, you obviously don’t know the ways of evil wizards, my friend.

Anyway, I don’t trust him, so, I chose to serve Evilnasty McBabyeater. He seems a trustworthy type.

Off I ran to his castle, which was swarming with bats and other assorted nasties. I like to imagine that his chamber was full of dark tapestries and dramatic lighting. Either way, I pledged myself to his undying loyalty, and offered to show him my magic ring. He then started to cast a spell, and – in self defense, I promise – I decided to kill him.

Anyway, I decided to make the most of this time to steal everything that Evilnasty had in his castle. Despite the book telling me that awful, powerful evil was approaching, I decided that I could surely take care of whatever it was – after all, the most evil wizard in the village didn’t stand much of a chance. So imagine my surprise when, midway through nicking Mr McBabyeater’s silver candlesticks, who else turns up but SATAN HIMSELF. He then promptly says that he has been waiting to claim Evilnasty’s soul for a while, and to reward me for helping send the foul wizard into the lord of darkness’ waiting talons, he rewards me by blowing up the entire castle with me inside. I was SO happy!

Realizing that this would probably be the shortest playthough in the history of the internet, I decided to play the game a second time. This time, I opted to play a servant of good. Sadly, as you can no doubt see on my photo, my skill roll was pathetic. Utterly awful. I decided that I would be best off trying to avoid combat as much as possible, to make sure I didn’t accidentally stab myself in the knee.

This time, when a villager in the tavern asked me if I wished to aid the good magician, I said “Yes, I would love to. I will serve only the forces of good.” He then turned into an angel and flew away. No doubt marveling at whatever the tavern’s landlord put in the ale, I made my way to the good wizard, who lived in a little farm. I’m not entirely convinced he wasn’t just a farmer.

Still, the wizard farmer asked me to go into the swamp and find him a magical plant. The plant, it seems, has no uses whatsoever to the forces of evil – so rather than just ignore it, they have been trying to hunt down and destroy every surviving plant. Maybe the forces of evil have too much time on their hands. “Find and crush every single plant that is of no use to us, my minions!” Yeah, I know, I’m padding this play-through out. This is because once I get into the swamp, I do not last long.

I head on into the swamp, and from the very first clearing, I head east. So far, so good. In the second clearing I come to, I find myself running away from a bear. I decide to flee to the north.

In this clearing, I meet the master of all spiders. I immediately sense that he is utterly evil, and this time I decide to actually listen to the book when it tells me this. Sadly, lacking the ability to swing a sword without chopping my own arms off, I make the tragic decision of talking to the master of spiders, to try to convince him that I am no threat. While I am trying to explain this, spiders jump up and eat me. Gee, thanks, master of spiders! You’re a real pal!

While writing this, I have checked some details on the book. It contains 20 instant-death sections, which… yeah, that’s a lot. It’s no surprise I died quite as often as I did. Also, it seems that Poomchukker is not a wizard at all. Either way, I did not do too well with this book at all. I chose it because I was hoping I’d get at least one that I could finish, but instead all I wound up doing is getting eaten by spiders and exploded by the devil.

It’s still an enjoyable enough book for the way it’s written, the occasional moments of comedy and the sense of breaking with formula. But I don’t remember it being quite so difficult. I think my next book will need to be one of the easier ones. Hm, my copy of House of Hell should be arriving soon, that should do the trick…

Cause of death: Spider nibbles.