Gamebook – Page 5 – Cybe's Website

Deathmoor

The Fighting Fantasy gamebooks by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone were blockbusters of the era. Who is up for a trek in the moors? Shame it’s the DEATHMOOR!

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!

Before continuing, please be aware that all of this content is made possible by the goodwill and support of my backers on Patreon. If you enjoy the work on this site, please consider supporting the creation of more content like this by clicking the button.

“The dagger held at your throat cuts deep. Your adventure ends here.” That’s section 400 in this adventure. I read ahead. Was just curious, you see. Something tells me that this book is going to be a tricky one, and not in a good way.

Physically, Deathmoor feels to have less pages than most Fighting Fantasy books. The system is basic, without any of the extra stats to keep track of. Having hit shelves right after Legend of Zagor, I get the feeling that this one may have been overshadowed by that. I don’t even think I seen this one in the shops.

The princess of some back-water kingdom in the arse-end of nowhere has been kidnapped by a group of nasty gits, who want all the gold in the kingdom for her return. But the quest isn’t given to the eponymous YOU this time, it’s been given to your rival adventurer, Fang-zen of Jitar! Oh well, he got the contract first. I’ll just sit back and wait for the next job to come in… oh no, wait, that would result in a very short adventure. Guess I’d better give chase and rescue the princess before he does, then.

I manage to roll up pretty much the most average stats possible for my stamina, skill and luck, and head off in pursuit of Fang-zen. And I stumble off into the wilderness, no idea where to go to find the kidnappers, and die in a gutter somewhere.

Re-roll character.

So now, rather than wandering off with no clear idea what to do or where to go (which is pretty much how most Fighting Fantasy books start until I stumble upon a tarot card reader or a sage who tells me what magic weapons I need to find), I instead hit the local pub. It’s there that I find Fang-zen, having a few drinks with some friends. What an odd coincidence. Almost as if the meeting was orchestrated by some author of some sort…

Anyway, I insult Fang for a bit and challenge him to that game in which people stab their fingers with knives, you know the game. I manage to not stab myself too badly, and Fang loses, handing over six gold coins and, on my insistence, the contract. It’s funny, I never really imagined that being a brave and heroic adventurer involved so much paperwork!

I wasted the rest of the night going to another pub and buying some ‘lucky’ heather from an old hag, which was a con as it was not remotely lucky. I had a random fight later that night with two fish-people who had a grudge against me due to some previous adventure, and the next morning I stopped in at the local market to buy some rope. Rope is always useful. Having wasted enough time, I read the details on the contract, and went off to the arranged meeting point with the kidnappers.

When I meet up with the kidnapper’s ogre colleague, he lets slip that he is working for Archanos. Yes friends, that is none other than the dread Archanos the Life-Stealer. Who, in case you didn’t know, is an evil dastardly fiend who is responsible for acquiring trade routes across the land, buying up gold mines, and arranging for the trade federation to blockage the planet of Nabboo so that the senate will pass a vote of no-confidence in Chancellor Velorum and allow Palpatine to seize control.

Actually, no, the last one of those is too boring and stupid for this book. But either way, Archanos’ plot to seize control of the gold trade by kidnapping the princess just comes across as being a bit too bureaucratic for a super-villain. Still, the ogre tells me to wait here for two days and he’ll come back with the princess. So naturally I follow him back to his lair instead. Across a region of the land known as the DEATHMOOR!!!

And no sooner have I set foot into the moors, than Fang-zen shows up and lobs a spear at me. I can’t say that I’m surprised at this, and frankly it’s quite nice to have this plot thread tied up. Having got quite tired of his silly antics, I beat him over the head my sword for a while, and loot the body. While I steal all the gold and silly sandals that he’s got, I notice that the ogre I’ve been tracking has escaped. I’m nowhere near skilled enough to keep tracking him, so I head to a small village outpost that’s aptly named Outpost.

The villagers there are slightly more friendly than the villagers at Khare, because they don’t shoot me with laser eye-beams or try to drown me with poo. But they do refuse to give me anywhere to stay for the night, all but one of them, who demands both gold and a free meal before he’ll even let me crash on his sofa for the night. He does mention that he doesn’t trust outsiders because a little old lady in a house nearby was murdered by a giant the night before… wait, that must be the ogre!

I hurry to the scene of the crime to investigate, only to find no clues whatsoever. And when I get back to the house, the man’s locked me out. Feeling very annoyed with the lack of hospitality in the village of Outpost, I settle down to camp for the night. During which I am attacked by a wolf. I cleave its head off, and grumble in annoyance as I promise myself that, one day, I will burn this village to the ground for their display of ill manners.I still have no idea why the ogre killed the old lady. Maybe he was hungry.

We trudge along through the moors until we get to a river, where we are attacked by two Blackhearts – creatures of mixed orc and dark elf heritage. Which makes me wonder how that pairing came about. Did an orc bonk a dark elf at some point? Is that a regular thing? Are they both physically compatible? Which one carries the child? Wouldn’t an orc be a little, erm, over-sized for an elf lady? And… y’know, I don’t know why I’m even thinking about this. I kill them both.

The whatever-they-are have a special amulet which signifies that they’re loyal members of Arch-thingie’s army of goons, and a map leading to their camp. The book then actually asks if I want to go to their camp, which seems like total suicide to me. So I do it. Sadly it seems that these two chaps I’ve killed were the camp’s only inhabitants, so after searching the place until I find bits of broken stones and rotten food (joy of joys), I decide to head south along the river.

I’m attacked by an acid-spitting snake, which I kill, and proceed to cross the river. Mid-way across I’m attacked by yet another monster, this time it’s a Granochin. The book doesn’t tell me much about what this thing actually is, so I have to work off the artwork, which indicates that it’s a kind of angry fish-thing with clawed hands or something, I dunno. By the time I get to the other side of the river, I notice that my stamina’s rather low and chow down on some provisions.

After camping up for the night, I head into a valley which seems to be littered with skeletons. They promptly come to life and try to attack me, causing me to flee into a nearby ruined farm house. The book tells me to roll dice to see if I can get into the house, but neglects to tell me how many dice I need to roll (yay for the editing!), so I’m going to just assume I make it to the house nice and safe.

Unfortunately, some stupid bugger built their house right on top of a Tantaflex, which is a giant shoggoth-type monster who has caused the skeletons in the area to come back from the dead. After I carve my way through four of the skeletons, the shoggoth awakens and gnaws on my lower intestine for a while. The book outright says ‘in the unlikely event that you survive’. But I do survive. Barely. I survive with one stamina point.

I promptly die while attempting to climb up the side of the ravine in order to get out of the valley, by losing one stamina point due to minor scratches and bruises from loose grit and pebbles. I’m the greatest hero in the known universe.

If Deathmoor was a cake, it would be low-fat lemon cake. It’s bland, but not criminally so. If you had the chance, you’d go for something a bit more tasty.

Cause of death: Pebble-dashed! Oh wait no, that sounds wrong…

Legend of Zagor

The Fighting Fantasy gamebooks by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone were blockbusters of the era. It is time, I think, to confront the warlock one last time and end the LEGEND OF ZAGOR!

Here’s an interesting question. Which was designed first – the Legend of Zagor book, or the board game?

You see, I genuinely can’t tell. I’ve spoke about the board game before, but now I’m getting my teeth into the book. This book always stuck out as different in the later stages of the Fighting Fantasy series, and I think a lot of it comes down to being vaguely cross-platform. I suspect that at this stage in development, it was already decided to create a board game, so the decision was made to attempt to replicate it as a book. But that’s just a guess, I’ve no evidence to support it.

But I can explain why I think that. You see, this book features four selectable characters. You’ve got Anvar the Barbarian, Braxus the Warrior, Stubble the Dwarf and Salazar the Wizard. The only real difference between them is their advantages, disadvantages, and how many magic points they each have – their skill and stamina are determined normally, but with very slight differences between the four. The advantages tend towards bonuses towards rolls, and the disadvantages tend to be which weapons or armour they can use. Magic points can be spent to cast spells, and it’s pretty self evident which characters will have more or less of those.

The book’s layout is not as complicated as some others released at this point in the franchise. You have a castle to explore, and the aim is to find special treasure chests. When you open each of these chests, you have a chance of recovering a pendant or a dagger, which are used to defeat the powerful boss monsters. The book is completely open and upfront about this. Which is one of the reasons why I suspect it was written with the board game in mind.

I want to pick the most balanced character for the first playthrough, so we go with Braxus the Warrior, who has no real disadvantages and a handful of magic points to spend. The introduction into the adventure is very well written, binding elements from the Casket of Souls and so on into a story that ultimately comes down to this – Zagor is back, and you need to go to Castle Argent to kill him again. I’ve got mixed feelings about this, because it does have the slight downside of making the otherwise excellent Return To Firetop Mountain rather anticlimactic. I have a soft spot for Return, remember.

Anyway, after hitting the local market to stock up on a few odds and ends, I catch a boat out to the dread castle. Given that this is a Fighting Fantasy adventure and I’m on a boat, it’s only a matter of time before disaster strikes. Some creepy fog descends, and I’m asked if I want to spend a luck point to get through the journey safely. I decide to play it risky, and don’t spend it. In return, a giant and very powerful dragon flies down and beats the ever-living snot out of me for a while.

After (eventually) killing the thing and nursing my wounds, I start to wonder if all the monsters are going to be that over-powered. It seems that my worry spreads to the crew of the ship, because they refuse to even go to shore with me, instead just dumping me in a small raft and telling me to row to the castle instead. I get to the island, and proceed to explore some of the ruins around the place. Eventually we manage to find a well, which is enchanted and gives me some advice in exchange for a gold coin.

Arriving at the gates to Castle Argent, I’m asked if I want to use an ‘open’ spell to get through the door. I opt to save my magic, and push my way through the door, stepping over a trip-wire, and hurrying into one of the nearby doorways. I am then very nearly caught in a net trap by a group of goblins, who I proceed to smack over the head without much difficulty, and find a longbow in the debris of the hallway for my trouble. It’s about this point in the adventure that I realise that I’m going to be testing my skill and luck a LOT!

I stumble around the castle for a while and eventually find my way into the guest bedroom. I start to dig through the mattress and find a magic ring, and an ‘open’ spell scroll. As I leave, I notice a hidden door in the corner of the room. I’ve always been a sucker for checking these out, so I head down the tunnel, managing to trip and smack my head on the floor as I do so. Eventually I get to the other end of the tunnel, which holds a door that has some weird runes marked on it. I decide to cast the ‘open’ spell, and that is precisely what sets the runes off, causing them to explode.

Grumbling angrily, I stumble into the room to find a very angry dark elf, who was hiding here. He tells me to get out, but I want to talk. Things don’t go too well as we discuss and debate our mutual positions, and he ends up falling on my sword several times. I steal his magic ring and a few gold pieces and run for it.

I stumble around for a while now, having no real idea where I’m going. I should probably map this place out. In fact, the entire area seems to be very apt for making a good map. Perhaps that’s the intention. Anyway, I eventually find my way into the feast hall, where I am beset by a swarm of rats. I’m guessing that these are not the snuggly, affectionate type of pet rats. Seriously, they’re the cutest things in the entire cosmos.

Before long I’ve worked by way into another corridor, and found my way to a wizard’s sanctum. I can tell it’s a wizard’s sanctum because the book tells me it is one after I try to smash down the door and get hit with a fireball for my trouble. I don’t think I’m doing too well at this book. I cast an open spell, eventually, and am rewarded with a rather nice haul of loot, which also contains my first silver dagger of the adventure. Not too bad all in all.

I manage to find my way into the castle’s jail, which is without a doubt one of the worst ideas I’ve ever had. I stumble my way into the jailor’s room, where I am attacked by a gigantic golem. My stamina is now seriously flagging after this combat, so I do my best to recover as much of it as possible while I search the room and find the jailor’s keys. Then I meet Mungus. Mungus is a gigantic, and very powerful, boss type monster. An ogre-like prisoner with a massive hammer and the ability to quickly turn my head into a smear in the floor.

Somehow I survive the battle, but my stamina is not going to be able to get up to its initial level any time soon again. I don’t even get one of those special treasure chests for my trouble! Well, I don’t get one from Mungus. I do get one elsewhere in the jail. It was guarded by a giant dragon. Which was locked in one of the cells. For an unknown reason. Seriously, who locks a dragon in a jail cell? Well, Zagor, I guess. Maybe he was angry with it. I don’t know. Either way, the thing is a bloody titan to destroy, and in return I get another silver dagger, some gold, and a magic wand that can only be used by the wizard character.

So far, a LOT in this adventure is only useable by the wizard character….

I trudge back upstairs and reap my way through a bunch of zombies and skeletons, which are no real match for me compared to the dragon. Soon, I find my way into the upper area of the castle, which is such an achievement that I’m given a boost to my scores. Woo, my stamina is back up to double figures again!

In the upper floor of the castle, I find my way into a room which contains a set of dwarven armour, useless to me. There is an old and ruined art gallery, which I investigate. I find a painting of an old wizard, Zagor himself, who threatens me and causes me to lose luck points. Oh, that wacky wizard, playing his silly painting games. I wonder if they’re paint by numbers…

I work my way to an especially large and important hallway, which contains several coloured doors. I head into the green one, and I’m beset by a giant plant elemental. After doing a little bit of pruning, I stumble my way into a ladies make-up room, from which I steal a bunch of cosmetics. The book claims that I’m doing this so that I have a disguise I can use to fool the monsters in the castle, but I’m not so convinced. Hey Braxus, it’s cool man, you can wear the makeup if you like, I won’t judge.

I manage to find the hall of heroes, a ruined gallery of the greatest warriors in the known universe. I’m saddened not to see any monuments to my own awesomeness here, given how many of these adventures I’ve been on. I do find a small secret doorway, which a knight called Sir Davian is using to barricade himself in and hide from the orcs. Because Braxus is a massive egotistical git, he then insults Sir Davian until the poor man hands over his magic armour.

Sir Davian also tells me that an old friend of his used to possess a magic sword that could do all the fighting for him, floating through the air and dispatching enemies while his friend would do more important matters. I like this idea, because it would let me outsource all my fighting work to the sword. I head off to follow the knight’s directions to find the sword, but I evidently get quite lost, and stumble into the barracks, where I encounter a very large and very angry statue that beats me around the head with a large club.

And so my adventure ends there, on the receiving end of a very large club.

I really don’t know what to make of this book. The writing is good in terms of description and atmosphere, and the artwork is very appealing. It has all of the dungeon crawl elements of classic FF. But on the other hand, the general layout and way you navigate around the dungeon is overly complicated, as are the rules and over-use of dice systems. You test skills and luck more than any other rolls in this adventure, except perhaps for the combat, which is often just far too brutal and does not scale well as the adventure progresses.

I really end up thinking that this book was attempting to closely emulate the board game and present that in a book style, and that comes across to its detriment. This had some real potential, but I think it was too ambitious in trying to do something that didn’t fit with what the general context of the adventure gamebook formula. I’d give it points for trying, but not for execution.

Cause of death: Went clubbing a bit too hard…

Spellbreaker

The Fighting Fantasy gamebooks by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone were blockbusters of the era. Fancy breaking a few spells? I thought you might, ya old SPELLBREAKER you!

Ah, Spellbreaker. The memories I have of this book. Not very strong memories, I admit, because it was the memory of being in a bookshop and choosing Revenge of the Vampire instead. If I’d have known how much I’d dislike Revenge of the Vampire, I’d have definitely gone for Spellbreaker instead.

This is another of Jonathan Green’s works, and technically the first of his to be on the Fighting Fantasy list. Given the direction he’d take his later works like Night of the Necromancer, I was surprised to see that at first glance this book seems almost ‘normal’. The only thing system-wise that’s different about it seems to be that it includes a faith score, which works just like faith scores always work in Fighting Fantasy.

The moment you start this adventure, you’re thrown into the middle of a storm. You’re chased by demons through the fields, until you get to an abbey and seek shelter for the night. While there, you witness a stranger steal an ancient book. Right off the bat, you’re thrown into a fairly tricky battle with a demon that the thief has summoned. The demon itself wasn’t too challenging, as my skill and stamina rolls were fairly decent this weekend.

After dispatching the demon, the monks of the abbey give you an exposition dump, explaining that the book that the thief stole contains a spell that can unlock a big scary box. And that inside this box is the Doctor, who will emerge and silence will fall. Or it may just be a big scary monster that will slay the universe, whatever. And it’s all my fault, because I let the stranger into the abbey with me. I’ll give it this, it does involve you into the story very nicely.

That’s the good side to this introduction. The bad side is that it does feel quite rushed, spread over only two paragraphs and a background segment, meaning that the reader has to get through massive walls of text to become involved in the story. If this had all been put over several more segments, with choices to be made, you’d have wound up feeling so much more involved in the story.

Having spent most of the following morning studying up on demons in the abbey’s library, I begin my journey to track down the book. Along the way, the wealthy Lady Attana hires me to guard her as she travels to a small city which is also en route, and although I’ve little interest in doing so I decide to help protect her anyway. After her traveling party is attacked by a couple of brigands, she rewards me by giving me the key to her treasure box… which was stolen by the brigands. So if I’m able to ever recover this box, I can actually get my reward.

I decide to ditch the rich woman at the nearby town, and go my own way. It’s not a Fighting Fantasy book without a visit to a seedy old tavern, so I spend the night in one, where I am confronted with one of the most horrifying and evil creatures ever to walk the face of the earth. A clown. Clowns scare the crap out of me, they really do, and this tavern has one prancing around bothering people for money in exchange for songs and jokes. I sheepishly hand over a gold in exchange for a song, hoping that this will be the least dangerous option, and he sings a song and leaves me alone.

The next morning I am still shaken from my horrible experience the night before, so I head to the local healing temple. I get a flask of special blessed healing water, but while I am at the temple an old beggar also asks me for money. Having learned from the night before (the clown gave me nothing special in exchange for the gold, except for the song), I ignore the man. In his rage, he casts the vicious and unforgiving Beggar’s Curse upon me! I don’t know quite what the curse will involve as the story progresses, because I play these books blindly and without checking them out ahead of time, so maybe we’ll see later. Maybe not.

I soon come across another beggar, only this time he is laying face-down in the street and evidently dying from the plague. I feel a bit guilty about earlier, even though the beggar who cursed me was a different chap entirely, so I give this plague-beggar a nice meal. In exchange he tells me that he has come here from another city, which was invaded by rats following visit from a mysterious stranger some days ago. Hmm, could this stranger be related to the book thief, maybe?

I spend the remainder of my wage from Lady Attana on going to see a puppet show! Remember what I said about clowns? Well, puppets scare the crap out of me as well! And puppets of clowns are even scarier, but there’s none of those in this show. I sit down and watch it, and I assume it’s very much like Les Mis. Following it, I buy one of the puppets, so that I have my own little piece of disturbing nightmare fuel to carry around with me forever (or at least, until it crawls out of my backpack and slits my throat as I sleep).

The mysterious rat-bringer I mentioned? The one who the plague-beggar warned me about? Turns out that he was waiting for me in the local alleyway, and wasn’t related to the book thief at all. He’s a sinister piper, probably on holiday from his usual home of Hamlin. Either way, he decides that he doesn’t like me all that much, because when he’s unable to put the jedi mind trick on me with his flute, he then decides to fire rats at me. Actually throw them at me full-force. I’ll let that image simmer in your mind for a moment.

It’s all a rather strange encounter, but I’m able to kill the piper without too much trouble. The city guards are so thrilled with my help in saving them from this horrific rat plague, that they accuse me or murder and chase me out of town.

I travel through the countryside for the rest of the day, and as the sun starts to set I manage to find a small hobbit-hole type of house in the ground. An old mole-lady, Talpas, bids me welcome and offers to let me stay there for the night.

She offers to read my fortune, using runes this time rather than tarot cards. But this is a Fighting Fantasy book, so she still manages to find that my future will contain evil and death and so on! I’m… unsurprised. The usual tarot card reading in a Fighting Fantasy game means that your cards are The Tower, Death, Judgement, Death again, Burning Pits of Fiery Pain, Pointy Swords In The Chest, Death, The Angry Bartender, Death, and Death again.

The next morning I continue my journey, and come to the plague-beggar’s village. I head around it, not wanting to risk catching deathly lurgy or the dreaded man-flu. Then I’m attacked by a pack of wolves. Then I wander into a forest and get attacked by a gang of bandits. So in short, this leg of my journey is best recalled as containing a lot of pain, sharp teeth and pointy sticks.

The bandits swear that their leader, a villainous figure known as The Mask, will have revenge on me for beating up his crew, but I’m not afraid of early Jim Carey films, and decide to ignore the threat of his vengeance and push on in my quest to recover the book. Next stop is the village of Fenford, where I find a nice old priest in a local inn. He tells me that if the Evil McBaddieMonster has already been released, I can seal it back into the pandorica with an item/spell/thing that can be found in a tomb not far from here. Then I make the mistake of speaking to a witch-hunter, who notices a small amulet that I’d stolen from the piper’s corpse the previous day, which causes him to scream “Burn the witch!” at me. A bar-room brawl erupts and I’m forced to flee the city. Again. This seems to happen to me every Friday night.

Following the priest’s advice, I head right into the nearby swamp, and am promptly attacked by a big vicious swamp-crawling beastie that manages to beat half of my stamina points off before I even manage to lay a hit on it. The swamp then seems to turn into a tangle of pathways and turns, which I stagger around blindly until I come across a little floating will-o-the-wisp type of critter called a Fetch. It attacks me too, and each time I hit it with my sword, I get electrocuted.

Barely alive and smelling slightly of barbeque, I eventually find my way to the hut of a swamp-man called Sam Boggart, who finally seems friendly. He offers to make me some potions, but I don’t have enough herbs for him to make anything useful. That, and I’m too busy bleeding all over his hut’s carpet. He offers to take me to the tomb, which is located in the heart of the swamp. “Can’t you help me tie my arm back on?” I ask him.

Soon enough, I get to the tomb, which is on a small island in the middle of the swamp. If I was hoping to find an item, I have no luck. Aside from the sarcophagus, the tomb is utterly empty. In desperation I try lighting a few candles and speaking to the spirit of the dead mage, but my faith score is just too low for this to work, and I’m forced to leave the tomb empty-handed.

I emerge from the swamp, without any special item or spell to help me on my way and no doubt still bleeding profusely. I get to the road-side, and hear the pounding of horse-hooves in the distance. A friendly traveler rides up, and offers me a lift to the nearby town. I thank him so much, because there’s a good chance I’ll be able to see a doctor and get my lungs put back in. I hop onto the horse, which promptly takes off into the sky. I turn to the rider, who has turned into Dan Aykroyd I guess because he then asks me if I want to see something really scary. Y’know, we do need a new Twilight Zone movie, really.

The rider was a horrible Wight monster, and because I didn’t have a magic holy weapon, I’m forced to try to run away. Which is kinda difficult to do when you’re about fifty foot up in the air. I think you can guess how this one turned out.

So yeah, Spellbreaker. Aside from the pacing at the start, it’s a pretty solid adventure with a lot of interesting encounters, like most of Jonathan Green’s books. There’s a lot of good creepy moments, which you know that I love, and the artwork is crisp and detailed (although I found myself wishing it was Martin McKenna as I think he’d have really captured the darker elements of the setting. I never did get to find out what the Beggar’s Curse was, though. Please do let me know.

Cause of death: Falling through the air, swoosh…

Night Dragon

The Fighting Fantasy gamebooks by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone were blockbusters of the era. Let’s go and play with the NIGHT DRAGON!

My total pageviews for this site last month was lower than several of the proceeding months, which is to be expected, but has still left me thinking that I’m not keeping my readers as happy as I should. I keep telling myself ‘be more funny’. As a result, today’s playthrough will end each paragraph with the words ‘pie in the face’.

So, Night Dragon. This is the 52nd book of the original Fighting Fantasy series, and you can tell that because it loads up several pointless little scores that it wants you to keep track of, like honour, nemesis (how aware of you the enemies are) and time. I don’t think the book’s actually going to need all three of these, they just strike me as extra busywork. Anyway, I roll up stats and am told that a dark elf has asked to meet me in the city of Blacksand (which as any Fighting Fantasy reader will remember, is like Ankh-Morpork but without the friendliness). He then tells me that there’s an ancient dragon who’s going to wake up and eat the planet or something, and a bunch of the other less-evil dragons are having a meeting to decide how to stop it. He asks me to go and save the world from this ancient, evil Night Dragon before it slays us all with a pie in the face.

So before I can say to the dark elf “Wouldn’t it be more useful for you to go and make a king aware of this so that he can raise an army or something”, I’m off on a quest to save the world again. I wouldn’t worry too much. If ‘World of Warcraft: Cataclysm’ has taught me anything, it’s that evil world-eating dragons can be easily handled by a time-travelling orc and a group of ten random strangers. The dark elf has given me enough gold to catch a nearby ship off to the north, so before long I’m sailing away off to the chilly north. Almost immediately, we are attacked by a large eel-type creature called a Greel, who kicks my ass with a pie in the face.

No, really, it kicks my ass. This beastie is ridiculously strong for so early in the game. After we’re able to overcome it, it isn’t too long before I see a body frozen in the ice out in the sea. I sail out to check and find that it has a serpent tattoo on its hand. The book tells me that this is important, maybe it will be, maybe not. Returning to the ship, I’m given a bowl of hot stewed Greel and we dock in a nearby town. I head to the local tavern, where I’m to meet one of the dark elf’s friends. But when I get there, I find that the elf in question has been murdered and a bunch of dark robed assassins are waiting to stab me with a pie in the face.

I’m… going to stop doing that pie in the face thing now. It’s stupid. And I’m confused. Did a giant rampaging ancient dragon from before the dawn of time hire some assassins? Anyway, the body has a plaque on him with the word ‘Endimion’, so I flee the room and head out into the town, aiming to find out what this name could mean.

Two days later, and I’ve not been able to find anyone called Endimion. But I am able to see a robed figure darting into the back of a shop. Given that I can’t resist following robed figures, I sneak on in and listen as he chats with a few of his friends, discussing a ship that’s due to dock soon. Heading down to the docks, I find that it’s a ship, and not a person, called Endimion. It’s a rather tentative connection, I know, but it’s good enough.

This wildly tentative series of detective hooks does pay off, because we’re able to find another dark elf who’s arrived with the ship, and… the split second I meet him, he’s assassinated by a robed goon. The elf babbles about Frost Giants and tells me to go to a pass far in the north-west. And here’s where I start to hate the book.

I try to leave the town, but the book tells me that I need a pass in order to leave. Rather than just asking me if I have the pass, it instead tells me that I need to know the NAME of the pass, and that I need to convert the name of the pass to numbers in order to move to the next paragraph. I don’t know the name of the pass, so the book sends me back to the tavern.

And I mean ‘back’ as in ‘back in time’, because I wind up entering the tavern to find that the dark elf I was to meet has just been murdered by the assassins – again. Urrgh. Yeah, the book’s sent me off into one of those horrible loops where the paragraphs point to each other, round and round and round. I kill the assassins and escape the tavern, I track the Endimion to the docks, I get told to go to the north-west to play with the Frost Giants, I’m asked for the name of the pass, I’m sent back to the tavern, where I fight the assassins again… I think you can see where we’re going with this.

So there you go, I’m stuck in a time warp. Death by throwing the book across the room in annoyance, I’m afraid. Seriously, it could all have been resolved by just pointing the reader to the paragraph after you leave the tavern murder scene, but NOPE. To be honest, I feel sorry for the poor dark elf contact, being doomed to be murdered by robed assassins over and over and over again, for all of time.

That’s another thing about books at this point in the series, the editors just didn’t give a rat’s arse…. Now I do admit, I could rather simply keep playing over and over and over until I stumble across the name for this pass that I’m supposed to find. But at this point, why should I? If the book itself doesn’t care, then why should I?

Nevertheless, I do care. So, I decide to just cheat. Seems that I did indeed entirely miss the pass, and I quickly read through the rest of the adventure without it. The challenge on this really seems to ramp up a lot.

By the end of the adventure, you’re fighting the titular night dragon who is by far one of the toughest monsters I’ve ever seen in a Fighting Fantasy book (with the possible exception of Legend of Zagor). Even though you do start the game with a rather slight skills boost, it’d still be a massively challenging fight. And then, to top it all off, the dragon’s head does weird things… Which, let’s face it, all dragon’s heads should do weird things.

Aside from the rather massive editing gaff that seems to have caught me, this is a damn challenging book which feels suitably epic. I really would have liked to have seen it fixed up a bit before being released, because then it would have been a real gem. It’s nowhere near as broken as Revenge of the Vampire, and from what I understand it’s entirely possible to play through the entire book without falling into the same editing hole that I did. But still, it happened to me.

Guess you could say I ended this book with pie in the face. A-ha, ha ha… sorry….

Cause of death: Doing the time warp, always…