Gamebook – Page 6 – Cybe's Website

Island of the Undead

The Fighting Fantasy gamebooks by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone were blockbusters of the era. It’s time for us to take a nice refreshing holiday to the ISLAND OF THE UNDEAD!

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.

This is the fifty-first book in the series, and is something of an anomaly. I strongly suspect that the entire series was winding up to finish with the fiftieth, Return to Firetop Mountain. If my theory on that is correct, then this is the book that broke the plan. It stood up in defiance of… of… eh, stuff. Defiant little bugger. Anyway, never had this book when I was a kid, it just never looked all that interesting. Blame the cover. I really should do a top ten good Fighting Fantasy book covers.

Let’s get right to this, shall we? You’re the son of a local fisherman, and it seems that the weather has been playing up quite a bit lately. So you decide to go and ask the local island full of wizards, who had previously been keeping the local meteological disasters at bay.

Me and a few other fishermen all hop onto a boat to go and pay the local fireball-throwers a neighbourly visit, but promptly get caught in a storm. Following a rather intimate moment with a tidal wave, I wash up on the shore of the wizard’s island as the sole survivor.

Right off the bat, the very first paragraph gives me a combat sequence, with the rotting corpse of one of the other fishermen turning into something called a ‘sea zombie’. It’s not a tough fight, but it’s a heck of a way to start the adventure. Once I whomp it into the ground, I head south towards a small forest. The forest itself seems to be enchanted, I wander around it for several days, using up my provisions, until I eventually meet an old man in a tree.

I’m asked if I know his name, but I’ve had no chance yet to learn his name, unless I had gone north to visit a lighthouse first. As I’ve no idea who the old man is, I just strike up a casual conversation, being as friendly and helpful as I can, and ask him what information he might have. When he has the gall to ask for some items in exchange for the information, I try to bat him with my sword instead. Cheeky bugger. Instead of dying like most polite old men would, he jumps out of the way and throws a bag of horrible plague at me.

Coughing slightly from my new case of Lung Rot (what a lovely name for a disease. I suppose other Allansian illnesses include the likes of Foot Muck and Willie Stink), I stumble through the forest until I find a rather curious clearing with an old brick archway stuck in the middle of it. At this point, my character promptly changes his name to Mr Falldown McTripsandfallsalot, because whilst exploring the clearing he manages to fall and twist his ankle on a rabbit hole. Annoyed, I decide to wait until the middle of the night before doing anything else, and when I awake during the night I find that the surrounding area has three barrows. Yay, I think, resting places for me to corrupt, and immediately fall into the nearest one by accident.

There’s a gold coin and a sword amongst the dead bodies, which I don’t feel is a fair trade for falling onto someone’s dead grandad. The next barrow is guarded by a fire monster which I can’t defeat with non-magical weapons, causing me to run away as it spits fire at me. The third and biggest barrow, naturally enough, is guarded by a big tough undead monster, similar to one of the druagh of Skyrim, but I’m able to kill it without too much hastle, at which point I fall down a stairway into the deeper part of the barrow.

My stamina isn’t looking too good at this point. Neither are my provisions, because the book instructs me to stuff my face with them every third paragraph or so. In the bowels of the barrow, I meet a ghostly spirit who tells me not to approach him. I don’t, instead I decide to talk, but he calls me a fool and spits ice at me. I get fed up with this entire silly barrow, so I leave and go to sleep in a tree.

The next day, I leave the forest and finally arrive at the hill, which provides a fairly good view of the entire island. It’s a pretty good view, and I’m planning my next move, until a bunch of skeletons rise up out of the ground and try to kill me. No idea what the skeletons are doing on the hill, maybe they went out for a jog and got so bored that they died from it.

I decide to head towards the local monastery, described as a brick building. I have high hopes of finding something vaguely useful here, and inside it there is a rather unusual thing – a kung-fu monk zombie. Questioning the plausability of a rotting corpse that can jump-kick its enemies, I kill it and explore the entire monastery. I find a few useful things, mainly a bunch of spare provisions and potions, a map of the island that indicates a small bay occupied by friendly mermen, and a scrap of paper that documents the falling-out of two of the local wizards, which some of the monks attempted to resolve via hiding their magic crystals. Oh, those wacky monks!

Anyway, before too long the monastery seems to get bored of having me around, because a rock elemental stumbles along and throws stones at me until I leave the area. Honestly, you’d think that these damn elementals would have something better to do with their time…

I decide to opt for a change of scenery, so I go for a walk in the swamps to the south. It’s very humid, and my skill and stamina start to plummet again. I wind up getting chewed on by a giant alligator, but manage to survive that whole ordeal. Eventually I reach a cliff leading down into the mermen’s bay. They seem to be having a bit of trouble with the local shark-men, so I kill one of those and earn their trust, and they kindly inform me of a secret entrance into the wizard’s tower.

I’m suspecting that the wizard’s tower is the final stage of this adventure, so I opt to head to another area first before I go that far, namely to a nearby small hut. The path to it is guarded by a hydra type of a monster, which is a bloody nightmare to kill, and has a rather overly complicated system involving cutting off its spare head. But once it’s dead, I get to the hut and find that it is also guarded by giant skeletons, purely to work as a pointless additional threat. The hut itself guards a small shrine, which has been utterly broken and ruined, and I’m unable to repair it without a pot of glue.

Finally, and utterly unequipped for it, I approach the wizard’s tower. The path branches off into a chasm, which I thoroughly explore and find nothing of any use, something of a recurring theme in this adventure. By this point, I’ve come to the firm conclusion that this entire adventure is based around finding just the right items, in the right order. Missing any, as I’m sure that I did at the lighthouse at the start, seems to automatically doom you to failure. But that’s just my conclusion. I may yet be wrong, let’s reserve judgement until we get to the tower.

I travel down the cliffside and find the hidden entrance to the tower that the mermen advised about, and immediately stumble into an empty storeage room. I head downstairs, stumbling through the tower until I can find a room containing a large tank of sewage water for no apparant reason. I try to break this open, hoping that petty vandalism to the plumbing will deal some kind of victory blow to the evil that has settled here. Instead, I merely feel ill.

The very next door I arrive at informs me that the final boss is probably on the other side (no doubt due to the scorch marks and general burning heat of fire in the air), and tells me that I can always return to that room later if I really want to. So I chicken out, and instead head into a room that appears to have flooded some time ago. Hopefully not with sewer water. I wade my way through the water, killing an unfriendly moray eel on the way, and get to the door on the other side of the chamber. Said door leads into the chamber of someone or something called the Master of Waters, and lacking any magical weapon, I am straightforwardly informed that I cannot win and that the Master of Waters kills me. Somehow. Whoever he is. Death by ????? I suppose.

Make no mistake, this isn’t a bad book. The writing is decent and quite evocative, the island itself is interesting, and although it doesn’t quite make you feel as part of the journey as Island of the Lizard King does, you do get quite a few nice areas that you can explore, often in a non-linear manner. Well, a sandbox kind of a manner. Having said that, the actual puzzles in this adventure are linear, very much so. But it does give you the illusion of choice, which is interesting. I’m undecided on this one.

I rather imagine that this one will play out better if you go through it several times and map out where to get all the items, but that’s just too much work for me. What did you guys think of it?

Cause of death: ?????

Return to Firetop Mountain

The Fighting Fantasy gamebooks by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone were blockbusters of the era. It’s been a long time since we started our adventures, so let’s now RETURN TO FIRETOP MOUNTAIN!

Sometimes, they come back.

It was 1992, ten years after The Warlock Of Firetop Mountain was published. The Fighting Fantasy series had been a big hit, a huge hit. By this stage there were 49 books in the main series, not counting all of the side series and spin-off items. For the fiftieth book, Ian Livingstone wrote Return To Firetop Mountain, a book which boasts its pedigree right on the cover.

And that’s a lovely cover, showing a veritable army of monsters, with the imposing mountain itself looming in the background, atop which stands the haunting visage of the now-undead warlock Zagor himself. The cover also features the letter ’50’ in huge, powerful lettering, making damn sure you know what number in the series you’re holding. I’ve a sneaking suspicion that this may have been intended to be the last in the series, because of the strong theme of returning to where it all began.

Funny thing, for the 30th anniversary of FF, I was in London to get a copy of Blood of the Zombies. In 1992 on the tenth anniversary of FF, I bought a copy of Return to Firetop Mountain in London. Specifically one of the airports, while waiting for a flight back home from a peculiar adventure involving the BBC which we won’t get into at this point. I hadn’t even realised at the time that FF books had been out for 10 years, all I knew was that this was the fiftieth and Zagor needed to be taught a lesson.

So let’s get to it. I’ve been spectacularly lucky with my rolls in creating my character here, with a skill of 11 and a stamina of a full impressive 24. From what I remember of the book, I need to collect dragon’s teeth in order to win, just like you collect keys in the first game. Only this time, rather than stealing his treasure, your goal is to destroy the evil warlock. I have to admit, it’s a more noble and heroic goal. To paraphrase from a Dungeons and Dragons game I played once, the truth of the first book is that we’d broken into an old man’s home, beaten him up violently, and stolen his possessions like a group of chavs.

Eager to go and pick on the poor old man again, my adventurer has grabbed the quest to head into the mountain, where Zagor is imprisoning local villagers and using their body parts to create a whole new body for himself…. ick. I’ll try not to think about that too much. Anyway, as I set out on the journey to the mountain, only to be stopped by the tavern keeper from the local town, who tells me that a pair of scouts are on their way ahead to alert Zagor’s forces to my arrival. Together we duck into the undergrowth, where I find a rather nice polished shield just laying in the dirt.

The shield comes in quite useful, because the scouts attack soon after and I’m able to deflect their throwing dagger with it. Together, myself and the tavern keeper make short work of the scouts, and find a few coins marked with the letter ‘Z’. I guess that Zagor is minting his own coins now. Got to admit, that’s the mark of a real evil genius. I wonder what the exchange rate is between Zagor coins and the Euro right now. In fact, the British pound sterling is still very strong against the Bison Dollar, due to M. Bison’s inability to kidnap the Queen.

The scouts were also carrying a scroll which puts a curse on me when I look at it, lowering my skill to a 9. Why would they even have this kind of thing? And why would they be carrying a cursed scroll around in their smelly boots? I’m sure it’s some kind of evil plan of some sort. I opt to press on towards Yaztromo’s Tower, which along with Port Blacksand is one of the most important (and often-visited) locations in the whole of the FF universe. I’m pretty certain that Ol’ Yaz will be keen to help me. We’re friends, see, from way back in the Forest of Doom days.

As I travel to the tower, things are certainly not uneventful. I am given a mushroom from a travelling mushroom seller, and am rewarded with a ring of invisibility in gratitude for saving a man who has been tied to the ground by bandits. Nearing the dwarf village of Stonebridge, I spend the night in a rickety old hut, and find a key hidden there (keys are always, always useful). I spend the night in the celler of the hut, and although I can hear scratching of claws and inhuman mutterings from the main part of the hut, but they don’t come down to bother me. The next day, we arrive in Stonebridge.

The dwarves are taking a break from drinking ale and singing about gold. In fact, they have discovered a new hobby – sailing. They tell me that my buddy Yaz isn’t in the tower, but has gone off on a little holiday to the village of Kaad, which needs to be said in a William Shatner voice from now on. They invite me to sail with them down the river to get to KAAAD!! so I pack my things up and go along with them.

This does not end well. Along the way we are sabotaged by a boat full of orcs, who shoot half the boat’s crew. After managing to escape the orcs, we sail along until we catch sight of an important messenger bird flying over to us, carrying extremely important information for the success of my mission – but before it can arrive, a giant eagle catches the bird and eats it. And to top the day off in the best possible way, the ship accidentally collapses and we all fall into the river and the whole crew get eaten by piranhas. Except for me. I suppose I had been sure to bring a snorkel with me.

To be fair, it could have ended worse. The sky could have spat fire at me. So I guess we got out of it alright in the end.

Dragging myself along the bank of the river, I realise that I’m probably not going to live to see Firetop Mountain. It all seems so far away. As I lay there trying to recover, I renew my determination to succeed. I refuse to just lay down and give up, even when a poisonous snake decides to crawl over me. I get up and march on towards KAAAD!!

Along the way I see an old hunchbacked man. He asks me for a gold coin, and being the generous and kindly sort, I hand over one to him. Sadly, he seems to take offense to my asking if he’ll accept Zagor Money, and beats me with an ugly stick. No, really, his magically-enchanted walking stick turns me into a hunchback too. My skill score has now plummeted to a mere 7. So much for a good deed! I explain to the man that I’m not one of Zagor’s minions, and eventually he believes me and apologises. But tells me that he can’t fix the power of his ugly stick. Seriously, old man, why do you even have something like that?

I arrive in KAAAD!! to find that it’s a plague site. It seems that Yaz’s holiday out here wasn’t just sight-seeing after all. I’m eventually able to track him down, or at least someone who looks just like him. I’m rather suspicious of the kindly old man I meet who claims to be Yaztromo, as I’ve never known him to be particularly friendly in any of the previous books. Turned out that this is indeed something of a beginner’s trap, because this man is an imposter. It’s a changeling monster posing as Yaz, and he proceeds to kick me around the whole town before I’m able to land a lucky blow and kill it.
I have already used up all of my Star Trek Deep Space Nine jokes about Changelings, so let’s just move on.

When I find the real Yaz, he grumbles and moans about everything, so I know it’s the real him. He then gives you the means to kill Zagor – finding the gold dragon teeth that are hidden around Firetop Mountain, and also figuring out the right magic words to use them. He gives me some gold coins to buy some items, and… does not heal my hunchback-ery status ailment. Oh gee, thanks sooo much Yaz.

So after a quick bit of shopping (wherein I gather the usual dungeoneering supplies of rope, leather gloves, garlic, silver knives and the like), a friendly local elf gives me a ride on the back of a giant eagle to the base of Firetop Mountain, and we are finally ready to begin the adventure proper. With my both my skill, stamina and luck now just a mere 7 apiece. Gosh, I’m doing well at this!

I venture into the entrance tunnel of the mountain, and am confronted with the first choice from the very first Fighting Fantasy adventure – turn left or right. In Warlock, turning right leads to a pit trap, so I decide to see what new twist this book has put on this. The door into the room is boarded up, but I find a bottle on the floor that contains a small brass egg. No idea what that’s doing there, or how someone managed to fit an egg into a bottle. Oh well, let’s get exploring!

A good few of the rooms from the original layout are sealed shut, but I eventually find one occupied by a group of skeletons, who all seem to be arguing over what to have for lunch. There’s about five of the buggers, and because I’m barely able to survive a strong wind at the moment, I decide to sneak out of the room before they can stamp on me. I head into the next room I come across, which seems to be a rubbish site. I dig around and do manage to find a tin whistle and an onyx egg. Odd, I wonder why there’s been two eggs already in the dungeon.

I find a chain on the wall and, hoping it’s not an alarm bell, give it a good yank. It opens a secret chamber. I can’t quite resist the urge to stick my hand into secret chambers, so I grope around inside it until I find a sealed container inside the chamber, immersed in enough acidic goo that is sure to ruin those nice leather gloves I’d bought. Inside the container I find a gold dragon’s tooth. Not too bad, not too bad!

Then I notice something odd. Yaz told me that the dragon’s teeth had numbers printed on them. This one has an icon, a little heart surrounded by a ring of fire. No idea why this is. Could be that it’s a code of some sort, which I’ll decipher later in the adventure. This reminds me of an curious thing that happened a few weeks ago. I bought some incense for my flat, to create a relaxing zen atmosphere. I read the label on the dragon’s blood incense, and I’m guessing that the company must have had complaints from customers because the box included a large section which read “Dragon’s blood is a type of plant. This product does not contain real blood from any dragons.” My mind boggles sometimes, it really does.

I figure that it’s pretty unlikely that the next room would contain anything useful after that, so I skip it and instead go into the following room which appears to be a torture chamber. There’s a skeleton laid out on a rack, and he’s sporting a rather nice gold ring. Hey, who’s averse to a little bit of looting the dead? I try to pry the ring off, when a net damn near descends on me. It’s only by the luck of the dice that I barely (and I do mean barely, as if I’d rolled even one number off then I’d have been caught) avoid it.

I notice that the trap was set by a goblin, and I lose my patience. I charge after the little bugger, my low stamina score be damned, I’m not going to be caught by a damn goblin. I follow him into a tunnel, where I find the ancient sword of the first Chaos Warrior… wait, what? I… don’t even… huh? I genuinely don’t know what this is doing here, but eh, I take it with me planning to sink it into the goblin’s head. I charge after him, scrambling through tunnels (and falling over) and leaping over piles of skulls, until I eventually admit to myself that he’s escaped and I’ve lost him. Pah. Pah, I say. Pah, pah, and pah again.

I try to figure out where I am, and find that I’ve wound up somewhere completely off the map of the original game. Again, the way that the dungeon here is structured to be built ‘on top’ of the old one from the first book, it’s very impressive! So instead of trying to figure out where the heck I’ve got to, I go into a nearby room and find that it’s full of statues. Each of the statues look like a warrior, except with an expression of horror on their faces. Then the door behind me slams shut, and a wall on the room starts to lift up, revealing something snake-like beneath. Oh joy. I employ my amazing special technique for how to deal with horrifying medusa-type monsters – I try to run away.

Oh great, the door’s locked. But not to worry, because the book gives me the option of using an item to help me. I’m so lucky that I found that polished shield at the start of the adventure, eh? Just like in the original Clash of the Titans, I’m sure that a polished shield will help me slay this monster. I turn to the section and…. oh, I can’t use my shield. I don’t know why, the section just simply doesn’t list it as an option. Maybe I lost my shield at some point. Maybe it was rendered scratched and dented when the scouts threw a knife or two at it. Must be honest, I’m a bit disappointed that it isn’t even mentioned.

Instead I have the option of using garlic, a mirror, or a tin whistle. I don’t have a mirror, and garlic is for use on vampires, which leaves me the whistle. Hey, maybe medusas are allergic to loud noises? Let’s try it.

No. No, they are not allergic to loud noises. I’m turned to stone on the spot. On the plus side, I like to think that I strike a stunning pose, in order to make sure that I leave a damn beautiful corpse.

Return to Firetop Mountain ranks up as one of the underrated gems in the Fighting Fantasy canon. The way that it uses the original dungeon layout as a base, but builds on top of it to create a whole different adventure is very impressive. The inclusion of the entire adventure tracking down Yaztromo is excellent, giving the player the chance to see a see and experience some classic Fighting Fantasy tropes.

The atmosphere feels rich, and the writing is very strong with Livingstone’s style. It feels that there are traps and dangers around every turn, and I strongly feel that I only got as far as I did on this playthrough by luck. The artwork is among the best in the series, fully detailed and utterly vibrant. It’s a real shame that this book is overlooked so often, because if the series had gone through with concluding with this book as was initially planned, it would have been a damn good send-off.

Out of all of the Fighting Fantasy books, I consider this to be an under-rated gem, and definitely suggest that you give it another playthrough today. Go on, do it. It’s raining outside, you may as well put your feet up and play this for a few hours. You’ll enjoy it!

Cause of death: Turned to stone.

Siege of Sardath

The Fighting Fantasy gamebooks by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone were blockbusters of the era. Stand by my side as we take part in the SIEGE OF SARDATH!

I wish that I could tell you a little more about my experiences with this book, but I’d never even seen a copy until it arrived in the post. For some reason, it always eluded me when I was looking through the Fighting Fantasy sections in book shops. Maybe it was there, and just didn’t jump out at me. I can’t say. Truth is, there’s not a lot about this book that jumps out to the audience. The title is relatively uninspiring, and the blurb really doesn’t do much to spin the imagination. Maybe I simply passed it up in favour of better sounding books. Did I miss out? Let’s see.

Either way, even the cover was new to me, sporting a well-dressed elf type man, possibly a vampire, striking a dramatic pose. It doesn’t look much like a siege, I must be honest. The book takes place in somewhere called the Forest of the Night, which sounds like the Forest of Doom’s emo younger brother. I’m not going to complain though, I wore enough black in my teenage years.

On a quick glance through the rules section (which is all I do these days. I’m sure I’ve missed loads of important things in previous books due to this, but eh, re-reading all that stuff is just not interesting to me), this book has a time system which is based around the day of the week. You have bundles of herbs to use to heal yourself instead of food. It also starts you off with a bow, which allows you to fire arrows at an enemy. You roll to see if you hit or not, and seems that you’re able to roll a set number of times before regular combat begins, so this acts as a way to take a few shots at the enemy before they can hit you. Got to admit, I like that idea a lot!

It seems that the elf city of Sardath is surrounded by a forest. Not just any forest though – an evil forest. Thing is, it didn’t used to be surrounded by it. The forest has moved, possibly growing legs and strolling down the riverbank until it’s got to the city, only then to start releasing poisonous spiders and ettins in the faces of the poor elves. My noble hero isn’t from Sardath though, we’re from another nearby city and I’ve been asked to go and help the elves out.

In case it wasn’t clear enough, a council is called in which we discuss just who to send. A messenger who has just arrived asks to speak with me, whereupon he tells me that he’s really an evil duplicate of the messenger. After a rather hectic fight sequence in which he tries to flee and I pin him down, only for him to then cut his own throat rather than be taken prisoner, the council decides that yes, there is probably something a bit evil about this whole affair. Smart council, that.

I dread going into the forest, probably because I’m no doubt going to meet Radagast inside. I fear Radagast, as I tend to fear anyone whose headgear consists of bird dung. I’d suggest he have a bath, but I’d be worried that he’d trip on the soap while getting out of the bath, break his neck, and regenerate into Paul McGann the White. Speaking of wizards, I’m vaguely annoyed at the council’s lack of wisdom in this matter, so I go to see the local astrologer, a powerful mage called Liam. Obviously Tim was busy.

Liam summons a Suma, a messenger being of the gods that I only recognise because it had an entry in Out of the Pit last week. The Suma tells me that I’ll need to keep ahold of an amulet if I want to suceed in my quest, and that I should seek out a Khornu Wych. I’m not sure quite how much use a corny witch will be, so I just nod and play along. Deciding that it’s best to get a move on, I head out of the city and come to the edge of the forest, where I see a travelling trader… and I’m reminded that the forest was meant to have cut off all trade routes. Suspecting another doppleganger, I have a pre-emptive attack, only to discover that the trader was not only an honest merchant, but a ninja as well. He pelts me with a glass jar of poison gas and vanishes into the distance.

I’m feeling vaguely adventurous today, so I opt to head to Sardath via river. It seems that I’m a particularly awesome person, because I have my own boat all ready and waiting for me. So I hop on board and start the journey into the heart of darkness. I’ll tell you right now that if I find Marlon Brando at the end of this quest, I’m going straight home. I sail around an old broken rope bridge and eventually make camp for the night. I am watched from the forest by evil glowing eyes (they’re never evil eyes until they’re glowing, y’see) and I’m told to note down paragraph number 178 in a circle on my adventure’s sheet if I just want to ignore the eyes and go to bed. It’s an oddly specific instruction that I should circle the number, so I choose that option. But I’m careful to set a camp fire first, just in case.

The book scolds me for setting a camp fire and deducts a luck point from me for doing so, and during the night I am attacked by a giant spider that spits its webbing at me. That’s not quite how webbing works, but because this is a children’s book, we’ll file that under suspension of disbelief and press onwards. I turn to the paragraph I was told to circle earlier on, and continue to sail down the river. While clearing some weeds off the boat, some of the weeds bite me and drain my blood. Apparantly it’s a plant called bloodweed, and the book then asks if I want to chop it out of my way with my sword, or clear it away by hand. For a moment I suspect that this is a bit of an idiot test, but when I choose to chop it up with my sword, I am told that the bloodweed had already had enough to eat and it wasn’t necessary to kill it. As a result, I’m told that the natural force of luck that I carry with me throughout my quest is diminished, and I lose another point of luck… Now wait just a damn minute here! Why am I being deducted luck points for making the careful choices here?

I think that I’ve figured out that this book isn’t going to be one that rewards being played cautiously, so the moment I catch sight of one of the creeping forest-dwelling critters that’s been following me, I fire a hail of arrows at it, while screaming “Death from above!” Naturally, the thing runs off, and I’m told that a little bit of the sick darkness of the forest comes to rest inside me, which costs me yet another luck point and JUST WAIT A MINUTE HERE! AGAIN? So, I’m hemoraging luck points something terrible, and the next paragraph tells me that a party of little frog-people armed with spears has now surrounded me and asks me to test my luck. Guess what I’ll roll here.

Yep, I was unlucky. The frog-people are the next to scream ‘Death from Above’ as they hurtle all their spears at me, impaling me terribly. I do manage to survive though, with only five stamina points remaining. I hurry the boat along, while they give chase for a while, but they eventually get bored and let me go. Soon I reach another rope bridge. Checking my map, I think that hey, this is pretty good. I’m not far from Sardath at all now. Another day’s travel and I’d probably make it. But I’m not in the best of shape, and there’s a little town called Colhryn to the north-east that I can get to if I abandon the boat and travel by foot. I choose to go there, hoping to rest and heal up before I head to Siege-ville.

En route, I am attacked by a giant spider, but I kill it without too much trouble. On my way to Colhryn, I learn that it is not a town, but a person I know who lives near the edge of the forest. Maps are funny like that. Anyway, I’m on my way to reach his… weird forest-dwelling hut, I guess… when I stumble across a zombie. I attempt to kill it, but it is aided by a horrible necrotic ooze type of thing which wraps around my leg and tries to… I dunno, do whatever oozes do. Bubble at me, I guess. Still, I manage to turn and run away before the things kill me.

Without having the chance to meet Colhryn, and realising that I’ve never met the corny witch that the Suma mentioned earlier, I decide to write off the day by curling up and getting some sleep. I’m awoke the next morning by a dwarf merchant riding a carriage along the road. Despite the option to flee into the street screaming at him about the horrible doom that has befallen Sardath, I instead choose to hitch a ride with him. Shortly down the road, though, he’s eaten by a monster. Really, he should have known better. Anyone who joins you for an adventure in a Fighting Fantasy book is doomed to die terribly. I have the option to try to fight this giant monster, but given that I have single-digit stamina points and that the monster in question is described as ‘Cthuloid’, I decide that course of action would be suicide. The book suitably punishes me for my act of self-preservation by deducting yet another luck point.

And finally, I arrive at Sardath. The place is definitely under siege, not by an army of course, but by the force of darkness that permeates the forest. Out on one of the many rivers leading to Sardath, I catch sight of a small boat that’s in ruins and struggling to stay afloat. I help the sailor to shore, and he thanks me but doesn’t give me any gold because he’s a cheap git. He promptly realises that he’ll probably get eaten by a grue if he accompanies me on my journey, so he scurries off in the other direction.

The northern region of Sardath is surrounded by a rocky outcrop, and I find a dead dark elf on the outlying area. I’m asked to roll my skill, with a modifier dependant on the day of the week that it is. It seems that the later in the week it is, the more awful the result. I don’t find anything on the elf, which is the best response. I’m assuming that the worst response is that it turns into a zombie and eats me. Either way, it is soon getting dark, and I’ve almost reached the entrance to Sardath proper. Yay.

The book asks if I want to make camp for the night. Because I’m so close to the city, I opt to push on. As a result, a horde of giant winged monsters swing down from the sky and kill me. I don’t even get the chance to fight them off, they just kill me through sheet instant-death. Strangely, death by flying monsters this time.

This is a tricky book to review. On one hand, the atmosphere is fantastic. It’s very well-written, feeling both exciting and dramatic at times, with a real sense of freshness to the prose. The storyline itself is simple, but it pulls it off brilliantly. As you’ll have noticed, I took the route through the river, but there are others as well, so it feels nice and varied and you’re rewarded by rich descriptions throughout. On the other hand, it’s pretty brutal in terms of punishing the choices you make, and doesn’t skimp on deducting luck points if it feels your choices weren’t in keeping with what it wanted you to do. As a result, you can sometimes get into those horrible ‘try to guess what the author is thinking’ type of puzzles. Your character is meant to be a skilled ranger that is wise and skilled in the ways of woodland survival, but that doesn’t mean that the player himself is!

These are flaws that can all pretty much be forgiven, though. And the book does invite repeated playthroughs, I really can’t deny that. I’d like to play this again. Problems aside, it’s very rich and definitely a lot of fun. I’d consider this one of the under-rated FF adventures, and if you can look past the flaws mentioned above then you’re going to find this quite a noteworthy title!

Cause of death: Death by flying monsters.

Moonrunner

The Fighting Fantasy gamebooks by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone were blockbusters of the era. Now let’s see if we can face the MOONRUNNER!

In the wake of a great war that brought ruin to much of the lands, the feared General Karam Gruul has eluded capture. As a bounty hunter, the main character is asked to track down this war criminal and bring him to justice. I really quite like this idea. It’s a nice change from the usual “a wizard is raising an army, go and kill it” type of scenario.

Wonder if being a moonrunner is much like being a bladerunner….

The introductory bit for this book is excellent. Our mighty bounty hunter, who we’ll name Fobar Bett, has been enlisted to track down Gruul, who is believed to be hiding out in the city of Blackhaven, and possibly under the protection of a cult called the Cabal of Werewolves. General Major Bretton, who is debriefing you on the information, offers to pay for the mission – but the character announces that he has a personal grudge to settle with Gruul as well.

No sooner has Bretton given me some leads, does he keel over dead. Assassinated by throwing knife through the window of the fort, no less! I quickly examine the blade, and recognise it as the work of a local artisan. But there’s no time for further investigation of the crime scene, I charge through the window after the assassin.

Using my acrobatics skill, I’m able to get to the ground easily… Oh yes, this is one of those Fighting Fantasy books that employs a range of possible skills. Like the ones from Sword of the Samurai, you may remember. But these are implemented far better already, quickly giving you a feel of possible actions without relying on the old ‘this skill will boost skill stat’ type of fallback. All the skills are accessible directly via the text, which not only adds to the flavour of the story, but makes it easier to cheat. Not that I’m cheating here, though. But you could. If you wanted to.

I pursue the assassin until he hurls a smoke bomb at me and makes good his escape. I decide to quickly check out the man who made the knife, hoping that I may find some clue there – only to instead realise that he has been cleared out of town, and instead a particularly nasty pit trap has been left on his doorstep for me. I fall into a cage beneath the doorstep, which is almost washed into the river. Thankfully I happen to have picked a few rather good skills, and I’m able to pull myself free without being drowned in the city’s wet and almost certainly sewage-encrusted river.

Without any strong idea where I should head to, and suspecting that I should have given stronger attention to tracking the assassin earlier, I instead decide to hit the local tavern and ask for advice. “Hey,” I say to the barmaid, “Know anything about the Cabal of Werewolves?” This rather weak attempt at a chat-up line does not go down well, leading to a bunch of men of ill repute hitting me with a bar stool and throwing me out of the tavern. And I did not even get a slap-up dinner, either.

Taking pity on me, I meet a sagely old professor lady who offers to help me recover from my recurring habit of getting beaten up by entire hordes of people. Professor Van Heldenghast (surely the most fortuitous name in the history of the universe) takes me to her home and lets me rest up. I’m actually going to enjoy this while it lasts, knowing (from having played Fighting Fantasy books so often before) that this will likely be the final moment of comfort in my terribly short and gruesome life.

And even better, she DOES provide me with a lovely dinner! The Professor tells me that Gruul is a practitioner of a rare form of sorcery, and that we can overcome it by acquiring six relics which are scattered throughout town. She gives me a shopping list of items for me to pick up from interesting places around town. Naturally, being me, the first place I choose to visit is the Chamber Of Horrors!

Sadly, it turns out that the Chamber of Horrors is just a wax-work display. It is not even slightly like the Circus of Horrors, which I went to see earlier this year. It lacks the fire-breathing rock’n’roll guru ringmaster Doc Haze. It lacks the bewildering contortionist Anastasia the 4th. It lacks the amazing Hannibal, the heavily tattooed sword-swallower who hangs from hooks over the stage. It lacks Captain Dan, the demon dwarf, who amazes audiences by dragging a Henry Hoover around the stage with his penis. Instead, the Chamber of Horrors has some wax works. And a shroud that a necromancer was once buried in, tucked in amongst the displays. Or rather, it DID possess the shroud. Until I nicked it.

My next stop is a curio shop, where I have to pick up a bottle of a vampire lord’s blood. The shop owner tries to charge me more gold than I have, so I threaten to do horrible things to his puppy unless he just hands over the bottle. With it, I head over to the old abandoned jail, to recover a chain that has been used to bind a powerful demon. Having unchained the demon, I promptly kick it back into the pit that it has crawled out of. Interesting fact about demons, they are vulnerable to being jump-kicked.

It’s about at this stage that things start to go… not so good.

I decide to head to the temple next, in order to recover the mask, seeing as masks seem to often be used as horcruxes and all that. En route, a man in a crowd gives me a note telling me to meet him on a hilltop on the far end of town for information on Gruul. Sure, sounds legit. What could go wrong? Not like it could be a trap or anything….

Oh shit it’s a trap! Who’d have guessed? When I get there, I am chased around the hilltop in the middle of a rainstorm by an obsidian monster for a while. It knocks me around, and is just about to kill me when it is struck by lightning. Not a lovely way to spend a few hours, but by the time I get to the temple, I discover that the mask has already been stolen by Gruul. Hmmph.

Hoping to pick up some speed, I head to the seediest tavern in the city next, where I need to meet two bodysnatchers who will help me find the next item, an evil skull from the local graveyard. They offer me a pint to drink, and I gladly accept. I wake up a few hours later, still reeling from the drugged ale, to find all of my possessions have been stolen. Yeah, only got myself to blame for that one…

The last item, the wooden hand of an executed thief, I find in gallows square. Sneaking through the gibbets and avoiding the executioners as they kick a beggar, I’m able to find the hand without too much trouble. But that’s not the last part of this item’s mission. No, I need to take the hand to a powerful necromancer who will enchant it.

The necromancer lives in a very dark house, probably called ‘Mansion Sinister’. It’s full of shadows and echoes. The necromancer, who may as well be called Wicked McEvilson for all I know, takes the hand and tells me to wait here while he enchants it, telling me most emphatically not to follow him through the door into his ritual chamber.

Y’know…. what do YOU think I do?

No, really.

Just… scroll down a bit, and put a comment in telling me what you think I do at this point in the adventure. Tell me if you think I stay and wait, or if I follow the necromancer through the forbidden door.

I’ll wait.

All done?

Good.

I’m not going to tell you how this adventure ends, but I will mention that it ended very, very soon after I made that decision. Very soon. With lots of screaming and yelling, and the sounds of the mortal mind snapping like broken glass, and eyes being burned with the images of something called the Necrotic Wilderness of Q’Yann.

So, how was the book? Well… the premise, as mentioned at the top of the post, feels suitably interesting and new. Our antagonist feels genuinely calculating, leaving various traps throughout the adventure. It’s full of some very colourful and interesting characters. The atmosphere is also excellent, both moody and dramatic, and you can often picture the sweeping gothic architecture of the city. This is definitely aided by the strong and evocative artwork.

The gameplay itself feels very free. I restarted the chase sequence a few times during play, simply because it can spiral off into so many different results. It certainly doesn’t feel at all linear. The last areas we visited here, recovering the artefacts throughout the city, feel like inter-connected mini-adventures all on their own, but don’t feel isolated from the rest of the story. And the options of skills that you can change (all of which open up new routes through the adventure) give a lot of replay potential.

So in short, I just LOVED this book! Big thanks to Stuart for sending it, I’m thoroughly glad to have got the chance to finally try this book as it has a whole lot to offer. Fantastic! Good to end on a high note, eh? Especially after the last few weeks’ less-than-excellent fare. Lovely. And damn, I’ve needed to get a good book going, after the last two. Feels damn lovely to be able to have something positive to say about things again.

Cause of death: Brain-melt.