Round 2: Temple of Terror

It's been six years since I read Temple of Terror, and in that time I've obviously gotten worse at gamebooking, as you'll soon find out.

Also since then there's been a little TV show come out called Game of Thrones, which I doubt a single person reading this blog hasn't watched - or read.

I bring it up 'cause the intro blurb to Temple of Terror is frighteningly familiar to anyone whose imagination has visited Westeros; an evil man who wants to rule the land, vast deserts, controlling wolves and dragons, large armies... okay, so typical fantasy tropes. But hey, it's good SEO for me to mention Game of Thrones, right? Game of Thrones.

Anyway, so this Joffrey-Mother of Dragons-Bran Stark mashup guy called Malbordus is planning to get his dragon army together by collecting some artefacts, 'cause he went to the Ian Livingstone school of badassery. You - I - have to stop him by getting the artefacts first, and save the world - to get you started, ol' stingy Yaztromo gives you a measly four spells and 25 gold pieces.

He knows Malbordus' evil plot 'cause his crow overheard it (if only it was a raven...).

Now there are two ways you can go - through Blacksand, or across the desert. Last time I went via Blacksand, and this time did neither - I jumped on board a giant eagle, was attacked by a pterodactyl and sent plummeting to the ground, and my incredibly early doom. Sorry about that, world.

I actually spent more time getting my USB keyboard to work with this ancient and busted laptop than I did reading Temple of Terror.

Round 2: Freeway Fighter

Freeway Fighter is set in the future - 2022, to be exact - and since we're now closer to that than the book's native 1985, I thought I'd get in theme and play it in a manner that would have blown 1985 Ian Livingstone's mind.

Laptop for blogging, external keyboard 'cause the laptop's keyboard is fucking tiny, phone with a dice app 'cause there's a baby in the house who might eat the real thing, an iPad as the adventure sheet 'cause again, babies and pencils don't mix. Oh, and a copy of Freeway Fighter - on the original vinyl.

Because I had to use Internet Explorer for reasons I won't go into there, it took more time to take, upload and insert this photo than it did to read the damn book

The premise of Freeway Fighter, as I explained on my first attempt, is pretty much Mad Max. In the six years or so since then however I've read the better part of Stephen King's output, and now know it also owes a significant debt to The Stand. The introduction is very much a three-page TL;DR of the first 400 pages of the The Stand, if you ignore the bizarre line about the "soccer finals of the World Cup" featuring England and the US, which commits crimes offensive to both sports fanatics and professional subeditors, like me.

Anyway, my mission is to travel to another outpost of what remains of civilisation to collect 10,000 litres of petrol. This brings hope - people post-apocalyptic still use the metric system - and despair - my starting inventory does not extend to 20c a litre supermarket discount vouchers.

Last time my strategy was to just drive as fast as I could, and that ended in failure when I ran out of petrol. This time, I'm gonna hang out with people - except those fuckers at Joe's Garage who got me in the distant past of 2008.

So, hitting the highway I dispatch the first car no probs, then hang a left at the fork. The bridge is out, so I rev the car as hard as I can and... fail. I plummet to the ground and die.

Stupid dice app gave me a skill of seven, you see. Maybe I should have rolled it old-school...