Round 2: The Citadel of Chaos

So last time I read The Citadel of Chaos way back in February 2008, I had too few Levitation spells, spent too long hanging around drawing attention to myself, rolled a skill of 7, and drank too much wine.

If we parallel this to my real life, well, I've solved none of these problems - do you know how hard it is to afford Levitation spells in a recession? - so my hopes aren't high for defeating Balthus Dire this time around.

Last time I didn't even get to him, so we'll take this in baby steps, eh?

I roll a 10/23/9 character, much better than last time. Roll a 13 for magic - three Levitation spells, just 'cause, Fool's Gold, 'cause there's not a creature in Allansia that can resist that funky beat, Stamina, 'cause it seems your dude forgot to pack some feeds before he left, two copies of Fire, 'cause it's best of the Planeteers' abilities, Illusion, 'cause tricks are what whores do for money (or cocaine), ESP, 'cause last time some crazy bitch wanted a gift, and I offered her a silver mirror, and she got crazy, Luck, 'cause I need it, Shielding, 'cause she tried shooting me with her eyes, Creature Copy, 'cause I want to see an ape with a dog face fight a dog with an ape face and a dog with an ape face fight an ape with a dog face, and lastly Strength, 'cause I'm a dude.

So! Onto the titular citadel. I didn't record my alibi for the ape-face-dog and dog-face-ape guards last time, so I'm going to go with... tradesman. Oh right, I'm not carrying shit. Better whip out that Fool's Gold spell. Ten minutes of white-boy dancing should convince them to let me in. Much success!

Inside, there's a bustling courtyard with a monument, some kind of fountain (ha, I wonder how many Stone Roses and Ian Brown links I can get into this one blog entry...). I'm just gonna stride across the courtyard... and someone starts shooting arrows! It's like that scene from Lost, except I'm not Frogurt. Well, I take one in the calf, but this is Fighting Fantasy, so taking an arrow in the k̶n̶e̶e̶ calf is no big deal - about the same as skipping breakfast.

Hiding behind the monument, the arrows cease, and it seems the monument is actually a temple. There's some drinks inside - one clear and bubbly, one red, and one milky. Now, I've drunk enough in my time to know to avoid the milky stuff and the red stuff, so to the bubbles it is!

Uh-oh. I'm knocked out, and have this wicked dream about a two-headed monster with a bunch of keys and a pet rat, wake up and decide to leave. No! I don't decide to leave! The book makes me. Stupid book.

One minor tentacle-related encounter later, I'm confronted by a guard I can't decide is Rocksteady from the Ninja Turtles cartoons or a one-horned Triceratops. A Monoceratops?

He wants a password I don't have, and I would like to use my ESP spell since I assume he must know it, but no. I'm forced to bluff. I'm also forced to bluff as a 'herbalist', 'cause I have weeds in my bag, which would have been good to know back on paragraph 1. And who needs Levitation spells when you have weed?

Anyway it works, 'cause rhinoceratopseses are stupid, and I'm soon wandering down a passage I'm not supposed to be, and I find a bell with a sign, 'Please Ring for Butler'. Yeah, alright.

A "hunchbacked, mis-shapen creature with rotten teeth, ragged hair and tattered clothes" emerges, begging the question whether this is casual Friday at the Citadel of Chaos, or Balthus Dire just doesn't give a shit.

He tells me to go left, so I go right (I failed last time, so I'm doing opposites, even if they're opposites I never tried), and end up in some trap, falling unconscious, waking up in that dream I had earlier.

"Iron bars at the window confirm you are in a prison cell of some sort. There is not much you can do but sit on the straw mattress in one corner until someone appears."

Err, what about cast a Strength spell and bust my way out? Cast a Fire spell and burn my way out? Cast an Illusion spell and just fool myself into believing I'm out?

Anyway, the dream is true - there's a two-headed lizard thing trying to feed me. But I guess it must have some keys, so I call it over. It's not as dumb as I think, so I cast an Illusion spell, making myself invisible. Now it comes over, unlocking the door. Time for my first fight! (Here in the citadel, I'm assuming I've fought before this adventure.)

He's easy, I escape, up the stairs, and like any escaped prisoner, decide to start fucking around. There's a door, and I can't help but knock it down. Inside, there's a sleeping midget of some sort floating above a table.

O'Seamus? Oh, it's a leprechaun. Irish. So I draw my sword, which he turns limp. He speaks some crap about three doors, so I just pick one at random.

It's dark! I'm being savaged by some beast! I pass out! I wake up and O'Seamus is laughing! It's been a giant practical joke! He gives me a magic sword - I hope its magic power isn't the ability to go limp - and a silver mirror "of fine workmanship", to differentiate from all the shoddy ones I might find elsewhere in the book.

The next person I meet is a woman washing clothes in a river, who tells me I need to find a fleece if I want to find Balthus Dire. She doesn't explain further, so I guess she's just obsessed with clothes and stuff. Token female character.

Next stop is a golem, whom I almost completely defeat with my own Creature Copy golem, finishing him off myself. The book's not clear on what happens if my golem wins - do I get to keep him around to fight off other golems and gentiles I might meet? Apparently not.

He was guarding a jar containing a spider with the face of a man, which is something I think I might have needed last time around, hallelujah!

Not so hallelujah? Once again picking the one staircase (of two) that turns into a super-fun-happy-slide, just like last time. There goes one Levitation spell... and I would have used another soon after when coming across a chest separated from me by a trench, but the book insists using a Strength spell, and jumping, is better.

Now, I only have one Strength spell, so no, I won't be doing that. I instead pick up the rope, loop it over the chest, and pull. It's heavy. It pulls me in. That's two Levitation spells...

Then, according to the book, I "curse at the fiendish trap that had been laid for greedy adventurers like [myself]". Really? Without opening it? Following our ram-raid of Firetop Mountain last week?

Next up's the ganjees that killed me last time. I still have one Levitation spell on hand, after which I forget the magic words somehow. Their very presence causes me to lose 1 skill, 2 stamina and 1 luck, which is surprising since I still apparently have an arrow sticking out of my calf which no longer seems to be a bother.

The inevitable happens - I've nothing that can work against them, and they scare the fuck out of me until I jump out a window. But ha! I have a remaining levitation spell! Right? Right.

Wrong.

It doesn't work, and I plummet to my death... again.

Round 2: The Warlock of Firetop Mountain

Because I'm a glutton for punishment, and/or 'cause I'm out of other ideas, I'm gonna give all the gamebooks I failed the first time around another go.

Except this time, I'm going to do the opposite of what I did last time, take into account suggestions left on the previous entries, generally try not to be as such a hopeless loser.

The first time around in The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, I made it past ol' Dragonball Z pictured on the cover (the 'Z' is for 'Zagor'), only to sit down on his treasure chest and have a sook, 'cause I couldn't open it.

What will happen this time? Well, whatever it is, it won't be cheating. I spent nearly an hour this evening trying to find my box of FF gamebooks - but it would have been easier finding the two parts of the Hammer of Stonebridge.

Then when I did find them - the books, not the hammer - in the bottom box of a pile of boxes, of course - the only one that was missing was The Warlock of Firetop Mountain! WTF?

So I downloaded the iPad app. Yeah, I get to use the iPad for once, instead of my three-year-old. So if I fail again, fuck you Steve Jobs!

To get my skill, stamina and luck scores, I have to shake the $1000 toy. Not a good start. I roll a skill of 7. Not a good start. Stamina 20, luck 9. The shakes needed are quite vigorous too - by the end of this, I probably won't need to go to the gym tomorrow.

Actually, with a skill of 7, I probably won't even make it to the gym.

So, let's get started! Hey, what do all these buttons do? *press one* Oh, that was quit. Now I have to re-roll... 12 /17/9. Ooer, that's much better! Honest.

There's also the option to read the book in whatever font you like. Even Helvetica! This quest just got a whole lot more sophisticated. But kind of sucky, so back to Georgia it is. FF just ain't FF in sans-serif.

I come across a door, and I have to roll my skill. I try clicking on the 'success' button, but am denied! No more cheating, it would seem. Another shake of the iPad, an increased heart rate (seriously, they're not cheap) and I succeed, 'cause I can't fail. Every time I shake the iPad for a foregone conclusion, I'm going to bill Ian Livingstone a dollar.

I fall into a pit, losing 1 stamina point. As I leave the room, a giant scroll appears, ramming home the fact I just lost 1 stamina point. It even has a sound effect! I shudder to think what will happen when I lose two. I wonder if I'll get the sound of someone crunching on a carrot when I eat a feed?

I'll probably find out soon, as I wake a sleeping orc. Fight time! Oh dear. Fights on the iPad are interminable! Half the time I shake the iPad, nothing happens. Then when the dice actually roll, it insists on adding the rolls to your skill score slower than a six-year-old!

Oh, you can just click on the screen... never mind.

Next door - isn't that just the drunk orcs? Next one. Snake - key! Yay. (See how much faster everything goes when I don't have to risk mashing my iPad on the ceiling?)

Next room - oh, here are the drunken orcs. And here's where I discover the first problem with just clicking the screen during fights - if you click the wrong option, like 'ESCAPE!', there's no going back. D'oh!

This time around, I'm noticing how many stuck doors there are in Firetop Mountain, and I'm enjoying how having a skill of 12 is pretty much like having a skeleton key to the whole dungeon, that's actually my shoulder. Except when it comes to opening chests, of course.

Next up I find a circular iron shield, which I can only take by dropping one item I'm already carrying. The ebook thinks I'm still carrying the Potion of Strength I drank a few pages back, so thinking I'm outsmarting the game, I drop it... only to realise having unlimited Potions of Strength could actually have come in handy further down the track. Damnit.

Something I didn't have last time I played was cheese, which I got this time. Hopefully not unlimited cheese. That might begin to smell eventually. Though, if I had unlimited cheese, I'd have no need to be in this dungeon, since my life would already be complete.

Got my second key at the minotaur - I'm definitely feeling lucky, despite just wandering at random again. Hell, it was four years and one day ago I last played this book, I can't remember which way I'm not meant to go!

Next stop is a room of paintings that look innocuous in their original black and white, or black and sepia, as they were in the original book, but obviously NOT TO BE LOOKED AT in the iPad version, which renders them with evil glowing faces. I think I'll just skip on through this room...

So, past the river and onto the maze, I'm quickly knocked out and awake "in the south-west" corner of a room full of zombies. Good to know despite suffering a concussion and being kidnapped whilst unconscious, I still have my innate sense of orientation.

Or at least I thought I did. A few 'pages' later, I'm onto the real maze. It's not as painful when you're just clicking links, not worrying about page numbers - just where I'm going to find this third damn key.

Or at least that's what I thought. The maze was as painful as ever, and took nearly 20 minutes of clicking around to get through. Imagine turning all those pages...

By the time I get to Zagor himself, I've got three keys - hopefully the right ones. Dispatch him while sustaining barely even a scratch, and then it's onto the chest - and it opens! Holy shit.

For the first time ever, I get to read page 400 of The Warlock of Firetop Mountain - and it doesn't disappoint. Forget the booty - the chest also contains instructions on how to control Firetop Mountain, and everything within it! That's awesome. What if you took over the mountain, and just to keep things simple, decided to call yourself Zagor? And 49 books later, it's YOU the adventurer is coming to kill?

So not fuck you, Steve Jobs. Thank you!

Wizard #7 - Bloodbones

So this is the first time I've played a gamebook published in the newest new FF series, and I can't go another paragraph without pointing out how impractical the shield that adorns the cover of each book would be, were you to actually be carrying it around as your #1 shield.

Those curly bits on the bottom, for starters, would continually be scratching people's legs.

Contestants in the Trial of Champions would keep trying to pry the jewels out of its umm, ears? Wings?

Not to mention it has a giant bloody great big hole in the middle large enough for a zombie pirate to step through. (Come to think of it, how big IS this shield? The hole is probably some kind of compromise between size and weight, but I'm assuming it wouldn't lower your life insurance premiums.)

The plot: when you were 12, a bloodthirsty pirate killed your family and half the village you grew up in, Clam Beach, which I'm guessing is the Allansian analogue of Home and Away's Summer Bay. (If only Alf was there to stone the flamin' crows!)

To the north of Clam Beach is the town of Harabnab, where author Jonathan Green tells us is where "all the good adventurers and sailors live". All of them. This explains why Harabnab was never mentioned in any of the previous 60 or so FF gamebooks I failed to complete!

To the south is the Port of Crabs, which is "haven to every pirate, buccaneer and freebooter" in the area. (I had to look up 'freebooter', which Wikipedia tells me is another word for 'pirate'. I wonder if this book will be about pirates?)

It's also where the titular Bloodbones has a secret base, or so says the Clam Beach soothsayer - why I'm trusting a prophet who couldn't foresee the rape and pillage of his hometown I don't know. How is he still alive? If Auckland had an official soothsayer on the payroll, and one day the 50 or so volcanoes this city is built on decided to erupt and he'd not given us a warning - no matter how cryptic - if I was boss, he'd be fired. Or thrown into the nearest lava stream, which I'd hope would be through Epsom. Fuck Epsom.

But Clam Beach's prophet's name is 'Raguy' which is too close to 'Raygun' to ignore, so I give him the benefit of the doubt.

Bloodbones isn't his real name though - it's just what his detractors call him. His real name is Cinnabar, which Wikipedia tells me is a "common ore of mercury". If I was Cinnabon, I'd totally play up the Bloodbones angle, but I don't think that's the case here.

Anyway, In true FF style the first thing I do on arrival in the Port of Crabs is check out the local bar scene. The barman tells me Cinnamon is dead, but a drunk hints that's not actually the case. He won't tell me any more 'cause it's not safe, but will in 10 minutes outside in a dark alley.

Outside the bar, I'm confronted by two decrepit old men - I can tell by their SKILL scores - and a half-ogre, half-something that isn't specified but I'll assume is retard by the way he lets the two old me fight me while he just watches.

Dutch courage from the bar makes it a no-brainer to rush them, they put up no fight, and the drunk from the bar tells me with his dying words what I suspected from the title of the book - Cinnabar is alive - he just had a flesh wound all along. A flesh wound that killed him, but was healed with some kind of voodoo - somewhere in Harabnab, some noble but ill-advised adventurer was pulling pins out of a doll or something.

One of the odd things with these new FF books is that they pre-generate a few characters for you to choose from if you're too lazy to roll some dice. Even stranger, the instructions at the front of the book say if you're new to FF, you might as well just start reading the book - without actually learning the rules, creating a character, buying the cheapest boardgame you can find so that you have two dice... it's just bizarre.

Experienced users on the other hand are pointed to the back of the book where the rules are explained. WTF? It makes less sense than the fucking jazz-hands pointy bits on the bottom of the cover shield.

Even stranger, of the three characters on offer, only two had their entire families killed by Cinnabar - Griffin Teague's entry only mentions his "father's killer", which doesn't say much for Clam Beach's suffrage movement. It also says he's tracked down Bloodbone's lair, which suggests this generic character made it further than I did before the book even began.

Anyway, I decided to give a generic character a go and chose Bronwyn Ravenblade, 'cause I thought I might find awkward plot points where the book assumed I was a 12-year-old boy playing a manly hero, but I wasn''t. I didn't.

Bronwyn's apparently good at gambling, so off to the Gambling Pit! It's guarded by what the book calls "two Troll guards", so I decided to ignore anything they told me. One of the things they told me was, "remember, no fighting".

Ignoring this when confronted with a cheat card 'magician' got me thrown out of the Gambling Pit. Damn trolls.

Before I got thrown out though I won some money playing "Calibrius's Calculator", which was essentially spotting a pattern in a series of numbers that would "baffle the greatest minds in Ruddlestone". Ruddlestone must be a shithole, 'cause I solved the problem in three seconds. And that's why the internet says I have an IQ of 153 - after drinks - when I know for reals it's about half that.

Bloodbones uses a codeword system to keep track of a player's actions. It's effective yet hilariously transparent, and would get your email hacked in a few seconds. In the Gambling Pit I overheard a couple of pirates say Cinnabar's ship was due to sail for Bone Island at midnight - and had to write down 'DNALSI'.

So, getting kicked out of the Gambling Pit also lost me my sword, so I went to the markets and bought a new one, this time a cutlass - when in Rome, etc. I also bought some 'gas globes', 'cause they sound hilarious, and FF could do with an injection of humour at times (why'd you think I started this blog?).

I'm then approached by a 'gaunt and scrawny' old man with stubble, an eye-patch, a stump for a leg and a monkey who wants to tell me something. (EDIT: The man wants to tell me something,not the monkey. Though if it had the power of speech I'm sure the monkey would have plenty to say.) The picture opposite is of a woman whom appears to be taking part in some kind of Brazilian street party, which gives mixed signals. Was Ravenblade a lesbian?

The old man though is for real, as I learn a few paragraphs later - there's a picture of him flinging a dagger with his monkey literally breaking the fourth wall.

The next notable event in my wandering around the Port of Crabs is walking past a cartographer's office. Yeah, in this hive of scum and villainy, a cartographer has set up shop. He won't tell me anything useful until I bribe him, which leads me to question his business acumen. Does he not sell maps? Or does he only work on bribes?

Bone Island apparently lies 370 leagues east of the Port of Crabs, which is conveniently less than 400.

Next I decide to go visit the governor, if only to see if there is actually anyone governing this silly place. The guard's easily bribed, but the governor himself is strangely uncorruptible - he doesn't believe me there's an undead pirate fucking about in the bay, and kicks me out.

I wouldn’t be so worried about this sequence of events if I didn’t have to write the word ‘REGNAD’ on my adventure sheet.

My quest doesn't seem to be going well, so I head to the Temple Quarter to see if I can get some religious guidance. The big guy in this part of town is called the ‘His Excellency the Primate God of Pride’. Oh great, another monkey. Or is it Ian Brown?

It's not Ian Brown. Well, I don't know, 'cause I can't get an audience with him, and I'm broke from buying a new sword so I can't bribe an audience with him. Before this year's unexpected Stone Roses' reunion, not even $100 billion could get an audience with King Monkey.

Port of Crabs sucks more than Clam Beach and Summer Bay combined. The governor's goons catch up with me soon enough, alerted to the fact I'd illegally written the word 'DANGER' on my Adventure Sheet backwards, and chuck me in prison.

They want at least 10 gold as a bribe, which I don't have, and the head prison guard also wants 10 gold as a bribe. If I didn't have it last time, how would I have it now?

So the game ends not with my death, but my wrongful imprisonment.

Bloodbones was a good read. I'd been lead to believe it was shit, but you know what, it wasn't. I'm a little baffled by the return to the original FF font. Call me a nerd, but the font of the later books in the original series was more atmospheric. I'm not going to go any deeper than that, it's a fucking font, that's all.

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My friend Jarrod who's lending me a few FF gamebooks I need to complete this blog has his own blog you can find at http://vom-krieg.blogspot.com. He describes it as "a blog about boardgaming, wargaming, painting and modeling" and that's pretty spot on. Check it out if that kind of thing tickles your fancy, floats your boat, tests your luck, and all that.

#56 - Knights of Doom

No, it's not a thousand Z-grade black metal songs/bands, it's FF#56, Knights of Doom, in all its purple and turquoise glory.

The back story is set 100 years ago, a long time ago in a land far, far away called Ruddlestone, there was a king whose brother was jealous, and a bit of a dick.

Consumed by his hatred, the king's brother Belgaroth - though for the purposes of humour, I'm going to call him Anakin - turned to the dark side, worshipping the 'Dark Gods of Chaos' and generally trying to overthrow the king so he could rule the galaxy, err I mean Ruddlestone, with an iron fist.

He was defeated though, and not heard of again... until now.

A giant swirling vortex appeared in the sky, a gateway from our world to that of the spirits, allowing evil demons and ghosts and, presumably Zuul, to enter Ruddlestone.

Who they gonna call? ♫ GHOSTBUS... nope. You. Or in this case, me.

I'm a Knights Templar, somehow displaced from medieval Europe into the hilariously-named Ruddlestone, and despite a SKILL of 9, I'm somehow considered one of the best around. I have mean skills in Arcane Lore, Commune, Battle Tactics and Tracking, and a magic sword.

The fact that even with a magic sword my SKILL is only 9 kind of worries me, to be honest. I'm really the best the king has?

I'm not even on my way before a ghost demon thing appears on a horse, and tries to kill the king. I fight him off and kill him - with no help from anyone else in the room, the lazy bastards.

After dispatching the ghost, I get some weapons from the armory, jump on my horse 'Firemane' (isn't that now a nickname for Lindsay Lohan?) and make for the town of Wendeform.

On the way there, I'm accosted by an angry mob wielding pitchforks and torches, as if they're off to lynch a black man or something. They're led by a dude with a skull for a face in a black robe and carrying a scythe - Death, is that you? Leading a half-assed lynch mob, really? There's also a leper and Kate Moss ("... a gaunt woman, her almost skeletal body covered by a tattered cloak. It looks like she has not eaten for weeks." Actually, that could be Amy Winehouse, considering her company.)

They surround me, bitching about how everyone is poor and struggling, whilst us Knight Templars swan about in relative luxury - yep, I'm the 1 percent! I convince them I'm on their side, perhaps leaving out the fact I'm actually working for the king - the 0.0001 percent.

They buy it, and let me on my way. Heh, dumbass peasants.

Time to rest! But I wake up in the night, sensing "all is not well". How the book knows of my real-life insomnia escapes me.

It sure isn't well - there's a disembodied hand carrying a dagger trying to stab me! (This is where real life and the book part ways, don't worry.) I jump on my horse and ride away as fast as I can - there's only so fast a ghost hand can go, apparently.

(Quick aside - there's a fantastic new anti-drink driving advert on TV here in NZ that's gone viral online, largely thanks the to the immortal line, 'You know I can't grab your ghost chips.' Check it out here. Seriously, do. If when you think of NZ you imagine volcanoes, hobbits and rugby, this will put things right.)

The next morning I arrive in Wendeford, pay no heed to the time of day and hit the 'Bristling Bear' bar. The barlady tells me there's this crazy wizard dude Herluin who lives in the forest, so I trek off to meet him.

He's dead, but in his dying struggle he conveniently left a few books out I figure could help me in my quest. One's described as a 'bestiary', and the text only describes one entry - the cockatrice, a cockerel/snake/bat crossbreed thing that sounds perfect for a dark and gritty reboot of The Wuzzles. I wonder if there'll be one later in the adventure, hmmm? No really, I didn't make it that far, so I can only assume. It's not like the book was open to 'evil demon'.

The other book contains a spell for summoning an evil demon, but I don't know this until I've read it out loud, duh.

I hit the undo button, but it knocks the book out of my hand before I'm done, so a fight it is and I'm out of here.

On the way to Havalok, I'm accosted by a band of murderers - I'm not sure how I know they're murderers, since they've not yet murdered me. Is an apprentice, first-time would-be murderer still a murderer? Ironically I dispatch them all - putting an arrow in the back of the one who fled - and pinch the whopping three gold pieces they're carrying between them, which is strangely exactly how many I need to spend at the 'Red Herring' Inn that night in Havalok. Suspicious...

The next day I figure I should put that 'Battle Tactics' skill to good use, and decide to hire some mercenaries. They won't join unless I can defeat their leader in battle, and for someone who's allegedly the king's best soldier, I put in a piss-poor effort. Couldn't even hit their guy once! He's not even wearing a top and I can't get in a scratch.

In fact, I'm so lame at fighting, later that day I'm killed by a group of street performers dressed in a dragon costume.

Most embarrassing. Fighting Fantasy Death. EVER.

The king's #1 dude, entrusted with saving the land of Ruddlestone, killed by goddamn mimes. Or whatever you call a bunch of hippies dressed in a homemade dragon costume made of toilet rolls and crepe paper.

'Mimes of Doom' wouldn't have made a very good book title, though. Or would it...

#55 - Deathmoor

It hasn't got the most inspiring cover in the world, nor the most original setting, but Deathmoor was a better read than I thought it would be.

It's a classic FF start - basic rules, nothing fancy, right down the 10 sets of provisions and a potion of your choice (I rolled 12/15/11, so that would be STAMINA, then).

The only oddity anyone skipping the rules would have missed out on was your possession of a scarlet pearl, whose only plot function appears to be to start a fight, which is as good a reason as any I can think of.

So, there's this princess who's been kidnapped by some evil dude, and she needs rescuing. Except you've been on holiday, diving for pearls and generally resting it up in some exotic part of the Old World, so don't get the message in time. Instead, the king and queen get your rival Fang-zen to deliver a message to the bad dude acceding to his demands, promising him half their kingdom if they return her in one piece.

Which is odd, since all the bad dude wants is revenue from the gold mines, which according to the princess' parents isn't exactly the be-all and end-all of their kingdom's economy.

Even stranger, they say 'half our kingdom' is the 'usual fee for such work', which makes me wonder a) how many times this has happened, and b) how big their kingdom used to be.

Since I've not got the job, I decide to go drinking. Well, the book decides that, which is fine by me. 'Several bars and several hours later' whaddya know - there's Fang-zen, drunk off his ass.

I sit down and challenge him to a game of pinfinger and win, but he's broke and can't pay up.

Instead, he gives me the contract to find the princess - literally, half a kingdom.

The bar's owner isn't happy about the knife marks we've left on his precious table, so to pay up I give him a town - just kidding, he's happy as Larry with a single gold piece. I'm such a good landlord.

It's not really my kingdom until I've rescued Princess Peach though, so onto another bar it is, of course. "You may as well carry on drinking, now that you've started!" That's what the actual book says, I'm not making that up. I like this book so much already.

The night ends as badly as many have in my real life though, buying a lice-infested heather from some old crone. I don't think the book meant a heather in the sense of a stuck-up rich girl, which is what Google tells me a heather is, but the book's already sent me on a bender which without, finishing the quest would be impossible, so who knows!

I stayed up all night, and hit the markets in the morning, probably after some fried chicken or something. Instead I came across an old-timey $2 shop, except everything cost 2GP. Bought the usual FF necessities - rope, knife, etc. And some 'sallow-seed oil', since that sounded incredibly specific.

Went to the docks, and some guys down there told me to visit the Baron, who "has a finger in every evil pie". Mmmm, evil pie.

On the way there, I was set upon by a pack of wild wolf-type things, losing a STAMINA point for every attack round the fight went on - in Deathmoor, there are a lot of fights, and almost every one has some kind of quirk like this. I liked it, as it gave each fight a point of interest, though I'm sure I would have liked it a lot less had I not rolled a SKILL of 12. Didn't even find out what most most of the consequences were, as a result, but they can't have been pretty.

I bribe my way past the Baron's guard, and just wander on in to his house, and he's a bit pissed off about that, so I charge him - with my head. Seriously? I'm carrying a sword, aren't I? Why am I charging him with my head?

Anyway, I cut him down, and he tells me the princess is being held by Arachnos (Wow, I wonder if he's a spider...) beneath Deathmoor.

His dying action is to release the bats, I run, and head off out of town. Three days without drinking later, I'm accosted by a giant, who wants to see the contract - I show him, he says he'll bring the princess back in two days, I don't believe him, and sneakily follow.

Soon enough, Fang-zen appears, and if the artwork is to be trusted, he's wearing jandals, which explains how I knew he was coming, and easily fight him off. Seriously, jandals? No wonder his SKILL is said to be two less than mine. It's a fashion penalty.

Fortunately, the book doesn't give me the option of taking the jandals, 'cause being a Kiwi, I'd probably put them on.

That night, I come across a small village, and no one really wants me to stay the night. There's a recently-burned cottage with warm blood all over it, which doesn't appeal, so I pay off a villager who watches over me all night carrying a poker - and I don't think he was carrying a hand of cards.

Despite this, I apparently sleep well, and the next day, reach Deathmoor. The first fight there is against a couple of Blackhearts - no, not Joan Jett's band - a Dark Elf/Orc cross. I didn't even know they could breed.

Heading south, I find a sign with letters missing - it reads 'P___OUS WELL'. Ooh, a pious well! Err, probably not. The book then has me heading west, through the fog and up a hill, telling me, 'If you carry on climbing, in as (sic) straight as line as possible, you can't go wrong, can you?'

Well, from real life experience, no, you can go wrong. Very, very wrong.

Next I find the pious well, assume it's another form of piousness - poison - and leave it well alone (see what I did there?).

The next encounter was with a bird of some kind, not very interesting, found its nest, blew a whistle, ran away into a cave, fought a spider, went further into the cave, found a pool of lava, and fell in and died.

Killed by a bad dice roll.

I know it all sounds very random, but it was an enjoyable book to read. I had an impression I was actually doing quite well until I rolled a bad number too, which is a little disappointing - hence the rushed end, since I'm a little pissed off - but them's the breaks.

The writing had a dry kind of humour to it you don't often find in FF gamebooks, and despite its cliched yet nonsensical plot, the writing and variation in encounters made it a page-turner.

Now, I've read a bit about the ending of the book being very disappointing - as in you have to solve a fiendishly difficult maths problem, then get all of a few lines describing your victory - and it's not even on page 400!

One of the writers on that link in the previous paragraph even said he passed "all my maths exams at school with flying colours", which I find a little hard to believe. I skimmed the paragraphs until I found the problem, and it took me only a few minutes to work out in my head - and I'm 14 years out of school!

*semi-spoiler* Most of the numbers are red herrings; I assumed the lowest amount of time he'd divide his life into is a year, then multiplied the highest numbers he gave - 12 and seven. This gave 84. I'm not even sure if this was the correct method to be honest, nor can I recall the proper names of any mathematical process involved, but it just seemed right... and it was!***

Then again, I was the captain of a region-wide maths competition-winning team... when I was 11. That 11-year-old could have solved it in 30 seconds, and told you how he did it, and then described how when he was older he was going to be an astronaut and captain of the All Whites football team. I think in solving Deathmoor's puzzle I just got lucky, the more I think about it...

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I came across this blog the other day, http://turnto400.blogspot.com/. I've only had a quick glance, but it seems to be pretty much the same premise as this one - guy gets a batch of old FF gamebooks, plays 'em through, makes jokes, achieves everlasting internet fame.

The catch is it seems he spends a lot more time than I do writing his entries, so they're much funnier than mine in a lot of ways. Lucky I only have a few books left to do, huh? I spend about an hour doing mine, max. It probably shows! Anyway, check it out.

(His FF gamebook collection came in "two wine boxes". I think mine came in a single, large banana box, so he's already off to a better start.)

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My friend Jarrod who's lending me the last few FF gamebooks I need to complete this blog has his own blog you can find at http://vom-krieg.blogspot.com. He describes it as "a blog about boardgaming, wargaming, painting and modeling" and that's pretty spot on. Check it out if that kind of thing tickles your fancy, floats your boat, tests your luck, and all that.

#59 - Curse of the Mummy

Curse of the Mummy is ridiculous. It's the only gamebook I've written about so far (and I've written about almost all of them now) which I had to play three times (in less than 45 minutes) in order to get enough material.

After rolling SKILL 7, STAMINA 19 and LUCK 7, if I'd known any better (perhaps by reading past reviews) I wouldn't have bothered leaving the tavern the book begins in. Apparently it's impossible without maximum stats, maximum luck with the dice and a minimum of playing by the rules.

Anyway, you start the adventure as a broke mercenary who's just washed up in the town of Rimon after your ship was suck by pirates. To earn a bit of cash, you meet a dodgy guy with a moustache and sign up for a mission which is literally to save the world from the resurrection of some ancient Egyptian (but not Egyptian, this is Titan after all) pharoah.

And instead of hiring Bruce Willis or Arnold Schwarzenegger, he gets me, a guy with so little skill and luck, I'd probably be likely to kill myself refilling my jug at the bar.

(The book's intro throws in a reference to Atlantis for some reason, which would be baffling if Titan didn't already have a Japanese region that isn't Japan and an area suspiciously like the Middle East. This mummy apparently dates from before the sinking of Atlantis, when the three continents of Khul were one - hundreds of millions of years I assume - which means this book really should have been called Curse of the Long Buried Fossil.)

So just hired, my boss Jerran and I leave the bar, and are set on immediately by a few of the fossil Akharis' followers. I take the leader, that being a thing a guy with a skill of 7 does, and he takes one of the others. I stumble, and he puts his hands around my throat, but I manage to shake him off thanks to my dice, who've decided to be nice - for now.

We kill two of them, and a third flees into the crowd. We give chase, but there's some clown down the road who decides to release his fucking black lion just as we're passing by, and it kills me.

Long-time readers of this blog will know by now if I'm killed before I've even finished my first drink, I start again. This time, I roll SKILL 7, LUCK 7... oh fuck. FFFFFUUUU... what are the chances of that happening twice? 0.07 percent, that's what. (incidentally, (1/36)x(1/36) is 0.000771604938, which is the conversion rate for square inches into square yards. Coincedence? Yes.)

Play #2: We let the cult members run away, and Jerran gives me 30 gold - so instead of quitting while I'm ahead, we go shopping.

I buy some rope and grapple (always comes in handy), lantern (yep), a healing potion (my SKILL is 7), poison antidote (obvious), a torch (bound to rummaging around in dark tombs) and of course, a crystal pyramid (rarely a gamebook goes past without me needing a crystal pyramid).

And lots of food. At one point in the book I'm told to eat two meals or lose 2 STAMINA for each meal. How about I skip two meals, then eat one to offset the hunger? Author wasn't thinking.

Heading out of town, we make camp, and are attacked by a giant scorpion which has either a SKILL of 8 or 10 - the text has both - and has two attacks per attack round, and the ability to administer poison. WTF? Already? So I roll over and die again.

I'd only been reading the book about 15 minutes at this point, so let's pretend I won that battle with a flawless victory, and keep on going, eh?

Jerran can't do the same though, he's dead, no second - or third - chances. The book tells me I bury him the next morning, which I can only assume means I needed someone to spoon that night. Why else would I sleep with a corpse?

Heading towards the Shaman of the Spirit Rock ('cause pseudo-American Indian characters belong in a Titan-based gamebook about Egyptian mummies and Greek mythology) I eventually come across some roadside succulents. Forgetting for a second the book keeps a poison rating, I eat some, and it's poison. Of course. It's called 'barbthorn' I'm told, which would have been a good thing to know BEFORE I ate it.

My next obstacle is a group of rock-throwing bloody baboons. I fight a couple of them, then the leader (whom I called 'Caesar', of course) and the dice are especially kind, scaring the crap out of the others who flee.

With a whopping 3 STAMINA, I climb up the Spirit Rock (yay, rope and grapple) and meet Lopar, the Shaman - whom of course has a dog's head. He asks me a riddle I get on the first try (hint: ♫ Ticking away, the moments that make up a dull day... ♫) and he tells me I'll need lots of magic shit to beat Akharis. No shit, sherlock. I gain a solitary LUCK point for this wondrous insight, and head on.

(He did say something about a 'Demon Prince Sith' though, just to throw another culture from a long time ago into the mix).

The next day, I find a ruined temple type thing which reminds me less of ancient Egypt and more of the one from Lost where Ben's "judged" by ***spoiler*** the Man in Black. Anyway.

There's a map there I'm meant to understand, and I don't, so it's game over. Not sure if there's a key, or a clue from a previous paragraph or what, but I have no idea what the answer is. Sure, I found it within 10 seconds by flicking through the book, but I've already died twice and thrice is pushing the rules of the blog a bit far, so I call it a night.

It was only then I read those previous reviews and realised I was probably lucky to get as far as I did with SKILL and LUCK of 7! Twice.

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My friend Jarrod who's lending me the last few FF gamebooks I need to complete this blog has his own blog you can find at http://vom-krieg.blogspot.com. He describes it as "a blog about boardgaming, wargaming, painting and modeling" and that's pretty spot on. Check it out if that kind of thing tickles your fancy, floats your boat, tests your luck, and all that.

#58 - Revenge of the Vampire

After reading Revenge of the Vampire, something was bugging me. It didn't seem this vampire had anything to avenge, until I realised it's a sequel to Vault of the Vampire - replayed here - which has an almost identical cover. Hey, it's been a few years since I played that one.

Book 58, second to last, of the original FF series, and you could tell the publishers weren't giving too much of a fuck. The adventure sheet has three skill boxes instead of skill, stamina and luck, and the instructions talk about 'magic points', which as far as I can tell, there are none of in the book itself.

And there's the almost identical cover, but anyway...

I roll 11/20/7, with 4 'faith' - it's as if the dice know I'm an unlucky heathen.

The book also makes you keep a 'blood' score, which I initially thought was going to be a measure of literally how much blood I have, like in litres, but was more a measure of time, luck, and whatever else author Keith Martin felt like throwing in there at the time. Or luck, or whatever else....

Long story short, there's a vampire you have to kill... again. Setting off with a backpack bursting with 12 meals - none of them cheese, I hope, for reasons I'll explain soon - I'm thrown in the deep end, stealing a dead guy's gold and being run out of town.

I'm soon at the house of Sewarth, a monk who knows a thing or two about this Count Heydrich, but he's out - and no one seems to know why.

I don't trust his housesitters, and tell them so, but the book makes me stay the night anyway.

Not surprisingly I can't sleep, so decide to go chat to the creepiest housesitter, Endrell. He's not in his room, so naturally, it's time for snooping! Bad idea. Endrell catches me, sends me to bed without any supper, and gives me a "herbal nightcap".

Now, in real life, I'm suffering a pretty bad dose of insomnia, and know for sure that herbal crap doesn't work. In the book it does, so I'm guessing it's some kind of Allansian magic the doctor's here cant' prescribe. Like marijuana.

Turns out it's poison, and I'm dead.

Now, if you've read this blog before, you'll know this falls under my 'too short, not enough for a blog' rule, so backtracking to before I searched his room...

Endrell walks in, and sends me to bed with 'thin soup'. Hungry, I get up, and look for something to eat. I soon come across the dining room, but aren't given the option to go in (probably 'cause I'm carrying a backpack bursting with provisions, but still no cheese), so I pick a random door.

It's a prayer room, so what the hell, I decide to pray. The book tells me this time wasting costs me a blood point, which begs the question, what the hell god am I praying to?

It then tells me I should turn to page 381, if my 'hands are clean'. After that prayer session I'm not so sure! Anyway, following a trail of blood I find a ghoul monk, kill it, but am injured in the process - and by injured, I mean infected with 'bloodbane', which proceeds to drain my stamina - and initial stamina - luckily, this part of Allansia is overflowing with excess food (cheese still to come).

Next I find the kitchen, which for some ungodly reason has a trapdoor, where I find some of Sewarth's notes, telling me to find a 'Soul Gem'. It also has a smudged, unreadable map, which I assume was left there by some previous FF gamer.

I also gain two blood points - guessing Sewarth left a vial of it here?

Moving on, I'm heading out of town chasing this suspicious character riding in a horse-pulled carriage, and the only horse I can find costs me 'all' my gold. What kind of economy is this? Sounds commy.

In the morning, I catch up - he's heading into a bar. Fuckin' eh. I decline to go in, just hanging out in a local ditch for the night, sleeping in the day, as you do. Come evening, this guy I've no idea who he is, is leaving, and I need my horse, but the guys at the stable won't give him back. They want this thing called 'payment' - again with the socialism - which I can't provide, having spent all my money on the damn horse. So I kill them, take the hit in faith points, take their food (still no damn cheese) and head off.

A couple of lines of illegible note-taking later, I'm hanging with a dude called Sandar, who's wearing a sweet amulet. He's insane, but not after I snatch off his amulet.

Anyway, I need to find Crab Peak, which is where ye olde Count Heydrich is, and it takes me 10 blood points of time to find someone who knows. Um, okay...

Turns out, it sits in the middle of the 'Plains of Analand', near 'The Great Wall'. Both of these things are on the map at the front of the book, but a giant fucking mountain the middle of the plains isn't? Who drew this map? A FF gamer?

I get to Crab Peak, and there's a few old witches arguing. How do I know they're witches? Well, they're old, cranky and female - that's about all the evidence the book's giving me anyway.

I sneak into the mountain, and soon come across a room with 20 decaying dwarfs and an 'evil' monolith. I don't have 'Oil of Enchantment', a 'heart-shaped gem' or a 'magic sword', so can't do much.

Except kill the local witch and raid her treasures of gold and PRESERVED CHEESE! Finally, some goddamn cheese! Time to go through the ominous magical barrier? Nah, onto fight the other witch.

Easy fight, more gold (I could buy so many horses, if this were a capitalist society) and the book forces me on to this mansion, which I'm guessing belongs to the Count (one, one mansion, muahaha).

Another long story short, I end up in a room full of "weird" jars, with a "palpable sense of evil" in the air. So of course I'm going to smash a jar! Starting with an empty one, of course.

Nothing happens.

A dusty one? I lose one meal's worth of stamina due to a "freeze". Not given the option to open with stars and shit, 'cause it's "not wise".

A few doors later, I come across a mad scientist. He has a cure for everything - literally. The page says I drink his concoction, and I'm cured of whatever I have. I'm almost tempted to go find this guy in real life.

So I kill him, 'cause you know, he wants me to leave after performing his miracle cure, and find more cheese. Sweeet.

He also has these potions lying around, so I drink something called 'essence'. Turns out its effects are somewhat of a dice roll - lol - so I spend some luck to help it out. I lose one stamina. I guess I was drinking light beer?

Several battles with ghouls and zombies later - one fight is literally against 'more ghouls' - I come to Count Heydrich's quarters... where I die 'cause I dont' have a magic sword.

As if there's no other way to kill a vampire!

Right. So, it sounds like I've been pretty hard on this book, but it wasn't that bad. It just never seemed like I was in control of anything. I could tell early on it was one of those adventures where certain items would be vital - eg the book I saw in my ill-fated first attempt, which I had to pretend (several times) I hadn't seen in the second - and if I didn't have said items, it was a futile effort.

That's the flaw in these complicated adventure gamebooks - because it relies on asking if I have certain items, so often, I get an idea I'm going to fail pretty early on.

Still, I could see the depth was there - the game was long, even though I didn't have anywhere near the necessary number of items or amount of information to complete it, and I got to (I guess?!) the final boss without too much trouble - apart from the early death - but there were a lot of fights. A LOT of fights. Anything less than skill 11 and I would have been screwed.

A last question - why the hell weren't there any silver-plated stakes lying around? And why so much cheese, when what I needed was garlic?

#57 - Magehunter

Miss me? No? Alright then.

An old friend got in touch over Facebook, and has kindly agreed to loan me the FF books he's got that I don't, which is awesome. He's a collector, but has a couple of gaps he'd like to fill - so if you've got copies of FF55 or 56 you don't want, leave a comment on this entry and I'll put you in touch.

Okay! Now that's out of the way, let's take a look at Magehunter.

The basic premise is you're a hunter of mages (no wai!), but really wacky mages in particular. I say this, 'cause the book opens with a document called 'The Most Revered Treatise of MAGE HUNTING', which lists a bunch of magician rules that makes shit like "In Philadelphia, you can't put pretzels in bags" sound completely reasonable.

For example: "Wizards do not eat fish." Obviously wizards in this book don't listen to Nirvana, 'cause everyone knows it's okay to eat fish ('cause they don't have any feelings).

Or how about: "Every 101st footprint left by a mage is that of a cat." What, a cat paw print? Or a human footprint, but cat-shaped? Be more specific, Treatise! I want to know what to expect when I next see a cat-shaped imprint on the lawn.

And: "A hound which is fed for a week on nothing but goats meat may sniff out the scent of a wizard." I like how you can go to the effort of feeding your hound nothing but goat for a week, and there's still a chance he might not sniff out a wizard. Back to eating Chump, Rover.

Anyway. There's this particularly naughty mage called Mencius whom you capture just as the book begins, but that won't fill 400 pages, so of course he gets away.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. First, there's the small matter the Adventure Sheet contains three skill boxes. Now, I know people like to say rolling 12 for their skill is a skill in itself - and some seem to be suspiciously good at it - but doing it three times? Turns out it's a printing error. So is the fact my potential companion has a box for his/her provisions, but I don't. Not like I need to eat, is it? Not even fish!

Funnily enough, I do actually roll a skill and luck of 12, thanks to lucky red die. I used the white die for my starting gold stash, and got a 2. Fuck you, white die. And fuck you companion, whoever you were meant to be, 'cause you never showed up. Anyway, getting ahead of myself.

So! Mencius escapes, kidnapping the heir to the something or rather, and I have to get him back. He's vanished down some magic portal inside a crack in the earth, conveniently disguised by a simultaneously-occurring earthquake. Us here in New Zealand have learned a thing or two about earthquakes in the past year (yes, even those of us up in Auckland), and not even Ken Ring says jumping into a seismic crack is a good idea.

Mencius conveniently leaves his spell book behind, so I'm able to learn how he did it, and create my own wormhole. Where will I end up? Lucky red die rolls me a 2, and on the other side I've suddenly aged 10 years, and find myself standing on a cliff edge over Mencius' dead body.

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED! Nice one, lucky red die!

Not so fast... I still need to find that idiot who got himself kidnapped in the first place, I guess. I have the option of climbing a mountain or following a river, so I choose to follow the river 'cause that song by Lykke Li about following rivers keeps getting stuck in my head. In real life, not the book, 'cause that would be weird.

I come across a town, with "towers... with tops like onions", populated by "strange dark people" dressed in "silk", who speak in an "incomprehensible guttural gabble" which gives me a headache.

Woah, holy pre-911 book, Batman.

Anyway, despite finding myself in what is essentially pre-Renaissance Constantinople, I manage to find a sweet bar and befriend a drunk bearded man, Al-Bakbuk. He teaches me a bit of the local lingo - probably mostly insults and pick-up lines - so as a gift, I decide to give him this ring I found earlier. I should have guessed giving it a quick clean would summon a genie.

The genie teaches me the rest of the "guttural" language, which is pretty awesome, and Al-Bakbuk gives me a turban, which is, um, "Cool... it's a turban. Thanks..."

Anyway, I head out shopping to find better shit than a stupid turban, but it's all a ripoff, so I head to the city of Kallamehr to find Al-Bakbuk's brother, Al-Fakik. Al-Fakik tells me to see a guy whose name doesn't begin with Al. Saleem. I'll apparently know him when I see him, 'cause he has a monkey on his shoulder. What, all the time? When does the monkey poo?

(Speaking of odd rules, here's another gem from the Treatise: "If submerged in water, a sorcerer's body will swell to twice its size." Does that also apply to witches? 'Cause that would have helped the peasants from that scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail no end... Ni!)

I don't bother, instead checking out this awesome tower I caught in the corner of my eye. On arrival, that heir to the thing I mentioned earlier's there, except it's not him - it's Mencius, what a twist! - so I unleash my language-teaching genie and run away. I know I'm carrying a gun with bullets capable of killing wizards (takes a silver bullet in this book, because... it's not explained, but I'm going assume they're all part werewolf), but I'm not given the option to shoot.

I go to the authorities, 'cause maybe they'll have the option to shoot to kill, but they're not convinced anything's the matter.

Now, one thing this book does a lot - and fairly well, from what I could tell in my particular journey - is getting the player to take notes, write down words, make marks on their Adventure Sheet - which affects the gameplay and plot. It's pretty cool, except I could see in the text that adding too many "x" marks would lead to a "fame" note, and that can NOT be good to get.

So I decided to go after Mencius, which was a bad idea. He unleashed a whole lot of skeletons on me, and the genie didn't show up, 'cause I bailed on him earlier. DEAD is me.

Which sucks, 'cause I was quite enjoying Magehunter. It's well-written, unpredictable, and as far as I could tell, on the winning side of the fine line dividing" WTF" with "WTF, this sucks". After reading it I did a bit of a Google, and it seems I might be alone in thinking this.

And I just realised I think I only made a single die roll in the entire adventure, which is kind of cool, but kind of annoying, since I spent 10 minutes earlier this evening trying to find my damn dice, whilst trying not to attract the attention of a toddler that was refusing to go to sleep.

I must have got 'lucky'.

So! That was Magehunter. Big ups to Jarrod for the loan, and hopefully I'll be back in the near future with FF58. Till then... remember this: "Dressing a sorcerer in undyed cloth will tie him to the earth."

#48 - Moonrunner

So I'm out of FF gamebooks, or at least I thought I was till one of YOU sent me Moonrunner! Thanks Mark! I'll post you one of my albums, though I'm not sure whether that's really a fair exchange...

Moonrunner's a good one. You're a bounty hunter, but not named, so you can pick one, I guess. Is anyone here not going to pick Boba Fett? No? Okay. Let's move on.

Mr Fett has to track down the last big war criminal still bugging the Old World town of Blackhaven, which is in no way a sideways-universe Blacksand, not at all. Except it totally is, but with a more Sherlock Holmes-era London kind of feel.

The book's true distinction is letting you pick a bunch of skills from a list, but implementing those skills naturally, and in a way that makes the narrative feel open and enveloping. More on that later.

This guy Bennet is giving me the info-dump, and in the very first paragraph he's killed, John Locke-on-Naomi-style - a thrown knife in the back. A quick look reveals who forged it - Alcham Lugosh - which is really useful... not, and I jump out the window in pursuit of the assassin. I spot him talking to a man running a horse and carriage, and disappear. I leap onto the now-moving carriage, and wait. And wait. And soon enough, the jockey drives the whole thing into the "filthy" river.

Growing up where I did, I know all about filthy rivers.

Anyway, I lost that brand name knife trying to swim out, but being stinky and wet didn't stop some beggar woman trying to chat me up. Beggars can'[t be choosers, I guess.

As it's the time of night when even pubs in a hole like Blackhaven are closed, I decide to pay a visit to Mr Lugosh. It's an option, so I guess he's an all-hours knifeman.

I should have known better though - it was a trap. Literally - I fell into a pit with 12 dead guys, all missing three fingers. This must be where woodwork teachers and guitarists from Black Sabbath go to die. That, or the New Testament story of the 12 disciples was a rose-tinted version of events.

The room starts filling with water, and I reach for a beam above to try and pull myself out. Oh yeah, that's right - Mr Lugosh is some kind of Ginsu fiend, and I quickly find out why so many dudes are missing three fingers. His knife skills are so precise, he makes sure his traps always cut off precisely three fingers - no more, no less, and all on one hand - just enough to make you lose 1 SKILL and a massive 2 STAMINA points. Really? Later in the book I get 'roughed up' by some ruffians, and I lose 2 STAMINA points. What did they do, chop off three of my toes?

I escape the pit by floating to the top as the water rises (slap to the forehead), and morning has dawned, so it's time to hit the pub. Not the doctor, the pub.

Some trickster is trying to con people into giving him money, so I try to use my own con skill on him. The book only gives me the option of using sleight of hand, which I don't have. This will be a recurring feature. Still, I win, and am loaded and set for the rest of the game.

I ask the bar wench about the Cabal of the Werewolf, the dodgy group behind the bad guy's plans. The entire bar kicks out their stools, I assume in a manner I think only David Cross could describe, and eye me up. I repeat my question, and lose that 2 STAMINA I was talking about earlier.

It works out though when some old lady professer gives me soup and money, and tells me I need to find these six MacGuffins in order to beat Mr Bad Guy. And only nine hours in which to do it! For some reason. What if I had waited till a reasonably drinking hour to visit this bar? "It is 4pm and... you're out of time! So ah... let's just get wasted."

To be fair, the quests to get these six items were quick but interesting. I got to con some orcs (no, I don't need a medal), buy a magic shroud for almost nothing, kill a demon. I also went to the Three Broken Fingers Tavern, which seemed appropriate at the time.

I got three of the widgets out of six, and as if by magic - or plot requirements - came across the secret meeting of the Priory of Sion, no wait, the Eternal Fraternity of the Rosy Chalice. Either or. I got gassed, and woke up in a coffin. Uh-oh.

I wouldn't tell Mr Bad Guy what I knew, so had my face eaten off by rats. Once again, sleight of hand would have been handy, somehow. I guess it extends to sleight of face?

Was a good read though. Yes, rats eating my face killed me.

But despite my jabs above, it was a well-written book, with much illusion of freedom and openness, despite the few obvious plot-pushing points. The skills do work well, even if in my ignorance of the game, I chose poorly. For the record I chose combat, so I could be like Sayid, con so I could be like Sawyer, disguise so I could be like Man in Black, and tracking so I could be like, er, Kate. Or Locke. If you've no idea what I'm talking about, sorry - I'm not going to try and explain five seasons and 16 episodes of Lost to you :) (One more episode... I'm about to explode!)

I liked the author Stephen Hand's other FF book, Legend of the Shadow Warriors, too.

Anyway... the latest issue of Fighting Fantazine is out, issue #3, PDF download with loads of Fighting Fantasy goodies. Check that out, and if you need some sounds to listen to while you're reading it, I've got a new album out under my Radio Over Moscow banner - it's called 'Hide the Decline', and you can download it free or chuck me $5 and have a dynamic, less compressed mix of the album and bonus goodies.

All good. Till next time...

Combat Heroes 1 - White Warlord

So, aside from the few I haven't got copies of yet, I'm out of FF books (and it's been 20 years since I tried a round Advanced FF with a bunch of highly uninterested intermediate school friends, so you can forget that!).

But a workmate dumped me with a few gamebooks from his personal collection he wanted done, so hey - why not?

I think though just grabbing one off the pile at random was a bad idea.

Firstly, White Warlord does not require dice. That was my first clue I was throwing myself in the deep end. The second? The paragraphs don't have any text.

Err, what?

This book is like a first-person-shooter, except without the shooting, and in book form. I know that sounds... retarded, but I'll try to explain.

So, pretend it's the mid-'80s, and two-player first-person-shooters don't exist yet, or they do, but suck. But things sucking or not existing never stopped nerds in the '80s, thus the Combat Heroes series was born.

Thing is, to have two players going against each other, two books would be needed, much like two controllers are needed these days. And much like console makers nowadays only ever ship one controller with the console, forcing you to buy a second one if you want to play two-player, Joe Dever realised not everyone would have both books (or a friend to play with) - so included a solo game in each.

Thing is, the solo game has no combat, at all, let alone any heroism. In White Warlord, the solo game, your arch enemy captures you and throws you in a dungeon. To win the game, you have to escape the dungeon, which you can only do so by collecting a bunch of trinkets in a particular order, and not be killed by traps.

And that's it. Hmmm. It's like Deathtrap Dungeon, without the plot.

So after two pages of instructions, skipping the 20 or so pages of instructions for the two-player game (thank god - it looked more like a technical manual than anything), I'm thrown right into it, on page 7.

The game itself is largely illustrations of what you can see directly in front of you, with a four-pointed compass showing possible directions to go in. If an action is available, there's a secondary set of paragraphs of text telling you what happens.

At first, I found it disorienting, despite trying to keep a map. I'm so used to N-S-E-W, that when I'm suddenly confronted with directions based on which way I'm facing - a no-brainer when playing on the PC or PlayStation - I've no idea which way I'm going. Even after getting the hang of it, almost every illustration that doesn't have a picture of an axe swinging at you looks pretty much the same. It might as well have been the infamous Warlock of Firetop Mountain maze - all text, no obvious way out.

After wandering around and diminishing my stamina, I mean endurance, to a single point, I had some luck - I found my way back to where I started, and went the other way. Almost immediately I'd found the first trinket of 10, then a second. Then I was killed by a swinging axe.

The traps were so brutal, and my luck in picking the right random pages so bad, I kind of wish I had dice to decide my fate for me.

I imagine this book would have been O for awesome if I'd sat down with a friend in 1988 and played it. Nowadays, it just came over as the most clunky way you could ever hope to present a one-on-one fight to the death in a maze, ever. The two-player instructions took 10 times as many pages as the single-player instructions, and that about sums it up.

Though, at least it would have lived up to the title Combat Heroes!

If you played this book a lot though, you'd get real good at flipping pages. Ninety percent of what you're doing is flipping pages. If you were playing the exact same story on a PC or console, it'd be 15 minutes of gameplay, including mapping, failed attempts and learning, to clock it.

So um, yeah. Might have been great in its time, but there's a reason people still get into FF, and I'd never heard of Combat Heroes till now. I trust Dever's Lone Wolf books are better!

Sorcery #4 - The Crown of Kings

Eight hundred pages - twice that of a normal FF book. Epic. But only if you finish it, of course.

And I highly doubt The Crown of Kings is able to be completed without completing the three before it. I guess.

Regardless, the book begins as the others did - with the assumption your character, if not you, has completed the previous three. It's a little disconcerting, considering there's no explanation in the intro, bar the usual blurb familiar from The Shamutanti Hills.

It's like dropping in on Arrested Development two seasons in, or Lost at any point that isn't the pilot.

So, night's approaching, and I have to choose from three caves - small, medium or large. Who am I, Goldilocks? Still, I chose the smallest cave, because you know, it felt just right. Or something.

There's a monster of sorts in there - I can't see it, but it sounds horrific. Time for a spell! No matter I can't remember what does what - come on, I've died how many times now? Can't expect my memory to be that great. HOW! Don't have an orb crystal. KIN! No gold-backed mirror. Fuck it, I'll just use my sword.

It's a jib-jib - the tribbles of the FF world. Great. Still, for some reason it's guarding a parchment I can't read.

The next day, I leave, taking some dust and three - and only three - pebbles with me. Heading on across a rope bridge, I'm soon confronted by a bird man. It won't translate the scroll for me - so I blast it with a magic fireball and stab it to death. That's how I've decided to roll - at least till I run out of stamina to waste on awesome magic tricks.

I stop to rest in another cave, this one has a message from a guy called Colletus (the slack-jawed yokel?), who's hanging out by the 'Groaning Bridge', apparently.

After a non-moaning bridge, I'm confronted with a ridiculously dangerous landslide. I know it's ridiculously dangerous, because it took me four lives to get past. Yeah, I died. Four times. But I didn't think any Fighting Dantasy entry should be fewer words than pages in the book being reviewed! I tried HUF - pretending my reanimated corpse still carried the Galehorn from The Seven Serpents - and died. Tried ZIP, and died. Tired NIF, mostly because it was on offer, and died (it creates a pungent smell. I'm not sure how it would have worked - perhaps the smell would attract a pterodactyl, Riddling Reaver or deus ex machina who'd whisk me away to safety?) . ROK? Um, rocks are already rocks. Dead.

WAL is the one.

Moving on, we're pretty much outside the fortress. Stabbed a couple of guards as they drunkenly slept, ate their food, usual Saturday night stuff in the suburb I live. Although they obviously had grog and food, they must've had nowhere to sleep, 'cause I had to sleep in another cave. Not sure where I found a cave at the gates to the fortress of Mampang.

Anyway, Libra came to me in a dream (no, she couldn't translate my scroll either). "At each stage of the journey, you have been successful." LOL. Anyway, she says she can't help me once I'm inside the fortresses - so I take the luck and stamina bonuses now.

Just as well too - at the actual gates there are four guards, none of them sleeping. I DUM one of them into a stupor, and narrowly slay the other three. Five stamina points left.

Once in the gates, it's as if I'm back in the land of the three bears - three doors to choose from, etc. Except this time, I choose... poorly. I found three Black Elves (who couldn't translate my scroll either). So far so good. Being on only five stamina points, I thought I'd try and befriend them. So far again, so good. But then...

I wasn't asked to test my skill or luck or anything. It was just assumed this would be my attempt at befriending a group of Black Elves.

"So, how do you black-skinned creatures keep from bumping into each other at night?"

Oh dear. They were apparently "deeply insulted" by my "harmless remark". I'm not at all surprised they kill me. I guess it was 1985, and it was still cool...

Weird way to end the series, huh?

Anyway... the link I mentioned last night is now tidied up. As in, if you click it, you get my current musical endeavour's website, etc. The album's free to download in some formats, so go nuts. Can't say it has a huge FF influence, though the next one - almost done already - might.

Oh wow.

I just realised a couple of links on my site are woefully out of date, haha! I've upgraded some, but the banner at the bottom of the site will have to wait till the morning.

Yes, you can still access my 'personal' blog on Livejournal, but nowadays it's just a feed from the blog on my website, radioovermoscow.com - another link I had to get into the 211th decade (210th?). I dropped the old musical moniker last year, to start anew.

It's late here, so that one at the bottom - if anyone ever dared scroll down 20 entries and click on a banner ad - will have to wait till tomorrow.

If you've read this far, you must really love this blog, so where do you think I should go from here? We're running out of FF books, and it's been 19 years since I tried to host an Advanced FF game. An awesome workmate has lent me some Lone Wolf books, and a couple of others, is this the new (old) thing, you reckon?

Anwyay. If you're itching for a FF fix in the meantime, you should check out Fighting Fantazine. Alex, a fellow Kiwi, has done an awesome job getting this webzine together, it's a few issues old, and includes edited-for-typos, swearing and nonsense-versions of entries from this blog.

Watching season six Lost, I'm almost convinced a re-do of this entire blog is needed - done as if the continent of Titan was under the water. WOAH

Sorcery #3 - The Seven Serpents

Much like John Locke, death can't stop the hero of the Sorcery! series, and so here we go again, with part three - The Seven Serpents.

It's been a while since I did part two, enough time to go back to Hogwarts and get a bit more magic training done. Well, a skim through the back few pages before beginning.

So, onto the book. The bad guy's got some magic winged serpents who've found out your on the way to wreck his evil shenanigans, so they're on their way to tell him. All seven. And they're magic. Not so magic they can just magic themselves back to bad guy HQ (which despite the fantasy setting, I like to think resembles Globex Corporation). Or fly.

The seven serpents are kind of based on the elements. And the sun and moon. And time. If they aligned themselves with Captain Planet, we could've knocked this climate change business on the head a long time ago. That 'heart' kid really screwed things up.

So, into the Baklands. Right on the first page there are storm clouds, the region is unmapped, and there's a big fuck-off scary bird illustration. Great. Turns out they're Nighthawks (fighter of the Dayhawks?) and they're here to fuck my shit up. I think hey, I know my magic spells, having just read my spell book prior to my resurrection, and cast WAL (it makes a wall). They fly around it.

Luckily, an even scarier bird turns up and frightens them off, and it has a message for me - the serpents are on their way, blah blah blah. It then leaves, under a cloak of invisibility. Doesn't offer to give me a ride to my destination or anything.

Moving on, I stop to eat and a talking tree tells me to go east, where a hermit will give me some advice. Ents don't lie, right?

This one didn't. I came across Shadrack, a hermit in the middle of nowhere that knew all about my journey. Come on! If a hermit in the middle of the Baklands, which no Analander has ever successfully crossed, knows about my mission... I'm again wondering how important it is to kill these serpents. Word about my mission is probably all over the Old World Twitter by now.

The next bunch I come across don't know me though. A group of Centaurs tell me there's a snake charmer nearby, so I head off in search of him. Maybe he's managed to lure some of these supposedly magic serpents.

He hasn't, it turns out - he's just got a bunch of ordinary snakes, which he controls with his magic flute. No, neither of those was a euphemism. I cast SUS, quickly work out he wants to know what's in my pack. Nothing he wants, it turns out, so in true FF tradition, a fight breaks out. He's a good snake charmer though - his six pets attack me one at a time. I don't know, I've never had to train a snake before, but they don't strike me as the kind of animal you can get to fight in sequence.

Maybe I found a really, really narrow hallway?

Anyway, I barely win, and have snake bite poison running through my system. Still, I pick up his magic flute and some holy water for my troubles. Isn't it convenient that everyone in Titan carries magical items on their person?

The poison will kill me by sundown if I don't find a cure, so I trek on quickly. Despite my efforts to avoid another rumble, considering I'm bleeding stamina points at double the normal rate, I'm soon attacked by an Internet Explorer. Wait, I mean a Firefox. If it was an Internet Explorer, I'd probably have been hit with a virus on top of my poison. BA-DOOM-TISH!

It eventually kills itself - no joke. Every time I hit it, it explodes into fire, risking my wellbeing, but losing 1 skill and 1 stamina itself. Not being the brightest creature, it exploded into fire on a single stamina point. If it was Internet Explorer, the book itself probably would have crashed.

Night soon came. I decided to trek on, in the hope of finding some snake poison antidote before the morning, and in doing so, lost 4 stamina points instead of 2, which killed me. I like to think I walked myself to death, rather than died from poison. It's somehow more noble.

The next book, The Crown Of Kings, is something like a million pages long. It's gonna take some mental preperation to dive into that. I've had Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged sitting on my bedside table for about two or three weeks now - that's where I put it when I got home from the library, and that's likely where it will be when I have to return it. It's just so... epic-looking. Well, that, and apparently it's a sickening book no self-respecting liberal kind of guy should ever take seriously.

We'll see which I get to first.

#53 - Spellbreaker

Reading some of the previous reviews of Spellbreaker, I think a better title for the book might be 'Gamebreaker'. Luckily, I didn't knowingly come across any of the multiple bugs it has, nor did I notice when I owned it the first time around. Probably 'cause I always cheated.

Anyway, so you're some guy who unwittingly lets the Titan equivalent of a Sith steal some magic book from a woefully undefended monastery, which in four nights will allow the demon pictured on the right (I assume) escape the snug, overheating coffin he's been trapped in. With the help of Skeletor, it would appear.

And despite the fact you've rolled a SKILL score of 7, it's somehow up to you to retrieve the book. Okay, maybe you didn't, but I did. Luckily (pun intended) I rolled a LUCK score of 12, which staved off the inevitable just long enough for me to have enough material to write this blog entry.

So, book thief guy left a parting gift in the form of a demon, one I had to fight in the very first paragraph. With a SKILL of 7, I was facing the very real probability I'd set some kind of FF record for lameness. I got through it, and Brother Hugo, whom I picture to be a cross between Desmond Hume (in his monk phase) and Hugo Reyes, healed my wounds. But only some of them.

The next morning, it was time to pursue the thief, who was probably using dark magic and his day in advance to hightail it back to Evil HQ. Still, I took a few minutes to check out the herb garden, on the monks' advice. They only had three herbs, which is kinda lame for an old-timey religious order. I thought they were smashed the whole time. I chose this lame herb harden over the library, thinking I only had time for one. An hour later, after waiting for some old fat bitch I'd agreed to escort in exchange for cash (escort in the traditional sense, not the naughty sense - I'd need a lot more than 10 gold pieces for that), gamebook mechanics meant I had to spend it sitting about grumbling about how shitty the herb garden was, instead of reading essential information about the plot-to-be in the no doubt awesome library.

The woman has an entire entourage of bodyguards, but she's paying me, with my epic SKILL level of 7, to defend them all? She's stupider than she is fat. The gaudy pimp rings should have tipped me off. Her name is Attana. I call her Fattana.

Anyway, not long after heading off I fail to spot an ambush by brigands, who almost kill me and make off with Fattana's jewellery box. I don't really care, but she tells me if I find it I can have what's inside, and gives me a key marked '252' - the year of her wedding. She's older than I thought.

Ditching that hapless crew, I venture into a small town, and hit up the local bar. If you've read my previous entries, you'd know this is a regular feature of this blog/FF gamebooks. Found some guys who were having a storytelling competition, so thought yeah, I've got some great stories, I'll enter.

Unfortunately, the book didn't give me the option of telling the story about that time I biked 100km through a gorge or woke up one New Year's Day in a tent wearing someone else's shirt, so I lost. I had to roll two die beneath my SKILL level instead. How does my swordfighting prowess affect my ability to tell a good story? Fuck knows.

Anyway, the next day I went to the markets to waste some more time, and a guy asked me if I wanted to buy a hawk. That's not a question that needs asking. Of course I want to buy a fucking hawk. Unfortunately, I'd already bought some cheap Shroud of Turin knockoff, and couldn't afford it. I could afford a whole backpackfull of cheap 'herbs' though, and made my way west towards the city gates.

Came across some religious morons, which the book's description led me to believe they were a cross between the Hare Krishna guys who dance through the CBD here in Auckland every Friday around 6pm, and Opus Dei, as they appeared in The Da Vinci Code.

Turns out I was kind of right - they were the 'Acolytes of Pain'. If I ever form a black metal/goth rock band, it will be called the Acolytes of Pain. They think I'm some kind of heathen (really? No wai!) and try to kill me. I'm already low on stamina, so wolf down three meals and jump the city walls. If I could do that in real life, I would have moved out of Hamilton long before I did.

On the outside though, I don't last long. I survived a werewolf attack through liberal use of LUCK and some of those crazy herbs, but am soon torn apart by werewolves.

If it wasn't werewolves, it would have been the plague tormenting the next town on the road anyway.

Soooo... thanks to my workmate Dan #2, who has loaned me this book and a bunch of others - non FF, but a few Lone Wolf ones and some others that look like Mad Max. I've still got to get through the last two Sorcery! entries at some point too... I should get reading.