It is fourteen years to the day since I started this blog. Fourteenth anniversaries aren’t usually seen as being particularly noteworthy, but in the realm of gamebooks the number 14 has a special significance, as it’s the number of the section to which players of J.H. Brennan’s Grail Quest books are sent whenever their character dies. This strikes me as being a good excuse for waffling on about gamebook deaths and the like for a bit.
I’ve had an interest (I’m tempted to call it a ghoulish interest, for reasons which will become clear later) in the sections dedicated to undesirable outcomes almost since I first got into gamebooks. Often, when a new gamebook hit the shelves of the local booksellers, I’d spend a while looking through a copy in search of the defeats and demises. There have been occasions when, undecided on whether or not to buy a gamebook, I wound up making my decision based on an Instant Death section. An underwhelming account of being murdered by a couple of low-lifes delayed my getting into the Lone Wolf saga by several weeks. Brain-burrowing spiders were what finally got me started on collecting The Way of the Tiger (a series that marked every unsuccessful outcome with a specific between-sections illustration, suggesting that somebody may have noted the draw of the demises, and chose to highlight them in order to appeal to readers who appreciated a good bad ending).
I know I’m not alone in this fascination. When I started looking into online gamebook fandom almost a quarter of a century ago, one of the first relevant websites I found was a catalogue of favourite ‘fail’ sections from gamebooks. I don’t think that site is around any more, but it has its successors in the likes of You Chose Wrong and Lose Your Own Adventure, and Deathtraps and Dungeons always takes the time to list noteworthy deaths in the book being profiled.
Nine years ago, in response to a query from a reader, I listed five of my favourite Instant Deaths. I think it’s time I expanded that list, and for obvious reasons I shall make it a top fourteen. So, in no particular order (other than starting with the ones I listed before, to make it easier for impatient readers to skip to the previously unmentioned titles)…
“It eats you, starting with your bottom.”
Fighting Fantasy 1: The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, Ian Livingstone & Steve Jackson. Section 64
I’ve told this tale before, but here we go again. This is where it really began. Gamebooks as a concept had appealed to me since I read an article on one in a Sunday supplement. I’d enjoyed the first one I read (Stephen Leslie’s Skyjacked). However, I wasn’t hooked until, during my first attempt at TWoFM, I let morbid curiosity get the better of me.
This was a diceless playthrough, so I ought to have won the fight against the Ghoul, but this was the first combat to give a section number for if you lost as well as one for victory, presumably because the Ghoul could paralyse as well as kill, so it was possible to be defeated yet still alive. Reasoning that, this being a book targeted at kids, it couldn’t be anything that bad, I snuck a peek at what would happen if the Ghoul prevailed.
Our hero gets eaten. Possibly alive. By now I’ve been reading books for around half a century, and I can think of few literary experiences as mind-blowing as that moment.
Poetry in immobility.
Golden Dragon 6: Castle of Lost Souls, Dave Morris & Yve Newnham. Section 279
Being turned to stone by a Gorgon (or, as some authors persist in calling the creature, a Medusa) is not that uncommon a way of dying in a gamebook – heck, Ian Livingstone’s included it in at least four different adventures. What makes this instance stand out from the rest is the sheer quality of the writing. Though structured as prose, it’s far more poetic in tone than most of the verse that may be encountered in gamebooks, transforming what could have just been another ‘Game over, try again’ into something strangely beautiful.
Does exactly what it says in the title.
Starlight Adventures 6: Trance, Pat Hewitt. Section 294
Another could-be bog-standard ending elevated by authorial artistry. Loss of identity is another occupational hazard for gamebook adventurers, but this book has a particularly evocative description of the gradual erosion of your character’s resistance and the subsequent descent into mindless oblivion. When I say that memory paints the section as being around twice as long as it actually is, I don’t mean to suggest that it drags, but to indicate that it gets a great deal across in a comparatively short passage.
Till my head comes off.
Grail Quest 8: Legion of the Dead, J H Brennan. Sections 211 & 222 (and thence 14, but the real gold is in those two)
As regards the situation and outcome, this is almost identical to an Instant Death from Dave Morris’ Golden Dragon book Crypt of the Vampire: while being throttled by a cursed item, you attempt to cut through it, and an unlucky roll causes you to inadvertently kill yourself. The difference is in the approach. Morris’ version is impressively gory, and slightly sadistic, while Brennan’s take on it is downright hilarious. Humour in gamebooks is a very hit-or-miss affair, but Brennan made it work better than most, and this sequence is one of his finest.
Verse than death.
Date with Destiny Adventures: Night of a Thousand Boyfriends, Miranda Clarke. Pages 9, 34, 42, 56, 34, 42, 56, 34, 42, 56…
One of the few highlights of this largely disappointing parody gamebook is the most horrifying inescapable loop of sections I’ve ever encountered, in which you wind up stuck listening to your flatmate recite dreadful poetry about her ex-boyfriend for ever.
Shockingly unsportsmanlike.
The Legends of Skyfall 4: The Garden of Madness, David Tant. Section 320
This series made the intermittently accurate claim that the books were ‘structured carefully to reward the thinking player and to penalise the careless’. One aspect of this approach was to try a new angle on some of the tropes of fantasy adventures. Case in point: while infiltrating the villain’s castle, you may reach a room in which much of the floor consists of an 8x8 chequered grid of tiles. An inscription on one of the walls warns, ‘Let evil betide him who follows not the knightly path.’
A pretty straightforward chess-based puzzle, right? Except that the tiles corresponding to the starting positions of the knights in a game of chess are just as electrified as the rest of the grid, because the castle’s owner is too smart to make things easier for his enemies by providing intruders with hints about how to avoid the booby traps.
Oh, the inhumanity.
Forbidden Gateway 2: Terrors out of Time, Ian & Clive Bailey. Sections 108 & 65
The FG books are packed with gruesome and hideous fates, but this one stands out for the sheer overkill.
Acquiring an item that enables you to summon a dragon, yet lacking a proper understanding of how it works, provides several opportunities for losing control of the beast and consequently expiring. However, only one of them happens while you’re on top of an airship. Fire-breathing monstrosity plus dirigible filled with flammable gas - that's never going to end well. Spectacularly, but not well.
No means nonexistence.
Tunnels & Trolls solo 5: Dargon’s Dungeon, Michael Stackpole (based on an original work by Bill Hart). Section 21A
T&T being targeted at a more adult readership than most gamebooks, some of the solos touched on the possibility of characters indulging in sexual activity. Unwelcome advances tended to meet with unfavourable outcomes, as is the case here. Should any would-be Romeo proposition the sorceress encountered within this dungeon, she declines with extreme prejudice, transforming him into a cockroach, crushing it underfoot, and casting a spell which causes anyone who knew him to forget that he ever existed. Some people I’ve encountered online would opine that her response isn’t harsh enough, but as a gamebook ending it does its job.
Masonic leg-pull.
Fighting Fantasy 47: The Crimson Tide, Paul Mason. Sections 52 & 400
What makes this ending special is not so much what happens as the way the book handles it. In your quest for justice against the mercenaries who murdered your father and enslaved your mother, you have found your way to the King, who hears your story and instructs one of his officials to put things right. As you and the official depart, the text says to turn to 400 - an instruction that has preceded victory in the majority of FF books - so you proceed to the final section to see how your success is to be rewarded… and get dropped into a pit containing the skeletal remains of numerous other victims of the King’s treacherous advisor. Cruel. And brilliant.
It’s a wrap.
Plot-Your-Own Horror Story: Nightmare Store, Hilary Milton. Pages 56, 38, 17 & 119
Around 40 years ago I was looking through a copy of this book in a shop, and found an ending that disturbed me. The eponymous store’s automated delivery system mistakes you for an item of merchandise, wraps you tightly in packaging material that makes breathing difficult, crams you head down into a crate, and nails it shut.
Rereading it now, I find that the horror is more in the concept than the execution, but the combination of utter helplessness and incipient death by smothering still creeps me out in spite of the slightly goofy tone of the writing.
We don’t need another hero.
Rescue the Princess, Paul Turner. Section 4
Before you confront the Demon who has kidnapped Princess Amber, you want to seek the advice of the wizard whom some call… Brian. However, the most direct route to his home leads through a forest inhabited by Elves who have a zero tolerance approach to trespassers. You may opt to make a detour around the forest, adding a couple of weeks to your travel time, but reducing the risk of getting a few dozen arrows through your vital organs. This strategy keeps you unperforated, but also causes you to reach the wizard’s home a couple of days after a more enterprising adventurer thwarts the Demon, brings the Princess home, and claims the reward.
You’d expect this sort of thing to happen a lot in worlds where ‘adventurer’ is considered a viable career path, but comparatively few gamebook authors give much thought to the possibility that it might turn out to be a book in which someone else is the hero.
High in the mountains.
Lost in the Mountains of Death, Tracey Turner. Page 104
On the surface, this ending is nothing out of the ordinary: many gamebooks feature deaths brought about by sub-zero temperatures. The specifics, however, add a touch of whimsical absurdity that stands out all the more in a gamebook that takes itself as seriously as the Lost books do: after making the mistake of dining on hallucinogenic flora you succumb to the delusion that you have transformed into an alpaca, and die of hypothermia before regaining your senses. Not the first time that woolly thinking has had lethal consequences, I’m sure.
I feel your pain.
Wizards, Warriors & You 5: The Haunted Castle of Ravencurse, Lynn Beach. Page 95
WW&Y could get a bit wacky on occasion, whether with bizarre situations or preposterously arbitrary means of determining randomised outcomes, and this ending has a bit of both. While playing as the Wizard, you are captured and bitten by a giant spider whose venom has unusual properties, causing all injuries sustained by the spider to be exactly duplicated on anyone it has bitten. Seeking to rescue you, your trusty companion the Warrior fires a poisoned arrow at the spider before you have the opportunity to explain why that’s not going to help. Should you be reading the book on the wrong day of the week, you have just enough time to regret having concocted quite so lethal a toxin before it kills you.
Met a fiction.
Choose Your Own Adventure 21: Hyperspace, Edward Packard. Page 90
This book is designed to mess with and/or expand its readers’ minds. Multiple pages are devoted to your character’s reading a gamebook. You may encounter the book’s author (and, in one ambiguous ending, be transported to a dimension he never visited, as a result of which the narrative ceases because he has no way of knowing what happens there, and thus cannot write about it). In the ending I’ve selected here, you take it badly when a character from several of Packard’s earlier CYOAs reveals to you that you too are a character in a gamebook. Demoralised by the realisation that you are not real and have only limited autonomy, you find a way to keep the book from having any further influence on your actions.
You stop reading.
