Brett Schofield is almost certainly the most talented of the artists who’ve illustrated Fighting Fantazine mini-adventures. For issue 5 he went that bit further, and provided the words of Bones of the Banished as well as the pictures.
The hero is a young member of one of the tribes of humans who eke out a living on the Plain of Bones. Following the recent death of Ngodo the chieftain in a not-remotely-suspicious hunting accident, Valfrek the shaman has proclaimed the ancient Rite of Banishment. All eligible adults are to be thrown out of the tribe, and each must seek a trophy in the wilderness. Whoever returns with the best trophy becomes the new chieftain (assuming there’s still any tribe there to lead once it’s been left undefended for around a month while every remotely competent fighter goes off into a dinosaur-infested wasteland to try and single-handedly beat up a few apex predators). I've recently come of age, so I have to actively seek death rather than sit and wait for it.
My anticipation of failure is partly based on the 'Hints on Play' section in the rules, which more or less states that I'll need to make multiple unsuccessful attempts at the adventure before I can start to figure out what I actually need to do to have a shot at winning. The first time I attempted to play Bones, I made doubly sure of failure by rolling a mediocre Skill. As I recall, my character ended up dying while fighting a feline predator in a tree, though it wasn’t his opponent that killed him: a bad roll early on caused him to fall off the branch and sustain lethal injuries upon hitting the ground.
Doomed though I almost certainly am, I shall nevertheless be allocating dice: a decent Skill should give me more chance of surviving long enough to learn something that'll be of use on subsequent attempts.
Skill 12
Stamina 18
Luck 12
There's also a non-random stat called Delays, which will come into play if I survive the first half of the adventure, and in addition to my dagger and Provisions, I get to take either a rope or a torch with me. I choose the torch.
Before heading out across the Plain I may speak with someone. Last time I made the mistake of talking to the shaman's miserable apprentice, who said something discouraging and hit me with a Luck penalty. The tribe's best hunter is unlikely to say anything helpful to a rival, which narrows the options down to my childhood friend Paru and my close friend Kuwi.
I choose Kuwi, who turns out to be the most beautiful woman in the village, and daughter of Wanushu, the aforementioned mighty hunter. This kind of detail should have been included in the section where I was offered the choice of person to approach: my character would already have known such things, and it would be useful for the reader to be aware (for example) that Wanushu is an overprotective father who almost certainly disapproves of our friendship. I hope that 'will require several attempts' warning at the start doesn't come with an unsaid 'because the author is withholding information and will harshly penalise players for not taking into account facts he deliberately failed to mention'.
Kuwi recommends seeking out the terrible winged lizard that dwells in the black mountain to the north. She also urges me to try and kill it quickly, as she's not comfortable with having all the village's best fighters sent away like this.
Well, the sooner I get going, the sooner I'll be back. Or dead. On my previous attempt I disregarded Kuwi's hint about the lizard because of my sub-par Skill, but this time I could be in with a chance, so I'll head north. This leads me through a light forest of thorn trees, and my Skill enables me to avoid hurting myself as I pick my way through it.
Beyond the trees I find grassland, and I see water in the distance. This turns out to be a watering hole, which is being used by many of the local fauna, including Antelope, Buffalo and Threehorns. I can stop for a drink or press on to the west, which is odd, as I was heading north. Maybe west is because the watering hole prevents me from continuing straight ahead and, I don't know, some stupid tribal custom forbids going anticlockwise around bodies of water. Or perhaps it's sloppiness, or change of direction enforced by authorial fiat.
I drink, and random chance determines that... nothing happens, so I move on. To the west, judging by the section number. Except that that section says that I'm far to the north of the village. And, as it's already been entered into my gamebook manager, I must have passed through it on my first attempt at the adventure, in which I started out by going east. I'd hate to have to map this region.
Anyway, night is falling, and I must decide whether to risk sleeping in the open or shelter in a tree. I'm not making the mistake I did last time: that chance of falling is no respecter of Skill, and it would be foolish to invite the same death that ended my previous attempt. Especially as the only noteworthy thing I've learned so far on this playthrough is that the local geography is disconcertingly muddled.
Nothing dangerous happens when I sleep in the open. The author just described it as a risk in order to trick readers into encountering the real threat in the tree. In the morning I must eat or lose Stamina, but there's a loophole in the rules that would make me better off going hungry now and voluntarily eating a meal later in the day. The same oddity is present in many FF gamebooks, but a mistake doesn't stop being a mistake just because lots of people make it.
Anyway, it's time I was heading off to wherever Mr. Schofield has decided I should be going. Which is somewhere other than north, as I am startled by a loud cracking noise that seems to emanate from a group of men and camels in that direction, and have the option of approaching them instead of continuing towards the cliffs towards which I had been trekking. The interstitial illustration just above this section depicts a crude firearm, which could be a hint (deliberate or otherwise) about the source of the noise. I think I'd better investigate further.
There are four people in the group, a Dwarf (though, presumably never having encountered his kind before, I take him to be a small human) and three non-locals whose clothing and mode of transport suggests that they come from a desert region. The Dwarf tells me that he's come from the city of Vynheim on a hunting expedition (which, in terms of distance, is a bit like someone from Berlin employing a few natives of Toulouse as tour guides for a trip to Rome). It's not going well, and he's proving a lousy shot with the blunderbuss he borrowed (he incorrectly says 'loaned', but I'm willing to attribute the confusion of opposite-meaning verbs to the character rather than the author). If I had a trophy I didn't need, I might be able to get something worthwhile in return for it. As it is, all I gain here is the knowledge that I should try and find something to kill before I get this far the next time I have a go at the adventure.
Heading on towards the cliffs, I learn something else that would have been self-evident to my character: I'm approaching the gorge inhabited by my people's traditional enemies the Oldbone tribe. I could turn back, but since the author went to such lengths to bring me this way, I suspect that I'm going to have to keep going. Especially as leaving is said to be 'safer', which is a warning sign after 'risk' proved the less lethal option when choosing where to spend the night.
On the alert for guards, I become nervous when I catch sight of a lookout post which appears to have been left unmanned. Indeed, the whole area seems more desolate than it should be. I think I'd better investigate. Descending into the gorge, I search for the entrance to the Oldbones' caves, and my high Luck guarantees success. Judging by the abandoned spears I find just inside, this place used to be guarded, but something must have befallen the guards. Can I find out what without falling victim to it myself?
The text compels me to head further into the caves, and the passage splits. No clues as to whether left or right is the better option, so I arbitrarily pick left. This leads through various chambers showing signs of recent occupation, but there's nobody here. Eventually I reach a cavern in which three holes have been gouged out of the rock and then covered with lids woven from branches and bones, with large stones holding them shut. Could be used to imprison animals or wrongdoers. I'll take a chance on opening one, in case there's someone in there who can tell me something useful.
I can choose which hole to check. Annoyingly, the section for investigating the middle one is directly before the one offering that choice, and I inadvertently glimpse enough to see that it leads to trouble. Well, I'm not going to let sloppy design deny me the opportunity to make a decision, so I'm ignoring that spoiler and going for the leftmost pit.
The hole is too deep for me to be able to see what's in it. I hear a moaning sound, possibly human in origin, and an unpleasant smell emanates from the hole, but I can't find out anything more without a rope, and I don't have one of them.
A systematic investigation would now have me turn my attention to the middle hole, but I'm still annoyed at the placing of that section, so I'll try the rightmost one instead. That one is also too deep for me to be able to find anything out without using a rope. What possessed the Oldbones to excavate such deep pits? I could understand them using deep ones that already existed, but the text indicated that these are not naturally-occurring holes, which means the tribe went to the effort of chiselling their way through tens of metres of solid rock when a dozen or so would most likely have sufficed.
And nobody involved in the production of Bones spotted the use of the wrong section number for looking in the leftmost hole here. Having one of the choices in section 180 lead to section 180 is even more careless than having 135 give 134 as an option.
Logically, there's no real reason why 'I tried it on a previous attempt and bad stuff happened' should be a more legitimate reason for avoiding a decision that 'I accidentally caught sight of the section and saw that bad stuff happens in it'. Nevertheless, it feels that way, so I am now going to check out the middle pit to give myself grounds to not do so when I play this again (assuming I ever get that far).
A big tentacle emerges and wraps around my throat. I have only a few rounds of combat in which to defeat it before it can drag me to my doom, but my Skill is high enough that I have a decent chance. It's a close call, but I do just succeed. However, further tentacles emerge from the hole, forcing me to flee. I also pick up a codeword - a straightforward example of the 'word related to what just happened, only spelled backwards' technique that Jonathan Green has employed on several occasions, so the suggestion in the rules section that readers would find it difficult to grasp the significance of the codewords used in the adventure is frankly insulting.
Back at the entrance I can investigate the other turning or leave. That codeword means it's probably a bad idea to stick around, but I suspect that by now I've already missed more than enough to guarantee failure, so I might as well find out as much as I can in these caves before meeting whatever grisly end awaits.
The other passage splits into three, and the choice here is marginally more informed than in the entrance cave: something glows to the left, the passage straight ahead descends sharply, and to the right I can only see darkness. I was denied the opportunity to check out both non-tentacle-containing pits by my having chosen a torch rather than a rope, so if the torch doesn't prove of any help with the darkness I shall be even more peeved than I already am.
Yes, the torch is useful. Proceeding to the right without it would mean a temporary and substantial Skill penalty. The passage leads to a hall with a throne in it, and there's actually someone here - the Oldbone chieftain, judging by the crown. Disconcertingly, he doesn't react to my arrival, and just goes on staring at the wall opposite.
I tell him to note down the codeword 'evitnettani', and a red glow enters into his eyes. Moving like a man possessed, he attacks me with his spear, winning a statistically improbable number of rounds before I kill him. As he dies, his mind returns to him, and he accuses me of having been sent to kill him by the man who took his people in return for worthless stones. Given that just in front of the throne is a heap of gems that appear to be my people's handiwork, that has some ominous implications. And his dying declaration that I'll end up a slave too isn't exactly encouraging, either. I take his crown as a trophy and return to the junction.
Next I take the left branch, and discover that that glow is daylight: the end of the passage looks out into the gorge. I risk a closer look, seeing that it's a long way to the bottom. Turning away, I am startled to see a spear-wielding Oldbone warrior, who attacks. Luckily, I dodge his initial attack, grabbing the haft of his spear and using it to unbalance him and send him plummeting to a messy death several hundred metres below.
There's nothing else to be done here, so I go back to the junction and try the middle passage. This leads less precipitously to the bottom of the gorge. Two openings lead out, both blocked with gates made out of bones. I open the smaller gate and step out into the gorge. Close by is a pit, which I investigate. It appears too deep for me to be able to get out again if I enter it, and may have been used for gladiatorial combat, judging by the blood and bone on the floor. I shan't take a closer look, what with the apparent impossibility of getting out again.
Heading left along the gorge, I see splatters of what's probably guano on the ground, and a nest on a ledge further up. Having come all this way, I might as well investigate the contents of the nest. It's big, and contains a large egg and some human remains. Suddenly cast into shadow, I look up to see the owner of the nest swooping to defend it. Luck is not with me, and the beast seizes me and starts to fly up. A roll of the die determines whether or not I'm able to break free, and I succeed, though a second roll to determine falling damage almost finishes me off, and then the Quetzalcoatlas swoops to the attack again. Despite the Attack Strength penalty for my precarious position, I survive, and I take the egg as a trophy, since there's nothing else of note in the nest.
Returning to the caves, I head back up, and this is where I face the consequences of having opened up the middle pit. The time I took descending and coming back up again has allowed the owner of the tentacles to extricate itself and follow me, and the creature hasn't come to thank me for releasing it. Against the whole thing rather than a lone tentacle, I don't stand a chance.
As I noted at the start of this playthrough, Brett Schofield is a talented illustrator.
Anyway, night is falling, and I must decide whether to risk sleeping in the open or shelter in a tree. I'm not making the mistake I did last time: that chance of falling is no respecter of Skill, and it would be foolish to invite the same death that ended my previous attempt. Especially as the only noteworthy thing I've learned so far on this playthrough is that the local geography is disconcertingly muddled.
Nothing dangerous happens when I sleep in the open. The author just described it as a risk in order to trick readers into encountering the real threat in the tree. In the morning I must eat or lose Stamina, but there's a loophole in the rules that would make me better off going hungry now and voluntarily eating a meal later in the day. The same oddity is present in many FF gamebooks, but a mistake doesn't stop being a mistake just because lots of people make it.
Anyway, it's time I was heading off to wherever Mr. Schofield has decided I should be going. Which is somewhere other than north, as I am startled by a loud cracking noise that seems to emanate from a group of men and camels in that direction, and have the option of approaching them instead of continuing towards the cliffs towards which I had been trekking. The interstitial illustration just above this section depicts a crude firearm, which could be a hint (deliberate or otherwise) about the source of the noise. I think I'd better investigate further.
There are four people in the group, a Dwarf (though, presumably never having encountered his kind before, I take him to be a small human) and three non-locals whose clothing and mode of transport suggests that they come from a desert region. The Dwarf tells me that he's come from the city of Vynheim on a hunting expedition (which, in terms of distance, is a bit like someone from Berlin employing a few natives of Toulouse as tour guides for a trip to Rome). It's not going well, and he's proving a lousy shot with the blunderbuss he borrowed (he incorrectly says 'loaned', but I'm willing to attribute the confusion of opposite-meaning verbs to the character rather than the author). If I had a trophy I didn't need, I might be able to get something worthwhile in return for it. As it is, all I gain here is the knowledge that I should try and find something to kill before I get this far the next time I have a go at the adventure.
Heading on towards the cliffs, I learn something else that would have been self-evident to my character: I'm approaching the gorge inhabited by my people's traditional enemies the Oldbone tribe. I could turn back, but since the author went to such lengths to bring me this way, I suspect that I'm going to have to keep going. Especially as leaving is said to be 'safer', which is a warning sign after 'risk' proved the less lethal option when choosing where to spend the night.
On the alert for guards, I become nervous when I catch sight of a lookout post which appears to have been left unmanned. Indeed, the whole area seems more desolate than it should be. I think I'd better investigate. Descending into the gorge, I search for the entrance to the Oldbones' caves, and my high Luck guarantees success. Judging by the abandoned spears I find just inside, this place used to be guarded, but something must have befallen the guards. Can I find out what without falling victim to it myself?
The text compels me to head further into the caves, and the passage splits. No clues as to whether left or right is the better option, so I arbitrarily pick left. This leads through various chambers showing signs of recent occupation, but there's nobody here. Eventually I reach a cavern in which three holes have been gouged out of the rock and then covered with lids woven from branches and bones, with large stones holding them shut. Could be used to imprison animals or wrongdoers. I'll take a chance on opening one, in case there's someone in there who can tell me something useful.
I can choose which hole to check. Annoyingly, the section for investigating the middle one is directly before the one offering that choice, and I inadvertently glimpse enough to see that it leads to trouble. Well, I'm not going to let sloppy design deny me the opportunity to make a decision, so I'm ignoring that spoiler and going for the leftmost pit.
The hole is too deep for me to be able to see what's in it. I hear a moaning sound, possibly human in origin, and an unpleasant smell emanates from the hole, but I can't find out anything more without a rope, and I don't have one of them.
A systematic investigation would now have me turn my attention to the middle hole, but I'm still annoyed at the placing of that section, so I'll try the rightmost one instead. That one is also too deep for me to be able to find anything out without using a rope. What possessed the Oldbones to excavate such deep pits? I could understand them using deep ones that already existed, but the text indicated that these are not naturally-occurring holes, which means the tribe went to the effort of chiselling their way through tens of metres of solid rock when a dozen or so would most likely have sufficed.
And nobody involved in the production of Bones spotted the use of the wrong section number for looking in the leftmost hole here. Having one of the choices in section 180 lead to section 180 is even more careless than having 135 give 134 as an option.
Logically, there's no real reason why 'I tried it on a previous attempt and bad stuff happened' should be a more legitimate reason for avoiding a decision that 'I accidentally caught sight of the section and saw that bad stuff happens in it'. Nevertheless, it feels that way, so I am now going to check out the middle pit to give myself grounds to not do so when I play this again (assuming I ever get that far).
A big tentacle emerges and wraps around my throat. I have only a few rounds of combat in which to defeat it before it can drag me to my doom, but my Skill is high enough that I have a decent chance. It's a close call, but I do just succeed. However, further tentacles emerge from the hole, forcing me to flee. I also pick up a codeword - a straightforward example of the 'word related to what just happened, only spelled backwards' technique that Jonathan Green has employed on several occasions, so the suggestion in the rules section that readers would find it difficult to grasp the significance of the codewords used in the adventure is frankly insulting.
Back at the entrance I can investigate the other turning or leave. That codeword means it's probably a bad idea to stick around, but I suspect that by now I've already missed more than enough to guarantee failure, so I might as well find out as much as I can in these caves before meeting whatever grisly end awaits.
The other passage splits into three, and the choice here is marginally more informed than in the entrance cave: something glows to the left, the passage straight ahead descends sharply, and to the right I can only see darkness. I was denied the opportunity to check out both non-tentacle-containing pits by my having chosen a torch rather than a rope, so if the torch doesn't prove of any help with the darkness I shall be even more peeved than I already am.
Yes, the torch is useful. Proceeding to the right without it would mean a temporary and substantial Skill penalty. The passage leads to a hall with a throne in it, and there's actually someone here - the Oldbone chieftain, judging by the crown. Disconcertingly, he doesn't react to my arrival, and just goes on staring at the wall opposite.
I tell him to note down the codeword 'evitnettani', and a red glow enters into his eyes. Moving like a man possessed, he attacks me with his spear, winning a statistically improbable number of rounds before I kill him. As he dies, his mind returns to him, and he accuses me of having been sent to kill him by the man who took his people in return for worthless stones. Given that just in front of the throne is a heap of gems that appear to be my people's handiwork, that has some ominous implications. And his dying declaration that I'll end up a slave too isn't exactly encouraging, either. I take his crown as a trophy and return to the junction.
Next I take the left branch, and discover that that glow is daylight: the end of the passage looks out into the gorge. I risk a closer look, seeing that it's a long way to the bottom. Turning away, I am startled to see a spear-wielding Oldbone warrior, who attacks. Luckily, I dodge his initial attack, grabbing the haft of his spear and using it to unbalance him and send him plummeting to a messy death several hundred metres below.
There's nothing else to be done here, so I go back to the junction and try the middle passage. This leads less precipitously to the bottom of the gorge. Two openings lead out, both blocked with gates made out of bones. I open the smaller gate and step out into the gorge. Close by is a pit, which I investigate. It appears too deep for me to be able to get out again if I enter it, and may have been used for gladiatorial combat, judging by the blood and bone on the floor. I shan't take a closer look, what with the apparent impossibility of getting out again.
Heading left along the gorge, I see splatters of what's probably guano on the ground, and a nest on a ledge further up. Having come all this way, I might as well investigate the contents of the nest. It's big, and contains a large egg and some human remains. Suddenly cast into shadow, I look up to see the owner of the nest swooping to defend it. Luck is not with me, and the beast seizes me and starts to fly up. A roll of the die determines whether or not I'm able to break free, and I succeed, though a second roll to determine falling damage almost finishes me off, and then the Quetzalcoatlas swoops to the attack again. Despite the Attack Strength penalty for my precarious position, I survive, and I take the egg as a trophy, since there's nothing else of note in the nest.
Returning to the caves, I head back up, and this is where I face the consequences of having opened up the middle pit. The time I took descending and coming back up again has allowed the owner of the tentacles to extricate itself and follow me, and the creature hasn't come to thank me for releasing it. Against the whole thing rather than a lone tentacle, I don't stand a chance.
As I noted at the start of this playthrough, Brett Schofield is a talented illustrator.
I think Angela Salamaliki might give Brett a run for his money when it comes to Fantazine illustrations. Scholastic would do well by inviting either of them to illustrate a book or two.
ReplyDeleteYou certainly got a lot further on this playthrough than I did on my attempt at this one
I think Angela Salamaliki might give Brett a run for his money when it comes to Fantazine illustrations.
DeleteShe is very good, too. On my only attempt to date at the issue 12 mini-adventure, which Angela illustrated, I died so quickly I barely got to notice the pictures, but now I've taken the time for a proper look, I'm impressed.
You certainly got a lot further on this playthrough than I did on my attempt at this one
True, but on my first attempt I failed in exactly the same way as you did in your playthrough. Though I don't think I made it anywhere near as many rounds into that horrendous fight. And in terms of completing Bones, I'm pretty sure I've barely scratched the surface.