Really Can't Understand This Revenge Thing. Waste of Time and Effort, Right?

Vengeance at Midnight is the first Fighting Fantazine mini-adventure to be covered here that I've already played more than once. This is for a rather unconventional reason. I had a humorous column in Fantazine (described by one reviewer as 'unreadably smug') which picked up on peculiarities in the gamebooks and drew tenuously-related 'life lessons' from them, and after a while its brief expanded to cover some of the Fantazine mini-adventures. Finding something to say about nine of the first ten was no problem, but Vengeance proved trickier. It certainly had its odd aspects - and the more I played it, the more of them I found - but it took me a long time to find one about which I could even attempt to be funny. 

Author (and 'zine editor) Alexander Ballingall responded to my growing list of questions and complaints about Vengeance by admitting that it had been a little rushed, offering me a place on the playtesting team, and having a go at rewriting the mini-adventure to address at least some of the flaws I'd highlighted. Since he provided me with a copy of the rewrite, I shall be referring to that as well as the version that appeared in Fantazine 8 (much as many of my Lone Wolf playthroughs make use of both the original edition and the Mongoose Books reissue and comment on noteworthy differences between the two). As most people familiar with the adventure will only know the published version, it seems only right to cover that one, but I could be spared several massive headaches just by using the rewrite's rules on fighting multiple opponents (I'd say 'changes to the rules on fighting several opponents', except that that would imply that the original actually had any such rules rather than leaving the reader to guess which of the many existing variants should be used). 

Vengeance at Midnight follows on from the FF gamebook Appointment with F.E.A.R. and Warlock magazine's Deadline to Destruction, presenting new challenges for superhero the Silver Crusader. Things have been fairly quiet in Titan City since the events of Deadline (well, since an alternate chain of events in which I didn't get killed by super-villain The Fly) - a bit of bother with a contract killer, the odd petty criminal to apprehend - so my attendance record at work has improved, and I've got myself a girlfriend, Helen Gray. Recently, however, there have been rumours that a new super-villain is planning something big, and regular informant Gerry the Grass has notified me that something dodgy is to happen at the docks on Friday evening. 

Before I investigate, it's admin time. For my superpower I pick Super Strength, as the 13-point Skill score that comes with it will at least delay the death by Stamina attrition that brings most attempts at this adventure to an end. Taking my other stats as they come, I get: 

Stamina 20
Luck 10
Given what I know about this adventure, that Luck might be a bit low. Oh, and I start with 3 Hero Points, and something bad may happen if my score drops to 0. 

As usual for adventures as the Silver Crusader, I also start with a couple of possible leads. Let's see, Butterfingers Johnson, former associate of criminal mastermind The Dealer, is attempting to go straight, now works at a McWhimpy's burger bar, and is under FBI surveillance. And a team of CIA agents is in town, trying to track down the one F.E.A.R. agent who escaped justice following the successful conclusion of Appointment, who may be working to break the Titanium Cyborg out of jail. I imagine it's an authorial error that locates him in a prison that actually exists in the real world, rather than the jokey variant on the name that Steve Jackson used in Appointment. 

What's Up, Dock?
For a while I keep watch at the docks. Eventually a car and a truck arrive, and their six occupants start transferring the contents of a container into the truck. There is, alas, nothing worth having to be gained by waiting until they're done, trailing the truck to its destination, and then confronting them or calling the police, so I might as well just fly down and start punching faces. 

My surprise attack enables me to get in a few hard blows against random targets before the fight commences. There is a small risk of accidentally beating one or two people to death if the dice fall badly, but I don't kill anyone, so my Hero Point score remains stable. I take a few blows over the course of the fight, but after 14 rounds of combat I've subdued the first four thugs. 

In the original version, that wouldn't matter: there, the fight has to last 25 rounds (if you live that long - and a couple of those crooks have high enough Skill scores to make that unlikely unless yours is in double-figures) and, unless you get incredibly lucky, ends in a situation that may well be impossible based on what happened during those 25 rounds of fisticuffs. However, the rewrite acknowledges the problems with that set-up and almost fixes them. 

Almost. 

In the amended text, the fight now has two possible outcomes (other than my being bludgeoned to death if I'd chosen another power and rolled a low-to-average Skill): 'fail to overcome the first four criminals within 15 rounds' and 'defeat all six in less than 15 rounds'. Now, 'less than 15 rounds' has just ended, and Man with a Scarred Cheek and Buxom Woman are still standing, so I haven't met the second set of conditions, but it's still 'within 15 rounds', and Male with Earring has just joined Female Thug with Knife, Red-Haired Thug and Thug with Moustache in the heap of semi-conscious goons on the ground, ruling out the first set of conditions. Awkward. 

The situation is closer to the first option than the second, so I'll go with that. Thus, while I'm busy thumping Scarred Cheek, he and Buxom Woman sneak into the truck and drive away, leaving me fighting their four incapacitated cronies. Unless I want to sacrifice a Hero Point by murdering a defeated criminal (guess what - I don't), the combat is over. Super Strength comes packaged with the ability to fly through the air, potentially at great speed, so following the truck shouldn't be much of a challenge, but for some reason I just sit and wait for the police to collect the mooks I defeated instead. Maybe Titan City has a by-law forbidding the pursuit of escaping miscreants.

Out, Damned Plot
A night's rest restores me to full health, and in the morning I'm presented with a variety of options. Despite having played Vengeance so many times back in 2014, I still have no real idea of the optimal (or, for all I know, only workable) path, so I'll start by following up one of those leads, and visit McWhimpey's. There, as a consequence of my having captured some of the criminals last night, nothing of any significance happens. Except that for the first time I spot a typo which implies that several of the burger bar's customers are conjoined twins, but that's hardly pertinent to my investigation.   

Will that second lead prove any more helpful? I head to Police HQ to liaise with the head of that CIA team. Fortunately I'm able to find her (a numbering error gets in the way of visiting one of the other law enforcement officials readers might want to meet up with). Agent Angelica Blanc tells me that it appears the scheme afoot is actually to free Deadline's Big Bad, The Dynamo, otherwise known as Karl Marks (seriously?). His brother Dave is suspected to have become the super-villain Volt Head, who has similar powers to The Dynamo. 

If I'd already encountered and apprehended Volt Head, I could do something here, but as I haven't, I can't. However, I am able to follow up on last night's arrests by interrogating one of the four thugs. Lacking any clear indications of who will provide most information, I pick the man with the earring, as he was closest in fighting order to the two that got away. 

His cell appears to be empty. A random roll determines that I fail to spot something, so I decide to try someone else. The woman with the knife was next in the perceived hierarchy, and she is still present, so I have words with Betty Monarch, aka Lady MacBeth. She lets slip that the super-villain running things goes by the name 'Janus', and that Betty's part in the plan involved getting a job with AB&C and providing an associate with secure access to the network. Not much of a lead, but it's all I have... 

A Shocking Development
Before I can proceed to AB&C to look into what Betty has facilitated, my Crimewatch informs me that something is up at the Megabyte Modem, which is part of the Pear chain of computer shops. I hurry there, and find that the building has been surrounded by police officers, led by Officer Kawalski (the man rendered unvisitable by an error in the Fantazine text, though this has been put right in the rewrite). 

Kawalski tells me that a super-villain is holding several store employees and customers hostage, and attempts at communicating with him have so far proved unsuccessful. That's 'unsuccessful' as in 'dead cop sprawled on the sidewalk'. Through the windows I can make out a black-clad man wearing a helmet with two metal prongs, between which arcs of electricity surge. The depiction of him on the cover of the 'zine doesn't entirely match the description, adding a good deal of colour and making his 'black helmet' yellow or gold. Looks like there was a bit of a breakdown in communications between the author and the illustrator, which is a little alarming, as they're the same person. 

Anyway, this is Volt Head. Looks like I should have saved visiting Police HQ until later. Attempting to lure him outside risks endangering the onlookers, so I'll go into the shop. But stealthily: if Agent Blanc is right about his being The Dynamo's brother, he'll probably want revenge against me. Sneaking in unnoticed requires me to Test my Luck twice, but I succeed. Once inside, I see that Volt Head is a bit distracted, pacing up and down and dividing his attention between his watch and a computer terminal. I need to roll against my Skill on two dice twice to see if I remain unnoticed, but a Skill of 13 makes failure at those rolls impossible. 

Finding out what's happening on the computer which so interests Volt Head requires me to make myself more conspicuous, which means Testing my Luck a third time. Again I manage it, and one of the hostages distracts Volt Head with a rather theatrical groan. In the nick of time I spot that the computer has almost finished uploading a file called damage to the internet, and notice the scrap of paper on which the villain has noted down his password. The upload is complete before I can do anything to stop it, and some twit left audio notifications enabled, so the computer makes a noise, drawing Volt Head's attention from the Oscar-worthy performance on the shop floor. Catching sight of me, he seizes the shamming hostage to use as a human shield, and I manoeuvre so as to enable everyone else to get out. 

This is where things get nasty. If I had Psi-powers, ETS, or Energy Blast I could try and do something clever with that power. It might work, it might not. But as I chose Super Strength in order to reduce the risk of dying in a fight, I have no option but to attack Volt Head in spite of the danger this poses to his hostage. Every time I win an Attack Round, I have a 1 in 6 chance of inadvertently killing her, and unless I use Luck (a risky prospect with my score depleted by the preceding Tests), I need to win at least 7 rounds to overcome Volt Head. Worse yet, my attempts to avoid harming the hostage mean there's a 60% chance of only doing half damage any time I do hit Volt Head, so that 7 rounds could easily go up to double figures. 

As it turned out, I got pretty lucky. Or the hostage did, since she survived. The fight lasted 11 rounds, during which Volt Head injured me once, we had one stand-off, and I inflicted full damage slightly more often than was statistically likely. How's that for preventing a catharsis of spurious morality? (An overly obscure in-joke, but Alex started it.) 

Before I can try to find out more about what Volt Head was up to, a spontaneously combusting teddy bear sets the shop alight, and another unfailable-for-me Skill roll determines whether or not I escape the ensuing conflagration. Fleeing the blaze (in view of all the computers in there, perhaps I should call it a towering inferno), I need to pick somewhere else to investigate, and I've just become aware of an ambiguity in the rules. There are tick boxes to keep track of which locations I've already visited, since going to the same place twice is not permissible. The list includes 'Downtown', and the heap of smouldering rubble that used to be a computer shop was located downtown, so does having been forced to deal with an emergency there mean I now have to tick the box for it, or are the ticks only for voluntary visits? 

I'm not ticking the box yet. If this mandatory encounter was supposed to rule out subsequent visits to Downtown, the author should have made it clearer. If I hadn't been paying closer-than-usual attention to the text because I automatically tighten the focus when playing for the blog, I doubt that I'd even have picked up on the mention of where the shop is situated.

It's probable that I'm going to temporarily lose my internet connection in the near future, so I shall post this while I'm still able, and if necessary I'll type up my subsequent encounters in this adventure in a word processing package and upload them when the opportunity presents itself. That may be a little while, as the public computers I've used for updating this blog during previous losses of connectivity are currently not accessible, but I hope to have my next post up before the end of October.

A Farrago of Distortion

As I have mentioned before, some time ago I bought several independently published Tunnels & Trolls solo adventures on eBay. I have also previously pointed out that Outlaw Press publications should be avoided. However, back in 2006, when I made the abovementioned purchases, Outlaw's dubious practises had not yet come to light, so even if the eBay listings had mentioned the publisher (and I can no longer remember whether or not they did), the name would have raised no red flags. Thus, I did end up buying a few solos that had been released by Outlaw.

One of them was by James Shipman, the man behind Outlaw, and that one is so atrocious a mini-solo that even if the writing were the only problematic aspect (which it isn't), I wouldn't play it for this blog (or indeed under any other circumstances). A second definitely contains artwork that was used without the creators' permission, as one of the artists first became aware of the misappropriation of their work when I provided details of the adventure for a listing at gamebooks.org.

And then there's Jason Mills' Scandal in Stringwater. I purchased it from (and it was signed by) Mr Mills himself, so I know that at least the creator of the text received due payment for his handiwork. The reproduction of the cover illustration at artist Simon Lee Tranter's website gives no grounds for suspecting that the picture was not properly commissioned. The possibility remains that some or all of the other nine artists whose work appears inside Scandal were ripped off, but I have no actual evidence of any impropriety relating to this adventure, and I see no reason to penalise the author for having been published by someone who turned out to have a dodgy stance on other people's IP, so I'm going to play Scandal here.

We turn from real-world legal matters to fantasy world legal matters, as Scandal is a self-proclaimed solo courtroom adventure. It starts with my character waking from a drunken slumber, and suddenly realising that the heaviness of his limbs is not just a symptom of the hangover, but because he's in chains. Opening his eyes, he finds himself in a cell, furnished only with a bunk and a bucket. A sign attached to the bars indicates that the cell is in a prison with the sort of name that might be picked by someone who thinks 'correctional institution' sounds too harsh (the initials of which spell out a rude word), all shackles and bars are made of magic-resistant meteoric iron, and water is available on request, "much of it clean".

I think I'll create a new character for this adventure. Lawyers' fees can be quite high in Stringwater, and if I skimp on starting equipment on the grounds that I'm not going to be allowed to keep anything anyway, that will leave me with more funds, and thus a wider range of options. And this is one of the rare occasions on which I don't feel the need to make my character a non-human, as the stats generated produce a workable warrior.
Strength 15
Intelligence 7
Luck 12
Constitution 8
Dexterity 14
Charisma 10
Speed 12
Only two poor attributes there, and both are quite appropriate for the situation in which I find myself: stupid enough to go on the drinking binge that led to my incarceration, and not healthy enough to have a high tolerance for alcohol.

For a while I try to remember what I could have done to break the law, and then I have a visitor. Quisling, clerk of the Royal Court, arrives to inform me that my trial will take place tomorrow, and to present me with details of the available defence advocates. I may risk conducting my own defence, select an advocate from the list, or go with the court-appointed one.

There are seven advocates listed, priced (it would appear) according to their competence. Going with the court-appointed one would be a gamble: the fee is fixed, and the advocate randomly selected from the first six on the list, so I'm just as likely to get an excellent lawyer half-price as to wind up paying slightly more than double for the services of the worst of the lot. Additionally, I only have the option of changing advocate (finances permitting) if I don't go with the court-appointed one.

So, do I dispense with the services of a lawyer (inadvisable), go with one of the better ones for whose services I have enough money, take a chance on the court's choice, or pick the seventh lawyer, who, intriguingly, takes her payment in Charisma points rather than cash? I think I'll try Mello Mildman. He's reasonably competent, and seems too bland to have a Lionel Hutz/Judge Snyder-esque bad relationship with any of the Judges. And his fees are just low enough that I could change lawyers if things start going badly.

Quisling informs me of the charge, which is randomly determined. I get to choose whether or not I'm actually guilty of it (so a reader who would NEVER litter need not be forced to play a character who did), but the verdict may not reflect the truth. And I am accused of... arson. Not good, but could be worse - if I'd got one lower, it'd be animal molestation. As regards culpability, I'm going with innocent, and shall plead Not Guilty.

The Judge and prosecuting counsel are also randomly selected. At this point I make the appropriate rolls, but I won't find out who they signify until I'm in court. Judge 1, Prosecutor 6, whatever that means. Quisling reassures me that the death penalty is only rarely issued, and when it is, the disembowelling usually takes under an hour. How very encouraging...

During the intervening time I manage to remove a screw from the bucket in my cell. It's not much of a weapon or a lockpick, but marginally better than nothing. Night passes without incident, and after a disconcertingly hearty breakfast I am taken upstairs to the courtroom. My advocate offhandedly introduces himself and starts toying with a silver coin and intermittently sighing. Not the most promising of starts, but it's a little early to try anything extreme.

The judge arrives, and Quisling reads the charges. I am accused of burning down the King's storehouse of biscuits and confectionery. A detailed list of the cakes and biscuits destroyed or damaged follows, ending with the observations that nobody likes the coconut oblongs that were ruined, and that it has yet to be determined whether or not the fire led to the softening of a dozen crackers.

Judge Hans Wringynne, a hobbit barely visible beneath the judicial wig, expresses his disbelief that a person such as I could be responsible for so terrible a crime, and asks if I did it. My advocate seems too disinterested to warn me if the judge could be shamming benignity, but I'll ask him anyway (and yes, even players representing themselves have the option of consulting their lawyer). Mildman shrugs.

I plead not guilty. The Judge says that he is inclined to believe me, but the trial must nevertheless take place. Still, his attitude means that I gain a Trial Point, and the more of those I have, the more likely a favourable outcome.

Judge Wringynne calls for the King's Prosecutor to make the case against me. A cheery-looking middle-aged man stands, and announces himself as Albert Fettling. It would appear that he is a perceptive and fair-minded individual, as I gain a Trial Point for not having committed the crime (a quick glance at some of the other Prosecutors' introductory sections reveals a variety of biases and prejudices that could favourably or adversely affect the Trial Point score).

Fettling calls for the first Exhibit, a large white amphora with the words 'FLAME OIL' glazed on it, the lid secured with a complex mesh of hooks and loops, and instructs me to open it. Given my advocate's attitude so far, there seems little point in seeking his advice, so I decide to make a show of not being able to undo the tangle that holds the lid in place. Regrettably, it is my Charisma which determines whether or not I get away with the sham, and I don't roll anywhere near highly enough to succeed. I lose 3 Trial Points (the score can go into negatives) for wasting the court's time.

Fettling then announces that three of these vessels were stored near the confectionery warehouse, but were not used, indicating that the person responsible for the fire was unable to open them. Nobody seems to take my evident ignorance of this fact as proof that I had nothing to do with the fire.

The next Exhibit is called for. It's a boot, very much like one from a pair I recently bought (not that I would have done at the price listed). Fettling instructs me to try it on, and my leg is unshackled to make this possible. This time I decide to see if Mildman is prepared to do anything to earn his fee. He shrugs and comments that the boot is probably mine. Thanks a lot, Mildman.

The Prosecutor explains that the boot was found at the scene of the crime, and I was wearing its partner when arrested. He concedes that there are many ways in which a drunkard could lose a boot, so this revelation only costs me one Trial Point, but Fettling then claims to have a witness, and goes on to note that the boot was wedged in a pile of chocolate cup-cakes, which were not burned but did get squashed. Fortunately for me, I'm not being tried by the Judge who loves chocolate cup-cakes.

The boot is taken away, and my leg is shackled again. Fettling's cheery mood fails to affect the Judge (though a different one might have been slightly swayed one way or another), and he calls the aforementioned witness, King's Own Confectioner Paddy d'Midriff, who claims to have provided an individual with a light shortly before the Confectionery Warehouse was set ablaze, and to have seen someone making a lopsided departure just afterwards. His testimony costs me 3 Trial Points, and another 2 when (following a failed Luck roll on my part) he explicitly identifies me as the individual to whom he gave a light. However, my advocate finally does something useful, getting d'Midriff to concede that the person seen fleeing the burning warehouse might not have been the same one who asked for a light. I recover a couple of Trial Points thanks to that admission.

The Judge dismisses d'Midriff, some kind of lucky break fails to occur, and it's time for the prosecution to sum up the case. Fettling rambles on vaguely for a little while, eventually recommending a guilty verdict. His laid-back summation works in my favour, and I gain a couple more Trial Points, but my score is still negative. Can my advocate swing the balance? More to the point, will he do so even if capable?

More intent on his coin than the proceedings, Mildman states that the first Exhibit can be dismissed, the second is irrelevant, and the witness was laughable, concluding that, "There's no case to answer really." That's either brilliant or appalling - and a roll of the die determines that it did more harm than good. The Judge sadly pronounces me Guilty, and asks if I have anything to say before sentence is passed. I could still try to escape, but given the toughness of the Saving Rolls I've had to make so far, my chances of success appear negligible, so I don't bother. Attempted flight will only make me seem more guilty.

I'm presented with a variety of comments I could make before sentence is pronounced, some of them appearing very unwise. I claim to have been framed, and a lucky roll has this weaken the Judge's resolve, adding one Trial Point, so I follow it up by claiming to have a family to support. This also works in my favour, bringing my Trial Point score to zero, so I think I'll quit while I'm not in the negatives.

Judge Wryngynne tells me that in Stringwater they make the punishment fit the crime, so I must work in the King's Confectionery Kitchen to make reparation for the destroyed comestibles. This could be bad news for my waistline, if not for the fact that my pleas to the judge have reduced the length of my sentence to 0 months. Not sure how that works, but I'll put it down to 'time served' and consider myself lucky to have avoided the Dexterity penalties that come with the weight gain.

To mark the conclusion of our (non-existent) working relationship, d'Midriff presents me with a goodie bag, which turns out to contain seven magic brandy-snaps, each of which can be eaten to restore 10 Constitution points or thrown to cause a fairly impressive explosion. If I were an arsonist, I could do some serious damage with them. And my experiences in Stringwater have left me more than half way towards levelling up. Next step, see what weapon and armour I can get with my remaining cash...

Well, that was entertaining. I think there should probably be a restriction on raising Trial Points above -1 if found Guilty. Still, that loophole and a minor typo are the only issues I have with the adventure, at least based on this playthrough. The variety of charges, Judges and Prosecutors should make it possible to replay Scandal in Stringwater several times and have very different experiences along the way, though the way in which they are determined makes a lot of what happens very random. I hope that, following the exposure of Outlaw's shady practises, Mr. Mills was able to get this republished by a reputable company, because it doesn't deserve to have become unavailable on account of James Shipman's wrongdoings. 

This Is Where It Gets Complicated

It's been almost 100 playthroughs since I last had a go at a Combat Command book, and the next one in the series is unique in being set in a fictional universe I know. Not that that was the case when I originally purchased the book, or even when I started this blog. Back then, my only experience of the works of Roger Zelazny was a short story I'd read in an anthology in 1990, of which I can remember only the line, "I think that mental cruelty was a trout." I did also own a copy of Deus Irae, the novel he co-wrote with Philip K. Dick, but I hadn't yet read it.

Time passed. On one of my browsing expeditions to East Hull, I came across a very reasonably priced volume comprising the five novels of the first series of Zelazny's Chronicles of Amber. Having read some very positive feedback about the series at an online forum I frequented, and knowing that I owned a gamebook connected to the series, I bought the volume, and a little while later I took it with me to read on the coach when visiting family on the other side of the country, and enjoyed it (despite the appalling number of OCR-induced typos). Thus, I approach Neil Randall's Nine Princes in Amber: The Black Road War with a degree of familiarity with its characters and setting, and greater capacity for being disappointed if this book turns out to be as poor as most of the preceding Combat Command gamebooks proved.

Section 1 is long - around 13 pages, not including the illustration - but does a reasonable job of holding my attention. It's a first person narrative, like at least the first series of novels, but with a different narrator. My character is Derek, the son of Eric (Eric was the principal antagonist in the first couple of books). It is now part of the way through, or possibly after the end of, the second series - that much is clear from the fact that Derek has read the first seven novels. Yes, they exist within the fictional reality as well as the one in which I'm writing this blog. Derek suspects that they're not an entirely accurate account, owing to authorial bias or faulty memory, but acknowledges that something like the events described in the books did happen.

At the start of the adventure, Derek is in Toronto, seeking a way to get to Amber, which is a parallel world. Having identified someone who may be able to help, he and eleven associates are keeping watch on the man's apartment, preparing to visit or raid it at an appropriate time. And then somebody drops a bomb on Derek's car. A timely warning from one of the team enables him to dive clear in the nick of time, but the attack raises some unpleasant questions. Derek stealthily consults with some of the others, none of whom are able to identify the attacker. A couple of minor details catch my attention, each one seemingly trivial on its own, but in combination making me wonder... A black squirrel is nibbling on the remnants of an apple as Derek approaches Jacques, and when Derek throws a rotten apple at Tom, it is seized by a small black dog. Any more black animals, and I shall become suspicious. Especially if they do anything with apples.

The bookshop above which the apartment is situated finally closes, and Derek and Jacques make their way to the door. A ring at the doorbell elicits no response for long enough that Jacques insists on breaking in, but before they can take any further action, the door is smashed open from within, and a trio of knife-wielding thugs emerges. One goes for Jacques, one dashes out into the street, and the third goes for Derek, so it's time for me to get the dice out and see how the fight pans out. Such is Derek and Jacques' expertise (combined with a decent roll on my part) that their attackers don't make it through the first round of combat. Despite having significant military experience, Derek has never killed before, and is sick afterwards.

Four more of the team join him and Jacques as they proceed into the apartment. The living room door is open, and the room itself offers few opportunities for concealment, while anything or anyone could be behind the closed bedroom door. I decide that Derek cannot resist the lure of the unknown, and he opens the bedroom door. What he sees behind it is unusual, and his reaction is strange.

The room is illuminated by a blue light with no obvious source, a venetian blind keeping it from showing through the window. There is no furniture, unless you count the tapestries on the walls, and the floor is decorated with a complex network of coloured lines and boxes, in which a pattern is just vaguely discernible. At the centre is a circular door, which looks as if it should lead down into the bookshop, though there was no sign of it when Derek and his men checked out the shop.

What is strange about Derek's reaction is that it hardly is a reaction. The rulers of Amber are able to unlock their dimension-hopping powers by walking a specific path along a labyrinthine pattern on a floor. Derek must know this: he's read the same books that I have. And while the mention of boxes doesn't really fit with the Pattern as described in the novels, the presence here of a pattern ought to be raising all sorts of questions about what, if anything, it has to do with the Pattern. But Derek's just wondering if he should investigate the door or go to the living room after all.

Further investigation seems like the best option, but there's something else to consider. Making a mistake while walking the Pattern has lethal consequences. So if Mr. Randall's interpretation of Zelazny's writing is at odds with mine, and this is a reproduction of the all-important Pattern, and Derek cluelessly strides straight across to the door because he's too thick to have figured out that the pattern is the Pattern, that's game over (and a big poke in the eye for anyone reading this book who's not familiar with the Amber novels, as I would have been if this blog didn't keep going on hiatus).

I'm going to hope that the author isn't that sloppy/cruel. And if he is, and Derek dies for failing to twig what someone with his knowledge should have, then the book doesn't deserve any more of my attention than it's already had. Derek sets foot on the pattern, and feels energy pulse into him. He starts to follow the pattern, finding that each successive step takes more of an effort than the last one. Should he turn back or keep going? It seems increasingly likely that this is the Pattern, so not continuing looks like a very bad idea.

Once Derek has committed himself to following the Pattern, it becomes easier. He reaches the door, which bears an inscription in a language he cannot read, and opens it. Beyond it are darkness, a foul stench, and insanity.

And that's it. Game over. The book's spine cracked as I opened it to what turned out to be the 'You just failed, sucker' section, but after having an Instant Death sprung on me like that for no good reason, I don't care. After an intriguing and promising start, The Black Road War turned into an authorial thumbed nose at the reader. It's not the worst gamebook I've read, but it is a definite candidate for 'most disappointing'.