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.