A Fortress Deep and Mighty

The mini-adventure in issue 14 of Fighting Fantazine used a system other than Fighting Fantasy, so I'm skipping that one for now and moving on to issue 15 and Brett Schofield's Lords of Stone. This is the first of the Fantazine mini-adventures on which I worked as a playtester, so I've played it a lot more than any previous mini-adventure (apart from the one I wrote).

Judging by the playability (or lack thereof) of certain published gamebooks, I think it not unreasonable to say that my playtesting technique is more thorough than some. It has three main phases:

1. Play the adventure with a randomly-generated character, marking all options not taken.
2. Repeatedly replay the adventure (continuing to mark options not taken, and removing markers from options when I do try them) until I win.
   Once I have at least a rough idea of the stat requirements, I'm likely to 'save' and reuse the first character I roll up who appears to meet those requirements, to cut down on unnecessary repetition. The priority here is to confirm that the adventure can be beaten using an achievable character.
3. Continue replaying the adventure until I have gone through every single option. Broken links can occur at any stage of an adventure, and checking each transition is the only way to be certain of finding however many there may be. Not that my finding and reporting them is any guarantee that they'll be fixed before the 'zine is published, but I do at least try.

Anyway, the point is that a little over eight years ago I played Lords a lot. It's a fairly generic dungeon-crawl, in which the reader plays a seasoned adventurer who has assisted the Dwarfs of Stonebridge in the past (and thus could be a veteran of more than one FF book - not that the third of those is likely to produce any veterans) and, consequently, gets called in by King Gillibran to deal with a new peril. As they say, no good deed goes unpunished.

This time the bad guy is Mor Orthor, a Dark Elf who has established a base in an old mine, and is experimenting with Elementals, presumably with the aim of raising an army and laying waste to the region. While Gillibran starts out by saying he needs to ask for my assistance again, by the end of the Background he's just ordering me to get rid of Orthor, his cultists, Elementals, and whatever other hostile creatures or entities might be in the mine. I'm beginning to wish that his hammer had stayed lost.

As I recall, on my very first attempt my character ended up locked into a cell and left to starve. Over the course of a few months I played the mini-adventure dozens more times. Played it, mapped it (sort of - it is not a cartographer-friendly dungeon crawl), won it, played it still more until I'd followed just about every conceivable route through it (including trying out all the Instant Deaths) and completed and sent off my list of corrections and other suggestions. After that I didn't play Lords again until it came up in last year's Fantazine forum challenge, and my low-Skilled character died in a fight against a trio of Dark Elves. Well, a pair by the end, but killing one opponent wasn't enough to save him.

This time round my character has:

Skill 8
Stamina 21

Luck 9

Not the best of stats, but if I'm careful and lucky I might survive.

I shall be using my map of the setting as I play Lords here, because there are some areas that contain nothing but penalties, and I'm not keen to revisit them. To be honest, I'm not that keen on revisiting anything in this adventure, as I'm not particularly enthusiastic about generic dungeon crawls, but I'm not going to condemn Lords because of its setting. Why have a go at it over a matter of personal taste, when there are so many non-subjective reasons to haul it over the coals?

In addition to the usual provisions and potion, I get to take some Elemental Runestones with me. These are magical items that can be used to deal with element-based threats and obstacles. Each is associated with one of the classical elements, and is effective against one other element: water overcomes fire, fire destroys earth, earth beats air, and air counters water. A Dwarf gives half a dozen of them to me, and somehow I get to choose the type of each, even though my character had no input into what the Dwarf handed over. I'll go with two fire, two air, and one each of the others.

Oh, and it's not clear whether Gillibran arranged for me to receive the Runestones, or if the Dwarf who handed them over thought something along the lines of, "What, the King's not even loaning our would-be saviour his precious magic hammer? Well, if old Swill-for-Brains isn't going to provide some assistance, I'd better do so myself."

Anyway, getting to the mines is apparently a bit of a struggle, though not sufficiently so for me to have any encounters, incur damage, roll dice, or indeed do anything other than read that it is an arduous journey. Along the way I see signs of the destruction wrought by Orthor's Elementals. I'd go into more detail, but the author didn't, so your guess is as good as mine. Burned-out farmsteads? Roads blocked by landslides? Blown-down trees with drowned Dwarfs clinging to the upper branches? Whatever: this adventure is all about the subterranean shenanigans.

I enter the mine and head along a tunnel, before long reaching a wooden door set into the left-hand wall. Opening it, I find a room with blood on one wall and bones on the floor. Having only recently played Mine of Torments makes it more noticeable that this place isn't actually that much like a mine. Maybe the Dark Elves added the door so that one of them could get up to whatever unspeakable rites he wanted to practise here in privacy, but still, a room? Not a chamber, a cavern, a cave - you know, the kind of larger space you actually get in a mine that's been used by miners for mining? In any case, I search it, and find a length of rope before returning to the passage.

Continuing on my way, I reach a junction. On the floor is a wooden box, inscribed with violent images, with a green gem set into the lid. Unable to remember what it contains, I open it, and oh, for goodness sake, I corrected that typo, and it's still there in the published version out streams a cloud of Stamina-sapping gas. To get away from it, I run to the right - yes, this is the kind of adventure that goes with subjective directions rather than anything compass-based.

Ignoring a boarded-up door in the right wall, I proceed to another junction. Though it is obvious that the passage leading left has caved in, I head that way, finding some comparatively fresh Dark Elf corpses partially buried in the rubble. The bodies have already been looted, but a roll of parchment remains clutched in the hand of one cadaver. Removing it, I find it to be a basic guide to translating some unfamiliar script into language I can read.

Turning around and entering the non-blocked tunnel, I eventually round a corner and find a dead Dwarf with a couple of obviously badly broken limbs. Close by is a war-hammer, and around his neck hangs a gold medallion. Though aware that there must be a reason why this corpse hasn't been robbed, I check out the Dwarf's possessions all the same. The hammer is a straightforward weapon, which I can take with me, though I must leave my sword behind to do so because... just because.

Taking the medallion summons a Stone Golem, which attacks me. As I'm using the hammer, I do additional damage, whereas the sword would do reduced damage. Though my Skill is higher than the Golem's, lousy rolls cause me to lose more Attack Rounds than I win, and if not for the extra damage done by the hammer, I doubt that I'd have survived to the end of the fight.

To add insult to injury, the rules only permit me to eat Provisions when the text says I can, or when I'm in an unoccupied room. Quite apart from the question of whether or not a room can be considered 'unoccupied' if I'm in it, the implied ban on eating while in tunnels, passageways, corridors and the like makes no sense, and was not in the text I was sent to proofread, or I'd have ranted about it to the author and editor before publication in the interests of making the mini-adventure less broken. Oh, and guess how many times the text explicitly says you can eat a meal. Out of 200 sections, of which around 170 are neither combats nor Instant Deaths, the number in which 'the options allow' you to consume Provisions is zero.

So, do I reinterpret the rules in a manner that makes the adventure less of a shambles, or do I potentially doom my character by accepting these absurd limitations and not healing until I'm next in a room that contains no living beings other than myself? Well, everyone else who's played the published version was stuck with the preposterous restrictions, so I'll endure them as well, and if that means I die in the next fight, at least I'll have a valid reason to stop playing.

I'm not going to deliberately get myself killed, though, so I ignore the next boarded-up door I pass, and the later door with a spider nailed to it. A little further on, the tunnel 'bends left and then straight', whatever that's supposed to mean. It curves to the left and then straightens out? It curves to the left and then winds back to continue in the same direction I was heading? This is why we can't have nice maps!

Whichever way I'm now going, there's a side passage to the right, which I investigate. It leads to another boarded-up door, but this time I remove the boards. The cave beyond contains only stalactites and a bottle I know better than to open, but it's somewhere I can eat a portion of Provisions... Unless I go for a really strict interpretation of that stupid rule, and have to go without because this is a cave rather than a room... No, a 'for research purposes only' check of the section for opening the bottle reveals that it refers to the cave as a room, so it's officially a room, so I'm eating, so there!

Back outside the room I notice a concealed door in one of the walls, and open it to reveal a concealed passage. Investigating, I follow it as it twists and turns on its way to an iron door with a misshapen and probably non-human skull mounted above it. Behind the door is a large cavern, split in two by a chasm crossed by a narrow stone bridge. On the far side I see a crystal chest and a stone humanoid.

As I have a rope, I could try to lasso the chest, but I remember from playtesting that that wouldn't work and could get me killed, so I step onto the bridge instead. The Boulder Beast animates, and as its Skill is equal to mine, and there is some risk of my being knocked off the bridge and to my death, I use a Runestone of Fire to weaken my stony foe. Finishing it off in combat is easy enough after that.

The chest turns out to be an illusion, which infuriates my character to an inappropriate degree, especially as it was concealing a key, so it's not as if that fight was for nothing. And if a cave is a room, I don't see why a cavern shouldn't also be a room, so I have another meal.

Returning to the 'main' passage, I continue along it, and soon see another door. It leads to the room where a previous character got killed by Dark Elves, so on this occasion I shall pass it by. Further along, the passage splits again, and there's a wooden chest on the ground just before the junction. The key I recently acquired fits the lock, so I am able to open it without triggering any traps. Inside are a ring, an amulet, and a shield. I take the amulet, thereby discovering it to be a Charm of Learning, and the shield, which bears the image of a griffon (even though FF more commonly spells it 'griffin') and gives me a decent Attack Strength bonus. I forget what the ring does, but I'm pretty sure it's nothing good.

Heading left, I discover that my character is unfeasibly stupid. Well, the text doesn't say that quite so blatantly, but it's the only explanation for what does happen. Protruding from the ground are a load of sharp stalagmites, and in the ceiling directly above them is the mouth of a shaft. And rather than realising that this must be the business end of a rather nasty trap, I wonder what the stalagmites are there for. Though, given the level of cluelessness required for such bafflement, I imagine my thought processes run more along the lines of "What... pointy... rock... things... do?"

Somehow managing to get past the stalagmites without losing an eye, I reach another door, and open it. Beyond is a small chamber with symbols painted on the wall (possibly in blood). And this is another instance of the error that bugged me in Lone Wolf, where 'or' needs to be taken as 'and/or' for the text to make sense: having the Charm of Learning in addition to the Translator scroll should make it that bit easier to decipher the symbols, but a strict reading of what's written here indicates that having both leaves me as clueless as having neither.

Interpreting the words in a way that makes sense, I use one or both data sources to translate the symbols, thereby discovering how to open a concealed alcove that contains an assortment of items. Most are 'something only a brain-dead Orc would consider treasure' (so I presume my character finds them too intellectual to bother with), but there are a few things that might be worth taking.

I shall leave the leather boots: having been made from the hide of a Snattacat, they would improve my agility, thereby increasing the difficulty of any Skill rolls I make while wearing them. Yes, increasing: I queried this in my playtester's notes, and the text remains unchanged, so I must conclude that in Lords of Stone being agile is regarded as a liability when determining how well a jump goes. Why bother to query the logic of that when the boots' effect is founded on the premise that items made from the skin of an animal most notable for its ability to turn invisible will naturally enhance the agility of their wearer?

So, no boots. But I will take the small bottle, which turns out to contain a healing salve, and the tattered cloak, which can be wrapped around one arm as a crude and short-lived shield. While learning about the capabilities of these items, I also see that the text calls the chamber a room, so I have another meal and almost get back to full Stamina.

Returning to the passage (now described as a corridor), I find that it ends in another door. I shan't bother going through, because there's no longer any pressing need to eat, and because the trap it contains would prompt another rant and I'm fed up of getting annoyed at this mini-adventure. So I return to the junction and take the passage opposite. This bends to the right, and somehow leads to a flight of stairs which terminates at the top of the shaft above the stalagmites. Well, I suppose if it were a big enough curve, that could sort of make sense, but the text says it 'soon' reaches the steps, so it would have to be something like this:

Not completely impossible, but still a headache for mapping.

On the floor a scrap of paper sticks out from under a stone. I take a look at it, finding the message, 'The key is in the wall.' And while you or I might be prompted to muse on questions such as 'The key to what?' or 'Which wall?', my cretin of a character has 'no idea what it means'. Frankly, I'm amazed he still remembers to draw breath from time to time.

Anyway, to proceed I must jump across the shaft mouth, and I make it to the other side without my character gaining a painful understanding of what the stalagmites can do to any adventurer 'agile' enough to fall down the shaft. Stairs lead down, and before long I pass the door to the cell in which my first attempt at this adventure ended.

Ignoring the door, I proceed to another junction. A cold breeze blows from the right, so I head left. After a short while I see a large stone door to my right. The effort of opening it costs a Stamina point, so it's now worth using a dose of that salve to restore myself to full health.

In the chamber beyond, I see a metal grille in the floor, coated in green slime, and in one corner of the room is a skeleton. The skeleton has a helmet on its head, a slimy sword in one hand, and a bow in the other. I don't have any arrows, and it's not advisable to touch any slime, so the only course of action that might be worthwhile is to check out the helmet. No, that just causes the skeleton to come to life and attack me, and in spite of the Skill advantage conferred by the shield, the dice hate me today, so I still take a couple of wounds. Still, this is a room, so once the skeleton is no longer active, I can eat and restore what Stamina I lost.

Further along the passage is another door. Moans sound from behind it, and I think I've pushed my luck more than enough as it is, so I don't open it. Soon after that, the passage ends at a cave-in. On the ground is a skull, the top of which has been cut in order to create a lid. Remembering from my playtesting days that some malicious prankster has used a venomous snake to turn the skull into a kind of semi-lethal jack-in-the-box, I leave it alone and head back to the junction.

The cold I noticed before intensifies as I head into it, and the passage becomes icy and snowy. That cloak helps protect me from the chill, and after a little while the temperature returns to normal.

Before long the tunnel terminates in a wooden door. The sound of whimpering comes from behind it, and the text clumsily railroads me into opening it. All right, so I know that the left turn at the previous junction leads to a dead end, but anyone who went right straight off would have no idea of that, and if they had a cloak, the cold area would be no deterrent, so 'no choice but to enter' is just an authorial 'you will go this way because I say so'.

The room beyond is occupied by an emaciated Dwarf who screams a lot. He turns out to be a 'fellow Stonebridge Dwarf' (at times the text makes out that my character is a Dwarf, and in other places it implies that I'm human, and nobody to whom I mentioned this after playtesting appears to have thought that there was any need to clarify the issue, so make of the contradictions what you will).

The Dwarf explains that he was captured by the Dark Elves some weeks ago, and escaped more recently, since when he's been keeping a low profile down here, evidently failing to grasp that keeping quiet involves not whimpering loudly enough to be audible from the other side of a door. Or screaming.

I promise to help him out of the mines as soon as I've dealt with Mor Orthor, and a passing Cave Manticore takes that as a cue to fire a stone spine from its tail into his back, killing him on the spot. The Manticore fires more spines at me, but I use the shield to protect myself and there's another flipping typo that I corrected to no avail. As the brute advances on me, I decide that now might be a good time to use that cloak as a shield. It helps a little, but the vindictiveness of the dice ensures that I still take a fair bit of damage during the battle.

Back when the Dwarf first screamed at me, this chamber was referred to as a room, so I eat and get back some of the Stamina I lost in the fight before going on my way. On the Dwarf's body I find a potion that will heal a little Stamina, and I save it for closer to the endgame.

A passage leads onwards, turning left after a while. A wooden barrel stands in the corner, and I lose a point of Stamina doing something that turns out to be futile. I could spend paragraphs ranting about all the corrections that were ignored here, but what's the point?

Continuing on my way, I reach a side turning. Growls emanate from it, but I go that way anyway. A Fog Elemental attacks, and I could use a Runestone to weaken it, but it's not exactly a threatening opponent even at full health, so I don't bother. And the dice are still in a mood, so I take almost as much damage as I did fighting the Manticore.

Further along the corridor, there's a cobweb-covered door set into one wall, behind which I could face a pointless test or take an unnecessary risk in order to get a bonus that'd leave me no better off than I already am. The passage turns right a little later, and I notice a hole in the wall. Reaching into it, I find another key, its end in the shape of a horned bat. Around the corner the passage slopes down and becomes flooded. Mandatory use of a Runestone of Air dries out all but a puddle.

Eventually I reach a spiked metal door, embossed with the image of a horned bat. After downing that potion and using the rest of the salve, I use the key I recently found, which lets me through into Mor Orthor's study. The Dark Elf is perusing a bookshelf, and after issuing a threat that shows him to be no Balthus Dire, he summons a Water Elemental to attack me. Or rather, he creates the illusion of one, but the Charm of Learning enables me to discern that it's not real.

I throw the medallion I found on the first dead Dwarf to Orthor, and he puts it on because why should my character be the only idiot in the room? The Golem appears and attacks him, and while he does destroy it, he takes a fair bit of damage and loses some Skill in the process.

Wanting to finish this, I charge in to fight, and Orthor fires a bolt of lightning, which is nullified by my Runestone of Earth. We then trade blows, and as I now have a two point advantage Skill-wise and only need to hit him once to bring his Stamina below the threshold necessary to progress to the next stage of the confrontation, the dice dig in their heels and allow him to wound me three times before I narrowly win a round of combat.

Orthor vanishes through a wall. A cursory examination of the wall reveals a button, and when I push it, I find myself in a vast cavern. This, like the one where I fought the Boulder Beast, is riven by a deep chasm with a bridge across it, but the bridge here is in a bad shape, and starts to crumble as I hurry across it. A Skill roll determines whether or not I reach the far side, and if I were wearing those boots I wouldn't have made it.

At last I catch up to Orthor, who is performing a mystical rite at an underground temple. This allows him to transform into a fusion of the four primary types of Elemental, but I am able to weaken him with the last few of my Runestones. The dice have become complacent, and I win the first two rounds of the fight, using Luck to increase damage both times. At this point one more blow will kill Orthor, but the dice realise how close I am to victory, and allow him to win another four rounds and draw at least one before I finally get to deliver a killing blow. He has randomly determined special attacks that kick in whenever he wins a round, but all they amount to in this fight is a small amount of extra damage, and my being unable to harm him during a round that I didn't win anyway.

Mission accomplished, I return to Stonebridge. Pay no attention to the fact that I was on the wrong side of a seemingly bottomless chasm that no longer had a bridge across it. Gillibran buys me a pint of beer and says that further rewards will be forthcoming. Which probably means fresh opportunities to get killed, but never mind. I've won, so I shan't have to play the adventure again for this blog, and Lords has already come up in this year's challenge at the Fantazine forum, so it's not likely to come up on my 'to play' list again any time soon. All right, it's by no means the worst Fantazine mini-adventure, but right now another seven years without going back to it looks to me like a good start.