It's Some Time Since We Went A-Foraging

While the most noteworthy thing about 2022 as regards Fighting Fantasy was the publication of two new gamebooks by the series’ founders, the same year also marked the release of issue 17 of Fighting Fantazine, around five years after the previous issue had come out. As the zine was made available for download before the books hit the shelves, I shall now be playing the mini-adventure that appeared in it, Andrew Wright’s Barbarian Warlord.

While I enjoyed the author’s previous Fantazine adventure and what I’ve read of his earlier interactive works, and what feedback I’ve seen on Warlord from others has been positive, I do not like this adventure. The need for high stats, the repetitive gameplay, the inconsistent tone and the ‘gleefully destroy what other authors created’ premise combine to drag it down to the lower ranks in my estimation. Not the absolute bottom, but since having finished playtesting Warlord I’ve had no desire to return to it, and am only doing so now for the blog’s sake.

Before I go any further, please make a note (written or mental as you prefer) of three things that typically come to mind when you’re thinking about Barbarians. I’ll be coming back to this later

There will be no reminiscences about how I failed the adventure on my first go, because all the occasions on which I made an unsuccessful attempt at it have blurred together in my memory. Now I think about it, I’m not sure Warlord even has any deaths other than via combat or Stamina loss. There’s a ‘you failed’ section for the benefit of any players who might struggle to grasp that getting slaughtered in battle does not constitute a successful outcome, but unless I’m forgetting something, that and the ‘victory’ section are the only two endings in the whole adventure.

My character is the eponymous anti-hero, the chief of a tribe of Barbarians who reside in the Flatlands, about to embark on a campaign of slaughter and pillage because of a drug-induced vision in which ancestral spirits encouraged me to go off on a destructive rampage. I’d better generate some stats, for my army as well as myself, and I will definitely be allocating dice, as average-or-below scores for a couple of attributes pretty much guarantee defeat. In fact, I’m tempted to take advantage of the fact that the adventure includes an optional ‘roll to determine the name of your character and his tribe’ feature and use the name generator as a dumping ground for the lowest numbers.

So, here’s Krong the Strong…
Skill: 12
Stamina: 19
Luck: 11
Honour: 4
…and this is the Blood Axe tribe -
Horde Strike: 11
Horde Strength: 21
Gold: 1 talent
I did wind up using the name generator as a receptacle for mediocre rolls. Otherwise, it would have been appropriate to go with Crud the Inept, of the Anaemic Lemming tribe.

So, it’s time for us to demonstrate to the peoples of the surrounding regions that we’re not just ‘primitive savages’ by attacking them without provocation, slaughtering lots of their people, and looting and destroying their homes. And where should we go pillaging first? I think on my first try I started out in Trolltooth Pass, where randomness pitted me against an undead enemy I couldn’t fight because I hadn’t yet found a weapon that would harm it, and I got penalised for retreating rather than just letting it kill me like a real man would. So maybe try somewhere else first, eh?

I choose the Moonstone Hills, and now it’s time to go back to that note I asked you to make several paragraphs back. Tell me, does ‘travelogue’ appear anywhere on your list? The thing is, Andrew Wright has written for a variety of Advanced Fighting Fantasy sourcebooks, and while his work as a Titanographer has doubtless proved invaluable to many a player of the FF RPG, he’s not entirely managed to suppress the urge to educate and explain in less-than-suitable circumstances. Thus, whenever my army reaches some new location, there’s a brief lapse into guidebook mode to ensure that I am needlessly well-informed about the people we will be massacring and the land we are about to despoil.

On this occasion we’re up against a force of Hill Trolls, and I’m told that they bear a ‘bewildering array’ of arms. Only five different types of weapon are mentioned, all of which can be used to stab, so I guess it doesn’t take much to bewilder my character. It’s a good thing for me that they don’t appear to have any blunt instruments or projectiles, or my head might have exploded from seeing such variety.

Actually, this is not a good time to be mentioning variety, as almost every encounter with organised opponents in this adventure plays out the same way:
i) My troops fight two rounds of battle against the enemy.
ii) A leader steps forward to target me with a ‘special’ attack and I have to waste a point of Luck Testing to see if I can reduce the in any case underwhelming Stamina cost by 2 points.
iii) I then take on the leader in single combat.
iv) If I win, all hostile troops shrug and resume battle as if steps ii and iii had never occurred, their morale completely unaffected by the death of their leader.
v) If we win, plunder and admin ensue.
Hands up who put ‘predictable’ or ‘rigidly structured conflict’ on their list.

Anyway, our armies clash, a few Trolls die, and Nurm, King of the Trolls throws a boulder at me. (A weapon without a point or an edge! My mind reels at the prospect.) He misses and charges at me, belying his brutish appearance with a cry of ‘The price for entering the Moonstone Hills without our permission is death!’

He’s the one who ends up paying that price, though a series of bad rolls makes the outcome less of a foregone conclusion than the disparity in our Skill scores would have suggested. A few of my troops also die in the renewed hostilities, but ultimately the Trolls are massacred, and we add a little gold to the horde’s hoard.

It’s time to move on, so I pull up the map I made during playtesting. While the setting for this adventure is very familiar, and has been depicted in map form in quite a few FF books (and also appears on the back cover of Fantazine 17), travel between locations is subject to certain limitations, and it can help to know which journeys can be made and which cannot. If ‘strictly delineated transport network’ was on your list, well done.

Considering the amount of Stamina damage I took fighting the Troll King, getting some healing would be advisable, but I can only do that when the text says I can. It might be wisest to head back to the Flatlands and see if I can heal up a bit there before I go any further, but it seems a bit early to be reversing course, and I think there’s potential for things to go badly back on my home turf as well, so I’ll risk venturing on for a bit longer.

From here we could proceed to any of seven locations – over half of those featured in the adventure. I’ve already ruled out the Flatlands, and I’m still not equipped to handle that potential encounter in Trolltooth Pass, so I’ll pass on that option. Firetop Mountain and Darkwood Forest can also wait, as my low Stamina makes confronting the resident magic-users that bit too much of a risk, which leaves Zengis, Chalice, and the Forest of Spiders. My map shows that once I’ve acquired one essential resource, I’m liable to pass through Chalice and/or the Forest on the way to doing what must be done with it, and thus might as well leave them for later. Zengis it is, then.

One geopolitical info-dump later, my army is lurking close to the poorly-defended city. Nharog, my second-in-command, encourages me to attack, using an analogy I’d expect from a native of the frozen north rather than a fellow Flatlander. We emerge from cover, and a horde of militia and mercenaries emerges from the city gates to confront us.

After the requisite two rounds of mass battle, in which the defenders of Zengis take heavy casualties, I confront the city’s ruling Baron. This encounter deviates slightly from the standard pattern, as my Luck doesn’t come into play. Instead, the Baron uses a coin to summon a Golden Sentinel, which is invulnerable to any enemy who lacks gold. Having saved wisely (anyone put ‘prudent management of financial resources’ on their list?), I am perfectly capable of harming my new foe, and one swift goldbeating later, the Sentinel transforms back into a coin, now bent out of shape.

The massacre of the opposing forces resumes, and it would appear that the Baron attempted to flee but was betrayed by some of the mercenaries, as his body turns up some distance from the field of battle. Close by are some other corpses and a few ‘strangely’ bent coins (my character apparently being too thick to realise that they were most likely transformed into Sentinels that proved incapable of defending their master). Suddenly as incongruously eloquent as the Troll King, Nharog philosophises about the Baron’s fate while I decide whether to post a garrison in Zengis or just ransack it.

Leaving troops behind will reduce the size of my army (well, obviously), and I don’t think there’s any real need to return here, so in the absence of a ‘just leave and let the survivors get on with salvaging something of their lives’ option, I make the pragmatic-ish decision to thoroughly loot and pillage the place, thereby gaining a substantial quantity of gold and causing widespread death and destruction (so it’s a little incongruous to see the next section describing the region as picturesque and peaceful as we prepare to leave it).

I think it’s time I returned to the Moonstone Hills to see how the region has adapted to the slaughter of most of the resident trolls. Various lesser powers are in the ascendant, and redundancy lurks within the text, evading the editor’s Delete key. Luck determines that none of the groups vying for control of the region risk preying on my troops, and we proceed to the inaccurately-named Lost Lake.

It’s an eerie place, and only Nharog and I go to the water’s edge. A raft drifts towards us, bearing an animated skeleton which offers me a fancy sword. Nharog quotes Monty Python because memes apparently transcend the bounds between realities, and I take the sword, which is magical and does extra damage. The skeleton disintegrates, and we go on our way.

Now I think it’s worth heading for home. The first time I did that while playtesting, I thought that returning to the Flatlands might mark the end of the adventure, but there are actually some very specific conditions that must be fulfilled before a non-lethal game over can be achieved. What does happen when we head for home is that we rejoin those of our tribe who stayed behind, and our Shaman casts runes to determine whether or not my conduct to date meets the high standards of the spectral mob that urged me to cut a swathe of destruction across the western lands. The bloodthirsty bunch have been sufficiently entertained by the mayhem I wrought I have acted honourably enough that they approve.

Since this whole adventure requires me to behave in ways of which I would not generally approve anyway, I might as well pay a visit to the Ancestors’ Shrine. There, rumour has it, the sacrifice of powerful magic may reap great rewards. And as no heed was paid to a playtester’s suggestion that some clarification of what constitutes sufficiently powerful magic might be helpful here, I’m going to assume that the sword I acquired from the skeleton qualifies, and that ditching it here enables me to rid myself of the thing without suffering any of the consequences of the curse that comes with it.

A bolt of lightning obliterates the sword, and a reanimated corpse erupts from the ground, introducing itself as Volgera Darkstorm. Back in the day, he trained (and was subsequently murdered by) three of Allansia’s most notorious evil wizards, and now he’s back, he wants to help me cause more mayhem. For some reason, entering into an alliance with an undead villain has no impact on my Honour score (though I remember from playtesting that recruiting the more disreputable kind of barbarian to replenish my troops would deplete it, so it seems that the social standing of my associates is more of an issue than their immorality - well done if you put ‘snobbery’ on your list).

It’s time to head west again and get back to wreaking havoc. Hoping that Darkstorm’s capabilities will suffice to deal with that undead pest if I encounter it, I now lead my men to Trolltooth Pass. The fall of the die determines that we do not run into the hostile Spectre: instead, we find an encampment established by a Dwarven merchant, who is willing to let me in and trade with him, but my army must remain outside.

If I’d plundered more places, or not sacrificed that cursed sword, I’d have the opportunity to sell something, but as it is, I can only buy some of what the trader has for sale. The Potion of Strength should restore the Stamina I lost, the Potion of Fortune will help counter the attrition of Luck that results from the way battles play out (even if it doesn’t work as well as such potions always used to in FF), and the horned helmet provides an Attack Strength bonus that should reduce the impact if the dice turn on me again in some future combat. Before moving on, I take a ‘not buying, just checking’ peek at the section covering acquisition of a soul-draining weapon, and I’m a little disappointed to see that, despite my having raised the issue in my playtester’s notes, wielding such an abomination would still have no impact on my Honour.

Taking my leave of the trader, I lead my men south to the Craggen Heights, domain of one of Darkstorm’s erstwhile students and killers. We march until we sight the Black Tower, and that merry japester Nharog calls Balthus Dire ‘impudent’. I order an attack, Dire and his troops come out to meet us (Balthus being carried in a curtained palanquin because of his vulnerability to sunlight). As we have Darkstorm with us, the battle does not follow the pattern I outlined earlier: the revenant mage takes on the demi-sorcerer, so I can ignore him and just focus on the conflict between the two armies.

Without Dire’s support, his troops are a pretty dismal bunch, and we rout them without taking any casualties. Meanwhile, Darkstorm has shredded the palanquin’s curtains, with fatal consequences for its occupant. We loot a decent sum of gold from the Tower, and it’s time to move on again. I’d rather not head back to the Pass, and it’s too soon to go to Salamonis, which leaves just the Forest of Yore.

This is the location of the School of Magic where three of Allansia’s most renowned good wizards (and the hero of at least one FF book) trained. Nharog wants to destroy the whole forest, and while doing so is not necessary (by which I mean that this location provides nothing essential for successful completion of the adventure), leaving the place untouched would not fit the character I’m supposed to be playing.

Around four years ago I started listening to a podcast in which someone played gamebooks (mainly FF) and recounted his adventures and misadventures, but I rather lost interest after the podcast reached Appointment with F.E.A.R. because the podcaster so resolutely refused to engage with the premise of the book. He was not a fan of superheroes, and had ethical concerns about vigilantism, and consequently was overly reluctant to even play at being a super-powered freelance crimefighter. Fair enough (though I don’t recall his having had anywhere near the same sort of qualms when Seas of Blood had him robbing, butchering and enslaving people), but listening to him repeatedly not even try to stop costumed miscreants from menacing the public until, inevitably, his inaction led to the annihilation of his home city, was just not entertaining - sufficiently so that I lost the motivation to keep listening.

Bearing that in mind, while I would be quite content to leave the Forest and its denizens unharmed and move on to somewhere the text does require me to loot and pillage, I recognise that Krong is more likely to share Nharog’s outlook, and ready my troops for another battle.

It doesn’t take long for the Forest’s inhabitants to gather a defensive force, and we are soon confronted by an army of Wood Elves, Half-Elves and trainee sorcerers, led by the Grand Wizard, Vermithrax Moonchaser, who reveals himself to be a disguised Gold Dragon (and a sneering elitist).

He’s about to try and immolate me when Darkstorm intervenes with a horribly misused bit of continuity. He snuffs out the flames Moonchaser was about to breathe at me by using an incantation that originally appeared in The Warlock of Firetop Mountain. An incantation created specifically for killing evil Dragons, designed to destroy anyone who tried to misuse it. An incantation that was hidden by its creator just after he perfected it, and not discovered until some time after Darkstorm’s death. An incantation that contains its creator’s name, so it’s not even as if someone else could have independently have come up with it. I’d have no problem with Darkstorm’s using a similar chant, perhaps suggesting that the one in TWoFM was adapted from a weaker, less discriminating spell, but having him say the exact same one is wrong on many levels.

Anyway, having prevented me from being incinerated (well, mildly singed, as I vaguely recall from playtesting other ways the encounter can play out), Darkstorm transforms himself into an undead Dragon and goes for the Gold Dragon, leaving me and my troops to deal with the rest of the Forest’s defenders. We take a few casualties in the course of defeating them, but victory is ours, and before long my horde has razed the School of Magic to the ground and incinerated the contents of its libraries. (Really not enjoying this adventure.)

In addition to the Honour I gain for bringing an evil monstrosity to slay a powerful force for good and obliterating a centre of learning, I also get a little more gold and a randomly determined treasure, winding up with a Potion of Skill.

It’s time we were on the move again, and while I’d like to go back to the Craggen Heights, as something essential can only be acquired by returning there after eliminating Dire and his forces, that’s not an option. Apparently the road from the Black Tower to the Forest is a one-way street (anyone have ‘strict adherence to the Highway Code’ on their list?). This restriction on travel (the only such to be found in the whole mini-adventure) seems to exist solely for the purpose of making Warlord that bit trickier, as my querying it in the feedback that followed playtesting elicited no explanation or alteration to the text.

Anyway, thanks to that arbitrary limitation we can only proceed from here to Salamonis or Chalice. At this stage of the adventure, going to Salamonis would only lead to my being penalised, so Chalice is the only viable option. It would appear that Chalice suffers from an urban identity crisis, unable to decide whether it’s a town or a city – both terms are used to describe it at different points in the text. Or maybe the locals have some kind of scam going on, so to prospective tourists they present themselves as a city, with all the prestige that comes from that status, but when the taxes are due, they claim to be just a town, hoping to be charged at a lower rate.

Chalice seems more poorly defended than Zengis - indeed, when we attack, only a weak militia stands against us, their low stats contradicting the text’s claims about their efficiency. A quirk of the dice enables them to inflict a little damage on us, but we overcome them and kill their King. The crown Prince and the leader of the militia flee, and as I may need to return here later on, I think it might be worth leaving a garrison to guard against any attempt at restoring the old order.

Taking control of Chalice provides me with an opportunity to recuperate and regain a little Stamina, and I gain a little gold, some of which I spend on a night’s entertainment for my men. This nets me a little more Honour, and in the course of my carousing I encounter a Dwarf (judging by the name, one who came to an unpleasant end in an alternate timeline) who tells me that Salamonis is defended by a hero who can only be harmed with a weapon made from a type of metal found at Craggen Rock. While I remembered this from playing the adventure before, having my character learn it provides a decent in-story motivation for seeking to acquire such a weapon.

The most direct route to where I next need to go is via Darkwood Forest, so that’s where I take my rabble next. When we get there, Nharog speaks disdainfully of resident wizard Yaztromo and encourages me to lead my troops against the locals. I do as advised, and am soon confronted by Yaztromo and an army of Forest denizens.

When I ignore Yaztromo’s attempts to persuade us to leave in peace, he targets me with a ‘Volcano Spell’, boasting about the lethality of an attack that wouldn’t even kill an average Goblin. I remember when this guy had what it took to hit an inadvisably belligerent adventurer with one of the fastest ‘fail’ endings in all FF, and now he’s reduced to dealing out a meal’s worth of damage at best.

Not that I come to any harm at all, as Darkstorm intervenes again. Blocking Yaztromo’s already underwhelming volley, he retaliates first with mockery and then with a spell of his own. Up until now my undead associate has spoken like a bog-standard generic fantasy villain, but suddenly he starts spouting dialogue better suited to Gene Hunt or Al Murray’s Pub Landlord, tossing in a gratuitous reference to either Alien or the works of Joseph Conrad for bonus incongruity.

While the two magic-users exchange sorcerous projectiles, my horde takes on the assembled host of Wood Elves, Pixies, Woodlings and Sprites, taking a couple of casualties but annihilating the sylvan horde. By the end of the battle, Darkstorm has prevailed, obliterating Yaztromo apart from his glasses, which I crush underfoot just to make the adventure that bit more mean-spirited.

Once I’ve helped myself to Yaztromo’s gold, we are on our way once more. Nharog is keen to get away from Darkwood, finding the Forest’s atmosphere enervating, which contrasts quite significantly with the gung-ho bloodlust he displayed when we first got here. This change of attitude between arrival and departure would have occurred even if I’d chosen not to attack the locals, making Nharog look decidedly inconsistent (or an absolute yes-man), with dialogue that could be paraphrased as:
Nharog: The people here are pathetic. I say kill them all!
Krong: No, we shall just pass through.
Nharog: Good idea. I don’t like it here: it's creepy. Let’s get away, and quickly.

Anyway, from here we move on to Stonebridge. For some reason Darkstorm doesn’t get involved in our attack on the town, so after the Dwarfish army and my own have had a bit of a tussle, King Gillibran hurls his fabled war-hammer at me. One of the most famous weapons in all FF, and even if it had hit me (which it doesn’t), ‘a mighty blow’ from it would only have inflicted a measly 2 Stamina damage.

Single combat between Gillibran and me ensues, and the dice turn on me. In spite of my having a three-point advantage when it comes to determining Attack Strengths, my foe wins almost twice as many rounds as I do, and even with my using Luck to reduce damage in the later stages of the battle, I wind up dead.

The ‘you are dead’ section orders me to replay the adventure with a new character at once, but even if I had any desire to give Barbarian Warlord another go, I still have another three FF books that I’ve not yet attempted on this blog, and over 80 other FF replays to get through before I cycle back to it. That’ll take a while, so there might even be some new books to play by then. Possibly even another issue of Fighting Fantazine, if I slow down a little.