I Know Something About Opening Windows and Doors

While it took me some time to get around to buying Fighting Fantasy book 28, I was a lot quicker to get the next one, Graeme Davis' Midnight Rogue. Indeed, I owned that one for some time before borrowing the copy of book 28 that eventually motivated me to acquire my own. The fact that Rogue's protagonist was something of an anti-hero made me less concerned about the impracticability of fitting it into my 'one hero for all the adventures' folly, and I was a little intrigued by the idea of playing a thief in Port Blacksand.

I think I got my copy of Rogue from Hammick's bookshop, close to the Five Ways, and I know that I made a diceless start on it on my way home. Not being able to make notes proved a little awkward when the section numbers I'd (seemingly unnecessarily) been instructed to note down turned out to be crucial for establishing where to turn when I acted on the clues provided in those sections. Since I had found all the necessary clues, I didn't consider it cheating to go back and remind myself of the relevant numbers, after which I went on with the adventure. At around the time that I reached the road on which I lived, I made a mistake and read the wrong section, thereby skipping several encounters, one of which provided an essential item, so I wound up dying for want of a magic sword.

Almost a decade and a half later, this was among the 16 FF gamebooks in a charity shop that got me back into the hobby. I bought it, two others of which I had fond memories, and four that I'd never played before, and enjoyed them so much that I went back and bought the rest the next day the shop was open.

My character is an apprentice in Port Blacksand's Thieves' Guild, and tonight will determine whether or not I get to become a full member. The test is pretty straightforward in principle: I have to steal something. A specific something, namely the jewel known as the Eye of the Basilisk, which was recently acquired by the merchant Brass, whose symbol is a coin. That's as much information as my character has, though obviously I know a lot more on account of having played the adventure before on several occasions.

I get to choose three Special Skills from a list of seven. Items which substitute for four of the Skills can be found in the course of the adventure, so if you choose the right three, you could potentially finish up with a complete set (though acquiring one of them is tricky and almost certainly more bother than it's worth). One of the Skill-substitutes shouldn't work in some of the situations where it can be used, and one of the non-substitutable Skills isn't all that useful, so to diminish the implausibility of this playthrough, I'm going for Climb, Pick Pocket and Spot Hidden. I also have the usual line-up of attributes, and the scores are:
Skill 11
Stamina 20
Luck 9
This is one of the comparatively few post-1986 FF books in which high stats aren't essential, but I can think of at least one unavoidable fight where I'm liable to be glad to have that Skill score.

Heading out onto the street, I start by snooping around in the area surrounding the Thieves' Guild buildings, known as the Noose. It's a good place to pick up gossip, and (for no good reason) the book won't allow me to come back here after going anywhere else, so unless I get the information available in the Noose now, I'll never get it.

First I visit the Rat and Ferret tavern, where I must pay one of my five gold pieces for a drink before I can join the men playing pin-finger at one of the tables. In case anyone reading this isn't familiar with the name of the game, that's basically a competitive variant of Bishop's 'knife trick' from Aliens.

Mind you, in the FF version, each player only risks injuring their own hand.

If I manage to avoid stabbing myself for a minute, I win ten gold pieces. If I mess up, I must hand over five. Which is problematic, as there's no way I can have more than four at this point (every other Noose-based encounter costs money rather than providing any), so if I go ahead with the game, it will be in the knowledge that I can't actually pay the price for failure. With a Skill of 11, there's not much chance of my losing, but an equally high score proved insufficient the last time I wrote up an attempt at this book.

This time round I succeed. Just. The men hand over the money, but know nothing of use to my mission, so I decide to try asking the landlord. Not that I need whatever information he can provide, but it's that bit more incident for this blog entry. He won't tell me what he knows about Brass unless I pay him, so I hand over a few gold pieces. It's enough to get him to tell me where Brass lives, and to remind me of the coin symbol. He then sticks a finger into my beer (evidently not having got his Food Hygiene Certificate) and uses the drink to sketch a symbol on the counter. For once I don't have the Secret Signs Skill, so it means nothing to me, and I'm unable to demonstrate my Guild connection. Consequently, the landlord remembers some washing-up that needs doing, and becomes too absorbed in the task to pay me any more attention.

Next I visit local clairvoyant Madame Star. In return for two gold pieces, she tells me that what I seek is hidden in a dark place, a place of death, and that I will have to look in a place of sleep and a place of work. Not very substantial, but without this 'clue' I won't be able to work out the section number to get to the right place because... I don't know. Maybe Mr. Davis thinks it's impossible to be a good thief without getting your fortune told. That could be why the hero of his mini-adventure wound up on trial at the start of it.

The only other thing I could do in the Noose is give some money to a beggar, and as he'd only give me a rope and grapnel that could be used in place of the Climb Skill, there's no point. Instead, I head for the Merchants' Guild, because with my Skill set, visiting the 'place of sleep' before the 'place of work' would ensure my failure.

The Merchants' Guild is across the Market Square from the Noose. As I make my way there, I notice movement among the trees in the middle of the square. Trees that Ian Livingstone never mentioned in City of Thieves, and which don't appear in his Market Mayhem, a game set in the Market Square, which appeared in issue 3 of Warlock (yes, there are trees, but not in the middle). I don't investigate because, even with 11 Skill, some fights just aren't worth getting into.

There's a guard by the front door, so I look for another way in. There's another door down an alley, so I check that out. It's not locked, and leads to a furnished room in which I can hear someone breathing. As I don't have the Hide Skill, I knock something over (wouldn't Sneak or Spot Hidden be more appropriate for managing not to cause this disturbance?), and wake the other person, who turns out to be a beggar who broke in to find somewhere comfy to spend the night. I reassure him that I'm not a guard, and he gives me the lock-picks he used to get in. These give me the Pick Lock Skill, without which I'd have no chance of winning.

Heading upstairs, I see two doors, both of them with plaques beside them. On one plaque is a coin, on the other a fish, and on the floor is the trigger mechanism for a trap, which I only notice because I have Spot Hidden. Avoiding setting off the trap, I try the door with the appropriate symbol on, which is locked. Good thing I have those lock-picks, as I'd be unable to get in without them.

The office contains a desk and chair, and there's an iron door set into the wall. That door is sucker-bait, but the desk contains a key with the letter 'L' on it, some more money, and two documents pertaining to Brass' recent purchase and refitting of a place called Barrow Hill. Can you guess where he's keeping the Eye? Well, Mr. Davis doesn't think that the information provided here is sufficient, so I'm going to have to break into Brass' house to learn what I just found out all over again.

As I'm heading for Brass' House (which I could do even if I hadn't been told its location by the landlord), I see two guards approaching. Still lacking the Hide Skill, I don't manage to evade their notice, so I decide to see if a handful of gold coins will cause their eyesight to retroactively deteriorate. The guards agree that they didn't see me, and resume their rounds while I continue towards my destination.

There are two houses at the corner I know to be the location of Brass' house, one with a coin carved into a doorpost, the other with a painting of an oar on a sign. At this point the book takes another turn for the ridiculous, as it's in my best interests to break into the wrong house first. So I pick the lock on the door of the house with the wrong symbol and step into a hall that has a black hooded cloak hanging on the coat-stand. Wearing this cloak is equivalent to having Hide (so it would have prevented me from blundering into the furniture in the Guild?). Also in the hall is a letter from Silas Whitebait to Captain Marlin, as a hint to anyone who's not here just for the cloak that this isn't where Brass lives.

Now that I have my reward for failing to act on information provided at the start of the adventure, I cross over to the correct house and pick the lock on that one. Ignoring the suit of armour in the hall, and the door to the servants' quarters, I creep up the stairs. There's a door on my left, and a landing with three doors leading from it to the right. To make things a bit more interesting, I head for the landing.

One of the doors opens, and a white-clad figure emerges and approaches. I keep still, and the somnambulist walks past me, then returns to his room. After giving him a bit of time to settle down, I listen at one of the other doors. The sound of snoring comes from behind it, so I enter the room and, lacking Sneak, tread on a creaky floorboard. The snoring stops, I freeze, and the cloak makes me sufficiently unnoticeable that Brass fails to realise I'm here, and soon drops off again.

I find more money in the clothes at the foot of the bed, and spot a key on a chain around Brass' neck. It has the letter 'R' on it. I use my Pick Pocket Skill to try and take the key, and have to make a Skill roll to succeed. Alas, I roll a double six - the only way I could fail - and wake Brass, who calls for help. I manage to flee without getting caught, but it makes no difference: the book won't allow me to travel to Barrow Hill unless I had my fortune told, ransacked Brass' desk at the Guild, and found the documents about Barrow Hill in the safe at Brass' house. I could have got into the safe with just the 'L' key and the lock-picks, but no, I just had to try and do things the hard way.

Well, I'll just have to save my gripes about how at Barrow Hill the book turns into a generic dungeon-crawl and rehashes chunks of Rogue Mage for the replay. Midnight Rogue is better in concept than realisation, and I'm no longer as keen on it as I was back in 2001. Indeed, only one of the books I reacquired on the day I came across the sixteen in the charity shop hasn't gone down in my estimation, and I now prefer several of the ones I left on the shelf and only came back for because I decided I might as well collect the set after all.

You Could Manage To Arrive Before the Nick of Time

I don't think I got Proteus issue 9, Lord of Chaos (by David Brunskill's new pseudonym, J.A. Collar), on the day it came out. I remember looking through it in the newsagent's near Boots and finding the logic puzzle that must be solved to get one of the essential items, but that newsagent wasn't on my route to school, and I definitely acquired my copy on the way to school. I was in or outside the music room when I got to the encounter with the witches in the mirror, and I gave the free gift (a miniature replica of issue 1) a little attention in room G, where I had French lessons. I know I didn't win my first attempt, as I missed at least two of the essential items (I was at home, in the kitchen, when I solved the mathematical puzzle that led to the first of them), but I can't recall whether or not I got far enough for the lack of those artefacts to doom me.

As usual, I'm an adventurer on the road in the search of quests. Towards the end of the day I catch sight of a walled city in the distance, and after a night of foreshadowy bad dreams I head towards the city. There are spikes on top of the wall, and one of the people tending the fields on the other side summons guards upon sighting me. After I explain my business, a ladder is provided, and I am escorted to the home of Glamarye, who appears to be the local sorceress. She explains that this place is Valantia, and its people really dislike violence, exiling anyone who perpetrates it to the harsh Kaercaradduc region in the north.

A recent attempted raid on Valantia led to the revelation that the arch-demon Uthergan is prophesied to rise from a nearby stone circle and lay waste to the region. It's a good deal more precise than your average prophecy, even giving a specific date and time. Namely, sunset today. So as I happened to be passing through the area and looking for work, the Valantians are willing to pay me well if I can track down the four symbols of power that will avert Uthergan's return, and thereby prevent the complete destruction of their city. There are enough real-world examples of people not bothering to take steps to avoid predictable and preventable disasters that I can't really call the Valantians' prior inaction unrealistic, but there are certainly problematic elements to their society.

Still, at least now they've decided to do something, they've employed a reasonably competent person to do the job, as I have:
Dexterity 11
Strength 20
There are no other stats this time.

Leaving Valantia, I reach a road. The direction I pick here will determine whether or not I have any chance of winning the adventure. I think west is the way to go, but it's been almost 10 years since I last played LoC, so I can't be certain that my memory is reliable here. Nevertheless, I trust it, and am right to do so, as I soon catch sight of a shack with an illegible sign on the door. Of course I investigate.

It's dark inside, but a man with a lamp suddenly appears, and is strangely amused when I tell him that I'm just passing through the region. He's a merchant, and while he doesn't have any of the items required for getting rid of Uthergan, I know from past attempts that that he is selling something that I'll need to use to get one of them, so I check out his wares. The only things that could be of interest are potions and scrolls, and for no obvious reason I'm only allowed to make one purchase.

After buying what I need (and experiencing the merchant's abysmal customer service skills), I return to the road and go back east. Yes, authorial sneakiness makes it necessary to retrace my steps less than half a dozen choices into the adventure. No wonder I failed the first time.

Before long the road turns north, and I encounter a lone Valantian who actually tried to find the artefacts himself. He's wounded and delirious, and has been unsuccessful, but deserves some commendation for at least making an effort. Before stumbling back towards his home, he mumbles fragmentary directions and drops a pouch of magic powder, which I take.

Further on I reach a junction, and follow the Valantian's advice, heading into the foothills of the Welsh-sounding Pen-Dinas and entering a cave. The passage soon forks, so I trust that the principles outlined by the bleeding man still apply, and the turning I take leads to a cave containing hundreds of gold pieces and an enthroned skeleton, which is wearing the golden breastplate that was the first symbol of power named by Glamarye. Two rather puny Ghouls attack me, and I barely take any damage in the course of dismembering them.

The breastplate is immovable, but a scroll clutched in the skeleton's hand tells (in rather clumsy verse) how to remove it. As I mentioned above, it's a mathematical puzzle, involving the numbers inscribed upon the breastplate, and shouldn't be beyond the capabilities of anyone who can subtract four-digit numbers from five-digit numbers. I have no problem with it, and soon the plate is in my hands and, judging by what the poem said, the spirit of the person whose skeleton was wearing the breastplate has finally been set free. I also help myself to a little of the money lying around.

There's only the one exit from the chamber, so I return to the junction and go the other way. Soon I reach another junction, and from this point onwards I don't have any recollection of correct directions. I try north, and find an exit from the caves. A sudden rockfall injures me, but I got off lightly: some of the stones that didn't hit are a lot bigger than I am.

After a couple of junctions I spot a bound and gagged man by the side of the road. I take a chance on releasing him, and he advises me to go back the way I came, so I do that. After some time I reach a swamp, and while slogging through that, I am attacked by a repulsive Marsh Monster. Even with the Dexterity penalty for the boggy ground, I outclass it, but a few bad rolls at the start of the fight cause me to take a significant amount of damage before rallying and defeating the creature.

Emerging from the marsh, I spot and investigate another hut. Opening the door triggers a booby-trap that gashes my shoulder, and the only thing of any potential value in here is a leather bag of berries. I try one, and it revitalises me, so I wind up eating the lot and exiting the hut in better condition than I was before I triggered the trap. The next hut I find contains nothing of value, and I take more damage when the floor gives way beneath me. This is getting tiresome.

At the next junction I am approached by a strange figure, who says nothing, but passes his hand in front of my face several times. Next thing I know, I'm some way up the north road from that junction. It's an interesting change from the usual 'authorial fiat has you decide not to take a certain turning' routine, but the lack of follow-up or explanation makes it just gratuitous random strangeness.

I reach a small village, and soon get the impression that I'm not welcome, though nobody is actively hostile. One man fails to notice me, being intent on trying to create a stone knife, so I offer him my own dagger. At first he doesn't understand my intent, and when he does twig, I find myself unable to answer his question as to what I want in return. He gives me a root that will enable me to fly when I bite it.

There's a harbour close by. Taking a look around, I realise that the figurehead on one of the boats is the statuette that's the second symbol of power. A plaque below it gives instructions on how to get the statuette, but I know from Glamarye's description that it's not that straightforward. Still, figuring out what does need doing is not the most challenging logic puzzle I've encountered in gamebooks, so I soon have the statuette.

As I'm heading out of the village, a nervous-looking man intercepts me and offers his services as an artificer. I accompany him back to his house, where he says he'll make me a key in return for some money. Sounds like a good deal, so I hand over the cash, and he carves several indentations into a block of stone, which he then hands to me. Not a conventional key, then.

But I've seen odder ones.

Leaving the village, I fall into a pit. Good thing I got that root, as without it I'd be unlikely to get out before the crossbow-toting brigands who dug it turn up. As it is, I narrowly escape and proceed to another junction. My wanderings eventually take me into a forest, where I find a rope ladder leading into a room that's been carved out of the tree. It contains a mirror and a bottle of black liquid, and there's a metal ring set into the floor. I drink from the bottle, and the mirror becomes a portal. Faces appear in it, demanding gold, so I hand over some money and get told where to find another of the items I seek, and how to acquire it. Moments later I find myself back at the foot of the tree, and set off again.

Following the directions I was given, I get attacked by a Stealthclamp (it's stealthy, and it clamps onto its victims' backs). Not a particularly tricky opponent, though the fact that I only do half damage means that the fight drags on a bit. Once I've killed it, I proceed to a chasm with a bridge across it. A man with a spear guards the way forward, and he wants a clutch of algethan berries for a toll. I ate the only berries I found, so I have to fight him. He's as good a fighter as I am, so I lose more Strength than eating the berries gave me. Still, my slightly higher Strength, and some lucky rolls, bring me through the fight, so I can cross the bridge.

Neither of the directions available at the next junction match the way I was told to go, but one is the direct opposite of it, so I try the other. The urn I seek is beside the path some way ahead, and by doing as I was advised, I am able to acquire it without breaking it.

It's getting late as I carry on, and before long I reach the stone circle of which I was told. I must have taken a wrong turning at some point between the village and the forest, as I only have three of the symbols of power. The sun drops beneath the horizon, Uthergan bursts from the barrow at the centre of the circle, and things get a bit unpleasant for me.

That wasn't quite as 'one true path'-y as I'd thought, but it's still rather too dependent upon purely random decisions. Mind you, it's by no means the worst offender in that regard, not even just in comparison with other Proteus adventures, and stats-wise it's reasonably fair. On the other hand, the plot's not particularly engaging, and the abovementioned gratuitous random strangeness is pretty much the only aspect of the adventure that's remotely innovatory. A middling adventure, all things considered. Unambitious, but inoffensive.

I Wouldn't Normally Do This Kind of Thing

My least favourite of the 148 gamebooks I've played for this blog is without doubt The Genesis Quest, the first of Nigel Gross and Jon Sutherland's Lemmings Adventure Gamebooks. Thus, I haven't exactly been looking forward to playing LAG 2, The Hypnosis Enigma. But I had no idea how awful TGQ was when I bought THE, principally because I got Enigma first.

Back at the start of the Quest playthrough (well, as much of it as I managed before giving up in disgust), I said that I'd explain how I got started on collecting the Lemmings books when I reached this entry, but there's not actually much to say. I came across a copy of Enigma in a charity shop and bought it, after which my intermittent completest tendencies prompted me to make a small effort to get the other book in the series. Perhaps I should have tried actually playing Enigma first: if it's anywhere near as bad as Quest, and I'd known that seven or so years ago, I could have saved myself the time, money and aggravation that book 1 has cost me.

Anyway, it's time I found out if the second book is any better than the first. It starts with the announcement that something strange (well, stranger than the usual level of strangeness) is happening in Lemming Land. Certain Lemmings are behaving very oddly, and all contact with the Space Zone has been lost. Assorted delegations of Lemmings are now meeting up to try and work out what to do - or rather, to dump responsibility for a response to the situation on the reader of the book.

In addition to keeping track of the Lemmings under my command, I'm also going to have to maintain a record of Victory Points (which provide some indication of how well or poorly I'm doing) and Mystery Points (the purpose of which is not disclosed in the rules). Those scores start at 0, and I must begin by selecting my team of Lemmings, but I can only pick members of three of the eight groups available. If this book only has one viable route to victory, that's around a 62.5% chance of guaranteeing failure from the outset.

Only one of the Zones explicitly mentioned in the introductory passage is on the list of Lemming categories from which to pick, and that's Space. So does that mean I have to choose Space to have a shot at winning, or will picking it give the authors an excuse to heap scorn on me on the grounds that, with the Zone now incommunicado, I have no way of gathering any Lemmings from there, and have thus wasted one of my three selections? I might as well find out...

No abuse. Yet. I get to roll two dice and pick that many Lemmings (in this instance six) from a list of nine types. The odds are deteriorating. I'll have an Attractor, a Jet Pack, a Floater, a Roper, a Laser Blaster and a Super Lem! (The exclamation mark appears obligatory). For the next category I pick Egyptian, partly because that whole pyramid thing suggests that I might be able to find Builders there, and partly because one of the between-paragraph illustrations depicts a Lemming in Egyptian-looking headgear, which could be a hint. Yes, I can get a Builder there. Also a Blocker, an Exploder, a Miner and a Magic Carpet (the dice fell less favourably here - and that six was already sub-par). Also depicted between paragraphs are Polar Lemmings, so I choose them for my final (roll - ouch!) three team members: a Thrower, a Scooper and a Kayaker.

I'm now ready to start, and the authors get in a snide dig at anyone who rolled poorly. Sure, Gross and Sutherland are not to blame for the way the dice fell, but whose idea was it to go for random numbers rather than set totals? Not mine.

Now I'm offered reinforcements by the Classic Lemmings. Again the dice decide how many, but this time there are only three possible numbers, and the roll determines which of them I get. A measly five, so I add a Climber, a Diver, a Parachute, a Runner and a Flame-Thrower.

I might as well start this investigation where I am, in the Classic Zone. A bit of nosing around reveals a shoddily-built platform, and given that Lemmings take pride in doing a good job, that's clearly evidence that something is afoot here. Closer examination reveals that there are still Lemmings working on it: five Builders and a Blocker, all of whom appear to be in a trance. I get asked if I have an identical group within my party. I was forgetting that extreme specialisation tends to be required when Jon Sutherland's name is on the cover.

Being four Builders short of quota, I find that half a dozen of my Lemmings suddenly get vacant expressions and wander off with the ones working on the platform. So that's goodbye to Floater, Blocker, Exploder, Scooper, Diver and Runner. Then a nearby building collapses, and we lose track of the entranced Lemmings in the chaos. I also lose a Victory Point (does the book allow for negative scores?) but gain a Mystery Point. Big whoop.

My depleted party moves outside the city. They head for a bridge over a river, and are enticed away by the sounds of a party.  The musicians are a mix of Highland and Egyptian Lemmings, and some of the partygoers appear to have danced themselves into unconsciousness. Asking about what's going on elicits no response, and a die roll determines that my Lemmings decide to join the party. Eventually I manage to get all but the Parachute, the Magic Carpet and the Roper to move on.

Proceeding to the hills, the remaining Lemmings find a Great Exit. There are three theoretically viable routes to it, and I pick the pass. It starts getting narrow, but I have a Miner... who turns out not to be needed, as the pass opens out again. The Exit can take the Lemmings to the Shadow Zone or the Highland Zone, and I know that the Shadow Zone is one of the affected regions, so we head there.

The place is brightly lit, which is odd, as it's supposed to be more like the title suggests. Up ahead is a maze (please, not again), with mirrors reflecting the light. I can't use Shadow Lemmings here, which might be a drawback if I'd had the opportunity to acquire any. And drat it, yes I do have to navigate the party through the maze. To add to the opposite-of-fun, I need to roll a die any time I see an asterisk, with a 1 in 6 chance of something (probably bad) happening.

After a while the party finds and deactivates a big floodlight. Directions switch from compass-based to right and left, and back again. Exits from junctions don't match with the paths taken to get there. The text suggests I've made a discovery, and directs me to another paragraph where I find that it's just another choice of directions. Eventually the Lemmings find an exit (I never did find out what would happen if I rolled the wrong number in the maze), and I can have a Victory Point for every floodlight put out of action.

There's a pit between where we are and the Shadow Lemming dwellings. Having no Glue Pourers, I must use my lone Builder (the book doesn't allow for the possibility of having none of either type). But I'd need at least four Builders to get the job done (precisely how many I require depends on another roll), and the only way to prevent my other Lemmings from marching to their doom across the unfinished bridge like... well, you know - would be to use the Blocker I lost earlier.

Well, that wasn't as appalling as the other Lemmings gamebook. But it was still pretty bad, what with arbitrary decisions and random rolls determining almost everything. This is not a series to which I will be returning in a hurry.

Looking for Something That Won't Be Found

Five months elapsed between the publication of Star Strider and the next Fighting Fantasy book, Robin Waterfield's Phantoms of Fear. There hadn't been a gap that long between FF gamebooks in years, and with no Warlock magazine to help sustain interest in the range, my attention drifted on to other things. I still played gamebooks, but my enthusiasm had diminished, and when Phantoms appeared in the bookshops, I didn't bother getting it.

Part of what put me off it was an element of the premise. I'd worked out a convoluted and contrived plotline whereby the same character could be the hero of almost every FF adventure, occasionally disregarding inconvenient details to help fit most of the plots into one overarching narrative. Even so, there were limits to how much I could ignore for the sake of this daft idea, and the fact that the viewpoint character in PoF was an Elf, not a human, was obviously going to get in the way of shoehorning the adventure into my epic folly.

Some months later I borrowed a copy of the book from a friend (the same one who lent me his The World of Lone Wolf books), had a diceless go at it, and enjoyed it enough to get a copy after all. There are two different ways of winning, one of which is actually quite easy if you're not using dice, so I made it to the end via that route. As I'm playing gamebooks properly here, I anticipate a more challenging time today.

So, my character is a Wood Elf, probably from the same tribe encountered by the hero of Masks of Mayhem shortly before he got unspecified. Having learned from both my parents, I'm a warrior and a shaman. I'm also a practitioner of the art of dream control. And thanks to past attempts at the book, I know that I'm nowhere near as competent as that description suggests. This particular version of the character has the stats:
Skill 12
Stamina 18
Luck 7
Power 11
That Power score is less impressive than it might look: the range of possible starting scores is 8-18. And it's an important attribute on either path to victory, so that may have already doomed me.

I wake from a dream in which I was explaining the plot of the adventure to the other inhabitants of the village. The Demon Prince Ishtra is creating a vast evil army beneath the forest, and I have been chosen to defeat this invulnerable villain. Reflecting on this, I decide to go back to sleep - not to try and forget about my quest, but in the hope of dreaming something useful.

In the new dream I walk through the forest until I reach a T-junction. A statue of a goddess releases the black dog it was holding (which runs down the track along which I came), and points down both the paths available to me. One path exudes a sense of health and well-being, the other leads to decaying vegetation and a foul-smelling pit. The statue drops the two identical copies of my sword that she's holding (no, they weren't there a moment ago, but this is a dream) and vanishes.

I take the non-festering route, and reach a ring of white elder trees. A voice tells me to remember this sacred spot, and I gain a little Power before waking. I now understand that I must seek out the blighted region within the physical forest, enter Ishtra's underground stronghold, and improvise a means of overcoming one of the most powerful evil beings in all Titan. After explaining my mission to the tribe (the book doesn't say whether or not it happens exactly as in the first dream), I collect my sword and backpack and set off, not bothering to pack Provisions because my character is woefully clueless about how rubbish he is at foraging for supplies.

Heading south (because I know from a previous attempt that north is no good), I am attacked by a Fog Devil that drifts in from Lake Nekros. Despite its insubstantiality, it's able to inflict a couple of wounds on me before I dissipate it. As I continue on my way, I start to wonder if this is the wrong direction too, and turn west. Observing uncharacteristic behaviour from the woodland creatures, I decide that it's time I looked for food supplies, and get lucky: not only am I left alone by potentially hostile fauna, but I even manage to find a decent number of Provisions. On at least one past attempt I've wound up having to fight something, and then acquiring less food than it would take to restore the Stamina lost in that battle.

Towards evening I'm forced to spend a point of Power driving off a swarm of hornets. Then I get ambushed by Pixies, who drop a sticky net on me and use magic dust to render me unconscious. I come round in the morning, soaking wet and still in the net, which is now suspended from a tree branch, and hanging over a pool into which the Pixies periodically dunk me for their own amusement. One of them explains that they serve the Riddling Reaver, minion of the neutral trickster gods. He doesn't want Evil to prevail, but he's not too keen on having Good triumph either. Still, if I can solve the Pixies' 'riddle', they'll let me go and provide some assistance. If I can't, it's game over.

Solving the not-really-a-riddle by counting the words in the Pixies' atrocious limerick, I am set free and get to pick one of a set of items. I choose a carved stag's antler because the text specifies how many branches it has, and items that have numbers associated with them are often important in gamebooks. I subsequently discover that the water has spoiled some of my Provisions, but I still have plenty left.

A little later I encounter an Arctolyce, a predatory wolf/bear hybrid, which purportedly has a particularly vicious bite, not that this one ever manages to get its teeth into me. Nothing else of note happens during the day, and I spend the night in a bone-strewn cave. Whatever makes its lair there doesn't trouble me, and I have a dream about bottomless pools of fire, water and wind (no, wind doesn't tend to form pools, but this is a dream).

In the morning I decide against exploring the tunnel at the back of the cave: while the potential harm found in there is easy to evade, I'm not aware of any benefits to be derived from going in there, so I might as well see if there's anything worth encountering on the outdoors route from here. No, nothing - it's just quicker. I reach the edges of the blighted part of the forest, which is more extensive than I'd expected, and stand my ground when something makes a loud noise. A blast of sorcerous wind knocks me over, but I'm not harmed because I wasn't breathing in at the time.

Continuing towards the despoiled region, I find an enchanted grove which still maintains some presence of Good here. There's a pool of water there, and I take a quick dip in it: on my previous online attempt I drank from it, but the benefit gained was negligible. Bathing proves a little better: I get a Luck bonus, and learn of a silly-sounding encounter that I missed (an Itching Powder Plant? Maybe that strange noise was caused by a Whoopee Cushion Tree!). Then I doze off, because obviously the thing to do when in close proximity to the lair of a foe that could crush me with no effort at all is to have a quick snooze. There's a 5 in 6 chance of getting something potentially vital here (and if the roll goes badly, I fail Cybe-style, but without that item I'd have to almost double my Power to be in with a chance). Nevertheless even if sleeping is probably the right thing to do here, it's still a pretty absurd course of action to be taking.

The fairy folk who tend the grove appear to me in a dream, teach me all sorts of gardening tips, and attempt to convince me to abandon my quest in favour of combating Evil by helping maintain this place. Their novel interpretation of 'Dig for Victory' fails to win me over, so the dream ends and the glade vanishes, leaving only a magical tree with one silver branch, which I take as a souvenir.

I advance into the warped part of the forest, and may no longer use magic. Not that I'd bothered with it before now, except for when the book made me do it to get rid of those hornets. Up ahead is a clearing, which I boldly cross, as a result of which I get attacked by a Slime Monster. To clarify, that's a monster that hoards slime, rather than one made of the stuff. Not difficult to kill.

Continuing on my way, I find and follow a trail. It leads to a fenced-off area full of holly bushes, and I crawl under the bushes to investigate. Up until now I've done a pretty good job of avoiding situations which reveal just how useless I am at woodland stuff, but here I get scratched and (non-lethally) poisoned by the holly, then ambushed and disarmed by the insane man who lives here.

Imagine this chap. But with a large and well cared-for axe.

He invites me back to his hut, where I introduce myself. If I had enough Power, he'd regain a little sanity at this point. Alas, I don't have nearly enough, so he bursts out laughing, and (assuming I wish to retain all my limbs) I have no choice but to grab back my sword while he's distracted with merriment. This leads to a fight, a trope-aware beam of sunlight forcing its way through the filthy window just to make the madman's axe gleam as he swings it at me. I win without much difficulty, but the likelihood of my finding the important item in the hut has just significantly dropped. A lucky roll enables me to discover the thing anyway: it's a glow-worm trapped in amber, and still glowing despite having been like that for millennia. And somebody's engraved a number on it.

That night I have bad dreams, culminating in one where I have to fight a tree. I lose. But dream combat tends not to be fatal, so I just wake up with less Power and a wounded neck. Resuming my trek towards Ishtra's domain, I spot a deer in a clearing, but that Shapechanger's already fooled me once, so I shan't fall for its tricks again. As I continue through the increasingly warped and deformed region, I become aware that I've been surrounded by half a dozen Dark Elves, who are now closing in on me. The text indicates that I hate their kind with a near-pathological intensity, but I know that even with 12 Skill, I wouldn't stand a chance against that many (I found that out the hard way on a previous attempt), so I try to break through their cordon before they get too close. That still means fighting them, but singly, so long as it never takes me more than four rounds to defeat one. Alas, the third one takes six rounds, so the fourth gets two free attacks on me, but the wording implies that the round-counting restarts at the commencement of each new fight, so there's still theoretically time to beat Dark Elf four before the fifth one catches up. Indeed, I have no trouble offing him once I'm able to give him my full attention, and the last two are no trouble at all. I think this is the furthest I've ever got through Phantoms by the rules.

Disguising myself as one of my attackers, I carry on to the pit, which is not as it appeared in the dream. In fact, Ishtra and his troops are occupying a complex of subterranean tunnels, the entrance flanked by two ivory pillars because allusions to Greek myth make perfect sense in a world that has no Greece. Once I'm inside, a new rule comes into play, allowing me to move from the real world to the dream world almost at will. If I were to enter the dream world, my physical form would continue to move through the real world in an invisible, somnambulatory state, so I'd be unaware of my surroundings, and go unnoticed by Ishtra's troops (provided I didn't walk into any of them). I'm going on about it in hypothetical terms because I'm on the item-hunting route, and the things I still need are all found in the physical realm, so I shan't be making much use of this aspect of the gamebook. If I had enough Power to make the alternate path viable (or if I'd failed to acquire the amber, and been forced to take the Power route as my one remaining slim chance of winning), spending time in the dream world would be more worthwhile - maybe even essential.

Before long I encounter a Crio-Sphinx at a junction. The Sphinx tells me which of the paths leading onwards would kill me, but I know that Sphinxes' words are never straightforward. I could evade the issue of trying to figure out what the Sphinx really means by slipping into the dream world, but I remember that the solution to the 'puzzle' is a matter of perspective, and take the turning that won't get a portcullis dropped on me.

I reach a cavern with several exits and a big pile of bones in it. For a while I just keep watch, seeing several Orcish patrols go through, and then I risk taking a closer look at the bones. They're the remnants of heroes of antiquity who fought Evil down here, and learning this is strangely encouraging.

More Orcs pass through the chamber, and I decide to explore one of the passages from which a patrol just came. I try the one north, and witness an altercation between an Ogre and a Troll who just bumped into each other. Their disagreement turns into a fight, and I watch to see what happens. The Troll wins and heads my way, still in a violent mood. He doesn't win his next fight.

Continuing to explore, I find an armoury with a quartz door. I remember the 'surprise' that's here, but not if there's anything in there that will justify getting attacked by the door. Best to check, just in case. While the Quartz Golem doesn't do much damage to me, it does slightly blunt my sword, and just turns back into an immovable door when defeated, so that was a waste of time.

Further on, I find the kitchen. The cook is in a bad mood because a Dark Elf foraging party is late (if it's the party I encountered, they're late in more than one sense of the word), and attacks me, meaning to add my corpse to the pot. Her cleaver's not much use against ingredients that can fight back. To make it look more like I belong here, I grab a tray of food and take it with me when I move on.

The exit leads to a dining hall where more Goblins than I can fight in one go are eating something vile. One of them demands to know what I'm doing here, so I pretend that I've just come to have my lunch. The pretence goes all right until I find a fingernail in the stew. Still attached to the finger. My character's a vegetarian, and can't stomach that, so I hurry out of the hall. After a little while I see a side turning, which the book compels me to ignore. There's a strong probability that something essential lies on the path that would have brought me here by the other route, but it's too late to do anything about that now. If I'm doomed, I'm doomed.

Next I encounter one of the more exasperating aspects of the book. It's a corridor with six doors leading off it, numbered with multiples of eleven from 11 to 66. If I want to open any doors, I must roll the dice, and keep rolling until I get a double. If it's a double one, I get to open door 11 by turning to section 11, and so on. Weird, and dream logic can't be invoked here as I'm awake. But what makes it that bit worse is that an essential item (on the item-gathering path) is behind one of the doors, while another leads to an Instant Death.

After several non-doubles (the amount of fruitless rolling that goes on here is another, lesser annoyance), I manage to open door 55. Not what I wanted, but it leads to a larder, where I can restore some lost Stamina. Trying again, I eventually hit the jackpot, opening the door that leads to the freezer. There I can take a lump of ice, making a mental note of the room number just because. It's possible that one of the other rooms also contains something beneficial, but I have what I need and would rather not risk inadvertently opening the failure room, so I move on.

At the next junction I hear cruel laughter drifting down one passage, and get a sensation of terrible doom from the other. A vague memory suggests that the doom may be what I need to check out. No, that's the beginning of the endgame, and here I am with only four of the six items I need. Well, what's done is done.

The passage leads to  cave filled with an oppressive aura of Evil. This immobilises me and drains away my Power, causing my lifeless body to drop to the ground. Unless I delay the inevitable by jumping to the dream world, which I do. There I come face to formless mass with Ishtra's lieutenant, Morpheus, source of all nightmares. I have to win at least one of three increasingly difficult dream combats to keep from being sent back to certain death in the cave.

I narrowly lose to the dream Harpy, but just manage to overcome the dream Clawbeast, so there seems little point in bothering to fight the dream Wraith. Then again, the number of dream combats I won may make a difference, so I play it out anyway. And lose very quickly. Still, I only needed to win one, so now I'm up against Morpheus himself, and this fight doesn't use the biased rules that every preceding dream combat did, but a minor variation on standard combat rules (substituting Power for Stamina). Oh, and that third fight was unnecessary

The fight lasts slightly longer than it would have if I hadn't blunted my sword (even though I'm not using a physical weapon), but I prevail, sparing Morpheus when he's down to his last couple of Power points, because killing the source of the dream I'm in is unlikely to do me a lot of good.

Not that it really matters, as I'm left with a choice between confronting Ishtra with less Power than I need, or fewer items than I require. Well, actually, if I try the Power option, having an insufficient score results in my being shunted to the item-based variant anyway. I must add up all the item-related numbers I have 'and turn to the paragraphs (sic.) whose number is the same as the total'. As I'm missing a couple of things, that paragraph makes no sense in context, so I must instead turn to the one in which Ishtra appears (taking the form of a bipedal crocodile with a goat's head) and atomises me with a fireball.

The inevitability of failure drains my enjoyment of playing a gamebook. From the moment I knew I'd missed something, this became less fun. But if I overlook my having been slightly soured on Phantoms for the last half dozen or so sections, I can see that it is one of the better Fighting Fantasy books published in 1987. When you consider the number of flaws and annoyances I've mentioned in this or the earlier playthrough, that's actually quite an indictment of around half the ones that came out that year.

He Died With His Boots On

A slightly different challenge for me today: I'm going to replay The Chasm of Doom, the fourth Lone Wolf book, with the character who's survived books 1-3. The thing is, I got most of the way through Chasm the first time I blogged about it, and I don't like just repeating myself. There are points in the books where I can take a different path and not doom myself, so adding a bit of variety there won't be a problem, but there are other stretches where I'm basically going to have to do pretty much the same as I did before, as it would be silly to take sub-optimal choices and potentially increase the risk of failure just for variation's sake. There's a poem that crops up a couple of times during the adventure, so I might have a stab at rendering the 'just like before' sequences into verse.

Having succeeded at the previous adventure, I get to add another Discipline. Camouflage would save me 2 Endurance points in one situation, and Tracking must surely be of some assistance in tracking down the runaway actor I already know where to find. I'm not so sure what uses for Mind Over Matter crop up here, so I'll take that one just out of curiosity.

Lone Wolf and his men set off down the road,
And found a strange old man's abode.
(The first couplet in Mr. Dever's verse has the same uneven metre, all right?)

Kicking the door in rather than politely knocking has no adverse consequences (and I'm amused that my character's response to being told, 'You have nothing to fear from me,' is to tighten his grip on his weapon).

The man proffered a scroll and disappeared.
Then along came a wagon of troubadours,
Put on a show, to scant applause,
With a real sword as a prop. (How weird!)
(Again, any metrical awkwardness is in emulation of the original.)

Hunting, which I already have, is just as good as Tracking would be for identifying the wagon where the actor with the Sommlending cavalryman's sword, so I don't even need to remember where I found him last time.

The next day's incident is randomly determined, and I don't get the same outcome as before, so when the approaching storm prompts us to seek shelter, we find a ruined temple instead of a tavern. Two men in black robes are hiding in the ruins, and make no response when I ask who they are, so I have the rangers capture them. A flask of something gets broken in the process, and I can now see that the men wear amulets indicating them to be members of a silent order of pilgrims dedicated to prayer and healing, so I apologise for the rough treatment. Still, given the existence of shape-shifting assassins and murderous fanatics in this world, caution is often a wise option. The text doesn't say anything about returning the money and food confiscated from the pilgrims, which is a bit off (though the Mongoose edition does at least make taking the gold and food optional rather than automatic).

Bandits attack during the night. Their leader fells a couple of rangers with one blow, then turns his attention to me, and gets a taste of his own medicine. The remaining rangers and I drive them off, but find that they've taken most of our horses. I keep as many men as there are steeds left, and send the rest back home to report on what has happened.

As we resume our journey, I catch sight of black birds in the distance. This time I have Animal Kinship, and thus recognise them as carrion crows. Might as well see what they're feeding on. And it's the remains of around forty of the soldiers who were sent in search of the lost convoy I'm now investigating, plus assorted bandits. Well, I already knew they were dead. Still, if I'd been wounded, the detour would have given me an extra section's worth of Healing.

Staying on the direct route until dusk, I don't waste any of my remaining troops on a doomed scouting expedition. After a quiet night, the text insists on my sending three rangers ahead of me, because there needs to be a source for the bodies I can find later on. The rest of us continue at our own pace until we reach the burnt-out wagon, and the fact that none of the scouts came back to let me know about it strongly hints that they're dead.

This time round I take a closer look at the wagon, and a surprise ambush leaves another three rangers dead. The rest of us continue towards Ruanon until we reach the bridge over the river Xane. On the other side are crossbow-toting bandits, who'd have no trouble picking us off if we tried crossing here, so we go west in search of a ford. After a while we catch sight of a group of bandits spearing fish and piling them up beside a wagon, and I'm experienced enough to sense that a whole lot more bandits are asleep in the wagon, so the risk of being spotted and overwhelmed is too great to justify taking action here. How about heading east, then?

Going that way leads to a boathouse, which contains (surprise!) a boat. Also a selection of items of questionable usefulness. Backpack space being limited, I just take the hourglass. Not that I'm aware of any situation in which it will come in handy - it's just a quirky object to add to my Action Chart. We then set off in the boat, which is promptly seized by the current and swept through a crevice into a dark cavern. What's the betting that this leads to the same stretch of river where the last rangers got killed on my last try?

No, it's beyond that point. I've reached the 'great hall' in the mines. This time round, the collapsing bridge that cuts me off from the last of the rangers in the Mongoose edition actually makes sense (and in the original text my companions just disappear). Not such an unnecessary edit after all. But still sloppy: there needs to be a 'reach the great hall' section with no mention of the rangers, for all the paths on which none of the men survived that far. It couldn't have been that hard to free up a section for that, either by merging a couple or by deleting one irrelevant choice - the silly macho door-kicking from early on, for example.

I'd forgotten how much of a bonus Camouflage would have given for evading the drunken guards. Well, it's too late to change my mind, so I'll just have to make the unmodified roll. I get noticed, and a couple more sub-par rolls enable the guard who actually manages to attack me to do a not insignificant amount of damage before I kill him.

Alarms were sounded by another guard.
Lone Wolf hit a pit-prop quite hard.

The Sommerswerd easily sunders the prop, as a result of which I take a little damage from falling debris. It doesn't always pay to be efficient. Moving on, I reach the shaft spanned by the bridge, with its bored guard, and finally get an opportunity to use Mind Over Matter, psychokinetically shoving a mound of loose shale over the edge, and hurrying across the bridge while the guard investigates the noise. Just a large-scale version of the 'thrown pebble' distraction, then, but it does the trick.

After dealing with the fearsome lever,
To the ruins of Ruanon Lone Wolf fled,
And did not get shot in the head
(A 1 in 10 chance from Joe Dever).
(Yeah, that last line probably doesn't rhyme if you're American. Tough.)

In fact, this time I get the other non-lethal (to me) outcome of the 'pursued by Warhounds, shot in the leg by a bandit sniper, rescued by Captain D'Val' sequence. Instead of being shot by the Captain, the sniper gets savaged by a Warhound too blood-crazed to distinguish between friend and foe, and his screams attract the rest of the pack. I approve.

The Baron babbled the prophetic verse,
And things began to get much worse.
The bandit hordes launched an all-out assault,
And with flaming oil set the Captain alight.

This Lone Wolf is experienced enough to know that rallying the troops is more important than helping D'Val, and orders a couple of other soldiers to put out the flames while he takes charge of the situation. Which is what I chose to do last time anyway, but now I know that I made the right decision.

A bold bandit Lone Wolf did fight.
Defences were breached (a mage's fault).

In rode a horseman, brandishing a lance.
Against archers he had no chance.

Randomness makes the fight against the Warhounds technically tougher than it was last time, but the improved Lone Wolf here hacks them apart before any allies arrive to help repel the beasts. Now a quandary arises: I remember that the Vassagonian soldier who's just been flung over the barricade is only pretending to be incapacitated, but in order to kill him before he can launch a surprise attack on me, I'd have to take my attention off the ongoing battle. Well, if the inferior Lone Wolf survived the faker's ambush, this one should have little trouble defeating him, so I'll focus on rallying the troops. Yes, that worked out okay: I managed to kill the sneaky wretch even before my Combat Skill penalty for being surprised had worn off.

The Vassagonians routed at last,
Lone Wolf now sought to avert the sacrifice.
Though insects sucked his blood (not nice!)
Unseeing enemies walked straight past.

When I reach Maaken, I try the unguarded steps. This time I have the Kalte Firesphere to illuminate the crypt and, more importantly, I'm armed with a weapon that can harm the thing I believe to be lurking in there. Yep, I remembered right. Well, near enough. The blood-sucking creature is so scared of the Sommerswerd that it flies into a crevice in the ceiling rather than confront me. A second exit from the crypt leads into a long corridor - the same one along which I walked just before making my fatal error last time. That's one choice I'm definitely making differently today.

Going in the other direction leads me to a balcony overlooking the inner sanctum of this subterranean temple. The Baron's daughter lies on the altar, and appears to be in a trance. Red-robed priests place black stone amulets around her, then file out, and I hear the approach of Barraka, leader of the bandits and principal villain of this book. He enters the chamber and opens a pair of skull-inscribed doors leading to the Maakengorge, letting in a howling gale. Then he approaches the altar, wielding a flaming dagger of black metal. For once a Mongoose edit removes unnecessary verbiage rather than over-clarifying: only the original text specifies that his boots are on his feet.

I can attack or try to distract him, and I risk finding out what the latter entails. Oh, real smart - I yell at him to leave her alone. Luckily for me, Barraka's equally dim, and rather than completing his vile rite and raising undead hordes to overwhelm me, he advances on me with the dagger. Again I have the option of fighting, and this time I'll take it, since I doubt that Barraka will be quite so obliging as to stand and watch while I rescue the Baron's daughter.

The fight is preceded by an inventory check, which isn't quite the same in the differing versions of the text. Both ask if I have the Sommerswerd, but only the original mentions a flask of Holy Water (that's probably what the pilgrim dropped at the ruined temple). Curiosity about another Mongoose edit prompts me to take a quick peek at some of the sections to which I won't be turning, which reveals the Mongoose edit to be another good one. In the original, the 'if you have neither the Sommerswerd nor the Holy Water' section asks if I have any Holy Water. Mongoose's deletion of the first Holy Water check gets rid of the unnecessary repetition. Still, keeping the initial check and skipping the redundant second check altogether would have provided the spare section needed to fix the problem arising from the 'collapsing bridge' edit I went on about earlier, so while the change is an improvement, it could still have been a better one.

But I digress. I do have the Sommerswerd, so for the purposes of this playthrough I should be fighting Barraka with it. The wind from the gorge attacks my mind, distracting me for long enough that Barraka inflicts a tiny cut on my cheek. I've suffered worse while shaving. Barraka's a fairly tough opponent for this stage in the series - in later books, to compensate for Lone Wolf's increased prowess, enemies get a lot more powerful, sometimes implausibly so - and is immune to Mindblast. But my Mindshield protects me from his more powerful mental attack, so on balance I've done better out of the psychic stalemate. As for the physical combat, I lose half my Endurance while he loses all his. And a little more besides.

The spirit of Darklord Vashna is denied its opportunity to rise from the gorge, and I take the dagger in order to ensure that nobody else will ever be able to try and bring him back from the dead again. Well, not for another dozen books or so, at any rate.

I emerge from the temple to find Barraka's remaining men being chased off by Sommlending cavalry. The rangers without horses must have made it back alive after all, then. The Baron is reunited with his daughter, and not even the 'James Bond will return'-esque promise of new ways to get killed in book 5 can take the shine off the happy ending. And I must concede that, while the Mongoose edit has its problems, it does make the book better in some places.

If I ever have to play this again, though, I'm taking Camouflage, not Mind Over Matter.

I Get Knocked Down... But I Get Up Again

I got the fourth and final Sagas of the Demonspawn book in the same sale as the third one. While I have a vague recollection of attempting it after giving up on book 3, and one or two plot details linger in my memory, I can't remember exactly how I failed it.

Had Fire*Wolf not died in the first battle of Demondoom, nor fallen victim to any of the other ways of getting killed that the adventure offered, then he would have gone on to destroy all of the Demonspawn and their lair with a convenient artifact. Book 4 picks up a couple of weeks after this, on the day that Fire*Wolf is to marry the Lady Freya. And this groom isn't quite as mediocre as the previous model, having:
Strength 56
Speed 40
Stamina 40
Courage 40
Skill 10
Luck 48
Charm 56
Attraction 16
Life 306
Still below-average, though, for all the difference it makes.

So, with the eponymous monsters now extinct, and nuptials impending, is the final book in the series going to focus on the hero's attempts to adjust to married life? The title Ancient Evil suggests otherwise, and there is potentially at least one plot thread yet to be resolved. Depending on how the dice fell, the Fire*Wolf who killed the Assassin who attacked him at the start of the last book might have noticed an intriguing scar on the body.

The father of the bride is troubled. Chancellor Nazar disappeared for a week not so long ago, and after turning up again, he had no recollection of what had happened to him during his absence. Since then, he's been behaving oddly. More than a dozen others have also disappeared, most recently the Chief of Police. But right now Fire*Wolf has other concerns.

At the appointed time, he heads to the Palace Temple and (dun, dun, DAA!) gets married (hands up who thought the bride would inexplicably fail to arrive, or Moldavian terrorists would burst in and attempt to kill everyone, or something else would happen to interrupt the nuptials). After the ceremony, Fire*Wolf is getting changed into his travelling clothes when one of the Gegum (a Bene Gesserit-esque order of witch-nuns he encountered in parts of the adventure I never reached) interrupts with a summons to the Convent. The book offers the option of refusing the summons, but it makes such a big deal about his being a free agent, able to determine his own destiny, that it's obvious he's got no real choice in the matter.

Before setting off, he orders his manservant not to tell Freya that he's gone, hoping to be able to return before she's finished getting changed. He meets the Abbess Lipta, who informs him that Harn now faces the greatest crisis it has ever known, vaguely implying that this new threat only exists because he prevented the Demonspawn from destroying everything. More cryptically, she indicates that the Gegum planned the crisis, but the threat is not their fault. They have chosen Fire*Wolf as the focus of the powers with which they mean to oppose it, and now wish to test his ability to control that power and not die. He objects to this, so the Abbess reminds him that he owes them for the help they provided last book, and he grudgingly agrees to take the test.

Suddenly the two of them are elsewhere - or so it seems, but apparently they walked there and Fire*Wolf had his memory of the journey erased because where they are now is that secret. The Abbess explains that Fire*Wolf must go through the door at the end of the hall, and he might die when he does. And he will die if he turns back or uses magic.

Beyond the door is a lava-filled pit, with a narrow plank across it. I shan't check to see if turning back is as lethal as Lipta said it would be. For Fire*Wolf to safely cross the plank bridge, I must roll two dice three times and get 10 or above every time. That would have a 1 in 216 chance of success, but Fire*Wolf's Courage score provides a modifier. The maximum possible Courage would give +9 to each roll, and even a merely average score would give +1, improving the odds to roughly 1 in 46.

This Fire*Wolf has a below-average Courage. There's no penalty for that, but it does mean that my chances of success are negligible. And even my first roll falls significantly short of the target. So Fire*Wolf falls significantly into the pit. As usual for Sagas of the Demonspawn (to the extent that anything about the series can be described as 'usual'), the 'Fire*Wolf is no more' section offers the possibility of restarting at a point other than the beginning. I take it, and Fire*Wolf returns to the plank. And falls off again. The same thing happens to the next Fire*Wolf, too. But the one after that gets a decent Courage (I would not have had the patience to reroll his stats that many times if not for the fact that my gamebook manager condenses the lengthy process into one click of the mouse) and survives the crossing.

Beyond the pit is a narrow passage containing a monstrous serpent. The book offers the option of seeking an alternate route rather than fighting, but I suspect that that means 'turn back in spite of the Abbess' warning and get Instant Deathed', so Fire*Wolf attacks. The serpent has a special one-off attack involving a venomous bite, and dodging it works in a similar way to not falling off the plank, but with just one roll, and a modifier based on Speed. This Fire*Wolf's Speed isn't as high as his Courage, so he winds up paralysed and devoured. A couple more reincarnations suffer a similar fate, and then a Fire*Wolf with the minimum possible Speed gets lucky and dodges the attack, so he can fight the serpent.

He loses. But I succeed at the roll for getting a one-off rematch with the same character. He loses again. The next Fire*Wolf fails to dodge the paralysing attack. So does the one after that. And then I fail the roll that permits me to restart at the section where Fire*Wolf died, so I think it's time to put the book back on the shelf. For a very long time.

A Bad Enough Dude

I don't remember the circumstances of my getting Star Strider, the first Fighting Fantasy gamebook attributed to Luke Sharp (not the author's real name). It was probably a Saturday, as I took the book with me to a church picnic, which would have been on a Sunday, and I think it unlikely that I'd have still been carrying the book around more than one day after getting it.

It's another SF adventure. The Galactic President has been kidnapped by the Gromulans, a humanoid species renowned for their illusion-creating technology. My character is a Rogue Tracer (the in-setting term for bounty hunters), and as one of the top-ranking Rogue Tracers (also known as Star Striders), I've been semi-blackmailed into rescuing him. He's been traced to a backwater planet named Earth, and I have 48 hours in which to find him - after that, the device that prevents his mind from being read will no longer be functional, and the Federation's secrets will be available to the highest bidder.

Rogue Tracers must be a pretty pathetic bunch if I'm among the crème de la crème, since my stats are a measly:
Skill 8
Stamina 21
Luck 7
Fear 8
Fear doesn't work like the similarly-named attribute in House of Hell: it just determines how much I'm likely to be harmed by Gromulan illusions.

The shuttle to Earth is less than half full, and has clearly seen better days. A service android asks if I want anything, and I choose food cubes, as this book dispenses with the usual restrictions on exceeding Initial scores. I only get one extra Stamina point for eating, but that could mean the difference between success and failure at some point.

Arriving in a desolate area, I notice a Sweepertron taking an interest in me. Could be one of my employers' 'spy' Androids, so I approach it. The Android tells me that the Gromulans are based in four cities, which I'm most likely to be able to reach on Silverhound buses. High-ranking Gromulans access the equivalent of the internet through their ComTerms, so if I can get my hands on one of them, I might be able to find out something about the President's location. After dispensing this information, the Android self-destructs, and since it's the cleaner, there'll be nobody around to get rid of the resultant mess.

I board the Silverhound and spend the next couple of hours dozing. Then the bus is pulled over by a couple of GromPol Androids, which check all the passengers' IDs, and throw me off the bus when they discover that I'm a Rogue Tracer. I wait to find out what's going on - no point in raising suspicions by trying to run away. The Gromulan commander asks whom I have come to Earth to capture, but I refuse to give a name as I know from past attempts at the book that Rogue Tracers never name their quarry. Annoyingly, this detail isn't mentioned anywhere in the background, and the only way to learn it is in this encounter - if I were to name a criminal, the book would point out that I'd just done the wrong thing, and penalise me for doing what it had neglected to point out that I should never do.

Still, I made that 'mistake' on my very first try, so now I know better. The Gromulan accepts my refusal to answer, and then creates the illusion of his head enlarging and biting my head off for no apparent reason. I'm not scared, and just return to the bus. A couple more hours pass, and then the Silverhound stops at a diner for breakfast. One of the patrons turns out to be an escaped criminal I've arrested before. He runs away, and I give chase, as doing my job is a good way to make it look as if I'm here on everyday business rather than hunting for the President.

As the fugitive attempts to attract the attention of some Rocket Bikers, I pull out my Catchman, a weapon designed to harmlessly immobilise criminals. It has a 2/3 failure rate, but today I'm lucky, and it neatly ties him up. I prepare him for retrieval and return to the diner, where I become the focus of attention. The proprietor asks if I caught the criminal, and I chat with him for a while, learning that his son is a member of a Houlgan gang in Madrid (Houlgans are one of the book's better humorous elements, being feuding tribes who belong to different sects of a 'long-forgotten religion' (actually football fans, but the text never spells that out, though the clues are pretty obvious if you think about them)). All this chat means that I don't manage to actually eat anything, but it's information worth having all the same.

Eventually the bus reaches Madrid, where I find a poster indicating Silverhound routes. From here I can only travel to Roma. None of the listed travel times are anything like as long as it took to get here, so either the timetables are ludicrously optimistic, or the shuttle terminal is a long way away. Since Silverhounds can fly, it's even possible that the middle-of-nowhere place I arrived on Earth is in America - having the United States reduced to a state of complete insignificance would fit in with the author's quirky approach to the future.

An Android signals to me. When informed of the activation of the 'spy' Androids, I was also warned that the Gromulans are good at reprogramming, so there's no guarantee that 'friendly' Androids are actually on my side. This one's been suspiciously proactive, so I don't return the signal. Furtive observation enables me to spot it reporting in to a couple of GromPol Androids, proving that I was wise to maintain my anonymity.

A group of Houlgans are trying to break into a food dispenser and, as luck would have it, their leader has a tattoo which enables me to recognise him as the son of the diner owner I chatted with earlier. Name-dropping his dad ensures a friendly reception, and I am treated to a mysterious and disconcerting Earth delicacy (probably scampi, though for personal reasons I'd find it that bit more amusing if it were a battered haddock).

The Houlgans hate the Gromulans, and let me know two places where I might be able to access a ComTerm: the Plaza de Toros and a hacienda. I choose the latter, as I got a dice-related Instant Death the last time I tried the Plaza route, and can't be sure of evading a similar fate if I should go there again, whereas the dice-related trouble at the hacienda isn't automatically game-ending.

Once I'm at the service entrance, my allies depart. Drifting dust alerts me to the presence of light beam-based security alarms, and only random rolling can determine whether or not I manage to avoid all the beams. For the first time since creating my gamebook manager, I get lucky, and reach the hacienda undetected. Once I've figured out that the door needs to be pushed open, I get inside, and encounter an Android with a jar. Attacking before it can alert anyone, I have a harder fight than I should against such a weak opponent, but eventually I damage it enough that it self-destructs.

A Gromulan child enters the hall and demands to know what happened to Beany (the Android butler) and her lemonade. She uses a few cartoonish illusions on me when I don't answer, then asks me to play with her. I suggest a quick game of 'hack the parents' ComTerm', and once she's shown me where it is, I send her off on a spurious errand. Accessing the ComTerm requires me to solve a couple of mathematical puzzles (because a password would be too easy to guess, right?), and I get as far as learning that the President is not in Madrid, but at a high-security base with coordinates beginning 169A. At that point I do get asked for a password-equivalent, and this book doesn't allow an implausible option to correctly guess it, so alarms start going off and I make a hurried departure, blundering into one of those light beams as I do. This triggers an illusion-based, chess-themed trap, but my knowledge of the game's rules enables me to evade capture.

I reach the bus station just as the Silverhound is about to depart. It's full, but when I show my Rogue Tracer ID, an old woman is ejected in order to free up a seat for me. This does not make me popular with the other passengers. It's late when I reach Roma, and I spend the night at a shabby Fast Food and Sleep Unit. A familiar-looking woman is also there, and I try following her in the morning. Despite being delayed by an ID check, I manage to catch up with her, and remember that she's another high ranking Rogue Tracer, named Arana. The 'never discuss business' rule only seems to apply when talking with non-Rogue Tracers, as she has no qualms about telling me that she's after Orvium Egburg, who stole some firmware that probably has important data on it. Suspecting that the data in question may be President-related, I offer to help Arana.

She tells me of two haunts favoured by Orvium and his cronies. I know from past attempts that I'll find him (and be forced to play a variant on Russian Roulette) at Gino's. So is the Roxyrama an investigative dead end, or is this one of those annoying gamebook sequences where reality alters depending on the decision the reader makes? Just for a change (and because I already know that the President isn't in Roma either), I head for the Roxyrama. It turns out to be an outdated 3-D cinema, and seems to be closed. I manage to get in anyway, and when faced with a choice between corridor and stairs, remember the saying that maths teachers used as a reminder of the correct order for graph coordinates.

I find a big man with a lot of guns who's watching an old movie (with a title that's never actually been used for a film according to IMDB), and express an interest in the stolen firmware. The man offers to take me to Orvium, but before we've got very far, a Gromulan task-force turns up. My companion starts attacking them, and I decide against getting into a fight on that scale, and try to sneak off. Which turns out to involve grabbing an abandoned retro pack (what's wrong with 'jetpack'?) and rocketing away. Luckily, I manage not to collide with any buildings, but get up onto a roof. Androids start shooting at me, so I try a little Parkour, and my Stamina is high enough that leaping from one building to another is no problem.

One regard in which Rogue Tracer beats Blade Runner

After all that, I wind up at Gino's after all, and spot Orvium putting the boot in to an acquaintance. I approach him, and he refuses to talk to me unless I play 'the game'. As I indicated before, this is essentially Russian Roulette, and the dice that were so helpful back at the hacienda are rather less so here, causing me to blow my head off on my very first pull of the trigger.

I got further in my previous online attempt, but failed that by running into one of the dozen or so arbitrary Instant Deaths that crop up in the endgame. 'Luke Sharp' went a little overboard with the lethality in his first couple of FF books, though this one is the lesser offender.