But, for My Own Part, It Was Greek to Me

Lee Russell's Labyrinth ('based on a concept by Daedalus') was not included among the Corgi Books Tunnels & Trolls reissues, nor was it part of the job lot that included the three T&T adventures I've already attempted for this blog. I eventually came across a copy in Archeron Books (as was), a local shop that sold second-hand books and comics, with a sideline in gaming paraphernalia, and has in intervening years relocated twice, dropped the 'Books' from its name and become a gaming shop with a small selection of left-over books and comics. That was before I properly got back into gamebooks, and when interest waned, I wound up passing that copy on to Wood Ingham, a friend from university (and if you've self-Googled your way here, Wood, howdy). The copy I now have is a later edition, A4 rather than A5, with an odd Centaur/Minotaur hybrid on the cover, and that was part of the eBay job lot that included my third copy of Naked Doom.

Labyrinth is an Ancient Greece-styled dungeon crawl, taking something of a 'theme park' approach to history, myth and legend, so my character will be wandering around the eponymous labyrinth, seeking the exit, encountering assorted heroes, monsters and members of the Ancient Greek pantheon, and hoping not to run into the Minotaur. Only low-level human warriors are permitted, but that's not a problem, as I need to create another new character anyway.
Strength: 13
Intelligence: 10
Luck: 7
Constitution: 13
Dexterity: 14
Charisma: 14
Speed: 11
Not bad, apart from that Luck, but Luck is the easiest attribute to improve when levelling up, so if I can just survive long enough, I can turn him into a fairly respectable character. That's a big 'if', though.

So, with character motivation still in 'because it's there' mode, I bribe a Cretan to take me to the Labyrinth entrance, and just after I go inside, a convenient earthquake collapses the way I came in, forcing me to search for another way out. I shall be mapping as I go along, but I won't go into detail about directions here, because in a maze-like environment that could get almost as exciting as listing every single roll of the dice.

The first room I find contains Prometheus, to judge by what those eagles are doing to the man. If the options available are indicative of the sort of decisions made by Mr. Russell's RPG group, I'm a little concerned about some of the people with whom he was gaming. What sort of person responds to seeing a man chained to a rock with eagles trying to eat his liver by going, "I attack the man!"?

I don't want a fourth T&T character to die in the very first encounter, so I choose not to get involved, and just gape at the grisly spectacle like a motorist passing the site of a particularly nasty car accident. When the eagles have had their fill, they fly off, and Prometheus waxes philosophical about human moral advancement.

Moving on, I reach an L-intersection (isn't that what normally gets called 'a corner'?). There's a door set into one of the walls, so I go through that. Behind it is a forest (traditional dungeon ecology is deranged), home to an unclad nymph who can't have encountered many humans, considering the way she looks at me.

Now would be a good time to explain a little of my philosophy of role-playing. Anyone who really doesn't want to know what I have to say on the issue can skip ahead to the next paragraph - I'm not planning on an essay. Okay, to me, the 'game' element of gamebooks and RPGs is a big part of the framework. For the purpose of playing these games, I'm willing to have my character do things that I would avoid in the real world, but largely to the extent that the game requires it. My character will kill, steal, study magic and do other things I'd really rather not do in reality, when it's necessary for having a chance at winning the game. But this 'end justifies the means' approach is as far as I'm willing to diverge from my real-world ethical code. Having my character do something that I (hope I) never would, just because the option is there and I reckon he can get away with it? No, thanks.

Still, even if I didn't have the attitude described above, I doubt that my character would now be pursuing the nymph with less than pure intent. GCSE Latin included a few passages from Ovid's Metamorphoses, which incorporated some Greek myths, so I know that that sort of thing tends not to end well. And, given most gamebook writers' fondness for inflicting bizarre fates on players' characters, I suspect that in this instance, it won't be the nymph that gets transformed into a tree to protect her chastity. Consequently, I just talk to her. She leads me to a tree with leaves of real gold, and I help myself to a little of the wealth. A lucky roll means that she doesn't laugh and blow away the leaves I've collected, and I leave the room slightly better off than I was when I entered it.

Behind the next door I try is a small hydra with seven heads. I vaguely remember this encounter from a while back, but not well enough that I can perform a decent cost/benefit analysis on the fight. Well, at some point I'm going to have to take a risk, so I may as well chance things here. The heads attack one at a time, and this could be a very drawn-out fight, as the Hydra has a slight edge skill-wise, but my armour should protect me from most of the harm it can do. Monsters' ability to fight diminishes as they take damage, so once I've managed to hit the head, it should become easier to hit it again, but inflicting that first blow is going to be the tricky bit.

It's not as impressive when conducted through a doorway

Indeed, the first head hits me three times (but cannot get through my armour) before I manage to wound it, but after that, I hit it every round until it dies. Battling against the other heads takes much longer, but eventually I kill six and subdue the immortal one. By which time a dozen new heads have grown to replace the ones I killed, and they get to attack two at a time. Against such odds I have no chance, but I can retreat. Doing so means that I get bitten in the backside, but that would have happened if I hadn't fought at all, so I'm not significantly worse off for having fought as much as I could, and the Experience gained in the fight has brought me more than a tenth of the way to levelling up. (IIRC, if all twelve fresh heads are killed, the hydra collapses under the weight of the two dozen that grow in their place, which is quite amusing).

Rather unhelpfully, the retreat option says I have to go back the way I came (fair enough - that is what 'retreat' usually means), but doesn't bother listing the points of entry to the room, and as I haven't been including section numbers on the map, the only way of working out what I need to turn back to is to flick through the book until I find somewhere I know I've been before, and retrace my steps from there. To be fair, the introduction does have a warning about this buried in it, but it's still sub-optimal design.

Much wandering along featureless corridors ensues before I reach a room in which a group of drunken women are performing a Dionysian Mystery Rite. They may be Maenads, so I go back the way I came before I attract any attention. In the next room I find, I hear music, so I make myself scarce in case it's Siren song. Then I come across the Dionysians again (the room they're in is bigger than I realised), and a while after that, a random encounter gets my pocket picked by Hermes.

A chest labelled 'Gifts of the Gods' looks too much like a trap to be worth investigating. Another random encounter causes me to meet Poseidon, and my luck runs out. He turns hostile, and my character has to wave goodbye to the world. Another failure, then, but the most substantial T&T adventure I've yet had for the blog.

This appears to be Mr. Russell's sole contribution to the range, and I can't say I'm massively disappointed that there are no more adventures by him. The basic concept of an 'Ancient Greece' adventure is sound, but the implementation is a little lacking. The wandering around featureless corridors gets tedious after a while (this must be what the Maze of Zagor is like for normal people). At least when the Cretan Chronicles series got to the labyrinth, it used frescoes depicting scenes from mythology to add a touch of variety to all the trudging through passageways. Having said that, it's not a bad adventure. Just one that could have been a good deal better.

The Price I Pay for Being a Man

The Sagard the Barbarian series by Gary Gygax and Flint Dille never made much of an impression on me back in the eighties. I got one of them second-hand, and was not sufficiently impressed to seek out any others. Not enough juicy death scenes. A little while after getting back into gamebooks, I discovered scans of the whole series (among other gamebooks) at the Underdogs' website, and found them diverting enough to request physical copies as part of a gamebook trade the following year. At some point in their troubled history, these books were the property of a person who wrote in them with a biro, and because of the way the series handles combat, that means that a lot of pages have been defaced.

These books use a rather different system to anything else I've played for this blog, so I've spent a little while messing about in Visual Basic to adapt my gamebook manager to handle it. It's a bit more cumbersome than ideal - too many variables at play - but I think I've got the bugs out of it. At the very least, the d4 emulator I've added should do a better job than the 'flick through the book and note the number at the top of the page' mechanism provided.

The book uses a pre-generated character, so there's no need to list any stats, and I can just get on with the background. I am, as the series title suggests, a Barbarian named Sagard. My tribe lives in the inhospitable regions of Upper Ratik, and I have decided to undertake the Ordeal of Courage in order to be recognised as a warrior by my peers. Basically, I need to leave the village, do something heroic, and bring back proof of my actions. If what I've done is impressive enough, I gain access to the Warriors' Lodge. If not, I get exiled.

Two courses of action suggest themselves to me: go west to the mountain range known as the Rakers, purported to be the home of an Ice Dragon, or head south to the Marsh (a frozen wasteland rather than the marsh the name suggests), home of the Painted Frustis and, allegedly, the site of the legendary Lost Colosseum. This book's called The Ice Dragon, so choosing which way to go is not difficult.

As I set off, I cannot help but notice a slight mismatch between text and cover artwork. In the book, Sagard is 16 years old, and equipped with spear, dagger, cloak and wineskin. On the front of the book is a bearded bloke in hypothermia-inviting shorts and boots, wielding a sword against some blue meanie.

I leave the village at night, then come to the conclusion that it's too dark to head through the mountain pass in safety. Consequently I decide to shelter in a nearby cave until it gets light. The cave's occupant, a Mountain Lion, does not approve of my plan. Theorising that killing a Lion would go some way towards satisfying the Warrior Idol panel, I get into my first fight. I take a bit of damage before prevailing, but it turns out to be the exact same number of Hit Points that can be restored by barbecuing the rabbit that Leo had been saving for breakfast.

The following day is uneventful, and I make camp in a valley at dusk. During the night I sense someone approaching, and wake to find a perfumed figure close by. It could be a woman, but then again, it might be Uncle Monty a hostile Medigian Trader, so perhaps I should attack before the new arrival knows I'm awake. As I recall, these books don't really go in for Instant Deaths, so the worst that can happen here is taking a little damage before getting into a fight. Therefore I'll try and figure out whether or not this person is actually an enemy before I start poking my spear at them.

A wise choice, as this is an attractive young Ratikkan female by the name of Glanda, who's on her own Ordeal of Courage (the fact that both genders have them is a good deal more egalitarian than I expected to find here). She intends to claim the heart of the Ice Dragon as her prize, and invites me to join her on this quest. I'm torn between wanting to accompany her (for fairly obvious reasons - which is a bit of a surprise, given that this book is published by the same company that bowdlerised the sexual references in around half a dozen Tunnels & Trolls adventures) and thinking that her intentions are foolish and suicidal. You know, it would have been a good time to make the reader aware that seeking the Ice Dragon is a mug's game back when I got given the choice between venturing into Ice Dragon territory and trying to find out what in Ratik a Painted Frusti is. Well, two of us should have better chances against the beast than one, and if her plan to use 'guile and speed' actually has any substance to it, a partnership could prove advantageous.

The somewhat regrettably-named Glanda claims to have heard that the Ice Dragon lives in an ancient Gondorian temple (Gondor? This isn't Middle Earth.), and she has 'some notions' about the whereabouts of this temple. Then, in the next section, she admits to having no idea where it is. Before I can query this discrepancy, we are interrupted by another Ratikkan youth, apparently from Glanda's village, and evidently very jealous. If I want to stick with Glanda, I'm going to have to fight him.

As I contemplate my decision, the book mentions that the Ordeal is supposed to be done single-handed. And this didn't come up when I was deciding whether or not to join forces with Glanda in the first place because...? I'm starting to have second thoughts about the whole thing: her plan now appears ill-thought-out, and fighting someone over a woman appeals to me as little in a gamebook as it would in real life. These two obviously have some history between them, and I'd rather not get mixed up in their affairs. Glanda is displeased, apparently having hoped to see a bit of violence. Definitely a situation I'm best out of.

After a couple of days I come across a trade route, and conceal myself when I hear a wagon approaching. It belongs to a couple of Medigian traders, who have a rather nifty-looking sword, and a Ratikkan woman in their cage. For once the book sums up the pros and cons of an action before I have to decide: if I attack, I get the advantage of surprise, but the slavers outnumber me. And apparently Sagard's ethics do not include any sense of duty towards Ratikkans who aren't from his village. But I've lived in Hull for the last 15 years, and Wilberforce's opposition to the slave trade is a big enough part of its heritage to have had some influence on me. Fear dictates that I remain hidden, but I'm not taking notes.

I get in four decent blows before the traders are able to start retaliating. After that I take something of a beating, but ultimately I prevail. Turning my attention to their prisoner, I find that she is a Valkyrie who was travelling incognito. She heals my wounds, gives me the sword, and lets me know that she has been watching over me, and would have protected me from death, but from now on I'm on my own. So the gamebook contrives to ensure my survival in the early stages of the adventure, then gets losable once I have a few encounters under my belt? I quite like that.

Oh, and I'm going to have to fight the Ice Dragon. Once it's been prophesied by a mystical being, it stops being a stupid idea, right? However, I have no more idea where the Dragon actually lives than Glanda, so I decide to seek the wisdom of the Frusti Sage. Who lives in the north, despite Frusti territory being to the south. Maybe he's a Nicodemus-style recluse.

There's no response when I knock at his door, and I am unwise enough to enter unbidden. The Frusti is in, and accuses me of trying to steal from him. He won't tell me what I want to know unless I give him my sword or fight him. Not that much like Nicodemus, then. The sword is too high a price to pay (especially as I had to discard my spear when given it), so I'm going to have to beat the Freedom of Information Act into this Sage. Who turns out to be a Berserker. Definitely no Nicodemus. He hits a lot harder than I do, but lacks armour, so the fight could go either way. And I win, but not by a very comfortable margin.

I take a map, wait until I'm fully healed, and then set off again at dusk (why the repeated departure as it's getting dark? Okay, so in a movie, you could get some lovely visuals of the hero striding towards the sunset, but this is just words on paper). This time round I don't wind up sheltering in a cave, as I find a Gondorian road, constructed of marble block that glow in the moonlight. It leads to a ruined stadium, beyond which is a mist-shrouded valley. The smell of a campfire leads me to a couple of Tehnite tents, with an ornately painted shield nearby. I consider stealing it, but reflect that Tehnites are brutal fighters. Better to do without, then.

As I sneak away, the mist suddenly dissipates, and I find myself forced into the combat I sought to avoid. The same section serves for 'try to steal the shield' and 'get spotted while departing', making for an awkward transition and a surfeit of Ackbarisms. As it turns out, the Tehnites are no better at fighting than I, their combined Hit Points are fewer than mine, and they don't have the damage bonus provided by my sword. Still, there are two of them, so I shouldn't get cocky. It's a less punishing fight than the one against the Frusti or the traders, but there's less healing to follow. Still, the shield will provide some protection in future battles, and also serves as a trophy.

During the afternoon I encounter the rare (and soon rarer) Furred Snake, and the shield takes something of a battering before the Snake dies. I rip out the Snake's fang (it only has one?), not just because it makes a good trophy, but because its venom will restore me to full health when I drink it (which isn't quite as daft as it may sound, as venom needs to enter the bloodstream to do damage, unlike poison, which is harmful when ingested. So you shouldn't really call snakes and other creepy crawlies 'poisonous' unless you're referring to ones that aren't good to eat - the ones you don't want biting you are venomous. Regardless, I do not advise drinking venom: if you do so, and it gets into a cut in your mouth and kills you, don't come complaining to me!).

At the end of the valley I see three potential ways forward: a crevasse, a cave, and what looks like a man-made portal. If there was anything in the rumour Glanda had heard, the portal is the most likely option. Still, this section is a self-confessed hub, so I could check out the other places first and see if there are any fun trophies to be had in them.

The crevasse turns out to house a flock of bats, which attack because fictional bats do that sort of thing. It's a tiresome fight, and I have to make use of the venom owing to the cumulative effect of multiple trivial wounds, but I survive. Lighting a fire against the unnatural cold, I discover that this cavern is artificial, and shreds of clothing on the floor hint that bad stuff has happened here. I'm given the option of turning back (leaving half way through the section, because sloppy structuring earlier and the authors' desire to have a round number of sections in the adventure leave no room for any 'if you advance, turn to X' option), but choose to face the nameless horrors of this place.

Which turn out to be a load of plucked birds (quite tasty) and a quartet of Kobolds that are almost as flimsy as the bats were. I mash them without taking any damage, and ignore another mid-section 'you can turn back now if you're scared', descending to a chamber strewn with the remnants of a large number of warriors, which appear to have been dumped here via a chute. Retreat doesn't look quite such a silly option now. Nevertheless, I ascend the chute, and cross a bridge over a river. The bridge collapses, but not until I'm far enough across to leap to safety. Still, there won't be any more 'turn back' options from here.

A huge door leads onwards. It's locked, but the keyhole is big enough that I can pick the lock with my dagger. Behind it is an Ice Golem. Even with the most favourable rolls imaginable, I could only chip away half of its Hit Points before it flattened me. But if I can dodge past it... I have to fight a couple of rounds before I manage, losing a quarter of my Hit Points and not quite managing to lop off a sixteenth of the Golem's.

Beyond the Golem is a building containing many cells that hold animals' remains. I encounter a few penguins waddling down the corridor, and by now I do feel a little p-peckish... So, back up to full health, I continue on my way. Beside each cage is an illustration of the creature that was held in it. Observing an impressive picture of a fearsome Snow Tiger, I peek inside to see the mighty beast's skeleton. The skeleton turns out to still be covered in flesh and fur, and contains a selection of fully functional internal organs, plus almost everything else necessary for sustaining life. The only missing ingredient is food. Which is where I come in, as far as the Tiger is concerned...

Mind you, this is one meal that's not going down without a fight. And the Tiger will be a skeleton before long. Albeit one that's missing a jaw, as I need my trophies. Oh, and that battle enabled me to level up (yes, this game has experience points and skill levels), so I'm a better fighter now. Still not good enough to have much of a chance against that Golem (and some of the wording on the encounter suggested that I may meet Icy Boy again), but improvement is improvement.

Hearing voices, I investigate, and come across a couple of Yeti hunters preparing to ambush their prey. A fight breaks out moments later, and I decide to join in, as I have a 50% chance of getting embroiled in the melee even if I try not to get involved. The Yeti kills one hunter and hurts the other, but eventually succumbs to our attack. The surviving hunter then turns on me, wanting to claim the pelt for himself. Somehow he manages to lose half the Hit Points he still had (whereas if he'd only survived the fight by the skin of his teeth, he'd have been inexplicably invigorated). I make short work of him, and claim the Yeti pelt and the hunters' rations.

After a while I draw near to the Ice Dragon's lair. Four armed men calling themselves the Zokapers guard it, and attack when I refuse to surrender to them. Singly they'd be no hassle. En masse, they don't quite manage to kill me, but they do come mighty close. One turns out to be only mostly dead, and offers to let me know a secret way out if I swear not to kill the Ice Dragon, which is apparently a load-bearing boss. There's a chance to earn XP here by deducing what this place actually is, but that's a detail I remember from reading through the pdf a decade or so ago, so I don't think I can claim it this time around. Considering that I'm on my last legs, I wouldn't mind taking the Zokaper's deal, but I don't know that he's definitely trustworthy, and besides, I'm on a mission to get the Ice Dragon's heart, not to get close to the Dragon and then chicken out, so I'm not sure I can just sneak out the side door.

Now, this is interesting. I think I must have accepted the Zokaper's offer back when I did this adventure before, because I can't see how I'd remember the original function of this place, and yet forget the big twist. Which is that the Dragon isn't a Dragon. It's a machine! The power source for the vast refrigeration unit that's been running here for centuries (not that Sagard could put it in such terms, but he gets that it's man-made).

I am distracted by a pounding on the door. On the other side, pleading for release, are some people who call themselves Teknikans, keepers of the Ice Dragon. They claim that they're prisoners. If they genuinely want to be freed, they could probably show the safest way of removing the huge jewel that is the heart of the dragon. Then again, I'm near enough to death that even a couple of Level 0 opponents could kill me if they got lucky, so if this is a trick by people desperate to hang on to their jobs, I'd be a fool to fall for it.

Overall, I think that tinkering with the technology of the ancient Gondorians while it's still running is liable to be more harmful to my health than fighting a few boffins. A wise choice, as the Technikans are legit (and, from their description, possibly von Danikenesque humanoid aliens), and do want their freedom. The bad news is that I need to destroy the Ice Golem to enable them to escape. Better news is that they have a healing salve which restores me to full health, and that they deactivate the Ice Dragon before we set off for the end boss fight. Take away the artificially generated cold, and Jack Frost starts to succumb to John Thaw.

The melty man cometh

The Teknikans help out in the fight. By 'help out' I largely mean 'take the damage dealt by the Ice Golem while the rising temperature and I do serious damage to it', but they do get in the odd blow, and it's the three that survive who chip away the last of its Hit Points. In its death throes it hurls me across the river, and a bed of slush gives me a soft landing.

Returning to my village, I face the judgement of my elders (and observe that the former owner who wrote in the book is a liar and a cheat, who claimed to have two trophies that lie on mutually exclusive paths). They are so impressed by all that I have accumulated, they want me to become the new chieftain. I decline, as there are another three Sagard the Barbarian books, and the challenges that come with leadership get explored by The Way of the Tiger rather than this series.

Well, that was entertaining. Perhaps a little too easy - every time it showed signs of getting dangerous, a massive healing boost came along - and some things could have done with being made clearer (or explained at a more appropriate moment), but it was fun, and occasionally required a little intelligent decision-making. As my schedule currently stands, it'll be a long while before I get to the second book in the series, but as I enjoyed the first book more than I'd expected to, I may bump it up a little.

Before You Embark on a Journey of Revenge, Dig Two Graves.

I'm pretty sure I was still ignoring dice when I first tried Ian Livingstone's Island of the Lizard King, and as this is the last of Ian's books not to use a narrow True Path, glossing over combat and the like meant that it was hard to lose. As I recall, I went via the beach with the crab, completely missed Sog's Helmet, made use of the harmful items as well as the beneficial ones in the box in the pond, took the route through the marsh that missed all the fights (but inflicted Giant Leeches on me instead), didn't discover the Horn of Valhalla (so had to fight the Cyclops), and had to use the Lizard King's own Fire Sword on him.

At the start of this adventure, my character travels south from the setting of Deathtrap Dungeon. There's no mention of his being laden down with several thousand gold pieces of prize money, so I think we can conclude that he is not supposed to be the victorious champion of the previous book. More likely, he formed part of the crowds that watched half a dozen idiots march into the dungeon, and gradually came to the realisation that waiting for a winner to emerge was going to be like waiting for Godot. Or Walter the Wallabee.

Anyway, I head down to Oyster Bay, home of my old friend Mungo, who greets me with something along the lines of, "Lizard Man slavers attacked our village this morning, and I'm about to head off to their home on Fire Island to kill them all." I offer to accompany him, because nobody else will. And a fat lot of help I'm going to be, looking like this...
Skill: 8
Stamina: 15
Luck: 10
This book may be easy for cheats like me-in-1984, but a by-the-rules chap such as I am today is unlikely to get far without a double-figure Skill and, ideally though less essentially, 20-odd Stamina.

As this is probably going to be a very brief entry, I'll give a bit more background detail to the adventure. Fire Island used to be a penal colony, with Lizard Man mercenaries for guards. When their employer ran out of cash to pay them, they took over the island, and started using the inmates as slave labour to dig for gold. The one who became King has been dabbling in voodoo and genetic engineering (a very popular joint honours course at Blacksand Polytechnic), as a result of which the place is full of hostile mutant flora and fauna as well as resentful Lizard Men. Owing to the high death rate among untrained, ill-equipped, malnourished mineworkers with brutal human-hating overseers, and the lack of fresh inmates being sent to swell the workforce, output has been dropping off a little of late, so the Lizard Men have started preying on nearby coastal villages for new workers. This book was published less than a month after the miners' strike of 1984 commenced, so any similarities you may perceive are going to be coincidental, but I'm sure all sorts of surreal analogies could be read into it if you were determined to read it that way.

Anyway, we sail to Fire Island, and I guess it's time I decided how we're going to die. There are two separate coves accessible from the inlet where Mungo moors his boat: Death-By-Pirate Cove, and Death-By-Giant-Crab Cove. In honour of the tenth anniversary of International Talk Like a Pirate Day later this month, I'll head for the former. Shockingly, it's being used by half a dozen Pirates to bury their treasure. We attack them, managing to kill the first two before they've finished going, "Yarr!". I only take minor damage against the next two, while Mungo rapidly dispatches one of the others, and then turns his attention to the Captain. Who runs him through on the spot. I get lucky and skewer the Captain shortly afterwards, but Mungo is done for. He wouldn't have survived if we'd gone for the other beach, either (one of my sisters attempted the book not that long after I got it, and was so upset when Mungo got killed by a Giant Crab that she almost gave up at that point). With his dying words, Mungo asks me to avenge his death by killing the Lizard King. Who's only very indirectly to blame, but it's quite an effective guilt trip to keep me focused on the quest despite the loss of half our forces.

Before moving on, I investigate the loot that cost six Pirates and Mungo their lives. It's a load of iron bars. Stupid colour-blind Pirates weren't even burying any decent treasure. I grab an iron bar in case I need to put up a lightning conductor at some point in the adventure, and head inland. Dusk soon falls, and after an uneventful night I set off again. Hacking my way through the undergrowth is tiring, but I know that if I stop for a rest, the lush, aggressive vegetation will go for me, so I persevere.

Three Headhunters take an interest in me. Each manages to wound me once while I am expressing my reluctance to become part of anybody's collection, but they have some bananas that restore a fraction of the Stamina I lost in the fight, so that was a totally worthwhile encounter. A plume of smoke implies the existence of a village to the south-west, so I head north-west in the hope of avoiding more offensive stereotypes.

This isn't the way I normally go when playing this book, as there is a possibility of acquiring something useful from the village. And of getting to commit arson in a good cause. But with my stats, the risk outweighs the potential benefits, so into the (relatively) unknown I go. And I promptly discover the skeletal remains of an escaped convict, with an axe and a rope lying close by. Being reliably informed by Murray that there are no animated Skeletons in the book, I don't hesitate to add the items to my inventory.

Further on I see that someone has constructed a platform up a tree, and vague memories come creeping back. Doesn't the guy up there throw coconuts at your head if you try to climb up? I'm pretty sure that it is possible to get information out of him in exchange for food, but I need all the Provisions I can get in this adventure, so I shan't bother investigating.

Out of nowhere, I get attacked by a Giant Dragonfly. After the fight I have the option of sampling some fungus that grows on a rotting log. I suspect that Ian Livingstone may have had a traumatic experience involving a toadstool when he was very young, as this is not the only time he throws such an encounter into his books, and eating the stuff rarely ends well.

This toadstool with a face has been lying around in my Photobucket account for 5½ years. It's a long story. 

Moving onwards, I find a clearing that contains a glowing green gem. Acting like a complete idiot in a 1950s horror film, I touch it, and it heals most of the damage done by the Dragonfly. I don't push my luck, though, and hurry away. Into an ambush by half a dozen Pygmies, who have blowpipes trained on me. Attacking does not look like a wise option, even if the illustration makes it appear that several of the Pygmies have really bad aim (or my body is the size of a zeppelin). They appear to want something from me, so I hand over the axe, which impresses them far more than it should. Maybe I've blundered into a The Forest of Doom-style situation, and just returned their tribe's stolen axe, without which they would have been inexplicably unable to defend themselves against the enemies who were preparing to attack them.

My path converges with the Headhunter village route on the edge of a marsh. I see a Marsh Hopper - a small reptile that knows the safe paths through marshland, but has the unpleasant habit of leading travellers into the territory of predators in return for whatever scraps remain once the unwary human has been savaged to death. I follow this one a short distance, and then blaze my own trail when it starts heading in a direction that doesn't fit my plans. That does result in my picking up a few Giant Leeches, which cost me some Stamina and the salt from my Provisions (note that in the real world, putting salt on leeches is not the best thing to do), but enables me to avoid a fight that would probably have left me far worse off.

After the marsh, I reach some hills. If I had a decent Stamina, I could acquire something useful here, but the ordeal that must be endured to get it is likely to be too much for this character, so I take the most incident-free route possible here. At the far end of the gorge, someone has carved the words 'Turn back or die' on a boulder. Unhelpfully, the precise positioning of the inscription makes it impossible to ascertain whether the warning is for people who've just come through the gorge like I have, or those just about to enter it from the other end. Well, it's foolish to expect to find anything important just randomly carved on a boulder, anyway.

Footprints in the sand indicate that somebody was apprehended around here not too long ago, and one of the participants in the fracas has dropped a brass snuff-box. Magpie-like, I grab it, and find it to contain a gold nugget and a note from the slave whose escape attempt ended here. The note mentions a couple of facts of potential use to any would-be rescuers, and is not signed, so even if its author hasn't been fatally punished, I'm not likely to get the opportunity to give him back his snuff-box.

Following the footprints, I encounter a Giant Lizard, and the luck that has sustained me through several more fights than expected finally runs out.

Among the things I didn't get to encounter in this playthrough are a trip into the mines (which are a good deal more mine-like than The Mines of Malagus), a series of challenges set by a Shaman so I can earn the right to learn how to overcome the Lizard King's virtual invulnerability, a pitched battle between liberated slaves and the Lizard King's troops, and a chance to totally fail to impress an attractive woman. Plus a minimum of two unavoidable fights against opponents more powerful than any I faced above. Ian has now mastered the art of making his books effectively unwinnable to at least two thirds of characters played by the rules. The books still make the by now laughable claim that the true path is still 'fairly easily' beatable even for characters with weak initial rolls. I'll keep an eye out for when the publishers finally drop the pretence.

Wounded by Fear, Injured in Doubt

I knew of Proteus by the time the second issue came out, and upon catching sight of a copy, I bought it. That's pretty much the story of how I got every issue bar the first. There was a newsagent's on my route to school, and another practically across the road from the school grounds, so I generally got the issues that came out during term time from one of them. I have vague memories of reading part of issue 2 in the vicinity of the Physics lab, which would suggest that that's what happened with this one.

My first attempt at The Mines of Malagus was an unremarkable failure. There are effectively three zones within the eponymous mines, and passage between zones is only possible in one direction because of booby traps, one-way doors and the like. Movement within a zone is largely unrestricted, but once you cross the dividing line, there's no turning back. For no very good reason, section 1 provides routes into all three zones, and I picked the wrong one, which meant I merely got to confront one or two monsters and possibly face a riddle before reaching the exit.

Recently I rediscovered part of a past attempt at mapping the adventure: fragmentary representations of bits of the second zone, with erasure smudges, letters that I presume refer to areas marked on another sheet of paper, and a whole section redrawn because I'd underestimated distances and couldn't get the tunnels to line up. On the same page is a more accurate representation of the Maze of Zagor from The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, unlabelled, but clearly recognisable as a result of my having mapped the wretched place so often.

Anyway, in this adventure (penned by David Brunskill under the anagrammatical pseudonym 'Viki Llundsbrand'), I play Mr. Generic Itinerant Adventurer. Possibly the same character as in The Tower of Terror after having run out of Potions, as I claim to know something of magic, but have only my sword to rely upon at the start. Then again, I could be someone else entirely, who looks like this:
Dexterity: 13
Strength: 23
Courage: 8
Oddly, I seem to have been travelling through uninhabited wilderness for the past twenty days, yet still managed to find somewhere to pay for a roof over my head every night until my money ran out.

At last I find a village, and my 'Will quest for food' sign gets me directed to the home of the Wizard Nytrak, who gives me a history lesson. This place used to be ruled by a Grand Wizard who protected its people from the hostile Dagraigs. It's not clear when he died: it is stated that he ruled 'a thousand years ago', but there is evidence that his death was a lot more recent than that. The headstone of his grave should have maintained the protection, but it was stolen by 'headless creatures' that wanted to take it to Malagus (seemingly a person, not a place, but that's never made entirely clear). It got broken during a squabble, and since then half a dozen expeditions from the village, and an unspecified number of quests by Dagraigs, have failed to recover the pieces. The thing is, it needs to be fully reconstructed before being brought out of the Mines, or the fragments that have been recovered just teleport straight back to where they were found. If someone can return it to the village, happy fun times will ensue. If it gets to Malagus, doom and disaster are assured.

Nytrak teaches me two one-shot spells, one to envelop an enemy in darkness, the other to heal me, and gives me some food, a rope for use against the Crocotta, and a lantern. As equipped as I'm going to get, I set off for the Mines, and Nytrak presumably gets on with arrangements for his own reburial (seriously - one of the first things he says is that soon he'll be returning to 'what you call burial').

The mines aren't particularly mine-like. I could accept the stalactites on their own, and just conclude that the miners made use of natural caverns to get into the rock face. But when the tunnel comes to a dead end with levers set into the walls to open concealed doors, I don't really get the impression that this is a place where labourers toiled to dig out useful or valuable minerals.

I pull one of the levers, head down the passage revealed, and encounter a couple of Nasnas. Weird folkloric creatures, half-man, half-nothing. Each has just one arm, one leg (bet they hate the Hokey-Cokey), one of everything an able-bodied human has two of. Don't ask about body parts that occur singly. I'm sure all sorts of interesting things could be done with such strange beings, but these are, alas, just a monster to fight like any other. They soon die, and I continue to a junction.

After a little meandering I reach a door with a handle. I shan't go through it just yet, but it helps me remember which way I should go from here. Before long I follow a growling noise to the chamber of the Crocotta. This is a fearsome brute that has adventurers like me for breakfast, but it's not morning and I have that rope, so I immobilise the beast and take a Stone of Power from its collar, which conveniently labels the otherwise unremarkable studs it bears.

Despite the name, the Crocotta looks nothing like this.

Some more meandering brings me to a tunnel so narrow that I can only get into it by crawling (so isn't that low rather than narrow?). Further in it gets higher and wider (both, then), and ends in a door which has a parchment nailed to it. The parchment warns that only a Stone of Power will be of use here, so I take the one I acquired earlier, and it only goes and blows the ****** door off. The room beyond contains one of the pieces of the headstone, which is heavy enough that carrying it costs me a little Strength. Subdued hurrah for a vaguely realistic approach to encumbrance.

The text then tells me that I head back to the door with the handle (though it is theoretically possible to have got this far without ever having passed that door), and I pull the handle. This causes the door to slide open, and I step into a passage that changes direction a couple of times before ending at a wooden door. I'm about to charge that door when something smashes through it from the other side, and I find myself in battle with a not-particularly-fearsome Kife. This section implies that the Kife's knife is part of him, like Captain Hook's hook, but the illustration and the following section (both in game terms and literally - the fight is in section 109, and the aftermath is 110) suggest otherwise. He wears a Brooch of Silver (not that you'd know it from looking at the picture), which I grab before continuing on my way.

At the next junction, the part of my brain that retains gamebook section numbers (instead of trivia like phone numbers, friends' names, appointments and deadlines) waves a warning flag, so I avoid the adventure's principal Arbitrary Instant Death (being caught in a rope trap and lowered into a vat of boiling water - as was a common cause of death for miners for several hundred nevers) and proceed to a locked iron door with a casket close by. I risk opening the casket, which presents me with a choice of keys and a puzzle to identify the correct one. Not a difficult puzzle.

Beyond the door is a passage leading to a stone bridge. As I start to cross, I am confronted by a Brimgeth, a mighty(ish) warrior, and one of the few types of foe to appear in more than one Proteus adventure. He only manages to wound me a few times, but with weaker rolls during character generation I might well have struggled to get past him.

Just past the bridge I notice a tripwire, and step over it. That's a between-zone border: try heading back this way, and I'll be less observant and get a poisoned dart in the neck. As an added disincentive to sticking around, noises from behind me suggest that the Brimgeth might not be staying dead for very long. Incidentally, it was authorial confusion over the meaning of the word 'rejuvenation' here, combined with a repetition of the error in a later issue, that led me to the realisation that Llundsbrand was Brunskill.

This zone is pretty labyrinthine, with the added complication that there's more than one section for each junction, to cover approaching from different directions, so section number recognition is less helpful here than in most gamebook mazes. I have a rough idea of the correct route here, and I may refer to that incomplete map when I get to the really tricky bit, but this is where I'm most unsure of the path.

Look, it's still better than the map in The Forest of Doom, okay?

At the fourth junction I reach, the air in the side passage tastes bad. That's actually a good sign, for me, though I shan't be heading that way, as I made the mistake of doing the first time I got to this section. If I'm right, I should change direction at the next junction, and then keep heading that way until I see the zone border (but don't cross it yet).

Yep, got that right. It occurs to me that curiosity is partly a bad thing in this adventure. The door handle I mentioned earlier, and the door with many keyholes here, are just the sort of thing your average gamebook player will want to check out, but doing so commits you to moving beyond the door, quite possibly sooner than is advisable. I hurry past.

The text compels me to ignore the next turning I see, but that's fine by me, as I know that one of the wrong ways from section 1 uses that passage to connect to the central complex. At the next junction where I have a choice, I'm not sure which way to go, but take an educated guess. Yes! I've just discovered the deadliest opponent in all the Mines. Which has its drawbacks (the word 'deadliest' is something of a giveaway, really), but does mean I'm still on track.

So, here I am, face-to-something with the Hogrob (it may not have a face). Composed of shadows, yet possessed of razor-sharp talons, gleaming yellow eyes and a shrieking voice. Hostile, and immortal. That last detail's the tricky one. Good thing Nytrak taught me some magic. With the help of the darkness spell, I am able to evade the Hogrob, though I do get a nasty gash in the arm on the way past.

Some distance beyond the Hogrob is the second piece of the headstone, which also costs Strength to carry. Up ahead is an arch which bears the inscription 'Labyrinth of the Lost', but going back the way I came would get me gutted (or worse) by the Hogrob, so I enter the Labyrinth.

Before long I find a room containing three chests and another simple logic puzzle. Solving it gives me access to the Secret of Samson, an incantation that will endow me with the strength of 'an army of men'. No disclaimer warning that it may not work if combined with a haircut, but then, dungeon-based barbers seem to be that bit too implausible even for gamebooks. While the room only has one exit, the text still bothers to specify that I leave by the door through which I came, as if worried that I might think I dug a hole, turned intangible, or teleported.

After that I get slightly lost, and lose some Strength clambering through a partially collapsed section of the mine. Still, I do manage to get back on track before too long, and reach an archway which reads, 'Farewell, Stranger'. I've got everything I need from in here, so through the exit I go. It leads me into another area where there's been a collapse, and the very atmosphere is oppressive. I'm able to get through the debris, but a little further on, a brand new cave-in begins. The Secret I so recently learned enables me to hold the walls up until things stabilise (in an interesting inversion of the Biblical Samson's final action) and I am able to continue on my way.

The next junction I reach is somewhere I've been before (though that's not immediately obvious because surviving the collapse is the only way of getting here from that specific direction, so it's not the same section as when I last came this way). It is, consequently, quite easy for me to get back to that door I made a point of not investigating earlier. As I take a proper look, a goblinoid creature emerges from a hole in the wall and doesn't attack me. He's the keeper of the keys, and explains the puzzle which will enable me to unlock the door. There's no 'if you cannot work it out, or get it wrong' option, so anyone whose mathematical skills aren't up to calculating (L-K)/2 will have to either give up without getting a decent 'you die' ending or cheat by checking every section until they find the right one. But even when I was 27 years younger than I am now, I had no problem figuring it out.

After going through the door, I soon encounter a woman named Liamorra, who attacks me. After two rounds, in which we each score one blow, she gets to the 'ask questions later' stage, and checks to see if I'm one of the hated Dagraigs. I explain my quest, and she reveals that she's on exactly the same mission. D'oh!

She then asks how I've fared. This is arguably the cleverest bit of the whole adventure - it certainly baffled a number of Proteus readers for a long while. The thing is, she has the third and final piece of the headstone, but she won't divulge that fact to losers who have less than two of the other bits. And as the vast majority of players first encounter her in the course of an unsuccessful attempt at the adventure, many wind up getting the impression that meeting her is just a minor inconvenience, assume that the third headstone piece is in some other part of the Mines, and wind up repeatedly getting themselves killed searching obscure and hazardous false trails.

With the whole headstone in our possession, we start looking for a way out. Instead, we find a ravening Spitsnipe. As when she encountered me, Liamorra leaps straight into the fray, the narrowness of the tunnel preventing me from offering any meaningful support. She grievously wounds the Spitsnipe before getting smashed to the ground, and I have little trouble finishing off the weakened beast. It's too late to save Liamorra, though, so I bury her (for sanity's sake, I'm assuming I build a cairn from convenient stones) and carry on in search of an exit.

Soon I reach a door with two levers set into it, and writing above each lever. A plaque above the door warns that, 'All that is written above the levers is false.' Technically, that's a paradox, because the plaque itself must be above the levers since the levers are in the door and the plaque's above the door, which means that if the plaque is telling the truth, then what it says must be false. But if I conclude that the plaque is not supposed to be self-referential, it's easy enough to deduce which lever to pull, and pulling that one does cause the door to open.

Beyond, I see daylight, and stop to put together the three-piece marble jigsaw I'm carrying. The cracks in the stone heal, and my journey back to Nytrak's is uneventful. I am rewarded with a hundred gold pieces (which seems rather less impressive when I remember that the landlord at the start of the adventure estimated my sword to be worth fifty). Still, I'm not in it for the money.

I may have played this one that bit too often. One of the enjoyable aspects of replaying gamebooks for this blog is being pleasantly surprised by good bits I'd forgotten, never previously noticed, or failed to appreciate on earlier attempts. I'm just that bit too familiar with the best parts of The Mines of Malagus, so there was no joy of (re)discovery here. Not that it was ever going to rank among the all-time gamebook greats (it's not even in my top 5 Proteus adventures), but it's a decent enough adventure, without any horrible faults, and that alone is enough to rank it above a significant number of gamebooks, so I'm a little saddened to find myself slightly disappointed at this victory.

Haven't You Always Wanted a Monkey?

As I recall, once I started collecting the Golden Dragon Adventures, I managed to find a copy of the second book, Dave Morris and Oliver Johnson's The Temple of Flame, at Ballard's model shop (which did a side line in RPGs, and had a small selection of books). I'd had a flick through a different copy in another shop some time before, but it had made little impression beyond the fact that there seemed to be a lot of sections that said nothing more than, 'You reach out your hand... (turn to [section number])'. In fact, there are only four or five, but being so short, and identical, they did stand out a lot.

There was once a party of adventurers who went seeking treasure in some ancient tomb. Many of them fell victim to assorted hazards along the way, but three made it to the sarcophagus. A final trap was triggered, opening up a pit. Two men fell into it, but one of them managed to grab onto the edge. He called for help from the third man, Damontir the Mad (a name that should probably have made the party wonder if this was really the sort of chap they wanted swelling their numbers). Damontir stomped on his hands, causing him to lose his grip, and took all the treasure for himself. But the man whose fingers Damontir trod on landed on a ledge, and survived, eventually managing to drag himself out of the pit. That man is the hero of this book, the Dragon Knight of Palados, greatest warrior of the known world, an armoured fighter who wields a sword so massive that lesser men can barely lift it.

Which makes me wonder why the cover artist for the US edition chose to make him look like this.

The dice, meanwhile, make him look more like this:

Vigour: 29

Psi: 8

Agility: 4

That Agility's pretty poor, but to be honest, there's no such thing as a promising character in this book. The Temple of Flame was pretty much the poster boy for 'unwinnable' until Ian Livingstone raised the bar above the stratosphere with Crypt of the Sorcerer. For this playthrough, I'll be satisfied if I get as far as the candidate for 'most counter-intuitive optimal decision in gamebook history'.

This quest I shall be mostly seeking the golden idol of Katak, which resides in a lost temple somewhere in this jungle. I found clues to its whereabouts in the library of Achtan. Funnily enough, not long before my trip there, someone else had consulted the mouldering tome that contained the leads to the temple. Wonder what he was researching... Still, best not to concern myself with other library patrons, or old betrayals, for that matter. After all, it's not as if they're likely to affect me all the way out here, right?

For a while I hack my way through the foliage, and when I stop for a breather, I spot a monkey being menaced by a viper. In the interests of primate solidarity, I kill the snake before setting off again. The monkey bites at the hem of my cloak, trying to divert me, and eventually I twig that he's trying to warn me away from a patch of quicksand. I let him accompany me, as he's more help (and less annoying) than many gamebook sidekicks, and name him Minki because apparently I'm that bad at naming pets.

Passing by an ancient grave, I reach a bend in the path. My research suggests that the temple is straight ahead, and as Minki isn't dancing the Dance of Nearby Quicksand, I decide to cut my own more direct route. I'm not in a side quest mood today. After a little zealous pruning, I find a centuries-old road that leads to the temple. I gaze at the great edifice, more than a little awed at the thought of being the first civilised man to set eyes upon it in millennia, and two louts in armour ruin the moment by tramping round the side of the place. Blasted tourists!

Hurriedly concealing myself, lest they try and get me to take a picture of them or something, I overhear enough of their chatter to ascertain that they are in the employ of Damontir, who has beaten me here. Not a completely unexpected development, if you have even a vague grasp of certain dramatic principles. Or read the back cover of the book.

Anyway, Damontir has left these comedy working class mercenaries on guard outside the temple, while he and his Nightmare Guard minions seek the idol. So not only did my erstwhile comrade have the sobriquet 'the Mad', but he was also known to employ beings known as Nightmare Guards, and yet I was surprised when he turned out not to be a nice guy? Just goes to show that there's little correlation between Psi and intelligence.

A mildly amusing ruffian can still be dangerous, so I attack the guards before ascending the ziggurat. As soon as I kill the first one, the second flees. Probably runs into something lethal in the jungle, but that's not my problem. I help myself to the other man's money and gin, and start to climb. Minki does not appreciate the anthropological significance of the statues that line the steps, nor enjoy walking on hot stone.

There are more human guards at the top. One is inattentive, and in the time it takes him to register my presence, I bludgeon him senseless without needing to touch the dice. The other is asleep, and my honour will not permit me to attack him like this. Minki resolves my quandary by poking him in the eye, and as honour doesn't explicitly forbid slaying a man who's been half-blinded by a monkey's paw, I carve him up.

A brief search turns up a trapdoor that clearly hasn't been opened in years. So that's not how Damontir got into the temple. And while I know from past attempts that there is a potentially useful item (with a twist) down there, I also know that its guard is capable of transforming the low in Agility into a smear, so I'll make for the main entrance. Which is close to a granite monolith in the shape of a demon, engraved with the glyphs of the five principal deities of the long-lost Anku Empire. The name of the fifth has been lost, very probably because generations of schoolboys didn't care about the god of arts and crafts when the rest of the pantheon had dominion over cool stuff like thunder, flames and the underworld.

So, which glyph will gain me access to the temple of the flame-god, rather than sending me (via one of those ubiquitous-seeming 'You reach out your hand...' sections) to my grave? The clue is in the title, and within moments the dais on which I stand is descending into the temple, coming to halt in an antechamber with two exits. Pick the wrong one, and I'm almost certainly done for.

A short distance down the passage I choose, I pass a side turning blocked off by a heavy grille, which I think means I went the wrong way, drat it. No turning back, alas, so I carry on until I reach a room containing a pit. In the middle of the pit is a plinth, bearing a large wooden box. A similar set-up to one of the traps in The Citadel of Chaos, though this one works a little differently, and is worth risking.

I jump across the gap to the plinth, and open the chest. A cloud of noxious fumes billows out of it, but I do not leap backwards (straight into the pit). In a rare acknowledgement of the fact that booby traps can lose their effectiveness with the passage of time, this gas, which would once have melted my face off, has diminished in potency over the course of the past couple of thousand years, and has no more effect on me than chopping onions would.

The box contains an unspecified potion, a belt with uncertain properties, and a Ring of Intangibility with one charge. It's odd, the way you only have to handle some items to know what they do, while others remain a mystery up until the moment when their powers take effect.

Turning and jumping back across the pit, I continue past another junction and find myself on a balcony, overlooking an awe-inducing flame-and-mirrors set-up that has remained in perfect working order for centuries. Minki is less impressed by it than I, and thus notices the approaching Nightmare Guard who would have garotted me while I stood gawping, but for the simian screech that draws my attention to the approaching assailant.

Once destroyed, the Nightmare Guard disintegrates into the sulphurous ashes from which it was created, and I take a quick look at the garotte. Under normal circumstances, just a silk scarf (though, as the design is a pattern of white skulls on midnight blue, not the sort you're liable to find outside the wardrobe of a kitsch-loving Goth), but in the hands of a Nightmare Guard, a deadly weapon. Well, deadly-ish. Okay, it only did 2 Vigour damage, but there was a 1 in 6 chance of Instant Death every time Old Nightie won a round.

Proceeding onwards, I reach a narrow walkway across a shaft of indeterminate depth, the distant bottom obscured by clouds of steam. I'm more than half way across, when a voice rings out from the archway ahead. It's Damontir, uttering florid threats. He looks much the same as when we last met - widow's peak, pentagram tattoo, 'glint of insane evil in his gaze' (and I thought he'd make a good addition to a party of adventurers?) - and is accompanied by around a dozen Nightmare Guards. He can't spare the time to give me a really slow and painful death, and just fires his Ring of Red Ruin. At Minki. Guess he knows who's the brains in this partnership.

Cackling like the Bond villain he so obviously wants to be, Damontir summons the reanimated corpse of his servant Sulsa Doom (no comment), last seen falling from a great height following a failed attempt at regicide (I'm going to assume that Doom's attack on the King post-dated that fateful expedition, because I can only cope with so much stupid in my character), and sets him on me before heading further into the temple.

Now, Doom isn't the impressive opponent he's been made out to be - sure, he can dual-wield swords, and thus gets a 1 in 12 chance of wounding me twice in a round, but the odds are still in my favour. Even if the fight were more dangerous, the only alternative would be to jump off the walkway into the steaming shaft that yawns below me. But if I hadn't taken the wrong turning just after entering the temple, evading this not-that-tough fight by hurling myself into the unknown would be the best thing to do. Yes, it did take me a lot of tries at the book to find that out.

However, I didn't acquire the item that transforms suicidal cowardice into the only way to acquire a near-essential item, so I have to face Damontir's Doom. Who gets me with both swords in the first round of combat, but succumbs to repeated blows from my one sword over the course of the rest of the fight.

Once Doom is properly dead, I set off in pursuit of Damontir, hungry for revenge. It's one thing to betray me, hurt me, and leave me for dead (or does that count as three things?), but kill my monkey, and I will hound you to the ends of the world.

Beyond the exit is a long flight of stairs, interrupted every ten metres or so by a landing. Mid-way between the second and third landings, I tread on a booby-trapped step, prompting a cameo appearance by the boulder from the opening sequence of Raiders of the Lost Ark. The boulder got a lot of gamebook work back in the eighties (he was in The Shamutanti Hills and Deathtrap Dungeon, too), but eventually typecasting took its toll, and his career went downhill until he hit rock bottom.

I manage to avoid getting crushed, and descend to a sort of junction. One of the passages leading onwards is blocked, though I could use that Ring to get past the obstruction. I'm pretty sure it's not worth it. At the next junction I take a side passage, and fall into a bone-filled pit that also houses a massive Golden Scorpion. It could be a genuine creature with an unusual coloration, or it might be an elaborate automaton. Either way, it manages to kill me.

Not that I'd have lasted much longer anyway. Without an item located in a part of the temple that can only be reached by jumping off that walkway, an imminent encounter would have gone like this:

1. Roll equal to or under Psi (1d6+3, remember) on 3d6 or die horribly.
2. Lose 3 Psi.
3. Roll under Agility on 2d6 or die. Non-horribly, but dead is dead.
4. Roll equal to or under reduced Psi on 3d6 or die horribly.
5. Lose 3 more Psi, and die horribly if that brings your Psi to 0 (yes, the likelihood of having survived step 4 with such a low Psi is very low, but that just makes it all the worse, as the elation of making that 1-in-216 roll is promptly undercut with a 'you still die').

And the climactic confrontation with Damontir is brutal, too. Especially the first time you encounter it, as what would normally be a wise course of action to take at that point turns out to be severely disadvantageous. The book's not impossible to win without cheating, but it's certainly one of the most difficult ones that can (just) be beaten by the rules. This is as harsh as Golden Dragon got, though that doesn't mean subsequent adventures are easy. Just less tricky than this one.

Pour le Prestige *et* Pour l'Argent

I'm pretty sure that Deathtrap Dungeon was the first gamebook I got new rather than second-hand. I have vague memories of beholding a blue-and-red spread of copies of it and Island of the Lizard King in the book section of Boots (they used to have one), and of being amazed at the profusion of Instant Death sections right at the start of the book.

My very first attempt went worse than it should have done because I blundered, reading section 12 when I should have gone to 13, thereby missing out on a significant chunk of the dungeon, including the first of the vital jewels and an essential piece of information. I wouldn't have won even if I hadn't made that mistake, as I passed up the opportunity to acquire the second jewel I needed. And I think I cheated a bit, and pretended I hadn't knocked on a trapdoor when it became apparent that doing so led to getting speared in the throat by a Goblin.

It seems unlikely that I used dice, as I recall making it as far as the exit and lacking all the necessary jewels a few times, and there's no way of avoiding at least three fights against opponents with Skill scores in double figures on the way there. Then again, I hadn't quite managed to beat the book by the time my dad had a go at it, and dice were definitely being used by then, because I deliberately ignored the double six rolled for the Giant Scorpion at one point during that fight, as that would have meant Instant Death. And during the final battle, after the Manticore won a few rounds in quick succession, dad insisted I let him take over the dice-rolling as I was doing so badly. Maybe he thought I was cheating a bit, so he wouldn't win the book before I did. He never did find out about the times I'd fiddled things to keep his character from dying.

So, the premise: some years ago, the ruler of an obscure province came up with an unlikely but successful tourist attraction. It's a large subterranean complex with one way in, one way out, and a load of traps, monsters and other life-endangering stuff in between. Once a year, anyone who thinks they're up to the challenge gets to go in. If anyone were ever to make it out of the other end alive, they'd get a large sum of money, but nobody has. And vast crowds gather every year to watch an unspecified number of adventurers go through the entrance one at a time and never be seen again. Imagine a reality TV show in which cameras aren't allowed where the contestants are, the public don't get to vote, and there's a high probability that all the participants will die. Actually, don't, or Sky TV might get ideas.

This year, my character has decided to be one of the contestants, not so much for the money as the fact that nobody has ever survived - a more extreme version of the 'because it's there' factor that motivated the viewpoint character of The Warlock of Firetop Mountain. So let's take a look at the man who believes himself capable of beating a challenge that has a 100% fatality rate up until now...
Skill: 8
Stamina: 21
Luck: 11
Idiot.

This doomed fool travels to Fang, the town where the eponymous dungeon is located, via Port Blacksand because Ian Livingstone has started world-building. After a few days spent sampling whatever entertainments Fang reserves for those about to die, he wakes from a dream that vaguely foreshadows the sequel to this book, and is led to the dungeon entrance where the other doomed contestants await. There are six in total, and he is the next-to-last to go in. Time for a quick perspective shift...

A short distance into the dungeon I find a table bearing six boxes, one of which has my name on it. I open the box to find a parchment bearing a message from dungeon proprietor Baron Sukumvit and two gold pieces. The note mentions that I 'will need to find and use several items' to make it through the dungeon, and for some deranged reason I memorise this and then destroy the parchment. Had it never occurred to me that acquiring McGuffins would be necessary? Is that fact such a super special secret that I really need to ensure that the last contestant doesn't get a chance to learn it? Am I not concerned that one of the other boxes may provide him with the exact same clue? Or even a different one, like 'you will have to kill some monsters' or 'the traps in this dungeon are harmful, and you would do well to avoid them'?

At a junction I see footprints indicating that three of my predecessors turned west, and one east. This is not one of Ian's patent 'go the wrong way and you've failed already' junctions, though there are some deeper in. Still, not following the crowd gives me a marginally better chance of surviving one impending encounter, so I follow the loner. After clambering over a disconcertingly squishy boulder, I have to turn north, and soon become aware that the temperature is rising. A recess in the wall contains a bamboo receptacle with clear liquid in it. Quite a neat dilemma for first-time players - is the liquid deadly, and the heat a trick to make the cautious more willing to drink it, or is dehydration the real danger, and the liquid the solution? Of course, by now I am well aware of what's going on here (I even flagged up an error in the text for the book's listing at Demian's site), so I know the optimal course of action, and take it.

Beyond the heated stretch of corridor, I see a door with a sliding plate set into it. Behind the door are the first of many pits to be found in this place, and a coil of rope. Having been advised that useful items are useful, I have the brilliant idea of taking the rope.

The passage turns west, and I run into a couple of Orcs. There's a chance of getting disarmed at the start of this fight, but I get off comparatively lightly with a flesh wound. Some appalling rolls mean that I take a lot more damage than I should against such minor foes - if I'd lost my sword, I'd probably have wound up dead.

Continuing on my way, I see more of the footprints I noticed earlier. They go up to a door in the wall, but don't come back out again. Behind the door I see why: the Barbarian who was second to enter the dungeon is impaled on several spikes protruding from a large board that must have sprung up from the floor when he triggered it. I help myself to his provisions, as he won't be needing them, and ignore the silver goblet I see in an alcove, as it's not something I need.

Returning to the corridor, I reach a junction, and see evidence that the three contestants who went left all survived the dangers of their chosen route, as their footprints all emerge from the passage facing me and turn north. I automatically follow in their footsteps, entering a large cavern that contains a massive idol with jewelled eyes, flanked by two big stuffed birds. It's a little surprising that none of the others to pass through here attempted to pilfer a gem. Maybe they were worried that doing so might cause the idol to animate (what a ridiculous idea), or they didn't want to risk the climb.

I have a rope. This makes it pretty easy for me to ascend to the idol's head and start to prise out one of its eyes. The idol does not come to life. The stuffed birds do, though, and while I manage to clip the first one's wings, the dice remain predominantly unfavourable. A little later, the sixth contestant will pass through here and, based on what I know of his character from more successful attempts at the book, will probably hurry away, wary of whatever caused my death. And everybody will fail, as the jewelled eye I died trying to acquire is one of the items needed at the end of the challenge.

By this book, Ian Livingstone has definitely lost faith in the FF mantra, 'any player, no matter how weak on initial dice rolls, should be able to get through fairly easily'. Before long, he will have unofficially switched to, 'any player, no matter how strong on initial dice rolls, should struggle to make it even half way through the book'. And a couple of books after that, he'll just turn nasty.

Perhaps if this book hadn't been so massively popular back in its day, FF wouldn't have got quite so ridiculously unplayable as it did at times. But the fans wanted tough fights and gruesome deaths, and that's what we got. And continued to get, even after at least some of us had matured enough to recognise that there were better ways of making a gamebook interesting than repeatedly shredding the player's character.

Pa-pa, pa-pa, pa-pa, pa-pa, pa-pa-pa. Pa-pa, pa-pa, pa-pa, pa-pahhhhh…pah!

What connects City of Thieves, Demons of the Deep, Deathmoor and today?

Well, the first three are all Fighting Fantasy books in which pearls are somehow significant, and today marks 30 years since The Warlock of Firetop Mountain came out, so it's FF's Pearl Anniversary.

Three cheers to Steve, Ian, and those who've added to their legacy. Thanks for the adventures.