Gamebooks

[Dark Jimbo]

Anyway, I haven't posted here for a couple of weeks and that's because I still cannot beat Masks of Mayhem.

I've fallen off the wagon a bit recently - I may have treated myself to a Nintendo Switch, which it's fair to say has been hogging most of my free time!

I don't have MoM, but I have got the next two book playthroughs in the bag for when we reach them - and having just done a little count, I've pleasantly surprised to find I've now played exactly half of the FF/Sorcery books that I own!

[Barrington Boots]

I hope you're playing loads of Animal Crossing, Jimbo.

..having just done a little count, I've pleasantly surprised to find I've now played exactly half of the FF/Sorcery books that I own!

Nice! Counted mine up and I've played 26/54 owned. I'm expecting the playthroughs to falter badly once we get into the 30s.

[Barrington Boots]

I've been playing Way of the Tiger: Ninja over the last week or so and finally finished it today. It's a prequel book to the series, ending exactly where Avenger starts with you off to fight Gorobei and become Grand Master of the Five Winds, and it's written by the same guy that did the final book in the main series, Redeemer.

Like Redeemer I won't spoil it here but it's enjoyable and very much in the spirit of the original series and pretty close to a Jamie Thomson book. You and four other aspirants must undertake a test to see which two actually get to fight to be Grandmaster. It's got much more of a Japanese bent to it in terms of enemies and setting and in a nice touch, you start off with less inner force and less stuff than you do in Avenger.
It's very hard - I died multiple times, and found the combat quite tricky this time around. The final fight is very nasty. The art isn't Bob Harvey, but it's better that the repro in the othert WotT reprints where colour art has been rendered muddy and ugly in black and white.
Negatives? It lacked the cinematic style combat that usually appears for a major fight in one of these books, and being a print on demand from Amazon the book itself isn't the nicest quality. That's not a lot of negative really!
Extremely fun if essential gamebook if you enjoyed the rest of the series.

[Richard]

FF23: Masks of Mayhem playthrough

I've been looking forward to this one because of Russ Nicholson's art. The first thing that strikes me about the story is that even though I am a king I am wearing leather armour like some kind of peasant. Maybe I'm trying to be a man of the people or something?

Anyway, my armourer Kevin recommends that I look for a chap called Hever who has a magic horn which might be helpful on my quest. That seems sensible so when offered a choice of directions I head Hever's way. I kill a couple of bandits and otherwise manage to avoid getting into any trouble. I reach an elf village and meet their chief and their shaman, who tell me they are sympathetic to my quest and so I am allowed to ask them only one question. Why? That's not very helpful. Twats. They show me a brief vision of me in the future holding something, only I can't see what it is. Then they teleport me to the opposite side of a lake, which is further away from where Hever lives than I was before. Again I say, twats.

I come across a derelict mine, and am offered the choice of exploring it or ignoring it. Since I am on an important quest, I decide I have better things to do than explore a derelict mine which I have absolutely literally no reason at all to investigate. Passing it, I wonder if I have made a mistake, as FF books usually reward pointless detours and side quests for no other reason than idle curiosity? Maybe I've missed out on an indispensable object, but there seems to be no rational reason for my character to mess around doing anything else.

I find Hever, and am offered half a dozen choices or so, none of which seem to lead to anything actually happening, so I infer that I have probably avoided falling into some trap or other. I was warned in paragraph 1 that I am in possession of an important helmet, a royal heirloom albeit not a magical one, without which my kingdom will be lost (which begs the question why am I carrying such a vital artifact with me on a dangerous quest and alone? Why not leave it at home and wear a regular helmet?), and one of the choices I didn't make was to let Hever's men look after it for me. While I am staying with Hever the helmet is neither lost or stolen, so a quiet stay is probably better than an eventful one.

However, having nothing to trade for Hever's magical horn, I have to hunt and kill a pesky sabre-toothed tiger for him. This involves some entirely random die-rolls, which I win, and I get the horn, which basically amounts to deducting one skill point from my opponents during most fights.

As I am about to leave, my old friend Kevin arrives, a bit the worse for wear, and promptly dies in my arms (Kevin Redshirt Mungo to give him his full name). He immediately becomes an undead foe wielding a nine-tailed whip, and Hever and I have to fight him. (There are good before and after illustrations of Kevin, one of him alive and friendly, and one of him undead and hostile, which I enjoyed comparing with each other.) We make short work of him and I return to my quest. I choose the most direct route to the mountains, where lives the evil sorceress I am supposed to assassinate, and on my way I meet a trader and buy some antifreeze potion, which sounds like it will come in handy up a mountain.

I also buy a luck potion, even though I still have the one I started the adventure with, because my Initial Luck is only 7 and I'm already down to 5. I drink one of them now, but that doesn't do me any good, because to escape a bush fire I have to roll one die with three possible outcomes (i.e. 1-2, 3-4 or 5-6) instead of Testing my Luck, and the result is that I am incinerated.

Frankly, that random instant death seems a bit rubbish. I continue where I left off, and my next choice is to choose between east or west with no information about either option (a bit of a pet peeve of mine with gamebooks). I choose east because that's what Barrington Boots says he always does, and that is at least some kind of reason, better than none at all. I fight a giant, decide not to take his helmet as it is presumably a trap, and then try to cross a ravine on a rope bridge. I fight some fire-breathing monster on the bridge, and although I easily kill it the bridge has been damaged by fire and it snaps, sending me plummeting to my death.

On my third go, I go back to where I killed the giant and choose another way to cross the ravine, which results in my drowning.

At this point, I had had enough and decided to stop. These deaths and the choices which led to them were all too random and uninteresting, and the adventure as a whole is only a series of isolated encounters with no real sense of story or direction, a bit like if The Warlock of Firetop Mountain was set entirely outdoors and there were no keys to search for. I can't be bothered to read the rest of it (although I will look again at the Hever section to see what else could have happened).

I have had a fun time looking at all of Russ's pictures, and there is a very detailed one at 184 with some realistic dogs which I think is some of his best work. It's worth keeping the book just for that, but not, I think, finishing it ... especially when I have Creature of Havoc and Beneath Nightmare Castle to look forward to next!

[Barrington Boots]

Great writeup Richard!

I'm with you on MoM in that I'm just giving up. I tried following a walkthrough in the end and still lost, because even if you avoid all the insta-deaths and pass all the skill tests there's still a random, odds against you roll to get a vital item that causes you to fail without it. It's just too hard.
I actually think it's a bit of a shame, as the plot is quite good with plenty of foreshadowing of certain events, and the art is awesome. Anyway, I'm going on to Creature of Havoc to eat some hobbits.

As well as CoH I was gifted a posh new edition of Lone Wolf Flight from the Dark for Christmas so also looking to play that. And my long-suffering wife picked me up a copy of Black Vein Prophecy so I now have the first 45 FF's to play through - hurray!

[Blue Cactus]

I can report I've had a few attempts at Island of the Lizard King and Scorpion Swamp last month. Didn't get very far but I did enjoy spending some time with poor Mungo at the start of Lizard King.

I was given a couple of modern Usborne 'Choose Your Own Story' books for Christmas - Shadow Chaser and Curse Breaker - both by Simon Tudhope. Anyone tried these? The illustrations are a bit... young, I suppose, but the books themselves look ok. Probably for younger readers as it's Usborne, of course.

[Barrington Boots]

I'm not familiar with those, but they do sound younger reader-esque. Let us know if any good!

Mungo is the MVP. The real poster boy for FF companions. Given (in fact, probably because) he's only alive for a couple of paragraphs its mad how much of a legend he is.

[Barrington Boots]

I've just had my first, brief playthrough of Creature of Havoc.

I've been looking forward to this one. It could arguably be the greatest FF book ever in terms of its structure and uniqueness... although I don't think it's the best FF book ever, which is a bit different. The whole concept - playing a monster, the associated change to the combat rules because of that, and your gradual change from mindlessness into sentience - is fantastic. There's a number of clever puzzles including, if I remember rightly, hidden paragraphs and a code. The book is tightly and logically plotted and opens with 19 pages of exposition and worldbuilding. It's a nailed on classic.

Of course, I'd forgotten how frustrating it is at the start. Beginning disorientated and confused in a dark tunnel, I immediately encounter a hapless dwarf and it soon becomes evident I am some kind of gigantic scaled, clawed creature as my attempts to communicate result in the terrified dwarf stabbing me and in response I accidentally kill him. From there, instinct takes over. I wander the tunnels at random, breaking through a door and killing another monstrosity within, before chancing upon a hobbit who I immediately and horrifyingly devour. I'm finishing off the little chap when a dark elf appears in the tunnel and fires arrows at me - the dice tell me I run away in terror, and as I dash down the tunnel I'm shot and killed by a bunch more elves. Game over.

With almost all the initial choices controlled by the dice, it looks like I'm going to be dying in this one a LOT. Worth persevering with though!

[Richard]

The evolution of your character during the first phase of the book is brilliant, and certainly makes this book stand out. (It's not exactly fair at first, but the bit where your decisions don't count is only for a short bit.)

[norton canes]

Browsing through this thread for the first time last night reignited my childhood fondness for the Fighting Fantasy books so this afternoon, on a whim, I downloaded a PDF of City of Thieves and embarked on my first adventure, using a dynamic online character sheet. Despite rolling an initial SKILL of 7 I managed to scrape past several encounters before finally meeting my end in a sewer where I was rapidly despatched by a giant centipede with a SKILL of 10. The text gave me an option to use an insect bracelet, which I didn't have and anyway suspect may have had little effect against an arthropod.

Good fun anyway, and I might give it another crack later.

[norton canes]

Second attempt: killed by the Serpent Queen. I was a little too honest when declaring the origin of my floral gift.

[Barrington Boots]

Second attempt: killed by the Serpent Queen. I was a little too honest when declaring the origin of my floral gift.

I think the Serpent Queen killed most of us doing playthroughs too. Stupid sexy snake-lady!

Elsewhere I finally made it out of the dungeon in Creature of Havoc on my 9th attempt. Then immediately died.

[Blue Cactus]

I'm not familiar with those, but they do sound younger reader-esque. Let us know if any good!

Mungo is the MVP. The real poster boy for FF companions. Given (in fact, probably because) he's only alive for a couple of paragraphs its mad how much of a legend he is.

Ha ha, I had no idea Mungo was such a legend. To be fair the book does establish your history with him and what a sound bloke he is, telling stories of his dad (also called Mungo) and sharing copious amounts of salad with you. I quite like it in FF when you have a buddy along with you for a wee while!

[Barrington Boots]

So I finished Creature of Havoc over the weekend. I died 18 times in total, including being shot by elves, falling into traps, blinded by beetles and then falling into traps, falling into rivers, falling into a furnace, starving to death, being mugged and dissected, guillotined, drowned in quicksand and murdered by trees. It'll take me a while to write it all up, but I wanted to get my thoughts down on it early as I thought it was every bit as good as its reputation.

It was a blast. The dungeon is definitely the most characterful bit of the book, and the first part of it is the best bit of that - it's the bit that really brings home that you're playing a monster, working on instinct and unable to understand a lot of things. I really like the way that as you gain sentience it's not signposted but the writing itself changes - you're never told you don't have to roll for you actions, you just get to start choosing them, and likewise you're never told that your intelligence has increased, the text just starts naming objects instead of just describing them and so on (for example, gold pieces and weapons are named and so on). It's also the best bit for you as a monster being particularly horrifying - eating your foes and dispatching them in grisly fashion and so on. Once you, as a player, get out of the dungeon things fall into a more standard FF book on the whole and it's easy to forget you're a gigantic, scaled beast on the whole (apart from a part where you try and help a hobbit only to fall prey to your instinct and kill and eat him anyway!). I was however glad to have to stop translating paragraphs out of their coded writing.

The combat isn't too difficult - there's a couple of tricky fights, but on the whole everything is weaker than you and being able to kill an opponent on a roll of a double means you've always got a chance of winning quickly and therefore is quite evocative about being a fearsome combatant: I never shied away from attacking things (quite the opposite) The book itself is super tightly plotted and tight with its victory conditions: within the dungeon you can, to an extent, wander at will as there'sd a few opportunities to double back, but once outside the wrong choice always leads to death.
My notes recorded NINE hidden paragraph number puzzles (as in, if this happens, add or subtract a number and turn to a new paragraph), some of which are used more than once, plus the code revealing a handful of other hidden paragraphs, which makes this the most crazily, cleverly constructed book to date, I think. Combine this with the usual sort of puzzles and half-clues, plus a sneaky bit where a signpost has been changed (I only noticed this because I'd come from one location so realised it was wrong) and you've got a book that's quite taxing puzzle-wise, but deeply satisfying when solved, and it makes for a really fun experience. It's amazingly hard, but not in the way MoM was where it was a relentless slog to move a few paragraphs forward. I really like the opening background too: a lot of what's presented to you is useless to the story but provide a background that means events in the book itself are set into context and so make sense instead of feeling random or arbitrary and when you start piecing things together - the reason for the dwarf and the adventurers being in the dungeon and so on - it likewise feels satisfying.

The downside? The end is a bit of an anticlimax. And of course, there's a single, legendary paragraph where you're told to look for certain wording to do an action, but the wording is different. I understand this was changed for a later edition, so I assume it's an error - I knew about it from previous reading this time, but as a kid couldn't get past this bit at all. Your companion, when you pick him up, is a total Mungo.

Oh, and the art from Alan Langford rules. My favourite picture is the Chattermatter, where if you look at the image there's a nice visual clue to something not being right with the scene... personally, I'm not a fan of the Ian Miller cover - I've grown to appreciate his stuff as I got older but it feels like a static and unexciting image when something a lot more dramatic would have been cool here given the content: I actually prefer the reprint cover with the Devourer. I'd be interested to see an artists impression of the creature of havoc itself - the little snippets of description we get (huge bulk, heavy head, claws and scales, spined back, lumbering footsteps and fanged maw) always puts me in mind of something like a mini-Godzilla...

It also feels like the series is maturing a bit. The descriptive, detailed writing brings the awful people and places you encounter to life and it's all very grim. There's a bit at the start where you can blind a wizard with a swipe of your claws, finish fighting his mates and then eventually finish him off as he's whimpering on the floor and devour him sets the scene for a cavalcade of horrors. I've read that some foreign translations don't have you, as the monster, eating people (especially helpless hobbits or apothecaries and so on) but their provisions instead.

[JohnW]

I don't imagine I'll ever give gamebooks another go, but I've really taken to these write-ups.
Please carry on.