Per plays the Fantazine adventures in order

[Per]

The goal here is to eventually play every magazine adventure in order (by the rules to begin with, but feel free to let me know if there are recommended stat minimums for certain adventures), nitpick everything, and I guess try to win as many of them as possible.


FFzine 1: Resurrection of the Dead by Alexander Ballingal

The introduction is a reasonably interesting bit of exposition: YOU are, which is to say I am, a merchant returning to my hometown after doing business in Royal Lendle (meaning, Old World of Titan setting) for a few months, and in my absence there's been a plague and an earthquake some trouble brewing on the nearby heath. Evidence includes disappearances (could be Snattacats), eerie lights (could be Will-o'-the-Wisps), a maiming (Snattacats), and my old friend Karl going insane (Snattacats airdropping from Will-o'-the-Wisps).

The adventure begins as I set out to personally look into this whole situation. My stats are rolled up as:

Skill	10
Stamina	18
Luck	9

and I get 30 Gold Pieces and two portions of Provisions to last the day. However, I do not possess a weapon of any sort. Does that actually make sense given the premise? Not only do I, as a former adventurer turned businessperson, not keep any such memento or treasure stashed away, but also as an active merchant with a generously staffed household I don't employ any kind of security detail whatsoever except for (as we are told) when I visit the capital of Royal Lendle, which must be a den of violence and mischief in an otherwise extremely well-ordered region with no criminal elements or wandering monsters to speak of. Let's see if the rest of the adventure bears this out.

One of the investigative options offered in section 1 does involve going to buy a weapon straight away, but I feel that if anything my concern for my friend Karl should be my primary motivation, and fighting creatures on moors is best left to actual adventurers and/or whomever else usually keeps this place in such good order. Just possibly the adventure might even agree with this.

Heading for the abbey where Karl is being treated, I pass by a line of beggars, and, since I figure I'm rich enough to fend off a good amount of Beggars' Curses, risk interviewing them. I'm then presented with a choice of three beggars, distinguished by their respective disfigurements, with a kinda flimsy explanation for why I can't talk to more than one or even address them all at the same time. The missing hand evokes the image of a thief, and as a merchant with no guards I cannot approve. Instead I decide the man with no legs is more deserving of my money. This is followed by a list of no fewer than four subjects about which to inquire. Wait, so did I just pick the most knowledgeable of the bunch, or does the beggar sequence comprise something around a twelfth of the whole adventure?

I don't suppose this particular beggar hangs out on the heath a lot, so I decide to ask him about the abbey, the option itself suggesting there might be something sinister about it. He tells me, in a Cockney accent that may be of my own imagining, that it's full of demon-worshipping people in goat masks wielding kris knives in the street. Nothing specific in gamebook terms, though. Maybe I'll be able to use this to make an informed decision elsewhere. Getting the hurried opportunity for a second question I ask about "recent events", causing him to reminisce about following a couple of shady town councillors outside town (with no legs?) and witnessing them mill around a well. Well = shady, check.

As I move on from this encounter, out 3 Gold Pieces, the adventure asks up front if I have any secret redirections to the Thieves' District or the Mongers' Guild, suggesting something about the identities of the two beggars not chosen. Being something of a monger myself I should perhaps know a thing or two about one of the locations in question, but it's on to the abbey for now.

Once there I'm somewhat jarringly offered the option to "pretend that I wish to join their order" and infiltrate the heck out of the place. I decide that just the word of a beggar does not make that normal behaviour, and Karl comes first. On my way to where he's being kept, a monk casually tells me a funny anecdote that just a little too perfectly accounts for the beggar's impression of the abbey, and he also tells me of a roaming monster causing trouble at the cemetery. Surely the civil authorities would swiftly deal with that, though? I'm given the address of a healer that can cure the monster's infection, I assume in case I am personally exposed, and I note this down like someone in an Ian Livingstone book who was just told by a passing shepherd that this morning he witnessed exactly 147 chipmunks taking a dump at the same time.

Poor Karl rants ominously when disturbed, claiming to be "dead" (but could he have been resurrected? Spitballing here). I go see the abbot, who is more coherent. Again a little startlingly I'm asked if I possess a "rune covered sword" - for a moment I imagine that by forgoing the option to pose as an acolyte, I've missed out on exploring a whole mini-dungeon beneath the abbey from which I could emerge with the only weapon that can hurt the disguised fiend before me. But a check for red wallpaper proves negative, and it occurs to me it could also be the case that if I had first gone to buy a weapon, I might have ended up with a cursed blade and having to humbly request the abbot to release me from its influence in between involuntarily trying to pin him to the walls with it.

As it is, because I do not have a sword, I get a free protective amulet. I assume that in the interval between the abbot saying he has no idea what he could do for me and him saying he wants to assist me in my pursuits, I tell him something about my ambitions to investigate the disturbances, though there's literally just the question about the sword.

When I leave the abbey, the cemetery has been added as an investigative option, presumably because of what I've been told inside. A brush of meta-logic suggests that if I follow any of the other leads, the option might not be presented again, so I take it. Also, cemeteries are the best gamebook environments; I once contemplated writing an entire adventure spent just mucking about in one, as others have.

Options at the cemetery include investigating the tombs of two families whose names mean nothing to me at this point, examining headstones (as if I expected a helpful oracle of ages past to have left an inscription with information about the case), and checking out the supposedly monster-haunted section, which I hope to be allowed to do with some prudence.

And things get a little weird. First, even though this area has the graves of the poor and shouldn't feature much in the way of mausoleums, large epitaphs and the like obstructing the view, I bump straight into the rumoured creature as it shambles about, and instead of hiring someone to deal with it for me, I decide to fight it barefisted to the re-death. Second, the adventure doesn't actually tell me what the monster is, but I cheat and look it up in Out of the Pit, learning it is a kind of skeleton (bonus points) and also that this specimen sports a nominally nerfed version of its special ability which however works out to be more harmful mechanically. Third, after I defeat it, being down to 6 of my initial 18 Stamina points but being kept safe from further infection by my amulet, apparently it would be absurd for me to think that an undead abomination that attacks people and turns them into others of its kind might have anything at all to do with disappearances outside of town, and I don't even get any of my 3 Luck points back for ridding the community of an absolute menace. (Minor rules note: I decided that once the creature had managed to infect me on the second attempt, I wouldn't have to lose Luck checking for re-infection.)

I feel I've now earned the right to check the gravestones of those I so nearly joined, finding a reference to a location that includes the name of one of the families whose crypts I can investigate, and tenuous as the connection is, I check the place out, to no result. This leaves just the option to rummage about in the second crypt, which seems like a completely random thing to do under the circumstances, so I eat my food and head back into town with a fresh reason to look for weaponry (in a section that seems to assume this is my first action taken for the day).

A bit oddly, I'm informed I just can't find a place to obtain a weapon, and I'm prodded into selecting one of the other lanes of inquiry, while still being offered the choice to keep looking for weapons LIKE A COMPLETE WEIRDO? Is this why I don't employ guards - there wouldn't be any weapons for them if I did? I'll settle for burly thugs with planks and cudgels! Also this section allows me to go to the cemetery, even though the first one didn't - why? Do I figure I could steal a weapon from one of the graves?

I take the option to persist. It turns out that in fact, there are no weapons to be had anywhere, or at least there's no one who makes them - I have to read between the lines that anyone who already owns one will just laugh me in the face when I offer to pay about 27 Gold Pieces to take it off their hands. Also the time it takes for me to find all this out costs me the opportunity to check out the tavern or heath for clues, though I must admit this is a consequence that makes sense from a gamebook design perspective. Only I'm still given the option of heading to the tavern, but just to "drown my frustration", not to "question the barkeep" - is he now dead or something?

Cider restores 1 point of Stamina, and I shout my highly relevant questions to the barkeep while he's at my table but he just gives me the finger, there are other customers demanding his attention. Out of the Pit is no help with the Dryaden seated nearby, but Titannica can at least point me in the right direction: apparently it's a sort of elf only found in Warlock 12. I can also speak to an "older gentleman" or a town guard whose work I've been doing out in the cemetery, and I have a good mind to show him the scars I earned as a result, but given what I now know about Dryaden, the presence of that elf seems so out of the ordinary that I can't let it pass.

The adventure asks if I've met him previously, and I cannot say I have. He gives me a couple of not immediately useable clues, a secret reference to use for obtaining a weapon (why did I expect him of all people to be able to provide one?), and a cryptic note which is not explicitly a cipher, so if it is one and I'm expected to crack it independently, he's gone all Pracy on me. I can still talk to the guard and bribe him into giving me the reference to the healer I already got from the monks (but I will not feel bad about spending any of my money in this adventure, I have so much, I'm a merchant). The old man freely volunteers that well = shady, but I knew that too. Since I'm now gaining information that might have been helpful during daytime hours, does that mean the adventure will let me loop around to another day of investigating the same places?

Waking up the next morning I find that my entire staff has left town during the night, possibly taking everything that wasn't nailed down with them, which is kind of interesting - they didn't take off until I returned from Royal Lendle, so was my presence what pushed them over the edge? The lingering worry that I may smell drops my Luck to 5, but I get another portion of Provisions. I'm told that if I've been infected and leaking Stamina points, I may now use the relevant section for visiting the healer, though in that case it seems kind of stupid not to have attempted this yesterday.

Since I'm fine on that front, and there's no service for restoring Luck, I opt for searching for a weapon, applying the redirection provided by the tavern elf and spending most of my remaining gold on a sword that he produces (and since it's possible to miss out due to lack of money, my servants really must have taken all the vast merchant profits the introduction was going on about). But wait, Dryaden will not handle metal - is this a wooden sword? Did I pay him in wooden nickels? I'm given the option of following him to beat him up and reclaim my money, and that could only end well. #sarcasm

There is no looping back. Evidently I've decided that the only course of action remaining is to walk out on the heath, all alone, no guards (they don't care), no monks (busy hell-worshipping), no friends (I smell), no posse of concerned citizens (they have no weapons and also they don't care). And something conclusive must surely follow, such as "or die in the attempt".

I'm told it's quite late after "all the time spent readying myself", even though I explicitly met with the elf in the morning, and no other activity during the day served to replenish my Stamina or Luck or round out my inventory. I kind of think the adventure might as well have said I puttered about on the heath all day and nothing of interest happened until nightfall, as then I could have imagined that the wasted effort was what had cancelled out any recuperative effects of the previous night's rest.

I'm asked if I marked a tree, but I wasn't allowed to go here, so no. I am however openly offered to visit the battlefield referred to on a headstone in the cemetery, where certainly some thing was made to take place in the past. I may as well guess this is likely to result in clues and aid rather than having to fight a gaggle of poxy wraiths for no gain.

Reaching the place I seek, in the light of the waning moon, two poxy Crypt Stalkers burst out and - *record scratch, freeze frame* Hi, science police here. Since the sun just set, if Titan's moon has an apparent retrograde motion like our own, that would be a waxing moon and not a waning one. Thanks, carry on - proceed to savage me, and I imagine them ironically crowing tourist board slogans at me all the while, like "Breathe the crisp air of the moors!" and "Hiking trails to suit any level of experience!" I put them back in the ground with 4 Stamina points to spare, and quickly sit down to eat my one measure of food before moving on to examine a nearby glow, which had better present something useful.

It turns out I've located the training grounds of an entire undead army which had escaped everybody's notice. Since a) moving closer would seem to be something close to suicide, and b) moving backwards and alerting the actual goddamn authorities would apparently be pure unadulterated madness, I decide to be cautious and move around the perimeter. In the process I encounter another Decayer, which I have some hope of defeating since I narrowly out-Skill it, but even though I'm miraculously Lucky the first time I have to check for infection with Luck 5, the same does not happen at Luck 4, and the resulting Stamina penalty is exactly enough to make me join the opposing side as an adventurer-turned-merchant-turned-smelly-skeleton.

Win ratio: 0/1
Skeletons: 1/1

Thoughts

This seems like a pretty good mystery adventure, certainly well written and edited, with plenty of options for investigative work and scatterings of hints and lore, although if you're unlucky and search for weapons the first thing you do, you could miss out on nearly all of it (so in fact I was right when I surmised the adventure would not ask me to make that my first priority). There are arguably some logical gaps here and there in the overall scenario as well as in how you approach your task, but I suppose most of the things you do make sense from a gamebook perspective. Of course I can't tell how well I actually did; do you need a set of very specific resources and references to beat the final part, or is it theoretically possible to blunder into the camp and blow it up with a bomb you find or something?

I couldn't find a separate art credit for the adventure so I assume the illustrations were done by the author. Some of them work, some of the ones with people in them kind of do not, and occasionally it's not obvious which section a picture goes with.

[andrewwright]

Nice review! If memory serves, I may have edited and playtested this and certainly illustrated the front cover featuring a skeleton warrior. Alex B. himself did the internal B&W art and the colour map on the backcover. Fighting Fantazine sometimes gets slated for art quality, but for a free DIY fanzine, what do you expect? It's all part of the learning journey! (and if you're that offended by art quality, by all means draw your own pix and sent them in!)

It was going to be called Night of Necromancer, but Jonathan Green asked permission if he could use that title for his last Wizard FF book. Around the same time I believe, the second Gamebook Adventures app was released called Siege of the Necromancer. I can't remember too much more about gameplay but suspect completing the final part may have been more involved and technical than lobbing incendiary devices about and waiting for them to detonate (though that does remain a practice I thoroughly endorse for dull faculty meetings).

[Per]

I saw that the adventure was written in a weekend, which is doubly impressive if it includes drawing all the artwork.

Regarding the cryptic note,

SPOILER: Click to show

I'm not sure it works as written, besides the fact you're not told you're supposed to work out the message yourself. If you do, and then arbitrarily turn to the section indicated, it breaks the continuity, so clearly you're not supposed to do that. But when you get the note you're just told, "This [note] might prove useful", and when you're given (what I assume is) the opportunity to use the reference, it says, "If you have some help from someone, turn now to the paragraph referencing that help." Well, no idea, I was just given some note with a hidden message that doesn't make sense in-world, says nothing about help though. So unless I missed something, arguably the adventure never allows you to use the reference and the thing is broken.

It also appears that if you use the note, you aren't given the chance to also meet up with Vannix and purchase a weapon, which makes no sense if the whole "help" deal with the note implies that you meet with him in order to find the black market (which has things like chalk and cheese that a successful merchant cannot find in regular stores).

I must also join Ed in cursing the delayed gratification of Luck bonuses which I'll never get because my Luck has hit rock bottom now and the odd +1 or even +2 isn't going to do much of a difference.

[Per]

FFzine 2: Shrine of the Salamander by Andrew Wright

Where Resurrection used the original FF rules across the board with the minor additions of Testing your Skill and starting without a weapon, Shrine stacks up a couple more changes: Test your Skill, a lower Initial Skill, a slightly different way of fighting multiple opponents that I can't remember from anywhere else, and a limited selection of Sorcery! spells.

The adventure is set at the mouth of the Jabaji river, where the realms of Daddu-Yadu and Daddu-Ley face each other across the water. The adventure seems to identify Daddu-Ley with the Copperstone Caves, and Daddu-Yadu with a set of caves on the opposite side of the river, though none of the Sorcery! sources given in Titannica spells this out (if you just look at the map you could think the respective Daddus refer to larger inland regions).

The mines of Daddu-Ley are worked by an amalgamation of races, but it's not explicitly said that the same is true for the clergy of Verlang, to which I belong. Since I'm apparently going to face Horntoads and a Salamander, it only seems appropriate to extend the Wind in the Willows flavour to my own faction, and though it's quite likely that I'm supposed to be a human, if I imagine I'm an Otternutter or some other Jacksonian variety perhaps the adventure will not directly contradict this.

Anyway, the Holy Idol of Verlang has been stolen (by "wet slimy footprints" which had "grabbed the Idol"), the High Priest declares the Horntoads of Daddu-Yadu and their Salamander overlord to be the culprits, I try to offer some alternative theories but such gross violation of principles of narrative economy is heresy, and I'm sent on a solo retrieval mission across the river. The stats of this resident commando priest-mage are:

Skill	9
Stamina	20
Luck	10

plus I have 2 portions of Provisions, 5 Gold Pieces (which I'm told from the outset will not suffice, thanks for the support, High Priest), basic adventuring gear, and a spell item... let's say the Cloth Skullcap, since I'm doing an infiltration mission. Even though I'm a priest, I cannot call on Verlang for aid. Is it too late to convert to Libra?

The woman who boated me across the river warns me about the grem... olata (it is poisoned?) and then I'm asked which of... which...

Haha, stop, wait. Wait a second now. Boating? Across? The JABAJI? Hahahahaha! No. We took a long detour out to sea and curved back to the other side, maybe. I'm sure the shoreline is strewn with spell items, too, isn't it, Mr Very Reliable Narrator?

Oh.

So, I pick up some spell items from the beach like a lunatic, and I'm asked which of four general areas to explore "first". I have possibly not played an Andrew Wright adventure since Lair of the Troglodytes that didn't use Fabled Lands-style free-roaming, but maybe this is beach and spokes? Places to choose from include:

The Under-Temple of Throff: sounds like a place to pick up resources if anything, not my first guess for where the Idol would be.

The Crystal Mines: inhabited by Dark Goblins, which sounds like just the type of jerks to nick Idols, but maybe not the first priority for that very reason (gamebook logic etc.).

The Tunnels of Ooze: I've been told to avoid it if possible, so of course I will.

The Croaking Caves: home of the Horntoads who may or may not have been framed for the theft, so they could be potential allies or enemies, but in either case I should probably learn more before confronting them.

Adding this up, I head to the temple. The gates are guarded by a priest, whom I offer a telepathically aided bribe of 1 GP to enter. The next choice is between the library and the Holy Pool. Attracted as I am to the former by the promise of three-digit codes, I doubt anyone's had the time to write a book about the theft just yet, so I opt for the place where all that Holy Water of Sorcery! lore is being blessed (or not). The Potion of Transformation on sale would no doubt help with infiltration, but even if I had all my starting gold it still wouldn't be enough, and I'd rather not blow all my remaining money on a Potion of Healing without knowing whether recovering Stamina will be a critical factor. Having accomplished nothing I mosey over to the library, hoping I haven't doomed myself by coming here too soon. (As a side note, since the sections I visit have the doorman abandon his post and accompany me into the temple, it's probably not the case that I could have gained meaningful entry by knocking his head off.)

It turns out the librarian charges for information, so I can ask about two topics if I want, after which I will have no money and will be doomed. I begin by asking about denizens other than the Horntoads and Salamander, and this nets me a secret redirection and a reason to visit the Tunnels of Ooze. I just have to make sure I go someplace first where I can beat people up and take their money, since I can imagine the sage I've learned about is also going to charge me for any help he can provide. Here and now I do also ask about the Salamander, since I wish to know if it has any particular weaknesses. I learn that Salamanders are a type of Pokémon, and also amazingly have a special weakness! I'm glad I didn't waste this money on a potion, but I suspect I'll instead bleed out in a ditch before I can make use of my array of secret references.

Returning to the beach I can double my stock of spell items before selecting the next spoke. Assuming that the Salamander is the end boss and that I need something to trade to the sage, I pick the Crystal Mines. On the way I encounter two Dark Goblins, and the adventure seems to rule out talking to them, but I use the TEL spell anyway and gain a clue about a trap at the mine entrance. I let loose my double helping of pebbles on them, killing them without a fight so I can loot them for 3 Gold Pieces, cackling uncontrollably.

The Crystal Mines are revealed to be a sub-hub with sub-spokes. "Gear" first. There's a shopkeeper that I choose not to attack, and an ominous list of items I could have sold but mostly haven't heard of. I cannot afford a new spell item, and I'm not sure why under the current rules I should buy a Bomba Fruit for 2 GP when Provisions cost 1 GP; being unable to buy food on account of already owning the maximum amount is what we like to call a "Gallantaria problem". I hold on to my money, painfully aware of the fact that I cannot return here. Poor shopkeeper was so enthusiastic about my arrival, too.

"Mines" next. An alarm is triggered and I'm given the option to cast spells, but since I don't know who's coming or from where, I choose to run. There's a slightly awkward transition as after I opt to "flee to the north" I'm sent to another section to choose the actual direction in which to flee, but I make use of the clue found previously, and scrounging up some spell items along the way (but not a pick or shovel, as they are evidently not things I will have a use for) I arrive at a cave where a Rhino-Man is guarding some slaves. I summon a Giant with my newly found tooth and together we prevail against the sentry who isn't as formidable as he looks. Liberating the slaves I get a reward of food, plenty of money, a valuable rope and a Luck bonus that does me no good, plus I'm booted out of the mines area.

The dread Tunnels of Ooze, then. The half-submerged passage somehow seems like the least dangerous way in, but in the flooded cavern inside I narrowly fail a Skill check and get trapped by a Giant Clam. The only spell I could use against it is POP, which doesn't seem like it would be effective, so I bash it with my shell-crushing hammer, even though the weapon is said to be unsuitable for the task. Immediately after that I have to fight a Sand Squid with an effective Skill of 10. I could Escape, however I suspect I need to kill it in order to be able to pick the way onwards I want. And even though I successfully use Luck twice to increase damage, I still stand at 2 Stamina when the fight is over, raised back to 14 by consuming all of my remaining Provisions. No Luck reward for puncturing this old bag of ink.

Given a choice of two paths, I pick the one I could not have Escaped to. I reach another cavern where the exit leads to the same section as the corresponding direction in the previous room, but there's also a set of precarious stepping stones over deadly ooze leading to a treasure chest, so if I am to accomplish something here, I have to brave them. A so-called Mud Dragon appears and swiftly falls prey to one of my four helpings of rock dust. Triggering a trap on the chest I suffer a little damage but earn some gold (so I'm now exactly as rich as my Resurrection merchant was when walking around begging people to sell him weapons and getting pelted with apple cores) and a hauberk that not only increases my Attack Strength but can also absorb damage (honestly if that's all it did it would still seem reasonable, but I guess it has to mirror the weird chainmail in The Seven Serpents). Of course, depending on how much more fighting needs to be done, it might still not be worth losing most of my health to the Sand Squid.

In the next chamber, where all the paths into the tunnels would seem to converge, I start to sink into quicksand trying to reach a doorway, and while I really want to read the presumed death paragraph reserved for those casting MUD at this juncture, I try to lasso the door handle with my rope, managing on the second attempt that a good many authors would not have allowed.

The next cavern mentions the presence of mushrooms, so even though I'm told that the sand theme is continued with the appearance of a Sand Golem "before I can do anything", I try my secret redirection... only to find it doesn't work, so evidently I have to deal with the Golem first, instead of calling out to the sage and getting him to call off his guardian or something. Can you sink animated sand into quicksand? Dubious, so I try the HOT spell even though I can't really spare the Stamina, and this glasses the Golem as I had hoped.

No Luck bonus for defeating it or anything, but now is clearly the right time to use my secret reference. And here is the deal with Zared the Hermit. He will trade information and items for food, but not for money. And I have money, but no food. I could have bought a little food earlier, but I chose not to, since I was saving my money for... Zared the Hermit. And there's no option to kill him and take what he knows from his head. Perhaps there's a lesson here for us all: just because one scholar counts the price of wisdom in coins, it doesn't necessarily mean the one in the next cave over will. He'll count it in chicken wings. At least he provides a presumably safer means of returning to the surface, but it's hard not to imagine that the needle on my doom-o-meter has twitched into the yellow at the very least.

Back at the beach I help myself to the last set of spell items (5 measures of sand, 8 pebbles, 4 measures of rock dust). Only one area remains to visit - the Croaking Caves. It's beginning to look like the High Priest was right about the perpetrators all along; perhaps he had read the adventure's title.

I immediately get attacked by guards, and the only thing I can do except fight is use the TEL spell, which I expect will reveal they want to kill and eat me. It gives me a justification for an action offered in the previous paragraph, but no new option that I can take, so I have to fight. Though I have a slim advantage in the Skill department due to my hauberk, there's still the fact that there's two of them and I only have 4 Stamina points, and I go down having won just a single Attack Round. Wonder if Verlang cares enough about his Holy Idol to wish he'd bothered to help.

Win ratio: 0/2
Skeletons: 1/2 (only part of the backdrop in the mines)
Gremolata: not found

Thoughts

The adventure is again well written and edited, with only a very few typos. As I have come to expect, Andrew Wright writes descriptions that are economic but distinctive, setting the various areas apart. Some moments such as the Hermit hiding from his own Golem seem rather Sorceryesque. The choice not to include fake spell options is understandable.

Was the adventure too hard? Did I do too many stupid things? Does the hub-and-spokes model used give the player a fair chance to obtain needed resources in different ways, or is there a one true path just presented in a different fashion? Having to proceed into enemy territory with 27 Gold Pieces and 5 Stamina points when there's a guy selling Provisions for 1 GP apiece within hobbling distance feels a tad arbitrary. However, it's really not unreasonable to expect that a player should have to attempt an adventure more than once to win, and under different circumstances I'd happily have taken another shot at it, but now it will have to yield priority to a whole line of other entries.

Brett Schofield's art is simply excellent, evoking both Nicholson and Blanche at times - great stuff. My one reservation might be that it's hard to take the flying Salamander head with its goofy smile very seriously.

"Crossing the Jabaji (except on a bridge in Kharé)"
–Kakhabad expression meaning "thing that cannot be done, stop talking about it, so dumb"

[The Editor (Alex B)]

Oct 25, 2023 7:13:31 GMT andrewwright said:

Nice review! If memory serves, I may have edited and playtested this and certainly illustrated the front cover featuring a skeleton warrior. Alex B. himself did the internal B&W art and the colour map on the backcover. Fighting Fantazine sometimes gets slated for art quality, but for a free DIY fanzine, what do you expect? It's all part of the learning journey! (and if you're that offended by art quality, by all means draw your own pix and sent them in!)

It was going to be called Night of Necromancer, but Jonathan Green asked permission if he could use that title for his last Wizard FF book. Around the same time I believe, the second Gamebook Adventures app was released called Siege of the Necromancer. I can't remember too much more about gameplay but suspect completing the final part may have been more involved and technical than lobbing incendiary devices about and waiting for them to detonate (though that does remain a practice I thoroughly endorse for dull faculty meetings).

Only Damian Katz play-tested it.

Yes, the interior art was mine - 1) it was done quick-ish & 2) I’m not a great artist. Just wait till you see my awful art in issues 4, 7 & 8.

I wrote the whole thing in one weekend. It was originally meant to have a second day exploring the town (and thus more chances to get a weapon) but realised towards the end of finishing the first day that the adventure wouldn’t fit 200 references if I kept the second day.

Yes, Jon asked if he could use the original title of “Night of the Necromancer”, so I had to retitle it.

I wrote and illustrated it to convince people it could be done - when I originally pitched the magazine idea and floated it having a mini adventure some people told it couldn’t be done. You can judge if I succeeded!

[Per]

FFzine 3: Prey of the Hunter by Kieran Coghlan

If I am to nitpick everything, I must note that the title of this adventure seems oddly redundant to me, as if instead of the usual juxtaposition of two elements (such as a location and an attribute), here we have just one; after all "hunter" and "prey" seem to be complementary concepts, each one implying the other. Maybe it's just me.

The introduction begins with a list of races and a future timeline, then presents the rules. Deviations from the norm include a Villainy score (for those who will not die a hero), a Trail score as in Spectral Stalkers (tested with two dice rather than the three which largely marginalized it in Stalkers), ranged combat (which references Testing your Skill before it's introduced), and Testing your Skill (where unlike the two previous magazine adventures you fail in the "equal to" case - you have to pay attention to these things).

This is followed by a pretty snappy background establishing the scenario: you've been stranded on a backwater world by Omoz, the criminal you were chasing, and he's going to hunt you for sport while your goal is to survive and get off the planet. Basically it's the same kind of low-key space opera setting that characterized the main series SF titles, with dogfights, frontier worlds and, I will not be surprised to find, wonky robots, and also the same kind of simple, effective premise that these books tended to present and then not seldom largely forget about, such as in the cases of the titular Space Assassin and Star Strider bumbling off at random - but I have higher hopes that this one will stick to its script.

Stats be:

Skill	10
Stamina	17
Luck	9

My first choice concerns whether to sell my Confederation uniform or destroy it, suggesting something about what kind of issues I'm going to grapple with from now on. I'm going to need money, but hopefully there'll be ways to get it that don't immediately give away my location, so I take advantage of the free incinerator service.

The city in which I find myself is technically run by the Confederation to which I belong, though I'm told I'm "unlikely to receive little help" from the Administrator, which I read to mean I'm likely to receive no help at all. Therefore I head to the spaceport to find out how much an off-world ticket will set me back. This leads to me exchanging words with some guy, and I have to pay him or increase my Trail score, implying Omoz can potentially pick up leads just about anywhere. I don't recall getting a starting capital, so I don't have much of a choice in the matter. Surely selling the uniform so I could afford this bribe would have boosted my Trail score by 2 or more, though?

After agreeing on a price of 350 credits to be flown out of here by a roguish pilot who's no doubt as good as his word, a guy beckons me into a corridor to ask if I want in on a little heist. Yes, random stranger, I, also a random stranger, am up for that kind of thing. On the one hand, no doubt any criminals I affiliate myself with will rat me out given the slightest encouragement (or may even be reporting directly to Omoz if he already has a web of connections on the planet); on the other hand, I need 350 credits or thereabouts and have to get started on that at some point.

One pistol combat with a Security Bot later, I'm down 6 Stamina points, up 1 Villainy point and up 1 Trail point. My accomplice has the loot though and wants me to hand the borrowed pistol back to him. Which could end badly for a random stranger, so I double-cross him first, netting me a bunch of circuit boards, some change and a codeword to mark me as the enemy of organized crime in these parts. In case there is honour among these particular thieves this may have been short-sighted.

For my next job I have no choice but become a titanium miner (I suppose I'll just carry the circuit boards around for now?), which is apparently quite dangerous and can't pay all that much, what with the decline in demand for the stuff. Thankfully though the planet isn't fully unionized, so I'm not going to leave a paper trail. For a day's work I earn 45 credits (so six more days of this and I'm done, probably won't be that simple though), record a codeword, and then get sent back into town.

And I'm given a chance to sell my circuit boards! This gets me a Villainy point on top of the one I got for stealing them in the first place, as well as a random Trail point. Being Lucky at the Yellow Orchid bar lets me sell them for 150 credits, bringing me to 232 or just three workdays from freedom. I'm somewhat unlucky in that the adventure doesn't even need to ask for my codeword to know it's time to sick no less than four gun-wielding vengeful mobsters on me, and the rules for ranged combat make sure I'll not be the one to step out of this back alley.

Win ratio: 0/3
Skeletons: 1/3 (maybe to be expected here)
Food: none of any kind

Thoughts

I'm not sure I've seen enough of the adventure to judge its design properly, but based on my first game, if it were a full-length adventure it could very well have been considered one of the better SF FFs along with Rings of Kether and Rebel Planet (and/or Robot Commando which I haven't read). The writing is good, but the editing not quite as good as in the preceding two adventures. I never reached a point where the adventure felt it was time to ask for my Villainy or Trail scores, so I don't know how close I was to having to fall on my sword, but at least I shouldn't yet have been in much danger of being caught. Maybe next time I'll sell my uniform, join the mobsters, go native, take over the place and let my henchmen deal with Omoz, assuming he has to follow the same gunfighting rules.

Peter Adamson's art probably wouldn't be highly regarded if it appeared in a book, but for an amateur adventure I'd say it clears the bar.

[kieran]

Oct 31, 2023 21:43:55 GMT Per said:

If I am to nitpick everything, I must note that the title of this adventure seems oddly redundant to me, as if instead of the usual juxtaposition of two elements (such as a location and an attribute), here we have just one; after all "hunter" and "prey" seem to be complementary concepts, each one implying the other. Maybe it's just me.

Not just you. It's not a great title, but I couldn't come up with anything I liked better!

though I'm told I'm "unlikely to receive little help" from the Administrator

Oops!

[andrewwright]

Oct 27, 2023 16:04:56 GMT Per said:

FFzine 2: Shrine of the Salamander by Andrew Wright

Thanks for the review, perceptive as always! Random thoughts in no order:

- you can play it online here: www.ffproject.com/shrine.htm

- Brett's art is fantastic. Also the front cover by Natalie Roberts, which depicts the Grem... I did the map of the region on the back cover.

- didn't realise the multiple opponent combat rules were that different - wow - learn something every day

- there's a prequel, Temple of the Bronze God, where you participate in the heist of the idol, available at the bottom of the downloads page here: www.ffproject.com/download.htm

- the structure of Fighting Fantazine adventures for 200 refs, meant I split this into roughly 150 refs for the adventure, and 50 refs for spellcasting results split into several key spell-casting nodes. It's obviously a bit artificial and hand-wavey at times but I really wanted to stick to the 200 refs limit.

- this was actually the biggest individual adventure I think I had written at this point, and gave me the confidence to propose Catacombs of the Undercity for Tin Man Games, which was a full 400 ref behemoth.

- it's interesting you say it has economic but distinctive descriptions - I was aiming for Livingstonian barebones minimalism and looking at it, feel guilty of plenty of over-writing at times.

- it was translated into French and Hungarian, the French version for a competition it didn't win because it was too One True Path-ish. Oh, the French! :-)

- next time I'll set up a shellfish provision shack at the initial hub to stock up on food.

- actually the abbreviated format dictated the hub and spoke model (aside from a brief non-linear diversion in the mines), with fewer references it's obviously easier to write this way then multiple viewpoints of different corridors to different rooms

- Champskees excellent solution notes the hub model is good because the last choice is always the one that moves you forwards, this was actually unintentional and I in no way knowingly planned this. :-)

- the Caves and the Daddus are explicitly named as the same places within the Sorcery books themselves.

- J Green was also keen on optioning the title, but I was selfish and wanted to keep it for this adventure

Thanks again!

cheers

Andy

[Per]

After playing each adventure I've been reading Ed's playthroughs (at least up to around the point where I lost), and it's funny how convergent our reports are sometimes. For instance, for Prey I wrote:

The city in which I find myself is technically run by the Confederation to which I belong, though [the Administrator is not likely to be much help]. Therefore I head to the spaceport to find out how much an off-world ticket will set me back.

Ed wrote:

Though technically in Confederation space, [the Administrator is not likely to be much help, plus stuff related to selling the uniform]. So I head to the spaceport to find out what it's going to cost me to get off-planet.

There was one thing I was wondering about the background which I didn't end up mentioning since I thought it was mostly snappy (although as Ed noted, it accomplishes this in part by shuffling exposition to the first paragraph): what was up with that space battle? YOUR squadron thought Omoz's ship might be disabled, then when it wasn't, you were hopelessly outgunned. Did you actually have an advantage as long as you didn't move in close? Then why not use this to actually make sure the ship was disabled (or blown up)? And if so, why would Omoz open himself up to that in the first place? And if not, what were you actually hoping to accomplish? I guess it makes your guys look less like a "crack team" in the end.

[Per]

Nov 1, 2023 14:49:11 GMT andrewwright said:

- didn't realise the multiple opponent combat rules were that different - wow - learn something every day

It's not that different, it's just it is different.

Nov 1, 2023 14:49:11 GMT andrewwright said:

- it was translated into French and Hungarian, the French version for a competition it didn't win because it was too One True Path-ish. Oh, the French! :-)

The French!!

Nov 1, 2023 14:49:11 GMT andrewwright said:

- Champskees excellent solution notes the hub model is good because the last choice is always the one that moves you forwards, this was actually unintentional and I in no way knowingly planned this. :-)

I think it's not necessarily a good idea since it seems to arbitrarily reward anyone who assumes this is the case (in about the same way it's not necessarily a good thing if a writer has an unstated convention that about 75% of the time right = good and left = bad) (plus I'm getting flashbacks to a lost Lone Wolf fan adventure I wrote ages ago).

Nov 1, 2023 14:49:11 GMT andrewwright said:

- the Caves and the Daddus are explicitly named as the same places within the Sorcery books themselves.

Do you remember where? As I noted it's not in any of the references given in Titannica, but there could be others, of course.

[kieran]

Nov 1, 2023 16:28:02 GMT Per said:

what was up with that space battle? YOUR squadron thought Omoz's ship might be disabled, then when it wasn't, you were hopelessly outgunned. Did you actually have an advantage as long as you didn't move in close? Then why not use this to actually make sure the ship was disabled (or blown up)? And if so, why would Omoz open himself up to that in the first place? And if not, what were you actually hoping to accomplish? I guess it makes your guys look less like a "crack team" in the end.

Now, now, don't be bringing logic into all this.

[andrewwright]

Nov 1, 2023 16:40:07 GMT Per said:

Nov 1, 2023 14:49:11 GMT andrewwright said:

- Champskees excellent solution notes the hub model is good because the last choice is always the one that moves you forwards, this was actually unintentional and I in no way knowingly planned this. :-)

I think it's not necessarily a good idea since it seems to arbitrarily reward anyone who assumes this is the case (in about the same way it's not necessarily a good thing if a writer has an unstated convention that about 75% of the time right = good and left = bad) (plus I'm getting flashbacks to a lost Lone Wolf fan adventure I wrote ages ago).

I guess I don't mind because while I enjoyed the hubs that Keith Martin in particular employed within FF gamebooks, it was frustrating to realise they needed to be tackled in some sort of obscure order, otherwise you were doomed. And of course, you can always employ it and then subvert it within the same adventure I guess.

Nov 1, 2023 16:40:07 GMT Per said:

Nov 1, 2023 14:49:11 GMT andrewwright said:

- the Caves and the Daddus are explicitly named as the same places within the Sorcery books themselves.

Do you remember where? As I noted it's not in any of the references given in Titannica, but there could be others, of course.

On the original B&W Sorcery! map by John Blanche, the caves are explicitly labelled as 'Daddu-Ley (The Copperstone Caves)' and 'Daddu-Yadu (The Croaking Caves)': fightingfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Kakhabad?file=Map_1.jpg

This labelling is repeated on his colour map as well: fightingfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Kakhabad?file=Map_3.jpg

And also Dave Andrews' map from Out of the Pit: fightingfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Kakhabad?file=Map_1.jpg

Granted, in the text they are just referred to as Daddu-Ley and Daddu-Yadu, but the combined labelling on the map makes it look obvious.

cheers

Andy

[schlendrian]

Nov 1, 2023 14:49:11 GMT andrewwright said:

- didn't realise the multiple opponent combat rules were that different - wow - learn something every day

I'd wager you are in the majority there. Most people likely just keep with the multi combat rules they encounter in their first ff, as they are unlikely to read the combat rules for every new one.

[Per]

Nov 2, 2023 12:55:27 GMT andrewwright said:

Granted, in the text they are just referred to as Daddu-Ley and Daddu-Yadu, but the combined labelling on the map makes it look obvious.

Hard to argue with that! It's not what I remember from looking at the map in my Wizard books though: I don't have them to hand now, but I think Ley and Copperstone were labelled separately, and the Croaking Caves weren't named at all. Assuming I'm not crazy, why would they change the map from the original? (Also I checked Titan but didn't think to check Out of the Pit for maps.)

[a moderator]

Nov 2, 2023 20:58:24 GMT Per said:

Nov 2, 2023 12:55:27 GMT andrewwright said:

Granted, in the text they are just referred to as Daddu-Ley and Daddu-Yadu, but the combined labelling on the map makes it look obvious.

Hard to argue with that! It's not what I remember from looking at the map in my Wizard books though: I don't have them to hand now, but I think Ley and Copperstone were labelled separately, and the Croaking Caves weren't named at all. Assuming I'm not crazy, why would they change the map from the original? (Also I checked Titan but didn't think to check Out of the Pit for maps.)

I just checked a couple of my Wizard copies, and the labels are there, but barely legible because the map has been shrunk to fit the smaller page size.

[Per]

FFzine 4: In Search of the Mungies' Gold by Warren McGuire

This adventure is based on the RPG scenario from Warlock 5, my strongest memory of which was a typo in the PDF version, presumably caused by an OCR error, that inspired the best of the few gags I wrote down for use in the fourth instalment of the Yellow Snow series. Giving it the exact same name (as the RPG scenario, not the Yellow Snow instalment) is perhaps needlessly confusing, unless it aims to closely instantiate the Warlock adventure using grid movement. To avoid mix-ups everyone should refer to Search as Search only, and similarly Mungies as Mungies.

New rules include a different way of fighting multiple opponents, a Disturbance score, special skills, and Testing your Skill with modifiers. Thoughts on each:

Fighting multiple opponents: These rules differ from regular FF in the same way as Shrine of the Salamander, but you are told to roll only one die. I'm going to assume this is merely a mistake made while copying and editing the text from that adventure, since it doesn't really make sense and also it would be even more of a hassle with the electronic Adventure Sheet.

Disturbance: This rule includes a big list of encounters to play out if you Test your Disturbance unsuccessfully, which was not in Warlock. One might also have handled this by putting the list in one or more sections, then going, "Test your Disturbance, and if you fail, note down the current paragraph and turn to..."

Skills: These possibly reflect an element of the FF role-playing game? Skills in FF gamebooks have been used for option gatekeeping rather than situational modifiers to rolls that are governed as much or more by the initial roll at character creation.

Testing your Skill: I'm going to assume that modifiers can effectively take you over your Initial Skill, though the rule could be interpreted either way.

With a full page of background, the adventure goes into quite a bit more detail than the original, though the core of it is the same: Mungie apes like to steal gold, there are rumours that they've stacked up quite a bit of it, so expeditions are launched into the Mauristatian wilderness. My adventurer is fairly powerful:

Skill	10
Stamina	24
Luck	12

For my skills I pick Climb (going into a mountainous jungle), Jump (ditto), and Observation (looking for an ape stash in a mountainous jungle), and I begin with 30 Gold Pieces to use for shopping. The adventure knows that crossing any body of water in Kakhabad is a fool's venture, as I have to part with half my current funds as well as half of anything I find just to get a nominal "old friend" to ferry me across Lake Lumlé. It's said that we "both leave unsaid what will happen if you return empty handed", rather than with two Gold Pieces and a length of string or something, and in my case this is because I genuinely have no idea, but maybe it involves the Shrine of Courga, a Mantis Man and fourteen barrels of glue.

Actually I'm given the option to not even go shopping at all, but I do, and pick up the following: garlic (cheap Vampire insurance), rope and grapple (mountainous jungle etc.), ivory mungie figurine (will trade to a Gnome for an ivory dragon), a Potion of Health (better Stamina-per-gold rate than Provisions), and a budget Potion of Fortune (does not increase Initial Luck). This leaves me with 4 GP for fending off Beggars' Curses.

Only at this point does the adventure tell me about the significance of some of my purchases. The rope gives me the Climb skill, which I already had, and they're evidently not cumulative, so that may be a complete waste, though we'll see (maybe I can trade it to a Gnome for a rope dragon). The figurine raises my Initial and current Luck. Leaving the market I spot someone with a non-ivory Mungie on a leash, presumably using it as a pickpocket (a possibility suggested in Warlock), but at Luck 13 I cannot be Unlucky enough to be targeted.

We set out on the great lake and things are not that perilous. After fighting some Flying Fish and not even getting to deal the killing blow, I stash one of them away (fish dragon!), which would have ruined my Provisions if I had any, but I don't, so free fish.

I gain a new reason to doubt the sincerity of my old friend as the first place he tries to drop me off is a patch of deep mud, so I could easily have been dead already, but again I can't possibly fail to Test my Luck successfully, getting back on board and persuading him to try another spot. No sooner have I disembarked than I'm attacked by a Madman, who I can choose not to kill after reducing his Stamina to 2, although all this gets me is 2 Disturbance points.

I'm beginning to think there won't be any grid movement as I'm given the option to go into a valley or up on a ridge. Honestly either seems fine, but I'll try the valley. Encountering a Skunkbear guarding a fruit tree, I toss my fish to it, ending up with the equivalent of three Portions of Provisions, so the fish gambit worked out.

At the next branch in the path I easily pass an Observation-based Skill test and spot prints from an ambiguous number of boots. I would rather hike alone so I go the other way. I get to Test my Disturbance for the first time, but do not roll snake eyes. Instead I get to use Observation again, and spot a couple of birds, which I remember from my old friend's spot of foreshadowing on the lake. Of course, I don't just want to "find my way through the forest", I want to find the Mungies' gold wherever it happens to be. But a clue is a clue, so I follow the birds, however tenuous the relationship between their bird activities and my goals, and reach a hut where it's implied I might want to spend the night. The Witch who inhabits the hut also says as much, but wants payment, and there's the usual list with a worrisome amount of items I've never heard of. I'm just 1 GP away from being able to pay with gold and a fruit, but as it is, I have to part with my ivory figurine. I do get to restore all my lost Stamina, whereas sleeping outside might well have cost me some.

In the morning my host wants me to undertake a fetch quest involving a frog, and why not. I get to roll for Climb (have it x2), Observation (have it), and Deftness, and passing each one, capture the frog. I then get the option to just walk away with it, which could be amusing if you're given the opportunity to lob your maximum poison frog in the face of the end boss, but I do want the XP for my fetch quest. As I had suspected, the Witch knows better than I do how to apply the frog's poison, giving me a dose that comes with a lengthy set of instructions where the words "fiddly process" and "die horribly" flash by. She also gives me three meals and a Luck point before I leave, so I reckon that was an ivory figurine well spent.

Moving on, I pass another Observation test despite rolling 11, and notice an alternative brambly path I could take. Being constitutionally incapable of turning down a path offered exclusively by skill use or similar, I bump into the presumed sorcerer I saw with a Mungie back in town. The adventure dutifully offers to let me ignore or attack him, but talking usually seems to be the most sane and civilized option. However, my attempts to build rapport by referencing our shared experiences, like what's the deal with Kharé anyway, just make him clam up, so I figure I'm going to threaten him a bit, but he utters a spell word and disappears. Curious.

My attention is swiftly drawn to the sound of combat nearby. I find a wounded Shield Maiden, and try the talky thing again. I get to choose between giving her food or stealing her stuff, and the rule given for use of her shield is so generous it's a marvel that adventurers aren't always carrying such shields around with them, but I stick with the friendly attitude and she provides what I presume to be a password or the equivalent thereof. After which I still leave her there to be eaten by ants or something.

Walking over hill and under tree, I birdwatch a Resplendent Quetzal, and the adventure tempts me with being able to sell its feathers in Kharé, but I'm here for gold, not to kill endangered birds, so I move on after making sure I'm not in an Ian Livingstone book and due for a critical Shaman appointment.

Reaching a river I can choose to go upstream or downstream, with no clue as to where Mungies dwell. I go downstream at random and cross the river on a slippery log, where due to having the Climb skill I can only fail on a roll of 12. No giant termites around, so I probably didn't miss anything critical further downstream.

But what happens next is a bit startling: while looking back over my shoulder, contemplating a poem and wondering whether "Champaque" rhymes with "snake" or with "Cadillac", I walk neck first into a Blade Tree, as you do, and live only briefly to experience my head rolling on the forest floor. No amount of garlic will help with this.

Win ratio: 0/4
Skeletons: 1/4
Champaques: veeery frieendly, come cloooser

Thoughts

Considering the list of calamities that would still befall me in the same section if I wasn't instakilled by the Blade Tree, I really must have missed a clue, or the adventure just hates people who go downstream. Either way it was a little unfortunate since I figure I must have been making some progress towards the end and wanted to see whether I might have acquired anything close to the proper resources needed in the endgame; if nothing else my stats were all still very high.

I liked the adventure's descriptions of the forest, giving a general context for your path choices as well as appropriate slices of animal and plant life. In this regard it compares favourably to the bulk of Fighting Fantasy, which almost programatically has tended to leave environmental details to the reader's imagination or, in the best cases, the artist's pen. Perhaps a bit more could have been done with mist, humidity and falling water, since after all it's supposed to be a cloud forest.

I found that for some reason the adventure would often offer path choices in the reverse order of presentation ("You can go left or right. If you want to go right, turn to..."), so you had to pay attention to what was what. The Disturbance score doesn't really make a lot of sense, if you consider that a random guy yelling near you at the shore will make it more likely for drop bears to fall on your head two days later, but if a Shield Maiden gets into a big fight close to you, it possibly raises her Disturbance but not yours - until you arrive on the scene and she yells at you, bam. It's like you're carrying around your personal resonance field that gets irreversibly charged up by sound and the natural environment then responds to it. Finally I wonder if the author thought the Sage's name would be a more obscure reference that it actually is, and whether him walking backwards is supposed to be some kind of pun.

As in zine 1, Alexander B.'s art works better with the odd animal or vista than with people up close, though I found the Witch less objectionable than, say, the Shield Maidens. The silhouette of a Howl Cat with the outline of the moon showing through it bugs me.

When you reach water on your slog
Do not brave the slimy log
Head upstream with froggy jar
Surely Mungies can't be far.

[The Editor (Alex B)]

Nov 6, 2023 21:38:45 GMT Per said:

The silhouette of a Howl Cat with the outline of the moon showing through it bugs me.

Ah, the days before I had any software to touch up pics.

[andrewwright]

I had a lot of fun doing the map on the back cover of the issue with this one. :-)

[Per]

FFzine 5: Bones of the Banished by Brett Schofield

It's not a song by U2, but the dino-packed adventure from Fantazine 5. New rules (beyond Testing your Skill, which I'm not sure counts as new at this stage) include Testing your Stamina, a carrying capacity of ten items including Provisions, codewords, and a Delays score whose application is appropriately delayed to the latter half of the adventure.

I'm an up-and-coming tribal warrior from the Plain of Bones, which I must admit to having previously known nothing about, and I can be described as:

Skill	9
Stamina	18
Luck	7

The rules say I'm probably doomed in my first few games, and I have little reason to doubt this. I begin with five meals (which I can eat "at any time", but "only one at a time") and a weapon, which I assume does not take up space in my backpack in between battles.

The inhabitants of the village of Boneridge are always on the cusp of starvation. Regrettably the chieftain fell to his death the other day, and rather than pick his successor in a game of pinfinger or something and immediately get back to hunting stuff and not starving, the shaman decrees that "all eligible men" should be literally exiled for a month, setting out to find the "greatest prize" to prove their suitability for the job.

Which raises a few questions. If the village is just about starving now, how will they fare in one month? Will the women and ineligible men do a good enough job of providing for the elderly and infirm, and if so, maybe they could also handle the leadership thing? Since I'm likely to die, does that mean we all are, and is that a great prospect for the village? We may return "within" a moon - can you un-banish yourself after ten minutes, return with a sprig of berries and get back to the hunting thing, probably cheered on by just about everyone who likes not to starve? Sure, another guy might return thirty days later with a really rare bootleg and have your berries beat, but that'd be good - there'd be at least two of you to keep the kids fed, and maybe you didn't truly need to be boss in the first place.

In short, while this shaman guy may be a terrific keeper of the ways of his people, I'm just not sure he's thinking of the children.

I get to choose between a torch and a rope as starting equipment, and a torch should logically be far easier to improvise (it's not said that it comes with some kind of fire tool), so I pick the rope. "Women, children and elderly" are tearfully waving us off - little wonder, emergency rationing begins tomorrow. I do get to pick a person to speak with, and I don't know if there's much strategizing to do here (if any of the other guys are aiming for something really daring, more power to them and I'm sure they'll make great leaders), so I pick a close friend, who turns out not to be another contestant but a possible love interest. Apparently something that could be a Resplendent Quetzalcoatlus lives in the black mountains to the north, and that may or may not yield a better trophy than what the other people would have told me about.

I have a choice of three directions. Heading west will take me to the lands of our tribal enemies, which seems like an unnecessary distraction given I'm not going to collect my trophy from them. To the east lies the holy site of Courga, and while Fourga might have provided me with some martial spirit, his sibling seems just as likely to lecture me on the lasting effects of infant malnutrition. So I may as well follow my friend's clue and go north. As a parenthetical note, the background had me thinking it might be a cool idea to recapture the former chieftain's mount and ride it triumphantly back into the village, but I have no idea where it went, or if that would even count as a trophy.

My choice sees me traversing the Light Woodland of Bones, where in fact I have to Test my Skill in order not to rip myself apart on thorns. I just had to walk through that? Maybe I'm not the brightest candidate for the job. Leaving the woods I pass a waterhole and move out on the savannah, where I climb a tree to spend the night. The tree is already occupied by a Black Lion, who's ready and willing to fight me for it, and I'm told if it rolls doubles for Attack Strength I'm dead, and it's quite likely to, and does in the second Attack Round.

Uh... wait, no, I'm this guy:

Skill	9
Stamina	19
Luck	11

Probably still mostly doomed, but as they say, that's slightly non-doomed. Rope again. I talk to a different friend, who is a contestant, and who suggests we join forces, with me shooting for the chieftain position. Which would mean he's either going to be a codeword, or his nickname is Mungosaurus. I can't see betrayal being a viable option in the larger context, so I agree. He turns out to be a codeword with a not insignificant combat bonus, plus for some reason his going to collect his gear takes less time than the girl's relating an insubstantial rumour in my previous life, so I can talk to a second person.

I choose the experienced hunter, who hands me his apportioned torch (now said to include flint and flint, which... I'm pretty sure would not actually work), meaning that picking the torch to begin with is a false choice, unless you can find uses for more than one. If anyone asked me we could appoint this guy chieftain on the spot and be done with it, but that's just not how we do things around here. Watching him set off towards the forbidden south still leaves me with time enough to talk to a third person, so I try the shaman's apprentice. He tells me I'm doomed, and so is everyone. I believe him. Oh, do I believe him.

After all that I still have time to talk to the girl, who again tells me about the rumoured winged lizard, and that she doesn't feel safe with "all the hunters gone". But look here. If this was such a stupid idea, this whole thing, designed to leave the village deprived and defenceless, would everyone just go along with it? We wouldn't, right? We're not a bunch of dummies, OK? We're chieftain material. Oh ho ho. Bye!

In this incarnation I'm well aware of the wall of thorns to the north, so I set out east with my buddy. We swiftly reach Courga Rock, and I'm told our deities "are those of pride and vengeance, who despise weakness and mercy". So Courga also has a fierce aspect. Communing can take up to several days, but I should have about thirty, so assuming we can keep ourselves fed, that should work. Offering one portion of Provisions I only get a vague piece of outside context foreshadowing in return, but at least it was quick.

We move on, turn to the north, and arrive at a tall hill, on the top of which I can see, from below, "the sun shining on water". Which is not how water usually works, so I kind of feel I have to investigate just on account of that. And on top of the hill I do find water "in a shallow depression" ringed by trees. My sanity slightly shaken, I replenish my water supply to no mechanical effect, then continue to the same section I'd have gone to if I hadn't climbed the hill in the first place.

Further north I spot a covered wagon, and try to hail it. This involves me "calling and waving" to "signal that I harbour no ill intent", but presumably if I was the kind of tribal warrior trying to signal that I'm here to steal your goods and eat your liver, calling and waving might also be involved. The trader is unfazed by my demeanour, but displeased with the fact I'm not lugging trade goods around. Look, dude, our chieftain just died and we're busy, have an iota of respect for our ways. I note that the trader's torch also comes with flint and flint, so maybe that's just how it is here.

As evening falls, I can see that the paths of my current and previous tribesmen have converged. This time I ignore the tree, with no negative consequences. I'm told I have to eat a meal or lose Stamina, leaving the question whether I do get the normal gain. Since I'm not wounded I would be better off starving myself, but the text clearly assumes I eat if I have food. At least I don't have to share any with my companion.

Setting off again across the savannah, we hear a thunderclap out of nowhere and spot some people in the distance. They have a line of camels, one of which carries "a large wooden throne", so not noticing them earlier doesn't really speak well for our awareness. Then when choosing to approach them, I figure we might try to use stealth, but again, it's like we are not experienced hunters in our element. Of course the adventure could just be saving time, since it's nothing more than a gun-toting dwarf on safari. I have yet to collect anything of value, and robbery is clearly not my way, so I'll not be taking possession of his blunderbuss. (As a small technical note, if you turn to 117 without actually having something the adventure counts as a trophy, you're left with nowhere to go.)

Having now journeyed quite a ways north, I'm told I'm just about to stumble into the village of my tribal enemies, the Oldbones, which is a bit puzzling, as I was previously told they live to the west of Boneridge. Well, I chose to avoid them then, and I'll do so again, I guess by veering a little bit eastward. This takes me to a clump of baobab trees, that are said to be "densely-packed" and "positively claustrophobic". Which I think is not how baobab trees typically work? I get to roll a die and add half that many Provisions, and I'm told what to do if I roll a 1, but not if I roll a 3 or 5.

Next I spot a baby Stegosaurus and get to choose to drink alongside it or leave, but not to attack it. There's a good chance I could get stomped by its mom or something, and last time I stopped to drink, going thirsty would have had no ill effects, so I try it this time, and what do you know, I do not get slapped with some Stamina penalty.

Continuing north, we set our eyes on the familiar site of Boneridge Village, our dear old home. Yep, we've circled Titan. We went all the way north, missed the black mountains, looped around and came right back to where we started from the other direction, like we're on a small planet inside a spaceship. All normal. I'm informed I'm ready to "stake my claim as chieftain" despite having zero trophies to my name. My buddy however finds the whole thing too embarrassing to even re-enter the village at my side, and I'm told I cannot use his combat ability, but not to erase his codeword, so maybe he'll turn up again.

I walk into the village alone, "proud of what I have achieved" (zero trophies), and also surprised not to see any other contestants (despite having explicitly been away for only two days with the contest lasting a whole month, again why am I back here with zero trophies). It turns out everyone's been abducted in vertibirds or something, but how could that have happened, the village is guarded by many strong warriors oh wait damn what a twist.

I find the shaman's apprentice standing by the edge of a cliff, and he beckons me to come over, which might carry some risk, but I happen to know he's something of a weenie and I could take him in a fight twenty times out of twenty, so I join him, and he pushes me off the cliff. Doh!

Linking note: I'm told to turn to 177 for failing the resulting Skill check with a roll of 12, but I'm pretty sure I should first go to 222 which shaves off 4 points of Stamina (incidentally this is only 2 more than if I made the check, and as it turns out, still better not to mention more logical than what happens if you keep your distance).

I climb back up like a dogged cartoon tribal and the apprentice is gone, but my potential love interest emerges from hiding, and explains a few things, or maybe I should say "explains". It's becoming clear that when the shaman said "within a moon", this meant a day, not a month; and either the adventure simply changed its mind, or perhaps "moon" is a specific Allansian measure of time readers are expected to be familiar with. Of course, the way the adventure is constructed I was always going to return after two days had passed, and thus too late to attend the trophy comparison ceremony (I have zero, so they were right not to wait for me, but it still hurts a little). While the whole starving kids situation makes more sense in light of this, it also kind of strains the meaning of the words "exile" and "banishment".

It would seem this is where the second half of the adventure begins, and my quest is now to free my tribe from the evil shaman and his mind control gem (and maybe I'm also supposed to seek revenge on the apprentice for lusting after my girl and pushing me down a cliff, but to be honest I don't care all that much). To get started on this, we head to the shaman's tent to consult the ancestors, seemingly unconcerned with the possibility that anyone we manage to phone up using the villain's paraphernalia will be aligned with him, and I'm asked to tally up the value of my trophies, all of them. "You place your trophies upon the altar..."

picard.gif

THERE! ARE! ZERO! TROPHIES!

The spirits are understandably unimpressed but tell me to go south into the forbidden lands, while letting me know it's just because I'm all they have to work with. A night's sleep restores exactly as much Stamina as I lost falling down the cliff, and I can now pick up to five meals and/or five torches, but not five ropes. I pick three torches, leaving room for my rope and six meals. I'm also accompanied by Kuwi (+2 Attack Strength) and Paru (+2 Attack Strength... but not his previous combat ability? So confusing). Wait, is Paru also eyeing my girl? Friend, come and stand here by the cliff for a moment.

At least the journey to the Cauldron cannot be that long, since I now know that Wanushu the hunter planned to go there, do whatever adventuring and beast-slaying needed, and return to the village in time to participate in the rite of trophies, which is to say in just one day. So even though the adventure threatens me with use of the Delays score, how bad can things really be?

We head south, beyond the barbed wire and warning signs. Reaching a big clearing I'm given the option to skirt around it, even though no concrete reason is given why this place of all bone-strewn places inspires thoughts of skirtage. I cannot disappoint the spirits further, we must head across. This prompts the appearance of a Spectral Carnotaurus, which is kind of cool. I'm told its forelimbs are "waving futilely" but left to guess at what it was hoping to do with them.

Having no "magical weapon", my only choice is to win an Attack Round and then Escape, but since nothing is riding on the outcome, even with an effective Skill of 13 against the spectre's 10, Escaping might well be the best strategy anyway. I take my 2 damage to keep my Delays down.

We reach the Cauldron at midday, which is more or less on schedule, but maybe the adventure ought to be less specific about time given the Delays thing. The next choice concerns a steep but direct path into the valley, or a safe but circuitous one. I'm all in on keeping (the number of) Delays down. Picking the narrow path leads us first to witness an unrelated battle between a Triceratops and a Ceratosaurus, then I have to Test my Skill to avoid damage. A completely random roll leads to Kuwi breaking her arm, though, costing me her Attack Strength bonus. That had better be worth avoiding a Delay or two.

Three options are given for exploring further: a leaning tower, a columned building, and a dark opening in the ground. What was it I was told at Courga Rock? "Seek the tomb of the crooked king, deep in the cradle of death!" Hoping the Celenasians didn't inter their dead in towers, I light a torch and head underground.

At a junction I discover what appears to be a cipher, which I shall not assume I'm meant to crack on my own. Other than that, if I knew the crooked king's regnal number I would have some idea which way to go, but as it is, I can only pick at random. A quick show of hands reveals the party consists of two Livingstonians and one Deverite, so I turn from 16 to 10 on the same page, tut.

Down the passageway we find several doors to presumed tombs, and I'm told to turn to the section matching the regnal number of whomever I'm looking for, but the spirits didn't mention any such detail. I can only take the generic option to examine some unsealed doors, where something like a Superior Ghoul awaits. This guy has Skill 13, Stamina 18 with the ability to lower my Skill with each hit and do the Razaak double-tap death thing. There's an item which could perhaps have vanquished or weakened him, but I haven't had anything save rope, torches and food since the adventure began. With an effective Skill of 11 I stand no chance whatsoever, and I'd have fared no better if the dice had left me with two fighting companions. What would really bruise my bones is if taking any of the options to rack up Delays - skirting clearings, popping into the "wrong" buildings - is what would have given me the resources needed to survive.

Win ratio: 0/5
Skeletons: 1/5 (lots of bones, none moving)
Worst gamebook title: Futility of the Forelimbs

Thoughts

Regrettably I must say this appears to be the first zine adventure so far with serious issues, affecting the premise, proceedings and presentation of options to varying degrees.

It will be obvious by now that I found the background and the whole idea of the Rite of Banishment confusing and misleading as presented. Twist aside, it's not a bad idea at the core; I for one quite liked the premise of Daggers of Darkness and thought more could have been done with it in that book, the team-up option in this adventure being a nice such feature. However, even if it's accepted that the time limit should always be understood to be one day and not one month, I'm not sure things really make sense. When you spend the night outside and then the whole next day hiking, it turns out you've already lost, in fact the plot hinges on this, yet you don't expect this to be the case when you return to the village. Also if there was a way to stop off at the fabled black mountains in the north that I missed, or any number of other possible encounters and detours, that logically should have added a day or more to the itinerary, but then your character should also have recognized this as futile from the start and remained within sprinting distance of the village. Any way you look at it something doesn't add up.

I was also completely bamboozled by the path taken in the first half of the adventure, which in retrospect appears to have swept across the area in a kind of counterclockwise curve, although this was never made clear in the sections I visited; for instance after spending the night in 150 you just "continue", while in 3 you "decide to head west", both leading to the same paragraph. At times the presentation of time and space is just confusing and inconsistent. If you go east from the beginning, it's morning, while if you go north, you travel for a few hours before being told it's morning, and that you impossibly see "sunlight upon water" while approaching a waterhole from the south - but then if you stop to drink, right away "evening is approaching", while if you choose not to drink, you "press on into the west". It's not quite at the point where suddenly you return to Kallamehr and resume shopping for vegetables before beaming back up to the Starship Traveller and zipping off to the next planet, but finding myself back at the village at least felt pretty darn surreal.

Of course there's also the odd rules conundrum, evidently several erroneous links in addition to the one I found, debatable design features like allowing you to speak with every villager at the start if you only do it in the prescribed order, various other logical quirks already referenced, and a few instances of dubious grammar or typography. Generally the writing is just fine and the descriptions work well especially in the Cauldron section. Kuwi's exposition in 177 is perhaps a bit forced, and if it were up to me Delays would be just Delay instead.

There are 274 paragraphs, which feels like a slightly awkward count for a magazine adventure, as it seems like you wouldn't have to flesh it out all that much to reach full length (and I'm pretty sure you could get to 300 here just by splitting out some sequential and/or conditional instructions into their own sections). This is not really a complaint though as the adventure has no obvious padding and I guess it makes little practical difference for a digital magazine.

The art is done by the author, appropriately in a somewhat different style from that in Shrine of the Salamander - more Allansian, as it were? It's still good, I just don't find the dinosaurs as charming or evocative as the toads and crabs of SotS.

[Per]

Nov 8, 2023 5:28:40 GMT andrewwright said:

I had a lot of fun doing the map on the back cover of the issue with this one. :-)

I hadn't noticed it! It looks pretty good, I'm pretty sure I would have noticed a fish that big though and I'm not sure what's up with "Khar'e" and "Luml'e".

[Per]

FFzine 6: Escape from the Sorcerer by Sunil Prasannan

Rules differences: starting without a weapon (-2 Skill), Provisions only restore 2 Stamina points. Maybe there's some explanation coming for the latter, but it's hard to shake the feeling that default rules could have been used across the board, especially since paragraph 1 is going to duplicate the instruction to deduct 2 from your Skill (at least I'll assume the instructions are redundant and not cumulative).

The background describes in some detail a conflict between the kingdoms of Agra and Alkemis in southern Allansia, noting for almost a full page which faction contributed to what battle or was subjected to which indignity. If I'm getting quizzed on this later, I'll look it up at that time. Of more immediate relevance, the protagonist is an officer in the army of the not-clearly-evil kingdom, your unit overrun and captured by the way-evil kingdom's minions, then executed one by one. When only you remain, you remember a prisoner's first duty is to escape.

Can I manage this and perhaps slay some evil dude in the process? My stats are:

Skill	11 (9)
Stamina	17
Luck	9

"Determined not to become another statistic", which if nothing else shows great confidence in the record-keeping services of the day, I immediately attack the guards who've come to pick me up. I knock one out at the cost of chafing my wrists to the extent of 1 Stamina point, and easily defeat the other within the allotted four Attack Rounds. The next section concisely informs me both guards are dead even though one was previously just stunned. Oh well, a prisoner's first duty is to kill some people.

Which I'll get more opportunities to do, clearly. After restoring 1 Skill for now fighting with a sword yet still manacled, I have to defeat three enemies in 20 Attack Rounds. If I'd started with a lower Skill, the time limit wouldn't be my only problem, but as it is, I should be able to do it. I kill the first two about as quickly as you could hope, but the third (which I out-Skill by 3) gives me trouble, and by the time I realize I should use Luck to hasten his demise, I stop winning Attack Rounds entirely. After 20 rounds, the last enemy is at 1 Stamina and I'm at 2.

Turning to another section as instructed, I'm surprised to see it's not an instant death, and dismayed that my last opponent gets to Escape without me getting in the free hit which would have finished him off. (Also if I'd attacked them in a different order, he could have been dead already.) I get to Test my Luck, and the ordering of the options is a little muddled not least because there isn't actually anyone left to fight, but I'm Lucky and immediately turn to the corresponding paragraph. There I get to un-manacle myself, restore my Skill, and chew down four portions of Provisions, bringing me up to 10 Stamina. To be honest I'd have expected Trolls and Lizard Men to carry around grosser types of victuals than the fruit and cheese I'm described as looting from them.

In addition to this I "take a moment to compose myself", despite the fact that the last Troll ran off to get a ton more people, but I guess being Lucky meant he slipped on a banana peel and fell into a waste disposal chute or something. Well, it's either that or alarms are blaring in the background as I talk at some length to another prisoner about ways to get out of this place. Evidently one possible route goes conveniently or inconveniently through the main villain's quarters, so victory may well involve bumping him off, although if that's the case, perhaps the adventure should have been called Go Kill the Sorcerer; also the question is whether there are other mandatory bases to touch before that can happen. The prisoner waxes a little ominous at the end, and to fuel any suspicion I might harbour the adventure specifically notes I leave his cell unlocked - if he is who he says he is, that's not going to endear him to the guards that should turn up any moment now.

Possible exits from the prison complex are to the north-east and east; my current choice of paths is between north and east. Let's try east. In a cavern I find a launching device for a "flashpowder parcel", which can be used in battle to potentially kill off all enemies. A prisoner's first duty is to blow stuff up. I'm given the option to head back and take the other route "if I haven't already been that way", meaning there's something on the northern path you can also backtrack from, like a storeroom packed with important keys, or a comically large number of guards. I'll chance missing something important and continue east.

The next cave contains a Giant Scorpion, which I luckily defeat despite its combat tricks. I decide to carry one of its claws around with me. In a T-junction I turn north to keep on a roughly north-eastern path. Opening a door I step into a room which is lit by a lantern yet curiously empty except for a Ring of Distraction on a table. I don't get to choose not to wear it, but for now this is no big deal since it effectively raises my Attack Strength by 1.

As an aside, at least up until I defeated the jail guards I thought I was being kept in a palace, stronghold or some such, but it's becoming increasingly clear that this is a regular subterranean dungeon with random dungeon stuff separated by long stony corridors, which perhaps serves to explain how a guard could run off to get help and not actually be back for a while. To illustrate just how random the dungeon stuff can get, I'm at this point hit in the face for 2 points of damage by a passing bat, which then flies off again like this happens to it every damn day.

In the next room are some guards, which again I have to fight at the same time but this time without having to count Attack Rounds. With my new fancy ring I kill them all without taking damage. Loot includes a "strength potion" which restores 2 x 4 Stamina points, some gold, and a Zyborium tube which can be used once per battle to deal 6 points of damage (but perhaps instead of, not in addition to, the usual 2, it's not clear). I'm collecting quite the arsenal here.

An easterly door leads to an underground stream which I follow south until I reach a bridge; presumably if I'd taken the eastern path from the T-junction I would also have arrived here, but from the south. I'm directed eastward across the bridge. Opening a door further on, I'm attacked by an evil Asura, who almost kills me in spite of the Zyborium thingy and the fact that I effectively out-Skill him by 4. I drink both measures of my potion, then loot some food and find a seemingly magical book which immediately gives me the power to understand the Asuran language (a perhaps just a tiny bit over-convoluted cipher). This is the kind of thing that would have helped in the last adventure.

I've been told that the ground in the corridor is covered in spikes, but that I'm not yet inconvenienced, which should mean either they aren't very sharp or very closely set, or that the soles of my boots are very tough. I get a chance to take a northward passage away from the spikes, and if I'm still shooting for the north-easterly exit, I should probably take it, though I'd actually feel better about the choice if it didn't seem like I'm failing the floor spike challenge. This leads to another T-junction where I can go north (along the same river I crossed previously, apparently, though it's not super clear) or east. North again. New junction, west or north. Eh, west, then. I cross a rickety bridge, turn north, and run into some kind of meta-joke creature. It variably does 3 or 4 points of damage in combat, but is also vulnerable to being blasted away in a single round using my Zyborium laser regardless of how it's supposed to work. I pick up the creature's beak, why not.

Up ahead is a cave with a river crossing, which is so dark I can't see the bottom, or, presumably, anything on the bottom. Turning around feels like defeat, so I brave the water, and fight two poxy Crocodiles. A bit out of nowhere, it turns out that what I was trying to reach beyond the river wasn't another exit from the cavern, but a boat that is suddenly present. If I don't want to take the boat, I have to go back south and east across the bridge. The adventure gives away some enthusiasm regarding the boat option through the use of an exclamation mark, so it seems like the right thing.

Going upstream is probably a lot of work, not to mention going back to ground already covered, so I head downstream. The tunnel the river is flowing through is lit with lanterns that someone has to light and refill, so clearly it's in frequent use, and not at all dangerous. Passing through another cavern I investigate a sack someone left lying around, which just happens to contain a magical silver sword which increases my Attack Strength by another 4. There's also a bucket. Do these two things make a set, or were they just rolled up from different treasure tables?

The river turns east and I encounter a Crocodile Mutant, which would be a respectable opponent in some books, but not in this one at this point. Water splashes into my boat though and I'm told it starts to founder, which shouldn't be how any half-decent boat works. Do I have a bucket? Yes, crisis averted.

The river is again said to turn eastward, reaching an island, which I must choose to pass on the north or south side, though it's not clear how I know it's an island in the first place. Not wanting to risk missing an exit to the north, I pick that side, and in fact do discover a ladder leading up. Climbing it I have to roll equal to or under my Stamina in order not to succumb to vertigo, and this could actually fail, but I make it to the top and climb through a manhole into a corridor. The adventure seems to assure me I'm on the right path, remains to be seen if I have the right stuff.

At a T-junction I can go east or north. The easterly corridor is said to lead to the weapons factory that was supposed to be at the eastern exit, and which I had believed to be located somewhere beyond the eastern paths I declined to take on the lower level. Maybe there are more ways through the adventure to get to where I am now, after all there was a way south from the manhole that I wasn't interested in. I want to stick to the sorcerer-killing plot, so I go north.

At the following T-junction I easily dispatch a guard and take his food (the Trolls had bread and fruit so if this is a human he should have petit fours or something, but no, it's meat). I take the opportunity to eat two of my three Provisions in case I'm asked to roll against Stamina again. North again rather than west. Reaching another T-junction with a path to the west, I'm told screams from that direction put me off heading that way, so I suppose heading west previously could have let me loop through a couple or rooms and then back here. Hoping I missed only things that cause horrible screams and not anything vital, I'm directed northward to a door.

To open this I apparently have to press one of two buttons: left, circular, Rune of Good, white arrow, or right, square, Rune of Chaos, black circle. I think maybe... oh, you have something you want to say, scorpion claw hand puppet?

"Yes! The symbolism here is obvious: the arrow represents the door sliding up, to allow passage!"

"Nonsense!" (exclaims the puffin beak hand puppet.) "If it represents anything, it's the section of floor on which we're standing smashing into the ceiling! Meanwhile, the Chaos symbol calls to mind the transportation circles used in Kharé, taking us ever onwards, most of the time."

"Down into endless sewers, you mean! As the adventure takes care to explain, the circle stands for everything, therefore nothing. Translocation to a lethal void!"

"You overlook the adventure's big helpful clue, asking us to consider which button the sorcerer's followers might be likely to press! They are Chaotics one and all, incapable of even touching the symbol of Good."

"Helpful? Bah! Rather an irrelevant observation to steer us towards the wrong choice! Who would integrate a loyalty test into a door opening mechanism, expecting their foes only to press the offending button? It makes no sense! Surely the construction of this place predates the rule of the evil sorcerer anyway!"

"You forget this has always been a den of chaotic villainy since ages past! Obviously they would install mechanisms marked with the emblems of their enemies, but, like, have them be deadly traps."

"Then what about this rhyme, scribbled on a piece of parchment that we found?"

Arrow is ahead
Circle is dead
Pick your fate
Good is great.

"We never found any such note, and that's a rubbish poem written in your own claw! See instead this cryptic inscription on the right-hand wall!"

Left is for losers
But square gets you there
Press the arrow and you're brained
It needs hardly be explained.

"In the same colour as the crayon you just dropped! Enough! I'm pressing the button! Left, circular, white on black, directional! Onwards!"

"No! Fool! You're dooooo-"

Click. Click? ZAP! Putting my faith in the powers of upness is an instant death. Whoever comes patrolling this way next and gets to loot my charred corpse will have a substantial upgrade to their combat abilities, and maybe they'll even have some fun playing with the hand puppets.

Win ratio: 0/6
Skeletons: 1/6

Thoughts

For a little while it seemed to me that, counting up Attack Rounds and finding bazookas notwithstanding, the adventure was keeping things on a basic level with a traditional room-to-room exploration structure, and I figured running it was a sensible editorial decision after several adventures characterized by largely non-traditional structures and advanced gamebook techniques (such as would be penned by fans wanting to continue the trend from latter works by Jackson, Sargent and Green among others). But before long, I was once again presented with numbers to note down and an encryption method to keep in mind. At this point in the zine's publication history, issues were still frequent enough that a less technically ambitious offering might have been accepted as a change of pace, but maybe it's rather the case that nobody really wants to spend their time in the creative spotlight presenting the fan equivalent of The Forest of Doom or City of Thieves. Well, I still have eleven more adventures to go and maybe one of them will be truly retro-oriented.

As is often the case when your adventure ends with instant death, I have no real way of knowing whether I was doing well. If I had pressed the other button, would I have entered the villain's lair and been allowed to take him on with all my special combat gear and a chance of victory? Or would I still have failed in one of any number of bottlenecks requiring undiscovered items or information? Who knows, perhaps even my choice of which button to press was not wrong, but required a secret redirection in order not to press the same button twice and get zapped, instead continuing with a specific combination. The sword giving +4 to Attack Strength in addition to being able to damage werewolves and undead would be one of the mightiest weapons in the printed books, here I found it in a sack discarded in an empty cave. Is there a backstory to this, printed or otherwise? Does its presence mean you are surely on the right track, or is it just there to tempt readers into revisiting a doomed path?

If the level of complexity doesn't significantly set this adventure apart from its predecessors, the writing style does. System terms and operations are handled somewhat loosely and inconsistently, colloquialisms crop up (e.g. referring to a group of enemies as "these guys"), descriptions of events and topologies are given that seem incomplete, imprecise, convoluted or inappropriately sequenced (e.g. the amazing appearing boat, or a corridor "heading north-south" from its southern end - isn't that just a corridor going north?), and also there's a smattering of things I would call errors of style. None of this makes the adventure unreadable and most of it wouldn't raise eyebrows in a different gamebook series; perhaps mostly it serves to illuminate through contrast the degree to which the writers of those other adventures have operated within the expected Fighting Fantasy style boundaries.

The art by Michael Wolmarans kind of passed unnoticed. It's a mix of digitally painted greyscale images and line drawings with more subtle shading, and though there's nothing wrong with it, it didn't infuse the setting with much colour for me. As it turns out my playthrough managed to miss every one of the large illustrations, though I mistakenly thought the one for 86 might be for 85, and even more mistakenly thought that the one for 110 was for 112 (the Puflin does get an illustration, but not in the section I visited). Didn't I see the Fu Manchu guy in Moonrunner?

I may as well take this opportunity to gripe about something that isn't specific to this adventure, but to the publication as a whole: the PDFs are protected in such a fashion that at least in Adobe Reader and Foxit, although you can mark text on the screen, you cannot copy and paste it. This prevents for instance copying titles and names for use in headings, and also snippets of code text for editing into readability. I'm reasonably sure that tools exist to grab the text anyway for anyone who truly wants to, so this is the kind of restriction that tends to inconvenience those the publisher hopefully did not intend to inconvenience.

[Per]

FFzine 7: Queen of Shades by Paul Struth

As everyone but me already knew, this adventure is the return to gamebooking by the writer of The Dervish Stone from Warlock 4. On the unexpected reappearances scale of one to Ruth Pracy suddenly turning up with the fourth instalment in the Flat Lands saga, it's perhaps not at the very top, but in the upper half at least.

The only truly special rule is a multiple opponents variant that's been seen before; calling once on Libra (with no generic option like restoring stats) and rolling for starting gold perhaps don't really count.

I play a Sightmaster, one of those googly-eyed freaks from Analand:

Skill	7
Stamina	18
Luck	11

I start with 6 gold, a quarterstaff and a dagger. Possibly not doomed depending on the adventure design.

The backstory is that after finding myself increasingly sensitive to sunlight I've decided to seek out the leading expert in protective eyewear, what do you mean everyone already made this joke I'm working happily with some disreputable people in Kharé (where everyone is disreputable to some degree, so this in itself doesn't make me a stone-cold gangster, I think), and the other day we robbed a queen's tomb of a silver mirror, but since then, two of the people in my band died or disappeared. It looks like I'll be next as two ghostly warrior women with ancient-looking weapons and armour materialize in my lodging room at night.

Stumbling out of bed over an unusual amount of semicolons, I have a choice between talking, going for my staff, or leaping out the second-story window. Talking produces no results, and I'm told that if I now fight, it'll have to be unarmed. That's right out, so I try the window. It turns out I was apparently on what would be called the third floor in some parts of the world, and the randomizer decrees I should lose 6 Stamina points (I'm given the option to Test my Luck to reduce damage by 2, but this doesn't seem like a good use of a Luck point).

The ghosts just follow me down anyway and the adventure has me call on Libra, who seems to chase them away, only to then lecture me to my face about my misdeeds, telling me graverobbing is bad and I have to return the mirror to the tomb or I'm toast. Also she won't listen to me again, although I knew that since it's in the rules. It does make you wonder whether Libra was always this actively opposed to for instance running into people's homes in Kharé and killing them for pocket money, or if dead queens are a special case.

Not wanting to become a Toastmaster, the next day I seek out surviving partners Fox and Jardakka at a tavern and "waste no time" filling them in, except for the entire night during which they could have been hacked up by ghosts for all I knew. The dialogue makes it clear the nightly encounter wasn't going to end with me not calling on Libra. It's also noted I retrieved my gear, and I buy a meal for 2 Gold Pieces, gaining back 3 Stamina points.

Fox then claims he gave the mirror away without even getting paid, causing Jardakka the Red-Eye to prepare to flame him (the adventure seems to assume you know the deal with this), and since I remember Jackson's Red-Eyes to be pretty much unstoppable, I let her get on with it, a decision I don't feel any worse about when Fox ends up trying to zap me instead of her. The Ogre proprietess breaks up the hostilities, but nobody gives me back my Luck point so now I feel that both of these bozos owe me.

Further options include: going to the merchant who has the mirror to ask for it back, going with Jardakka to find protective amulets against spectral Shield Maidens, and going with Fox to consult Vik. Though I doubt it's immediately going to lead to a successful ending, I decide to trust the bozos to run their own errands, and go alone to the merchant.

His mansion is located next to the Jabaji, which is quite practical as you don't have to worry about intruders coming from the side of the river (it cannot be crossed). After being asked if this is my first visit I speak to a Minimite outside the mansion, then to a Serpentine inside it (and at one point I'm told that "Jardakka whistles softly" at the sight of the interior decoration, which is a bit startling since I thought she was off doing something completely different). The adventure asks me what I intend to do here: inform the merchant the mirror is cursed, sniff out the location of the mirror so we can steal it later, or kill everyone and everything. I don't think I'll be doing the last one with Skill 7, and our thief Vanaru was the curse's first victim, so only honesty remains. Surely merchants are a superstitious cowardly lot.

It turns out the Serpentine mesmerizes me into telling the truth, which for some reason horrifies me even though I thought that's what I was going to do anyway. (Also Jardakka is evidently along for the visit, so who's out buying protective charms? Well, it's fine, can't have enough 'Dakka.) Merchant Shar-kali-Sharri shows up and turns out to be a Cyclops, so again I probably wouldn't have whooped him and his forty Soldier Mant guards with Skill 7. He claims to have paid plenty of money to Fox, who is then a dead man walking, and consequently won't part with the mirror, curse or no curse. He offers us money to make ourselves scarce, but I turn it down saying it will be of no use if the curse isn't lifted, which may be a lie, as I didn't try shopping for ghost-repelling amulets yet.

The merchant stomps off and I cannot ask the snake woman out on a date. While leaving I spot a younger Cyclops, perhaps the merchant's daughter, holding the mirror, and I'm given the option to jump her and take it, but I'm fairly certain my life and my hopes of a ghost-free tomorrow would end there, so we leave for now - something was learned, at least. In fact, I'm given a secret reference to prove it.

New options: go slay Fox for being a treacherous bastard, prepare a break-in at the mansion, and visit Hagbut's magic shop. The first regrettably does not seem productive. I pick the shop, hoping we won't be left entirely without time to plan the heist. Clearly we should have taken the merchant's coin, though.

At the shop I'm again asked if I've been here before. I'm assuming a second visit to the mansion means breaking in to steal the mirror, but what might a return to this place involve? Complaining that the golden locket that was supposed to ward off spirit ladies just attracts arrows? The Gnome shopkeeper has cute matching nicknames for us. Unfortunately I don't have a numeric code for a specific item, so I have to settle for the generic option, which is a magical sword I'm not close to being able to afford. Just killing shopkeepers for the things you need probably remains one of the least fruitful courses of action in gamebooks, so I ask if he might be willing to accept... alternative payment. I do not have the item he would take in exchange. The only remaining option is to buy Holy Water from Daddu-Yadu (where it's bottled by a sect of money-grubbing monks, I happen to know), but since I ate previously I cannot afford even that, and Jardakka seems to have no funds of her own, having blown all her money on apples.

We pop into the adventuring gear store across the street. The Ogre who runs it seems to have it in for Red-Eyes and possibly also is unaware that they are unstoppable. I keep browsing, which leads to the Ogre and his friend, who turns out to be another Ogre, attacking us. Well, then, we'll take their entire stock, and for nothing.

Of course, I forgot my Skill is 7, and to defeat this Skill 8 enemy, I have to increase damage with Luck three times. Even so, I'm at 1 Stamina point. I'm informed Jardakka and I are both covered in blood. Knowing Red-Eyes are unstoppable, I tell her, "Surely that's not your blood." She just rolls her eyes (behind her eyelids). Of course it isn't. Someone outside the shop starts hollering, don't they know this is Kharé, this is normal. I do the looting we've darn well earned and get to pick two items from a list: a pouch with 12 GP (for shopping elsewhere, perhaps) and a rope (for breaking into places, perhaps).

Three options again: return to the merchant, kill Fox, or seek the witch of Krooe. Uh... who? What? Where? What? With my current stats at Skill 7, Stamina 1, Luck 7 I think Fox could kill me with a toothpick and the break-in wouldn't go much better, so by all means let's consult this witch person, maybe she'll heal us up for free or something.

Of course, the adventure could have told me something like, "What do you mean, the witch of Krooe? There's no such thing! Die, fool!" and it'd be a fair cop. Instead it turns out Krooe is a little village district on the west side of Kharé, apparently still within the walls but separated from the rest of the city by muddy fields that no one cares to develop. I'm given a choice of Svinns to ask for the whereabouts of the witch (so it's a secret witch?) and I have no idea which one's more likely to know, let's go with the young man. This seems to be the right choice for random reasons: the guy has no earthly clue but his mom does, and we're sent to talk to his fisherman dad, who for a coin rows us down a canal into the flooded basement of a derelict house, where we wait for the arrival of the witch.

Come nightfall, Jardakka has disappeared, but I find the witch lying about, and approach her as instructed. When I'm within reach, she grabs my hand and bites me, which kills me, so I'll never know if she thought this was a splendid practical joke in the end.

Win ratio: 0/7
Skeletons: 1/7

Thoughts

So once again I die wondering whether I could in fact have made it to the end if I'd gone left instead of right, previously saved a point of Stamina or Luck. This is getting to be a common refrain in these playthroughs, but maybe not outside the realm of reasonable expectation. I was actually rather enjoying it at first, at least as much as any of the previous adventures: city setting, rogue shenanigans, investigation, companions (mostly one), even playing a non-human character though it didn't seem to make much difference. So it was rather disappointing when, upon resuming play in Krooe after a day's break, I advanced just another handful of paragraphs to an under the circumstances sure fatality.

Perhaps a bit heretically, I'm on the record saying I didn't find the original Kharé painted with enough flavour. I was intrigued initially to find some unusual sensory descriptions here, including the "arguments of the other tenants and the barking of a stray dog" in the background section, and how after I jumped down into the yard, the adventure took the time to explain the significance of the smells from the outbuildings even though this had little to no bearing on what was going on. There's a little less of this later on, when you move about town not seeing or hearing much outside of your immediate focus, but at least some nice sequences like the boat ride in Krooe, and all told it should be above average for the series.

If the queen herself had risen from her sarcophagus to come after us with arms outstretched and wheezing for us to give her the mirror, that could have been a skeleton right there, but no. I still think the title reads a bit funny.

Most of what I've already said about Alexander Ballingall's art holds true here as well, and to be honest, there's more than one scene (including the opening with the two ghost warriors) that just isn't improved by glancing at the accompanying illustration. This isn't a first in gamebooks though (and I'm thinking of things like some illustrations in Down Among the Dead Men, seemingly drawn from briefs including none of the specifics from the actual gamebook text, or the god-creature in Rings of Kether). The image of Jardakka seems to show a regular human with quite ordinary eyes, nothing like the Red-Eyes drawn by Blanche; on the cover of the magazine her eyes are at least shut. I do like the small image of a Soldier Mant who's wielding two swords in two hands each (which you'd think would not improve mobility) and is clearly in the process of informing you in a high-pitched voice how much you're in for it.

[Per]

FFzine 8: Vengeance at Midnight by Alexander Ballingall

I honestly didn't expect this specific reason to regret not playing the remaining two Warlock adventures, one of which was Deadline to Destruction. The rules here are the same as in Appointment with F.E.A.R., except you begin with 3 Hero Points and must fall on your sword if you reach zero, and there's a carrying capacity of three items. The stats I rolled are:

Skill	12
Stamina	15
Luck	8

Well, that is a somewhat interesting distribution. If the adventure hopes to bring me down with enemies rather than dropping rocks on me, I might have a chance. Since I rolled these before picking a superpower, I won't be taking Super Strength, but ETS, the only one of the other skills that won't drain precious Stamina from me. Does the Accessory Belt count as an item? I'll assume it doesn't.

Two starting clues: 1) there's a potential person of interest at the Park Maintenance Office for Abudon Park (presumably a typo for Audubon, also this is awfully vague), and 2) mind-powered mutant Frenzy is on the loose, info can be found at 12th Avenue (much less vague).

The background says things have been comparatively peaceful in Titan City for a while, and I have got myself a girlfriend. Now however there are rumours of some nefarious plot, and I'm patrolling the harbour in accordance with Gerry the Grass's latest tip. No matter which superpower I chose, I begin perched on a tall crane and then leap effortlessly between stacks of containers; honestly this feels ill-advised for anyone but the Super Strength version of the Silver Crusader. Then, instead of proceeding to paragraph 1 for my first choice, my entry point in the adventure depends on my power, with section 1 being just like any other. That is a bit unusual, so I can't help but wonder if it's done for a special reason; with the adventure adding up to 269 parapraphs, it doesn't seem that this would have been the last possible solution for freeing one up.

As a truck loaded with contraband pulls out of the harbour, I forgo the power-agnostic option to jump onto its roof, because again that seems like the thing only Super Strength should be doing, and instead use ETS. This means tracking the truck (which becomes a van for the duration of a section, then turns back into a truck) to a large industrial depot, and I guess if I'd been on the truck's roof I would now be inside the depot. I'm not, but for some reason I'm on the roof of the depot as the truck arrives, even though I tracked it here making sure to stay well behind. Slightly confusing.

Asked to pick a way inside, I choose to search for a regular door or window rather than drop in through a skylight or go down to the loading bay; picking a lock should be no biggie for me. I end up squiggling through a window to a second floor bathroom (which in some parts of the world would be a third floor bathroom) and make my way down to the ground floor where suspicious crates are being stacked up. I'm given the chance to listen in on the criminals (as the adventure calls them, though I have yet to catch them doing something clearly illegal) with ETS, but only pick up that one of the thugs (as they are now also labelled) is called Butterfingers, which may be useful to know.

Given the choice whether to tackle them myself or alert the police, I pick the latter. The police arrive, and I get to choose whether to backtrack and join them, or to (seemingly) confront the criminals as if the police hadn't shown up in the first place. Uh, former, please, though I feel like I'm giving up a considerable tactical advantage by not staying here to observe. With me outside and the depot surrounded, the criminals appear to come out peacefully as instructed, but with ETS I can use Perception Goggles to see that they're an illusion. Instead of simply informing the police I must choose between rushing the illusions or throwing something at them. And instead of using some gadget I just look around for a rock to throw, and must Test my Skill... which wasn't in the rules? I'll just assume the "equal to" case is success. The rock passing through the criminally thuggish reveals them to be illusion, which I already knew, but also for some reason dispels the image. However, this only allows me to see the real truck speeding away while the depot explodes killing us all harmlessly. OK, but surely the police can go after the truck or use police radio or something. Nope! OK, but my tracking device is still on there. NOPE! To be honest this sequence of events doesn't make me or anyone else seem very competent. I can always hold out hope that Butterfingers was the only thing I could have hoped to learn here anyway.

New day, a Stamina boost I cannot benefit from, and a list of places to go. Both of my clues have relevant locations among the options. I'll go to Audubon Park, which is still referred to as Abudon. The adventure asks if I expect to run into some named character here, and I do not, which leaves three generic options, any or all of which may lead on to the Park Maintenance Office. There's the lake, back paths, and Olgivy statue, which may or may not be a typo for Ogilvy, whoever that is. Well, I do like the idea of back paths. I'm told they offer such privacy among the thick bushes and trees that criminals use them as a meeting place, which I hope was seldom the case at my own local botanical gardens even before some of the most nicely secluded parts were bulldozed.

Testing my Luck successfully I run into a whole outfit of gangers, which would not be lucky for ordinary people. Since I'm evidently in superhero clothes, they point and jeer, which I can imagine some non-criminal elements having done as well as I made my way here across the city. They have me surrounded in no time. I throw a smoke bomb, as well as a virtual die to determine how many thugs I can disable with nerve pinches while they mill about helplessly. Two! I rather got the impression they might number in the double digits, so I decline the adventure's offer to fight the remainder, and take off.

I reach an obvious hub paragraph where I must virtually tick off the location I just visited. Apparently I can investigate one more before being sent to a tick-based distraction. I'll check out the mutant community as per my second starting clue.

This time as I head out, the adventure points out expressly that I'm "rather conspicuous in my Silver Crusader outfit". I don't doubt the "Bradourif building" is a reference to actor and gamebook aficionado Brad Dourif, though I can't establish any connection to the X-Men franchise. My clue tells me which investigative option to select. A secretary asks if I have an appointment, and I actually have a name that can be converted slightly laboriously into a paragraph reference, which I guess means I actually did have an appointment. The section actually goes on for a bit past this point with several "got this? No, maybe that? No!? What's wrong with you" options, one of which curiously is using ETS in case this was the clue I didn't pick at the start.

I'm shown into the office of a Charles Xavier expy. After I describe the situation, he identifies one of the thug-criminals from the depot, specifically the one who created the illusion that confounded me so, to be the mutant from my clue. A bit confusingly he deduces this at least partially from a detail that was never mentioned in the text. I'm given a Downtown address with no fewer than three numerical elements. That done, I'm offered to explore the rest of the building. Having already collected what I presume is the correct lead for my power from this location, I fear looking about might do little but cost me a Luck point or worse, but I'm also curious. I'll just duck out at the first sign of trouble.

First I visit what appears to be an arts and crafts studio with small shops. Maybe I can pick up some organic soap for my girl? I'm given the option to Test my Luck, but decline. The leather salesman, then? Ugh, he forces me to Test my Luck, and I fail, though with no other ill effects. Going back down to the café, I'm given a choice of people to approach (corresponding fairly closely to the selection of Svinns in Krooe), and I'm already regretting this as I wonder which of them will drain my precious Luck further. The twin girls may be safe. They advise me to go to the park and check out the back paths. Welp, thanks, I'm out. Or not, as an outfit of mutant gangers harass me for talking to "their girls". So now I have to fight four people "at the same time". Cool! How? This wasn't in the rules. Using the most common rules for fighting multiple opponents, though no such thing happened in AWF, my high Skill actually allows me to come out completely unscathed. And that's the end of my visit to the Mutant Enclave.

I'm back at the hub paragraph, and since I've ticked off two boxes, something happens. An alert from Gerry has me heading off downtown, my conveyance of choice being "a flurry of action" or something, to a computer shop where apparently I expect a simple smash-and-grab to take place, although if that was the case, surely it would be over by now. I'm told to note down the name of Officer Kawalski in case I must do some A=1 converting later, and he says there's a villain in the store with hostages but no one's actually communicated with him. Well, if the police couldn't talk to him, I don't see how I could, and anyway my power should be a good match for a tech-based villain, so I sneak into the store, resisting the rare opportunity to turn to 1 in the middle of an adventure.

I'm instructed to Test my Luck twice, failing both as expected and ending up at Luck 4, so unless the adventure suddenly remembers how Luck works and decides to reward me greatly for something, I'll not be Lucky again in this playthrough.

Since I suck at sneaking (or more accurately, have bad luck at sneaking), the villain Volt Head sees me and grabs a hostage. For some reason though "the chaos and confusion of my arrival" allows every last one of the other hostages to escape - did I turn over a stack of four hundred boxes of robotic assistants, all of which activated, broke loose and started buzzing around offering to fold laundry? It doesn't say. I have ETS, so maybe I have a gadget with which to zap the remaining hostage. I zap Volt Head instead, gaining 2 Hero Points since nobody knows it was unintentional, but not a single goddamn Luck point.

Searching the shop for clues, I find a teddy bear, which isn't so much a clue as a trap: the bear catches fire, and for some unspecified reason I conclude this will be enough to destroy the one load-bearing pillar in the entire store. I must again Test my Skill, but this time there are partial instructions, and the "equal to" case is indeed success. I make it out before the bear explodes for real killing everyone nearby burying the store in rubble. It's a little unclear whether the store was just one part of a larger building, in which case destroying the one pillar could make sense, or if the store was more or less synonymous with the entire building, which was the impression I got upon arrival, in which case the bomb would presumably have flattened everything regardless of placement. Either way, if failing the check had been fatal, it would be proof that this adventure hates characters with a low to middling Skill in addition to Luck.

I'm sent back to the hub section again. A literal reading of the instructions in it would now have me tick off the Downtown location. Of course, I could have already ticked it off before I got the address from fake Xavier, and if so, would I be unable to return there, even though I now have a very specific reason to? I tentatively answer yes to the second issue, no to the first. Let's imagine I never left Downtown, but saluted Officer Kawalski and just stepped into the closest doorway.

The description understandably still has me "heading downtown", listing off a number of prominent establishments, wisely not including the computer store among them. Luckily I have the address needed to work out where to turn to, so I can bypass the general list of places in which to get drained of Stamina and Luck. The adventure has me knock on the villain's door, then asks me for codewords. I have none. He opens the door, and the adventure informs me of the "sudden understanding" that this guy was at the depot, even though I already knew. Upon seeing me, he launches a mental attack. What did I expect would happen? I'm asked if I have Psi-Powers, even though I thought I only got here because I have the ETS starting clue. Oh, I see, the powers share a bunch of clues, and in fact, Psi-Powers doesn't have a single exclusive clue. Sneaky. Fortunately this power is easily emulated with a Skill test, which has the added benefit of not costing 2 Stamina points.

The physical brawl that follows is a cakewalk. I search the apartment and find a teddy bear, which for some reason I don't throw into the street below screaming "EXPUROOOOOSION", a restaurant stub with a number, and a swipe card with a number. If I take all three, am I at full carrying capacity? I'll leave it for later to ponder whether I can discard the stub to pick up something far bigger while retaining knowledge of what was printed on it. I also get a codeword to record the arrest.

I can now head purposefully to where the restaurant is located, and the adventure makes a passing reference to the fountain from which a monster oddly arose in AWF. The restaurant isn't open, but I'm given the option to burglarize them for the crime of serving food to a mutant villain at least once. Of course! I lose a Hero Point for this investigative measure. Of course.

Since I already fought Volt Head - which is not determined by a codeword, I'm just asked straight up - there isn't anyone dangerous around. I incapacitate some random guy I have no real reason to suspect of being a wrongdoer, and find some odd uniforms in a locker, taking one (and discarding the stub to make room). The "police and CIA" all show up to take the guy I knocked out into custody, I'm not told why, but they must have their reasons. Even so, I don't get my Hero Point back for doing what was evidently quite justified. Maybe I should retroactively also deduct one for entering the depot earlier.

I'm now faced with the conundrum of whether to visit the remaining two generic Downtown options. I have no particular reason to think I'd find anything there, but as it happens, I'm out of clues where to go next anyway. Well, it's not like getting my Luck drained even more is going to make a difference. Let's try this AB&C thing, whatever that is. It's a telecommunications provider and there are no fewer than three options of whom to talk to. I'd be embarrassed to talk to the boss without good reason and experience tells me customer support is useless, so I pick maintenance. I mean, what are the odds of this being related to - HALT, EVILDOER!

It turns out I recognize a woman in her clipboard-holding workplace outfit as being one of the people I saw at the harbour in her crate-lugging thuggish outfit, but to be fair she helps a bit by making a run for it. If a clue had led me here, perhaps I'd have complained about "realizing with a shock" who she is, but as it is, it's fine. Also since they ended up blowing up a building, I'm OK with the adventure calling her a "crook" at this point. Chasing after her, I have to Test my Luck. Ahaha! Seriously, why was avoiding tripping on the stairs not governed by Skill instead?

She becomes "lost in the corridors and staff" and I can call on no inside or outside resources to help locate her. If I now go to the head of the branch or customer support, might she be there? Doubtful, though I try them anyway, to no result. Then I go to Cottonworths, just to leave no stone unturned. Maybe another crook/thug/knave is employed there.

The electronics department could actually be relevant to my power. Nothing of immediate interest, but I take the option to remain there, hoping that this means browsing increasingly useful components and not just sampling an increasingly expensive range of foot spas. I'm told I pick "slightly obscured or shadowed spots" in order not to stand out as the Silver Crusader, as if that'll make the difference as to whether criminals start filling the aisles, instead of just getting me thrown out as a likely shoplifter. Anyway, after some time, female villain Da Femme comes crashing in through a window. Bet she hadn't done that if she'd seen me out in the open by the coffee makers, which I suppose kinda makes it my fault.

She kicks me in the stomach while I check my Accessory Belt for something relevant (having leapt out in front of her first, like a moron), causing me my first 2 points of damage. She gets in another hit during the subsequent battle, and I get two more useless Hero Points for her defeat. I'm not informed in the slightest what she was hoping to accomplish here. "Was it the foot spa?" I shout at her while the cops drag her away. "Was it the coffee makers? What is it you and your pals need for your evil plans, villain? Speak, fiend!"

It seems somewhat unlikely that I'll reach the end of the adventure and be asked, did you capture Da Femme? Then yay! She was the big boss actually, the great plan won't be carried out now, you win!

I go visit the toys department just for the hilarity in case there'd happen to be a supervillain there as well. Interestingly, I can ask the manager about my non-exploding teddy bear, a possibility I had overlooked. But, this goes nowhere. I've exhausted the extensive Downtown spoke and go back to the hub with three locations ticked.

The Police HQ seems as good an option as any, and should if nothing else be fairly safe. Unless the bad guys decide to blow it up while I'm there. Better look out for bears. I'm told that "of all the people in Titan City, the men in blue are on your side", immediately convincing me there's at least a handful of traitors among them. Though I've run into two named officers so far, the one whose name I was instructed to make a note of is Kawalski, and converting his name to numbers and adding 15 I get 102, which is clearly the wrong section. A little bit of scrolling reveals 94 to likely be the correct destination, meaning his letters would have to add up to 79 somehow. I don't get it, but continue from there. (I convert Belcher as well just to see if there was a mix-up, and his reference checks out.)

I find Kawalski in the process of making coffee. Using a coffee maker from Cottonworths? Is this plot stuff!? No, wait, that was just something I made up. Drinking this could either poison me or give me my 5 missing Luck points back. Regrettably I feel the former is more likely. I produce my non-exploding teddy bear instead, hoping I didn't just unintentionally skip past the only Kawalski-specific interaction. He in fact seems to be absent as I take the bear to the forensics lab, where I'm told I have "uncounted cups of coffee" despite just having refused a single one in order to "not waste any more of my time". The bear gets analysed, though, and turns out to be some kind of triggered incendiary device. I leave the dangerous bear at the lab to get a free inventory slot, and I'm instructed to tick the top box in the hub section, enforcing a redirection if I should hit six other boxes - maybe at that time they'll have found out something more?

For now, though, I have four ticks, and that's a redirection of its own. Addison Square Gardens is being attacked. It appears some kind of fighting event has got out of hand, and a well-muscled woman is shooting beams from a sceptre, which may violate even MMA regulations. She is pinning down a Doctor Brown who seems to be responsible for the lab accident that gave her what I assume is her powers. The ETS paragraph bluntly tells me I have nothing that helps here, raising the very serious question why I rushed in to confront her. She's Skill 10, Stamina 17, and does on average 1 Stamina point of extra damage every Attack Round regardless of the outcome. If not for a lucky streak of sceptre-blast checks at the end, I would go down, but I survive at 1 Stamina point. And this is an ETS guy who happens to have Skill 12! Any less and I'd just be dead.

My reward? 2 Hero Points and the name of Officer Belcher (who I already met), though it seems I won't have any use for it. Luck points? Good one!

I'm back at the hub. Which location has the hospital!? Could the Burger Bar sell Provisions? I'll just have to chance it. Arriving at the bar I'm asked for any of three codewords, two of which have been mentioned previously, but none of which I actually have. This means I can get down to ordering food. As I step up to the counter I see someone hurriedly leaving the kitchen, and I storm after him, because that's the type of thing I do. I'll zap him, and after he tells me he just forgot to renew his parking ticket, I'll zap him again.

The adventure asks me to Test my Luck. If I had started at 12, maybe there would still be any point in asking. And as a result of failing, I "take a nasty spill onto the ground" and... heroically lose 1 Stamina point. The one I had.

Win ratio: 0/8
Skeletons: 1/8
Hero Points: 8

Thoughts

If this is a serious attempt to create a four-in-one adventure in the style of AWF with unique clues, investigation paths and appropriate confrontations for each superpower, then I applaud the ambition and effort. If it's more like a single puzzle where the powers serve to determine the development and difficulty of certain encounters, then at least the flavour is present, and there is some decent dialogue. I had a bunch of fun with my playthrough even though a lot of it is perverse enjoyment at poking fun at everything which seems unexplained, inappropriate or unfair, which is probably not the thing to shoot for.

And there's rather a lot of that. There are descriptions which don't respect your chosen power or previous information, transitions that don't respect previous actions or events, outcomes that are mystifying or disappointing, and confrontations which you blunder into haphazardly or incompetently - this might be fine if you're off your proper path, but shouldn't be the case for mandatory encounters. On the technical side, there are the two things missing from the rules, the incorrect Police HQ reference, and the question whether the carrying capacity rule was worth including. On the game balance side, Luck is treated even more offhandedly than in Resurrection of the Dead, and it would appear a very high Skill is also a prerequisite for most characters. On the editing side, there's "Abudon" and a few other typos (e.g. "making shure", go home, book, you're drunk).

I dealt with the illustrations largely by not noticing them, which is helped by the fact that some of them only accompany specific outcomes of encounters. The fighting ring at the top of page 54 suggests this illustration is for the Daiichi encounter, but even if adding a sceptre would complete the image of some dainty magical girl, the fact is that she looks nothing like the description, and does not have a sceptre. My mental image of Volt Head was much improved by not knowing he's on the magazine cover - I thought that was supposed to be the Crusader!

[Per]

FFzine 9: Return to the Icefinger Mountains by Ed Jolley

This playthrough will be somewhat different from all the previous ones since I'm not going in blind, but have attempted the adventure several times before, though never successfully. More about this later and/or elsewhere, perhaps; for now it's enough to know I'll be trying for the "sword jerk" path I had figured would be there but had stopped pursuing for reasons that may become clear. This also means I won't be accepting a low Skill, so I'll roll and assign dice for once. Discarding my first set of [1, 1, 3, 4], here's what I end up with:

Skill	11
Stamina	17
Luck	10

I'm fairly sure doomage awaits, but we can have some fun seeing how far I get. The rules are standard across the board, with the minor additions of an instruction that your inventory must be strictly managed as directed and a warning that the adventure will sometimes mandate the eating of Provisions, although they will still function normally. You can only eat when instructed, but that's how it was in the beginning.

The background is I think longer than any of the previous, taking up almost two full pages. The adventure takes place thirty years after the events of Caverns of the Snow Witch, and assuming Fighting Fantasy on Titan runs in something resembling comic book time, that should mean we're in the future, and specifically one where two things hold true: one, unless there have been various cataclysms that go unmentioned, for the next ten or twenty years or so, every demon or warlord or necromancer who's going to try to demolish Titan or even just northern Allansia is going to fail. And two, the educational system is advanced enough for orphan farmhands to solve linear systems in their heads. If you ask me, it certainly seems like things could be worse.

Long story short: I'm a survivor of the Crystal Caves, whose evil enterprise some guy wrecked back when I was a kid; along with an older fellow escapee I begin to have nightmares of the Witch's return, and just as we're about to set out to do something about it, I find him killed in his home. Rotten luck! But a scholar from Salamonis is due to arrive to take his place as my companion.

So I begin in front of the tortured and bound corpse of my friend, and going by the picture, either he wrote a message in his own blood by flexing and extending his ankle to an impressive degree, or one of his killers wrote the text upside down (and let's ignore that the writing was apparently done by creating dry streaks in the puddle of blood, which might be possible if his toe was very waxy). He has a balled-up piece of paper in his mouth, which some people might find intriguing or suspicious enough to check out, but I happen to know that taking it would risk derailing my chosen path, and I think it's just backstory anyway. Well, it could be some kind of "take the Mth letter of every Nth word" cipher that you won't be instructed to solve, but what are the chances etc.

I make to leave, but a strange man was just about to enter, so we stare at each other awkwardly for a bit. He introduces himself as the scholar Denati, inspiring enough trust for me to let him in. Once inside he rather quickly concludes there's nothing to learn from the crime scene (what about this teddy bear huh), and agrees to go on the doomed quest with me. He's always wanted to visit the lost city of Cyrantis beneath the Crystal Caves since it's the focus of his life's work, but has apparently never considered going, despite the fact that it must have been a lot more accessible these last thirty years than it was previously. Are there no heroic people in Salamonis that could be hired as bodyguards?

The market is open at this time, and I get some equipment: winter clothing, blankets and lanterns which don't seem like the kind of gear you would normally record, a rope which is often recorded, and seven portions of Provisions. We then set off right away for the mountains. If I'd previously taken the paper, a guard could have noticed my boots being soaked in blood, but there's no risk of that now. We pass a trading post, where we spend the night and Denati's unspecified funds lets us conserve food, which will matter if there are seven opportunities to eat and/or use food in other ways.

We reach a kind of virtual "is it Thursday or Friday" moment, though the book in fact already knows this is the one Thursday section, and therefore we come across whatever is the collective noun for a combination of Toa-Suo and Snow Wolves. Lie low and wait for them to pass? No, that's dumb. Let's cross their path directly behind them. Also, in the accompanying illustration my companion sucks badly at hiding, so they probably already know we're here.

Welp, now they know, not through a Wolf catching our scent, but from a budget brand Yeti looking over its shoulder. We run and so do they, in the same direction. I roll under my Stamina with four dice, and I guess so does Denati, giving me an easier preludial fight against a single Snow Wolf. Unfortunately it wins one Attack Round and ties one, so I have to spend a point of Luck to defeat it within five Attack Rounds, which seems critical. Catching up to Denati I find we've reached a crevasse. I think jumping it would take me off the chosen path at best, so we run alongside the chasm until I'm forced to take a stand against two Toa-Suo and one Snow Wolf to be fought at the same time.

I kill the Wolf without taking damage (anything else would probably have doomed me already). At that point I turn to a new section and get to see that another warrior has joined the fight on our side. I'm told however to finish the one I'm already in, without repeating the stats of those enemies, which I tend to find annoying (although probably less annoying that when arbitrarily adjusted stats are given). I take another 2 points of damage. However, the real challenge still awaits. Or the first of several real challenges.

The fighter who came to our aid turns out to be a young woman with a sizzling sword, basically someone who up until now has been the heroine of her own story. I cannot help but wonder if that sword might be a particularly effective tool in our quest to re-destroy the Snow Witch. As she notices me looking at the sword and pondering possiblities, she waves it around and threatens violence. This is one of those small flashpoints in history. A premonition tells me that if I quickly assure her I was never going to steal the sword from her or anything, she will just mock and threaten me some more. This upsets my natural sense of honour and fairness, and I give her the fight she (would have) asked for. She has the same Skill and more Stamina, and does more damage, so only Luck can tip the scales slightly in my favour.

I kill her! I'm at 1 Stamina point and my Luck is down to 7. Frankly neither of those stats looks promising.

Oh, no, wait. The adventure tells me I'm a right asshole and drops my Luck to 4. "You shouldn't have done that," says Denati, but I think maybe he doesn't understand what's at stake here.

Anyway the sword increases my Attack Strength by 2 and does 3 points of damage, increasable to 5 by anyone whose Luck is not 4. Denati doesn't want to leave the girl to scavengers, so we toss her into the crevasse, where I assume she will rise as a freeze-dried revenant eternally clawing the walls in a futile attempt at pursuit. When we make camp and I'm instructed to eat a meal, the adventure can't resist observing that I likely took damage during the day. Well, adventure, don't you know some people are just hardened into cheating by oppressive forces of extreme unfairness? I'm at 5 Stamina after the meal, feeling slightly confident if I can just make it unharmed to the next. However, then a roll of the die results in an "icy breeze" depriving me of 2 of the Stamina I regained, which is just another way for the adventure to tell me I suck.

Next day we keep travelling through the mountains and I have to roll for a random encounter. It's a Snow Stag "optimistically" looking for food, maybe it's in the wrong biotope. Killing it would not allow me to eat at a faster rate, so I try waiting to see if it digs up treasure. This upsets the Stag's natural sense of honour and fairness and as it charges me, I have to Test my Luck. Ahaha! Being Unlucky enough not to get out of the way leads to considerably more damage than I could endure, not even one of those "take an ENTIRE die" things that were considered harsh once. Another Allansian hero is going to have to clean this mess up later. Or two, with one killing the other along the way.

Win ratio: 0/9
Skeletons: 1/9 (I know there's something that would count, but not today)

Thoughts

RttIM, which could also have been called RttCC or QftLCoC or StB or something, is very well written, has scenes that are logically structured and resolved, and contains ambitious and apposite world building aiming to expand and explain elements and context from Caverns of the Snow Witch. The adventure makes it easy to accept and absorb the premise with its nods great and small to FF9 as well as appreciate its sampling of setting-appropriate enemies and challenges. It manages these things in part by being considerably more wordy than previous zine adventures, with more than a few of the 275 sections taking up a full column or more in the magazine corresponding to about a full page in an old FF paperback.

Also the gameplay is, taken scene by scene, not bland, repetitive, confusing, or for the most part overly punishing, and if the solution seems very hard to find with repeated games being funnelled into the same fatal scenario, that's not something that immediately sets off warning bells; in fact one might very well expect and hope for an intricate and nonobvious design. However, there's a world where you've repeatedly searched for some Jacksonian path into the endgame, and despite securing and applying a variety of resources just haven't seen any promising signs of it, although you have caught several references to what should be an alternative approach assuming it's not just a crimson fish of unusual size, which however, once you narrow down what it involves, appears to be precisely overly punishing not to mention thematically awkward, and judging by the adventure's general quality it doesn't seem like the author would be unaware of either circumstance, but it's harder to tell whether it's actually entirely by design, and you make a last effort to look for a non-jerky path buried deep in some string of arbitrarily specific outcomes, but find nothing again and again, and Snow Stags dance on your grave. In this world or some like it, the adventure could look pretty lousy after all.

Brett Schofield's art is mostly very good to great, especially the linework in the small illustrations. Some of the big ones show locations that feel a touch empty, tidy or flat; I'm not sure what could or should have been added in most cases, but it's probably not a coincidence that the images from the actual book tend to put people and creatures up close.

[a moderator]

Nov 22, 2023 19:56:36 GMT Per said:

However, there's a world where you've repeatedly searched for some Jacksonian path into the endgame, and despite securing and applying a variety of resources just haven't seen any promising signs of it, although you have caught several references to what should be an alternative approach assuming it's not just a crimson fish of unusual size, which however, once you narrow down what it involves, appears to be precisely overly punishing not to mention thematically awkward, and judging by the adventure's general quality it doesn't seem like the author would be unaware of either circumstance, but it's harder to tell whether it's actually entirely by design, and you make a last effort to look for a non-jerky path buried deep in some string of arbitrarily specific outcomes, but find nothing again and again, and Snow Stags dance on your grave. In this world or some like it, the adventure could look pretty lousy after all.

I may have overcompensated in my attempts to address an issue I had with an aspect of FF books 39 & 56. There are readers for whom the non-Livingstonian route to victory did not prove excessively cryptic/elusive, but in hindsight I can see that finding the solution could require an inordinate amount of effort for anyone not already in the know.

[Per]

I'll describe the process through which I failed to find it in more detail in the appropriate thread at some point.

[Per]

FFzine 10: Hand of Fate by Kieran Coghlan

The villain team-up fans have been waiting for since the mid-80s! Lucretia Dire had her husband murdered! Leesha had to leave a room for several minutes! Now it's payback time!

I am the protagonist from The Citadel of Chaos where I slew the main villain sporting stats akin to these:

Skill	9
Stamina	20
Luck	12

I may not have fought fairly. Rules: super standard. Starting equipment: none. Background: fairly brief. On my way to Zengis I'm passing a wooded spring valley, and the author knows the only thing going on in valleys is ambushes. Rhino-Men!

I start a new paragraph to show that we've entered the adventure proper and get to choose a spell from the selection known from FF2. I have a hunch I'm heading for roughly the same outcome whatever I pick, but let's apply maximal logic to this. I'm told Rhino-Men are actually quite weak, so why should I want to Creature Copy one of them? Also they can't get much weaker with Weakness. Plus, uh, let's say their fanatical devotion to the cause makes them immune to Fool's Gold. These spells all suck! I try the Weakness one. A little cruelly I strike down one while he's confused, and another in such a fair manner that he scores two hits on me. But then, the guy I had believed to be the Rhino-Men's first victim sneaks up on me from behind. Ack, scripted capture sequence! Valleys.

There's a longish impressionistic sequence of a kind not terribly common in Fighting Fantasy, in which I get my hand sawed off by the villains, who then leave to go on a training camp so they can level up and... it's slightly convoluted. I lose 1 Initial (and current) Skill point and 3 Stamina points. Eventually I find myself alone with a Ganjee in a bottle and (I think) the third Rhino-Man from the ambush. The Ganjee, whose "deep, rumbling baritone" voice I cannot entirely reconcile with his frequent yells and exclamations, though that may just be my prejudice against baritones, taunts the Rhino-Man into freeing me from my chains so I can be beaten up. I beat him up instead, though I'm now down to 7 Stamina points.

The vintage Ganjee introduces himself as Sussurus (and not, as I will realize a little later, Susurrus), explaining why I lost my magic along with my left hand. I don't recall this detail from Citadel of Chaos but let's say it's canon now. In between mocking me for failing to understand things that haven't even been brought up yet, he tells me of the Juggernaut Golem, a construct as tall as four Great Golems stacked on top of one another, it's a little bit like apples and Smurfs except just golems, and whose ignition key is my left hand... the Hand of Fate! Apparently that's the reason for the training camp, I have to be killed in a fair fight to transfer the power and not by, say, pulling aside some curtains on me.

I loot the guard for a water flask and two portions of Provisions (no mess hall, gotta carry food). If I don't take the Ganjee with me, will the adventure have to smite me in order not to break down? (The dialogue has me suggest I just open the bottle to let a Ganjee out into the room, yes, that's advisable.) He can clearly still call for other guards, so I take him. And of course after I do, he pulls the "by the way there's an instant death around the corner" trick responsible for saddling us with various memorable mandatory companions.

Above my cell is the kitchen, where I run into Fang-Zen, the man who masterminded my capture. Fleeing back into the cell seems counterproductive, so I rush him, and he first shoots me with a crossbow, then smacks me with his sword, and finally kicks me back down the stairs, which is... just enough to kill me?

Nah, instead of taking a mulligan, let's pretend it occurred to me to stop and digest food in the middle of a hurried escape. So I'm at 8 Stamina but zero Provisions as Fang-Zen rushes down the stairs at me, setting off the fire trap the Ganjee warned me of. I guess that's why I was given the option to run back down, although that would still hinge on my captor being a bit daft. It doesn't actually say he dies, so he may turn up later with horrible burns in a jumpscare of some sort, but I have to believe the paragraph he's reading at the moment begins with "Fool!" at the very least.

I run out of the kitchen and out of the house into the backstreets of Zengis where goblins are being whacked on a daily basis. Big Belly Man does a cameo, so if the Juggernaut Golem is made of cardboard when it appears, I know what they had to blow the magazine budget on.

To earn money to travel Allansia, I'm given the choice between begging and relying on the unspecified magical powers of my bottled companion. This may be a first in gamebooks. One option seems potentially more lucrative. I earn 14 Gold Pieces through fake fortune-telling, but then guards turn up to arrest me. The Ganjee scuppers my attempt to talk them out of it, contrary to his own self-interest, so now I have the equally unpalatable options of being arrested (which should cost me my gold if it doesn't end the adventure) or attacking the guards (which frankly should end the adventure, especially as I was not told I could take Fang-Zen's sword). Maybe if I come quietly, Sussurus will do something useful.

No, actually I'm put on trial. Is this an episode of that legal drama taking Kaypong by storm, Chaos & Disarray? Before I can even be told what crime I committed, an old adventurer friend barges in, professing my innocence. Uhh, I'm kinda guilty of some kind of weird fraud I guess? Apparently there's a 1 in 6 chance of my being condemned despite not having really done anything preposterous like attacking guards. I dodge that bullet, but all of my gold is confiscated, as is the Ganjee (not sure how to feel about this). Well, the priest Tynar invites me to his home, which is perhaps where I should have headed straight away if the only point of this money-making episode was to try to tempt me into doing something really stupid.

Tynar's hospitality, or more specifically his liquor, is good for 4 Stamina points, and I get 10 Gold Pieces and a potion to heal another 6 Stamina when needed. Again I'm given the option of leaving the Ganjee behind, and the adventure points out he's almost certain to betray me, but I still suspect it couldn't handle his absence and would have to strike me dead somehow. Either that, or I'll find the bottle for sale at the market and have to fork over all my gold for it. We go to the courthouse and I know better than to not pay the obvious bribe asked in return for the Ganjee's release.

Saying goodbye to Tynar, I head to the market where something would happen if I'd been dumb enough to kill two guards. And there's the obligatory shopping paragraph, but with no garlic. Basically everything on sale seems like a necessity. Hoping it won't be the case that I have to save money for travelling expenses, or that the next section will take me past the guy hawking ornate hairbrushes and Sandworm's teeth, I spend all my money on a sword, cloak and single meal (and I'm told I give the "cheap meats" a miss but I still pay only 1 GP for iron rations).

Well, this is all my good standing will get me in Zengis, so we hit the road. I raise the possibility of visiting the Healer in the Moonstone Hills, while Sussurus wants us to go to some place called Daneth-El and take a quick portal to Vatos. On the one hand, I paid to have him with me to tell me about things like this. On the other hand, getting where you're going as fast as possible is invariably fatal. Since the Healer lives nearby, stopping by there can hardly hurt.

Moving across a pastoral farmscape which appears entirely unbothered by the threat of depredation of monsters and madmen, I'm told I nick apples off trees for food. But it was spring in the background? Maybe it'll start snowing by the time I reach the desert. I spot a fisherman trying to land a fish and of course I'm going to help him, since the fish will cough up a brass key stamped with the number 177. Something fairly weird happens though as when I grab the rod, "the force nearly tears my arm from its socket", despite the fact that the fisherman at that point is still holding the rod in place. Then he releases it, and I fly off into the river, arm very much still in socket. Well, I want my key, so I'm not letting go. And I'm beginning to suspect those spring apples were off slightly as I appear to be dragged into an underriver bubble inhabited by Mimsies, some kind of frog goblins. Froblins? I may have made a discovery that renders all this talk of hands and golems comparatively meaningless. New adventure in Mimsytopia!

I'm taken to their king and told I won't be allowed to leave. Why would I want to leave? However, I may leave if I give up the Ganjee, even though it seems like they could just take him off me whenever they like. No, this has to be some kind of apple-drug vision. I'm not giving in to your wiles! The king instead starts bartering with magical treasures. Fishier and fishier. Stamped key or nothing! I end up humiliating myself with clumsy acrobatics though, the adventure won't negotiate on that point.

Left to wander, I approach a strange laboratory. On the way I'm given the option to take the princess hostage, let's stick a pin in that one. I sneak into a storeroom with potions, and have to choose between a green and a purple one. I pick purple more or less at random, and this allows me to breathe underwater outside the bubble so I can return to the surface and resume my quest. To prove it wasn't a dream I may snag a red or a blue potion, but absolutely not both, that would be madness, I pick blue.

A night's sleep in the hills restores 2 Stamina points. Then things get a little weird again: I spot a Roc on the horizon, but it also spots me, though I should be fairly small as viewed from there, and in the time it takes it to reach me, I couldn't possibly think of a good hiding place, but have to choose between running for some distant trees or "kneel down" in order to fight the giant bird. How smoothly rounded are these hills? Kneeling actually seems like the less stupid option. Ah, no, it picks me up and flies away with me. Hacking at the Roc while I'm far above the hills seems dumb, so let's see where it's taking me. Roc nest with rubies the size of stamped keys, here I come!

The bird drops me into a "thatched nest" (so, one with a roof?), where some hatchlings (or thatchlings) attack me among the eggs. I spend a Luck point in the process of hacking them up, because surely the adventure will reward me for heroics such as these. It doesn't, well, not with Luck anyway, but I find a sun talisman which may be Healer-related.

Onward to whatever is the next mind-boggling stop on this journey. Actually it's the Healer's home. We're old pals apparently so he makes an exception to his rule of only admitting the sick (I'm merely a badly wounded cripple), and like a true professional he loses track of the patient he was very carefully treating as I arrived. I describe my magic as that which "lurks within" my left hand, and the Healer agrees that I've "lost my very being". I'm a Lurker of some sort. But then the Healer turns back to his patient, a burn victim. "Ha ha, you messed up your rule again," I say. "He's burned, not sick!" "Oh drat, you're right," gasps the Healer. The man who bounds up from the pallet is Fang-Zen! "I'd have gotten away with it, too!" he cries.

He grabs a wand and threatens us with it. The Healer says the wand isn't safe and offers to let him leave. If I jump Fang-Zen the wand may blow both of us up, so I wait. The mercenary edges over to the exit, then seemingly tries to zap us with the wand, but this only turns him into a goblin, who runs away (to turn up another day). The Healer says it was simply a wand of metamorphosis, so I guess it's one that always targets the wielder, and turns them into a goblin by default?

Next, the Healer expertly diagnoses my injuries and fixes me up to max Stamina because important quest offers a Pegasus ride to Vatos, and there's not even any talk of silver objects. Also, he offers to take the Ganjee off my hands. There's been so many chances to ditch the spirit that it's entirely possible the adventure will mock and kill me if I get to the end and didn't rid myself of him. But not yet.

We're off, and the view of all Northern Allansia is so magnificent - it's said I can see all the way to Port Blacksand far off in the west - that it's a bit jarring when I'm suddenly told that desert nomads fire arrows at us with alarming accuracy, sitting on their camels. If we swooped down to ask for directions, the adventure forgot to say. To keep flying should be a lot safer than to land and get peppered with arrows on the ground, but given that the situation already seems absurd I don't trust the adventure to share my impression of what's going on, and anyway my natural sense of honour and fairness etc.

So we land, and I hop off and... instruct the Pegasus to fly back over the nomads so they can shoot it again? And leaving me stranded in the desert? This was the plan? The nomads surround me with plenty of firepower and if the Ganjee had chosen this moment to let loose with a few choice insults, I feel I would have earned it.

They take me to their camp, where I'm handed a sword (so now I have two?) and square off against their champion, a "broad-shouldered youth" carrying "a strange sword" like a bat'leth made of bone. You know, the kind of guy who up until now has been the hero of his own story, but will become just an instrument for consolidating gear in mine. Or not? I have the sun talisman, so... wait, no, I'm going to whoop him after all, just somewhat less fairly as the talisman blinds him with a reflection. I out-Skill him only by so much, though, so I quickly gulp my healing potion before the fight, surviving it with 4 Stamina to spare.

He drops to his knees and I may finish him off or not. Either option could gain or cost me his weapon, so I pick the less bloodthirsty one (surely this must annoy Sussurus but he keeps quiet). I drop the sword (but keep the old one), help the youth to his feet, raise his arm and cheer. Everyone looks stupidly at me and at each other. They have no idea what to make of this strange behaviour, maybe they would prefer to have fewer strong warriors in their tribe, are they going to kill us, it could go either way, no, they cheer also. The chief disowns his son, everyone laughs at this as well, and I'm sent on my way without any booty. Maybe the guy will come after me and join my team or give me the sword he's no longer worthy of or try to stab me in my sleep or something? Please? No?

OK, so now I'm in the wide open desert with no idea where to go, this is why I had a Pegasus goddammit. I lose 2 Stamina points for being exposed to the sun, my cloak is like one of those transparent raincoats I guess, and I eat my one portion of Provisions to reduce the chance of the adventure killing me with thirst without taking my water flask into account. Sussurus tells me which way to go to reach Vatos, but also seems to want to tempt me into burying him in a random dune somewhere along the way.

Next there's a sandstorm, and now a cloak actually helps. Then I risk punishment for not being able to afford the large water flask. I throw the empty small flask away in disgust (because clearly I'll never get a chance to refill it), but I'm given the option to drink from my blue potion. It has no effect but the liquid is enough to sustain me.

Finally Vatos comes into view and there is a genuinely amusing pair of lines from me and Sussurus, implying I wouldn't have made it here without the Ganjee, as suspected. Instead of going in through the gate and then ducking into a network of corridors, we enter through a secret door some distance from the city walls, which is locked yet can be kicked open (for how many doors does this hold true in gamebooks?), and then we're in corridors. Ones lit by wall-mounted torches, no less, so there must be plenty of people moving around here all the time. Also there's tap water, I drink a bunch and refill my flask oh no wait. Good thing I never planned on making it back from here.

Coming across a door, I have to open it and see what's inside. Which turns out to be something like two Dark Disciples about to sacrifice a guy to their nameless gods in a chamber adorned with Mayan-looking carvings. For a moment I think maybe it's the nomad I fought, but no, it's some equally bare-chested pointy-eared Elf hippy. I do not possess an Axe of Hacking, nor is there any hint of what it might have inspired me to do. Instead I have to take on the black-dressed men in the normal fashion, and I out-Skill the first by 1, yet lose three straight Attack Rounds.

Win ratio: 0/10
Skeletons: 1/10 (honestly not sure why I'm still tracking this)

Thoughts

I have some mixed feelings about this.

On the one hand, I'm sure the author had a ton of fun writing it, not stopping at the double high concept of the two returning villainesses and the enigmatic and malicious spirit turned bottled sidekick, but also throwing in largely unrelated and almost hallucinatory subplots along the way, in and out in a few paragraphs like some kind of Luke Sharp on bad apples just because it can be done. On the other hand, this strains the thematic coherence and makes the main character at times look both hapless and thoughtless, though perhaps it's somewhat appropriate for the person who was potentially at just about everyone's mercy in Citadel.

On the one hand, the adventure is generally well written and paced, and special delight appears to have been taken in including a number of death sections with more or less exotic ways to end your adventure. On the other hand there are lots of editing errors, as well as some flawed transitions, conflicting descriptions and just plain mystifying developments, of which the case of the nomads hitting a moving aerial target a thousand feet above the desert was probably the worst one I came across (in some competition with the moving yet unmoving fishing rod).

On the one hand, having a companion is nice, and some of your interactions are amusing or serve as useful exposition. On the other hand, some of his garrulations seem a bit forced or off-target - he should be allowed to be a windbag, but not a clown - and I'm surprised the "squabbling over a catamite" bit made it into the magazine, certainly it would never have been anywhere near a real book.

On the one hand, fights and penalties are fair compared to what else I've seen in the zine, with predominantly Skill 6-8 enemies and a few chances to restore Stamina. On the other hand, since you'll unconditionally drop 1 Skill point at the beginning, if you started with 7-9 you'll still constantly be fighting opponents that are at, just below or even just above your level, which isn't sustainable especially when (as seems to always be the case) it's quite hard to restore Luck.

I also have mixed feelings about the art by Robertson Sondoh Jr, but come down on the thumbs up side. After all, the sometimes surreally stylized children's book figures are a good match for the slightly wacky and freewheeling adventure, and I like the use of lines and textures in images like that of the magistrate or the transformed Fang-Zen. There are a few details I find distracting, including Lucretia Dire's left arm and the Centaur's right one, and the Elf sacrifice has an odd >:( expression at the prospect of being saved. The image of Leesha and the snake makes me regret not reaching that far, though I doubt I would have been allowed to ask either of them out on a date.

The magazine cover offers a different take on the villainesses, especially in terms of height if the golem shown is supposed to be 40 feet tall. The back cover repeats a scene from the interior, but the Felinaur has lost her top and in the process also her nipples, which is incidentally also true for the bare-chested men inside the magazine, but not for the Centaur she is fighting. The coloured exterior illustration also misrepresents the Felinaur's eyes, and both depictions of the scene invent a shield for the Centaur while turning the Felinaur's dagger into a scimitar.

[kieran]

Nov 25, 2023 20:19:15 GMT Per said:

On the one hand, I'm sure the author had a ton of fun writing it

Pretty much! I wrote this as a side project while losing the will to live writing Gamebook Adventures 11 so I was determined just to have as much fun as I could with this one - which probably explains both the wackiness and the sloppiness.

[Per]

FFzine 11: Ascent of Darkness by Stuart Lloyd

Here's a strongly Greek-themed adventure set in and around Carsepolis of Titan antiquity, which according to the original FF RPG material may have been intended to be more Roman, but these days who really gets to say.

The rules for rolling up your character have been changed drastically. Skill and Luck both start at either 9 or 10 (equal chances), while Stamina is about one die lower than usual. However, you can get a boost to one stat by picking the corresponding Heroic Power: Skill by 1, Stamina by 6 or Luck by 2. Heroic Flaws, of which you also must pick one, don't do anything in particular before the adventure begins, but will no doubt make you their dancing puppet at some inconvenient time.

There are also special combat options, which are basically additional exchanges of blows broken out of the normal abstraction and mostly useful if your opponent has a higher Skill or you are fighting multiple opponents. Speaking of the latter, I guess if the main series was never able to settle for one model, it's not reasonable to expect that fan adventures should. There's Testing your Skill and also your Stamina (three dice).

It says "Provisions do not restore Stamina points in this book", which might have alternatively been phrased as "Provisions will not be used to restore..." so as not to give the impression that you'll accumulate Provisions but they don't actually do anything. I'm going to assume I can't go over my Initial Stamina even though this rule is only stated for Skill and Luck (and in fact the character generation rules don't tell you to set an Initial Stamina, but it's on the Adventure Sheet, elsewhere in the rules and in the adventure).

I don't know to which extent the Powers will be used for gatekeeping options, but in any other adventure, increasing Skill by 1 would be worth a lot more than being able to take three more hits, so I pick Speed of Pangara. Of the Flaws, Rage seems to be just a worse version of Hubris (which might make you fight the wrong people, but at least the wrong bad people), and the chance of triggering Achilles' Heel (whose?) is impossible to gauge yet, so I'll go with Hubris.

My character thus becomes:

Skill	10
Stamina	16
Luck	9

In the end my Power just brings me up to where I'd have been anyway if I'd rolled better, thanks a bunch, Pangara. Still, being able to run on water might come in handy if I can't swim.

Starting equipment includes some combat gear I won't write down, a shield that effectively raises my Skill by 1 while I have it (so I assume I may lose it or it would have been baked in), and 50 GP (I'd have cleaned out the market in Zengis with this). Also among my "bare minimum" of stuff I have an army and "wagons full of supplies", though helpfully I'm told I don't need to track their contents.

The adventure begins at the northern edge of the Desert of Skulls, one year before the War of the Wizards begins. I watch some loser on a Pegasus get shot down by nomads, laugh at this, and then order my troops to retire from the day's fighting against the Caarth (who I'm told have the advantage of terrain, but presumably fighting them closer to human settlements would risk civilian casualties). The respite is short as telescoping technology reveals another incoming force which must be dealt with before morning.

The first decision concerns whether to attack straight away or manoeuvre into a better tactical position. Well, it's no good if they move away while we reposition ourselves, so let's head right in. I end up fighting a Caarth Warrior, and since we have almost the same Skill, I think it's worth using the Flurry of Blows stunt every Attack Round. I win the battle in four rounds, of which I actually only win one (which might as well have been tied), the rest is Flurry damage.

I spot a robed Caarth waving a glowing staff around, always bad news, while some of my men are in need of assistance. Those guys will have to fend for themselves and prove their worth, this mage guy or whatever must be taken out, though I have the usual hunch the adventure might not let it be permanent. A warrior tries to intercept me, but since I have Speed of Pangara I leave him in the dust and stick my spear in the robed one, who also bites it. What! I earn a Greek-themed codeword for this accomplishment. If I win the adventure will I be allowed to carry the same character into Sea of Madness?

The Caarth retreat and leave one three-metre champion who demands to fight our strongest. It might have been useful at this point for the adventure to tell me something about whether Caarth are in general honourable and whether my men would expect me to accept the challenge. I have Hubris, but the adventure doesn't check for it, maybe it will meta-penalize me if I don't act like it did. Let's just assume that if I did order my men to attack, the reverse ninja law would come into play. I accept the challenge because I CANNOT LOSE.

I lost.

New guy:

Skill	11
Stamina	19
Luck	9

Better rolls, same Power and Flaw, because I didn't really see too much of either. To make something different happen, even though it may well be worse, I go for the tactical redeployment counterclockwise double pincer it's-over-Caarth-I-have-the-high-ground battle option at the start. Do I have the Cunning of Logaan? Nope... What we end up doing though is the exact same thing as when we attacked directly, only with support from bowmen, so what were they doing in my previous life, just chilling in the background? I get to fight a lesser quality Caarth and forgo the use of stunts, remaining unharmed.

Everything else happens as before except I order my men to advance on the big one, and... yeah, inverse ninja law squared. At least I effectively out-Skill it now so I CANNOT LOSE.

I do not lose. Well, I do lose 6 Stamina but I know it could be worse.

Returning from the skirmish I'm met by one of my family's retainers who has news of my father's death and a letter from my mother. Both are a mix of "as you know"-type exposition (even using those exact words once each) and appeals to my natural sense of honour, fairness and contempt for skulking snake-culty people. I summon Brule and return to Valusia delegate this desert fighting stuff to the servant and prepare to return to Carsepolis. The resident healer fixes me up to max Stamina "in the short time you have", making him about 500 times the doctor that old sham Pen Ty Kora is. Stuff I'm instructed to add to my adventure sheet includes five torches, flint and tinder (is there steel also or are we doing the double flint thing again?), a waterskin, and "enough food for my journey". Well, there it is. I could estimate that enough food is 400 portions of Provisions, but the adventure has already guarded against this by saying they don't restore Stamina when eaten.

I'm given a choice of three paths to the great city: through the mountains, through the forest or along the coast. The theme hasn't so far given me the impression this is the type of adventure where going one way gets you a stamped key and knowledge of how many acorns fell on Sally the Sage's head last Thursday but on the others you're doomed, so I should be able to just pick according to preference. The forest is said to "bring humility to all people", so maybe I could lose my Heroic Flaw there. Oh, I see, each path is tailored to one Flaw, so my logic should be correct.

After non-humbly hacking my way into the woods, I come across a tree bearing metallic apples: golden apples of the sun, silver apples of the moon, and bronze apples of I don't know what. I really should get some. How though, climb, shake or knock down? The tree was very tall, so logically only climbing should work assuming it can be done. Maybe the adventure should have told me just how far off the ground those things are.

Having Speed of Pangara, it turns out, makes climbing much easier (maybe I do the Prince of Persia thing where I just run up the side of the tree). My haul: silver apple of Potion of Strength, bronze apple of emulating Strength of Telak, and golden apple of Potion of Fortune. Well, I'm not humbled so far, I'm awesome.

There is a somewhat broken transition as after climbing down and "moving on", I'm suddenly informed I'm finished with my "first attempt" and apparently gearing up for another go at the apples, which could have made sense after another type of attempt or a different outcome, but is just weird now. A Treeman shows up. I tell him about the Caarth because people should know about these things. He gives me another bronze apple. Bye!

I reach a camp full of "rangers" and "druids" who tell me that since I've "trespassed on their lands" I'm required to prove my worth, only I'm not really since I could also just turn back. Having Hubris means I'll have none of that, I'll fight them all at the same time since I CANNOT LOSE.

However, my worthiness shall be tested less violently in a foot race against someone named Atalanta, so it's a good thing for my sense of self-worth that I have Speed of Pangara. This isn't quite enough to win, so I take a bronze apple and toss it behind her so she has to turn around and pick it up ruin my teeth on it to gain Strength of Telak as well. I win! I haven't lost my Flaw at all, I'm so awesome they accept me into their ranger-druid tribe and give me a choice of free gear. No stamped keys, no bone swords. Maybe these are actually all cursed things that are supposed to humble me? Let's see:

Obsidian bat amulet: warns of danger by turning hot (if you know, you know), and has a once-per-combat utility effect: +2 Attack Strength or +4 damage on a hit.

Wooden ring: +2 Initial Stamina, and +1 damage for each Attack Round won.

Bracelet of green metal: immunity to poison (complete with secret redirection for ordinarily lethal circumstances), and restores 3 Stamina after each fight.

Well, I'm waiting for the other sandal to drop because I don't feel humble at all, I'm more awesome than ever. I get to restore my Stamina to full (being a bit of a literalist I hadn't increased my current one without explicit instruction) and then carry on, leaving the forest and approaching Carsepolis.

There's a dramatic scene where I crest a hill and with music swelling in the background and my mantle billowing I lay eyes on the city illuminated by the first light of dawn, then the adventure abruptly cuts to me sitting on a rock chewing food when some guy creeps up on me and shoots an arrow into my shoulder. First, I seem to recall having a prophetic dream about this. Second, it's a bit of a discontinuity. Third, if I don't lose any Stamina from it, did it really happen?

Where there's one ambusher there are often several so I don't like to throw away my spear, I give chase instead. But nope, I'm poisoned to death! But nope, I'm not! I can't believe I happened to pick the one item from a long list without which I would presumably have been unconditionally doomed. Let's just hope that was the only mandatory one. I keep going and the music swells up again as I enter Carsepolis. Guards salute me as they should, none of this getting arrested for fake fortune-telling or rummaging through my backpack for contraband.

Entering my home, I find poor mother surrounded by Courtiers, possibly this should be Courters, but either way I have to approximate the end of the Odyssey. The drunken sods attack as one creature, leaving my Flurry of Blows a lot less effective than it theoretically might have been. While their collective Skill is low, they have a special ability to inflict 1 point of damage each Attack Round while they are at Stamina 10 or more. All my gear and stunts give me a fair chance at shaving 9 or more Stamina off them in the first Attack Round so that this ability will never trigger, but since I fail both my use of Luck and the stunt, they end up taking a total of 7 Stamina off me instead of zero as hoped. This if anything might actually humble me.

After I kill most of them, one claims to be a prince of Salamonis, that underdeveloped pit of cowards and cutthroats, and if I had Rage I'd be forced to kill him, meaning sparing him must be a virtue of some kind. Well, you should always let one live to spread the tale. He gives me a ring of charm and takes off to found a dynasty.

Then it's time to talk to mum. Healers fix me up to max Stamina again and I even get my Luck point back, if it's not a first in these playthroughs then it's pretty darn close. I get an allowance of 1000 Gold Pieces to add to the 50 I already had, as well as a trireme, and it occurs to me that in fact I did lose my army and wagonage. It's time to head out into the city, investigate my father's death and root out cultists wherever they slither and scheme.

If I want to use the trireme I have to hire a crew at the docks, but it seems to me I don't actually have any reason to go anywhere just yet. The taverns and palace could both be sources of info and gossip and attempted ambushes. I think however it might be time for some piety, despite the fact that the background accurately adjusted to my choice of Flaw by having me ascribe my successes not to any boon from Pangara but to my own plain awesomeness.

At the temple, the codeword I gained at the beginning of the adventure pays off as first a regular priest and then the high priest realize what I do not. An oracle reveals that my enemies are seeking an artefact that has been in, and I suppose may remain in, the possession of the Guild of Wizards. I also get two codewords, one presumably related to speedy travel at sea which I'd have had to pay for if I'd been blessed by some other god, the other perhaps related to the hidden artefact.

A little interestingly, I'm sent to a hub section duplicating the options for investigating the city, but with not a single "if you haven't already" nor any fallback reference in case I've been everywhere and can't for the life of me think what to do next. The temples of Telak and Logaan may allow me to pay for services or blessings; the temples of Ashra and Vuh may provide general guidance. The Guild of Wizards is clearly of interest but maybe I should go shopping first. And I should perhaps not visit the market unless I know how much I have to set aside for a crew.

I'll try the docks first under the assumption that the adventure won't make me prematurely set sail towards an undetermined destination. No, to do so I must have two codewords, one of which is the somewhat self-explanatory crew and the other of which is the more sinister dagger, presumably knowledge of where to go gained by clearing a plot hurdle in another location. After I pick the option to hire a crew, the next section a bit oddly has me going around asking other people with ships for "passage". Maybe the outcome will be the same. It turns out I have to kill a pirate captain for some merchant guy, that's me, hired goon of Carsepolis. The captain is Skill 11, Stamina 10 but I kill him in two Attack Rounds and immediately regenerate the damage he did to me in the first. The merchant is pleased and "offers me his crew". They're slaves I guess? Back into the city I go, my purse none the lighter.

Market next, then. It's just a list of things that in some regular gamebook nobody would be able to afford, with references describing their properties only if you do buy them. Some things I can presumably do without, like the warhammer, and is that shield really a lot better than the one I already have? Maybe I should try some serial piety and then come back here.

At the temple of Telak I predictably don't have the codeword marking me as a blessed one, but I can shell out for two blessings. One is kind of rubbish as it only gives a minor bonus in my next battle, which for all I know could be against some harmless Carsepolitan Thug (drunk). The other involves blessing my spear, so if I then buy a new one, is the blessing wasted?

The temple of Logaan is for the moment useless as all I can do there is pay to restore Luck one point at a time.

At the temple of Ashra, I may say I wish to join the church. Uh, is there a chance I genuinely do, or would that be frivolous? What would Pangara say? Does joining the church mean ending my quest? So many questions. The implication that I may previously have become a follower of Vuh indicates I have a choice to make here. At the temple of Vuh a similar option is offered though there's also the possibility of turning in a golden chalice that I do not have. I consult Titannica for any trivia on these guys and read that in Carsepolis people worshipped the evil god Elim, so worship of Ashra and Vuh was frowned upon. No doubt that's why these temples have seen better days, there was no option to go to the temple of Elim, though.

OK, sure, I'll join your little backyard cult. Turns out I had to have a recommendation from one of the other gods to even qualify, but I do. To prove myself I agree to kill a Life Stealer because I CANNOT LOSE. (Paragraph 114 points to 115, tsk.)

We go to perform some ritual in a public square in the middle of the night, don't the night watch have anything to say about that? The Life Stealer shows up and is pretty powerful, but I whack it without needing the priest's support spell. The priest tells me I have what it takes to be a follower of Vuh (everyone else here must also have killed one of these things), and I get the corresponding codeword as well as a Ring of Life which restores 6 Stamina once per combat. I guess they're not giving out the fabled Shroud of Vuh to any old acolyte, but it would have been kind of in line with how the adventure has heaped stuff on me before.

Still not entirely sure whether shopping before attempting something more plot-oriented is wise, I hit the taverns. It appears this is just another option for getting a crew, though, and I assume it would be inappropriate to try one of the options given if I already have one.

Instead I try the palace, evidently expecting to be granted an audience with the king, but I'm turned away by an unfamiliar priest who apparently is authorized to command the king's guards. I may remain to investigate, but I think before that, I can do at least some shopping. To the market!

For my weapon, a new sword (500 GP): I can Test my Luck before combat and depending on the outcome, I get +1 or -1 Attack Strength for that battle. Not exactly what I was hoping for as I can hardly trust I won't need my Luck for other things.

To boost my Luck, a lucky charm (150 GP): I effectively Test my Luck at +1 Luck. Well, helps with my sword if I gravely need it.

In case of Werewolves or Death Wraiths, a silver dagger (200 GP): automatically does 2 damage at the beginning of every combat, but I lose it if I Escape.

Considering that these things are all markedly less powerful than what I got from the druids, I wonder how much that stuff would have gone for at the market. I go and get the heartseeker blessing from the temple of Telak for 100 GP, leaving me with the 50 I started with in case I want to get a soda from a vending machine.

Back to the palace to snoop around, my equipment jingling and jangling. Some guards wonder what on earth I'm doing, but when they "see" that I'm investigating the priest (perhaps more accurately they ask and I tell them), they point me in the direction of his quarters. I'm asked if I have a grazer bat fetish and in fact I do. This alerts me to the attack of an Assassin, and this is the first battle in which the Achilles' Heel Flaw could have done me in if I had it. However, not only do I quickly slice her up, I also get to heal up to full because of various items.

More guards show up but again they're kinda on my side, and searching the priest's room turns up pamphlets suggesting he's a follower of Elim. Just like everyone else then? No, faced with this "evidence of treason" the priest smiles and disappears. This segues a little abruptly into a talk with the king, who provides me with a crew (so now I have two?). There's a possible continuity error here as nothing prevents me from going back to the palace and repeating the whole thing, a codeword might have stopped that.

Only the mysterious Guild of Wizards remains. Could this treasure the oracle was referring to be the golden chalice? An apprentice admits me into the guild and since I have the archive codeword, I ask to see the archives, which is a bit confusing since the oracle didn't say anything about that. Maybe everyone just knows that when searching for treasure in this guild, you start out there.

Once in the cavernous archive, which apparently has no shortage of artefacts, I get to Test my Luck and would have been Lucky even without my charm. Even so it takes hours to locate an unadorned blue metal box that captures my attention. Opening the box reveals a black dagger shrouded in an evil aura (so, the Dagger of Elim?), but this also prompts the appearance of an Earth Elemental that can only be hit with magical weapons. It's a good thing I bought that sword after all.

This could actually be a tough fight, so I successfully activate my sword bonus, and that's enough to fairly comfortably beat the Skill 12, Stamina 18 monstrosity and also heal up completely afterwards. While I was busy, though, a blue-robed wizard makes away with the dagger. Other wizards show up to ask me to pipe down and end up identifying the blue-robed one. Just as with the priest in the palace, nobody trusted this guy but they never got around to doing much about it. Wait, so he's been here forever looking for the dagger, but it wasn't until I got here and actually started looking in boxes that he got his hands on it?

The head wizard also checks Titannica and confirms that the dagger was in fact the one and only Dagger of Elim, you just don't know what you have in storage sometimes. He also complains about the possible rise of the church of Elim which I suppose isn't all the rage after all. A little scrying reveals the dagger has already been taken to Fire Island of all places. "My friend Mungo will take you there," says the head wizard. A dying scream is heard from outside. "You will have to sail there on your own," says the head wizard.

Since I have the codewords needed to go to sea and no lead on that chalice, I think I'll have to say goodbye to mother and set off for Fire Island, just taking a little detour to the temple of Logaan to spend my last money on restoring a point of Luck.

Heading towards the docks, I suddenly get hit with another arrow. The archer, I can see, is on a boat in the harbour, and while I peer down at him, he hits me with yet another arrow. So I can just step behind a building and he won't have a line of fire? No, my only choices are to throw my spear or run at him. Guess I'll try the spear for once, also this is why I had it blessed. Nope, even though the spear hits, it turns out you needed two codewords for it to do anything, and I lack one. For some unspecified reason this results in me running back and forth on the quayside while seagulls preen and the archer sits happily in his boat shooting arrows, and after a few minutes of this, instant death occurs.

Win ratio: 0/11
Skeletons: 1/11

Thoughts

Well, that was ultimately a bit disappointing. The adventure builds me up to be some kind of mythical god-favoured hero laden with magical trinkets of every description, then has me stand yelling at clouds while someone fires an endless stream of arrows at me until I die. I suppose he could eventually turn out to be some equally beefed-up champion whose arrows you cannot take cover from and whose copper earring (which was handed to him by moon fairies) makes people forget about things like carrying a shield, being able to run on water, and having an entire city at their back.

We're definitely in experimental workshop mode here rather than nostalgia mining: what if we change character generation to compress stat ranges and add an element of point assignment? and what if we add another layer to the combat abstraction? and what if we treat the main character as a Christmas tree and deck them out with potentially every kind of modifier you could possibly think of? The use of the Powers and Flaws in the adventure feels comparatively conservative. The problem is maybe not the innovations as such but that the adventure design does not accommodate them. You go through lengthy sequences making choices, adjustments and notes, then directly afterwards you still hit old-fashioned instant death bottlenecks that don't care about how granular your fights have been or how much paperwork you've been made to do.

The writing is passable overall but needed some checking and polishing. Some fairly important locations don't really get a description, at other times fundamental circumstances are entirely omitted (when you arrive in Karnak Tor your men immediately "collapse in their bunks" - what, in the town square? Only some time later do you learn the town has a "castle" where you lodge), small conundrums pop up throughout (why was it a logical step to lose the ship's crew after your father died, yet keep the ship? Why didn't the bowman use the strategy from your second encounter in the first? Why does the "position" option against the Caarth change only gear, not position?), and several transitions are abrupt or incongruous. You are regularly addressed as "lord" and there are a few other hints that you are male, and I suppose some would argue that the theme demands it, but in some places the adventure seems to want to avoid fixing your gender by calling you "child" or "young one".

Michael Wolmarans has created a number of good colour images for the zine, but as with issue 6, his interior art didn't do much for me here, with several pieces appearing unfinished. Presumably there's a story about deadlines and lack of people lined up to help meet them, but the image of the Hydra - half-penned, half-shaded, half-inked and with some crude squiggles added in - just doesn't feel serious and should have been left out.

As a parenthetical note, this seems to be the one and only zine you can copy text from, quite possibly it's related to the fixing of an erroneous spelling of the adventure's main location and therefore entirely unintentional.

As another parenthetical note, I find it amusing that my, Ed's and Kieran's first (surviving) recorded games all involve picking the same Power, picking the same Flaw, and dying in the same second fight.

As a third parenthetical note, 217 begins with "You cannot see a thing" but deducting 20 doesn't give a valid reference.

[Per]

This one went quicker than usual.

FFzine 12: Starhunt: Void Slavers by Ian Brocklehurst

First sci-fi adventure since zine 3! Will I be less doomed in this one?

New rules: a Blaster Skill stat and no less than four ship stats. As in Starship Traveller, nonstandard rules for combat are given in the final few paragraphs.

Me:

Skill	10
Stamina	20
Luck	7
Blaster Skill	12

And my ship:

Manoeuvrability	8
Weapons System	8
Deflector Shields	19
Hull Integrity	21

Well, that is certainly a spaceship. Insert joke here about the moral character of English coastal cities.

I appear to be a star trader with some roguish characteristics. I start with two food packs (Provisions) and one medi-kit (+8 Stamina), and I also have a "ship medi-kit". It's said about Luck and Hull Integrity that they can't exceed their Initial values, but not about Skill or Stamina.

The adventure begins with a space future background, which I think tries to say there are no intelligent aliens then goes on to describe how inhabited worlds are strictly spatially sorted by their desire to integrate with the TCA federation, and continues with a prologue, where your father gives you a space call to alarmingly tell you that your sister is about to become "some pervert's sex slave for however long she can", and he doesn't mean she got a boyfriend. This is followed by section 1, where I land on the ocean world of Aquatine, and section 72, where I pass through customs and am told to add a knife and an earpiece to my inventory (so I assume I may lose them). Stabbings are the acceptable form of violence around here.

This leads on to section 50, where some happenings are made to take place, and that's followed by... no, wait! There's a choice at the end of this paragraph, the introduction has ended. I'm told the "night sky is still visible" due to... something with the planet's orbit? I can choose to visit a "police booth" or an old friend. I'll assume the former is not just some place to hand in found property, but relevant to my investigation.

The booth does appear to be some kind of general interface with the police authorities, and also extremely spacious unless there should have been a space in "outback". Officer Cassidy reacts sharply to my enquiry about the slaver raid. Can I trust her? Well, if the force is crooked, perhaps the implication that her booth isn't being serviced properly hints that she isn't.

She is. And it's not even an instant death, it's a transitional paragraph and then an instant death.

Instead of rolling up a new guy or gal, let's simply pretend that was just a bad daydream. I jolt back to my senses and cleverly tell the officer I'm a journalist, I'm going to dig up the truth about this and print it for everyone to see or whatever they do with newsy stuff in this retrofuture. While Officer Cassidy didn't think twice about murdering some random concerned relative, she reacts very differently to a professional snooper and even gives me a snippet of info about the raid. Logically it should be one that dooms me if I try to use it later on.

So, off to meet with my friend. Section this turns to section that and I talk via earpiece to my bot and eventually I arrive at the club Fishnet High (wasn't that a teen school drama I watched in the early 90s). The adventure interrupts the turning to new pages by having me fight a Crazed ME-Bot, and it says I just punch it instead of using my knife, but I assume the rules are the same. This is why they call it Fighting Fantasy, yeah!

Some new sections to turn to and after talking to my friend Arthur about slavers there's the adventure's second instance of branching (and I'm told to note down a second number, only I'm pretty sure this is one I couldn't not have). No, sorry, it's just cycling through a couple of questions, false alarm. Arthur says that the adventure's potential end boss is reputedly "the dictionary definition of the word 'bitch'", so... "speak scathingly"? "A female dog or other canine animal"?

Ooh! A couple of paragraphs after leaving the club I get a conditional redirection based on visiting the police booth earlier. It's just some info implying that following the lead Cassidy gave me could doom me, but it's something. Then back to our regularly scheduled flow of sections. It just doesn't feel meaningful to summarize most of the things I do or see or hear because anyone who plays the adventure would necessarily read the exact same things.

I must now pick one of the two numbers I've noted. The adventure knows I have one, and tells me I must pick it if I don't have the other, but even if I try to lie about that, I wouldn't know where to turn! Anti-cheating tech!

I have to say it would be a pretty amusing twist here if it turned out Arthur's lead was the doomed one. It's not, though. But whoa holy crap another fight! Two Street Junkies, one with Skill 10 and one with Skill 8 to be fought at the same time, I manage to put down the first but Luck is not on my side and so the second fatally stabs me.

In some other adventure, given the very few actual choices I've made to get to this point, uh, none really? I would probably have called another mulligan, but for now I think I'll say I gave this one a fair attempt.

Win ratio: 0/12
Skeletons: 1/12

Thoughts

When Starhunt offers you a choice
Do not make complaining noise
Pick a branch, yes, either one
Straight ahead and then we're done.

Hm, what to say about this one. Scrolling through the adventure I've seen a bunch of other sections that do have choices in them. I've also seen a number of death paragraphs, though, so for all I know there isn't necessarily any true branching. The story that you are effectively being made to read as you flip onwards as instructed is inefficiently told, with redundant exchanges and interactions.

I don't have any notable objections to the art by Angela Salamaliki, though I could do without illustrations of people looking at futuristic pole dancers.