Post by andrewwright on May 18, 2024 14:53:37 GMT
A Slope of Pines by Per Jorner, winner of one of three Merit Awards in the 2023/2024 Lindenbaum Prize for short gamebook fiction.
Per Jorner is the gamebook writer’s gamebook writer. Author of the intricately deadly Mansion of Maleficence amateur adventure, serial and comprehensive reviewer of sundry gamebooks (including the best ever gamebook review for his take on Creature of Havoc by Steve Jackson), he won the second Windhammer Prize in 2009 with The Bone Dogs. A Slope of Pines marks his return to the gamebook circuit after a somewhat lengthy hiatus, and for which he picked up a Merit Award in the third iteration of Stuart Lloyd’s Lindenbaum Prize for short gamebook fiction. This review will take two parts, firstly, a playthrough of A Slope of Pines, and, secondly, an appraisal based on the rigorous criteria and feedback Per has provided on other entrants in this year’s edition of the Lindebaum Prize.
Part One: The Playthrough (SPOILER WARNINGS)
I’m a witch participating in a mushroom-hunting competition, with a truculent familiar, and a bunch of equipment I don’t have to write down, plus a basket with lots of compartments storing variable numbers of stuff.
[Aside: I love the concept. Victor Cheng once talked about doing a Windhammer Prize entry about searching the woods for obscure ingredients, and since writing The Titan Herbal I’ve become something of a connoisseur of fantasy RPG herbals, including the legendary Fungi of the Far Realms by the Melsonian Arts Council, so this adventure is right up my creek!]
Mushrooms (and other fungi) are presented in bold type, with two stats, number (as 1X, 2X etc.) and quality (as *, **, etc.), but with an added note emphasizing DIVERSITY. Plus I can carry other stuff in the basket. Finding mushrooms is dependent on a 2d6 roll, with higher numbers favoured and positive modifiers including your choice of Familiar, Charms and Luck. You can only use one modifier per roll, before you roll.
There are four charms, Find, Open, Run and Sneak, of which you can choose five, so I go with Find (x2), Open, Run and Sneak. Familiars boil down to four candidates: a fieldmouse, a toad, a nuthatch and a marten. Hey, it’s called Slope of Pines! I go with Paws the Marten. I call my witch Mog the Groggy.
Luck starts at 1, and you can use it to add +4 to one dice roll, or +6 if you spend 2 points, while Time starts at zero.
The Mushroom Hunt begins! I’m third in line, Tyra the Pike goes west, May Thistlebottom heads off east, and then it’s my turn! I can’t got east immediately after May, so have a choice of north, south or west (with the competition finish line being the village of Lime Ridge, somewhere to the north).
I head north, thinking maybe to eventually wander off eastwards into the forest. In a pasture I find some Red Cracking Boletes (1X*), and then decide to head east, immediately finding myself alongside a red cabin that belongs to one Mr. Brock (while finding a Horse Mushroom (1X**). The cabin door is open, dare I venture inside?
Hell yeah, let’s be sylvan burglars! Rolling what to nab from the cabin, I use one of my Find Charms, and pilfer a Green Key. Sweet (although it is obviously not fungi)! Unfortunately, Mr. Brock returns!
Mr. Brock turns out to be a giant badger in a “tobacco-smelling dressing gown”, but deploying my Stealth Charm, I easily evade his senses and depart the cabin, heading to parts north-east.
Here I disturb “a boulderbrute, a spirit of nature said to be born from lingering feelings of grief and injustice” but my familiar Paws helps me to escape, grabbing some Trumpet Chanterelles (1X**) but also look for other stuff of interest.
And there is! I find the remains of a contestant from a previous competition, old Anny Moss, and, using my last Find Charm, grab both her Fairy Torque and renew another Find Charm. I’m finding some interesting gear but bugger all fungi so far! The boulderbrute returns, so I hurriedly head northeast, upslope into dense forest.
Here, deep in the woods, there are no mushrooms, and I have to add my first Time point, but Paws the familiar helps me reach the top of a hill, where I “look down at a slope of pines.” An omen, surely!
And, yes it is. Paws helps me find a rich crop of Wood Hedgehogs (3X**), which is my best find so far! Following an old trail, I arrive at a small pond, in which a lone mallard drake swims and squawks forlornly. Ignoring the duck I find some more Trumpet Chanterelles (2X**) and head down a trail, hopefully westwards.
I emerge into a gravelpit of sorts, and see a feline face on a trail to the northwest. Being risk-averse at this point, I head west instead, and find myself in a mosquito-infested mire. Grabbing some more Trumpet Chanterelles (1X**) I also find a trail heading northeast up a hilltop.
Following this trail leads me, after a lengthy climb (Time=2), to the top of a plateau, where, deploying my only Find Charm, I find some Chanterelles (1X**) and a curious door in the rock!
Obviously, the Green Key I picked up at Mr. Brock’s cabin works a treat, and the door opens to reveal a tunnel into the hillside. Entering, because why not, I find a Cavernous Glittergill (1X****), which is clearly, pretty special. There are loads of further choices in this subterranean netherworld, but I ignore them all and head back to the surface, being ultimately quite cowardly.
This takes me to the outskirts of Lime Ridge, the finish line for the Mushroom Hunt. As my Time is 2, I can explore one further area for fungi – I chose the orchards, and find some Giant Puffballs (2X*), which I can carry instead of stuffing into my wicker fungi basket.
Heading into Lime Ridge, I’m given the choice to kick Mr Dogg, but, yeah, naw, that doesn’t sound like a good idea. I get to the finish line, and have 24 points, minus 1 for Time of 2 or more, so 23 guarantees me victory! Mog the Groggy is the champion of the Mushroom Hunt. Or is she? Looking at a list of ‘chaos options’ I see only two that apply to me (burglaring Mr. Brock’s Cabin and disturbing the boulderbrute), so have a quiet victory instead of an exciting one. Still, that will do for Mog the Groggy and Paws the Marten! Success at attempt one!
(Part Two will feature an overall breakdown of this unique and entertaining adventure)
Per Jorner is the gamebook writer’s gamebook writer. Author of the intricately deadly Mansion of Maleficence amateur adventure, serial and comprehensive reviewer of sundry gamebooks (including the best ever gamebook review for his take on Creature of Havoc by Steve Jackson), he won the second Windhammer Prize in 2009 with The Bone Dogs. A Slope of Pines marks his return to the gamebook circuit after a somewhat lengthy hiatus, and for which he picked up a Merit Award in the third iteration of Stuart Lloyd’s Lindenbaum Prize for short gamebook fiction. This review will take two parts, firstly, a playthrough of A Slope of Pines, and, secondly, an appraisal based on the rigorous criteria and feedback Per has provided on other entrants in this year’s edition of the Lindebaum Prize.
Part One: The Playthrough (SPOILER WARNINGS)
I’m a witch participating in a mushroom-hunting competition, with a truculent familiar, and a bunch of equipment I don’t have to write down, plus a basket with lots of compartments storing variable numbers of stuff.
[Aside: I love the concept. Victor Cheng once talked about doing a Windhammer Prize entry about searching the woods for obscure ingredients, and since writing The Titan Herbal I’ve become something of a connoisseur of fantasy RPG herbals, including the legendary Fungi of the Far Realms by the Melsonian Arts Council, so this adventure is right up my creek!]
Mushrooms (and other fungi) are presented in bold type, with two stats, number (as 1X, 2X etc.) and quality (as *, **, etc.), but with an added note emphasizing DIVERSITY. Plus I can carry other stuff in the basket. Finding mushrooms is dependent on a 2d6 roll, with higher numbers favoured and positive modifiers including your choice of Familiar, Charms and Luck. You can only use one modifier per roll, before you roll.
There are four charms, Find, Open, Run and Sneak, of which you can choose five, so I go with Find (x2), Open, Run and Sneak. Familiars boil down to four candidates: a fieldmouse, a toad, a nuthatch and a marten. Hey, it’s called Slope of Pines! I go with Paws the Marten. I call my witch Mog the Groggy.
Luck starts at 1, and you can use it to add +4 to one dice roll, or +6 if you spend 2 points, while Time starts at zero.
The Mushroom Hunt begins! I’m third in line, Tyra the Pike goes west, May Thistlebottom heads off east, and then it’s my turn! I can’t got east immediately after May, so have a choice of north, south or west (with the competition finish line being the village of Lime Ridge, somewhere to the north).
I head north, thinking maybe to eventually wander off eastwards into the forest. In a pasture I find some Red Cracking Boletes (1X*), and then decide to head east, immediately finding myself alongside a red cabin that belongs to one Mr. Brock (while finding a Horse Mushroom (1X**). The cabin door is open, dare I venture inside?
Hell yeah, let’s be sylvan burglars! Rolling what to nab from the cabin, I use one of my Find Charms, and pilfer a Green Key. Sweet (although it is obviously not fungi)! Unfortunately, Mr. Brock returns!
Mr. Brock turns out to be a giant badger in a “tobacco-smelling dressing gown”, but deploying my Stealth Charm, I easily evade his senses and depart the cabin, heading to parts north-east.
Here I disturb “a boulderbrute, a spirit of nature said to be born from lingering feelings of grief and injustice” but my familiar Paws helps me to escape, grabbing some Trumpet Chanterelles (1X**) but also look for other stuff of interest.
And there is! I find the remains of a contestant from a previous competition, old Anny Moss, and, using my last Find Charm, grab both her Fairy Torque and renew another Find Charm. I’m finding some interesting gear but bugger all fungi so far! The boulderbrute returns, so I hurriedly head northeast, upslope into dense forest.
Here, deep in the woods, there are no mushrooms, and I have to add my first Time point, but Paws the familiar helps me reach the top of a hill, where I “look down at a slope of pines.” An omen, surely!
And, yes it is. Paws helps me find a rich crop of Wood Hedgehogs (3X**), which is my best find so far! Following an old trail, I arrive at a small pond, in which a lone mallard drake swims and squawks forlornly. Ignoring the duck I find some more Trumpet Chanterelles (2X**) and head down a trail, hopefully westwards.
I emerge into a gravelpit of sorts, and see a feline face on a trail to the northwest. Being risk-averse at this point, I head west instead, and find myself in a mosquito-infested mire. Grabbing some more Trumpet Chanterelles (1X**) I also find a trail heading northeast up a hilltop.
Following this trail leads me, after a lengthy climb (Time=2), to the top of a plateau, where, deploying my only Find Charm, I find some Chanterelles (1X**) and a curious door in the rock!
Obviously, the Green Key I picked up at Mr. Brock’s cabin works a treat, and the door opens to reveal a tunnel into the hillside. Entering, because why not, I find a Cavernous Glittergill (1X****), which is clearly, pretty special. There are loads of further choices in this subterranean netherworld, but I ignore them all and head back to the surface, being ultimately quite cowardly.
This takes me to the outskirts of Lime Ridge, the finish line for the Mushroom Hunt. As my Time is 2, I can explore one further area for fungi – I chose the orchards, and find some Giant Puffballs (2X*), which I can carry instead of stuffing into my wicker fungi basket.
Heading into Lime Ridge, I’m given the choice to kick Mr Dogg, but, yeah, naw, that doesn’t sound like a good idea. I get to the finish line, and have 24 points, minus 1 for Time of 2 or more, so 23 guarantees me victory! Mog the Groggy is the champion of the Mushroom Hunt. Or is she? Looking at a list of ‘chaos options’ I see only two that apply to me (burglaring Mr. Brock’s Cabin and disturbing the boulderbrute), so have a quiet victory instead of an exciting one. Still, that will do for Mog the Groggy and Paws the Marten! Success at attempt one!
(Part Two will feature an overall breakdown of this unique and entertaining adventure)