#14: Temple Of Terror

TEMPLE OF TERROR

Ian Livingstone

Reviewed by Mark Lain

Originally advertised as Dragon Master, FF #14 can be easily overlooked due to its falling in the middle of a fairly inconsistent period in the series. Puffin’s demanding release schedule (caused by FF being a victim of its own success) meant that other writers and experimental subjects were being brought into the series when it got into its “teens” to allow numerous FF books to be published in a matter of months, with mixed results in terms of quality. Temple Of Terrror was the first Allansia-based medieval FF to be released since #9 Caverns Of The Snow Witch and came after two fairly adult-themed entries (the modern-set #10 House Of Hell  and the medieval but Orb-based #11 Talisman Of Death) and two fairly pathetic Sci-Fi efforts (#12 Space Assassin and #13 Freeway Fighter.) The fact that it was followed by the relatively ignored Sci-Fi detective FF #15 The Rings Of Kether does not help its attempts at getting any attention... and Temple Of Terror certainly deserves attention as it’s a return to the feel of the earliest FF books and is arguably IL’s third best offering after #5 City Of Thieves and #6 Deathtrap Dungeon.

Interestingly the opening section suggests that this is the sequel to #3 The Forest Of Doom as it begins with you recovering in Stonebridge after a recent adventure when the ever-annoying Yaztromo turns up and hires you for another suicide mission after commenting that you look familiar to him. He takes you back through Darkwood Forest (which it turns out he is impervious to dangers in, which begs the question of why he didn’t do the mission in The Forest Of Doom if it would have been so easy for him to get through it) and then teaches you a choice of four out of a possible ten spells. Your task is then to travel to the Desert Of Skulls in search of the lost city of Vatos which is where five dragon statues are hidden. These statues are being sought by the evil wizard Malbordus so that he can use them to take over the world (surprise, surprise...) You have to get there before him and destroy the statues to foil his evil plan. Unusually for FF the plot of this book flows very logically and it all seems to make sense as you work your way along. The introduction is very well put together and you do get a sense of series continuity which I always like to see in FFs. There is also a genuinely epic feel to the plot as you have to actually locate Vatos rather than just starting on the doorstep like you do in so many other FFs (although repeat playing will reveal that it’s impossible to miss Vatos as long as you live long enough to get to it as this is a linear IL FF and you can’t go in any other direction once you’re close to it.) You have a choice of two different routes to take (although one is more dangerous and there is an essential item that you can only get if you go the other way), either via the ever-popular Port Blacksand or a trek directly south across the plains. Whichever way you go you have to negotiate the desert and it’s certainly pretty tough and really does have an atmosphere of endlessly trailing across sand with the sun relentlessly beating down on you. Logically, you are required to drink regularly, which is good to see as it makes perfect sense in a desert and you can meet some fairly tough creatures (that need to be tough to survive in such a hostile environment) including an incredibly strong Sk 10 St 20 Giant Sandworm (although you later discover that there was a reason it’s so tough as it yields an essential item that you can’t win without having, so that seems sensible too.) Once you’ve reached Vatos there is then a dungeon trawl through the abandoned city, hunting for the dragon statues before Malbordus gets to them.

But there is even more to this book’s plot than all this and this has to be one of the most well fleshed-out stories of any FF book as there are twists along the way to add to the challenge. Once you’ve survived the trip to the desert, then negotiated the desert to reach Vatos, as soon as you enter the city the Messenger Of Death whispers “DEATH” in your ear and you are involved in one of FFs best races against time ever. He tells you that if you find all five of the letters that spell out “DEATH” he will appear and suck the lifeforce out of your body (and not in a good way lol.) Thus you are presented with a double-edged challenge. As this is Ian Livingstone, the five dragon statues are very well hidden and involve lots of risk-taking and opening/looking behind things. However, you never know whether what you’re opening or looking in will contain a statue you want or one of the five letters you are trying to avoid. This mechanic is brilliant and adds masses of tension to the experience and really gives you something to aim for. You are not just hunting for a shopping list of items (and there are loads to find in this book as it’s Ian Livingstone so you can’t expect anything less), you are also trying to avoid finding some stuff as well. In keeping with the early FFs, the dungeon is full of fiendish traps and tough opponents, along with some NPCs that are helpful, and there are lots of choices of left or right to take. Also, as it’s Livingstone, the route is pretty linear and the true path is narrow, but you don’t really notice as you are intently concentrating on finding dragon statues without finding DEATH letters (which are all avoidable, incidentally.) There is a fairly tense moment where you can find two of the letters back-to-back if you’re unfortunate enough, but it’s also possible to find the first dragon statue immediately after you meet the Messenger Of Death which introduces a feature that is very rare in all but the best IL FFs (ie this one and numbers 5 and 6) – balance of difficulty.

This book, as with numbers 5 and 6, is very tough and requires multiple replays to beat it. What is great about this FF (and 5 and 6) is that it’s so well designed in terms of interest and excitement that you want to keep coming back and you know that you will eventually find the true path through repeat plays. What is brilliant about this FF (and, again, 5 and 6) is that it is as encouraging and rewards you as much as it punishes you. Skill, Stamina and Luck penalties are frequent and particularly harsh in this book (often 4 or 5 points are lost for errors), but these are offset against very generous bonuses for successes. You are allowed to use magic which always goes in your favour, but there are Stamina penalties for this so you have to choose your moments wisely (as in Steve Jackson Sorcery! cycle.) There is no optimum selection of spells and they are all handy (but not totally essential) at various points in the game. To avoid the final section being too easy, your magic is disabled near the end but I like this as it makes you rely on key items rather than using the easy way around things. Even the plot has an extra element of balance and intrigue – very little is made of Malbordus once you reach Vatos. No-one has heard of him and that’s because the few inhabitants of the lost city are living under the dictatorial grip of a megalomaniac called Leesha and, interestingly, she plays a far bigger role in the Vatos section than Malbordus does, which adds an interesting extra twist to the plot as you start to worry about what she might have in store for you, let alone Malbordus.

In the rules section, there is no mention of Potions and this is the first medieval FF where you do not get a Potion from the outset. You do get 10 Provisions (which you can lose and replace at various stages, which is also nicely balanced) and a rather generous 25 gold pieces. Initially, the money seems to be a mixed blessing as you can get ripped-off a lot early on in the book (as well as robbed of all of it), but it is not needed once you’ve used whatever you’ve got left of it to buy some items from a nomadic trader in the desert (if you find him.) There’s a neat feature here as some of his more useful-looking objects are useless and the more incongruous ones can prove very handy, but none are obvious by their price (no 25 gp blue candles here like in The Warlock Of Firetop Mountain.) There is also a treasure-related continuity item where you can find an item that could make you rich if you survive. It is very unusual for a FF book to make you think of your future beyond its own ending in terms of riches or fame (again Deathtrap Dungeon is one of the few others.)

If this book has one downside it is with Malbordus himself. It is possible to completely forget about him once your focus has been switched to Leesha (who you learn far more about) and he seems to be awkwardly tagged onto the end once you’ve dealt with her. He is definitely tough (Stamina 18) but there is no pre-combat to negotiate and you can get straight on with the battle which, if you beat him, leads you to paragraph 400 and victory. However, as this book is well-balanced the skill is in actually reaching him as you will have taken so many stat penalties and bonuses by now that at least one of your stats is going to be dangerously low, so you will do well to actually beat him even in straight combat. This could be intentional to avoid the soul-destroying problem in FFs of falling at the final hurdle due to something you probably couldn’t have anticipated. The usual Ian Livingstone problem of needing maximum stats to have any hope of winning is apparent, but this is normal for his FFs and it’s at least handled better and fairer than usual so you tend not to notice.

The encounters in TOT are also well-balanced and varied, ranging from low-stat insects through to very tough specials (like the Night Terror) that really do take some beating. Some encounters can only be fought with special items (which also keeps things interesting) rather than just hacking your way through everything. Indeed, there are some NPCs that you need to speak to rather than kill so variety is added there too and you are required to think a lot about what actions to take (especially when you’re trying to find more dragons and less DEATH letters.)

As several of the encounters are fairly horrific (Night Terror, Phantom, Messenger Of Death, Giant Sandworm), the art is suitably unpleasant and Bill Houston’s vacant staring eyes on some creatures are very effective. I also like his skeleton guards dressed in Egyptian gear which, although no reference is ever directly made to pyramids/Egypt/pharaohs/mummies, seem very appropriate in the desert/lost city theme. Chris Achilleos’ cover art is effective, but I’d have preferred a yellower desert look rather than the night brown of the cover, especially as the cover depicts Vatos’ Serpent Guard who you meet on first arriving when it is still daylight (you are told specifically later on when it turns to night as that’s when the Phantom and Night Terror appear.) Achilleos’ best FF art ever was his wrap-around cover for Titan – The Fighting Fantasy World but his TOT cover is well-drawn too. As ever, the revised cover art for Wizard Book’s reissue is inferior and, whilst scarier than usual for Wizard’s covers, does not capture the feel of this book at all. This is not a horror-themed FF and the Wizard cover would suggest this. I gather that IL wanted the Wizard cover to be an extreme close-up of an Orc which would explain the thinking behind the design, but this is of little relevance in the book’s plot.

Overall this is a brilliantly-designed FF that is exciting and interesting from beginning to end. It is urgently written in a very upbeat manner with many long descriptive paragraphs that really draw you into the scenes. The initial journey to Vatos is epic in a good way and avoids the tedious drudgery of Caverns Of The Snow Witch and there are constant surprises once you are in Vatos itself. Few FFs have a plot mechanism that is as effective as the play-off of the Messenger Of Death against the need to hunt for the dragons, and Livingstone manages to create his second-best and most varied dungeon after Deathtrap Dungeon. This book is one of the few highlights of the 11 thru 19 part of the original series and is arguably one of the best medieval FFs. Incidentally, this is one of only two FFs that has no Puffin Books puffin logo on the spine – the other being #30 Chasms Of Malice but they probably disowned that one...

#27: Star Strider

STAR STRIDER

Luke Sharp

Reviewed by Mark Lain

Let’s make something clear from the outset: as is often the case with FF aficionados, I am not generally particularly fond of the majority of the small number of Sci-Fi FFs, nor do I rate Luke Sharp (real name Alkis Alkiviades) as a FF author. He only wrote four FF books and has been criticised for including unfair features in his FFs such as Luck tests that invariably lead to death if you fail them and arbitrary dice rolling (often several times within one paragraph) where failure will also kill you. Sharp’s second FF offering (#30 Chasms Of Malice) is infamous for being practically impossible and his third (#35 Daggers Of Darkness) is certainly not a walk in the park either. Interestingly enough, his first effort, and his only Sci-Fi FF, is actually fairly easy (if you go the right way) and is far shorter when compared to his pretty long (in the FF context) medieval books.

The premise here is that YOU are a Rogue Tracer (aka a Star Strider) who has been hired to rescue the Galactic President from a hostile group of aliens who want to extract some key strategic info that is in his head. The aliens in question are the Gromulans (or Groms) who have settled Earth, a now fairly irrelevant planet that YOU know very little about. Exactly when this is supposed to be set is hard to say, but most Humans have left Earth and settled off-world so it must be set after 2019 which is when its obvious conceptual prototype (Blade Runner) is set! Off-world settling is heavily plugged in Blade Runner and the concept of your being a crack bounty hunter is a nod to this as well so Sharp has presumably borrowed from it. Indeed, borrowing is very much in evidence in Star Strider and there is a feeling that it is a hodge-podge of various likely influences both from classic Sci-Fi and also from actual Earth reality:

• ·         A Rogue Tracer = a Blade Runner (more or less)
• ·         The semi-baddies are the humanoid Gromulans = the semi-friendly but untrustworthy humanoid Romulans in Star Trek
• ·         Youth gangs abound on Earth called Houlgans that are based on “some sort of ancient religion” and have names like L’pool, R’al and G’ners = football hooliganism
• ·         You can ride Silverhound hoverbuses = Greyhound buses in America
• ·         There is a race of feline humanoids from the planet Wistas-4 = Whiskas cat food
• ·         You ride a hoverboard in the final London section = the hoverboards in Back To The Future II
• ·         Earth is fairly irrelevant and of little interest/threat = Earth is “Mostly Harmless” in The Hitch-Hikers’ Guide To The Galaxy

Some of these references (if intended) are actually quite witty and there is a definite satirical element to this FF. The Gromulans have the ability to use Illus-O-Scopes to control the planets they settle. Much is made of the Grom’s illusions in this book, plus you are sometimes inconvenienced by public transport which is unreliable and pretty useless. Added to this is that any food you eat seems to be fairly tasteless. All this suggests that Sharp is trying to say something about reality on present day Earth here. How successful this is depends on how much you notice of it and/or read into it but it’s definitely there and it’s rare that FF attempts satire so this does add to the experience.

As is often the case with LS’ FFs there is a lengthy background section that acts as you being offered the mission, followed by a mission brief where the scenario is explained very thoroughly including such details as the effect of Illus-O-Scopes and why the President’s info is so critical (along with some colourful detail about the Groms’ fondness for snails and chess, which is a bit bizarre.) The background is interesting enough to make you want to play the book, but you suspect from the outset that this could be a fairly daft experience and this will depend entirely on what mood the book catches you in as this adventure can either be perceived as genuinely amusing or just silly at times.

As normal with Sci-Fi FFs there are some extra game mechanics to contend with. Fear is back, but this time it is an unchanging value that is a measure of your ability to handle the Groms’ illusory attacks – roll higher than your Fear and you lose Stamina due to being scared. This is a generally effective feature (that can frighten you to death) but that overall reflects your fortitude to carry on, as fear of illusions will naturally weaken you. Time is included as you have a limit of 48 Time units in which to liberate the President otherwise the Groms have extracted the info they want from his head and apocalypse is on the way. This does add a sense of urgency and raises the tension of the game, but multiple playings will show that it’s practically impossible to run out of Time (unless you digress to a genuinely stupid extent) so it’s not hugely effective overall and could have made the book much more challenging in the sense of needing to find an optimum route (or routes as it’s not wholly linear.) The Adventure Sheet includes a section for Oxygen, but this is not a stat as such in that it is only used in the Plaza De Toros sequence (which can be avoided) which is a shame as this is intriguing when you first see it – basically, you have a limited amount of Oxygen to find your way out of the Plaza which, as with Time, adds some nice tension but isn’t particularly difficult to survive so is another wasted opportunity. Surely if you’re running out of air the aim is to find the true path out asap and this should be very tight? As most combats are with Androids that are all fitted with a fail-safe weak point installed by the slightly paranoid Groms, throwing a double 6 in combat with an Android means you’ve found its weak spot and disabled it. This does add a realistic aspect in that robots should be mechanically vulnerable. It also works well as the weak spot should be well-hidden so the highest possible dice roll is needed to achieve this. Interestingly, there are no instructions in the rules about your Skill, Stamina and Luck not being able to exceed their initial scores. As these are therefore presumably unrestricted, for once it really is possible to win with the lowest possible starting stats as you can increase your Stamina by eating (which happens a reasonable number of times) and you can end up with a ridiculously high Luck score as Luck bonuses are frequent and generous.

The lack of any limits to how high your three core stats can get is a good antidote to one of the usually excessively tough aspects of a Luke Sharp FF – the very numerous Luck tests where failure will almost always kill you. Yes, there are lots of them in this book, but you have a pretty high chance of surviving them here – if only Sharp had allowed unlimited Luck in his other FFs... The other major problem with Luke Sharp’s FFs is very much in evidence - the arbitrary deaths by failing random dice rolls that represent things such as how many stairs you have to leap or whether a stray laser blast has hit you, etc. These don’t seem quite such an issue in this FF though as it is generally fairly easy so the relentless feeling of inevitable failure that blights his adventures does not come across in Star Strider. Similarly, the Luke Sharp-ism of instant deaths by going the wrong way are also included but they generally make sense in this book, mostly being caused by power units etc failing on stolen hover cars/bikes (that you can easily avoid commandeering anyway) or by persisting in blatantly going the wrong way. Indeed, a big aspect of this book is that common sense will generally see you through. If you are on a specific mission the likelihood of digression is low so this does add to the effect and make you feel part of the action (FF # 15 The Rings Of Kether is similar in the respect that you are encouraged to focus specifically on the task in hand.) The introductory spiel mentions that Excel droids are the Groms' most lethal android creation and that they should be avoided at all costs. This is certainly the case as any run-in with one will kill you. This may sound unfair (and typical of Luke Sharp) but, again, with one or two exceptions, only doing something really stupid will result in you encountering one, so they are mostly avoidable.

Encounters are also pretty easy to deal with for the most part. There are several incidents where you can get arrested by GromPol (the Gromulan Police) but as they seem to be the most forgiving law enforcement agency in the known universe (for some reason, considering their paranoia with androids and with wanting to control thoughts by using illusion propaganda) it is very easy to talk or shoot your way out. In fact, for a fairly dominant race that is into inter-planetary colonisation, the Gromulans are pretty pathetic. Any non-GromPol Groms that you encounter will usually faint in terror so it’s hard to believe that they are planning to wreak havoc when they get the info out of the President’s head. Granted they defend themselves with illusions, but these can be broken/survived with your Fear stat. Groms are rather like The Wizard Of Oz really. Most combats are with androids and, whilst this can be a bit monotonous, there are some humorous android encounters to break up the air of repetition. A visit to the Plaza De Toros will result in you facing a robot bull, whilst there is an unhinged android that thinks it’s living in a Western and will challenge you to a shoot-out after it’s rambled on about its imaginary horse (which does exist if only in illusion form) if you go to a certain tavern. All in all, these are quite fun and will, as I have said, break up the cycle of android fight after android fight. There is a continuity error where, if you find the robot bull’s weak spot and deactivate it, it will then come back and attack again, but it is hardly noticeable as all you will be interested in doing at that stage is escaping the bullring. It is possible to meet another Rogue Tracer (twice, in fact) and, in the first instance help her if you wish, whilst in the second she helps you, but these aren’t essential to the plot and (in the first case) you will achieve the same result by ignoring her completely. You can also pick up a few other wanted criminals along the way which neither gains nor loses you anything, but it does make the environments feel less like you are in a mission bubble and that there is an overall context to the setting.

A further feature of both Sci-Fi and Luke Sharp FFs that is very obvious in this book is that there are basically no items to collect as such. You can pick up a few bits occasionally but none make any difference to your success or failure. Acquisition of items is often an indication of whether you are on the right track so it is hard to establish how things are going when you never really find anything. Granted the main aim is to find clues (specifically co-ordinates) that will help you locate the President, but you can just as easily reach him without any clues. The usual FF mechanic of using numbers to find a hidden paragraph does not happen in the final stage. There are a few parts of the book where you can only access certain rooms or computers by solving fairly complicated mathematical problems, but, again, none are the difference between winning and losing so the effort put into figuring them out is wasted and you will never fail if you can’t solve them. Plus, the actual co-ordinates are in several different locations so it’s fairly easy to find them, if only to make you think that you’re achieving something by doing so!

As regards the plot of the adventure, it is all very logical, if somewhat empty and unchallenging, and there are none of the usual ridiculous convolutions or credibility pushes that so often occur in FF books (plus it’s Sci-Fi so the horizons of logic are pretty unlimited anyway.) The actual game itself simply involves negotiating your way from Madrid to Rome to Paris and finally to London. None of this is even remotely difficult and the first three cities are fairly dull and only have a couple of possible routes you can take with very little to see or do other than a few (usually helpful) run-ins with the locals (not that you’ll ever really need any help!) The London section consists entirely of a hoverboard trip through the London Underground. This is the main part where going the wrong way or through the wrong door will often instantly kill you but, if you know where you are headed or use trial and error, it won’t take many attempts to get through it (plus there’s a map so if you do know the way it’s actually very easy.) This final section is very unbalanced compared with the other three as literally nothing happens here other than you change direction or die. At least the other three cities offered something (if not much) to do, plus the trips from city to city allow you to interact with people and/or eat to restore Stamina. When you finally find the President he is with a Grom who naturally faints from terror so rescuing him is also easy. There then follows a Luke Sharp scenario where you have to keep throwing dice to survive an ascent (this bit is actually quite hard if only due to it being based entirely on arbitrary chance.) The absolute final stage is the only part of the entire book where the Groms seem nasty and where their illusions have a sinister touch, but if you have already grown used to their illusion attacks it doesn’t take a genius to survive this and win.

There is one feature of this book that seems odd and that is your trusty Catchman pistol – the weapon of choice of Rogue Tracers. It fires a sticky net over baddies to catch them and will help you avoid combats. For some reason, the all-important Catchman is very unreliable and you have to test your Luck to see whether it has worked properly or not every time you deploy it. This may be designed to add some difficulty to what is generally an easy FF, but I fail to see why crack bounty hunters would favour such a useless weapon!

Art-wise this book is sound and the internal illustrations do have a futuristic feel to them being weighted towards greys and blacks which have a “shiny” slick appearance that also gives a sense that much of this is happening at night. Whilst the art is functional it does suit the tone of the book generally. The cover is pretty good and does have a futuristic feel to it, even if the creature on it is not particularly relevant and isn’t a Gromulan which is, after all, the central alien species of this book, so I’m not sure what happened there. Luke Sharp is not known for writing interesting text but the writing here complements the art and does create the right atmosphere to help you feel involved. At times the text is quite humorous and avoids the boring matter-of-fact-ness and lack of description that blights Sharp’s medieval FFs. Similarly, his often off-hand way of telling you that you are dead is avoided here by making the instant deaths actually feel like a natural progression from a previous section (be it from stupidity, time-wasting, a craft you are in going haywire, etc) rather than just another random “oh well, you’re dead for some reason or other” comment.

So, in summary, this FF is not bad, but it’s also not particularly good either. It’s certainly fairly easy, but the general lack of anything happening of any consequence or interest does make it all feel a bit pointless making it one of the most forgettable and irrelevant FFs ever and certainly the only underwhelming entry in the otherwise consistently good ‘twenties part of the original series. Far from essential...

#30: Chasms Of Malice

CHASMS OF MALICE

Luke Sharp

Reviewed by Mark Lain

The watchword with number 30 in the original series is “malice”. This book is written and designed with absolutely no consideration for the player’s enjoyment and acts purely as a series of ways for YOU to fail. It took me 4 ½ hours to play through this book for this review, which is more than double the usual time to play a FF even if you visit everywhere (which I did.) Sadly, the time taken to get through this book is not a reflection of it having any depth or imagination to its construction – it is simply a boring and relentless catalogue of instant deaths and 50/50 life/death dice rolls with very little to see or do other than waiting for your inevitable death (which is, frankly, a relief when it comes.) The book may be so long and dull because it knows that you really aren’t going to get very far so the latter half wouldn’t be worth making interesting as it’d be a waste of the author’s time writing something that no-one other than cheats will ever read.

It is a shame that this adventure is so disappointing as the premise starts out quite intriguingly. YOU are the long-lost blood heir to a great King who trapped an untold unpleasantness (actually another loony who wants to destroy the world called Orguz) in the titular chasms. The seal to these chasms has been broken, the great shield that defends it has been stolen, and it’s the bloodheir’s job to enter the chasms and kill the maniac within. This is the first of three Khul-based FFs that form a loose trilogy based around the wizard Astragal (the others being Daggers Of Darkness and Fangs Of Fury.) Astragal enlists you for this task and, to help you on your way, sends a cat goddess called Tabasha The Bazouk along too. Tabasha is handy as she can find you food and sometimes also get you out of lethal situations, but you can only use her services nine times, one of which must be either increasing your Skill or Luck to its initial level (basically a Potion substitute then) but at least she’s one of the few reliefs in this grim reading-playing experience. Your character’s position of third assistant rabbit skinner in the royal kitchens is obviously supposed to be hilarious but just comes across as a lame attempt at suggesting just how irrelevant you are until you are sent on this mission. It is possible that the total impossibility of this adventure is intended to reflect your (lack of) status, but that would be giving too much design credit to Luke Sharp and I don’t believe this is the case. The only genuinely good bit of game design I can pin-point is something that I’m surprised didn’t get more use in other FFs – if you cook Provisions (assuming you can find some Fuel to do so) eating them is worth 6 rather than 4 Stamina points but you’ll need all the Stamina you can get and it hardly makes much difference as most of the death situations completely ignore stats full stop.

The design flaws in this book’s environment are out-weighed by its sheer unfairness, but these flaws are restricted largely to the problem that there are too many labyrinthine path networks. Whilst there is no maze as such, most paths interlink (often un-mappably and, therefore, probably impossibly) into each other with many of the wrong paths being very brief routes to a point just beyond the helpful part of the correct path so getting back on the right track is pretty hard. Ditto, seemingly thematically unconnected areas link into each other making the credibility and flow of the plot disappear very quickly. It would be very hard to map this book due to this which makes the likelihood of a lot of replays low as you’ll just end up back in some boring area that will eventually lead to death.

The biggest problem with this FF, however, is that it is fundamentally impossible unless your luck with dice-throwing defies all laws of probability. Yes, it is possible to get lucky on every throw, but this is not realistically going to happen. If you have the staying power and can really be bothered to find out what the whole book is about and what happens, the only real way of doing this is to cheat (probably many many times!) The best FF books are challenging and interesting/varied enough to make you want to keep replaying in the knowledge that, whilst the book may be tough, it is not impossible and you will eventually win by building on what you know from previous play-throughs. That is not the case here. This book has so many, often unfair, things to throw at you that there quickly comes a point where you just don’t care anymore. Any one of these on its own would be harsh, but Chasms Of Malice expects YOU to contend with:     

• An inordinate number of instant death paragraphs (c.50 which is more than 10% of the book), many caused by simply going the wrong way or opening the wrong door
• Equally, there are too many sections that lead to nothing but the 50 instant death paragraphs
• There are too many Luck testing situations, most of which lead to death if failed and, as there are so many, you will end up with a Luck of zero fairly quickly making failure even more inevitable. Added to this is the fact that so many of the failed luck test deaths are handled in an almost aloof, off-hand manner such as getting hit with a stray arrow, falling off a ledge, or getting crushed by a big rock, that you just don’t care after a while
• The absolute worst part of this book’s unfairness is the One-Hit Combat idea. This is meant to demonstrate that fighting on a ledge can lead you to fall off and die easily, but it’s arbitrary in the extreme and totally ignores your stats and therefore your combat prowess. You throw two dice for YOU and two for the enemy – the higher number wins, the lower number falls to their death. Given that in several cases you have to deal with 3 or more of these in one section, again, you are unlikely to survive
•  Added to all this are the random dice rolling situations that can determine life or death. In one case, if you throw 50% of any possible numbers an Orc has randomly executed you, and in another the dice determine distance and then whether you make it across the distance or not
• If all that isn’t depressing enough, there are even some combats where throwing certain doubles will lead to instant death

In short, the ways in which you can die and the way that they just follow one-after-another make this book a relentless experience to the point where it really is very boring.

The boredom is exacerbated by there being very few interesting encounters and cameos. Only the meetings with the underground people called Gaddon/Sensewarriors are of any real intrigue, but these usually just lead to attacks by lots of Orcs anyway, but you can at least learn how to fight in the dark, making combats slightly easier in that you don’t have to keep taking a -2 Skill penalty when rolling your Attack Strength. There is an OK-ish visit to an Orc garrison where the crack Xokusai Orcs that protect Orguz’ lair live, but this comes very late on so you will either not care anymore or, more than likely, never actually live long enough to get there at all. The concept of the Xokusai Orcs is a good one in itself but isn’t exploited at all and the Xokusai just seem like normal Orcs, if a bit more fanatical. On the subject of combats, the bulk of the encounters have Staminas of 10+ so even these are pretty relentlessly-hard.

Another potentially interesting, but ultimately wasted, concept is the Kuddam - these are Orguz’ seven fanatical side-kicks who you can run into in the chasms. They are all out to stop you at all costs and you need to mark off any that you kill on your Adventure Sheet as you go along. Any you miss will result in your having to fight Orguz once for every living Kuddam, plus once for himself. I could only actually find 4 of them in the entire book (unless I wasn’t paying attention any more, which is possible) which makes this final showdown pretty impossible as well (if that’s any real surprise!) Orguz himself is totally two-dimensional and is hardly worth the effort to reach him. In the unlikely event that you can get this far and beat him, you are then faced with yet another potential fail situation where you have to guess which person out of five is the traitor using clues you have gained along the way (or by cheating, which is highly likely by now.)

Of some interest is a system of cyphers used by the Gaddon. If you can learn these (and, shock horror, you actually get TWO chances to do so, which is the only real nod towards making your life easy here) you can then access locked doors and secret passageways. Unfortunately, most of these special routes can just as easily be found by going a different way so that is rendered a pointless feature as well.

A good FF should always have a well-fleshed-out and believable back-story to set the scene and make you want to get involved. Creature Of Havoc is probably one of the best examples of how well written a back-story can be in FF. Sadly, Chasms Of Malice is not. I had to read the introduction four times before I could understand its onslaught of information from various chronicles etc. Anyone who has tried to understand the baffling opening Chapter of Tolkein’s Silmarillion will know exactly what I’m on about here! Luke Sharp seems to then veer off into very sketchy descriptions for most of the book itself, giving very little impression of the chasms that you are in. There is very little to involve you in the text here.

This book has only one real mercy. The internal art is all by Russ Nicholson who I think really epitomises FF. As much of the art is his really good illustrations of orcs and dwarves, at least the book is given a familiar feel in this sense and the only sense of involvement you can really get is from the pictures as the text is so oblivious to the reader’s immersion. I also really like the atmospheric firey cover. It’s a shame the written contents are so bad as the art is wasted here and deserves to be in a better FF.

In summary, this has to be a contender for worst FF of all time due to its lack of interesting gameplay and the fact that it is so harsh on the player that you have very little motivation to try to beat it more than a handful of times - perhaps that’s why so many immaculate copies are around! Luke Sharp (which is a pen-name by the way) seems to have taken to heart the criticism that his previous FF #27 Star Strider was too easy and unleashed his resentment onto the player in this grim, relentless and dull FF offering which could have been good given some of the ideas it includes, but simply finished up being awful. Anyone who bought and played the FFs in release order will have got a nasty shock playing this after the very forgiving #29 Midnight Rogue that it followed. Incidentally, this hasn't been re-issued by Wizard Books and hopefully never will!

#16: Seas Of Blood

 SEAS OF BLOOD

Andrew Chapman

Reviewed by Mark Lain

Number 16 in the original series is one of only two FFs where you get to play an out-and-out baddie (along with Midnight Rogue where you’re less bad and more just vaguely shady.) It is also one of only two pirate-themed FFs ever released (the other being the many-years-in-limbo Bloodbones.) Andrew Chapman was fairly prolific in the teens era of the series, giving us #12 Space Assassin, #15 The Rings Of Kether and this effort all in very short succession. The quality of his output was sadly very inconsistent, but there was a noticeable improvement from book to book: Space Assassin was terrible, The Rings Of Kether was adequate, but Seas Of Blood was actually really good. Perhaps Chapman realised this as at this point he then stopped writing FFs for good (other than a co-writing credit in the 2-player offering Clash Of The Princes.) Incidentally, to avoid any awkward silences he didn’t die suddenly, I’ve checked J

There is much to relish in your portrayal of a pirate captain who has engaged in a wager with his rival (the colourfully named Abdul The Butcher) to decide who is king of the pirates (although that does awkwardly now remind me of Aardman’s The Pirates in An Adventure with Scientists, which could reduce this book’s credibility slightly nowadays!) You both have a limited time in which to sail around the Inland Sea, plundering, murdering and robbing to gather as much gold and slaves as possible. Whoever has the most when you reach the far end is the winner. So the premise is pretty simple really, which works well and is a nice respite from the usual FF fare of either assassinating a megalomaniac who’s threatening the world or going through some hideous experience or other to acquire untold wealth and fame. To help accentuate the difference between the individual YOU and the YOU that has a big ship and a crew, two new stats (Crew Strike ie Skill and Crew Strength ie Stamina) are introduced. New stats are always a mixed-bag but, unlike some other attempts at crews (the dismal and unnecessarily long-winded effort in Starship Traveller springs to mind), this one is well-handled. There are many skirmishes with other ships and/or bunches of people and, although most of these are fairly difficult, you do get the feeling of a tough inter-crew battle which is pretty accurate as you wouldn’t expect this to be over in three dice rolls. You also can’t escape unless you win an Attack Round (again, logical, as you’d collectively need the upper hand overall, rather than it just being YOU that’s running off.) To add a sense of urgency there is a Log feature as well where you keep track of how long you have been travelling for – another logical inclusion as you are on a schedule here! If you exceed the number of days agreed with Abdul you lose regardless (more good plot logic.) Some extra rules have been added as well to deal with time being a healer and also with strengthening your depleted crew. Capturing slaves increases your Crew Strength and you personally can regain 1 point of lost Stamina per day of travelling. Again, these are further logical inclusions and are, again, welcome.

Whilst the fairly simple plot is executed effectively, there are a few issues that seem at odds with the overall well thought-out construction:

• ·         Primarily, if you have been plying these seas and making a nuisance of yourself in them for years how come a) you don’t seem to know what there is anywhere and b) no-one seems to know who you are (or has everyone who ever met you ended up dead)?
• ·         Less jarring, but also fairly evident is that there seems to be a time dilation effect depending on which direction you go in or what verb is describing your way of moving. For example, heading one way up a river takes ages, but going the other is really fast (unless of course the current is incredibly strong in one direction, maybe?) Likewise, “speeding” towards Nippur takes twice as long as just generally going there!
• ·         No matter which direction you go in and how many times you zigzag across the Inland Sea, you never seem to run into Abdul and his crew. What route exactly does he take then? Is he watching where YOU go and deliberately going the other way or something? Or does he just head straight for the really rich pickings and then spend a few days R&R somewhere? It would be nice to be able to do some taunting and even plunder each other along the way as that would really add some extra urgency to the game.
• ·         Occasionally, there are some moments that just don’t seem to make sense, in particular an assault on a monastery where you are made to change your mind about torching it with flaming arrows only for your “over-zealous” (and presumably fairly disobedient) crew to burn it down anyway destroying all its booty in the process (or is this an admonishment for attacking a monastery?....er, which a nasty pirate wouldn’t really be bothered about in moral terms) and a Roc’s nest that seems to contain the entrance to a dungeon (that has no dead clumsy baby Rocs in it that would presumably have slid into it at some point surely?)

Given the subject matter (and the fact that pirates are presumably unwelcome in most places), the difficulty level is fairly high in this book, both in the combat/encounter sense and in the unpleasant instant deaths sense (and many of them are pretty unpleasant.) There are c.40 instant death paragraphs in this book, in other words 10% of it is trying to kill you! You are especially penalised for exploring. Given that most FF players will want to take some risks and will enjoy guessing what might be good and bad situations to get in, this book is pretty harsh on bravery. Combat-wise, you will need a very high (11 or 12 preferably) Crew Strike to stand a chance in ship-to-ship combat situations which is, unusually for the harder FFs, very suitable here as fighting other pirates and trained navies is not going to be easy (most ships encountered have Crew Strike 9 or 10.) The fact that some tough combats yield hardly any booty adds to the difficulty and the fact that you need to choose wisely before engaging other ships. There is even a point where you can literally find yourself in the middle of a warzone which is very hard to escape from and, again, this really does make sense. To add to the difficulty, the true path is very tight and exploring often gets you nowhere as many diversions are exactly that – diversions that send you on a wild goose chase up a river etc and gain you nothing. As time is of the essence this could be another deliberate feature but it does kind of take away the whole idea of an adventure. The real killer comes in a triple-wammy at the end where you need to have four winds on your side, followed by a hand-to-hand fight with a Cyclops and finally the discovery that your (seemingly) huge amount of booty gets divided in half for the final count-off with Abdul himself. In one way you can feel pretty cheated by this at the end but, on the other hand, it does show you that you need to seek out the true path and gather a vast amount of gold (800+ gps to be exact.)

Initially, it appears that you have quite a variety of routes to take, which seems interesting and varied, but multiple playing will show just how linear this adventure really is and also just how much of it is pointless diversion and red herrings (rather like House Of Hell.) This means you can learn from replaying and gradually discover the optimum route so there is lots of playability on offer here. Add to that the genuine satisfaction gained from playing a baddie, some interesting side-missions, the general fun of bataar racing (Steve Jackson would approve!) and this book’s (overall) well-designed structure, and this makes for a generally really good FF.

There is one real tour-de-force sequence in this book which is not well-written but is brilliantly designed: the battle with the Cyclops. Rather than a straight FF combat, you have to choose where to strike the Cyclops over numerous blows and there is a real skill to it, rather than just slashing with your sword/rolling the dice. This sequence covers around 30 paragraphs and is reminiscent of the car chase in Chapman’s The Rings Of Kether. Chapman seems very fond of these long set-pieces and should perhaps have been a film director instead, as his ideas and execution are better than his writing abilities.

Indeed, the only real problems with this book are peripheral rather than any faults in the game itself. Chapman’s writing is typically terse and, at times, lacking in colour and detail. The atmosphere is created more from your being a pirate and the premise of the game, rather than from the text, which is fairly barren in places. Chapman’s snappy approach worked in The Rings Of Kether as it added a hard-boiled aspect, whilst his frankly dull atmosphere-less prose in FF#12 all but ruined Space Assassin. In Seas Of Blood it just about gets away with it as your attention is elsewhere. The endings are genuine let-downs and make you wonder why you bothered turning to them – whether you win or lose you only get two sentences that amount to little more than either “You lose. Ha ha” or “You win. Hurrah.” (but actually phrased worse than that!) The other big problem is Bob Harvey’s art which I really do not like. Granted it is better here than in Talisman Of Death, having a slightly sun-drenched “bright” feel to it that adds a Treasure Island­-ish effect, but it is still too “Arabian Nights” in feel and does not seem to be fantasy art. If anything, Harvey’s art looks more like semi-serious history to me that detracts from the theme of this book. The cover is far better and has real menace to it, even if a) the seas of blood themselves aren’t red and b) the hydra is nowhere near that big when you meet it. Incidentally, this and Robot Commando both have the number and Fighting Fantasy lettering in black on the cover instead of the usual white – I have no idea why!

Overall I really like this book and have played it many many times without ever getting bored of it. Its strengths carry it through and do well to overcome its odd parts and bad writing/artwork. Wizard Books haven’t re-issued any of Andrew Chapman’s FFs, but this must surely be the one that most deserves a re-issue as it is genuinely good.

The Trolltooth Wars

THE TROLLTOOTH WARS

Steve Jackson

Reviewed by Mark Lain

I have to admit that when this first came out I approached the concept of a “Fighting Fantasy Novel” with some scepticism. The whole idea of a FF book is that it’s “Part-Novel, Part-Game in which YOU are the hero”. This offering is 100% novel, no part game, and someone else is the hero. So in that sense it kind of defeats the object of it’s being FF really. However, if you can get your head around the idea that this is a concerted effort to expand on the FF folklore that was assembled in Titan – The Fighting Fantasy World, and not a shameless cash-in for Puffin at the height of FF’s success, then there is definitely some value in the creation of a FF Novel series. Steve Jackson was always trying to expand the boundaries of FF as a franchise so he was the most likely person to pen the first FF novel of which there were, eventually, only seven – three featuring Chadda Darkmane and four about Zagor. In keeping with the FF gamebooks, SJ wrote the first, then SJ and IL executive produced the rest that were written by various other interested parties.

As this is a Jackson effort, the key NPCs are Jackson creations, Balthus Dire (from The Citadel Of Chaos) and Zharradan Marr (from Creature Of Havoc), with supporting roles for Jackson/Livingstone’s Zagor (from The Warlock Of Firetop Mountain) and Livingstone’s cartoonish Yaztromo (who we first met in The Forest Of Doom and who then turned-up ad nauseum in various other FFs.) Many of the creatures lean towards the more outlandish and original Jackson types (rhino-men, ganjees, calacorms, soulless ones, etc) with the usual inclusion of some fantasy standards (goblins, orcs, etc) which makes this feel like a very Jackson-esque effort. SJ’s prose was always well written in his FFs and that is the case here too and his tendency to include some dark humour also shows through (Ian Livingstone’s FF writing always felt more serious in tone) which is welcome and keeps it interesting for the reader.

Much has been said in reviews about the inconsistency or sheer ludicrousness of FF plots. The fact that traditional FF is a game makes this less annoying, but this would never work in a story book. Thankfully, SJ manages to create a logical and well fleshed-out storyline that flows nicely and makes perfect sense. The added bonus of this being a story book means that it is possible to develop the urgency of the plot by having multiple threads running simultaneously to eventually meet together further into the story (eg: the story often switches between Dire’s, Marr’s, and Darkmane’s activities) – this would be impossible in a FF gamebook because, by definition, YOU can only know what has happened and/or is happening to YOU (unless you’re psychic or something.) The plot revolves around possession of a herb called cunnelwort that allows you to go on little forays into the spiritworld (LSD then basically?) Whoever has this power can become the most powerful sorcerer on Titan so Marr and Dire both want it. Marr has already got it (but can’t really use it properly otherwise he would already be Sorceror #1 presumably), so Dire’s minions attack a caravan transporting some and steal it. This upsets Marr and very soon a war breaks out between their two forces. Dire uses the usual collection of bizarre vivisects that anyone who has played The Citadel Of Chaos will be familiar with, whilst Marr’s army consists largely of his unholy experiments with gormless zombie-type things. The main protagonist enters the fray in the form of Chadda Darkmane (the YOU of the piece, in fact), an adventurer from Salamonis who is keen to increase his Amanour (which is best described as a kind of publically-acknowledged kudos or the adventurer’s equivalent of well-publicised sexual virility) so he gets hired by the King of Salamonis to meddle in the war and make sure Salamonis does not get invaded. It soon becomes apparent to Chadda that he can make his task easier by visiting the third of Allansia’s evil sorcerers (Zagor) and asking him for help. So, long story short, Dire and Marr are at war, whilst Chadda visits a few towns and then plays The Warlock Of Firetop Mountain but with the aim of making friends with Zagor rather than nicking his treasure. Needless to say, Chadda acquires a couple of hangers-on along the way, both of whom in traditional FF companion style eventually end up dead, so no surprises there. It is worth noting as well that once again Jackson cannot resist referencing Greek mythology when it turns out that the entire story is just the Gods playing a game to relieve their boredom and personally I really liked this very unexpected ending.

Much of the enjoyment of this book comes from its exposition of the FF world. There is a really nice background to the Dire family early on in the book, the role played by the ganjees makes sense of how they came to be living with Balthus Dire in The Citadel Of Chaos, Zharradan Marr is revealed as even more despotic than he appears in Creature Of Havoc, and Zagor is actually quite sympathetic by comparison and we can see why he buried himself so deep inside Firetop Mountain to get a bit of peace within the microcosm of his own impenetrable domain. A few areas of illogicality in FF gamebooks are explained along the way (eg: why the keys to Zagor’s treasure chest are scattered around Firetop Mountain’s dungeon) and we get to visit one of the bizarre novelty towns in Allansia (Shazaar) which gives SJ a chance to be playful as he often is in his FF books. There is a very interesting section where we are introduced to the ganjees’ mortal enemies (the sorq), so they’re not totally indestructible after all or, at the very least, they do appear to have a nemesis. There are a few small downsides to the FFxploitation in this book, but they are mostly harmless – the similes in particular are often laboured and seem a little smug (smelling like a skunkbear, etc etc) and Darkmane’s annoying Chervah sidekick is a sort of hyper-superstitious version of the equally-irritating Gronk in 2000AD’s Strontium Dog stories.

If there is one area of confusion it would be where this story is supposed to fit into the FF story arc. The gamebooks do tend to have a coherent flow with sequels and prequels along the way etc. Given that Balthus Dire is still alive, this book must come before FF #2 The Citadel Of Chaos. The presence of Marr is more confusing as he gets trapped in his own dimension in FF #24 Creature Of Havoc and gets trapped again in The Trolltooth Wars when Darkmane smashes the mirror he likes to hide in – unless he has a lot of mirrors with pan-dimensional properties, this is fairly hard to explain. Zagor still being alive is less problematic as he keeps reincarnating anyway (albeit in a kind of Frankenstein’s monster way) so the jury is out in that sense, but he does still have his treasure so, logically, this would also sit before FF #1 The Warlock Of Firetop Mountain. Other aspects of Firetop Mountain suggest this as well – the iron cyclops still has its jewelled eye, the minotaur in the Maze of Zagor is still alive, the keys to Zagor’s treasure chest are still where you find them in WOFM, etc.

There is a certain assumption, in the way this book is written, that the reader is familiar with Titan and the FF world, but I can accept this as it is fairly unlikely that anyone would read this book without having a prior knowledge of FF. The attraction of a FF novel would stem from liking the gamebooks, so this does make sense. There is also an assumption that the reader has completed The Warlock Of Firetop Mountain as Darkmane’s trawl through Firetop Mountain is full of spoilers that will tell you how to find the true path (in terms of items, at least) through Firetop Mountain. In particular, where to find Zagor’s keys and what his two weaknesses are (the eye of the Cyclops and his deck of cards) are given away here.

In a clever bid to make this 100% novel FF book more acceptable to FF fans, key moments are punctuated with internal art by Russ Nicholson. This is especially astute as Nicholson’s images of Zagor and Balthus Dire are used several times which adds coherence with the gamebooks. As ever, Nicholson’s art is really good throughout and his particularly beady-eyed and ugly goblin/orc art is as good here as it is in any other FF he has drawn. Again, this adds a nice linking feature to the gamebooks.

There is one aspect of this book that rarely appears in FF gamebooks. The gamebooks rarely show much empathy plot-wise as any “human” element is supposed to come from YOU, the player. As the immersive-ness of the adventure being “yours” is not present when Darkmane is experiencing what there is to be experienced, the reader's sympathies are gained in other ways here and SJ handles this very well in his writing. Of particular note are Balthus Dire’s initial cunnelwort trip which is a bit overwhelming even for a sorcerer of his experience/evil-ness (you really get a sense of how the spiritworld really ought to be left alone by mortals) and the real highlight of Jackson’s writing comes in the attack on the village of Covan (again, from Creature Of Havoc and presumably fully re-populated by the time FF # 24 enters the story arc) which is genuinely harrowing in the way it is written from the perspective of one family.

All things considered, there are hardly any negative points to this book. The fact that it manages to act as a compliment to the gamebooks (assuming you can figure out where it sits in the “history” of Titan) is a credit to how well it is written and there is definitely some fun to be had in the diversion of watching someone else having to go through what YOU would normally be up against in a standard FF gamebook. There are no dull points, there are many exciting and/or disturbing points and the book bounces along very well. It’s very easy to read 100 pages of it in one short sitting without even realising how much of it you’ve just read - surely that has to be the sign of an enjoyable novel... The FF novels have never been re-issued and definitely deserve another chance assuming they can still find an audience.

The Lord Of Shadow Keep

THE LORD OF SHADOW KEEP

Oliver Johnson

Reviewed by Mark Lain

Originally planned (and advertised) as number 13 in the original FF cycle, this book instead surfaced as number 3 in the rival Golden Dragon Fantasy Gamebooks series published by Granada. From what I can establish, this was commissioned by Puffin and was entirely intended for the FF series, when Johnson suddenly turned traitor and the book was released by Golden Dragon instead without Puffin even knowing this was going to happen! Forget the eventually released Bloodbones, this book was totally lost to FF as it NEVER appeared in the FF series and is far less known and talked about than Bloodbones. If it wasn’t for it being listed as a forthcoming book in early editions of Sorcery! this book would probably have passed by all but the most inquiring of FF fans and collectors.

Rather appropriately, treachery is exactly the subject matter of this adventure. The premise revolves around YOU being a member of the Imperial Guard of King Valafor (Richard I?) who has gone on crusade against some (presumably heretical if it’s a crusade?) goblins. He left his supposedly nice brother Averok (King John?) as Regent, but, as is often the case, Averok soon turned despotic and sadistic under the influence of the thoroughly unsavoury Arkayn Darkrobe (one of the most cringeworthy baddie names of any FF ever), so it’s your job to hunt Mr Darkrobe down in his castle (the Shadow Keep of the title) and rid the land of Lalassa of him, thus allowing nice old King Valafor to be restored so everyone can live happily ever after. Oh, and Darkrobe is a vampire by the way... and so is Averok... not that you ever actually meet Averok. So, plot-wise, this is pretty much the usual FF standard fall-back idea of hunt down and kill the baddie who is threatening life as we know it. Sounds like it would have fitted in perfectly in the FF series so far then!

The plot as you play is very linear as you travel from your hometown, through a forest, across a plain, and then into Shadow Keep itself (which is basically akin to the Black Tower in Citadel Of Chaos, I suppose.) There is only one true path and there are rarely many options to digress from it other than to go either left or right, or select a staircase or door out of two or three, all of which will eventually lead to the same place, followed by another set of supposed “choices” that eventually lead to the same next place, and so on, so, again, this is pretty much a standard FF trek followed by a dungeon trawl, followed by ascending a tower. As it is largely set in a tower and you are likely to want to get to it quickly, in this case, linearity makes sense and, as with COC, once you’re ascending the tower, the likelihood of digression will be minimal by definition. So this is acceptable, if a little restrictive in terms of having a choice of where to go next. All in all, the plot here is very logical with no bizarre digressions and it does feel like it flows and makes sense as you play through it. The further into the Keep you go, the more undead you meet, until you encounter a mass of hungry ghouls in a dining hall and/or a group of dapper vampires, followed by the big man himself. Darkrobe’s minions are milling about the place trying to protect their master and there are a few comedy encounters such as a Lizard Man with a lisp who seems to be straight out of PG Wodehouse, a somnambulist witch, and an unusually sympathetic ogre. There is a courtyard to negotiate before you get into the keep, as well as a Ghoul who demands a password, and the ghost of Darkrobe’s deceased ex-wife (all very similar to Citadel Of Chaos then, really.)

Again, as with COC, there aren’t an awful lot of items that you need to collect but, those that you do need, are totally essential (although you’re given the most important one in the introduction before you’ve even started!) Also, just like COC, there are a lot of instant death paragraphs (nearly 10% of the entire book in fact), especially once you’re in the Keep itself, which does make for a pretty tough adventure. To make it even harder, you need a very high Psi stat to stand any chance of mentally coming to terms with the Keep’s inhabitants (Vault Of The Vampire would employ the similar stat of Faith, House Of Hell used Fear, and Beneath Nightmare Castle handled this as Willpower, to name but a few of the plethora of different approaches to this idea.) Add to this the fact that you also need a decent Agility score otherwise you have no hope in Skill or Luck test-equivalent situations, plus a very high Vigour stat to survive the many Stamina-reducing happenings, and you get a book that cannot be won without superhumanly-high attributes (so Ian Livingstone would have approved, then!)

To make this book even harder, combats are handled in a manner that completely disregards any evidence of your being a battle-trained imperial guard. Basically, each combat scenario is different, but many are pretty weighted against you. You throw two dice and then check to see what the outcome is. Some combats lead to instant death if you roll a 2, most are just either you or the enemy taking damage, but some have very different results dependant on the number rolled. In some cases, a higher roll can cause severe damage to either you or your foe. For example, if you still have the magic ring from the introduction section you can potentially inflict 10 points of damage to Darkrobe in one hit. Conversely, if you attempt to attack him outright as soon as you meet him you instantly take 15 points of Vigour damage (meaning you are almost certainly dead, I’d have thought.) If Agility is basically a mixture of Skill and Luck, and Vigour is Stamina this would be equivalent to losing 15 points of Stamina which would surely be the highest damage taken in one move by you in any FF book ever. Whilst it emphasises the importance of the magical ring, it also gives you basically no chance of winning without it so killing you outright would have seemed fairer (and is hardly rare in the final showdown situation in most FFs.)

So, the plot is logical if very linear by necessity and there is no ridiculously-long Livingstone-style shopping list, which are good things. There is also a really nice long introduction that sets the scene very effectively. On the flip-side, stat-wise this book is very tough and combats can be very unfair at times, as can the number of instant deaths (which some might view as a challenge in line with Citadel Of Chaos again, so this is both a plus and a minus really), although overall this book does veer in the overly-difficult direction a lot of the time.

The most interesting thing about this book, and part of the real intrigue in playing it, is seeing how it would have functioned as a FF book had Oliver Johnson not stabbed Puffin and FF in the back at the last minute. The mechanics of FF have been smoothly switched to use the Golden Dragon system and, notwithstanding moments like the grossly unreasonable 15 Vigour (Stamina) point penalty, it would work well using either set of rules (although Psi would need an equivalent new attribute inventing, but that’s hardly unusual in FF.) It would be worth getting hold of the FF manuscript (if it even still exists) just to see how the 15 Vigour point loss was meant to work in Stamina points and also how the many special attacks of various encounters would have been handled. Would this book have fallen into the trap of using practically nothing but “Specials”? – if so, it would have seemed a bit unbalanced, unless the justification would be that only “Specials” can survive in the Keep, which you could argue would make sense. I found it a bit odd that you can meet two different lycanthrope species in short succession but there are none after these so we can overlook this (after all, this isn’t Howl Of The Werewolf.) Using FF’s combat system would resolve the combat problems above, so maybe this book was forced down the combat unfairness route mentioned before when it was converted into a Golden Dragon offering. Equally of note is the length (or lack, thereof) of this book: at only 300 paragraphs, it is standard for Golden Dragon, but would leave you feeling very short-changed if a FF had only 300 entries. I can’t help thinking that this did start out with the usual 400 sections as there are parts of its construction that seem edited and there’s a cut-and-shut feel to it. For example, some paragraphs send you to others on the facing page or within a dozen or so sections either way which does make it a bit easy to cheat as you can see what’s coming without having to use multiple fingers to mark save points. A more frustrating result of this suspected editing is that most of the illustrations are on the wrong pages and footnotes have been inserted to make you look at the previous page’s picture (or the next page’s one.) This makes it seem disjointed in places. Furthermore, there is a section where, if you go a certain way, you can find yourself in a labyrinth. These are usually not good places to be in FF books as anyone who has spent hours endlessly wandering around Warlock Of Firetop Mountain’s Maze Of Zagor will understand. The labyrinth in TLOSK ends as soon as it begins. Basically, in you go, find a minotaur immediately, and then out you go again. Even if you get “lost” you get straight back out easily. Either a lot of the (presumably) removed paragraphs related to the labyrinth or Johnson needs to look the word “labyrinth” up in a Dictionary! Either way, this part of the book was frankly pathetic and might just as well have been excised completely. Also, where, in a Keep, would you find room for a maze anyway? This is pretty much the only illogical aspect of this book but, as it’s mostly non-existent, you’d hardly notice! Also of note is the switching of location – Allansia is thinly-veiled and re-worded as Lalassa and there are numerous references to the Icewrack Hills (a corruption of Icefinger Mountains and Moonstone Hills maybe?)

The real let-down in this book is Leo Hartas’ artwork. The illustrations are almost cartoon-ish and rarely rise above the semi-comical. Only the picture of Darkrobe’s dead wife has any oomph to it and you certainly don’t get the impression of an imposing and terrifyingly evil environment.

A counter-balance to the generally unsuitable art is Oliver Johnson’s text. Descriptions are lengthy and generally thorough and the scene is set well, especially in numerous colourful descriptions of direction-taking options (eg: stairs with blood on them vs stairs with red ribbon on them vs plain old stairs.) This adds a nice sense of foreboding and manages your expectations as a reader pretty well. Some of the instant deaths feel a bit curt and unsatisfying, but most are well-written and are far from the, for example, Luke Sharp-style “You are dead, so there” type that can be a major anti-climax.

All things considered, this is an entertaining, if short, adventure and you certainly don’t feel you’ve wasted your time by playing it. Yes, the labyrinth is a contradiction in terms, the art is hardly worth bothering with, and it’s very very hard, but overall (in a 400-section full FF version with the stats properly factored) it could well have been one of the better entries into the very uneven “teens” part of the series (ie numbers 11 thru 19) and would certainly have been better than the eventual number 13 we received (Ian Livingstone’s only Sci-Fi effort, the Mad Max rip-off Freeway Fighter.)