The Riddling Reaver

 THE RIDDLING REAVER

Paul Mason and Steve Williams; Edited by Steve Jackson

Reviewed by Mark Lain

The second release designed to turn FF into a fully-fledged RPG system (following on from Steve Jackson’s Fighting Fantasy – The Introductory RPG) is the first FF to introduce us to Mason/Williams’ seemingly favourite creation, The Riddling Reaver, who would later re-appear in Slaves Of The Abyss and Magehunter, as well as a prequel short FF in Warlock 13 called The Dreaming Sands. It is also one of the wackiest FF books ever which, whilst certainly imaginative and almost Roald Dahl-esque in its macabre humour in places, borders on silliness in other parts and is very inconsistent and lacking in overall cohesiveness.

However, the feeling of disjointedness can be overcome to some extent by playing the book in the manner that the rules suggest – the cover clearly states that this book is “Four thrilling role-playing adventures” and the recommendation is that it be played out in four separate sittings to get the most from it, although the claim that this could ever constitute four adventures is pushing it as each part would hardly be memorable if played in total isolation – Steve Jackson’s Sorcery this is not! It is even divided into four “Acts” to make the desired approach even clearer. Plus, it would be pretty exhausting for the players, not to mention demanding on the GM, if you were to attempt to play this book through in one session. You’d probably all get bored with what would seem like a catalogue of daft situations in four tenuously-connected environments, but, broken down into four sections, it can be very fun and entertaining as the players try to second-guess the Reaver’s constant tricks whilst making sense of some of the bizarrest situations that any FF has ever presented. In fact, situations is what this book is all about as it is a RPG scenario in the style of the myriad scenarios produced for Dungeons & Dragons and Warhammer, and not a “sit and play it through” FF book. The book is designed to be read by GMs only and gives as thorough a description as possible so that the GM only has minimal padding to add dependant on what the players say and do. To keep the feel of FF, the GM is required to supply the linearity that normally holds FFs together and there is little room for wild digression on the players’ behalfs as several NPCs act as “guides” throughout the adventure to keep it all on track. This book is actually quite demanding on the GM as they would need to be very familiar with each section before it could be successfully played. This is very different to the dungeon approach of the two mini-adventures presented in Fighting Fantasy – The Introductory RPG where each room/encounter/etc was a small cameo. TRR has a flow from section to section (or at least within each Act it does!) and the interlinking sections must be understood fully before attempting to GM this book, otherwise it could comes across to the players as just a mess. This is another good reason to follow the book’s advice and play it in four distinct sittings – attempting to play the entire book at once will show that it actually is a bit of a mess overall!

The introduction suggests that this book CANNOT be played without already having a copy of its predecessor but this is not the case as, assuming you understand the FF game mechanics, there is no reason why you can’t play this book without needing to fork out for Fighting Fantasy – The Introductory RPG. FF had become a major franchise by the time TRR was published and this comes across as nothing more than cynical marketing. There are actually some very neat extra rules listed in TRR that could be applied to any FF RPG (again, without needing to know anything outlined in the earlier book) and that should have been employed in the FF series as a whole. There is a particularly good rule regarding unconsciousness (presumably to lessen the chance of one person dying and having to sit the game out whilst the other players plow on ahead without them) where if your Stamina is reduced to zero you are out cold, rather than dead, and can be revived. Stamina dropping to -1 suggests a fatal wound. The zero = unconscious rule would be a bit awkward to use in FF books in practice (unless there were lots of wandering Samaritans about the place to help you) but these new Stamina loss rules do make good sense. The RPG standard of bigger weapons doing more damage but being harder to use due to size/weight is added in this book and the need for this rule is pretty much a given to create realism. FF books have tried to factor this in with Skill penalties, but with mixed results, and the deployment has been scattershod across the series as a whole. Steve Jackson’s “editorial” influence is apparent in the inclusion of Mighty Strike, where a double six roll in combat causes a fatal wound instantly (he used this concept again successfully in Creature Of Havoc) and this also makes a lot of sense. After all, cutting into a finger will not hurt as much or cause as much of a problem as cutting someone/something’s head off! Finally, Magic is included. One player can opt to be a wizard taking Skill and Stamina penalties in return for choosing from a set of spells lifted straight from Jackson’s The Citadel Of Chaos. There are points in TRR where magic is genuinely handy and can make progress easier, so this is a nice touch (even if the spells are hardly exciting or original) that adds a bit of variety to play and characters. On the subject of characters, this book apparently works best with five players, which, again, would be quite a logistical undertaking for the GM and I can’t help thinking that more time would be spent debating what anyone is going to do (especially as many situations call for only one player to do something) if this many people were playing. On the plus side, the more players there are, the more ideas can be suggested to solve things and the less chance of any one player’s stats being reduced to the point of death at too early a stage, which would ruin things.

The adventure itself is divided into four distinct parts, each with its own environment and aim. Part One is the most tenuous as the players just happen to stumble across an event that the GM may have to make some effort to convince them is worth investigating as it’s hardly inspiring. Assuming they are interested (or have to be somehow forced to get involved), the first Act involves ascending a tower to discover the Reaver, followed by using a set of his riddles to gather a bunch of items from around Kallamehr which will then allow them to reach Act Two. The tower itself offers little other than an introduction to the main characters of the piece. The trawl around Kallamehr can be quite interesting and there are inventive moments where tattoos can be got that have special properties (remember this is meant to be a RPG so anything gained in this book will still be there for the players in further adventures) plus it’s possible to become a wanted fugitive. The usual FF fall-back of random encounters in certain oft-visited places determined by dice rolling is present, but this does keep things varied and helps with continuity. Overall though, Act One is nothing special and just sets the scene. You also get to pick up a NPC in Act One who is basically the GM’s legitimate channel to either keep the players on track or outright help them if things start to go off-course or the players are just stuck (the riddles aren’t easy in some cases!)

Act Two involves a boat ride on the Reaver’s boat “The Twice Shy”, the sole aim of which is to still be alive when the boat reaches the location of Act Three. Act Two, in spite of its being a connecting stage, actually has some of the most inventive moments in this book. Granted, the usual random encounter dice roll is still in play for the top deck of the boat, but the rooms in the hold can be very interesting. Especially intriguing are the vision box (where each player sees something different, some appealing, some terrifying) which can lead to all sorts of player reactions, the painting room (which requires Crystal Maze-esque ingenuity on the part of the players to figure out what to do), and a room where everyone is miniaturised and meet a “giant” mouse with very high stats. Indeed, several of the encounters on the boat can be quite tough (the mouse, a plesiosaur, and a very dangerous chimera) which makes survival that little bit tougher and, along with the more original rooms, adds a lot to what is otherwise a linking section. There is also a room that may seem incongruous at this stage, but that gives an important clue about the Reaver’s obsession with taxidermy which will prove useful to know later in the adventure. Likewise, the first door with a riddle on it that tells you how to survive the room is found on this boat – again, this is a handy clue for success later in the game. Act Two ends with having to negotiate a riddle room. As before, the riddles are not easy and provide a nice challenge to the players.

Act Three sees the players arrive on an island where The Twice Shy has taken them and this is where the theme of the book lurches awkwardly towards feeling rather too much like Island Of The Lizard King. There are two types of Lizard Man here, as well as Pygmies, Head-hunters, and other primitive creatures/peoples. This section really does not gel with the previous two and this is where the book starts to become disjointed and any feeling of natural flow starts to fade. Granted, the players do meet the Reaver face-to-face as soon as they reach the island, but he’s in disguise and the players might not actually realise it’s him. The initial jungle section is fairly forgettable and is the least satisfying part of the adventure as a whole. However, the far side of the jungle houses The Shrine Of Destiny which really does take some imagination to even reach as you have to cross an invisible bridge to access it – how long it would take the players to work this out is anyone’s guess. The Shrine itself actually turns out to be something’s internal organs which is certainly a surprise, although it probably doesn’t take that long to work this out once the players are inside it. For the most part, the trip through the shrine is as lacklustre as the jungle that came before it, but the final stage where the players meet the (very strong) Icons Of Good and Evil is another very inventive touch, followed by the Act closing with the Reaver revealing his true identity and escaping in an airship.

The final Act is easily the best. The first part involves the players trying to reach the Reaver’s inner sanctum. This is the part of the adventure where the Dahl-esque black humour (and at times total lunacy) kicks in proper, from the opening negotiation of a waterfall that flows upwards, via a tricky Leprechaun surrounded by giant butterflies that are trying to eat tiny dinosaurs, followed by a possible encounter with a Tremlow (a very terrifying-looking, but totally cowardly monster that runs off instantly), a library where (admittedly stupidly) reading a book about summoning Fire Demons gets the players attacked by one, then a series of encounters with more of the Reaver’s taxidermy including two false-ending style stuffed Reavers and a set of stuffed versions of the players themselves, and then a room where the riddles on cupboard doors give clues as to what’s in them, it really does seem that the writers have thrown everything at the last section and it’s definitely worth getting through the previous three Acts to get to here, if only for the sheer entertainment value. There are even some Wheelies to run into (more evidence of probable Jackson tinkering and shamelessly adding in bits from The Citadel Of Chaos.) If the players can survive all this madness, they must then use a clue to figure out how to get through the door that leads to the very last section – the Reaver’s lab. This part does draw together some previous (seemingly random at the time) encounters. For example, the machine the Reaver uses to make the Mutant Lizard Men from Act Three can be found, as can the machine he uses to create his minions, the Replicanths (which by now the players will have encountered lots of in Act Four). There is another throw-back to Batman (in particular the 1966 movie) in a room full of powdered creatures (just add water). Other encounters include a particle bender (that allows the GM to have some fun mixing things together with bizarre, if arbitrary, results), an almost impossible to kill single-handedly suit of animated mechanical armour (Sk 14 St 20) that only works when it contains a player (who can also be hurt once its Stamina drops to 5!) and that all weapons work against with a damage penalty of -1. A void room (plagiarised from Deathtrap Dungeon) presents probably the most lethal threat in the whole book and is the last obstacle to negotiate before reaching the Reaver himself. Sadly, the ending is a total anti-climax as it is not possible to get near the Reaver and he escapes. This is almost unheard-of in FF as the feeling of achievement that players get from surviving to the end and killing off the final baddie is all but missing.

Overall then, plot-wise, whilst there is little inter-connecting material between the Acts other than chasing the Reaver, the plot has no illogicalities and its bizarreness is actually very suited to its subject matter, even if it is very bizarre in places. The big let-down is that it is book-ended by an intro and ending that are in turn uninspiring and disappointing, and Act Three could be left out completely and replaced with something more suited to the almost Arabian Nights feel of the other three parts (everyone seems to be wearing fez and Ali Baba pants) or just something better! On a positive note, the ever-welcome element of series linking is also present when you can meet the person who supplies the creatures for the Trial Of Champions.

Some of the ideas in this book are genuinely original and imaginative and solving the riddles/tricks can be very complex (even if some can be solved by accident.) It is a matter of opinion what the reader/players might make of some of the attempts at all-too-clever jokes in the text – Hammet The Dash, Cona Nundrum, and Jaiphrai Ah’cha – and there is an over-riding feeling that this book is designed to introduce the Reaver as a marketable new NPC rather than another FF crack-pot for the player(s) to despatch. He doesn’t actually seem very evil (which might be why he’s allowed to survive) and the best analogy I can think of is that he’s the Trickster Gods’ sort of Pope!

If this book were a single-player “standard” FF it would be very hard as the riddles are often tough, things like the void room are instant deaths, and some situations would only be reversible if you kept running into benevolent NPCs throughout the book which could get annoying. Likewise, many of the encounters are with creatures with stats in double-figures. All this is made far easier with a group of players so the chance of everyone making it to the (hopeless) ending is pretty high.

This book is a rare and brave departure from the series as a whole and tries to do something different with the FF concept by creating FF’s only full RPG scenario. The extra rules add a lot and add welcome logic to how FF functions. It is difficult to know what standard would have been achieved with later FF RPG books as this is all we have to go on, but this is a decent start in spite of its flaws. It’s certainly too inconsistent and over-reliant on wackiness and it seems a bit smug at times as it’s not as clever as its writers think it is even though, in parts, it’s as inventive and as complex to crack as FF ever gets. 

The biggest challenge (and probably a reason for the concept of a FF RPG never really taking off) is assembling, and maintaining the interest through the duller parts, of five players to even give it a go in the first place...

Demonstealer

DEMONSTEALER

Marc Gascoigne

Reviewed by Mark Lain

The second FF novel (and the second in the Chadda Darkmane cycle) starts immediately after the end of its predecessor, The Trolltooth Wars, but is a very different style of novel. It would have been simple to attempt to create a Trolltooth Wars II, but it is good to see that the FF novels series is showing variety in its second outing.

Marc Gascoigne’s writing style is noticeably darker than Steve Jackson’s and the approach is different from the outset. Gone is the FF-xploitation of the first novel, which relied in some part on name-dropping of various key NPCs and locations to draw the reader into accepting a non-gamebook FF entry. As Chadda Darkmane is by now established as a new NPC, there is far less need for over-extemporisation and contextualising to keep things feeling familiar to the reader. Only Yaztromo is carried-over from the first novel and the remaining protagonists are totally new FF characters in the form of a new sidekick for Darkmane, a new baddie’s acolyte, and a new main baddie himself. Gascoigne is in some ways taking a risk by not using a “known” gamebook enemy, but the change is welcome and there is a mystique to this book’s villains that would be missing if familiar (and probably dead in a continuity-bending way for those who have completed the relevant book) gamebook baddies were used instead. The Trolltooth Wars needed familiar (and, preferably, high-profile) enemies to help the reader to relate to the book. Demonstealer has the advantage of coming second and being far free-er to develop Darkmane as a character and make him the central figure going forward. It is odd to note that the concept of Amanour (which was very important to understanding Darkmane’s motive) plays an almost non-existent role in this book, but it did make him seem like a bit of an ego-maniac and its absence has little impact. The Cherva (or, rather, A Cherva) sort of returns during a visit to the Cherva’s home-town but, thankfully, this is only a brief cameo and Gascoigne is wise not to bring back the Jar-Jar Binks of the piece. Knockabout humour worked well in The Trolltooth Wars and suits Jackson’s writing style, but would not sit right with either Gascoigne’s darker tone or the generally darker themes of this second book.

The plot centres around the theft by a sort of evil monk-sorceror person, from Yaztromo’s tower, of a scroll which is needed to free an uber-demon from the rock that it’s imprisoned in. Having stolen said scroll, the miscreant acolyte frees the uber-baddie’s four secondary demons (also imprisoned in a sort of Stonehenge thing) en route to releasing the main demon himself from a mountain. All pretty simple plot-wise, with none of the elaborate war/dimension-jumping/inter-wizard antagonism of The Trolltooth Wars. Indeed, the plot progresses at a more leisurely (but still urgent-feeling) pace and is basically a pursuit of the sorceror/four released demons in a bid to reach the prison-rock of the main demon without a) too many innocent bystanders getting their souls stolen by the demons, and b) the main demon getting released before Darkmane arrives to prevent it (and the inevitable destruction of the world.) So, the plot of Demonstealer is far more akin to a standard FF gamebook plot and this gives it a more claustrophobic and “adventure-like” feel to it, which does work in the sense that these novels are intended to be taken in the FF context. Along the way there are several fairly gruesome killings of various people whilst the four demons hunt for fresh bodies to move around in (one ends up drawing the short straw and having to be a cart-horse at one point, which is a nice touch of dark humour) and Darkmane acquires his sidekick as a direct result of the sidekick wanting revenge on his friend’s having been killed for a shell to house a demon, so there’s some good plot coherence and understandable motives for the reader to sympathise with. In The Trolltooth Wars it was sometimes hard to work out if you were meant to root for Balthus Dire or Zharradan Marr or the fairly obnoxious Darkmane at times, but there is no blurring of the roles in Demonstealer – you are clearly backing the goodies in this book. Plus, Darkmane seems less arrogant (due to the playing-down of Amanour) and therefore is easier to will on to defeat the demons. An interesting point is that far more is made of Darkmane’s dislike of sorcery and there is a pivotal moment where he has to swallow his pride and read the incantation from the all-important scroll, otherwise the main demon will be freed - this is a neat bit of character-development, not dissimilar to the way Luke Skywalker is rather impetuous and naive in Star Wars, but then matures as he becomes more self-aware in The Empire Strikes Back. I like this as it helps the reader/viewer warm to initially slightly annoying characters as they become more experienced adventurers.

So the plot here is far less ambitious than the first novel, but in some ways works better as it feels far more like a FF gamebook would. Plus, Demonstealer has the benefit of being Part 2 of the series so has less to prove to a sceptical audience who expect FF to be a game, not a suspicious-looking attempt at expanding a franchise. There are still various obstacles for Darkmane to negotiate along the way, but the focus here on the end-goal is always very clear. There are no big set-pieces other than the climax, which makes the climax feel far more, erm, climactic than Trolltooth’s catalogue of big events/site-seeing trip around Allansia approach. The final scene of the book where Darkmane is faced with the demon on the mountain is actually quite disturbing (as are the body-snatching attacks along the way) and you do get the feeling that the mission is doomed to fail as the demons are always one step ahead of Darkmane. This adds to the darker tone, but also adds to the impact on the reader, so it works well. There is also continuity from the first novel due to Demonstealer beginning with Darkmane in R&R at Yaztromo’s tower, recovering from the wounds he incurred in his “all-or-nothing” suicidal jump from the Galleykeep at the end of the first novel. Coherence and series-linking is always nice to see in the FF “cycle” as a whole and, as the series was developing into a huge-scale body of work with a by-now fully-established Tokien-esque back-story (in Gascoigne’s Titan – The Fighting Fantasy World), it would have made little sense for this book not to continue in the same vein. It even adds another element of back-story when we discover something about Yaztromo’s past in the context of his having imprisoned the demons in the first place – so he was a proper wizard after all, rather than a doddery old fool who sells you useless “magical” junk in The Forest Of Doom and teaches you far from essential spells in Temple Of Terror.

Art-wise, this book has one of my all-time favourite FF covers and it really sets the tone of the novel with its blacks and reds. Thankfully, Gascoigne’s writing matches the cover perfectly and the tone is consistent and well-suited to the plot throughout the book. A really nice moment comes when we are treated to a performance of a popular Allansian ballad - this really adds to the medieval atmosphere of FF and is yet another layer to the FF folklore that Gascoigne is key in documenting. Sadly, although I’m a fan of Russ Nicholson’s art, the internal incidental art lends very little to this book and the tone would probably have been better-suited to having no internal art at all – but that would hardly fit in with the identity of FF and how FF books “work”, and it doesn’t detract any from the immersion into this novel. It must be said, though, that this novel is written in a more adult manner so internal art is not necessary in this sense.

As this book moves at a less frenetic pace than The Trolltooth Wars and is linear rather than flitting from location to location and scene to scene, it is far easier to pick up and put down and be read in a more casual manner as it is very easy to keep up with Demonstealer’s plot flow. That’s not to say that it doesn’t make for a satisfying cover-to-cover read in one sitting, because it does and is very easy to read, but it is definitely easier to break away from the action and return for another sitting without losing the feel of the novel.

In summary, this is another really good FF novel and is so different from the first that it encourages you to finish it and move onto the third FF novel to see what variety and/or surprises that can offer...

#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.