IN SEARCH OF THE MUNGIES’ GOLD
Steve Jackson
DEATHTRAP ON LEGS
Paul Mason & Steve Williams
THE TOWER OF HADES
Dale Ashman
THE RING OF SEVEN TERRORS
Graeme Davis
THE DREAMING SANDS
Paul Mason
Reviewed by Mark Lain
Steve
Jackson’s Fighting Fantasy – The Introductory
Role-playing Game primer book attempted to turn the FF solo gamebook
concept into a full-blown multi-player RPG, something expanded further with
Marc Gascoigne and Pete Tamlyn’s three book AFF series, which was itself then
developed massively by Arion Games in the early 2000s and beyond. The original
Puffin FF series only produced one full scenario book for SJ’s basic FF RPG, Paul
Mason and Steve Williams’ The Riddling
Reaver, but Warlock magazine
offered several smaller-scale FF RPG scenarios in its pages, all of which
fundamentally required existing familiarity with SJ’s original FF RPG book to
be able to play them.
The first of
these, appearing in Warlock #5, was In Search Of The Mungies’ Gold, a hybrid
campaign and boardgame written by SJ himself, which is played out on a board
also included in the magazine. It additionally requires the GM to read and be
familiar with The Apes Of Mauristatia,
an Out Of The Pit article also
included in that issue, so pretty much everything the GM would need is there
bar the FF RPG book that is a given pre-requisite to have read otherwise I
struggle to understand why you would be attempting to play this! Reading over
the scenario will also reveal that an understanding of the plot of the Sorcery! series (if you are to make the
most of the Hermit character), a copy of The
Shamutanti Hills, and a copy of The
Citadel Of Chaos (that, just like in that book, will win you loads of money
that you are unlikely to need) are also all needed to be able to include
absolutely everything that this scenario asks for. The scenario’s premise
itself is simple. Mungies are apes who like to collect gold (for some reason
that even the text admits is not really clear other than they just seem to like
stealing it) and rumours of their gold stash are doing the rounds in Kharé.
This has attracted the attention of the group who are about to play and they
get in a boat, sail across Lake Lumlé, and thus begins the game as they land
and search around the board looking for the fabled horde. The GM decides in
advance where on the board to locate the 16 game-defined encounters and the
players make their way from board square to board square as they explore the
area and the GM does have the option to add more of their own material if
needed. The instructions do insist on six characters (possibly to make some of
the tougher encounters easier maybe, otherwise I can’t understand exactly why)
and any shortfall in players has to be made up by NPC hired hands played by the
GM who are bribed to do the bidding of the players in the group, player Skill
tests and suitability of potential financial rewards for the NPCs permitting.
The instructions are helpfully clear on how to go about successfully planning
the way encounters are located on the board, and importantly point out that
creatures should be logically placed in their habitats, encounters with NPCs
who can advise on finding the gold are placed in reasonable positions (eg: they
can be found near the boat to get an early hint or somewhere in the wrong direction
to put the adventurers back on the right track), and that the gold is not put
somewhere totally unfair (in the boat being the example the text gives - as
there are two encounters that must precede the gold square I can’t really see
how this can happen, but the text’s point is admittedly a valid one, all the
same).
The
encounters themselves are what makes this piece interesting as the four species
of apes of Mauristatia are well designed and unique, especially the Wraith Apes
who are harder to fight at night than if encountered during the day and are
less likely to attack during the day, which could be handy if the players
happen upon them in daytime (although this would largely be through sheer luck).
Indeed, the GM must track the time of day as the characters move about the
board and, in keeping with Sorcery!,
if they go a day without eating they will suffer a Stamina penalty so there is
added realism in that respect and managing the 5 Provisions each player starts
with is a key part of being victorious, although finding the bomba fruit will
definitely help in this respect. The Champaque is also intriguing in that it
can grow progressively stronger if certain conditions are met. The titular
Mungies themselves can only be fought if a player has a Skill of 10+ otherwise
they will just run away as they are very fast so a group where every player has
lower Skill scores can in theory have an advantage, especially as there are
seven Mungies to contend with. Conversely, a weak party may struggle against
the lethal Manticore that can be found if players are particularly
unfortunate!
In terms of
difficulty, notwithstanding the Manticore and potential instadeath at the hands
of a Blade Tree, this scenario is not too hard, and the added option of using
the GM-controlled NPCs (if there are any in the party and they can be convinced
to fight on the players’ behalf) makes this all the more the case, and a
tactical party will think to use this and the players should be thinking
tactically anyway. Slightly harsh is the rule that Escaping is not allowed
(especially if the players find the Manticore), but it does allow the various
traits of the different apes etc to come to the fore much more. The relatively
small size of the playing area (and the possibility that the party could just
blunder their way straight on to the correct path to the gold with no real
resistance) does make for what is likely to be a short game but the GM does
explicitly have the option to include the contingency plan of including the return
journey back to the boat should the players find the treasure too quickly.
Obviously a savvy party may well opt for the same safe route back but the GM
could of course subvert this and reorganise some unused encounters that have
arrived on the scene in the intervening period. The return journey coda adds a
double-jeopardy factor as the boat is found to be damaged meaning only one
player can ultimately leave with the gold so it becomes a winner takes all
situation which does unravel the collaborative aspect but is something of a
potential twist in the tale (unless of course the party just decides to give up
on the gold and abandon it in favour of camaraderie, thus completely defeating
the object of the exercise).
The
all-important replayability of course comes from the randomness of how the
board can be laid out (just like SJ’s subsequent WOFM boardgame) which does make this different to most pre-designed
scenarios as they can be very proscriptive and there is a noticeable absence of
scripted prompts to read out to the players which emphasises even more the
boardgame feel of this piece. However, I cannot help feeling that there is an
element of lazy design with the “refer to this or that book for ideas” element
and, although the play area is small, alternate pre-written options for
encounters to allow subsequent playthroughs to be very different would have
been a nice add-on. That said, the inclusion of the various apes does make this
more interesting and worthwhile than it would otherwise have been and there is
a clear sense of place to the setting which overall makes this a decent first
stab at a scenario from Warlock
magazine. Personally I would have liked something longer for players to get
their teeth into more but the return journey can allow for the unused material
to still get included if needed and will extend the game’s duration, so SJ was
thinking on his feet when it came to making this more than fifteen minutes’
worth of play. Incidentally, a gamebook adaptation of In Search Of The Mungies’ Gold was included as the mini-FF in issue
4 of Warlock’s spiritual successor Fighting Fantazine in 2010 which greatly
fleshed out the original premise and concepts.
Warlock #7 gave us the next of these scenarios
in the form of Paul Mason and Steve Williams’ Deathtrap On Legs, a sequel to Deathtrap
Dungeon that follows directly on from the end of that book and probably
works best if one of the party has genuinely just completed it (the
instructions do say to do this) given that the concept here is that the winner
of The Walk has just slept off his or her ordeal and is joined by a team of
groupies (the rest of the playing party) who watched the victor enter and
subsequently emerge alive from the Trial of Champions. The groupies have to
join forces with the victor and, as one, they head off to an inn in Fang where
the group is mysteriously invited to get some R&R at the tower of one
Badedas the Blue (shades of Tolkien in that naming convention). However, little
do they know that the tricksy Baron Sukumvit has spiked the victor’s laurel
crown with a smelly juice to allow him to be tracked by a vicious Crocosaurus
ridden by a Gumar hunter whose job it is to retrieve the 10,000 Gold Pieces
prize money that Sukumvit is not best-pleased to have parted with and to
silence any possible news spreading of the besting of his famous Trial (in
other words, to kill the victor), so the whole thing is a set-up. Tangled up in
all this too is Jaiphrai Ah’cha (one of Mason-Williams’ many punny characters
that resurface in various of their FFs and is an alternative identity of their
favourite creation, the Riddling Reaver) who is despatched to keep an eye on
proceedings and make sure the Gumar hunter comes out victorious at the end of
all this. As an aside at this point, it is worth noting that it is in Deathtrap On Legs that we discover that
the character who leads contestants into the Trial is the very same Mr Ah’cha
so that is a nice bit of lore to come out of this piece. I think for
authenticity, not only should the victor be played by an actual immediate
winner of Deathtrap Dungeon, but the
groupies should also be played by characters who have been a party to the
entrance and emergence of the same character - some simple general background
given to these players by the GM would suffice to set the scene for the
non-victor players, but this would definitely add to the immersiveness and
understanding of who is who. The text does state that the victor character can
carry over anything they found in Deathtrap
Dungeon (which makes perfect sense) but, bar any obvious “open use” items
such as food or weapons, their usefulness would have to be edited in as custom
moments by the GM for this aspect to really work, but it would definitely add
something and drive the idea of continuation more effectively.
So, what of
this highly-promising idea then? Well, this is the problem because there is not
actually much to this scenario other than the gambit of getting to the wizard
in one piece via a plain where nothing happens unless the GM throws in a couple
of random plains-based encounters of their choosing, a forest where the first
crocosaurus harassment takes place, and the tower episode which does have some
surprises but is the only decent part and even then only really breaks down
into two events plus the necessary crocosaurus and Gumar killings. An added
problem is that most of the players will be asleep during the crocosaurus
attacks in the forest as only the player on watch will be awake to experience
what is going on, although several visits from the creature can happen so that
different players can be awake to experience the same moment which would add
some context. Further exacerbating all this (or the lack of “all” in this) is
that, other than the rather strong reptilian beastie with its Sk 14 St 18
stats, hardly much of a challenge is presented. Jaiphrai does a vanishing act,
Badedas has been turned into a fairly weak zombie, the Gumar is hardly strong,
and an inconsequential wild boar vs freaking out Hillman moment is not going to
cause a party of the intended 3-6 players much trouble. Granted there are a
couple of neat but very slight moments where the GM gets to have some grunty
gesticulatory fun trying to articulate the Hillman telling the group about the
crocosaurus he has seen passing by (if they can interpret this at all) and
inside Badedas’ tower is a pool not unlike that where the famous Bloodbeast
resides in DD (it’s actually a
teleporting portal in this case though) but any excitement that could be caused
by the possibility of another Bloodbeast encounter is dashed quickly.
In essence,
this can be summed-up as, basically, off the group goes, they try and avoid
being killed by the crocosaurus/hunter, they get to the tower hoping to meet
their host, they find the maguffin of the piece (that Badedas is dead and they
have been duped into going there so they can be killed off), and then it all
ends very suddenly. It is kind of like an alternate extended ending that got
deleted from a movie of DD and has
been included as an extra feature on the DVD edition. It is unlikely to take
long to play (maybe as little as 30 minutes) and definitely needs the GM to add
more random (ie non-plot) cameos in to put some meat on it and get around the
lesser issue of everything being directly related to the plot which does
detract from the realism that unconnected encounters and moments in an exterior
setting should give. It is far less imaginative than we have come to expect
from the Mason-Williams team but it does have the “big reveal” ending that
Mason was always a proponent of in his FFs.
In conclusion
then, Deathtrap On Legs is fairly
inconsequential overall. It is a good concept in the way it follows DD in a potentially intriguing manner
but sadly it makes nothing of its possibilities and little more can really be
said about it. The title is pretty neat though.
The Tower Of Hades, written by reader Dale Ashman and
presented in Warlock #8, is an
altogether lengthier and much more involved affair than the previous two
efforts and, in spite of the action taking place all in one location as opposed
an outdoors trek like In Search Of The
Mungies’ Gold and Deathtrap On Legs,
it feels much bigger overall, largely due to the sheer amount of material and
content incorporated into this scenario. It takes another simple premise (the
group’s friend, Belkor the Dwarf, has failed to show for a rendezvous so they
go to where he was last known to be and try to establish what has become of
him) but this time makes way more of it. Initially, the group explores the inn
where Belkor likely disappeared (the Horizon Inn) and unearths a mysterious
cult at work. From there, they find an entrance hidden below the inn buildings
which leads first into some underworld caverns, and then into the Tower Of
Hades of the title. This may not sound big map-wise but there are about 40
areas to explore, which is a lot for a “mini-scenario”. There is a lot of
sleuthing required on the part of the players and this is far from a simple
adventure but the inn section is not especially tough and acts more as a
prelude and basic intro to the concept. It is when the group enters the actual
tower itself that this really erupts into a seriously challenging scenario.
The tower is
on several levels and, as the players explore, the real scale of what is going
on becomes apparent. In many ways this has echoes of what would come with
Zharradan Marr’s marranga abominations in Creature
Of Havoc as the big baddie of the piece (Ar Gadayon, an evil sorcerer) is
conducting vivisection experiments on various creatures and unfortunate locals
with a view to creating an unholy army of nasties to unleash on the world
(shades of another SJ effort there then as this is not dissimilar to Balthus
Dire’s shenanigans in The Citadel Of
Chaos). An interesting point to note here is exactly what world this is as
this scenario is set in something called “The Outlands” and appears to have no
Titan link of any kind. This is not a problem, on the one hand it does make it
exist in a vacuum within the FF cannon, but it does at least show originality
as the author has not tried to piggyback on another author’s work – potential
then to genuinely play this as a standalone scenario but I admit there is no
real reason why the GM could not retcon The Outlands into the standard FF
worlds somewhere to incorporate it into a larger campaign. But I digress, let’s
get back to the tower. Each level of the tower has numerous rooms to explore as
the story reveals itself and the players must piece together the
ever-increasing amount of evidence they find to a) rescue Belkor, and b) take
out Ar Gadayon himself. Some elements (especially some power spheres and
deactivating a light beam) are complex and would require a lot of lateral
thinking by the players which makes this feel more like one of the more
elaborate D&D modules and is a far cry from either of the previous two Warlock scenarios in this respect, and these
sections do require very close and repeated reading by the GM to fully
understand what is being described. What I really like about this piece though
is how focussed it is on its concept and how well-designed and developed this
is, from the hierarchy that can impact events in various ways (dress as a
higher member of The Order that makes up Ar Gadayon’s acolytes and you will be
afforded more respect and some moments will be made easier than if you dress as
a lower member or don’t opt for disguising at all) to the gradual revealing of
the vivisection aspects, through the way the tower acts as a self-contained living
space for the sorcerer’s minions (both human and Ogre), and even the way Ar
Gadayon himself is presented as a cultured insane genius of sorts. Depending on
how skilfully or clumsily the players negotiate the game map (from even the
very first part in the inn) this adventure can be made easier or harder and
some members of the group can easily get captured and become destined for
torture/experimentation themselves unless the other players can find where they
have been taken so the chance of the group getting split up is pretty high
which will obviously make things harder. Tangling with the Order too early in
the piece can be disastrous (and the Order are very strong opponents with stats
in double figures) as can doing obviously stupid things like antagonising a
massive regular whose table at the inn is permanently reserved for him or
trying to fight the local militia who can show up if the group causes too much
trouble in the inn section. The inn section is largely about ground work in
introducing what is going on and trying to keep the group in one piece before
locating the tower and unravelling the crux of the piece.
Something
that makes this stand head and shoulders above its two predecessors is the
focus on plot (Mungies is just a
smash-and-grab exercise and Deathtrap
has a concept but it barely gets used to any good effect) as the players
discover more and more as they progress, whilst remaining fixed on the original
aim of finding Belkor. Once it becomes apparent what is really happening a two-fold
challenge comes into play of rescuing the group’s friend and also vanquishing
Ar Gadayon. Obviously Belkor can be found either alive or dead (if the former,
then he is a usefully strong NPC to have in tow for the later stages of the
game) so there may only be one aim albeit tinged with revenge, but the ultimate
victory condition would be to defeat Ar Gadayon and have everyone including
Belkor live to tell the tale. But any kind of win in this adventure is hard
fought as (and the intro even warns of this) the scenario grows increasingly
harder as you get further along and the Final Act really is very hard indeed
(way more so than Mungies or Deathtrap), especially due to the
amount of logic and thinking out of the box required from the players to
negotiate the tower given that the earlier two scenarios were mostly just
killing opponents to get to the goal, whereas this one asks the players to
divine how to operate and/or deactivate mechanisms, how to best approach
situations, etc etc. In other words, this is a much more nuanced and
traditional take on role-playing where brains will win over brawn even though
sheer strength is still needed in places (and strength in numbers for the
multi-opponent fights with tough enemies). To curb the psychotic approach in
the inn section though, the number of spare seats at each table in the inn is
cleverly limited so the full party cannot join any one table together, which is
a neat touch that also requires the party to separate and gather intelligence
to bring back to the group. Conversely, in the tower any combat is
better-handled collectively as the difficulty ramps up but, again, combat
should be avoided if only to be strong enough to handle the end game.
I have
noticed one glaring error early on where a group of adventurers can be met in
the inn – the text says there are six of them then goes on to only ever
describe five of them (a similarly famous error existed in Blade Runner so is this a gag?) but a sensible GM would notice this
and either add a sixth or just tell the group there are five, so this is hardly
a crisis. There is some fun to be had by the GM in playing the barman, Belkor,
Ar Gadayon, and the various cultists and ogres, and everything feels very full
and fleshed-out in this scenario. The content of the tower in particular is
very original and intriguing material. Admittedly, it could be a long session
to play, especially given all the problem-solving, but RPG scenarios are more
often long than short (brevity was a criticism I levelled against the previous Warlock offerings) and that just makes
for a more satisfying adventure with lots for the players to get stuck into.
There is also no real need for the GM to improvise in this scenario and nothing
needs adding to make it more exciting to play. In fact, the whole thing is so
focussed and neatly-packaged that any random stuff would feel at odds, plus
where would you put it anyway given the play map here?
This scenario
was the one that raised the bar for Warlock’s
FF RPG offerings in my eyes. It feels complete, is very well thought-out, is a
serious challenge for the players, and is full of logical and interesting
moments. It is arguably a bit too difficult at the end, but this just makes it
more climactic and the mixed emotion element of Belkor being either alive or
dead at the end makes it all the more worthwhile. Ar Gadayon’s mini-empire is
fascinating as is what he is up to and his tower is well-worth a visit. Really
good stuff, particularly as this was a reader submission rather than a
professional effort by one of the GW inner circle.
The third
consecutively-published scenario (in Warlock
#9) was Graeme Davis’ The Ring Of
Seven Terrors and was a very effective treat. Very much a cameo to be
incorporated into a larger overall campaign (otherwise this may feel a bit
random and incomplete), this is effectively a sequence of seven challenges
bookended by the over-arching idea of a burial barrow surrounded by a stone
circle. The quality and interest here comes in the variety of shifting
environments and encounters inter-related to the way the stones and the tomb
morph from one form and appearance to another, each transition designed to suit
a theme. Overcome one challenge and the circle/tomb transforms into its next
configuration, it’s as simple as that, but the nature of what the players are
faced with is far from simple as each presents a “Terror” that the party must
contend with in various different ways.
First up is
War, made a little trickier by the potential for the group to become separated
and part of it being unable to see what has become of the other part. This first
section generally goes easy on the players though and involves an easy fight on
a post-battle scene with a group of skeletons equal in number to how many
players are facing them. A gentle opener then. This is followed by Famine, the
scene having transformed into a desert wasteland, the stones and tomb now
sandstone. This one is deceptive as it seems there is no threat, but in actual
fact Sand Weevils are eating the group’s supplies and the result can be serious
if bitten causing terrible hunger and worse. Next the scene switches to a sea
of vile brown slime, the barrow having become a mudbank and the stones dead
tree stumps. This bleak locale is Plague and the party must fight a group of
Decayers (again equal to as many as there are in the party) which can inflict a
slow-reacting rotting disease further down the line (another reason why this is
best played within a larger campaign so that the ramifications can really be
felt to full effect). If everyone is still alive (and they should be as the
first three stages are very survivable) the group next faces Madness as the
tomb becomes a black domed crypt supported by seven pillars (the stones’ latest
form). The exercise here is to deal with a Banshee, complete with its ability
to mesmerise and render defenceless any hapless player caught in the spell of its
wail. The Banshee is the first physically strong opponent here with Sk 12 St 12
and can only be fought by untransfixed players but the rub here is that she
will only attack mesmerised characters getting autohits so this is the first
stage that could really separate the strong from the weak and potentially
deplete the party. Assuming at least some players survive, we move onto Death,
the scene unchanged but it is now night and signs of other tombs and burials
can be discerned. All the group’s weapons are now made from silver and, as
before, a number of opponents equal to the current party headcount appears,
this time Crypt Stalkers. GD has been generous here in giving the group the
required magical weapons to fight these opponents otherwise this would have
been wildly unfair and the Crypt Stalkers are pretty weak (Sk 8 St 6) but they
do have special attacks, but again this is offset as any Crypt Stalker that
gets a kill will vanish. Stage 6 sees a wall of flame appear around the circle
and the stones/tomb are now made from a red-veined black stone which smokes
ominously. The group’s weapons have also taken on the same appearance being
black metal with red warping streaks. This disturbing and weird scene is the
prelude to a fight with a Hell Demon with Sk 14 and 4 Attacks, so we are in
seriously tough territory now (quite literally Hell). As a gesture of
benevolence, the Demon’s Stamina is calculated proportionate to the number of
players +6 ie given that this scenario is suggested for 3-7 players it will
have St 9 at its weakest and 13 at its strongest so, in spite of its very high
Skill and its multi-attacks, it can be physically not too extreme a
proposition. If the group are still standing after this, erm, hellish
experience, there is a bright flash and everything turns white, the ground,
barrow, and tomb all now being mirrored as the group faces the seventh terror:
Self. Each player must fight a duplicate of themselves with the same Skill and
Stamina as they have. Once each doppelganger is dead everything goes back to
how it looked at the start of the scenario including (generously and possibly
relievingly) the reincarnation of any players who may have died at any point in
the series of ordeals (albeit with only 1 Stamina point!) To allow for some
continuation into subsequent scenarios (and in keeping with the famine episode)
there is a narrow chance that some players may still have their silver or
red/black sword and its relevant stat bonuses, which is a nice touch and helps
this feel part of a bigger campaign/story. Survive this and the party has
defeated the Seven Terrors. Ah, but then comes the final challenge because,
remember, this started out with the players finding a stone circle with a tomb
at its centre which now opens up to allow them access. In they go and they find
the occupant who has become a Death Wraith. He is not especially strong but the
restricting interior of the tomb means only two players can viably fight him
and, unless one of them was lucky enough to find they still had a magical
weapon, they must make a grab at one that is to hand otherwise they cannot
wound this last nasty. If they do succeed the reward is lucrative and worth it.
What this
scenario has that the others discussed so far do not is a relentless pace with
no let up or time for the players to draw breath as one encounter follows
another in quick succession. The energy and tension grows as the cameos get
ever tougher and more foreboding and the final analysis where the players
literally face themselves is very clever (in fact, the whole thing is very
clever). There is also far more invention on show here than in its three
predecessors and Davis was at the time quite an exponent of the FF RPG concept
having contributed several articles to Warlock
developing the system. My personal favourites from the Terrors are the grim and
gloomy Plague, the vicious Hell, and the highly original Self (everyone’s worst
fear is to face themself in mortal combat lol), but everything offered here is
great material delivered with atmosphere and impact to spare.
Another point
of interest here though is the art, as every one of the encounters (bar Self
which would be impossible to illustrate) has a single illustration to accompany
it and these here are by Trevor Hamond, an artist with a truly unique style,
but whose work for FF was restricted to three issues of Warlock only and nothing else. This is a huge shame as his art is
very impactful and striking, looking to me almost like a primitive version of
Gary Ward and Edward Crosby’s woodcut style from Caverns Of The Snow Witch, and he should have been used more in my
opinion.
The Ring Of Seven Terrors is a superb scenario which, if built
into a larger campaign as an extended episode, would be a brilliant inclusion
to both reward and penalise the party, and is the first really essential FF RPG
scenario from Warlock magazine.
We would have
to wait until what would prove to be Warlock’s
swansong with Issue 13 to get another FF RPG scenario from its pages, the high
concept The Dreaming Sands by Paul
Mason, itself another part of PM’s ever-growing Riddling Reaver-related story
arc. This piece does not specify how many players it is designed for which
makes it less proscribed in that sense. It also starts with a sure-fire crowd-pleaser
by setting its opening in Port Blacksand’s ever-popular Black Lobster tavern.
All very promising then. The concept is that Lord Azzur hires the group to
resolve a “plague” that has beset the city. The nature of this plague is within
itself alone a very clever idea as peoples’ nightmares are becoming reality and
wreaking havoc. At the bottom of all this is of course that pesky Reaver again
and, whilst no prior knowledge of his activities is necessary, it would
definitely be of benefit to put all this in a wider context and make it feel
like an extension of the adventure the players would have hopefully already
experienced in The Riddling Reaver.
The group is hired to locate the source of the problem and eliminate it by
heading south from Port Blacksand to see what they can find. Before leaving the
city they cross paths with Angelica (the Reaver’s daughter) who masquerades as
a helping hand but is actually there to try and scupper them and prevent them
reaching what turns out to be the Reaver’s castle.
The adventure
per se involves a plains trek divided into several pre-defined sections (no
GM-determined layout this time around, which does make this something of a
one-shot in design terms once the party has won), each with a set
encounter/cameo in it. There is a well-balanced mix of the conventional and the
unique here with wolves/elves/centaurs/ogres/trolls offset by previously unseen
creatures such as Nikrechauns and the Lords of Gond (the leader being the very
powerful Naijem-Nosoth). Obviously the unique material is the more interesting:
Nikrechauns are sort of pre-school Leprechauns that are far less troublesome
but will turn into Leprechauns once they have got the requisite pot of gold
together, and the Naijem-Nosoth (an anagram of Jamie Thomson for the more
observant) is lethal but is also vulnerable to high-pitched noises to give some
fairness to him being potentially over-powered otherwise. However, the standard
stuff is also well-handled with a Dark Elf encounter in particular being very
neat and totally in-keeping with the plot as they are convinced the players are
a dream and do not in fact exist! The Centaurs are fun too as they are
basically on a sort of religious pilgrimage. What may be becoming apparent in
all this is that killing is not necessarily the way forward in this scenario
(the Trolls are so stupid that they can just be baffled into non-aggression,
for example) and PM’s preference for plot and concept over strong-arming one’s
way through is very much to the fore again here. That said, there is Angelica
to deal with sooner or later and she is very strong (Sk 14 St 20) and a force
to be reckoned with.
A really
interesting mechanic here is that the actual location of the Reaver’s castle is
never given away and with good reason: the players must either visit every area
to reveal it or, and I think this is probably PM’s intended approach (assuming
the players can think like him and attempt this) is to roll a dice to decide
where to go next and, lo and behold, his castle will appear suddenly. This is
an original way to handle the finding of the player’s goal and adds the
randomness of the whole Reaver concept to the “true path”. Even more randomness
comes into play once the players are in the castle. There is no castle map and
the GM simply improvises an intentionally impossible and unmappable design.
Again, random choice rather than trying to be rational and put any sense of
reason into the equation is the only way the party can locate the Reaver
himself. In his chamber is the source of the problematic nightmares (a sorcerer
called Alokurga) and, in itself, this is easy to resolve assuming the players
can use a lateral thinking technique to get him out of his dream state (which
causes his death at unseen hands). However, the Reaver then appears (the owner
of the unseen killing hands of course), goes into a typical bad guy
confessional soliloquy, and promptly vanishes. And that’s that.
But, there is
a whole other level to this scenario too: dream attacks. And this is where the
GM really comes into play. Whilst the map of the scenario and its various
encounters is set, the dream attack concept is not and the GM can choose how
and where to attack the players with dreams of whatever kind he or she can
conjure up in their imagination. This is where it can get really interesting
(and potentially terrifying) as the players will quickly start to question what
is real and what is not, making the elements designed by Paul Mason seem all
the more threatening and unpredictable. Indeed, the over-arching theme here is
the blurred line between reality and dreams and, as the aim is to stop the
dream plague that has hit Port Blacksand, it makes perfect sense to have the
players getting affected by this too otherwise it is just a means to an end
that could get forgotten in what PM is clearly trying to avoid from becoming
little more than a seek-and-slay exercise.
The dream
aspect is quite demanding on the GM but there is fun to be had in trying to be
as warped as possible with this aspect. As with The Riddling Reaver, the GM is also expected to come up with
cryptic ways of responding when playing the part of the Nikrechauns, which
could be a challenge requiring some decent pre-planning. But these are just two
examples of how original and different this scenario is and, when handled as
intended, this is a great little adventure for a sharp-minded group of
(probably more experienced) players. Mason’s usual tendency to emphasise plot
over play is not as evident as usual here and he really gets the balance right
between concept and a really satisfying adventure. For sure, this is more
cerebral than most scenarios and is not really suitable for a group that just
wants to kill everything and collect the spoils, but this is a welcome change
and if GM’d properly this is a very intelligent scenario to both play and
referee. Kudos to Mason for taking a risk that paid off with this.
So, Warlock made a concerted effort to
develop the FF RPG concept which deserves credit. However, the results were
very mixed, ranging from pretty empty and uninteresting to extremely good.
There is simple stuff here and very intelligent stuff, which would suit a
variety of playing requirements in terms of what people are looking for. Some
of these are very set by the creators, others are more freeform and require
greater input from the GM. Each has its merits but some are definitely way
better than others. But for variety, I cannot fault what Warlock tried to do with these efforts.
