Market Mayhem

MARKET MAYHEM

Ian Livingstone

Reviewed by Mark Lain

Included as a free pull-out centrepiece with Issue 3 of Warlock magazine in November 1984, Market Mayhem has the distinction of being the very first FF boardgame, as well as the very first official additional material (beyond the two scenarios included in the book) to be produced to exploit the Fighting Fantasy - The Role-playing Game system created by Steve Jackson. The board is a simple two-page black-and-white spread divided into a grid with a few perfunctory simple pictures in some squares to add a bit of interest. Fourteen illustrated character profile cards in a hideous olive green describe the different player characters, and a bunch of small square chits with just words/names on them act as player character tokens (these are in the same bile-like green as the character cards to differentiate them from the NPCs and items), NPC tokens, and various items that can be picked up as you go around the board (it is worth mentioning here that the item cards can be used as projectile weapons by testing Skill - a nice touch of realism as it means there are ways to hurt other players beyond just one-on-one combat in adjacent squares with its associated risk element). Two pages of instructions with a couple of nice illustrations finish the package off. The art throughout is by someone called Dave Eastbury (his only work for FF) who, as far as I can tell from a Google search, is a comics artist who worked on The Beano, etc. The art is really nice though and is a sort of fusion of Russ Nicholson and Bob Harvey's styles with a little bit of Iain McCaig thrown in, none of which is a bad thing. It's a shame we did not see more from Eastbury in gamebooks. The Rules are very straightforward and explain the setting to add a bit of colour, run through all the characters including NPCs, and basically cover everything you need to know to play. The beauty there being that you can get straight on with the game. The components are intended to be mounted on stiff card otherwise they would be far too light and flimsy to serve any practical purpose and one sneeze from a player would send everything flying into oblivion and ruin the game. 

The game itself is a mass battle melee affair played in the format of turns of Movement-Action (something White Dwarf also specialised in pre-Warlock) and these are a great way of introducing beginners (and/or people you are trying to convince to get into the hobby) to role-playing games and how fun they can be (as well as how uncomplicated they can be if you choose to let them and steer away from book-keeping, table cross-referencing, and endless dice rolls in lieu of ever actually doing any adventuring). Each player character has a set goal or task to complete but, oddly, the introduction suggests the real point of the game is to have everyone kill everyone else to get a last man standing situation, which I do not think is the idea. Surely the aim is to complete your defined task and get out alive rather than do your task then start indiscriminately killing people, especially when only a couple of the tasks are of the assassination type. There needs to be an element of assassin aims in the game as that allows certain players to become each others' secret targets and greatly adds to the fun and tactics of the game, but to override all of the character motivations with a battle royale does not work for me. It also presents the issue that, if each player plays as intended in the Rules and only has one character, as soon as someone has killed you for what might seem to be no reason at all, you are out of the game and can become a spectator for a rather long time as the other players duke it out. This game also has no apparent time limit or jeopardy in the sense of the authorities wading in (yes, the market guards can get involved and increase in number, but all you have to do to keep them at bay is keep killing them) so can go on forever, something that was addressed successfully in Warlock's later similar mass battle game with FF rules, the Judge Dredd-themed Shuggy Hall Brawl, wherein the setting gets raided by the Judges and everyone gets arrested after x number of game turns so there is much more of a sense of urgency. But Market Mayhem does not have this and, unless you add house rules, there is no actual achievable resolution other than everyone just deciding to kill each other. 

The subject of the various characters' aims is worth discussing as there is a lot of variety to them to keep things interesting and add lots of replay value as you try out different characters over subsequent plays: some are out to kill others, some are looking for items, some want money or food, some are more esoteric and open to interpretation (ie require you to role-play), etc. The simpler and more tangible aims are often the more difficult (especially the hunter-killer ones), whereas the subtler ones such as having a good time can be completed in more than one way, requiring creativity on the parts of the players. For example, the market contains several NPC sideshows (a dancing bear, a fire-eater, a husband-and-wife knife throwing act, etc) all of which are forms of entertainment and can be interpreted by players as being resolutions to their aims, if they employ a bit of imagination (which, let's face it, is kind of the idea with RPGs so this is a success in that sense). The character who seeks money to repair his temple also needs to be played with a bit of lateral thinking and watching his player try and convince other players and NPCs to part with their cash and make a donation in increasingly elaborate or convoluted ways is a definite highlight. The NPCs are, for the most part, support players, and are all controlled by the referee (yes, this is a RPG so it needs a referee), and include the aforementioned entertainers as well as numerous stallholders, market guards, and a few of the typical annoyances found in these sorts of places such as a firebrand who jumps on issues bandwagons and tries to help people, a woman in the pillory, and some female slaves that are on sale. No prizes for guessing then that some of these characters hold the solutions to some of the player characters' goals. 

As the game has a referee, this is where it can be adapted and there is no doubt in my mind that Market Mayhem demands modification and house rules to really draw out its potential. Firstly, there is no way in the game to restore any lost Stamina which means you will slowly and inevitably head towards death if you start to get wounded. This is a bit frustrating, especially if you are an assassination (or spite) target and, as several of the market stalls and NPCs are specifically there just to sell food and drink, it seems to be a gaping hole that the two cannot be connected, so I like to include Stamina replenishment through eating food you have bought. By extension then, secondly, also allowing players to start with some Gold Pieces is useful to allow them to a) buy food, and b) experience certain things such as watching the bear dance (or just bribing each other, which will happen in role-playing sooner or later, especially if players form alliances, which often does happen in Market Mayhem). Also, if no characters actually have a defined amount of money, the player trying to get donations (for one) surely cannot complete their aim, which is a bit of an issue. Thirdly, and this is more nuanced, there needs to be a motivation for each character to bother with their aim at all rather than just being psychotic, so introducing the idea of winning points for completing an aim adds another layer to the outcome of the game, often alongside leaving the market alive as soon as the aim is completed (which also avoids the aim-negating mass battle ending being the only possible outcome of the game). Fourthly, the mileage you can get from the game will only last as long as every character has been played by every player so the introduction of additional elements with scenarios or further characters would eventually have to come into play to avoid the game being eventually redundant. And finally, to avoid it being one-note, I do find this plays best with just three or four players (officially it caters for 3 to 15 players with one always being the referee), each controlling two or three characters each as that adds variety to the scope of each players' aims and also avoids someone getting just one particularly weak or overpowered character (or one with a less interesting goal) and deals better with the problem of someone dying at an early stage and sitting the bulk of the game out whilst getting increasingly more bored. 

The actual look of the game and its components is very much a product of a time when these games were acceptably simpler visually and it does not stand up visually anymore (and was probably also rather basic and austere even then, although it was free so we can't complain). Time has moved on and boardgame players demand much more in terms of production values nowadays. The Rules do suggest the game is more effective if played with minis (and it is) notwithstanding trying to remember which mini is meant to represent which character, although that is easily solved in various ways that are hopefully fairly obvious. With production values in mind, an excellent decision was made by FF fan Kevin Abbotts in 2017 to create a revamped version with all-new colour box art by Mike Tenebrae, an A1-sized full-colour illustrated board, colour octagonal character tokens, illustrated item tokens, an 8-page A4 rule book, colour character cards (yay, the horrible olive green is gone) and Adventure Sheets for tracking stats etc, and even three suggested scenarios to open the concept out. He produced two professionally-printed copies, one of which was used for demo play sessions at Fighting Fantasy Fest 2 in London in September 2017, the other being gifted to Ian Livingstone. Fast forward to the COVID saga in mid-2020 and the Abbotts reboot of the game was generously made available to the general public in a hi-res print-and-play format through the Fighting Fantasy website. This new version is definitely an improvement and not just for visual reasons. The inclusion of the three scenarios takes it beyond the aim completion or just kill everybody gambit of the original, although I will say that only the pirate scenario really works for me, probably because it adds to my house rule idea of players winning points, but also because it gives the various item cards scattered around the board an additional purpose beyond just being thrown at other players as each type of item has a points value when given to the pirates, the spade (which there is only one of) being the highest so the players can engage in an item hunt alongside their own goals. Playing for points raises the game well above a simple slaughter and means anyone who cannot complete a goal for whatever reason can still theoretically win just by collecting lots of item cards and giving them to the pirates. There are however some issues with the new version that could easily have been solved: the text has many typos and a bit of proofreading would have made this look far better; the instructions for set up are on the very last page for some reason; and, the biggest problem by far, the list of NPC descriptions and purposes is completely missing meaning, to actually play the game as intended, you need to have the original as well to plug this gaping hole. Indeed, when I play I actually play in a hybrid version, with the NPCs represented by the original version's square chits (to easily distinguish them), the NPC descriptions by necessity also coming from the original, the referee uses the green character cards too from the original to track player progress and be able to know what they are trying to achieve, whilst the rest of the game uses the new version which is just visually far more arresting, is more impacting for the size difference, and has better resources for each player, plus the handy character stats/weapons tables in the new version's rule book are really useful for at-a-glance checks by the referee.

Market Mayhem, in its original Warlock form is important because it was the first of its kind and, as a melee game, was great fun and very effective. But it did not properly handle character aims and made them secondary and with no real incentive to achieve. It was very basic aesthetically though. The updated Abbotts version fully addresses the production values aspect to create a very visually impressive game. Adding the scenarios raises it above the simple outcomes of the original, but the many typos and the massive mistake by missing out all the NPC descriptions is a problem so bad that you still need the original to fix it. As a game, one of the real beauties of Market Mayhem is how adaptable it is, as you can add the suggested points system, create an infinite number of custom characters with new missions (home-made expansions basically), and it is very simple to learn and just get on with playing. However, Warlock magazine topped this by producing a much better take on the same concept with Shuggy Hall Brawl in Issue 11 as it addressed the time vs urgency issue and added way more interesting character motivations. Shuggy Hall Brawl is the better game for this, although it is not an Allansia-set piece whereas Market Mayhem sits within the FF world and mythos and that alone will probably make most people favour it over the later sci-fi game. Bottom line is though, that Market Mayhem is hugely enjoyable and fun and is a great gateway to more complex RPG material and also to the FF rules and concept.

#22: The Dungeon On Blood Island

 

THE DUNGEON ON BLOOD ISLAND

Ian Livingstone

Reviewed by Mark Lain

The 40th Anniversary of the publication in 1984 of Deathtrap Dungeon brought us the long hoped for Deathtrap Dungeon 3. Except it isn’t #3, it’s #2. At least in the Scholastic continuity it’s #2 as opposed the Puffin continuity that already had #2 in the form of Trial Of Champions. But Scholastic didn’t reprint ToC so this new book is not really DD3 other than that it clearly is if we remember that the Puffin series exists, except that it isn’t because of the new continuity, but for the fact that it is because there are now three of them! Allow me to explain… Someone (possibly YOU) won Deathtrap Dungeon – this fact is undeniable if we can have any sequels at all. In Trial Of Champions Baron Sukumvit was unhappy about this so he completely rebuilt his dungeon making it even more deadly but Lord Carnuss (Baron Sukumvit’s rather jealous and spiteful brother) decided to undermine him by hiring (well, press-ganging really) his own champion to beat the rebuilt dungeon – this YOU was not the same YOU as the one who defeated the first iteration and, on winning, this particular second YOU kills Lord Carnuss in a final act of revenge for all the horrible things Carnuss did to you at the start of the second book. So far then in the story arc, the dungeon has been bested twice, by two different YOUs, and Carnuss is dead. Roll on Part 3 and Carnuss is alive again which is clearly a bit of an issue when we think about the Puffin story arc. So we have to ignore that arc (we already have done in the Scholastic sequence generally anyway) and accept a new one where Carnuss was not killed by YOU #2 at the end of ToC because none of that happened. Or rather, it actually DID happen but in a different way as the Introduction to this new book explains: that YOU (the one “working” for Carnuss) died trying to defeat the dungeon that Carnuss was so jealous of, so Carnuss has had a new and rather more ambitious idea of building a rival dungeon on the titular Blood Island which, due to a convenient (and presumably not entirely coincidental) building schedule, is ready for its first contestants shortly before the annual trip to Fang is due to take place so everyone flocks to Carnuss’ version instead. Oh, and rather importantly, just to really piss Sukumvit off, the prize for winning is one of the most valuable objects in Allansia (the Orb of Fang) which Carnuss won from his brother in a dice game. So, the series has been retconned so Carnuss is still alive which puts this new book immediately after DD and in fact also after ToC but assumes the YOU in ToC cannot win hence Scholastic not reprinting the original second book and instead making an oblique reference to it here, otherwise nothing would make sense anymore. In a nutshell then, for the purposes of DD3 actually making sense, it would be helpful if you could just forget you ever played Trial Of Champions please.

Anyway, now that we understand the premise, and we have finished reading this book’s unusually long (for FF) Introduction, we now know what is going on and how Carnuss can still be drawing breath. An important point to make here incidentally is that the Introduction tells us that we have 5 Gold Pieces – I mention this because I missed it completely the first two times I read it and I know some readers have queried this in forums as there are points early on where you might buy something really useful but potentially cannot work out how you could have got any money previous to that point. Subtle and I like this idea of the book wanting you to read for accuracy despite your eagerness to get on with the game. This Introduction also tells us that there are 120 contestants for this instalment which is rather more than the six for the previous two (or one) then, which could make this one pretty challenging, not to mention crowded, and that you befriend a cheerful dwarf called Thump who is from Stonebridge (nice cross-continuity, which is something I always like to see) and he makes a comment that Stonebridge recently suffered an attack from some giants (in Shadow Of The Giants) which adds even more world-building flavour and evidently puts this book after that one in the new continuity. The Thump friendship reminds me of the Throm situation in the first book as it brings back the gloomy reality that, sooner or later, one of you has to die, and Thump does make a comment about how you are competing with each other. I was intrigued to see how the book would handle the 120 contestants thing but my hopes of an enormous dungeon and/or a battle royale of some sort were quickly dashed when Carnuss announced that he wanted that 120 cutting down to 12 in an hour. That’s a lot of people to eliminate in 60 minutes and the book has us set about a sequence of challenges against other contestants rather reminiscent of the arena in ToC (not that that happened to a YOU that is you, of course) to whittle that number down. The 12 is then halved to just six which seems a more Deathtrap Dungeon-y number of contestants to me and feels more appropriate.

And, now we are six (as A A Milne once said), we finally head excitedly into the all-new dungeon, looking forward with trepidation and glee to whatever Livingstone’s devious mind has conjured up for us this time, especially as the previous two trips to Deathtrap Dungeon really were fantastic and two of the best FF books ever, if also very (but suitably) difficult. The first thing to comment on is that, if you make a particular decision, it is possible to have lost 4 Stamina points in the first three sections (and 3 Stamina even if you don’t make that choice) so clearly this book is going to be hard on the stats. Which it is, as there are lots of potential Skill, Stamina, and Luck penalties that you can suffer along the way (some are harsh, especially on Stamina), and without a high starting Skill and Luck you’ve got no chance as there are also many tests of both of these to negotiate. Granted, not all are on the true path, but these dungeons are cracked through gradual exploration, mapping, and revisiting, so these penalties are all very noticeable and some are unavoidable. On a similar note though, most combats (bar a few Specials close to the end, which is acceptable as we like a climax) are actually pretty easy and most foes have low stats, so in that sense this one is forgiving. Indeed, if you were to play this book without dice (ie avoiding the implications of any stat penalties) it would probably be quite easy as there is a lot of signposting to aid you (if you pay attention), and the true path is basically a straight line that is hard to digress from and, if you do, more often than not you are forced to turn back onto the correct route and these parts that will send you back repeatedly suggest you “might” want to turn back anyway so it all becomes a bit obvious after a while. Similarly, it quickly becomes apparent that Carnuss sees copper as bad news and most things made of copper will have negative effects on you. There is also a book in a library that more or less explains a chunk of the dungeon map to you. If all this was not generous enough (remember, it’s a very different story if you are playing with dice as it becomes REALLY hard if you do!), there is a non-win ending where, if you fail at several of the final analysis parts, you can exit the dungeon as a failure, but an alive failure – neither of the previous dungeons gave that much quarter so maybe Carnuss is less of a sadist than his brother? However, I mentioned earlier that you must face several Special monsters at the very end and here is the part where, even if you play without dice, this book suddenly becomes (perceptibly) incredibly difficult as you are required to surrender ALL of your money and equipment to the Dragonmaster before you face the three really tough opponents. How you handle this penalty though is down to interpretation as one of the subsequent combats does prompt you to have or not have the Vorpal Sword so do we give up all equipment except weapons? Can we keep shields and armour too as they increase combat stats? Who knows, really, but how you interpret this will determine how much chance you have in combat (assuming you are playing properly with dice) against these three big end baddies which are a series of three different Demons: a Thorn Demon, a Howling Demon, and a Larva Demon. For welcome variety though, whilst the first two do have high stats in double figures and are hard to fight (especially if you get hit by either of them as both have implications), the third (the potentially most lethal too) does not involve a fight and instead you either use an item (if you decided you could keep it) or take a stat penalty, but either way the third does not involve a fight and the feeling that you are faced at the end by three consecutive crushing fights is not actually the case and this has been handled with imagination rather than having a generally easy (stats notwithstanding) path through the book to just get pasted by any of three really powerful opponents right at the end which would be a bit frustrating. Incidentally, the Howling Demon (if you did not know) is the thing on the book’s cover.

Which subject brings us to the art on display in our third/second trip to the Sukumvit-Carnuss Brothers’ designer dungeons. The cover sees the very welcome return of one of FF (and fantasy generally)’s greatest artists, Iain McCaig. And I’m not sure how I feel about his cover offering here. I want to like it because it’s McCaig and, whilst the Howling Demon is terrifying and reminds me of the Bone Demon from Casket Of Souls and also of Zanbar Bone from City Of Thieves, what usually makes McCaig’s art for me is the combination of a fantastic central subject but also a highly-detailed background (look at the cover for City Of Thieves or The Forest Of Doom or anything at all in Casket Of Souls for example and you’ll see what I mean), and the cover to TDoBI is basically a yellow monster on an empty black background, which seems rather lacking in my opinion. This is a mixed blessing as having McCaig back in FF again (he also did the alternate cover for the hardback version of The Port Of Peril remember) is also a good thing, but this could have been much better if it had been more than just the creature itself and there is definitely something missing here. The first Deathtrap Dungeon also featured internal art by McCaig (Trial Of Champions had a cover and internals by Lone Wolf’s Brian Williams, not that that book ever happened, of course) and I was really hoping the same would be the case again for this new book, but that was not to be and, instead, the internals are by Krisztián Balla. Balla’s art here is, for the most part, decent and all of the illustrations are well-detailed and atmospheric, although some of them seem a bit cluttered (the hobgoblin in the cage, for example). The only weak piece here is, curiously, the Bloodbeast, although I suspect we have an embarrassment of riches with the previous version from DD and there was no way this creature could not viably have been illustrated again this time around.

Mention of the Bloodbeast will surely be enough to get anyone scrambling to acquire a copy of this book and I have to say that the way this creature’s reappearance is handled is very neat as it is not just the same encounter from the first book over again – something that would have been very easy to do – but is a non-combat situation where you meet it and get the hell out as quickly as possible. Even more interesting is that the Bloodbeast is on a red herring path that yields nothing. These two factors do of course make its appearance little more than cameo but it’s an expected and necessary cameo given how iconic a creature this was in DD so it is definitely a welcome inclusion. Another returning species from the first book (and we have to assume this is a different Bloodbeast after one of the YOUs that isn’t us now killed the first one 40 years ago) is rather more subtle and low key – the mischievous Troglodyte. It would have been very easy to stock Carnuss’ dungeon with all the same monsters from the original and, whilst this would have had nostalgia value, it would have made this book into a very tired retread, so bringing back a creature that played such a small part in the first trawl is a clever touch for me. These two encounters give cohesion with the first book whilst avoiding this new one becoming a slavish rehash (which it most certainly is not by any stretch of the imagination). Obviously the three Demons in the Final Act are one of the big encounter moments, but I also really enjoyed the Imp in his Spikle (exactly how does that thing brake though?) and the non-combat encounter with the Ghost-Witch who wants her cat back was a fun moment too. The usual sword fodder is all present and correct (Goblins, Trolls, Skeletons, Ghouls, Zombies) to avoid this being a catalogue of key encounters, whilst the usual plethora of traps and tests are liberally scattered about the place too. It does seem this time though that we are expected to open almost every door (many reward you) rather than there being an element of “Oh no, what’s next?” trepidation that the first one/two books gave us, but I have already observed that the path aspect of this book is far easier than the previous Trials were. To keep things familiar (we don’t want this visit to be totally alienated from the others as we need the comfort of feeling that this is Deathtrap Dungeon again rather than some other non-Deathtrap kind of Dungeon) there is a Trialmaster (here called the Dragonmaster) near the end to act as a Day Of Reckoning concept although, as I’ve already said, whereas in the previous books any failure to have the requisite items led to death, in this iteration you just get ejected as your penalty for failure which feels rather less “Deathtrap”-y to me. That said, there is a clever anti-cheat mechanism when you are asked how many dragon balls you have (like with the ring count in ToC) but I found the compass point test (which had had some build-up before this point that suggested this could be a big event) far too obvious and really does not require you to have actually found the numbered keys to solve it as long as you have been given the info you need for this.

As with the previous DD books, you are required again to make sure the other contestants are all dead before you reach the Final Act, although (and again this makes it a bit easier) only five actually enter the dungeon as the sixth unfortunate entrant dies before he or she has even got through the front door, not that you know this unless it’s already happened to you in a previous attempt, otherwise you just have to accept meeting four others along the way and reaching the end first regardless. Also in keeping with the previous books, how these encounters with your rivals play out is varied and does not just involve you having to fight them (well, not all of them), plus there is an element of variety based on how you handled some interactions earlier in the book which, again, is good to see. Indeed, this visit to a Deathtrap Dungeon is much more plot-driven than the previous two (the first was plotless, the second just had the Carnuss aspect) and the other contestants play a big part in this as, obviously does the maguffin of the Orb Of Fang (which is itself not without its tricksy moments!) In keeping too with the way several of the new Scholastic books have concluded (Assassins Of Allansia segues directly into Deathtrap Dungeon, for example), this book has an open ending where Carnuss appears to have a new job for you – could this actually turn out to be where a reprint of Trial Of Champions could be a thing? Well, probably not, or not without some rewrites, as that book requires you to not have encountered Carnuss before and to never have entered a Deathtrap Dungeon of any kind before. So who knows really what is coming next but it is certainly an exciting proposition and the more continuity in FF the better if you ask me.

Something I always liked about Livingstone’s books was the attention to detail, the energy of his writing, and the Easter Eggs. This book is no exception and it bounces along at an energetic pace, you really feel that you are in the various moments, and there is a nice homage to Steve Jackson in the character of Jak the Jolly Juggler who even has curly ginger hair! Annoyingly though, and this is a problem with many of the new Scholastic entries, this book needed better proofreading as there are numerous typos and grammatical errors which do not detract from the enjoyment (nothing is illogical or contradicts what it is meant to mean such that you get confused, and there are certainly no broken parts like we had to endure in some of the Puffin FFs or even The Port Of Peril) but they do strike me as yet more evidence of Scholastic’s lack of quality control. Gone now though are the horrible smut marks on the page edges that were intended to be effective but just looked shoddy – at least Scholastic are listening to fan feedback to a certain extent.

Any return to Deathtrap Dungeon, handled well, is always welcome, and this is a decent series entry. There is an argument to say it’s a cash-in on an old and easily-exploited concept but I like to see it more as a much-requested fresh angle on a classic FF trope. The difficulty level is schizophrenic (incredibly hard with dice, very easy and excessively signposted if just playing the true path such as it is) but both of its predecessors were very hard so this is refreshing if unexpected and some would say it is too easy to really satisfy the hardcore players but what I got out of The Dungeon On Blood Island was a lot of enjoyment and a feeling of the early old school FF entries. It definitely needed a harder-to-find true path and more digressions into blind alleys (rather than being turned back whenever I went the wrong way) but there is enough variety of material here to see it through. Not the best of the new Scholastic FFs, but still a solid and worthwhile entry that takes us back to one of FF’s greatest ideas and rethinks it enough to keep us interested. And even its harshest of critics surely could not at least be pleased to meet the Bloodbeast again.

Vengeance At Midnight

 

VENGEANCE AT MIDNIGHT

Alexander Ballingall

Reviewed by Mark Lain

Let’s get something very clear from the start here: I do not like the Silver Crusader concept. I hated Appointment With FEAR and could do little more than tolerate Deadline To Destruction. It’s not that I don’t like superhero stuff generally, I just found AwF a gimmicky empty playing experience. For me, it’s one of the very worst FF books play-wise so the idea of there being a third instalment of something that I could happily have lived without the first part of was far from inspiring. But, like it or not, we find ourselves back in Titan City and donning the costume of the Silver Crusader, alter-ego of Jean Lafayette, once again in this 269-section piece from Fighting Fantazine Issue 8. The fact that all three parts are written by different people also amplifies the sound of the bottom of the barrel being scraped as Steve Jackson evidently only intended for there to be one of these otherwise he would have expanded the concept himself (and it would have made a far better RPG if you ask me although the thematic similarity to Games Workshop’s Golden Heroes may have prevented that from happening).

Time has passed since Jean’s last run-in with a major superbaddie (The Dynamo from DtD) and there are a couple of neat little bits of story arc advancement here where you now have a girlfriend called Helen and your relationship with your boss seems to have improved a lot as you are no longer constantly showing up late for work due to your crime-fighting commitments. But of course sooner or later Titan City would be threatened by another lunatic in a silly costume and you have started hearing rumours of a journalist having disappeared and the possibility of a new nutter hatching a nefarious plot against everybody. So off you go to save the day, starting with a run-in in a warehouse, the discovery of a consignment of teddy bears, and then the whole saga unfolds before you. As with the previous two adventures, a lot of the actual content involves choosing various places to visit as you try and gather intelligence to crack the case, a lot of these choices being potentially somewhat uninformed and random. There is a path to follow though based on key bits of information but unravelling it is tricky and the true path itself is very tight, something which brings me to the first big issue with this mini-FF: it is unreasonably difficult. There are several moments where you have to fight a catalogue of opponents and death by Stamina loss is a frequent problem. That said, if you choose the Super Strength Superpower and thus have a default Skill of 13 this becomes a more realistic proposition, something which is so fundamental to victory that it can effectively render the other three Superpower options pretty redundant. These lengthy fights also usually require you to track combat rounds as this can affect how the fight plays out so there is some bookkeeping to do in amongst all the dice rolling (and dying and having to start over) too. Furthermore, the majority of the fights that are with just one or two opponents are usually against very strong foes (both in Skill and Stamina) as they are supervillains which also means a very high Skill on your part is vital, plus a high Stamina too if you are going to have any hope of staying alive. If this isn’t imbalanced enough there are only two opportunities to restore Stamina (both by 6 points when you wake up the next morning) which is hardly fair. Similarly, there are a lot of Luck tests (especially on the true path) and, again, very few chances to restore Luck, so a high Luck is also vital. There is one particularly irrational moment where you have to pass a sequence of three Luck tests and two Skill tests – fail any and you miss a vital password that you cannot win without knowing. This is frankly ridiculous. Furthermore, there are a lot of letter-to-number conversions to find hidden sections which, whilst I like this mechanic as it is an excellent cheatproofer, can be taxing plus one of them is calculated incorrectly and leads you to the wrong section so, unless you have a solution, errata list, or can be bothered to sift through each section until you find the right one, the game is broken and cannot be completed “properly” (although with the crazy stat issues you could argue it is broken anyway).

One feature that sent AwF’s difficulty into the stratosphere that I am glad to say has not been carried over from the first Silver Crusader outing is the annoying reliance on arbitrary guesswork to find hidden sections and this was the main thing that made me hate the original book so much. As a concept and rules-wise though, the same structure that existed in the previous two instalments is all here again: you have a choice from four Superpowers and the list is the same in all three adventures; you can gain Hero Points as you go along based on how heroic or otherwise your actions are; you get three Clues from the outset; the whole thing plays out over a few days; the usual umpteen jokes and riffs on popular culture are here again; and you are not supposed to kill opponents in combat (instead they surrender once their Stamina is reduced to 1 or 2) as you are a good guy. There are a few variations on some of these this time around though as the Clues basically do nothing other than just give you abstract information that you then ignore as everything you need to know to actually finish the adventure is told to you in the course of the story. Rather more problematically the Superpowers also have no influence on how the plot actually plays out. A great feature of AwF was that it was basically four adventures in one (albeit all very frustratingly short ones) so had huge replay value. Not so the case there as each Superpower just subtly nuances events and how you negotiate certain moments to ultimately lead to the same point either way. This is rather sloppy design and creates the illusion of something that just is not there: choice of how your superhero functions and the ability to affect the game as a result. Obviously this makes replayability limited but the fact that you are going to die in almost every attempt might be enough to compel repeat attempts. Hero Points are handled very differently here as you start with 3 rather than 0. This is because should your HP ever drop to zero you have to turn to section 99 and suffer the consequences when the Federation Of Ultrapeople (The Avengers? Justice League? The X-Men?) send Lady Chartreuse (“a drink so good they named a colour after it” to quote a certain Tarantino movie) to deal with you which is survivable although you cannot accrue any further Hero Points after this which does make you rather less heroic. Also, there are several different “scales” of victory where, whilst the true path is very tight and linear, you can reach the win section having tied up various loose ends along the way and finish with more Hero Points (in the previous two Hero Points were purely for you to measure an extra success aspect and try to finish the book with more of them and thus more heroically on subsequent playthroughs) so for the first time in a Silver Crusader adventure Hero Points actually have an in-game purpose which is good to see. The biggest problem here system-wise though has already been raised which is that, unless you choose the Super Strength Superpower and start with Skill 13 you simply will not be able to finish this due to the scale and number of fights you are faced with which is a big own goal for a concept based on variable superpowers.

Without labouring a point too much when it comes to the fights you are expected to deal with, it has to be said that the very first one in the warehouse at the beginning seems especially unfair as you can die or reduce your Stamina dangerously low before you have even done anything of any consequence and there is no reward for surviving it other than not being dead. There is also a key fight with Volt Head that is effectively broken for various reasons and the same fight seems a bit unsavoury as you are trying to save a female hostage whilst you fight Volt Head but the chance of her not dying in the course of events is incredibly low – this just seems odd and very unheroic to me.

Which brings us neatly to the subject of the key villain of the piece who is called Volt Head (and we see him on the cover of this issue of the ‘zine in fact). In a nice element of continuity/lore he is the brother of The Dynamo from DtD so he does presumably have a personal beef with you to add some colour. Indeed this adventure is crawling with FF-related Easter Eggs, far more so than either of the previous two gamebooks, and is a dream for fanboys. Amongst others we have the link between Volt Head and The Dynamo, Wolmaran Apartments, a villain called The Warlock, the Owl and Weasel pub which is next door to the Black Lobster restaurant, and there is a copy of the unpublished Saga Of The Stormchaser in Cottonworths (so it comes out eventually then lol). A couple of nice little general popular culture references that I personally found more amusing than the usual ones these Silver Crusader adventures are filled with are Ben Seven, Karl Marks, and Da Femme who “wears a form-fitting dark yellow suit” (so that’s literally an analogue of The Bride from Kill Bill in her figure-hugging yellow jumpsuit then). What did annoy me a bit though is that the elusive and essential password (the one you get in return for somehow beating the interminable odds and passing three Luck and two Skill tests in succession) is “Voldemort” – this is possibly a bridge too far for me, is too literal, and it isn’t even trying to be a clever take on something like the naming conventions and characters in these Silver Crusader adventures otherwise are. Why did the author do this?

The author himself is Alex Ballingall (Editor of the ‘zine) and he does write very well with a lot of atmosphere and detail to bring his adventure to life. Most of the game sections are relatively long but there is often a lot of dialogue to accommodate (essential to get that comic book feel) and variances with Superpower prompts that need to be factored in (not that they make much difference in the long run). Each key character (ie YOU, the supervillians, and the cops) is written in such a way that they have obvious personality and traits and this does add a lot of depth to the proceedings. The lengthy sections may look off-putting on first sight but they do work well in context and AB has done a good job of putting his take on Titan City across. I wish I could say the same for his art which “graces” this adventure as it is best described as “rough” and looks incomplete and amateurish (the teddy bear fillustrations are particularly awful) but it is better than what he did for Resurrection Of The Dead in the first issue of the ‘zine and he does a good job of emulating the comic book panelled look that Declan Considine produced for AwF and this is a clever visual that suits the concept. The colour cover for this one is also by AB and, again, looks rough and incomplete and is certainly not of a good enough quality to be on a cover especially as most ‘zine covers have been really good professional pieces of fantasy art. I do wonder if they were struggling for contributors art-wise for this Issue?

There are a few interesting design points that I feel are worth bringing up with this adventure, the most apparent being that section 1 is a normal game section rather than the beginning and the introduction gives you options sending you to other paragraphs to start the game. This in real terms is a pretty minor thing but I do find it interesting and I always like to see gamebooks having functions like this that subvert expectations in how they should be designed and these are always an unexpected surprise that makes them feel a little bit different when the author has taken the time to think to do this. There is also, more conventionally, an open ending where you meet the Titanium Cyborg again in prison and it is suggested that a fourth part is on the cards. I read a thread in the Fantazine discussion group suggesting that the Helen character (who, incidentally, does nothing other than get mentioned at the start as existing, have a shower at one point in the book, and show up again right at the end, so including her was not really worth it as she serves no purpose other than to expand your character’s history a little bit) might turn bad in a potential fourth part of the saga. In many ways I hope there will not be a fourth because three is more than I ever really wanted!

So then, is Vengeance At Midnight worth staying up late to experience? I’ll be honest and say I did actually quite enjoy it. The idea of the exploding teddy bears triggered by a signal from a computer is a fun 1960s Batman type silly way to bring about the apocalypse and the supervillains seem less crappy in this one than the previous two. The fact that Hero Points finally serve some sort of (albeit limited) useful purpose is good to see. The usual in-jokes are everywhere (I can take or leave these as they are a bit too knowing) but the FF Easter Eggs are a nice inclusion. It is way too hard though (to the point of being unfair), the requirement to get the password is insane, there is no way you can get anywhere without maxed-out stats, the Superpower choices are rendered useless, and the art is terrible. But of the three Silver Crusader efforts this is still less annoying to me than AwF but is not as conventional as DtD so it does have some merit to recommend it. Yes, it’s nothing special but it is certainly worth giving a go even if the odds are hugely stacked against you and it is absolutely broken due to an adding error by the author.

Ascent Of Darkness

 

ASCENT OF DARKNESS

Stuart Lloyd

Reviewed by Mark Lain

Stuart Lloyd is very prolific in the world of writing amateur fan FFs (and AFF modules) as well as being a regular fixture in Fighting Fantazine  so it was fairly inevitable that a short FF of his would appear in that same publication sooner or later and Issue 11 brought us this interesting adventure. I say it is interesting because of the very original idea of creating here what is effectively a classical Greek epic in FF form.

YOU play a heroic figure, the son of a King, and the leader of an army of men engaged in an ongoing war with the Caarth. You receive a letter from your mother and return home to find that your father is gone and the evil cult of Elim is threatening everyone’s existence. Cue an eventual trip to Fire Island to get to the bottom of the problem and resolve it. The story arc takes you from the Desert of Skulls/Karnath Tor (where you are fighting the Caarth) to Carsepolis (your home) via one of three different terrains (mountains, forest, coast), then on a sea voyage in a tireme to Fire Island. A point to note here is that Carsepolis is the ancient city upon which’s ruins Port Blacksand was built and this is the first “official” trip to classical Port Blacksand that we have had from FF. Kudos for this then. As this is an adventure cut from the cloth of Homer, your character comes replete with several suitable traits. You start with a sword, a spear, and a steel helmet, but no armour (very Greek!), and have 50 Gold Pieces to your name. YOU also have to choose from one Heroic Power and one Heroic Flaw: the Powers are basically boosters to your attributes but the Flaws are more subtle and affect the path itself, sometimes giving alternative approaches and sometimes forcing you down certain routes. The Flaws also give some balance to avoid you being excessively strong (although you should be anyway given the context) and the descriptions of the Powers in the Introduction are very detailed and colourful with some nice legendary context to what you have done in the past. You also get Heroic Stunts that you can use in battle (a lot) which can swing things in your favour if the dice (ie the Gods) are on your side. There is also an unusual approach to rolling up your Skill, Stamina, and Luck here where you can only have each stat be rolled up to a certain level but then your chosen Power will boost one of these to a potentially powerful amount. Again, this suits the concept. This kind of idea is a trademark of SL’s amateur FFs so it is good to see it applied to this offering too. There is a neat little heroic touch too where if you do anything particularly unheroic you will lose Luck points - this is clever.

The initial battle with the Caarth is a good opener as you are straight into the action and have a few strategic decisions to make but the end result is basically the same. An amusing little inclusion is that there are only 300 of your army left after the battle which is a nice nod to The 300 Spartans of classical legend, but there are a lot of possibly overly Greek references along the way including the codewords (Perseus, Heracles, and Odysseus) and the fact that your father is called Agamemnon. This does create a bit of disconnect from FF as these names are just too well-known and too associated with Greek legends. The idea of the Achilles Heel Flaw is just about ignorable as it has become a euphemism but it is still directly related to Achilles so throws another Greek non-FF trope into the mix. What SL has managed to do in terms of encounters though is get a good mix of FF and Greek material, with all the Greek encounters being equally FF encounters as they are already lifted from classics and established as FF lore: harpies, the mermaid, and the hydra in particular. What is very apparent in the combat encounters is that almost all of your opponents have stats in double figures and are equally as legendarily powerful as YOU. Indeed we see some very high Staminas in this adventure (many of the fights are multiple foes fought as one), but for once this is actually offset against your potentially being a bit over-powered too so there is some balance here. Some foes can even use Stunts against you which make those fights particularly varied (and dangerous).  A lot of fights have adjustors to shave extra Stamina points from you under certain conditions which does add to the realism of fighting several foes as one.

With very strong enemies to fight and your Power and Flaws offsetting each other, the question of difficulty arises quickly but because of the balancing factors you can get through with average stats (or as average as you can have here) plus there is no optimum choice of Powers or Flaws to scupper you from the outset. The Powers do not really affect the actual adventure itself all that much (bar in combat) but the flaws certainly do and the Achilles Heel is just that and does make the adventure rather harder if you choose this Flaw. It is also theoretically possible to have two Powers by acquiring the Strength Of Telak from a bronze apple so if you start with this Power that can be a bit of a sucker punch (or a big plus if you started with one of the other two!) So whilst the Powers and Flaws are presumably intended to nuance and change the adventure only the Flaws really do in terms of the actual path you follow. It has to be noted that a lot of the Stamina penalties through misadventure are quite harsh (routinely losing you 4-6 points) but there are many opportunities to restore back to your Initial Stamina (as well as getting restoratives for Skill and Luck too) and to replace lost spears (which are very useful) – the fact that many of these are blessings from the Gods adds to the whole classical package. If you can find either the Shroud Of Ashra or the Shroud Of Vuh in Carsepolis (not particularly hard to do) these will make things noticeably less lethal in the later stages and there is at least one item that is essential on a certain path and you cannot get beyond the first Act without having poison immunity. Indeed, when I first read this I thought it was broken at section 99 because I did not read the text closely enough and whatever choice I made killed me – but that is not the case and there are two examples of where close reading based on notes you have taken is vital which is a nice bit of cheat-proofing without resorting to arbitrarily guessing that you are supposed to go to a secret section (something that frustrates me hugely in some FFs). Luck tests are very rare (the instructions say you will need to test Skill, Stamina, and Luck but these rarely happen and I can only find one Stamina test) and there are only about a dozen instadeath sections, mostly for doing stupid things or not having crucial items, so this is reasonable enough. The true path is not especially hard to find as the adventure is very linear with clear convergence points to round off each Act and there are two win outcomes (which results in the final section not being the end and is just a standard game section) but I suspect the optimum ending is that where you have your father’s ring and he survives rather than the version where he dies and you become King (which is still a win really though, but just a bit less heroic). The fact that there are no pre-defined combinations of Powers and Flaws needed to win adds yet more fairness to the piece. The choice of the three Act 2 paths (forest, coast, mountains) adds some nice variety for replays but none is optimum as such and each affords you several useful items including stat bonuses, the vital poison immunity (important in avoiding an overly linear true path) and some Flaw immunities, and the ability to emulate Powers that you may not have. I have noticed though that the coast path is the tightest in terms of the goodies you can come out with (a limit of two from the choice you are given), the forest path restricts you to picking three, but the mountain path appears to have no limit so you can come out with a catalogue of useful paraphernalia on this path to make you very strong indeed. The view is that the best path is the forest as it is the shortest of the three, is theoretically combat-free (depending on what you do), and gets you the various apples that make a later challenge considerably easier, but having a bag load of useful stuff from the mountain path is not to be sniffed at either. The coast path is probably the hardest as you need a dagger otherwise you get assassinated but as this repeats in the Final Analysis I’d argue that this is de rigueur anyway. Similarly, in Carsepolis you can theoretically go everywhere (with a couple of inter-related restrictions) and the freedom to explore is evident even if each of the areas is fairly brief, you don’t really do any exploring as such, and the endgame of acquiring a crew and a dagger is the same and very achievable either way – there is a certain order needed to how you visit bits depending on your chosen path and some ways result in getting a free crew whilst others are more expensive and I’m sure you can end up with lots of crews too if you choose to continue exploring rather than heading straight for the docks the first chance you meet the required conditions. As with the second Act the Carsepolis part is mostly designed to your advantage which gives an expectation of a big climactic finale on Fire Island. But before you get there you have the tireme voyage and a hydra to contend with (which isn’t really very hard). Then comes the end Act on Fire Island itself which is pretty short and colourless and quickly gets to the point with the conclusive showdown (well, there are only 219 sections, after all, and the second and third Acts do eat rather a lot of these up).

The Fire Island section highlights a big problem though with this adventure as in parts it is a real mess. The hut/wizard cameo only makes sense if you choose to enter the hut otherwise you find yourself dealing with the second half of it anyway even though you opted against it (plus you seem to hurtle backwards on the map for no reason to get back to the hut you didn’t know you were visiting!) There is a really clumsy bit of layout/design where section 104 leads to 107 then to either 103 or 105 followed by 105 going to 103 anyway so everything for that cameo is on one page. This also happens earlier on when 114 leads to 115. There is also a weird bit of design on the coast path where you can defeat the harpies in combat to then go straight to an instadeath section if you don’t have a dagger and get assassinated (might as well just let the harpies kill you really). It seems odd to me that the Carsepolis section can allow you to go everywhere (bar the conjunction between the Temples of Ashra and Vuh) an infinite number of times as you are always sent back to the same section to choose where to go next and there is no suggestion of a limit on visiting frequencies (this results in the enormous variety of crews you can have as mentioned above). In the endgame there is an impossible sequence of sections/Flaw prompts (142 to 35 to 71 etc) as, if you have one Flaw there is no way you will have another one, so querying this three times over in an unfeasible combination is pointless. A similar issue occurs with the Flurry Of Blows Heroic Stunt which renders it basically useless as there are no multi-enemy combats and all of these are treated as single foes. There is also an incorrect section link where you are sent to paragraph 133 but it makes no sense in context so somehow the completely wrong text has ended up on this section. With all these errors (and the way they amplify themselves in the Fire Island Act) I do wonder if the ‘zine’s supposed team of playtesters and adventure editors actually exist (or know what they are doing!) and it does distract from the potentially exciting climax to the piece where your classical hero gets to be all classical and win against insurmountable odds.

But the Fire Island bit also throws up a few lovely bits of FF lore for those who want to find them. On first landing on the beech the text tells you that you are “ever watchful for giant crabs” (well, you would be wouldn’t you as 2000 years later poor old Mungo comes a cropper in their claws) and the lizard men are already oppressing humans by enslaving them leading to an uprising inspired by YOU, but in this case they are being forced to build a temple to the evil Elim rather than worked to death down the mines. Interestingly, there is no mention of the infamous Lizard King so I guess he hasn’t hatched from his royal egg yet. The way Carsepolis is ancient Port Blacksand is nice too but there is no real correlation between the two. A possible conclusion that can also be drawn is that classical FF world is similar to classical Earth world in that all heroes are male as it is explicitly stated here that you are male – not an issue as it works in context but it could remove the immersive YOU idea if you are a female player.

A big epic piece like this with the overhanging theme of an impending Evil should have some pretty epic art in it and this was entrusted to the always reliable Michael Wolmarans (aka Mike Tenebrae). The only problem is that he seems to be having an identity crisis with his art here as it ranges from excellent (the very sinister colour cover, the fillustrations especially the Greek helmet, the full pager on page 38) through middling (a lot of the people) to a few pieces that just look incomplete or rushed (the lizard men are especially bad and look totally unthreatening, the zombies make less sense the more you look at them, and the tavern brawl looks like something out of a childrens’ comedy cartoon). Okay so I know this is a fanzine and contributors will probably be working for nothing but still if we compare these with MW’s fantastic work for the ‘zine on Escape From The Sorcerer there is definitely something inferior about the art here. What does lift it well above the inconsistent art is SL’s writing which is pacey, full of energy and an obvious love for the gamebook form, and keeps you interested regardless of any glaring errors that might be annoying you. SL knows a huge amount about gamebooks and the concept and mechanics included here are excellent and show this very clearly.

This is a highly original effort and the classical theme and early-Titan setting alone carry it. The mechanics where you are naturally strong and have legendary talents and weaknesses are great and perfectly suit the concept. It is not especially difficult and is very fair, plus it is not especially long and can be played through in about half an hour or so. The multiple paths and more than one ending add great replay value, as do finding out how different combinations of Powers and Flaws can affect the proceedings. The errors are frustrating (especially on Fire Island where they do distract you from the finale as you try and get your head around them) but the lore and snappiness of the whole thing do make for a decent adventure. The originality of theme and the fusion of Greek classics and FF lore make this well worth a look as do the paciness, overall fairness, and SL’s quality writing and understanding of the gamebook form and how to manipulate it. The art does it no favours but I tended to just ignore it and look at the plethora of fillustrations. If the errors had been ironed out by whoever was supposed to be proofreading/playtesting it, this would have been a real winner. As it is it is just good rather than great.

     

Six-Gun Friday

 

SIX-GUN FRIDAY

Gaetano Abbondanza

Reviewed by Mark Lain

The idea of a Western FF has been bandied around for years. Warlock magazine mentioned it as a potential genre in its occasional reader questionnaires but nothing ever came of it. There is an argument to say that it would not fit comfortably into Titan but as samurai and Eqyptian-modelled pyramids found their way in there is no real reason why a cowboy setting could not be worked in somewhere or other, especially as each part of Titan has a distinct identity of its own. When Six-Gun Friday appeared in Fighting Fantazine Issue 13 I saw this as a mixed blessing: it was a brave and welcome move into hitherto unexplored territory for FF, but I personally find most Western movies pretty tedious and they are my least favourite genre. That said, I do like the stylised violence of the Sam Peckinpah and Sergio Leone movies as well as some of the other (admittedly wildly OTT) spaghetti Westerns, the more revisionist  later efforts like Dances With Wolves, Little Big Man, The Outlaw Josey Wales, Soldier Blue  and Unforgiven, and the more original efforts like High Noon. Okay, basically I don’t like the traditional ultra-macho John Wayne/John Ford/Howard Hawks cowboys-and-injuns stuff.

So, what is Six-Gun Friday about? YOU play the part of a Marshall in a small Wyoming town. (Well, that immediately resolves the “how to fit Westerns into Titan” question – the answer is to simply not bother even trying!) The bank gets robbed and YOU set out to bring the perpetrators to justice who it quickly becomes apparent are the much-feared Friday Clan, a bunch of outlaws who tick lots of Western character trope boxes: two brothers who are the sons of a preacher man (to almost quote Dusty Springfield), an ex-lawman gone bad, a tubercular medic, a train robber, and a sociopath. In your pursuit of the Fridays you travel from your hometown of Bent Reed to the rather larger Cheyenne before engaging in a final showdown on a moving train en route to Phoenix. What is interesting plot-wise is that the Background gives no indication of what is to follow. Instead, the very lengthy and thorough Background is exactly that – a background to your character’s history, and a very detailed and convincing one at that. Section 1 then opens with you winning a game of chess against your Tonto-esque sidekick Rodrigo and then the bank robbery saga unfolds from there. Rodrigo leaves the proceedings pretty much immediately (so you don’t have to contend with a FF companion’s inevitable death) and then returns near the end to play another brief but plot-helping supporting role (and he stays alive, remarkably!) As you play on and get deeper into this gamebook, you soon discover that there are many ways through and there is no true path as such. Instead, the order that you might encounter the various Fridays in based on your decisions influences how each playthrough pans out. The scope for exploration of the possible paths is considerable and the replay value is, by FF standards, far higher than usual. Some paths will prove easier than others - being a marked man or not initially tangling with enough Fridays will make things trickier – but each one has its own little nuances and some can be negotiated with a minimal Skill score, although the more combat-driven paths will need a decent Skill for you to stand a chance, particularly in fist fights as all hand-to-hand opponents have high Skill and Stamina scores. There are also two possible endings: the optimum one has you killing all six Fridays, and a rather unexpected non-win outcome can be found where you turn bad and join the Friday Clan (a nice touch of anti-hero Western tropeage there). The train end Act is particularly climactic and very cleverly designed: essentially it is a gunfight where you follow a sequence of tactical moves and options, recording your Friday kills by noting down Xs – once you have five Xs noted down (and you can get two in some sections if you pull off some better moves and/or get lucky with dice rolls) you move on to the ultimate showdown with the Friday’s leader. This part really is exciting and is much more interesting than many FF final analyses as even this can turn out in a few different ways, plus it is a true test of your decision-making in conjunction with dice rolling and your initial choice of Special Skills (ie real RPG-influenced stuff).

On which subject, the mechanics of this piece are neatly modified to suit the context. You have to choose two Special Skills from five options: Fast Draw (which means you always get the first shot off in gunfights), Tracking (self-explanatory Tonto stuff), Detection (a bit Sherlock Holmes-y), First Aid (so your First Aid Kits restore 5 rather than 3 Stamina), and Spontaneity (a kind of common sense crossed with streetwise-ness). For once, these skills are all variously useful, none are useless, and there is no optimum combination. Instead they affect how certain moments play out and/or make some incidents easier to get through. Spontaneity is the most entertaining as you come up with all sorts of ways of wriggling out of situations, sometimes in amusing ways. Obviously, Fast Draw sets you up best at the end but the others will help there too in their own ways so it pays to play through several times using different combinations just to see what happens. What does strike you on creating your character is that there is no Luck score involved – whilst this may seem anti-FF it does avoid the potential clash of Luck rolls with Special Skill use plus as there is no magical aspect here it does make sense to exclude Luck. Standard FF combat rules are only used for fist fights where you logically cannot ever kill your opponents (and there are plenty of them which is a nice Wild West touch), with unique gunfighting rules being used for weapons combat: if you are shot you Assess For Damage by rolling 1d6 and adding 3 to the result to see how much Stamina you lose (this may seem harsh but getting shot is often pretty terminal so this is realistic), whilst firing at an opponent involves Testing Your Aim by testing your Skill with 2d6 but only rolling sub-your Skill is a success so a high Skill is handy if you go down the gunfighting route (and you have no choice at the end). A final unique rule is your choice of Primary Firearm: there are two to pick from, either a Colt .45 (-1 from the total when Testing Your Aim as it’s pretty accurate) or a Smith & Wesson .45 (+2 to total when Assessing Damage as it’s pretty lethal). Again, both weapons have their uses and neither is a better or worse choice. Finally, as Provisions would make little sense in the Old West, you have four First Aid Kits which each restores 3 Stamina (or 5 if you have the First Aid skill). You may argue that surely if time has moved on so has medical effectiveness, but getting shot can happen quite a bit in this adventure and there is only so much patching up of bullet holes that you can realistically do, so this makes sense too. An interesting point to note here is that this is one of the small number of FFs that defines exactly who you are down to your name: you are called Mathew Slade (which also defines you as male). I don’t have a problem with this (most Marshalls were male) but taking another name can be slightly distancing from it being YOU who is playing the lead role and I’d imagine the gender thing is off-putting for female players. Setting you as male though does help some of the interactions with female NPCs work properly and it is what it is.

NPCs play a huge part in this adventure and it is very dialogue-driven, which is something I like. The dialogue feels like it is from Westerns and the various characters you meet are all very suited to the theme. In fact, the whole package is very well written and feels very authentic – the author must really understand and a have a fondness for the genre. Generally very long sections add to the sense of a slightly ponderous sweaty Western movie and work well in context. With this though comes the effect that this is quite a mature piece due to some of the language and concepts (prostitutes, etc) and it is certainly not for younger audiences (I did say I favour 15 and 18 certificate Westerns!) Alongside the emphasis on talking is an emphasis on driving the plot and the pacing in this piece is excellent as it builds to a heart-pulsing conclusion. It feels fast-moving and never lets up to the point where it is hard to put it down or find a suitable break point if one is needed. As there are many plot strands, Codewords are used very effectively here and I’m not a fan of these generally but here it helps keep things logical and in order without having hundreds of sections to work with. The fact that most of the Codewords are desert snakes adds to the atmosphere and the sense that the Fridays are bad news. A couple of the Codewords also have an ominous effect, quite clearly telling you that you are a marked man, which surely is not going to end well. One structural point which does alienate this somewhat from FF (and gamebooks generally) is that there is only one item to be found and even then it is far from essential (but it is at least another nice Western trope – a bottle of sarsaparilla bitters!) Curiously, the lack of items to collect barely had any impact on my playing experience so it obviously is not an issue, plus why would you collect items when you are tracking outlaws? Information and help is what you need here and you get these in spades from all the dialogue and run-ins with various people. It is worth mentioning that you never need to reload your gun (John Woo would approve) and I feel that needing to track and conserve your ammo would have been a neatly nuanced mechanic as you can otherwise just fire rounds off all over the place with no thought for the fact that keeping at least six bullets for the end might be prudent. It is a minor niggle, but it is there all the same, especially as gunplay is a big feature of this effort and there is no other inventory to have to manage bar your four First Aid Kits.

This brings me to difficulty. I have already said that a high Skill is a definite advantage, but a player with rock bottom Skill can still win if they are a bit more careful in which Special Skills and weapon they choose. A low Stamina though will give you no chance as getting shot will always do at least 7 points of damage, you can only ever restore your Stamina four times with First Aid Kits, and there are very few opportunities in the text to regain Stamina. Plus opponents are generally pretty strong (as they should be to survive n this environment). But then, as I have already said, getting shot is often fatal and survival of the fittest was a fact of life in the Old West, so this is realistic rather than just unreasonably hard. The fact that some paths are less dangerous than others though does make each playthrough either easier or harder depending on what path you find yourself following in conjunction with Special Skill choices.

I am often quite brutal in my criticism of the internal art in Fighting Fantazine’s mini-FFs. Some have had genuinely excellent art that sat well alongside the main series of books and their benefit of far higher publisher’s budgets. Others had amateurish rubbish that had such a detrimental effect that the adventures would have been better off without any internal illustrations. Massimiliano Amadesi (no, I don’t know who he is either but I’ve found a YouTube video of a comic book art exhibition he put on in Bologna a few years ago so I suppose he must be known for that) created the internals for this piece and I do rather like his thick-nibbed heavily-inked art. It definitely captures the look and feel of a Western and it is neither fussy nor sparse. His saloon scenes have lots of nice detail and he draws characters in a caricatural way that suits the stereotypes of the genre. I have just one gripe: the image for section 185 is from someone else’s perspective (unless you are having a pre-hanging out of body experience) as you are in it! The ‘Zine’s covers always carry the colour art for the given issue’s mini-FF and the dusty desert image by Michael Wolmarans (better known to many as Mike Tenebrae) for this adventure is very good indeed. The hand of cards sat front and centre shows a really effective summary of the feel of the adventure and the whole image overall is hugely effective.

I have briefly mentioned the lengthy sections full of Western flavour and the author’s obvious understanding and appreciation of the genre, but it is also very apparent that Gaetano can really write. The prose is excellent, the atmosphere is full-on, every character has their own personality and unique-ness (many also have motives for why they are where they are and why they are doing whatever they are doing, especially the girls), the pacing is perfect, and there are not even any obvious errors (neither textual or structural).

Overall this is a really classy and highly original effort in a whole new territory for FF to branch into. Given the real world setting and the adjusted mechanics there is the question though of whether this is really FF. Arguably it is not, but it is a cracking little adventure anyway and a good gamebook is a good gamebook regardless of the system. There is even a useful Afterword tagged on the end explaining the historical elements and adding even more context. And on top of all this, the title itself is very clever: there are six members of the Friday gang and everyone carries six-shooters. An excellent gamebook that should be played over and over again to discover all the different threads and path variations. This is potentially the absolute best of the ‘Zine’s mini adventures.   

    

 

Sister Angela's Veil

 

SISTER ANGELA’S VEIL

Mark Lain

Explained by Mark Lain

Let’s start with the really obvious thing here – I wrote this mini-FF that appeared in Fighting Fantazine Issue 16. So I will try to be as objective as possible and offer some trivia about this piece as we all my opinions on it. The original idea for Sister Angela’s Veil came from one single cameo, the chestnut orgy, itself actually a red herring that serves no purpose to the true path and, more to the point, can lead to you missing an essential piece of information later on, assuming you choose to use an item that can only be found in the orgy room. The concept of this episode is based on a true historical event that I stumbled across whilst watching an episode of The Borgias. Basically a group of corrupt Priests were duped at a feast that developed into an orgy and chestnuts were served in amongst all the frivolity. As it happens, the women involved in this event also wore veils (and little else) so this is where the overall veil idea also came from. So, essentially, I constructed an entire adventure around this one event then I subverted it by making it totally unconnected to the optimum way through. Indeed, the observant will notice a few steals from true history and/or popular culture, but that is a feature of my adventures that I do not try to conceal. The most obvious examples in SAV are: the (Borgia) chestnut orgy; Father Grandier is named after a real 16^th Century Priest who was at the centre of the “Devils Of Loudon” case that was documented in Aldous Huxley’s book of the same name, itself the source material for Ken Russell’s 1971 movie The Devils; Grandier’s (potential) suicide by slashing his wrists in the bath is based on a moment in Umberto Eco’s The Name Of The Rose as is the idea of a forbidden book having its page edges laced with poison to prevent prying eyes; the Chapterhouse is based on that found in Wells Cathedral, a room that fascinated me when I frequently visited it when I was growing up in Somerset; the automaton powered by a section of the ground is an amalgam of the daleks’ power source in the first ever Doctor Who dalek story from 1963 and Tick-Tock from Return To Oz

Next came the real point of the piece – the investigation into the missing holy relic of Sister Angela De Culpa (a bit of an Enigma Mea Culpa reference in that name). The veil idea’s inspiration has already been covered but, when I realised that if you write it in the possessive (ie with a s at the end of the character’s name) you get an anagram of what would be the big reveal of the adventure:

Sister Angela’s Veil = Sister Angela Lives

Not the toughest verbal puzzle ever as the name is still evident, but the point is there. As an aside here is the question of why I called her Angela and I honestly have no idea. Maybe a subconscious angel image for religious iconography or perhaps it’s just a pretty name that came to mind and seemed to flow nicely, who knows, but The Name Of The Rose comes into play again in how YOU get involved in the mystery as there is a definite parallel with the sending of William Of Baskerville in Eco’s story and, again, I make no apologies for this.

The location was always going to be a convent in the Moonstone Hills just because I wanted it to be remote to add a sense of your being vulnerable and a long way from home. The convent layout is based on a genuine convent medieval floor plan (I forget which one or where it is), albeit simplified and heavily re-arranged. My original idea was that the convent had turned to vice since the veil vanished and that its residents were now under the influence of a malign trance from beyond the grave as, without the veil’s positive presence, the literal corruption of death had turned the convent into a brothel which would explain why there could be things like orgies going on in there (although I never fully nailed quite how this had come about in logical terms). But this idea got vetoed when I submitted the first treatment to Fighting Fantazine (they said, correctly, that it didn’t quite make sense) so, as I wanted to curry favour and my endgame was to see my work in print to get it some audience exposure, I acquiesced and changed it to an “untainted” convent but that still housed some nasties and a few people of dubious virtue.

At this juncture, let us look at the submission process that eventually led to SAV seeing the light of day in the pages of the ‘zine. After changing the treatment the concept was accepted by the Editor and I set about with gusto writing the adventure. I tend to work quite quickly once I get going so this took a month or thereabouts from first draft to submission-worthy version. I then waited 12 months to get the first set of proof-reading and play-testing notes back from the ‘zine. Various edits, questions, and corrections were suggested and I addressed these as needed (I believe there is still a section mis-link that we all missed, but it wouldn’t be FF without mistakes lol). One issue though that arose from the outset was one that I would not back down on and, subsequently, this does seem to have become something of a point of controversy with this adventure and I have seen it mentioned in pretty much everything I have read about SAV, this being the killing of the changeling in its initial baby form. The standard objection is the morality of killing a baby. I will address this as it is important and, in at least one case, I received a pretty vitriolic comment concerning this episode on an online gamebook forum. I have defended the relevance of the baby kill since the ‘zine first raised it and my justification is twofold: 1) when was FF ever conceptually moral in any way? 2) if you read on from that choice, you quickly realise that the baby is more than it seems when you engage it in a sequence of increasingly tough combats (in other words, by the next playthrough the player will know the truth of this section). So, I submitted my revised text and I waited. And I waited. A further full 12 months later (to the month), I received another set of proofing/playing notes querying more (mostly minor) points and requesting more corrections. By this point, quite frankly, I had long-since lost interest in this adventure and moved onto other projects so I no longer cared and just agreed to whatever they suggested, minus the baby kill which I absolutely refused to excise from the adventure as it is a neat trap for the unwary player (replays should show how to correctly deal with it) and it also links back to an earlier cameo so it adds some coherence too. I acknowledge that, in isolation, what you are expected to do to tackle the changeling may seem unsavoury but context is everything and I think it is a key part of the experience of this adventure.

Once the final draft was settled on by both parties, the next stage was when I was asked for an art brief for the cover, x number of internals, and x number of incidentals. I always like to have the big set pieces and any moments of awe or horror illustrated in my gamebooks, so choosing what to have visualised is usually something that is in my mind’s eye as soon as I design that particular part of an adventure. So this was an easy task, even though the project was, as far as I was concerned, very old news by then. This was the only time that I have been required to write an art brief without knowing who would be producing the art, so I had to write the briefs without the benefit of being able to exploit and play up to an artist’s style. By a bizarre coincidence, the colour cover was by Michael Wolmarans (aka Mike Tenebrae) who I have since worked with several times on my own Destiny’s Role gamebook series and he is very good at interpreting my briefs how I see them. I liked the cover when I saw it – it was striking and captured the sense of mystery that I was looking for, but I have read a lot of negative comments saying that it is a bit too grotesque or unsettling (again, since when was FF meant to be cosy?) However, and this is another unique experience for me adventure writing-wise, I did not see any of the art until the ‘zine issue was published and I was rather less impressed with the internal art by Simon Walpole which is, let’s make no bones about this, pretty poor. I have seen worse in the ‘zine and I accept that this is a fan work, but the art did it no favours at all and is far too bright and cartoonish for what I was looking for. There is no way I would have accepted any of it for a DR book but I did not have any say in the art the ‘zine matched to my text so it is what it is.

This subject neatly brings me to my personal opinion of an adventure written by me. First the positives. There are some fun moments of black humour that I enjoyed: the Potenza curse that renders your weapon useless (ahem); the initial moment where if you refuse to co-operate the book basically says “Sod you, stay outside and die, then”, but phrased better obviously; and the part where you can end up having to blunder your way through the leading of a religious service if you have killed a particular character. For those who focus purely on the polemic baby kill, I say this: I do have a sense of humour after all. And I do like the way that, as a mood piece, it is pretty taut and it definitely has atmosphere. I have seen it described as “weird” which was the intention as I wanted to do something a bit mysterious and outré, whilst also creating a fairly traditional building exploration adventure. In fact, I do think that the overall mystery-solving concept worked well. Generally, I see this as an adventure of moments and I’m not sure how well it gels, but there are several cameos that I really like: the orgy, the scriptorium, the trippy garden and its hidden tomb, the calacorm (who doesn’t like calacorms?), the automaton (which doesn’t quite fit though), and the bathroom Grandier encounter that can go any number of ways and really does require the player to tread carefully and think. When I wrote it, I liked the whipped suspended “fallen” nun but in retrospect it is maybe a bit too sado-masochistic, but then this adventure does get pretty dark (as many reviewers have pointed out) and this was heavily influenced by the 1970s Italian nun-sploitation movies that Redemption re-released in the ‘90s that are utter shite yet oddly compelling at the same time. Plus, this cameo does link to the changeling and adds even more context to what unsavoury events may have taken place in the recent past in the convent. On a similar note (and in the next chamber to the changeling) is the immured nun-wight which is another true history concept (devotional walling in of oneself) that I’ve fused into a fantasy horror trope for shock effect. I think the adventure overall has quite an old school feel, but the added violence and nastier moments do serve to pull it into the 21^st Century.

Re-reading it for this review is the first time I have read it since I submitted the final draft (I couldn’t face it until now because the whole overlong saga of getting it into print was too arduous and I hated this gamebook for so long because of this) and it does stand up pretty well, but if I had full creative control and speaking now with the benefit of hindsight, I would definitely do some things differently to address what I see as its negatives/failures. There are way too many Luck tests (often with fatal outcomes for failing) and I doubt a Luck score of less than 11 or 12 will get you very far. Likewise, there are some tough fights so a high Skill is essential, especially if you fall foul of the Potenza curse and/or lose your weapon at Square One (which is maybe a bit unfair, but you are entering what you are made to believe is a holy place so it does add up). The “Angela claiming to be Amandla” moment can just seem like a typo but it is meant to emphasise the lie that links what Grandier tells you so it’s actually a key text prompt for victory, but it did not come across very well and probably doesn’t really make sense so I should have made her lying more obvious (possibly just by choosing a better fake name for Sister Angela to utter). I would definitely make the meaning of the “veil of lies” concept more explicit generally as that is the point of the title (well, that and the anagram that exposes the lies) and the “veil” maguffin. I would also write it how I originally intended it ie with the fall to prostitution angle, but I would definitely give it a more logical base as I would have the time to develop this properly as it was discarded before it got the chance to become something that worked in context. I think overall that my now negative view of this adventure is born out of the prolonged creation of it (and my subsequent disappointment when I saw the internal art) and the fact that it was never quite what I planned it to be. Indeed, when I first started planning this adventure, the process of expanding the ideas and designing the overall map was a very exciting time (especially as I knew where it was going to be printed) but after 2+ years of development hell there came a point where I was just going through the motions, which is a shame really.

There are a couple of important points to note at this juncture. Firstly, the mirror episode (step into it or smash it?) is a trick I used to include in many adventures that I GM’d for friends when we played out scenarios in my early teens. For some reason this idea captured my young imagination and its being featured in SAV is a nod to its inclusion in basically every adventure I ever created when I was young. Secondly, this is the only time I have ever used a Bestiary to mine ideas for encounters to include (in this case, Out Of The Pit for pretty obvious reasons) and we have OOTP to thank for how the whole changeling part found its way into the proceedings. I think I probably chose to refer to OOTP to try and give SAV a more “FF authenticity” feel, but I cannot be certain anymore quite why I did this. I seem to recall that the calacorm was always going to be there so the prison cells were a given and the way you can get knocked out and come to in them is very much a homage to The Citadel Of Chaos.

My personal opinion is that SAV is an average mini-FF in the context of what has appeared in Fighting Fantazine as their output (just like Warlock before it) swung from brilliant adventures to utter dross. The ‘zine has at times definitely offered better mini-FFs than SAV, but there has certainly been some that are inferior to it in its pages too. For a long time it seemed like SAV might be the magazine’s mini-adventure swansong but it looks like there is a new Issue imminent after several years’ hiatus. To close I will ask myself the question “Am I proud of Sister Angela’s Veil?” For sure, I am proud that I got my work published in the ‘zine and I do not take this for granted in any way. That the adventure got a positive comment in You Are The Hero Part 2 from one of the ‘zine’s staff just before it was released was also a pleasing moment for me. Of all the adventures I have written (both amateur and professional) this is my least favourite, but this is as much because I like to complete a project and move on rather than endlessly going around in purgatorial circles revisiting it well after the fact as it is for any artistic or quality reasons. It is way too hard and the true path is very tight but it was designed as a challenge and a mystery to solve rather than a slash-and-collect-your-way-to-victory affair. That it was never quite how I imagined it is a problem that probably bothers me more than anyone else. The bottom line is that gamebooks are created for people to play and art of any kind is designed to both entertain and to provoke/inspire a reaction from those who experience it. The fact that some people have played it and felt compelled to comment online suggests both of its fundamental purposes were achieved but I myself would never rate it any higher than a decent but flawed effort.