Advanced D&D - Books 13-18

RANKINGS 

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13. Gates of Death - Score = 5.7    Tier = OK

Attempts to beat: 1

As I return to complete the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons series, I find yet another TSR gamebook that I was able to beat on the first attempt. The second one in a row to boot. This book sees us playing as Wyn the Younger, a youthful paladin who, as we begin the story, is being lectured by his high priest mentor for having been involved in a local bar fight with some thugs that insulted his order. The high priest goes on to confide in Wyn that the princess of the realm (and only heir to the throne) is dying, and only something called the Breath of Life can save her. So as penance for the apparently heinous act of the bar fight, Wyn is sent to retrieve this powerful item. It won't be easy of course, as this item is believed to be kept behind the legendary and mystical Gates of Death, which are supposedly located somewhere within the nearby Shadow Mountains. As luck would have it, the high priest managed to find a map outlining where Wyn needs to go, along with a poem hidden inside a musty tome that seems to provide clues as to the obstacles that Wyn will need to overcome on his journey. (Well, those were incredibly timely and convenient finds weren't they?) Wyn is not sent on the journey alone however, as the high priest sends Julian, a former thief and now priest initiate, to accompany him on the quest. So off you and Julian set on horseback, making for the Shadow Mountains to hopefully find the mysterious Gates of Death, retrieve the Breath of Life, and save the princess.

The game system follows the style typical for the series, providing you with a list of your character's attributes (Fighting, Wisdom, Perception, and Dexterity in this case), then giving you a certain amount of points that you can distribute among them as you see fit. At various times you are then tested on these attributes by requiring to make skill check rolls against them to see if you pass or fail. I generally enjoy this system as it normally allows for experimentation as to which attributes prove to be the most essential, which could also vary depending upon your chosen path through the book. Unfortunately though, this book is so easy that I'm not sure it matters how you allocate your points. I did look around after beating it, and there are certainly some failure endings here and there, but I believe you would have to be pretty unlucky with your dice rolls to reach them. Should you fail a skill check that you are asked to make, it only ever seems to result in some sort of minor Hit Point loss, and sometimes not even that, as you may be asked to make a second skill check roll should you have failed the first. Failing these back-to-back skill checks may indeed see you lose the adventure, but the target numbers you need to make are set sufficiently low enough that this should be a rare occurrence. Oh, and you also have your 8 Experience Points with which you can use to help with these checks should you anticipate any of them being particularly key to your overall success. The only single section that gave me even the slightest bit of trouble involved climbing up the side of a massive tower, where you are required to pass 8 (!) Dexterity Skill checks in a row (making this absolutely feel like a Luke Sharp designed sequence). The check number you need to roll is low yes, but failing even one of them sees you sliding down the tower, losing a single Hit Point in the process, and having to start from almost the bottom again. But because you begin the adventure with a fairly high number of Hit Points, you should have many, many attempts to make this climb, so it just leads to a lot of tediousness. Even this might not be necessary, as because the adventure only took me 1 attempt to beat, this sequence might be completely avoidable as well. 

In addition to the skills mentioned above, the adventure also incorporates an Honor Point system. As a noble paladin, Wyn begins the quest with 4 of these Honor points, and can gain or lose them as he makes his way through the quest depending on if the actions you take are considered honorable or not. This is incredibly similar to the Judgement Point system used in one of the previous books in the series, "The Nightmare Realm of Baba Yaga". As in that book, here you are also tested at the very end of the adventure to see if your Honor Points are at a certain level, and if so you are granted final victory. As also seen in that prior book however, how you gather these points seems to be quite obvious. Just act like a good person, avoid stealing and spying, don't rob dead bodies, and you shouldn't have any difficulty in the slightest in getting the required number of Honor points. 

One last design feature the adventure contains is a Time mechanic, whereby at certain times in the book you are told to mark off that a day has passed on a chart. The chart provided on the bookmark at the front of the book only goes up to 6 days, so you know beforehand that should you take longer than 6 days to complete the quest, you have likely failed. As with the Honor Point system, this didn't seem to work very well as I easily made it to the end under the time limit. But again, having only needed 1 attempt to win the adventure, it is possible that some of the other routes I didn't take could have led to wasted time and additional days added to my chart, but still, I'm really not sure why this mechanic was used at all, as it doesn't add all that much (if anything) to the adventure because the passing of the days is so far out of your control.   

Author Terry Phillips makes his return to the series with this book, having previously penned the excellently written book #4 in the range, "The Soulforge". The writing here is once again above average for a gamebook, with some nice descriptive prose, particularly once you get to the underground section in the back half of the book. However, it was also a step down from "The Soulforge" in this respect and felt a little like Phillips was more "going through the motions" with this effort in terms of both writing and also story for that matter. One story thread in particular that felt bungled was the plot line involving the archdruid. At the very beginning of the quest you learn that the archdruid (one of the realm's royal advisors) actually wants the princess to die, thus leaving no heir to the throne so that he can hopefully install his own choice of ruler who will, among other undesirable things, immediately disband the paladin order. You spend the opening sequence of the book hearing how the archdruid will be doing all he can by pulling out all the stops every step of the way to prevent you in obtaining the Breath of Life. But other than a group of his gypsy associates accosting you at an inn on the very first day of the quest (and these guys could just have easily been made out to be some random bandits or ruffians), the archdruid is basically never heard from again. There is a throwaway line at the very end of the adventure about how he "ran away" after you returned victorious and that's that. Ok then, case closed I guess. Not very satisfying I must say.    

Maybe the only unique aspect that Phillips introduces in the book is how it's apparently attempting to make some kind of commentary on death and the afterlife all throughout the story (and during the endgame in particular), but I'll be damned if I could figure out exactly what it was trying to say. It's strongly suggested throughout that Wyn will need to sacrifice himself in order to obtain the Breath of Life and thus save the princess, as dying is the only way to proceed past the Gates of Death (makes sense) where this item lies. And die he does. But yet AGAIN we have another adventure that backs out of the sacrifice angle at the last moment despite having hammered this message home all the way through the quest. The Breath of Life as it turns out isn't really an "item" in the usual sense, it's actually a.....well, I'm not totally sure what it's supposed to be, as it isn't explained very well. We do find out that it can indeed bring people back to life (again, makes sense), as in the afterlife Wyn inhales the Breath from the Ki-Rin (a pegasus type creature) that was guarding it, which then brings Wyn back from the dead. And now that he has the Breath residing inside him, he can carry it back to the princess to save her life as well. The ending here reminded me very much of the ending to the "World of Lone Wolf" series, by not only backing out of the sacrifice angle, but also providing a "super happy" style conclusion, with Wyn and Julian returning to their home city as heroes on the back of the flying Ki-Rin. Wyn then saves the princess and is made the captain of her personal guard, with a romantic attraction between the two of them hinted at as well. You know, as this is not one of the stronger gamebooks I have played, I'm actually glad this wasn't the adventure that finally took the concept of self sacrifice to heart, as I never felt that I was on an epic quest that this sacrifice would be best suited for anyway. 

Ranking: This is a typical "by-the-book" fantasy adventure. Travel to some mountains, make your way through a cave system, find the magical item, save the princess. It's just missing an evil wizard at the end. There does appear to be some decent replay value here at least, as there were several different routes that could be tried, which is a good thing because the adventure is just far too easy, as has been the case with several of the books from this series. I really don't see all that much that could be done to have improved it either. It's passable enough I suppose, but it's not exactly thrilling stuff and it's definitely near the bottom of the series rankings. 

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14. Trail Sinister - Score = 6.6    Tier = OK

Attempts to beat: 7

On to the 14th book in the series, and after some initial misgivings, I had some good fun with this one. Here we are playing as Kardel Arthur Dolan, a 20 year old "fighter" and son of the Duke of Pembrook. The story begins by telling us that 5 magical plaques have been stolen from our castle. In a confusing bit of explanation, we are also told that when these plaques are combined, they form a powerful item called the Crystal of Knowledge (the exact powers of this item are left very vague, I can only guess that it grants "knowledge"?). Fortunately, the thief who stole the plaques has already been apprehended. Not so fortunately however, we learn that this thief has already sold the 5 plaques to various individuals around the dukedom. With a looming troll invasion on our borders, it is imperative we retrieve the plaques so that our father can use them in our nation's defense. Needing all the men he can muster to prepare for the coming attack, we are sent off to bring back the plaques with only the help of two volunteers, Langor (a self-proclaimed powerful mage), and Probmer (a self-proclaimed master thief). We know the town that the plaque thief was in when he sold his ill-gotten gains, so we begin the quest by heading there to see if we can pick up the trail and recover the plaques and then return before the imminent troll attack destroys the castle.  

Tracking down the plaques is really not too difficult, as the adventure follows a fairly linear path (at least up until the final plaque). What is interesting though is that the people holding them are not guilty of anything, as they bought them from the thief in good faith. A couple of them are even willing to sell them back to you, only wishing to turn a profit in the process. This makes for one of the more interesting angles in the adventure, as you begin the quest with 350 gold pieces, and may be able to buy some of the plaques back instead of having to fight for them. It's just too bad then that the most interesting aspect of the book is brought low by probably its biggest drawback, that being a lack of player agency. Skill checks determine the majority of things that happen and actions that you take in the adventure, which precludes you from making strategic decisions regarding spending your gold (or anything else). I was able to overlook this to a certain degree because I was enjoying the adventure so much, but it's definitely noticeable and I could see how this might be a turn off for some. 

Incredibly, this adventure omits the Experience point system seen in other books in the range that allows you to save up points to spend on any skill checks that you might deem essential. I say incredibly because unlike some of those others, this one could have really used it. Author James Brumbaugh does a fine job in mixing in several skill checks (among the many, many checks in the adventure) where failure leads to automatic death. This is great at building tension for each of these checks as you never know if a failed roll means a Hit point loss or game over. And while getting to allocate an extra 9 skill points between your 3 stats of Fighting, Presence, and Perception before you begin the adventure helps somewhat in planning for these skill checks, the rules regarding their allocation (your Fighting stat must be your highest attribute and your Perception stat must be your lowest), just serves to remove some of that strategy. With this being the case, there is admittedly an "on-rails" feeling to the adventure, at least until you reach the assassin's guild sequence near the end where events from then on out can diverge significantly depending on if one of your companions survived or not. So on the one hand, I appreciated the added challenge level and tension that these skill checks provided, especially coming off the two previous books in the series, but on the other hand it can be frustrating to keep failing at the same unavoidable hurdle over and over knowing there was absolutely nothing you could have done differently to change it. 

The Hit point system for Kardel though was handled very well, with many of the non-lethal failed skill checks resulting in possible large Hit point losses. Unlike some of the other books that usually see you only lose a single Hit point here and there, failed rolls in this adventure can result in Hit point losses of sometimes between 5 to 20 in one attack. This makes dying through loss of Hit points a very real concern. That said, I'm not totally sure what the purpose is of having to track the Hit points of both Langor and Probmer, as they rarely take any damage, and if either of them were to die due to Hit point loss it would throw the continuity of the adventure into a shambles. It is also possible to proceed through to winning the adventure not actually needing the Crystal of Knowledge. Plans change and all that, so in-game it could be explained that Kardel needs to change tactics once he arrives back at Pembrook and now finds it too late to use the Crystal. But if that's the case, why was it automatic game over earlier when you are asked if you had all 5 plaques and you said you didn't (as it is technically possible to miss a couple of the plaques)? I chalk this up to Brumbaugh losing track of all the various possibilities during the endgame.   

Speaking of your travelling companions, I found them to be excellently handled. Both Langor and Probmer each have one individual attribute of their own (Wisdom for Langor and Stealth for Probmer), and these two characters prove very powerful and are routinely called upon for aid, often stepping in to give you a second chance should you fail your own skill check. Their backgrounds are also kept a secret, with it not being revealed until very late as to why they would volunteer for such a dangerous assignment in the first place, and both of them occasionally take actions that benefit themselves personally as opposed to the ultimate goal of the quest. Because of this, you are never really sure if you can trust either of them, and some good intrigue and mystery is created by these developments as you are routinely reminded that you know nothing of these two at all. I also enjoyed how Kardel was not above threatening anyone he came across who he felt was hindering the completion of his quest. While generally friendly, the whole of the dukedom is at stake here and he isn't about to take any crap. Good on him!  

I must say that I greatly enjoyed the atmosphere of this book. You travel across sun drenched fields and beautiful forests, while visiting clean and well constructed inns and taverns. Heck, even the evil wizard in the adventure has immaculately manicured lawns around his magnificent stone house. For me this all conjured up images of a "Heroes of Might and Magic" style quest, where armour gleams in the sun and brilliantly coloured banners fly from castle ramparts. The encounters were all well done too, with interesting lengthy fights against mountain cats, wyverns, wizards, assassins, and various armoured enemies. This appears to be the only gamebook ever written by Brumbaugh, and if so, that's a pity as I thought there was some real promise shown here. The design has some good ideas in the premise of either fighting or bartering for the items you seek, and with some tweaking this could have been really great. The writing is not quite at the level of Terry Phillips from the previous book, but I would still call it slightly above average in its own right. One thing that still has me puzzled though is the choice of title. I'm not sure what "Trail Sinister" is referring to from the adventure. You and your companions are on the "trail" of trying to recover some items from people who presumably bought them in good faith, which is not what I would call sinister. The only other trail I can think of that this may be referring to is a literal trail that you follow to get to the evil wizard's house, but this trail itself isn't sinister in any way (it's actually made out to be an extremely pleasant ride through the woods) and it takes up only one section of the book in any case. I suppose it could also refer to the fact that one of the people "trailing" you could be sinister. (And this might be backed up by the cover of the book). If anyone out there has any other idea as to the meaning behind the title of the book I would love to hear it. Speaking of the cover of the book, who are these two figures supposed to be? If these are meant to be two of the heroes of the adventure, they are drawn completely differently here than they are drawn and described all throughout the interior of the book. Otherwise, Kardel grew a mustache at some point and Probmer shrunk a few feet. 

Ranking: I would compare this book to that of a roller coaster. Once you allocate your stats, you are basically along for the ride that the dice take you on, but I did find it a very enjoyable ride nonetheless. The difficulty level was about right and the story kept me involved and guessing right until the end. It would have been better served by more player agency for sure, and there are a few other tweaks that could have pushed this score higher, but I still had a good time with the book even though I can admit it has some design issues. Therefore, I put it in the middle of the pack for the series, but it certainly had the potential to be better.

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15. The Vanishing City - Score = 5.2    Tier = OK

Attempts to find optimal ending: 3

"The Vanishing City"? More like "The Vanishing Gameplay". This adventure does a complete about-face from the previous entry, which was littered with skill checks and dice rolling, by containing very little of these at all. I will get to that when reviewing the design, but first, the story. In this adventure we get to play as Sir Theobold Redbeard, an older fighter with his best days behind him, but thanks to his previously legendary exploits he now finds himself as the ruler of the dominion of Lighthall. While strolling through the market of his capital city one day, accompanied by a visiting cleric friend of his, Theona, strange lights suddenly descend from the sky and promptly zip around "erasing" the city, seemingly from existence, along with all the citizens within it. For some reason, Theobold is apparently saved from this disappearing act due to the armour he wears (and this armour and its apparent magical properties do not seem to ever be mentioned again) along with Theona, who is also saved thanks to her close proximity to Theobold when the phenomenon occurs. The two of them thus find themselves in an empty field where the city once stood, wondering what the hell is going on, when a magical copper coin appears at Theobold's feet. A message is then projected from the coin explaining the situation. There is a war raging in the alternate dimension of Trann between an evil sorcerer known as Durhan the Conqueror and a group of good wizards known as the Ruling Wizards of Trann. The war has now spilled over to Theobold's dimension, as a vanishing spell Durhan cast has broken through the astral barrier separating the dimensions and these wizards now need Theobold's help by having him travel to their dimension and defeat Durhan, which would also restore Theobold's own city. The copper coin will transport Theobold (along with Theona) to Trann anytime he wishes, but first the wizard explains that there are 3 other coins scattered about Theobold's dominion. These other coins are made of gold, silver and platinum, and bestow various powers that could be useful in defeating Durhan and will also prove that Theobold is the hero they seek should he be able to defeat the guardians holding these coins. 

This all sounded incredibly familiar to me, and well it should, as this is almost the exact same plot from author Allen Varney's earlier book entitled "Doctor Strange: Through Six Dimensions" from the Marvel Super Heroes series. It's not just the story however, but the design as well that shares many commonalities. As in that adventure, you begin with the option of 3 different places you can travel to (in this case, a cave, a lake, or...another cave) and can visit and re-visit them in any order you wish, and you also have the option of travelling to the alternate dimension any time you like as well, even right away should you desire. The 3 other coins are not all that hard to obtain from their various locations, and as long as you don't just attack everything on sight like a maniac (of which you are actually given the option of doing even though Theobold is supposed to be a well-known and honorable hero) almost no dice rolling or passing of skill checks is required to get them. The coins possess certain powers (the gold coin allowing you to transform into a different creature, the silver coin allowing you to cast an illusion, etc) which allows you to bypass certain situations with an auto-win, which in turn just serves to make an already easy book even easier. Each coin contains enough strength to have its power used 3 times before it's spent, but I don't think there are even 3 places to use each coin throughout the whole book. The only encounter throughout the adventure that even remotely stood out was one with a family of riddle loving sphinxes. In order to obtain the gold coin, you need to defeat the male sphinx in a riddle contest. The riddle you are asked to solve is one of those "one of us always lies and one of us always tells the truth" variants, which I feel like I have seen several times in gamebooks already. Even this encounter isn't all that great though, as once you answer the riddle correctly, the sphinx proceeds to immediately flub your riddle and it's game over in your favour after one round. 

Stunningly, this adventure has one of the quickest victory paths I have ever seen in a gamebook, and can be beaten (with the "optimal" ending achieved no less) by not even visiting any of the first 3 locations and by just immediately heading straight to the dimension of Trann! As it turns out, you don't actually need any of the coins (say what??) to vanquish Durhan, as some various different items that you can use to defeat him can be found within a single dragon-shaped house in Trann itself. You don't even need to fight anything in this house. Just search the two floors and you get everything you need. Even if you did happen to fail a Perception skill check to find one of the items, you could just go out and come back in and try again. This Perception check was one of a whopping TWO skill checks along this victory route. Granted, you have to answer a final somewhat vague question correctly from among four options, but it's so easy and quick to get back here anyway that you could just return in 5 minutes to try the other choices should you want to, so it's barely worth pondering it. Also much like Varney's earlier book, this adventure has several different victory endings that can be reached. I once again took it upon myself to add some challenge by attempting to reach what I felt was the optimal ending contained within the final section of the book, only to discover that this is the easiest and quickest one to get! 

Special mention needs to be made on the ending sequence to this adventure (the optimal ending in any case), which is terrible and absolutely interminable. Once you and Theona collect the items you need from the dragon-house (I hope you didn't waste your time gathering those silly coins), you both fly through the sun (yes, really) to find the extremely powerful and god-like Flame King, then convince him to help you against Durhan. And by help you, I mean for him to do everything himself as you just sit back and watch. At this point, you are sent to the incredibly long and boring victory section, which details the final battle between the Flame King and Durhan (again, you don't even get to participate) where the Flame King basically squashes him like a bug. This battle takes place in one of those astral-planes-kind-of-like-outer-space-but-not-really type of deals where you never really know what the heck is going on and what rules and laws of physics are applicable. I'm never a fan of these "anything goes" type of locations because random junk can happen at any time, you know, just because. Even after Durhan is defeated, you still need to endure the trip back to your own world where you find your previously vanished city has now been restored, along with all its citizens. But guess what? None of your subjects believe you when you relate your adventure, as no time has passed for any of them! Then in a final groan inducing moment, the Flame King appears over the city to scare your citizens into believing your tale. Was that really necessary? Not to mention that reading the Flame King's dialogue at the best of times is tortuous because he tallkkkkkkssss likkkkeee thissssss. I usually greatly enjoy and savor victory sections, but this one I found myself rushing to finish just to get it over with. 

This book definitely feels like Varney just took his "Through Six Dimensions" template and then pasted this much less interesting adventure over it. The routes through the book are far shorter, and most importantly, left me wondering where the heck the gameplay was. He included an interesting starting system whereby you have your choice among a half dozen equipment items of which you can select two, and they bestow various stat boosts, but then he goes on to give you very little reason to care which ones you pick. When you only need to roll the dice twice on the winning playthrough, that's a problem. This was especially jarring coming off of playing the previous book in the series which was wall to wall dice rolling. Varney's writing also seemed to take a step back for me as well, and he additionally includes a very flat and uninteresting romance angle throughout the book, with Theobold routinely thinking of how good a queen Theona would make, while at the same time trying to summon the courage to ask her to marry him. The two characters really don't seem to have any chemistry though, and they are routinely bickering, with Theona in particular constantly calling out Theobold for his drinking habits and what she feels to be the evilness of such "imbibing". Cripes mate, is that the kind of nagging you want to put up with for the rest of your days? For his part, Theobold seems to have a bad habit of calling Theona "old girl". So, I guess he really is asking for it after all. We do know from the stats card that Theobold is 40 years old, and with pickup game like that, this book could have just as easily been entitled "The 40 Year Old Virgin".  

Jerry, I know less about women, then anyone else in the world. But one thing I do know is, if you refer to them as "old girl", you are a complete idiot. 

Ranking: I'm not sure I've played a gamebook that felt more like an entry in the Choose-Your-Own-Adventure series more than this one. Barely any game mechanics, multiple endings, random stuff going on at times, and very flat characters. I feel like this series has really gone into a bit of rut with the last several entries, not doing anything we haven't seen before, and not even doing it as well as we have seen it before. This particular book has lots of room for experimentation going on within it, but that's really the only positive thing I can say about it. It's down near "Prisoners of Pax Tharkas" at the bottom of the rankings for me, which was surprising after playing Varney's previous book.  

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16. Shadow Over Nordmaar - Score = 8.5    Tier = Great!

Attempts to beat: 24

Whoa! I've got to start saying that a series has hit a rut more often. No sooner than I do, I'm greeted with this gem of a gamebook. This is another entry in the series which takes place within the Dragonlance universe, and sees you playing as Jonn, or at least, you think that's what your name is. You see, one of the real great hooks of this adventure is that you begin by finding yourself lying in a clearing surrounded by forest, with no memory of who you are or where you were going. You are awoken by a cleric girl named Lorina, who while fleeing her home village of Valkinord after it was attacked by dragons, comes across you in this clearing and helps to nurse you back to health from some wounds you are suffering from, the origin of these wounds also being a mystery. You and Lorina are immediately attacked in the clearing by some unknown assailants, and from there the two of you escape into the woods and must determine which way you should head, hoping that you can recover your memory along the way and complete whatever mission you sense you were on when this memory loss befell you. This amnesia angle isn't entirely new, as the wonderful "Creature of Havoc" from the Fighting Fantasy series used a similar hook, but it still remains a great idea, and with you playing as an actual human adventurer as opposed to a mindless monster, it provides more than enough originality from that earlier FF masterpiece. The reason why this premise works so well is that it provides a fantastic sense of mystery throughout the book, as you will come across various individuals who seem to know who you are, yet will call you by different names and will many times act outright hostile towards you for reasons of which you are unaware. As I've said many times elsewhere, providing a mystery in a gamebook is a wonderful way to go, as after every failure, I'm anxious to immediately start again because I dearly wish to solve it and learn what is really behind all the goings on. 

Another fantastic element to this book is that there are two separate routes to victory. Now, I don't just mean that there are two routes that eventually converge on the same ending, but that the two different paths are completely separate adventures, as they conclude at different locations and see you battling a different antagonist entirely. Not only that, but even more unusually, the conclusion of each of these adventures reveals you to be a totally different person depending on which path you picked. This, combined with a fairly high difficulty level of both paths, works wonderfully as there is a heck of a lot of play value here if you want to beat both adventures. And while I for one appreciated the extra challenge this book provided, especially considering how easy a lot of books in this series have proven to be, it should be noted that this book can be quite frustrating at times, because a single low roll at the wrong moment can immediately scupper you.         

In addition to the usual type of starting attributes that these books provide (Stealth, Wisdom, Agility, Fighting and Perception in this case), the adventure also includes a couple of other things to keep track of. One of these is Memory points, which are obtained in various sections when your character happens to remember something from their past. These Memory points are absolutely essential to find if you wish to win the adventure, as you will be asked at the very end if you have found a certain amount of them. If you have obtained enough, you finally remember who you are and are able to defeat the villain, but if you do not have the required amount, it's instant death. It was my experience that you couldn't afford to miss even one of these Memory points, so you will need to carefully search for them and determine which Skill checks you cannot afford to fail should you wish to win. I had a good time locating these as they could be easily missed, which contributed to me exploring the book to the fullest. Thankfully, this book includes the Experience point system seen in most of the prior entries, which give you a certain number of starting points (8 in this book) which you can add to any Skill check rolls you wish in order to help you pass some of the more key rolls. Author Dezra Despain (more on this name later) also did a great job of providing just the right amount of points that had me thinking long and hard about the optimal way to employ these, and I found I needed every single one of them! This is contrary to most of the other books in the series, which have proven easy enough that these Experience points were not usually required in order to win. The other extra stat you need to track is how many days have passed (as was done in "Gates of Death") with you being told whenever you need to mark off one day. If you take too long to get to the end of the adventure, you lose. I found this mechanic didn't work nearly as well as the Memory points however, as other than one sequence that can find you wandering around lost in a haunted time-warping forest, costing you several days in the process, I'm not sure how you wouldn't get to the end in the allotted time. And even if you do find yourself lost in this forest, I believe that means you have already missed one of the Memory points and can't win anyway.    

The adventure does admittedly suffer a bit from something that occurred in one of the previous books in the series, "Trail Sinister", in that the dice will take you on the ride, and if you find yourself rolling a low enough number at any one of the essential skill checks (and because there are several of these, you will need to spread out your Experience points to use on them) then it's game over on one roll with nothing much more that you could have really done about it. To me however, this is really just the nature of these "skill check" style of books, and I barely noticed it in this case (unlike how much it stuck out in "Trail Sinister") because the adventure was so well designed and my urge to solve the mystery so great. I found myself strategizing long and hard about how to allocate my starting Skill points along with where to use my precious Experience points as I slowly drew out my map and uncovered which Skill checks were essential and which I could afford to fail. As mentioned, there are more than a few of these Skill checks that have to be passed in order to win (some to avoid instant death, and others in order to obtain an essential Memory point). The plan I ultimately decided upon was to mark out the four rolls I felt I needed to use the Experience points on the most on my map, using 2 Experience points apiece on them. Even so doing, the adventure took me many attempts to get through as there were more than just these four checks that are essential and any low roll on any of them, or even any extremely low roll on any of the checks that I was actually using my Experience points on, and it was curtains. It was the thought process that I needed to put behind this spending of all my points (both Skill and Experience) that contributed greatly to making this book such a winner.

There are some minor nitpicks present here as well however. After the great mystery buildup all throughout the adventure(s), I found that the final confrontations with the antagonists were slightly disappointing. They are your typical fantasy style villains, and while they get the job done, I was hoping for something a bit better, considering some of the creativity shown in other areas of the book. One of the final ending sections actually even implies that your character may have just made the whole thing up, which is an unusual twist and I see what the author was going for, but it also feels like something of a cheat in the "it was all just a dream" sense. However, this is left up to the reader to decide, so I'm going to go ahead and say my character actually did do all he claimed to have done so that I don't feel robbed of the accomplishment of winning. There is also the odd editing error here and there, most notably with your character being called "Jonn" all throughout the adventure but your name shown as "John" on the stats card, and at least one example of a skill check that provides you with two different values that you need to hit, but fortunately these are very minor. And in keeping with the strange choices of cover illustrations that was also seen in "Trail Sinister", I'm not totally sure what the heck the cover of this book is supposed to be depicting. I felt like I explored this book quite thoroughly but still have no idea who this is supposed to be or what is going on here. It is as if there is a large disconnect between the illustrators of some of these covers and the actual content of the books. Fortunately, all the above is relatively minor and does not detract too much from this otherwise great book. 

One other oddity to mention is that this book, much like another great entry from the series "Master of Ravenloft", begins with a section told from the viewpoint of someone other than the player character. In this case, the adventure opens from the perspective of an evil dragon patrolling the skies over Nordmaar. I don't think this works nearly as well as the Ravenloft adventure though, because as far as I can tell this dragon is never seen or heard from again the rest of the book after this very first section. It feels like a mechanic used by the author in order to avoid having a prologue (as the dragon's internal monologue gives us a bit of background on the area) which is acceptable enough I guess, I just thought it a strange coincidence that what for me have been the best two books in the series both began with one of these types of "bad guy" viewpoint openings. 

So, on to the subject of the author themselves. Near as I can tell, Dezra Despain is a pseudonym for well known Dragonlance author Tracy Hickman. The fact that this appears to be the only gamebook ever written by Hickman (unless he has used another pseudonym that I am not yet aware of) is a travesty.  He has a clear gift for storytelling, writing, and design. If your first ever gamebook is this good, then one can only imagine what else could have been produced had he stuck with it. His writing is excellent, particularly when it comes to the interaction between Jonn and Lorina. It needs to be mentioned that the Lorina companion has been one of the better ones I have come across to date. She proves to be very useful, and while also dangerous in battle (even though in her own words she doesn't have any fighting experience) she additionally shows a surprising amount of vulnerability at times. The growing relationship between the two characters is another high point of the book, as you slowly watch these two people begin to truly care for one another. Finally, I'm not sure how he did it, but Hickman managed to cram two full length separate adventures into a mere 191 section gamebook. I just got through commenting how the previous book in the series, "The Vanishing City", could be completed incredibly quickly, and that book contained a much larger 245 sections. Hickman puts on a master class here on maximizing section count. 

Ranking: Great! The intriguing amnesia angle, the atmospheric writing, fantastic companion, and two separate adventures to top it all off. There is also a great deal of thought and strategy that needs to be put into where you will deploy all your points, both in terms of Skill and Experience, which will vary depending on which route through the book you wish to take. The endings, while not bad, were a little bit disappointing however, and the adventure is not for the easily frustrated. Still, this book is neck and neck with "Master of Ravenloft" for the best in the series, and while I have to give that earlier adventure the edge thanks to its wonderful antagonist, great Clue-like design, and fantastic final boss battle, "Shadow over Nordmaar" is a classic in its own right and makes it into my Hall of Fame.

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17. Spawn of Dragonspear - Score = 5.3    Tier = OK

Attempts to beat: 2

And here we are back to the middling efforts. While I do see the upside in having a series that has a number of different authors contributing to it, a downside to that is that when you encounter a really strong entry in the range, the next author rarely seems to be able to match it. Any great game mechanic ideas that a writer devises is not carried forward, and some of the momentum of the series is therefore lost. That is definitely the case here, with this entry from author Steve Perrin returning the series to its bare-bones essentials. This adventure, which takes place in the Forgotten Realms universe (one that I am totally unfamiliar with) sees us playing as Kelson Darktreader, a half-human half-elf "Ranger", who serves as a huntsman for the city of Daggerford. When demons begin to spew forth from the nearby city of Dragonspear, Duke Pryden of Daggerford sends most of his army to join an alliance of friendly neighboring cities to find out what is going on at Dragonspear and to quash the threat. A byproduct of the appearance of these demons is that there is also a growing orc army gathering within the nearby Misty Forest under the leadership of Jagurt Redclaw, a large, violent, and intelligent orc commander. Instead of travelling to Dragonspear with the rest of the army, Kelson is given the task of heading into the forest to learn more about this orc army, and to assassinate Redclaw should the opportunity present itself. 

This isn't a bad beginning, but it also doesn't exactly tread new ground. Perhaps the only interesting angle during this opening is that Kelson is saddled with half a dozen named companions (a mage, a cleric, a barbarian, and several fighters) of which he commands, and something neat could have been done had you got to somehow manage this group and guide them through the adventure, learning and developing with them as you go. Alas, this whole idea is scrapped very early on, as in something out of a Lone Wolf book, everyone in your group except for yourself is killed in an orc ambush. The early entries of the book also like to repeat things, with facts from the prologue being copied over into the opening few sections. This opening really hammers home how Kelson doesn't like or trust humans, but then he acts like a totally naive and trusting idiot when it comes to the guide he chooses to lead his party through the forest. 

Once all your initial companions bite the dust, you are provided another ally in the form of Braggi Quickaxe, a barbarian you once met long ago. While Braggi proves very useful throughout the quest (bailing you out several times), I never really got the feeling there was any sort of connection between him and Kelson, despite Perrin's attempts to convince me otherwise. Braggi is also another one of those characters whose dialogue is tedious to get through, as he talks in broken English. Once you hook up with Braggi, you need to decide if you want to continue your hunt for Redclaw or head back to Daggerford to stop a demon heading there. This is set up as the main choice of the adventure, and an interesting one at that, as it even hints that which you decide to do will have serious consequences, as you effectively will need to leave one of the two villains to their own devices, and they will no doubt wreak havoc as they see fit. As it turns out though, this ends up being far from the case and you find out that you can actually stop them both in plenty of time.   

I've been saving this one for last, but boy o boy does this book contain one of the worst continuity errors I have ever seen. One so bad in fact that it boggles the mind how it made it into the adventure. So, as mentioned above, you have two things that you need to accomplish. One, you need to kill the orc leader, Jagurt Redclaw, which will scatter his orc army, and two, you need to get to your home city of Daggerford and stop the demon imposter there from enacting whatever evil plan he is concocting. As also mentioned above, you are given a choice as to which you would like to do first. Should you choose to go after the orc leader first however, and succeed in successfully assassinating him (with a description of how his army does indeed then scatter and return to their own lands), you then head to Daggerford to stop the demon. As it turns out, the demon's plan was to open the gate of the city on a certain night and allow the forces of Redclaw to enter. Seeing as how I had already killed Redclaw and scattered his army, this problem is already then solved because there is no army left to come to the city right? Apparently not, as the adventure proceeds as if you had chosen the other earlier option of going immediately back to Daggerford, complete with Redclaw and his now suddenly intact head (and suddenly intact orc army) appearing to invade the city! I ended up having to kill Redclaw yet again on the field of battle. This is a horrendous bit of immersion breaking game design, and it's tough to imagine how it never occurred to Perrin that players could have chosen to go after the orc leader first. Why even bother giving them the option to do so in the first place then? Yikes!     

I'm struggling to find much else to say about this book. It follows the basic design of the series to a "T", and that's about all it does. It contains some of the basic stats we have come to expect (Fighting, Archery, Physical, Sensory, Stealth) and also the usual Hit Points and Experience Points.....and that's it. There are no new unique stats or game mechanics added just for this adventure, like many of the other books provide, and as such this feels like it should have been one of the first few books released in the series, when it was still finding its footing. This is a shame too because there was an opportunity here to play up the archery angle to the hilt, with perhaps Kelson having a different limited selection of arrows such as incendiary, explosive, or poison and sleeping gas, which led to different outcomes depending on what was used. Or, the leading of  your initial squad could have been capitalized on, with Kelson having to manage and deploy his group depending upon the situation. Unfortunately, that isn't what we got. Maybe the writing was on the wall for the series at this stage and this book was just hastily thrown out there, but it's a pretty big disappointment considering how good the preceding adventure was. Oh, and continuing on about the covers of these books, I once again have no idea who is being depicted on the cover here. It's obviously not Kelson, and doesn't appear to be Braggi either, but it's also a rather generic illustration and I suppose it could be one of multiple "randoms" that you may come across during the adventure or it could be showing someone from one of the sections I didn't encounter, as this book only took me 2 attempts to complete. 

Ranking: Very underwhelming and near the bottom of the series rankings for sure. I give it an edge over "Prisoners of Pax Tharkas" and "The Vanishing City" because there is actually a decent amount of gameplay here if nothing else. But one of the most dreadful continuity errors you will ever see in a gamebook is also very telling as to the level of care put into this. With one more book to go, I hope the series goes out on a much better note than this (but if final books from other series are any indication, my hopes aren't high).

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18. Prince of Thieves - Score = 6.4    Tier = OK

Attempts to beat: 15

Almost! The series draws to a close with this effort that starts out so well, but then collapses right at the end. In an adventure that has a very "Midnight Rogue" feel to it, we play as Jadd Hachen, a legendary Robin Hood type thief within the sprawling city of Vasivada who robs from the rich and gives to the poor (he literally does this in the very first section). The story opens with Jadd having just robbed a temple of 3 different coloured gems (along with fistfuls of gold), at which point he himself is then robbed of the gems by a trio of thieves. Each of the thieves makes off with one of the different gems (blue, green, and red) and heads into a different part of the city. It is at this point that Jadd learns of how the gems he stole were in fact about to be used by a demon called Kaviani to open a portal to his demon dimension in an event called The Reckoning, which would basically end the world as we know it once Kaviani's compatriots begin to pour through. It is therefore up to Jadd to retrieve the gems to ensure Kaviani doesn't get his mitts on them first. 

The adventure can be cleanly divided into 5 sequences, outlined below:

1- Escaping Kaviani - This opening sequence is where Jadd is robbed of the gems in an alleyway, at which point the demon Kaviani (along with his gargoyle henchman) makes his first appearance. Jadd is clearly over his head at this point so you must escape through alleyways and over rooftops. You also have Royal Guards pursuing you as well because of the theft, and you can find yourself having to avoid them also. While it is possible to die in these opening sections, you would need to have several bad rolls in a row for that to happen, and it makes sense for the start of the adventure to not be very difficult. This area also does a great job of setting up Kaviani as a powerful and scary foe, along with providing you a companion for the quest in a fellow female thief named Zane. 

In a great bit of freedom, the adventure then allows you to try and get back the 3 gems in any order you wish, with a series of mini-quests for each. Breaking them down from easiest to hardest:  

2 - Obtaining the blue gem - The easiest gem to reacquire, this quest gives Jadd and Zane a couple of different ways to get it, with the easiest being to investigate a pawn shop where the thief who had made off with it has just sold it. The pawn shop owner turns out to be a witch however, and she isn't just going to hand it over without a fight. Once you defeat the witch for the gem, Kaviani appears (he is chasing you throughout the whole book) and attempts to take it back from you himself. It is here you learn that it is possible to survive the mini-quests, but actually lose the gem to Kaviani. Should this happen, you can still continue and attempt to get the other gems. At first I thought this made sense, as if Kaviani needs all of the gems to open his demon portal, then you should really only need to get one of them to thwart his plans right? More on this later. There really isn't all that much to this sequence if you take the pawn shop path, as the majority of it takes place within said shop. The other path to get the blue gem is longer and slightly more difficult, but also prevents Kaviani from appearing and trying to take it back later. Like most of the book, this quest is well written and has a good level of intrigue. 

3 - Obtaining the green gem - The medium difficulty gem to reacquire, things start to get more involved here. You learn the thief who took this gem has been captured by the Royal Guards and brought to the palace dungeon. You then have the choice of either searching the palace treasure room which is located at the top of a tower, or by going to the dungeon itself should you believe that the thief may have been able to hide it on their person before being captured. Unlike with the blue gem, there is a do-or-die skill check here and it's not a gimme either. Fail it and you die. Pass it and you get the green gem. I believe this then makes the green gem impossible to "lose", so long as you are able to survive the insta-death skill check.  

4 - Obtaining the red gem - Woooo boy. Talk about the difficulty level suddenly skyrocketing. Far and away the hardest gem to reacquire, this quest sees Jadd and Zane following the thief who took it into an underground area of the city known as the "Down-Below". Should you be able to survive it, this quest can become far longer and much more involved than the others, with the two different paths through it leading to the acquisition of the red gem having several skill checks along the way of the do-or-die variety, and once again, none of them are exactly super easy to pass. The adventure down here is so involved and well described though, with many interesting things that can happen, that it really stands out as one of the highlights of the book......with one exception. That exception being an awful unavoidable random die roll right near the start of the area that not only determines which path through the quest you will take, but also gives you a 1 in 3 chance of instant death. To clarify, this is not a skill check where you can plan ahead when allocating your Skill points or by using your Experience points, but you roll one die, with a result of 1 or 2 taking you on one of the routes to the gem, a 5 or 6 taking you on the other route, and a 3 or 4 meaning game over! This is basically the same crap that I called out regarding the siren in "Trial of Champions", and it's just as infuriating here. 

5 - The final battle with Kaviani - For the longest time while playing this book, I thought for sure it was going to make it into the Good tier. Well, then the end game happened. Because as it turns out, the whole process of acquiring the gems is TOTALLY MEANINGLESS! After each of the 3 mini quests, you are asked if you have yet acquired all 3 gems, or if you have lost any 2 of them. If either of these are true, then you are sent to different sections. So what happens should you obtain 2 of the gems and lost the third? Well, thanks to the appropriate paragraph being very confusingly written, you apparently can keep trying to obtain the one gem you lost by replaying that mini quest over and over, with unlimited attempts as long as you don't die. This is incredibly immersion breaking and I have to believe this isn't at all what author Chris Martindale intended. Should you only get 2 of the gems, you do get a 1 in 6 chance of immediately moving on to the endgame, which was a nice bit of leeway allowed to the player, but those odds are still obviously not very much in your favour, and you will likely be left with no choice but to replay the one mini quest for the gem you lost, or just chalk the whole attempt up to a defeat (which is what I did, as replaying the quests seemed massively silly). What's more, I also thought all along that should you end up losing any 2 of the gems, then surely that must send you to a game over section, otherwise why is that section there? Not so fast! Should you lose 2 of the gems, after a couple of page turns you are actually sent to........the final confrontation and endgame anyway! In fact, it's the exact same one you would have been sent to had you succeeded in getting back all 3 of the gems! What??? So it's basically a case of "gems schmems", all that really matters is surviving the mini quests. As long as you do that, you get sent to the same final sequence no matter how many of the gems you managed to reacquire. Wow.  

As just stated, regardless of how many gems you were able to get back, Kaviani eventually gets them all anyway by kidnapping Zane and demanding you turn over the ones you have in exchange for her safe return. Like a total idiot, Jadd actually agrees to this and gives up any gems he has, which results in Kaviani beginning his Reckoning ceremony. It is here you have one final chance to defeat Kaviani, by either challenging him to a duel, or by attempting to re-steal the gems while he isn't looking (jeesh, does Jadd say "YOINK!" when he does this? These gems have been stolen more times than my lunch from the office fridge). Both of these options are doable, with each leading to one final do-or-die skill check to determine if you are able to save the world or not, with the book having several successful possible endings depending on what you do here.    

It's really unfortunate how the book plays out at the end, as getting back the 3 gems takes a really great "Goldilocks" approach by varying up both the length and the difficulty of all 3 of the mini quests, in addition to providing a couple of different paths through each. The adventure all throughout is also very well written by Martindale, with many interesting encounters and fast-paced set pieces, along with a nice sense of atmosphere in all areas of the city. There is no denying how difficult some of the rolls are though, particularly in trying to get the red gem. This is compounded by a rule regarding the use of the Experience points in this adventure, in that you can only use 1 point per roll as opposed to any amount you wish from what you have of them remaining. This rule has been used in some of the other books as well, but really hits home here due to the plethora of tough rolls, and the option allowing you to use more than 1 point was direly needed. The adventure also doesn't do much to add to the game system, with Jadd only having three basic stats (Fighting, Agility, and Cunning), with no unique mechanics included for this entry. There are a few items you can pick up along the way, but these only "might" come into play right at the very end of the adventure in the fight against Kaviani, and there is really no telling if any of them will be effective in any case before using them, which makes them a total crap-shoot. And as mentioned earlier, Kaviani needs all the gems in order to call forth The Reckoning, so story-wise once you get even one of them you should be able to move onto the end game. Admittedly though, this would make for an incredibly short adventure. But hey, at least the cover of the book makes sense this time, as this is a clear depiction of an encounter with the gargoyle henchmen that occurs in the adventure, so apparently someone got the memo for this one.  

Ranking: Crash! That was how fast this book plummeted in my estimation once I learned the truth behind gathering the gems. It's still on the higher end of the OK tier thanks to the well above average writing and story, along with a lot of interesting design within the mini quests (the 1 in 3 random instant death roll notwithstanding). This is the second Martindale book in the series (after "Curse of the Werewolf") and both have begun with some really great ideas, only to have the execution of them leaving something to be desired. I give this a slight edge over his earlier effort and put it in the middle of the pack for the series, but it could have been so much more. Try not to roll your eyes too much at the endgame and it will likely go over better, but I just couldn't help myself.