Crossroads - Books 8-14

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8. Encyclopedia of Xanth - Score = 5.1   Tier = OK

Sections: 108
Attempts to Beat: 2

I return to the Crossroads series of gamebooks after a moderate layoff, and oh brother, what a way to start the back half of the series. The reason I say this is because right off the top, this was one of the most painful "reads" I have had in my life, and this is one of the worst written gamebooks I have played to date. And this is bizarre, because the author of this entry, Jody Lynn Nye, was also the author of the very well written first book in the series, Dragonharper. I am getting a bit ahead of myself though. To begin, this adventure is set in the world of Piers Anthony's "Xanth" series of novels, and like other entries in the Crossroads series, opens up with an introduction written by Anthony himself. And I gotta say, while many of those previous intros had me intrigued and wanting to check out some of the actual novels the gamebooks have been based on, this intro had the complete opposite effect. Anthony comes across as arrogant and self-important here (at least to me), as he explains how he originally came up with the ideas behind his world of Xanth. For example, while walking outside one day, he wonders what might happen if a tree came alive and grabbed him, so he decided to write that into his stories. Y'know, there is certainly nothing wrong with including plant life or other creatures that attack unwary travelers in a fantasy story, hell it's to be expected. But to act like you invented it is rather rich isn't it? He also decided to have his world/country of Xanth itself take on the exact shape of the state of Florida (where it appears he was living at the time), with a large canyon bisecting it in the middle. There is another country which I think lies to the north called Mundania (really?), where normal "non magical" people dwell, because apparently each Xanthian citizen is born with a magical talent, which differs from person to person (kind of like X-Men mutants I suppose). Oh, and let's not forgot about the large Lake Ogre-chobee that can be found within Xanth. (And for those who don't know, Lake Okeechobee is the largest lake in the actual state of Florida). Wow, what an imagination this fellow has! And that's about all I learned from this intro. While there is mention of magic, and creatures such as dragons and centaurs existing in this world (along with those attacking trees), there is precious little information given as to how this world operates, be it political systems, neighboring enemies or allies, the level of technology, or even info about the population. Heck we don't even get so much as a map. There could be cities teeming with people, or the whole place could be a barren wasteland for all I know. But to be honest, I had no desire to learn about it after reading his introduction either. 

So anyway, we play in this adventure as Alister, a Xanthian teenage boy with the magical talent of "finding things". Because as the book tells us, "When he concentrates, he can find almost anything he sets his mind to". That should come in pretty handy in a fetch quest like this I should think! It turns out that Alister's father is from Mundania, and therefore has no magical talent of his own. Sick of the teasing his schoolmates give him about his Muggle of a father,  Alister sets out to find a local wizard known as Humfrey to ask him how he can help his father obtain a magical talent. Upon locating the wizard, Humfrey offers him a deal, in that he will answer Alister's question if the boy can bring him the 5 volumes of the Encyclopedia of Xanth, which are scattered around the country. Thanks to his own talent of finding things, Alister readily accepts, and sets off to locate the books, with his loyal pet dog Marbles along with him for the journey. The game system here is similar to the previous adventures, with Alister being provided values in the 6 attributes of: Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom/Luck, Constitution, Dexterity, and Charisma. He also has 21 Hit Points, and has inventory slots for 4 Weapons, 4 Magical Items, and a backpack with room for 5 "other" items. I'm not sure why the adventure bothered with the inventory system though, as other than the 5 books you need to gather, I don't think there is anything else to acquire. Combat functions the same too, with enemies given values that you need to roll "To Hit" them, and values they need to roll "To Hit" you, along with showing how much damage they do should they successfully strike, with Alister himself causing 1D6 of damage using his staff.

But then you start the adventure, and goodness gracious the amount of puns thrown at you here is ludicrous! Look, I like a pun as much as the next guy, but you gotta sprinkle them in, not machine-gun fire them non-stop at the reader's face as if your life depended on it. There are many sections in the book that are several pages long, with seemingly every other sentence containing a pun of some sort. There was one section in particular, section 10, that I had to put the book down halfway through, because I just couldn't take it anymore, and it was beginning to elicit a physically unpleasant response. In addition to puns you might expect to find such as "trees barking", "eye scream", "suddenly feeling angry when you reach a crossroads" or "getting in a bad mood whenever you eat crabapple pie" , we also get such gems as enjoying watching a genie coming out of a bottle while making a fizzing noise because "you always wanted to see a slow djinn fizz", along with wondering why the bindings of a group of books are wet, and are told it is because of the "Dewy Decimal System". And who could forget your character avoiding a cluster of trees because they have no desire to play "copse and robins". There is even one involving "nose candy" which felt a bit out of place, but then again this gamebook series has not shied away from more adult themes than others I have played, so I suppose it may actually fit in after all. All of these are just a very, VERY small sampling of the puns leveled at you in this book, and therein lies the real issue. I might have found some of these quite clever, and taken individually still might, but the sheer volume of them at times completely overwhelms everything else going on, including the story itself. I even found myself wondering if the whole reason for the book to exist was purely as an excuse just to make these jokes. You know you've got a problem when you have your protagonist perform actions completely out of character, just because you needed them in that situation to use a pun you had in mind. F#&!ing hell! After finishing the adventure, I did a small amount of research on the novels and the world of Xanth (and by "small amount of research" I mean consulted Wikipedia), and apparently puns were a big part of the novels too. So, maybe instead of criticizing Nye for writing this, I should be applauding her for mimicking the same style of the actual books on which this adventure is based. I can say this though, if the novels are indeed written anything like this gamebook, then I have even less desire to read them than I did after that introduction from Anthony.

You have been judged by a panel of your Piers. And the verdict is.....guilty!
( I can do them too!)

Ok, now that I have that diatribe behind me, onto the adventure itself, which considering as how the book only has 108 sections to work with, is actually pretty decent. After visiting the wizard, you head out in search of a moving marketplace that runs along at breakneck speed as it travels continuously through the countryside, and yep you guessed it, this is called the "Flee Market". Once you find a way to catch up and jump inside the market, you can easily acquire the first two volumes of the Encyclopedia after dealing with a man working a "bookstall", who attempts to delay you in buying his books, har har. After leaving the market, the adventure then gets much more interesting, as you come to a crossroads (don't say it), and are given a choice of three directions. Each direction leads to one of the three remaining volumes of the Encyclopedia, and you can do them in any order you wish, which is always a welcome addition in a gamebook. The three routes all have different challenges that must be overcome, although none are particularly difficult. One of the routes involves solving 4 riddles in succession to obtain one of the volumes, and my only failure at the adventure occurred here, when I got the answer to the final riddle incorrect, and then doubled down on that choice which led to my being locked out of obtaining that particular volume. (Note to self, when you are given a choice of directions in a gamebook, and upon choosing one are then asked something along the lines of "are you sure you want to go this way or will you turn back?", you should probably turn back.) Another route involves you visiting a circus (where large ticks issue the tickets), and where you must play a game against the ringmaster, a creature made up of actual rings, in order to obtain that volume. The final route is the strangest of the bunch, as you travel through a strange wooded area, where you must defeat a couple of creatures in combat before then needing to outwit a giant translucent baby of all things, who has a volume of the Encylopedia in its stomach, because it eats everything it sees, which includes you and Marbles. Once you have all 5 volumes of the Encyclopedia, you then travel back to Humfrey the wizard to win the game.

I should point out that even if you don't acquire all 5 volumes, you can still win just by making it back to Humfrey, you just do not get the "optimal" ending for having all the books. That said, there is very little difference between the endings, as your character makes a moral decision nearing the end of the quest which for all intents and purposes makes the number of books you have gathered moot. Much like with Nye's first entry, Dragonharper, this adventure is not difficult at all, as while there are some combats to be had, the numbers given for you and your opponents are frequently heavily in your favour. Indeed, I found the most dangerous creature I faced was the very first one, which is a shapeshifting Python that is guarding the entrance to the wizard's castle right at the start of the book. This Python changes form every two rounds, and a couple of its forms could cause some high damage if you are unlucky with the dice, including the form of a fire-breathing crocodile pictured on the cover of the book. There are some Skill checks to be passed too, but as with some of the other entries, your stats are set high enough so that they are generally very much in your favour, and even should you fail them, you likely will get another chance at it before anything dire happens. And finally, as much as I disliked, and perhaps even hated, the writing style of the adventure, your dog companion Marbles (who by the way, sings in a "barkershop quartet" back in your village), is FAR and away the best part of the book. He acts much as I would want a dog companion to act, in that he dutifully seeks to please you, warns you of danger, begs you for treats, and cowers or whimpers when he knows he has acted badly. There is a running joke (well you better hurry up and catch it!) of how Marbles is a rock hound, and is made of actual rock, which plays into much of the adventure. However, I don't think this was properly communicated to the illustrator here, as in the one picture of him, he is drawn very much as a real life flesh-and-blood dog. Even so, give me a dog companion such as this in more gamebooks please! 

Ranking: What a shame. The brutal and relentless onslaught of puns all but ruins what otherwise is a decent, light-hearted, fantasy adventure. I thought Nye's first book, Dragonharper, was well written but light on gameplay, but this was almost the opposite experience. There were times while reading that I thought I was going to have no choice but to put this in the Bad tier, but then I remembered that while important, prose isn't everything. The adventure itself, along with the great inclusion of Marbles, did just enough to rescue it. I do confess to a certain amount of dread though, because I couldn't help but notice that book 13 in this series, Ghost of a Chance, is also written by Nye and is based once again on Anthony's world of Xanth. Oh no! Please, please, don't let it be written like this one! At least I have a little bit of time before I find out.  

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9. Warhorn - Score = 7.3   Tier = Good

Sections: 120
Attempts to Beat: 1

Onwards, and most definitely upwards, the series goes with this entry. This adventure takes place in the world of Lynn Abbey's Rifkind, Daughter of the Bright Moon, and right off the bat the introduction here provided by Abbey is miles better than the one given by Piers Anthony in the previous book. We get some good background information to the world here, although Abbey herself admits that she put much more thought and effort into her characters than the actual physical world they inhabit, which she named Dro Daria. The geography here is fairly simple, as Dro Daria is a circular island, with the middle of the island consisting of desert, the outer rim near the ocean made up of wetlands, and with a couple of mountain ranges thrown in between them for good measure, one in the east and one in the west. Each terrain also contains different human inhabitants, with the nomadic tribes of the Asheera dwelling on the fringes of the desert, the more civilized Wet-Landers along the coast, and the hardy Glascards who live in the mountains. The mountainous areas might be the most dangerous of all, as they also contain a tribe of crazed cannibals referred to as "Mountain Men". Magic and deities play roles as well, with various gods being worshipped, mainly depending upon what region you happen to live in. And lo and behold we actually get a map of Dro Daria! Granted, it's not much of a map, showing only a few points of interest in what appears to be the cramped confines of the island, but anything we can get helps with the immersion.

The adventure itself begins in one of these mountainous regions, and as the main character of the novels, Rifkind the warrior-woman, does not make an appearance in this gamebook, we take on the role of Scatha, a teenage girl currently boarding in the large mountain fortress of Chatelgard. Here, Scatha is undergoing training to become a warrior, and as she is the only girl being so trained, faces constant teasing and bullying from her male classmates. Scatha, using a magical seeing stone that she possesses and which allows her to see visions, has a vision one night of an evil wizard known as Drukor, who has located an ancient and powerful relic, that being the titular Warhorn. This Warhorn, which is made from the actual horn torn from one of the ancient gods, allows the user to call forth any deity they desire upon blowing it. Scatha realizes immediately that she must prevent this powerful item from falling into the hands of this evil wizard, and fearing that no one would believe her or trust her vision, sets out on her own to find the Warhorn before Drukor does, because as we all know, an evil wizard would seek to call forth evil gods. 

Ok, so needing to prevent an evil wizard from using a powerful magical item that can destroy the world isn't exactly original stuff as far as plot goes I'll grant you, but the way the story itself is told I found quite compelling. Right from the start, author Dana Kramer mixes things up by using her female protagonist to show all the misconceptions that Scatha must overcome, as most people she comes across do not initially take her seriously as a fighter until she proves otherwise. And once again the more adult subject matter of the series comes through, as Scatha finds herself the victim of an attempted rape right in one of the earliest sequences of the book, when she tries to escape from a band of brigands she encounters along the road. For the second adventure in a row we are also given an interesting travelling companion, this time in the form of a teenage stableboy (no word on if he's "rough hewn") named Harold, who joins us along the way. Granted, he is not near the companion that Marbles from the last adventure was, but he is well fleshed out, and Kramer alludes to a budding romance between Scatha and Harold all throughout the adventure without completely hammering you over the head with it, such as was done with the romance found in book 3 of the series, Revolt on Majipoor. 

Once you have got Harold along with you, which happens very early, then begins a trek to obtain the Warhorn, the location of which is shown through the seeing stone, which is revealed to be in the desert area located in the interior of the island. Scatha and Harold then get to traverse icy snow covered mountains, ancient temples, a dank fortress, a cut-throat infested city, and finally the end stretch across the desert, which leads to the final confrontation with Drukor with the fate of the world hanging in the balance. No pressure! The whole trip is a lot of fun, and a pervasive feeling of paranoia abounds, as you will come across various people along the road and in the city, and are never quite sure who you can trust. Like most entries in the series, the book has a relatively low section count of 120, but with many of those sections containing several pages of text. However, there are more than enough decisions and skill checks thrown in here so that you know you are playing a gamebook. The combats themselves are a little more sparse, but I think this works for the best, as each one has an incredible feeling of danger, at least narratively if not necessarily gameplay wise. I will say though that I felt the final sequence against Drukor was a bit of a let down, and while it was certainly an acceptable conclusion, it lacked some of the oomph in the storytelling found in the earlier sections of the book. On that note, it's tough not to feel that the book started to get rushed near the end, as the amount of text in the sections of the adventure seemed to get less and less the nearer I approached the endgame. Once Drukor is defeated, Scatha returns to Chatelgard to a hero's welcome, and while hinted at, the fate of her relationship with Harold remains open to some reader interpretation.  

My biggest complaint, as it is with several books in this series, comes down to the easy level of difficulty. This might not have necessarily been the case however, as there is the odd tough combat in here, and perhaps I was just fortunate with my dice rolls, but still, you will more than likely acquire several stat-boosting items (such as a +2 sword, +3 armour, AND a +1 shield), along with some insta-win magical pearls that can be used at various times throughout the quest. These items then turned what could have been a difficult final battle where the odds would have been against you, and flips those odds around into one made much easier and now in your favour. Although to be fair, this fight is still by no means a gimme, as I could see a few bad dice rolls during this encounter leading to failure. Normally I would say having the opportunity to seek out combat enhancing items to use in a tough final fight to be a great thing to include, only the problem here is that in this case I don't think these items are likely to be missed unless you were to fail several skill checks in a row, which seems very improbable. There is also a "Day Chart" mechanic included near the end of the adventure, where once you make it to the desert, you are told you only have 10 days left to locate Drukor before he obtains and uses the horn. From that point on, you will be instructed in various sections to mark off a certain number of days, and if 10 days pass before you make it to a certain point, it's game over. It felt like this too though was made a little easy, as other than a moment occurring where you get knocked out and are told to take 1D6 off your number of days remaining, as long as you don't roll a 6 here, you shouldn't have much trouble in making it in time. (Although I might be singing a different tune had I rolled a 6!) Credit to Kramer for including this though, as she was at least attempting to expand the gameplay in what so far has been an otherwise relatively simple series in that regard. The adventure does include a death section which you could be sent to, and I found it to be strangely worded, as you are told you can try again and may wish to increase Scatha's "skill level", which will also increase her Hit Points. I'm not really sure what that is supposed to mean, as there really is no "skill level" here. I can only assume Kramer meant to just go ahead and give yourself any attribute scores that you wish, along with however many Hit Points you want, and if this is the case, then making completing the book a challenge probably wasn't what she was going for anyway.    

Ranking: And we have a new leader in the rankings! It's not lost on me that the two books I have at the top of my series rankings to this point, Warhorn and A Warlock's Blade, both only took me 1 attempt each to complete. This is odd for me, as I have been vocal about preferring a challenge in my gamebooks. That I have them at the top of the rankings just goes to show how enjoyable I felt the writing and story of these were. As with other entries in the series, due to its low section count the adventure is rather linear, but I don't have a problem with that because for me, while Warhorn doesn't tell a particularly original fantasy story, it at least does so extremely well, and I greatly enjoyed the ride. Where I might have normally stopped halfway through the book to take a break (because the books in this series are reading-heavy as opposed to most gamebooks), this entry had me ploughing on through to the end as I was so invested in what would happen next. It even introduces some mechanics into the proceedings with the Day Chart feature and the acquisition of combat-enhancing items, if even the latter of these was a contributor in ultimately making the adventure too easy. There is also just enough variety in the choices offered while playing to make me want to try this book again sometime and make different decisions. Overall, very well done Dana Kramer!

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10. Seven No-Trump - Score = 0.0   Tier = Broken

Sections: 110
Attempts before calling it a day: 30

Well, the title of this book certainly cries out for some political jokes doesn't it? Being apolitical myself however, I will refrain from attempting to make any. And besides, there is quite enough going on with this gamebook which renders such humour unneccesary, because pee-ew is this one ever a stinker! This entry is set in the world of Roger Zelazny's "Amber" series of novels, and as usual, we begin with an introduction from Zelazny himself. Just based on this intro, it sure feels like Zelazny's novels are heavily character based, as he gives us a brief description of each of the members of the royal family of Amber, which I'm led to believe consists of 9 princes and 4 princesses, of who he provides us some background information as to each of their character traits and their roles within the kingdom. Very little is mentioned about the world itself that these characters inhabit, and all I know is that there are 3 cities: the capital city of Amber; a floating city in the heavens; and an underwater city that sounded the most interesting of the bunch, but played no part in the adventure (at least from what I played of it). Oh, and I also learned that each of these members of the royal family owns a deck of cards, with each card in the deck representing one of their brothers or sisters. They can then use these cards (or "Trumps" as they are known), to communicate with each other, and can even travel through the Trumps themselves to instantly join whichever of the siblings they are communicating with. An interesting touch there at least. One other thing to note is that Zelazny sure seems to have some trepidations about allowing the author of this gamebook, Neil Randall, to use his characters, as he expresses doubts about this a couple of times, and then goes on like he is trying to convince himself that Randall will do right by him. As it turns out, it might have worked out better if he hadn't allowed this! 

In this adventure we play as one of the princes, who goes by the name of Random. Or should I say, a former prince, as when the story opens Random has only recently been named the new king upon the untimely passing of his father. While sitting in his throne room one day, Random realizes he has not heard from most of his siblings for weeks, which seems rather odd, so he decides to use his Trumps to contact them all. Upon so doing, he finds that he can get in touch with all of his sisters, but only 1 of his brothers, as the remaining 7 brothers do not respond, which I presume is where the title of the gamebook comes from. So, Random determines to find out what happened to his brothers, and we begin the adventure by searching their rooms in the palace for clues as to where they may have gone. Now, check out how this adventure starts you off:

Section 1 - read 11 pages of text - turn to Section 2
Section 2 - read 10 pages of text - turn to Section 3
Section 3 - read 7 pages of text before finally making your first decision

To say this is not a good way to start your gamebook is putting it mildly. Why do gamebook authors do this? To pad out section count? Surely they don't think they are fooling anyone with this do they? Maybe they think they are breaking it up for the reader by doing this and don't want to annoy them by having one huge section, but I personally just find it even more frustrating when I get to the end of a very long section only to find I have nothing to do and am just sent on to keep reading. At this point, my expectations were now already quite low. They would still not be met.   

Anyway, it is mentioned that the royal family are lovers of art, with the brothers rooms that you visit containing many unique drawings and paintings. This then also leads to the initial premise of the adventure, and it is a good one, that apparently the brothers have vanished because, through some kind of magic,  they were pulled inside either a drawing or painting in their respective rooms. In the first brother's room that we investigate, that belonging to Julian, we also find ourselves pulled inside a drawing that Julian has on his wall. This also happens to be a drawing from a well known real life artist, M.C. Escher, and it is one of those weird-ass stairs that lead to nowhere and seem to defy logic, such as seen in his work Relativity. Here, we can attempt to free Julian (or you can actually just leave him there if you'd rather), and may find ourselves stuck on those "impossible" stairs. Escaping these stairs can prove rather frustrating, as you have to make several Skill checks in a row, and unfortunately two of the Skills being tested are your two lowest ones. I died here a couple of times before finding a way to escape this drawing while avoiding the stairs, so fair play for allowing a way to bypass this. In the next piece of art you enter however, things get far, far worse. 

After escaping that Escher drawing (with some help from your sisters using their Trumps), you then move on to another sibling's room, your brother Caine this time, and are yet again pulled into some artwork, which happens to be a rather idyllic painting that shows 3 towns, one on a mountainside, one in a valley, and one beside a river. And from here on out, the book sucks. At least, what I got to see of it. When you start out, you get to pick from two choices of towns for which you want to head towards. No matter which you pick, it doesn't take long before you learn that in addition to Caine, there is ANOTHER one of your brothers inside this painting as well, that being the evil Brand. (There had to be an evil brother didn't there?) You also learn that time passes at a different rate inside these magical works of art, as Caine and Brand have been living within this painting for years from their point of view, even though they have only been missing for a few weeks time back in Amber. The two brothers are also at odds, with Caine even having gotten married while he has been in here, and who also now sees himself as the protector of the people who live in these towns, while Brand has been seeking to rule over all those in the painting by establishing himself as their god, having even had a church built in which they can worship him. We obviously side with Caine here, and must then locate and confront Brand, because he plans to wipe out anyone who will not worship him. 

Before I get to the confrontation with Brand though, the adventure tries to take steps that will prevent you from going in circles by providing you with a codeword whenever you have an encounter with one of your brothers. However, despite this I still sometimes found myself going back and forth between the two towns, being sent to sections I had already been to, which completely ruins any feeling of immersion. Oof. But then once you have ploughed through that, you finally must confront Brand himself in battle near the halfway point of the book in an unavoidable one-on-one fight, and this is where my journey came to a screeching halt. 

So, you and Brand are evenly matched in terms of skill, with each of you requiring a roll of 14 or higher on three dice to "hit" one another. Wait a minute, 14 or higher? Oh no! This is the "Car Wars" series all over again! This number is just set too high, and I routinely found myself rolling over and over and over with neither myself or Brand scoring a hit. A successful hit would cause 1D6 of damage, and I swear there were far too many times that I would FINALLY get a hit in, only to have it cause a whopping 1 point of damage. Incredibly annoying that! Now if that's all there was to it, simple perseverance should eventually see you winning roughly half the time. But wait, there are a few other wrinkles conspiring against you. First of all, and this is the major problem, your Hit Points are not even close to even, as Brand starts the fight with 42 Hit Points, while you begin with a maximum of 23 Hit Points, assuming that you haven't lost any up to now in the adventure of course. But that's not all. When the fight begins, Brand already has his hand around your throat, and you must break free from his hold before you can even damage him. You do this by scoring a hit on him that does higher than 2 points of damage. Meanwhile, he can damage you as normal each round while you are attempting to do this. But that's still not all. Once you break his hold you get to fight on even terms, however should you do 4 points of damage on him in any round, Brand then pulls out his sword which does 2D6+2 of damage! For f#@k's sake! You then try to draw your own sword by attempting to pass a Dexterity check each round until you are successful (while Brand gets to use his sword while you are doing this), and when you finally succeed, you now both fight with swords in what is now a fencing match. This fencing part of the combat then immediately switches things up by lowering the "to hit" value for both you and Brand all the way down to 6. Which, when using three dice, led to each of us hitting the other pretty much every single time. At this point you are likely totally screwed, or at least I was, as whenever I made it this far, Brand already had me down low enough to where one or two hits was probably going to finish me off,  while I still needed to hit him several times if not more. True, if you can get Brand down to 3 Hit Points or less he will "flee", but in over 25 straight attempts at this fight, I only ever came close to doing so once, when I got him down to a measly 5 Hit Points but couldn't close it out. What a magical run of the dice that was (and I still lost!), as the next closest I ever came was bringing him down to 13 Hit Points, although he would often finish with 20 or more by the time he killed me. As such, I eventually decided to wave the white flag. Alright Brand, you win. Keep the damn painting! What the heck do I care what happens to these fake people in the painting anyway? So there! 

This really isn't what I had in mind when I was wishing for an increased challenge in the series. Dying at the exact same spot in an adventure over 25 times in a row is not challenge, it's torture. While 30 total attempts at the adventure doesn't sound like all that many before declaring it "Broken", as I often attempt many more than that, it wasn't so much the number of attempts that stopped me as it was how drawn out that damn Brand fight was thanks to the high "to hit" value, and I just couldn't take rolling the dice that many times over and over when the odds of victory felt so slim. I do think I would have eventually gotten lucky enough to win I suppose, but I shudder even now thinking about how many total dice rolls it would have taken. Hundreds? Thousands? (Surely not?) Maybe one day I will come back to it and try again, but to quote Aragorn "it is not this day". 

To finish up with some other aspects of the book, this adventure has a rather unique writing style for a gamebook, with your character constantly inner-monologuing to himself about experiences he has had in the past based upon whatever situation he is facing now. This is interesting at first, but gets old really fast. Not only that, but we learn that the princes and princesses have the ability to visit endless different worlds in a vast multiverse, and apparently at any point in time they choose as well. Tell me something then, if that is the case, with our Random character having visited countless different worlds, why does every single anecdote he gives come from the same world? If you guessed that world was Earth, you win the prize. This feels like an excuse for the author to name drop famous people such as Shakespeare or Machiavielli that our character may have run into while on Earth, but it also feels lazy. Hell, our character even takes aspirin for a headache while on Amber for crying out loud. Couldn't you have bothered to at least make up some interesting things that happened to us on other planets? Like the time we ran out of gas on Rygell-4 and while walking to the nearest gas station discovered that our date was actually a space-werewolf?  Or how about that time we picked up a three-breasted prostitute on the Moon of Vega but then realized too late that we were out of cash? Work with me here! 

In this book we could only wish to be so lucky.

Apparently the first book in the Amber series is entitled Nine Princes in Amber. I have no clue how these characters are portrayed in the actual novel, but to me this gamebook was more like "Nine Assholes in a Palace". The whole situation appears to borrow from Greek mythology, with all these princes and princesses, each with some different ability, continually engaging in political maneuvering and personal feuds much like the gods of Olympus, with Amber obviously standing in for Olympus. Although I did not get to encounter all of them, none of these royals seemed particularly likeable, with perhaps your character Random coming off the best, but even he seems like a righteous prig at times. Perhaps Zelazny was right to be worried about what Randall would do to his characters! I will say though that after reading a synopsis of the actual novels, I found myself intrigued by the concept, and have put this series on my list to possibly check out in the future (if I ever run out of gamebooks to play, which seems increasingly unlikely).  

Ranking: To the very bottom it goes. With some gamebooks I have put in my "Broken" tier, there could be a mechanical reason that, if corrected, might have actually made the book good, if not at least passable. That is not the case here though, and even if I had managed to get past the Brand encounter, and barring a miraculous recovery in the final act, this was still easily heading for the "Bad" tier. The initial idea was good, having to enter drawings and paintings to rescue someone, then fight your way out again (and I believe there was an excellent quest much in this vein in one of the Elder Scrolls video games which did this to great effect), but it's all downhill after that. Unlikeable characters, pages and pages of text with no decisions or dice rolls in sight, a writing style that wears out its welcome far too quickly, and worst of all, crappy gameplay (I was even asked to see if I could roll lower than my Intelligence score on TWO dice at one point, and your Intelligence score is 14!). For the most part I enjoyed the first book of author Neil Randall's that I played, that being Storm of Dust from this same "Crossroads" series, although looking back on it now, that gamebook was rather short on gameplay, which was probably what saved it, because Seven No-Trump is now the second book in a row of Randall's that I have played, following Ultra Deadly from the "Sniper!" series, where the gameplay is very poor, and that might even be considered a generous statement. I noticed I have one more gamebook of Randall's to play, which is The Black Road War from the "Combat Command" series, and I do hope that entry isn't more of the same.

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11. Deryni Challenge - Score = 5.2   Tier = OK

Sections: 101
Attempts to Beat: 2

Well, at least we are back in the realm of the sane, if unremarkable, as far as gamebooks go. The next adventure up for bid takes place in the world of Katherine Kurtz's "Deryni" novels, which is yet another series of which I know nothing about. And after reading the introduction from Kurtz herself, I still know almost nothing about it. Congratulations Ms. Kurtz, you may have written the worst one of these introductions so far. This intro just jumps right in with both feet, feeling like it even starts mid-sentence, by rattling off places and names with no context or meaning given to anything mentioned. It talks about various clans and their rulers and how they are intertwined, and that's about it. There are some pretty huge gaps here, such as, is this series set on Earth? I assume so seeing as how we are eventually told that the year is 905 AD. But then if so, where? I can only gather from the names given, like Clan MacRorie, that this is supposed to take place in northern Scotland, but that is just a guess. What is the makeup of this world in terms of populations, economics, technologies, magical beings, or challenges faced by its inhabitants? Some better info would be nice here! I find it hard to believe this was written by an actual published author. After that opening bit of complete no-help, we begin playing as Geordie Drummond, a hot-headed member of the aforementioned Clan MacRorie, who also happens to be a member of the Deryni. So just what is a Deryni? Hell if I know, as it's never fully explained! Anyway, after losing our temper one day and venting our anger on a long-tenured stableman, we are summoned by our leader, Lord Camber, to answer for this insult against a loyal member of the clan. In order to redeem ourselves, we are given a mission to undertake. It would seem that along the far northern coast, there lies an ancient monastery which has recently come under the leadership of a monk who goes by the title of "The Gryphon". Rumour has it that this monk has been fomenting rebellion against our clan among the local populace, and we are charged with heading up there to investigate whether these rumours are true, and if so, to then assess the threat he may pose. This seems like it could be rather dangerous, and I'm not sure the punishment in this case fits the crime of insulting a stable worker, but wishing to get back in Lord Camber's good graces, we readily accept and immediately head out. And I do mean immediately, as in right after leaving his chambers, where we are led directly to a horse to leave for the north. 

The author of this gamebook is Stephen Billias, and right away I realized I was unfamiliar with this name. A quick search would explain why, as this appears to be the only gamebook he has ever written, and I'm sorry to say it shows right off the hop. Right after setting out on your horse to make your way north, you come across a fast flowing river where you find a young boy clinging to a log in the rushing waters, crying for help. The boy is about to plunge over a waterfall, and you are asked to make a Dexterity roll to see if you are able to pluck him off the log. Except the outcome of this roll doesn't matter. Pass it and you rescue the boy. Fail it and he goes over the falls, but survives, and you pluck him out of the waters at the bottom, then move on to the same section you would have been sent to if you had gotten him from the log in the first place. Sigh. This boy, whose name is Beck, is one of two key NPC allies you will meet along the way, so the adventure needs him to live in order to accompany you, but still, couldn't you have at least suffered some kind of Hit Point loss for failing the Dexterity roll? Anyway, once we have rescued Beck, we learn that he has recently been made homeless upon the death of his uncle, so we allow him to accompany us on our mission. 

The adventure becomes a bit episodic for awhile after that, with Geordie and Beck travelling northwards, needing to get themselves out of different jams along the way. First they visit a local fair where they need to buy provisions without getting robbed or killed. Next they take shelter in a clearing one night alongside some fellow travellers, only to wake in the morning to find that two of the travellers (local monks) were murdered in the night. Doing the right thing and returning the bodies to a nearby monastery only goes to show that no good deed goes unpunished, as we are accused of the murders ourselves, and then must extricate ourselves from that sticky situation. Then it's on to a local inn, where an acolyte of the Gryphon suspects what our mission is, and we must then find a way to fool him. After that, we continue on and once again take shelter for the night with a fellow traveller, who turns out to be the second key NPC ally of the adventure, a Deryni healer known as Jarmuth Rhydon. Or is he??? So, with this encounter the gamebook does something very strange, and if I may be so bold as to say it, rather annoying. Upon meeting Jarmuth, you might find yourself asking him to join up with you, and are then asked to make a Wisdom roll. Should you pass the roll, Jarmuth does indeed join you, and you all now continue on together. From here on out, Jarmuth proves himself an incredibly honourable and worthy ally, giving sage advice and pulling your butt out of trouble on more than one occasion. But should you fail this Wisdom roll when you first meet him, not only does Jarmuth not join you, but he becomes a completely different character entirely, and tries to murder you in your sleep! Having a character react a different way depending upon a skill check is to be expected, but to have everything about them rewritten save for their name, including background, motivations, and most importantly, having them go from being a good guy to a bad guy based solely on your skill check, seems rather messed up doesn't it? And even when he does try to murder you in your sleep, you awaken before he does so and get to fight him in a one-on-one combat. But this combat doesn't matter, as you have already lost. Lose the fight (and you shouldn't, as your stats are far better than his) and you are obviously dead, yet even if you win the fight, you are told he managed to wound you in the process severely enough (even if you took no Hit Point damage) so that you must return back home, mission failed. Indeed, this was how my only failure at the gamebook occurred. Much like with Beck, you need Jarmuth with you to complete the mission, but yikes what a strange way to do this. Now, this Wisdom skill check thankfully isn't essential, and can be bypassed once you know its coming, which is good news for the gamebook, because otherwise I would have been even harsher about all this. 

So now that you have both Beck and Jarmuth with you, you close in on the Gryphon's headquarters, which is located in a monastery perched high atop some craggy rocks along the northern seashore. After a brief visit to either a nearby town or the castle of the local lord (where nothing at all happens), you then move on to another strange episode of the adventure. Your character decides to do some reconnoitering of the monastery first, and does this in the most bizarre of ways. You decide to lower yourself by a rope down the side of the cliff just outside the monastery, to see if you can locate a way in down along the beach. Then begins a long stretch where you manage to make it down to the beach, do in fact locate a door back there, and then construct a makeshift ladder out of planks that have washed up on the beach so that you can reach said door. But before you can climb up to the door, one of the monks of the monastery comes along and steals your ladder while you hide behind a boulder. Now having no means to reach the door, you give up and head back up the cliff face to try something else. Dang, this was a whole lot of sections with no payoff whatsoever! 

Ok, so you finally devise a way inside the monastery, by using your Deryni powers to walk along a tightrope you manage to secure between the mainland and the crag the monastery rests on. You are almost given away by an inhabitant of the monastery, but he allows you to go on your way should you be able to solve a riddle of his. This is one of those instances where you are told the riddle, but then whether you can solve it or not comes down to a skill check. In fact, you even get a couple of different attempts at passing a skill check to see if you can make it past him as he gives you a second riddle should you be unable to "solve" the first. A wasted opportunity to allow the player to solve an actual riddle here. After this, you are inside the monastery right at its very peak, and are already at the chambers of the Gryphon, because he lives on the top floor naturally. You are then given a few different options as to how you want to confront the Gryphon, and this will determine whether you win the adventure, because should you choose correctly, there is no final combat with him, you just get sent to the final victory section and automatically "win". This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but the correct option here seemed rather easy to guess in my opinion, and after winning the adventure and going back to examine the other options, most of the others lead to victory as well, so you would likely need to be rather unlucky to lose at this point. Not having a final "combat" against the big bad of the adventure, but having it all unfold narratively instead, always feels rather odd, but more so in this case, because the final fight against the Gryphon is described in a borderline batshit crazy fashion. This fight takes place with the both of you perched on that tightrope that you came across earlier, with you both using swords and twirling moves a la "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon". Entertaining for sure, but rather out of place with the rest of the adventure, which had a much more grounded reality to it. After the Gryphon falls to his death, his minions immediately surrender, and you, Beck, and Jarmuth return to your clan in heroic fashion, with all of this rushed along in the final section.  

Stephen Billias' writing here is noticeably more terse and to the point than prior entries in the series have been, with less flowery descriptions than many of those books. That probably works in its favour when it comes to a gamebook though. There are fewer of those very long text passages (although there are still some here and there), and even the font is a bit larger in this book to make up for it, which made this one of the quicker reads of the series as a result  That's not to say it's completely without atmosphere though, as Billias does a very nice job in my opinion when it comes to describing the cold, grey, and foggy landscapes that you travel across. While I don't think characterization is a strong point of his, he has the immersion of the landscapes down pat. 

As far as the gameplay goes, there is not an abundance of it, and what there is felt rather straightforward for the most part, with more than a few decisions and rolls to be made that don't really matter. There are also a few situations where random rolls are used to determine events, and I have found myself softening over this aspect the last few years. In a way it would make sense, as there are many things outside of our control, so what happens next determined in such a manner can be seen to have merit. That said, it can admittedly be frustrating to have a random roll that then sends you to a do-or-die skill check, which happens a couple of times here. (And in one instance there is even a skill check that you are better off failing, as passing it leads you to a do-or-die random roll!) Thankfully I was able to pass the skill checks in those instances where I fell foul of the random outcome, or I probably would have been harsher about this also, and wouldn't blame anyone in the least if they wanted to rant about it. 

I do think there was one large missed opportunity to do something unique and special here however, and that has to do with the hot-headedness of our character. All throughout the adventure we are warned about our temper, and how we need to control it in order to successfully complete the mission. It would have been great to have had some kind of "Temper Score" or some such, where we must sometimes either test this as a skill, or perhaps accrue "Temper Points" as we make our way through the book, with the possibility of it boiling over at some point, in which instance we could find ourselves in a situation or combat that we otherwise would not have been in. But, perhaps that would have been too much to ask from this rather more simple series with its lower section count. Ah well. Oh, and on a final note, even after finishing the adventure, I still have almost no idea what a Deryni is supposed to be. Through playing the book, it seems that they are imbued with some sort of mild telekinetic and empathic powers like some kind of Obi Wan Kenobi, but that's about all I learned. 

"This is not the gamebook you're looking for."

Ranking: One of those gamebooks that, while containing a few eyebrow-raising design decisions to be sure, does just enough to slide by. And to be fair, for a first-time gamebook author, it could have been worse. I came to appreciate Billias' writing more as the adventure went on, and just compared to the introduction, he seems like a better writer than Kurtz, the actual author of the novels. I can't bring myself to score it much higher than this though, and have it neck-and-neck with Revolt on Majipoor in my rankings, although I give a slight edge to Deryni Challenge as at least it does not contain the cloying romance angle of that previous book. Three more books to go! And although the odds would seem against it, I wonder if I can find a great entry before the series is over.