Fighting Fantasy - Books 46-50

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46. Tower of Destruction  - Score = 0.0   Tier = Broken (for me at least)

Sections: 400
Attempts before submitting : 20

Wow! Herbie Brennan wrote a Fighting Fantasy gamebook? Well, no actually, as this entry is from FF stalwart Keith Martin, but if I hadn't known who the author was after my playthroughs of this, Brennan would have been one of my top choices as to their identity. I thought there were more than a few of his hallmarks here. An icy setting, a crazy plot, a hub section for exploration, incomprehensible puzzles, and an apparent disregard for playtesting. But first, the plot, and man is this one ever eye-brow raising. It doesn't start off all that badly, as we play as a northern barbarian, who after returning to his village one day finds that it has been attacked and "fire bombed" by some sort of giant magical flying sphere. We then set off after it in a quest for revenge (and apparently not because we want to prevent this atrocity from befalling anyone else). However, it gets far worse when we eventually catch up to the sphere, and learn that it was just a trial run for an even larger doomsday device being constructed by a wizard who is currently enthralled to a demon. His plan is to build a flying tower (pictured on the cover) which would fly all over Titan, presumably bombing all the world's inhabitants back to the stone age (or whatever passes for that in a fantasy setting). Excuse me while I try to stifle my guffaws, because this has to be one of the most ridiculous "evil plans" of the whole series, with silly cover art to match, and would fit right in with the villain plans from the Nintendo Adventure series that I just finished playing. 

Turning to some of the specific rules for this adventure, we get two here. First is your Honour stat, which predictably goes up or down depending on what actions you take during the quest. While I have never minded this aspect when used in other gamebooks, it always seemed to me to be blatantly obvious in most cases what you are supposed to do. For example, right in the very first section of this book, when you return to your freshly-attacked village, you are given 4 options, one of which is trying to help the injured. I mean c'mon, that is clearly the option you are meant to take. Even without the Honour system I would have been taking that choice anyway, because you know, I like to play as a hero. The second specific thing to track here is Time passed, and in my opinion this is completely botched. You are told to add a day to your Time tracker every time you go to sleep, and then when you arrive at a certain location in the book, how much Time it took you to get there will determine if you need to fight extra enemies or not (as apparently they have time to "prepare for you" if you took too long). There are several problems with the whole thing though. One, why couldn't you have just been told when to mark off a day instead of determining it for yourself? This made it incredibly easy to miss the passing of a day, especially in later playthroughs when I was mind-numbingly going over the same paragraphs again and again. Next, arriving late only means that you have to fight a couple of extra lower-stat enemies instead of bypassing them should you be early. You are probably going to need a high Skill score to beat this book anyway, so instead of adding tension by arriving late, it just added more pointless dice-rolling. And finally, as near as I can tell anyway, the only way to get to the location early is by ignoring as much as possible on the way. Maybe that was supposed to be the point, but I just found it better to accept that I was going to arrive late, as at least that way I got to play as one of the good guys, with the added bonus of not having to worry about the Time stat anymore. 

So we set off alone in pursuit of the flying sphere, and I felt this opening act to be something of a drag. I usually enjoy the cold and icy settings, but I found very little atmosphere here, and other than the names of the creatures I might have to fight, I never got the feeling of traversing a desolate and icy wasteland. Once we finally catch up to the sphere, which has now landed, we make our way inside and fight our way to the control room where we destroy the magical ball of flying death. We also learn that our quest is far from over, as we now must travel to a desolate Ice Palace which was once inhabited by Elves, but is now where we need to head in order to also destroy the titular Tower of Destruction before it can unleash a similar fiery fury upon Titan. Thus begins another overland trek which I found just as uninspiring as the first one (do you want to fight an Ice Demon or a Polar Bear?), before arriving at the majestic Ice Palace. 

Ok, so here the adventure implements what I thought was the best part of the book, by providing a hub section that allows you to explore 9 different areas of the Ice Palace in any order you choose. There are some different items you apparently need to discover scattered throughout the Ice Palace, which should have made for a grand old item hunt. Unfortunately, you can easily find yourself locked out of certain areas should you not proceed in a specific order, which while perhaps not ruining the whole thing, sure can make it rather frustrating. So, what do you need to do in the Ice Palace in order to proceed further into the adventure? I wish I could say, because this is where my attempt at the book came to a grinding halt. Before I get to why, I will list below some of my frustrations with the book up until this point, saving the one that caused me to throw in the towel for last. 

- So I may only have myself to blame for this first one, but at one point I came across a fight against two Ice Ghosts (which appears to introduce some new rules for fighting multiple opponents?),  and proceeded to fight them with the instructions given. Upon finally winning the fight, I flipped the page to see where to turn to next, only to read the first sentence at the top of the next page which says..."When you first strike one of the Ice Ghosts turn to.....". Oh for f#@%s sake! Sure, that will teach me to read to the end of the section before beginning the fight, but would it have killed them to put that instruction on the previous page? In fact, why couldn't it have come even before the stats of the Ice Ghosts were listed? Gah!

- Staying on the combat issue, there are many fights in this book that have extra dice-rolling that needs to be done in order to resolve them. For instance, when you strike some enemies, you roll one die to determine if you do 1 or 2 points of Stamina damage. Or you might need to roll one die every round to see if that demon hits you with his fire breath in addition to the regular attack. In a book I wasn't enjoying all that much to begin with, this just made some of these encounters drag on too long. 

- Speaking of fighting a demon, there is a combat against a Fire Demon here where before you begin you are told "the Fire Demon can be struck and hurt by magical weapons". But it says nothing about if you have no magical weapons. Are you just dead?

- Ok so this one really bothered me, but at one point I was forced to lose an Honour Point because I apparently wouldn't help the spirit of an Elf who was in distress. The reason I wouldn't help is because I had already helped this spirit earlier, but the book did not seem to take into consideration that the player may have already done this! This is very odd considering the hub structure of the Ice Palace area.

- There is a tower you can ascend with a landing in the middle that has passages running off to the left and right. You are asked if you want to try the left or the right one, but this "left or right" choice doesn't change depending on the direction you are going, either up or down the stairs. Thus, the right hand passage is labelled as such even though when you are coming down the stairs, this is the passage on your left. It seems to me this whole situation could be avoided by using East or West instead of Right or Left. A small quibble perhaps, but it stuck out more than usual thanks to several of the other issues I was encountering along the way.  

- In another smaller issue, I at one point acquired a Snow Fox pelt as I travelled. Later on I was given the opportunity to sell a Silver Fox pelt if I had one. Hmm, was this meant to be the same thing or are there several different fox pelts out there to collect?

- The clock puzzle. Jeesh. I had to admit defeat on this one. Not because I felt I couldn't necessarily solve the puzzle, but because I couldn't read the damn thing! I know I have waxed on recently about some of the smaller printing I have been encountering in gamebooks lately, but this one is brutal, My eyesight ain't THAT bad! At least give me a chance without having to break out the magnifying glass. And on the subject of the printing, why is the text in this book smaller in general?

- So here it is, the issue that caused me to admit defeat. This being the numerical sequence puzzle. Now this one I do admit to not being able to solve, and unfortunately for me it appears that not being able to solve this means you can't win the adventure (although hopefully someone can tell me if I'm wrong on that one). This puzzle gives you the following numbers: 0,1,10,35,84,205 and tells you to turn to the section with the next number in the sequence. I tried many different things with this but didn't come up with anything that felt remotely correct. I considered just guessing every number until I found the answer (the number is likely greater than 300 based on the sequence, so this might not have been so onerous as it first sounds), but I eventually felt that this would be against the spirit of the game and would feel too much like cheating. 

And thus, with that last one, my quest to beat this book came to a crashing halt. I even stuck around for several playthroughs taking The Temple of Flame approach by trying everything else I could think of in other areas of the book, no matter how counter-intuitive it might have seemed, in the vain hope that there might be another way to acquire the Ice Bird that appears to be blocked behind that numerical sequence puzzle (if the description in that section is any indication). My total attempts at the adventure were really not all that high for a book I had to give up on, and that is partially a combination of there being hardly any instant deaths in the book, along with there being a plethora of healing options available to you.   

Speaking of healing options, was it just me or did the Provisions system here seem really out of whack? You begin the adventure with 10 Provisions, which can restore 4 points of Stamina. There are in addition times where you will be told you must eat a meal or suffer a Stamina point loss (Lone Wolf anyone?). The thing is, there are LOADS of times when you are instructed you must eat, sometimes even twice in the same section! This is all then offset by having the acquirement of more Provisions readily available throughout the book. There was one spot where I picked up a whopping 8 provisions at once, and another where my provisions were restored back to the maximum of 10! For the life of me this all ended up feeling like mindless bookkeeping just for the sake of it. And perhaps it was my frustration with other areas of the book bleeding over, but the writing here felt like a step down from earlier Keith Martin efforts. None of the creatures or encounters stood out to me in the slightest, and if you introduced a drinking game whereby you took a shot every time you read the word "ice" in this book, you'd have died from alcohol poisoning many times over. Who knows though, not being able to solve that one puzzle means I missed out on the final act of the adventure, so perhaps I missed out on a corker of an ending, although that might be overly optimistic. One thing at least I did feel the adventure got mostly right was the money system, as there are some useful items that you can purchase, but gold can be tough to come by and if you want to buy some of the better stuff you might need to plot out where you can acquire some extra cash. 

"An understandable but not excusable mistake" as Sheldon Cooper would say. This book is full of those. This could also be a picture of me trying to solve that numerical puzzle. 

Ranking: I feel somewhat guilty in putting Tower of Destruction into my "Broken" tier. After all, just because I'm not smart enough to solve a puzzle that appears to be essential to completing the gamebook, doesn't necessarily mean there is something wrong with it. But I've put every other book I have been unable to complete into this category so for now I will stick with this ranking. If at sometime in the future I am able to figure out the puzzle in question, I may return to try and complete it and then revisit this score. That said, up until the point where I called it quits, the adventure was on its way to a rather low score anyway, barring the possibility of the final act which I never got to see, blowing me away. The premise was ridiculous, the atmosphere was rather weak, inconsistencies in the text seemed to abound, wrinkles thrown into various combats just made them more tedious than anything, and the puzzles were absolute head-scratchers. After two Good entries (Stealer of Souls and Master of Chaos) and one Great one (Vault of the Vampire), it's hard for me to believe this is from the same author. I dearly hope Keith Martin isn't going the way of Ian Livingstone, where his books appear to get progressively worse. For now though I will give him the benefit of the doubt that this was an outlier and that he will return to form with his next entry. (Please!)

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47. The Crimson Tide  - Score = 8.2   Tier = Good (Very!)

Sections: 400
Attempts to Beat: 16

Sweet! A gamebook where we get to play out a mutiny on a US nuclear-armed submarine? Count me in! Oh, wrong Crimson Tide I guess. Thankfully though, as awesome a premise as that sounds, this gamebook is really, really good in its own right. I was very intrigued to read another adventure from author Paul Mason after the head-scratching-yet-somehow-still-good Black Vein Prophecy (and of course, the excellent Slaves of the Abyss). Like Black Vein Prophecy, this adventure takes place on the Isles of the Dawn, and in fact turns out to be a sequel to that adventure in a sense, with several characters from that book getting mention here. As original as this gamebook ultimately turned out to be, the opening sure wasn't. You play as a child of 13 years old to start, who has their rural village attacked and razed by savage mercenaries, with the mercenaries additionally taking your mother into slavery and executing your father right in front of you. Ok, so this is riffing on "Conan the Barbarian" right? The whole scene and atmosphere felt so close to me to the opening of that movie, that this has to be an homage. I haven't even read any other reviews of this book yet, but I already know there is no way in hell that other reviewers haven't mentioned this. Not only that, but if you play your cards right (or wrong I suppose), you can quickly find yourself taken captive and put to work in the mines, building up your strength as time passes, much like The Wheel of Pain from the movie. It diverges from Conan after this opening though, as you set out with the handful of other survivors from your village, all children, and attempt to seek justice against the mercenaries.

First though, this adventure introduces 2 unique stats to track, those being Age and Ferocity. The Age is pretty straightforward, as you begin aged 13, and are told at various points in the adventure that a year has passed, and to add 1 to your Age. Whenever this happens, you will be told to add a certain amount to your Permanent Stamina (indicating how you are growing stronger), and perhaps even be granted a Skill increase. In addition, whenever you age, you get to restore your Stamina to its Permanent (maximum) level, and also deduct 2 points from your Ferocity score. The Ferocity score is quite interesting, as you begin with a randomized amount, and will be told to add or subtract from it at various times during the quest. This score is meant to indicate your level of bloodlust in seeking revenge, and is generally increased when violent events befall you, and decreased when you experience moments of inner peace. Should you be able to bring your Ferocity score down to 0, you have achieved full inner peace, and will get to claim a rather nice Skill increase. Both of these stats are incredibly important, because being only a child to begin, your usual stats of Skill and Stamina are reflected by this fact, with your starting Skill ranging only from 1-6, and your starting Stamina from 2-12. This makes you a very weak character to start, and you will want to avoid getting in fights if possible (which is good advice throughout the whole adventure really). 

So, what is best in life?

"To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women." 

Somewhat sadly (the barbarian in me admits), that is not the point of this gamebook, despite how it starts, which was a nice unexpected turn of events. I spent my opening playthroughs wandering across the Isles of the Dawn, seeking out the mercenaries and wondering how the heck a child was going to be able to bring them to justice. The adventure doesn't hold your hand in this regard, leaving it up to the player to explore everywhere in order to uncover the means by which they can accomplish their goal. (Although it was mildly concerning that getting revenge on the mercenaries appeared to be more important to my character than rescuing my mother, but this may have been the whole point the book was trying to make). It doesn't take long to learn that this adventure has quite an extensive use of codewords, and you find yourself uncovering more and more different codewords as you progress, which can help to open up previously unexplored areas of the book. The more you explore the various areas in the book, the more codewords you will come across, and here is where something mentioned back in the rules of the book becomes very important, as you were told to not only track these codewords, but note the order you find them as well, suggesting they form some sort of message. It then becomes a fantastic puzzle to solve, as you use trial-and-error to help you figure out which codewords are essential, where they can be found, and the order in which you will need to collect them. There are a couple of items you are going to need to locate as well, and everything required for victory is a joy to uncover as you travel across plains, up mountains, through villages, explore caves, enter cities, and even visit a monastery. There is a wonderful array of things to experiment with here as you slowly piece everything together, and I enjoyed this very much. 

As is usual for Mason's books, I found mapping the adventure to be a challenge, albeit an enjoyably messy one. Places can often be entered by several different ways, and you can even find yourself circling around to areas you have already visited. Continuity in these situations though is mostly maintained through the use of the codewords, which usually prevent you from reading the exact same section again. There was one odd moment though when after first visiting an uncle of mine, whose wife was incredibly friendly and accommodating towards me, I found myself back at my uncle's house again later in the quest, at which point his wife apparently had turned hostile towards me and threw me out of the house. (What happened there? I thought she was willing to do anything to help me?). The more I played, the more I also came to realize just how much the "inner peace" aspect of the adventure came into play. Maybe I'm totally off base here, but Mason appears to be making a comment that revenge might best be left to a higher power, and there are surprisingly several endings that can be found where your character gives up his pursuit of vengeance to live out their days in relative peace (although that kind of leaves your mother in a bad spot doesn't it?). In fact, if it wasn't for the rescue of your mother, some of these other endings might even be considered successful ones, depending on your point of view.   

So as I made my way through the book across many playthroughs, slowly unlocking the codeword message, there was one rather innocent seeming encounter with a "Puzzler" as you are travelling across the countryside that I found myself routinely coming across. This fellow is a failed scholar, who now wanders the land asking people he encounters riddles, and should they be unable to answer correctly, custom dictates that he be given charity. An interesting idea (if not ripe for abuse on the Puzzler's part), and the Puzzler then puts forward a math question for you to solve. After my spectacular failures at the puzzles in the previous book, Tower of Destruction, I was more than a little pleased with myself when I believed I had come up with the correct answer to the Puzzler's question. Strangely though, it initially appeared that my answer didn't matter, and it wouldn't be the first time I have encountered a riddle that appeared to waste my time (hello Dave Morris!). However, much like with Morris, this was where "knowing your author" came into play, and I was immediately suspicious here, because I know that Paul Mason is not the type of author to have a meaningless encounter such as this, especially when you are told to write down your answer on your adventure sheet before turning to the next section to see if you got it correct.  

It took me a few more attempts of looking all throughout the map before hitting upon the exact order of the codewords that spelled out TURN TO "PUZZLER ANSWER" (I'll try to avoid giving away the exact number answer). The question then became, when to use it? If you turn to it immediately after the Puzzler encounter, it makes absolutely no sense, so this is where the preceding words in the message come into play. And here is the thing about the codewords though, and the biggest question I have regarding this gamebook: How many of them from the message are actually required to beat the game? One of the reasons I say this is because at a key point in the adventure you will be given a list of options, and after these options are listed you are told: "you may know of another option". I think the inclusion of that last sentence is a bit unfortunate, because it in effect could cancel out the first half of the message. For example, if the only codewords you had found at this point were TURN TO "PUZZLER ANSWER", you would be clued in that this is where you need to do so. Hell, I'll take it a step further and say that if the only thing you had uncovered at this point was the answer to the Puzzler's question, you wouldn't have anything to lose by at least trying it here, especially if you had exhausted the other options. Let's face it, it's not like Mason doesn't encourage out of the box thinking in his books, so if a player were to do so and win, I would have a hard time finding fault with it, even if it wasn't the way I would have done it. Even the codewords themselves are a bit of a giveaway, because once you find the words TURN and TO, you know you are now looking for a number somewhere. It just all feels a bit nebulous, and for all I know this was the intention. I will say though that not assembling every word of the message (and I'm not totally sure I had them all, even though it was still obvious what I needed to do and when), can make the quest rather easy, ONCE you know what to do. But I didn't have a problem with this in the slightest, as it took me a fair number of playthroughs to uncover the secrets of the adventure as it was. 

The only other thing I can really find fault with is the ending. Once you finally put together the secret message and have the required items, you will be asked what you want to do first, either get revenge for your father, or rescue your mother. That doesn't really seem like much of a choice does it? From that point on you are hand-held until the end, as the King himself takes you to see your mother, frees her, then zips along with you to the mercenary camp where you are asked if you want to execute in cold blood the mercenary responsible for your father's death, or let him live. Again, not much of a choice, especially considering the "inner peace" aspect of the adventure. (And once the killer of your father is unmasked, very little is cleared up about who he actually is. I had some questions here....). And don't get me wrong, as I can certainly appreciate gamebooks where it's not about the dice rolling, but on my winning playthrough I had one, yes one, combat (against a White Faced Monk). And even for this style of gamebook, that felt rather light. 

Paul Mason's writing is once again on point, and he does a marvelous job of conveying the atmosphere of a land boiling over with thoughts of revolution. There is definitely a heavy Eastern influence in the Isles of the Dawn area, and from what I have heard about Mason, this appears to be something that greatly interests him. The encounters were nicely varied also, with just the right mixture of magical mysticism and the harsh realities of war. The monastery sequence stood out in particular, as did the palace sections near the end where all your hard work finally pays off. There is one encounter however, against a Mudworm with Skill 12(!) that occurs right at the start of the book that will have you questioning your eyes. Your own character can only have a maximum Skill of 6 at this point, so this is all but a death sentence. Thankfully this is not on the required route, so unless this was meant to be the author's version of an "instant death" section, I have to believe this was an error? On a final note, I found the cover of this book, while somewhat busy, to be quite striking, and it evoked memories for me of City of Thieves, no doubt due to that looming skull!   

Ranking: Boy, this came really close to greatness for me, but just didn't quite make it there. I think it's just missing out on the brilliance of one of Mason's previous books, Slaves of the Abyss, but it's still very, very good. Gamebooks that require you to find a well-hidden path through to victory are the ones I live for, and this one is definitely that. I wish the Age mechanic had come into play a bit more, but I thought the Ferocity stat worked like a charm, with its emphasis on achieving a zen-like state perhaps being a comment on a larger philosophy. The ending I thought was a letdown, but this was an adventure more about the journey than the destination, or at least that is what I am telling myself. It occurred to me while playing this that Paul Mason might just be the "Steve Jackson" of the back half of the Fighting Fantasy range. I really appreciate how he, like Jackson, appears to be continually pushing the envelope on what is possible in gamebooks, and is always trying new things. That said, for all I know maybe Mason is not a fan of Jackson and wouldn't take kindly to the comparison! I hope he would take it as a compliment though, coming from someone like myself who thinks very highly of the vast majority of Jackson's books, and now also his. 

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48. Moonrunner  - Score = 9.4   Tier = Great! 

Sections: 400
Attempts to Beat: 9

My goodness! Stephen Hand does it yet again. This guy was on fire! After his previous two books, Dead of Night and Legend of the Shadow Warriors, both made it into my personal Hall of Fame, I found myself wondering if he would be able to do it yet again. As it turns out....yes. Yes he can. We play here as a well known bounty hunter, with the wrinkle being that we don't hunt down evil-doers for the money (or not JUST for the money anyway), but because we have a sense of duty to bring these baddies to justice. We certainly have come a long way since the money grubber from The Warlock of Firetop Mountain haven't we? In this adventure, we find ourselves sneaking into the dangerous and mostly lawless city of Blackhaven (think Port Blacksand on steroids), located in the Badlands region of Gallantaria, where it is believed an infamous sorcerer by the name of Karam Gruul (and with a name like that, how could he be anything but?) may not be dead as previously believed. What City Guard presence there is in the city has picked up clues that Gruul may not only still be alive, but marshalling his forces in secret, and that a mysterious group known as The Cabal of the Werewolf may in fact be a front for his evil activities. Our mission is to then search the city for more clues as to Gruul's whereabouts, find him, capture him, and bring him to Royal Lendle to stand trial for his crimes. This in itself is intriguing, as for once we are not told to take the "Apocalypse Now" approach and just eliminate the bad guy with extreme prejudice. Spies lurk everywhere though in a city as rotten as Blackhaven, so much so that we are required to sneak into the city under cover of darkness, and that only the leader of the City Guard, Bennet, is to be made aware of our presence there and our mission within it. This proves to be a massive problem when Bennet is murdered by an unseen assailant in the opening section, and with us as the main suspect in his murder, we immediately find ourselves now not only having to deal with Gruul's agents in the city, but the City Guard itself as well, as we slip out into the night to follow up on the few leads that Bennet was able to give us before his death. What an opening! . 

Before I get into the rest of the adventure though, it is important to note that this book includes a Skill selection system, where you get to choose 4 Special Skills from a list of 9 before you begin. As is usual, certain Skills can then help you pass various obstacles at different times, and these Skills include such things as Lock Picking, Climbing, and Sneaking to name just a few. And I have to say, this is one of the better Skill systems I have seen in a while, as through my various attempts at the book I found most, if not all of them, to be useful at different times. Some came in more handy than others for sure, as I found the Lock Picking and Con skills to be extremely useful for example, but a big part of the fun was in determining which ones I needed to take in order to pass those most important moments of the adventure. However, even should you not have the asked for Skill at a key moment, that usually doesn't prevent you from passing the obstacle (except for an important moment near the end), it just means you will need to pass either a Luck or Skill stat dice roll instead.    

I am now going to break up the adventure itself into 3 acts for ease of review:

Act 1 - Tracking down clues to locate the Cabal

So after the untimely murder of Bennet in the opening section (and what murder isn't untimely I suppose), we head out to investigate the leads given to us in an attempt to find the Cabal of the Werewolf that will hopefully lead us to Karam Gruul himself. You can choose to follow up on these leads in any order you wish, which is a really nice design choice, and the book even includes a beautiful map of Blackhaven in the introduction. This map isn't necessarily functional as you can zig-zag all over the city if you wish with no adverse consequences, but it does help with the visualization of this hive of scum and villainy, and I very much enjoyed its inclusion. In this opening act, you can choose to investigate an insane asylum where someone with information is supposedly being held, you can enter the slums in an attempt to contact an informer for the City Guard, or you can head to a seedy dockside tavern known as The Last Octopus where the Cabal is believed to congregate. And this is if you don't find yourself in pursuit of Bennet's murderer first, which can lead you on a rather merry chase! The insane asylum deserves special mention here, as it fits wonderfully into the overall atmosphere of the city. Upon visiting these various locations, you may find yourself picking up different code words that you are told to note down, and these can be helpful later when you near the end of this act and are asked how much you have uncovered so far. I will say though that these code words are just an experience you had written backwards (a meeting with Doktor Welsh for example in a nice callback to Legend of the Shadow Warriors will give you the code word "Rotkod"), and I'm not sure what the point of that was. Why not just spell them forwards? Anyway....

This isn't all though, as there are a couple of additional locations that can be visited should you perform certain actions in the opening section back at the scene of Bennet's murder. And this is important, because one of these locations is a fantastic addition to the adventure. This occurs when you are given the option of heading to a deserted mill near the edge of the city, where it is believed a traitor to the City Guard and a spy for Gruul is holed up. Here you encounter said spy, known as Conrad, where you fight him to the death. Except for one problem.....he won't stay dead! In a scene right out of several horror movies, lightning re-animates the freshly killed Conrad, who from this point onwards will spend the rest of the adventure hunting you down like an un-killable machine. The first time I saw the illustration of Conrad I immediately thought of Halloween's Michael Myers, however reading the section itself it's clear this character is drawing inspiration from Friday the 13th's Jason Voorhees instead (with the machete being his weapon of choice, and with the re-animation from lightning as was done in Friday the 13th Part 6: Jason Lives). You can't defeat Conrad here, you can only hope to escape. The brilliant part of all this is that you are given a code word, and later on during the quest you can be asked if you have this code word, and should you have it, Conrad makes another appearance in his unrelenting hunt for revenge and must be escaped from once again. Really great stuff.  

 

Yeah, I know. The Conrad character was pretty blatant. But you know what? It was so awesome that I didn't care! 

Act 2 - Locating the Magical Artefacts (Wards)

After that opening act, you will learn that Karam Gruul is indeed back and active within the city, and you will then get to meet Professor Van Heldenghast, a character with the same goal as you, as they are also on the trail of Gruul to ensure he is stopped. The Professor will inform you that there are 6 magical artefacts scattered throughout the city that would come in very handy in a final confrontation with Gruul. The Professor is also able to tell you where you can find these artefacts, and you then have the option of visiting, in any order you choose,: The Chamber of Horrors, The Olde Gaol, Kiennar's Curiousity Shop, The Three Broken Fingers Tavern, The Shrine of Belthegar, and Gallows Square. The catch is that you only have 9 hours in which to do so, as at midnight you need to be at a certain location where you discover the Cabal is meeting, so you don't have enough time to visit all 6 locations. Upon visiting a location and completing its set-piece, you will acquire one of the artefacts, but will also be told to mark down that a certain number of hours has passed. Once you hit the 9 hour mark, you need to immediately turn to the indicated section to move on to the final act. 

The 6 locations you can visit are really quite varied, with some of them such as Kiennar's Curiosity Shop being completed in a section or two, while others such as The Chamber of Horrors and The Three Broken Fingers tavern leading to rather in-depth sequences that you need to successfully navigate. Heck, there is even a local serial killer known as The Shocker (because he scares his victims to death) on the loose, and you can choose to help and track him down or not. I enjoyed all 6 of the locations, but especially The Three Broken Fingers Tavern and your dealings with two unscrupulous grave robbers, and The Olde Gaol, which involved an encounter with a trapped demon. The artefacts themselves are also interesting as each has its own backstory, and not only can they bestow some stat boosts for the final battle, but they also come with some negative tradeoffs as well. Once your 9 hours have expired, you take what artefacts you managed to gather and are on your way.   

Act 3 - Capturing Karam Gruul

So now you have learned where Karam Gruul is currently marshalling his forces, and this is where you leave Blackhaven to travel towards his lair. You first need to navigate through his army gathering outside his tower's walls, and then into the tower itself. At this point though I have to call out probably my biggest gripe with the adventure. As I entered the tower, I was told I walked in on a gathering where on a balcony, Radu was preaching to the assembled acolytes below. I then decided to......hang on....who the hell is Radu? I get the feeling I was supposed to have encountered this character before, even though I hadn't. Flipping through the book after beating it, it would appear that my acquiring an item called the Inmate's Locket way back at the asylum had kept me from meeting this character. (At least, that appears to be the reason, but I'm not totally sure). The thing is, for me at least, this Locket was granted to me every time I would free the inmates in the asylum, which seemed to me to be the best thing to do, as it allowed you to bypass a difficult fight against a Frankenstein-type monster while escaping. I feel like this was a goof by the author, although I may be incorrect. In his defense, the various different paths available through the book may have had him losing track of who was met where. And maybe the biggest compliment I can give the adventure is that this really didn't bother me all THAT much, because I was having so much fun with the rest of the book.  

Anyway, you now need to navigate through Gruul's gathering of acolytes to ascend to an upper level and confront the main man himself. How tough it is to get through his followers and to Gruul is determined by what Skills you have at your disposal, and once you finally track the sorcerer down, you are ready for the final battle. This final fight is more involved than what we normally see, as you first roll dice to determine how many "Notura" points Gruul has available to him (these are Magic Points, who are we kidding). Once he has that number, you then roll one die, and consult a listing of 6 different spells that Gruul can cast to see which one he uses against you. Each spell obviously deals some negative effects, but these can be countered should you have the correct artefact. If you can survive long enough so that Gruul runs out of Notura points, and then pass a Stamina check, you then defeat him and take him into custody. This whole design isn't without some problems I must confess. If you roll very low for Gruul's Notura points for example, this fight can be an absolute cakewalk. Also, I didn't find it very clear as to whether Gruul could cast the same spell more than once, as the fight opens with you being told "roll one die to see which spell Gruul casts first". Why put the "first" in there otherwise? Of course we know the first time we roll it will be his first spell. And if he can cast the same spell more than once, you could find yourself rolling the same number several times over, and if this is a number you have the correct artefact for, you probably won't have much trouble beating him. So, randomness plays a big "roll" in this confrontation (heh). Still, I think I prefer a more interesting design such as this to a typical "here is your Skill-11 Stamina-16 final bad guy.....have at it" conclusion to a gamebook.  

Even after capturing Gruul, you are not quite finished, as you still need to take him to Royal Lendle so that he can stand trial for his crimes. The adventure tries to catch you out a couple of times here, by attempting to goad you into certain decisions, but if you stay the course and keep what the main goal is in mind, you shouldn't have too much trouble getting Gruul back to Royal Lendle, where he is found guilty and you win the game. There is one incredibly odd moment that occurs over this travelling back to Royal Lendle sequence though, when it is revealed that not only have you been very familiar with Gruul for years, but you did in fact used to be one of his minions (a "Moonrunner"). Admittedly, there was a line given in the introduction about how this mission was "personal", but to be honest I had forgotten about it by the time I got to this reveal section. I guess it was an attempt to throw a twist in right at the end, but the problem is I don't recall this ever being hinted at during the adventure other than that one line in the introduction (or if it was, I missed it). I mean, our character didn't act like he knew Gruul during the adventure did he? This only takes up one section of the book, and for me it didn't detract from the adventure so I won't hold it against it, I just think a personal quest for revenge, if fleshed out more, could have added something to an already great gamebook. Ah well.    

Ranking: Another no-doubt Hall of Famer for me from this author. This also currently cracks into my top 10 FF books overall, and having said that, I'm shaking my head in disbelief that of his 3 books, I have this one ranked the lowest (albeit by virtue of losing a tiebreaker with Dead of Night). This also means that Stephen Hand now occupies 3 of my top 7 spots in the series to date. So yes, if you haven't guessed already, I am a HUGE fan of his. Much like with the previous book in the series, The Crimson Tide, when I completed Moonrunner I was left with a feeling like there was nothing else quite like this entry in the whole series. Purposefully making it so that you can't visit all the wonderful set pieces in one go felt like the opposite of what Fighting Fantasy usually does, and it worked for me because those set pieces were all so incredibly fun to experience, that I immediately wanted to dive back in and try something new. More so than any book in the series I can think of, two different players who beat this gamebook may end up having wildly different experiences from one another. The Skill Selection system worked fantastically, the exploration allowed you to visit places in the order you choose or even ignore them altogether if you wish, and the atmosphere from Hand is once again so oppressively thick and wonderful that I now think he should have bottled it and opened his own "Atmosphere Shop". The adventure was slightly easier than I would have liked to have seen by this point in the series, and I probably could have beaten it in a few less attempts than it took me, but I found myself taking unnecessary risks at several moments just because I was so interested in what I might uncover. The twist at the end also fell a bit flat, and the Radu encounter may have been botched, but I was more than willing to forgive those flaws because of how much fun I was having with the rest of the book. Overall, really great stuff on offer here!   

Seeing as how this is apparently the last gamebook Stephen Hand has written (and I was quite saddened when I only learned that fact after finishing Moonrunner), I need to take a moment to comment on his output. Three gamebooks from Hand, and all three were absolute bangers! I don't recall hearing his name mentioned when the subject of greatest gamebook authors of all time comes up (and apologies if others out there have been banging his drum for years, as I try to know as little as possible about these books going in). I have to believe this is because he "only" wrote three books, but from a quality-per-book standpoint, how do you top this guy? He has to be in the "greatest of all-time" conversation in that regard at least, right? Well, at least for me he certainly is. His books all have rather a horror bent, which I love, so perhaps you also have to enjoy the horror genre, but even from just a design standpoint alone I thought these were fantastic. I mean sure, the more books you write, the more likely you are to eventually come out with a stinker, but still, to know that he never wrote another gamebook again after this feels like something of a tragedy. Much like when Steve Jackson took a long hiatus after writing Creature of Havoc, I can't help but wonder what the story was behind Hand ceasing to write more gamebooks. If anyone deserved a crack at their own series, I feel like it was him.