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46. Tower of Destruction - Score = 0.0 Tier = Broken (for me at least)
Sections: 400
Attempts before submitting : 20
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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?
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.




Good to see you return to the FF series even if you didn't like this particular adventure.
ReplyDeleteTime for a re-read on my part !
Good luck! Let me know how you make out with those puzzles!
DeleteYeah the puzzles in this one are very hard - I've never solved the clock one. Even knowing the answer, I don't understand how you're meant to work it out other than trial and error. My understanding is one of the clocks is also drawn incorrectly though I can't blame my failure on that.
ReplyDeleteThe puzzle you got stuck on also has an error. The differences between the numbers in the sequence are 1, 9, 25, 49... ie the odd numbers in sequence squared. However, the next one should then be 165 (84+9²). Instead, Martin has skipped 9² and gone straight to 11² to get 205. The sequence still works otherwise though. If you add 13² to 205, you get 374 which is the correct answer. Another suggestion is that it's squared prime numbers rather than squared odd numbers but that doesn't work either since 1 is not a prime number and 2 is. So this puzzle is broken, only solvable if you make an assumption on what the author was going for and then assuming he messed up. And since it's vital to success, then I suppose it's fair to declare thie whole book broken.
Thanks for the confirmation Kieran! Man, that puzzle is even wilder than I thought. I did experiment with squaring the numbers at one point but it still didn't make sense to me. It is at least somewhat comforting to know that it wasn't a relatively obvious solution that I just couldn't figure out.
DeleteTower is one of my least favourite Keith Martin FFs, but when I finally beat it (yes, it can be done), it was feeling pretty epic by the endgame.
ReplyDeleteOne good thing to have come out of this book is that it inspired me to do my best to make the snowy wilderness sequences of my Fighting Fantazine mini-adventure Return to the Icefinger Mountains eventful and engaging in direct contrast to the blandness of so much of Tower's trekking to key locations.
Well, I see it as a positive. Maybe some readers regard the bulk of those perils and encounters as padding, and wish they could get to the Crystal Caves with a minimum of incident along the way, but at least I made an effort in response to the disappointing nature of the voyages in Tower.
I took a look at some other reviews after posting my own and it appears there was another puzzle, a music one, that I never even got to that I'm also not sure I could have solved. This book would seem to back up the belief that at least some authors in FF were not writing for kids!
DeleteI look forward to playing your adventure Ed. I have to believe the icy setting is more difficult to write for than some others.
This book is a mid-tier entry by my tastes, but like you I found the constant shuffling of provision numbers to be really annoying. I think last time I played it I made a digital character sheet to make it a bit easier.
ReplyDeleteOddly, the outlandishness of the plot (giant flying tower) was never really off-putting for me, but on reflection it does feel a bit out of place.
The provisions system in FF seems to be unevenly handled throughout the series, with Tower of Destruction going way over the top!
DeleteIt's great to see that you've made it back to FF, John, after all those awful cash-in books. Shame that Tower is not the most auspicious re-entry point. That musical staves puzzle is indeed as impenetrable as the stupid clock-face one, although to be honest fuming over them is the only memory I have of the book at all. I suppose the general sloppiness of design is only to be expected from Martin. After all, he did spend much of the 80s constructing dodgy ganzfeld experiments to 'prove' the existence of extrasensory perception. Susan Blackmore's verdict on his parapsychology research at Cambridge could be describing much of Tower: 'these experiments, which looked so beautifully designed in print, were in fact open to fraud or error in several ways, and indeed I detected several errors and failures to follow the protocol while I was there'.
ReplyDeleteI still have some more cash-in's to come! It always feels good to get back to FF though so am trying to savour them.
DeleteI was really enjoying Martin's books up until Tower. I also have to say I was not aware of any of what you said about him. Perhaps I need to spend more time researching the authors!
You could easily write a book on the guy. Back when he was just Carl Sargent, he was something of a leading light in bringing scientific credibility to parapsychological research. In 1979 he was the first person to receive a PhD in the field (from Cambridge University no less!), and his laboratory garnered quite a bit of notice for its 'outstanding results in ESP tests'; he was also one of the investigators of the Enfield poltergeist, and even seems to have caught the eye of the CIA at one stage. Sadly, the wheels came off in 1987, when Blackmore published a report showing that the 'randomised' images he was asking subjects to share telepathically were likely less random than advertised. From then on, it was the more honest fantasy of Warhammer, Shadowrun, AD&D and FF for him.
DeleteThere seem to be three different methods for fighting multiple enemies by this point:
ReplyDelete1. Roll a full attack round against each, but you can only wound one.
2. Same as above , but only roll once for your own attack strength.
3. Roll once for everyone, and only the highest score of all hits.
I'm pretty sure method 3 was only used by Keith Martin. And I've encountered more than one amateur FF adventure where the author failed to realise that there's more than one established procedure for fighting multiple opponents, and neglected to specify which approach they considered the default. Oh, the joys of being forced into battle against half a dozen opponents without even knowing whether you need to roll the dice twelve times every Attack Round or just seven...
DeleteYou're bang on the money about Crimson Tide, which is absolutely one of my favourites too. I really like the sense it gives of being stuck off in the margins, caught up in larger events beyond your comprehension or control. Ironically, given that the protagonist is supposed to be a child, I found it completely baffling as a younger reader. It's only when I came back to it as a near-adult (and hit on the right sequence of codewords) that the coin came anywhere close to dropping. Pretty revelatory it was too. Oh, and the Mudworm encounter was apparently the fault of series editor Marc Gascoigne, who thought the fights needed beefing up and forgot how young (and weak) the central character is supposed to be. Mason's justified disgust at the tweak is well documented online.
ReplyDeletePS: As I'm sure some of the others will also note, there are earlier codewords that make clear the point at which you are meant to turn to the Puzzler's number. The first in the sequence is even 'When'!
DeleteI have to admit I never found the word "When" in any of my playthroughs of the book! It doesn't seem necessary though as the message makes complete sense without it? In any case, love that there are still things I didn't get to see even after a fair number of attempts.
Delete'when' is very hard to obtain. It requires you to
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Travel along the road, run away from the mercenary, distract him from Hani (losing 2 Stamina and gaining 1 Ferocity - meaning you will die if you rolled Double 1 for Stamina), travel along the polders then fail a Ferocity roll (your Ferocity at this stage will be between 4 and 13 but average 8 or 9 so this will likely be a very tough-impossible roll) and then win a combat against a Skill 6 Stamina 6 enemy where your own Skill will be 6 at the absolute maximum and your Stamina is likely to be low if you managed to fail the Ferocity roll. However, there is a trick to this book (discovered by thealmightymudworm on the Fighting Fantazine Forum) where you can loop back to the start but with improved Skill and Stamina and reduced Ferocity which greatly increases your chance of acquiring 'when' - and if you mess up again, you can just do another loop and have even better chances next time.
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Paul Mason has said he doesn't consider nay of the codewords essential if the reader can work out what to do via a mixture of intuition and meta-knowledge from previous attempts. Personally I don't like this as it raises the question of why bothering to have these codewords in the first place unless they're meant to represent milestones in your spiritual journey but hey it's his book. At any rate, I'm glad this extremely interesting gamebook didn't get a 'Broken' score due to the challenge of obtaining 'when'.
Ah! Thanks Kieran. Death's Messenger killed me rather easily so I gave up going that way. Figured I would save trying to beat him only if I ran out of other things to try. I'm sure glad the hidden reference number wasn't kept behind that fight!
DeleteThat's interesting, because I did wonder how many of the (I think 7) codewords in the final message you needed to have properly won. Like, if you missed the first one (when) you could probably still figure it out with the other 6.
DeleteI guess completing the whole message can be considered a flawless victory!
I, on the other hand, was too dumb to figure it out, even with most of the words.
Restating and reaffirming a few things which have been said before:
ReplyDelete1. Mason is definitely NOT a fan of Jackson (or Livingstone, for that matter).
2. As has been said, the Mudworm skill level was a decision made by then-series editor Marc Gascoigne, who Mason did publicly call "an idiot" for this blunder in particular.
Stay tuned for the next chapter of this soap opera.
I'm starting to notice a pattern about how the other authors felt about Jackson and Livingstone!
DeleteFinished my play through of Tower Of Destruction - a bit of a slog to be honest. As for those puzzles - the numerical and clock ones are hard enough but the musical one is simply IMPOSSIBLE ! How did anyone ever solve this when the book was first published ?
ReplyDeleteI cheated ;)
DeleteI gave up. So, according to that sample, nobody did solve it.
DeleteI managed to solve it. Being able to read music (ish) probably helped, but ultimately it boils down to the same kind of pattern recognition that's at the heart of most basic codebreaking. And since there is a logical progression in there, it's arguably easier to crack than the runes in FF>/b> 56 - unless you use Knights of Doom's must-fail-a-SKILL-roll-to-find cheat sheet.
DeleteHuh. I went back to it, and it turns out that Ed is right - it *can* actually be worked out, even without a PhD in parapsychology. You definitely need a hard copy, however, since the PDFs floating about online are too low-def to include the necessary visual information, and it's a pretty tedious process, but I got there. Turning the staves 90 degrees helped a lot. So thanks, Ed, for helping me set down 30 years of bewildered frustration!
DeleteBetter late than never !
DeleteJust realized that I foolishly got rid of The Crimson Tide during a recent book clear out - aaargh ! No LUCK points for this gamer.