Middle-earth Quest

                                                         RANKINGS 

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1. Night of the Nazgul - Score = 6.3    Tier = OK

Attempts to beat: 8

A fantasy gamebook set in J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth? Yes please! With so many other fantasy stories borrowing from Tolkien (and understandably so), it's a real treat to go right to the source material itself and find yourself playing alongside actual events from the books. In this first book of the Middle-earth Quest series (originally called Tolkien Quest), we play as an unnamed stable-hand in Bree, who is called into The Prancing Pony inn one morning to meet the ranger Strider, who has an important secret mission for us. Strider gives us the bad news that the Nazgul, otherwise known as the Black Riders, are now heading for The Shire in their search for the One Ring, and will not hesitate to kill any hobbits and burn down any villages that stand in their way. He therefore needs us to head west and warn the various villages in the Shire of their impending arrival. Strider would make the journey himself but he is currently awaiting the arrival of Frodo in Bree, which is why he is turning to us for assistance. We are additionally told that time is of the essence and we must make haste. To this last point I'm not sure why he couldn't see that we were at least provided a horse if speed was so important, but I'm noticing that not giving you a horse even when it would be incredibly beneficial seems to be common among gamebooks. So off you set from Bree on foot, hoping you can avoid bandits and Black Riders along the way and get the warning out before it's too late. 

The first thing about the game design I need to comment on is the character creation, which is fantastic. You have three main attributes, Strength, Agility, and Intelligence. Determining what their values are involves dice rolling and allocation, as you roll two dice three times, and then get to decide which value gets assigned to each attribute. I love this style of stat generation as it allows for a sense of strategy along with an element of randomness. This is one area that I think the Fighting Fantasy series in particular missed the boat on, as rolling 4 dice and then allocating the numbers to Skill, Stamina, and Luck seems like a FAR preferable method to what the system has stuck with for decades, and to this day I wonder why they haven't made that change. You also have your Endurance stat in this quest of course (your life points), which is determined by multiplying your Strength by 2 and adding 20. 

Character creation doesn't end there however, as you also have an additional 8 stats (Melee, Missile, Defense, Running, General, Trickery, Perception, Magical) which all begin with values of 0. You then get 6 points you can allocate among these as you see fit. Some of these, such as the Melee and Defense stats, are used in the combat system, while others such as Perception and Trickery are used to make dice checks at various times in the adventure. Your values in these additional 8 stats can also be affected by what equipment you may be carrying and by what your initial Strength, Agility, and Intelligence scores are. As if this wasn't fleshed out enough, you also decide upon the race of your character, being able to choose from among Man, Elf, Dwarf, or Hobbit. Each race provides further unique modifiers to your stats, such as an Elf getting a bonus to Perception when outdoors, and a Dwarf getting a likewise bonus should they find themselves underground. 

Oh and did I mention there is also a spell system? For those 6 points you get to allocate to your additional stats, you can instead choose to trade them in for spells. For each 1 point you trade in instead of allocating, you can choose to select 2 spells from among a quite impressive and varied list. Once you learn a spell you can use it from that point forward, with each spell costing a certain amount of Endurance points along with the need to pass a dice check in order to cast it. There is just a ton of stuff to experiment with here and you really feel like you are tailoring your character in such a way as to make them your very own and to suit your own play style. This is probably the best character creation experience I have come across yet. 

Combat involves taking your Melee score and subtracting your opponent's Defense score to get an attack value, then doing the same for your opponent (taking his Melee score and subtracting your Defense). Once you each have an attack value, you take turns rolling and consulting a Combat Table at the back of the book to see how much damage you have done to your opponent, and then how much they do to you, until one of you is either dead or unconscious. This is very similar to the Lone Wolf combat system, except it doesn't condense it down to one single number for both of you at once. Thus, the table used here isn't nearly as in your favor as the Lone Wolf table, making the fights here much more balanced. How much damage you do is also dependent upon what weapon you are using, with swords and maces predictably causing more damage than daggers or bare fists. You even have the badass option of throwing your weapon at your opponent (utilizing your Missile stat), which if successful can cause more damage, but also means you can't use that weapon anymore for the rest of the combat. The Combat Table here did have one aspect I found frustrating, that being if you or your opponent can oftentimes roll a 12, it's a one hit kill. I died a couple of times because my adversary rolled a 12 even though I was winning handily up until that point. I suppose this could reflect that they got a lucky blow in, but it still doesnt make it any less aggravating to lose because of one single roll.  

Despite the above, this particular adventure is not about combat at all. In fact, you will definitely want to avoid any and all fights if you can. The reason being that time is the real enemy in this quest. Each section of the book has a number of minutes at the top, and you need to add these up as you go along. Once you hit 780 minutes, one day has passed (it's assumed you don't travel at night) and you can rest for the night, eat, and recover Endurance points. You do have the option of travelling at night if you wish to attempt it, but the penalties for doing it are so onerous I'm not sure why anyone would want to. If you don't make it to Hobbiton within a certain allotted amount of time, you will find it destroyed when you get there, and you lose. When you first begin, you have absolutely no clue what the time limit is that you need to make it there by, and I found myself just trying to get there no matter how long it took just so I could discover this number, as without knowing it, it's impossible to plan an optimal route or form any kind of strategy.    

The map you are provided is really the key to the adventure here, and is essentially split into two halves, with the Brandywine River acting as the halfway point. The whole map is divided up into a hexagonal grid with each space uniquely numbered such as 1A, 1B, 2A, 2B, etc. You begin in the far eastern half in the hexagon containing Bree, and can choose to move to any adjacent hexagon as you make your way west across the map. You then look up the number of the hexagon you just moved to in the book to find out what happens to you in that space. I initially found this movement system to be great, but by the end of the adventure I couldn't help but feel it was also greatly wasted. The eastern side of the map also includes the Barrow Downs and the Old Forest. As such, the vast majority of the adventure and just about anything of interest is played out on this eastern half. Once you cross the Brandywine into the western half, very little of note actually happens. I came across almost no encounters to speak of (although this may have been a blessing in disguise), with most of the grid spaces basically telling you how pleasant the countryside is and to move on. This western half of the map contains all the villages you are supposed to warn about the Nazgul, but this just consists of entering a village and trying to make a check roll against your Perception stat to see if the hobbits in that particular village believe you or not. If they do, then you are told to mark down that particular village has now been warned. This certainly makes it seem like you will need to warn as many of the villages on this side of the map as possible. Once I finally beat the book however, I found out that this doesn't matter in the slightest! All you need to do is warn Hobbiton. If you can do that within the time limit then you win, regardless of how many other locations you warned (or even if you didn't warn any of them!). So, what the heck was the point in giving them all the heads up about the Nazgul then? For that matter, what the heck was the point in even having them on the map, as other than warning them, there is nothing to do in the villages! This whole "warning" aspect feels either very poorly thought out, or it was left unfinished. 

Most players are probably going to want to take the more southerly route west across the map because that is the one Frodo took, and involves meeting Tom Bombadil. That said, if you actually want to win the adventure, I think you need to just take the straight shot up the road to Hobbiton, making a brief detour around the bridge to take Bucklebury Ferry. The main reason for staying on the road (even though Strider warns against this), is that the travelling time along spaces with a road in them is much lower than those without, and you will certainly want to save as much time as possible. And herein lies the main problem with the adventure, and unfortunately it's a big one. Because of the tight time limit, the quest actually DETERS exploring (not that there is much to find anyway), which shows an incredible lack of foresight in planning the book.  

Something else that deters exploring is that you learn fairly early there is nothing useful to find. There are no hidden items squirreled away in any of the grid spaces that are essential or even near-essential to completing the quest, which is very unfortunate. When crossing the Barrow Downs in particular, you are asked several times if you want to try plundering some of the tombs. Even with the meta-knowledge that this is obviously a bad idea, it also seems to contradict the supposed heroic nature of your character. The heroes in The Lord of the Rings universe arent out to accumulate gold and gems like you might find in other fantasy gamebooks. Even the usual gold hungry dwarves wouldn't do this if it meant putting the lives of other good folk at risk.     

Another unfortunate aspect of the adventure is that the repeating of the same encounters here borders on near lunacy. Taking the southern tack across the map sees you meet the same freaking Barrow Wight half a dozen times. The north tack isn't much better, as you encounter the same bear, snake, or group of orcs (what the heck are orcs doing in this part of Middle-earth at this point in time anyway?). You can also go right up the middle by taking the road, but guess what? Yep, you encounter the same highwaymen over and over. While playing I found myself thinking this might have made a much better co-operative board game. If the map had been included on a board (or even a large fold out piece of paper) with several players all having their own characters and tokens, and with the goal of avoiding the Nazgul and alerting all the towns of the Shire before time expired, and with the book acting as the "dungeon master" in telling the players what happened on each grid space, this could have been a lot of fun despite all the repeating encounters.  

The rules at the front of the book also provide a "basic" rule-set that you can use, which disregard the magic and time mechanics. Disregarding the time mechanic however seems to defeat the whole purpose of the adventure, so I'm not sure why you would want to do that. I suppose you could use it as an excuse for more exploring without worrying about the time limit, which was a main criticism of mine, but it completely flies in the face of the mission you are given, and there is nothing that interesting to find anyway. You are also told that you automatically pass any time limit checks if you use these basic rules, which would make the book incredibly easy. There are also instructions on how to import characters from the 1982 Middle-earth Role Playing Game for this gamebook, so they are clearly hoping for some cross-platforming players to buy this. 

While getting to play a character alongside the events of Lord of the Rings is a huge draw, there isn't much in the way of originality shown in the storytelling here from author John David Ruemmler. You do basically the same thing Frodo did in going from Hobbiton to Bree, except you do it in reverse. You even have most of the exact same experiences. Barrow Wights, Old Man Willow, rescue by Tom Bombadil, Goldberry, Bucklebury Ferry etc. Even your encounter with the lone Nazgul plays out much the same, with you cowering under a tree while you can hear him sniffing for you (as depicted on the cover). Speaking of this, the book is called Night of the Nazgul, but nothing happens at night (as you use that time to rest) and there is only one Nazgul in the game and if you follow Strider's advice to avoid Brandywine Bridge you wouldn't even encounter him. This proves to be wise advice, as if you attempt to engage this Nazgul, you are totally screwed! 

Ranking: The fantastic character creation and map movement system, along with getting to be thrust into the thick of The Lord of the Rings itself, are enough to recommend giving this one a look. It's just a shame the adventure itself is a bit of a damp squib. Trying to make it to Hobbiton in the time limit can be tense, but repetitive encounters and a complete lack of purpose in exploring the Shire and outlying areas bring it down considerably. I hope the future books learn from this as it would be unfortunate if such a well thought out game system ended up being totally wasted. 

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2. The Legend of Weathertop - Score = 6.4    Tier = OK

Attempts to beat: 3

On to the second book in the series, and the first thing that struck me here was how different this adventure felt as opposed to the first book. I guess that makes sense, as we have a different author in Heike Kubasch penning this entry. As far as I can tell, this is the only gamebook Kubasch ever wrote, and it kind of shows as there isn't much in the way of originality at work here as far as the story goes. The story in this book takes place after the events of The Lord of the Rings, with Sauron having been defeated and Middle-earth having generally become a peaceful place, with a few exceptions here and there. For this adventure you are called into your mentor's library in Minas Tirith one day (a mentor in what exactly is kept vague), and he informs you that he recently discovered an ancient map pressed between the pages of an old dusty tome. The map purports to show the location of an underground hall where it is believed a powerful magical artifact called The MacGuffin Staff The Staff of Truth was hidden to keep it from falling into enemy hands during the siege of Amon Sul (ie. Weathertop) which occurred hundreds of years earlier. He entrusts you with travelling to Weathertop (that's a bit of a hike from Minas Tiriith isn't it?) and to search the caves in the area for a possible hidden entrance to the hall, and if successful on that front, to then retrieve the Staff. 

The adventure proper begins with you having just arrived at Weathertop as you prepare to search for the hidden entrance, and the quest from here on out is very clearly demarcated into 3 acts. These acts include: locating the entrance, travelling through underground caverns, and finally searching the halls for the Staff. I will go over each below:

1 - Locating the hidden entrance on Weathertop. Ok, there is no way to sugarcoat it. This opening act is a snoozefest. You are provided with a map that shows an overhead view of Weathertop, divided into the hexagonal grid that we saw in the first book. You have several options as to which space you would like to start on, then you just proceed by moving from space to space, checking them all until you can eventually stumble across a hidden opening to the caverns beneath the hill. This could have made for a decent bit of exploring in theory, because unlike in the previous adventure, this actually encourages you to explore as many spaces as you can. The big problem though is that 90% of the spaces on this map contain absolutely nothing! There are a couple of encounters to be had, be it with some Haradrim (evil men from the south), or some dwarves who are passing by, but considering how many spaces are on this grid map, anything of interest is incredibly few and far between. I was so relieved when I finally found the secret entrance, because then I didnt have to wander about aimlessly anymore, being told how the grass looked and how I was swatting away gnats as I walked from empty space to empty space.

2 - The underground caverns. Things start to pick up here, as we descend into the caves beneath the hill, and immediately acquire a travelling companion in the form of a hobbit known as Hamwich Tunnelly, referred to as 'Ham' from then on. (I'm somewhat disappointed his full name wasn't given as 'Ham Sambwich'). Ham had read about the adventures of Bilbo Baggins in Bilbo's book "There And Back Again", and felt like he wanted to try the adventuring life for himself. Beginning with a trip to investigate Weathertop, he quickly found himself falling down a hole and ending up trapped in the caverns. You tell him of your quest, and because he needs your help to escape anyway, he agrees to aid you in looking for the Staff. 

Right from the start of this act to the very end of the book the adventure becomes your typical fantasy dungeon crawl and doesn't really do much to impress, but that very slow first act probably makes this seem better than it actually is. Everything is relative I guess! This act has the illusion of non-linearity, by initially giving you many directions of tunnels to choose from. You soon find out however that many of these tunnels that you try are immediate dead ends, forcing you to turn around and go down the only tunnel that was ever really an option. That aside, and unlike the first book in the series, there are lo and behold some helpful items to find here, such as magical pendants and cloaks that can buff some of your stats. This act also contains most of the encounters in the book, with interesting battles against trolls, spiders, Haradrim, and even a Kraken. Most noticeable about this act however is the complete lack of the grid map that the adventures had been known for up to this point. So for these caverns at least, you have to make your own map as you go, which I always enjoy doing in any case. 

3 - The halls beneath Weathertop. Once you and Ham descend far enough, you locate the entrance to the ancient halls that contain the Staff. With this act, the adventure returns to providing a hexagonal grid map of the halls. The halls are a decent size, but there really isn't much of interest going on in them, and if you paid attention to a clue given in the prologue (and you are reminded of it before entering the halls), you shouldn't have too much trouble locating the Staff. I was somewhat disappointed by the emptiness of these halls. While it makes sense from a story standpoint of course that enemies would not be roaming this long lost area, we were warned earlier that there would be traps to overcome, but these never really materialize. Once you find the Staff, the book gets around having you have to backtrack all the way out again by having it magically transport you back outside Weathertop. You then bring the staff to King Elessar (Strider/Aragorn) in Minas Tirith and cover yourself in glory.    

While the story here has more originality when compared to the first book (at least as it pertains to its comparison with The Lord of the Rings, as exploring a dungeon for a magical artifact is hardly original in a gamebook sense), there is one rather large exception. That exception occurs when you enter a room in the caverns and are confronted by a wight, who challenges you to a game of riddles. If you win, he will let you pass, but if you lose, he gets to eat you. Sound familiar? To be fair, the adventure doesn't even try to hide the fact it's copying the Gollum encounter from The Hobbitt, as it even recycles one of the very same riddles. Not that your character gets to play the game anyway, as the sequence plays out with you watching your companion Ham and the wight trading riddles back and forth. You get to participate at the end, but it's quite lame, with you just being asked point blank if you gave the correct answer or not. The adventure did however conclude with some questions regarding various moral choices you made during the quest, which I found to be a neat way to try and catch players out who either did something selfish or answered without thinking carefully first. The adventure as a whole is pretty easy, with the only real danger of losing seeming to come from one of your opponents rolling a 12 and one-hit killing you in combat. I never saw any insta-death paragraphs (although they could exist) so as long as you can avoid that unlucky double-six coming up against you in a combat situation (which killed me twice), you shouldn't have much trouble in winning. 

The character creation here is the same as the first book, with a combination of dice rolling and skill point allotment determining your avatar's strengths and weaknesses. And speaking of character creation, very curiously you apparently do NOT carry over your character from the previous book. The first adventure seemed to imply that you would be able to carry your character from that quest forward to future books, including any items or skill bonuses that you may have acquired. That doesn't appear to be the case though, as your character is clearly a different individual from that first quest. In that first book, you played as a stablehand from Bree, while here you play as a student from Minas Tirith. More to that point, I found some really cool and useful gear near the end of this adventure, and was even rewarded by the King with some very high powered items. It would certainly suck eggs if I never got the opportunity to use these because I will once again be playing a completely different person in the next adventure. I guess time will tell on that front, but it might retroactively make this adventure somewhat worse, because otherwise what is the point in giving the player combat or skill enhancing items in the very last section! 

The biggest negative of this book for me is one of the aspects that made the first adventure unique, which was the time mechanic. With this, you tracked your time spent travelling as you went along, and you needed to make it to the end of the quest under a certain amount of time or you lost the game. And while this did contribute to a discouragement of exploring, it at least made the race to the end tense. The same time mechanic returns here, and this time it's a total flop. Once again with each section you are given a number of minutes that you add up as you go, but in this adventure it seems not only utterly and completely pointless, but aggravating as well. With every single section, I had to stop and note time numbers down on my scoresheet, and as it turned out, it was all for no real purpose. There are some Haradrim also apparently looking for the Staff of Truth so I guess the time mechanic is supposed to represent you racing against them to see who gets it first. The problem there is that you are given a massive amount of time in which to make it to the conclusion, and I'm not sure how you would fail this. Even if you do fail, it doesn't mean instant game over as in the first book, it just means you have to fight the Haradrim sooner than you otherwise would have

You are also explained to several times by the text about the personalities of hobbits after meeting your companion. The book seems to have forgotten that you may actually be playing as a hobbit yourself, which is then akin to teaching a fish to swim.  And while it may have been severely out of place, with your character hailing from Minas Tirith and all, a hobbit is still one of the race options in the character creation part of the adventure. This situation, along with the reuse of the time mechanic makes it feel as though the author pasted over the rules from the first book before they began planning, and felt like they had to include all of those same rules, even if some of them made no sense for this quest. 

Ranking: Trying to decide between this book and the previous one was very difficult, but I have to give the edge to The Legend of Weathertop by the slimmest of margins. The pointless time mechanic is incredibly annoying and the opening act is very tedious, but it picks up a bit after that, and unlike in the first adventure, exploring is actually encouraged and rewarded here. The last two thirds of the adventure are a standard fantasy dungeon crawl that doesn't really do anything special, but it's competently done and provides you an opportunity to put some thought into the end game at least. 

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3. Rescue in Mirkwood - Score = 5.2    Tier = OK

Attempts to beat: 1

Third book in the series. Third different author. That's not a good sign. Gerald Lientz writes this adventure, and while he does have several gamebook credits to his name, this appears to be his very first. And as with Heike Kubasch before him, it kind of shows. This lack of authorial continuity is hurting the series in my opinion, as while the mechanics of the books remain the same, they are unevenly applied within the adventures themselves. One of my concerns at the end of the previous adventure was if we would be playing a different character in this quest and therefore not have access to those great items we acquired in the last book. And the verdict on that front is.....well, I'm not really sure. Your character here is basically "generic wandering fantasy adventurer" and nothing they do or say indicates they are supposed to be that same person. But then again, they are kept so vague that it doesn't rule it out either. So the hell with it, Im assuming it's the same character so as to not make the progress I made in that previous adventure pointless. And in fact, at the very end of this book you are rewarded once again with your choice of stat boosting item from a short list so I believe this is what the series is intending.

This book takes place sometime after the events of The Lord of the Rings, and we find ourselves playing a roaming adventurer who while traveling along the western edge of Mirkwood forest one day, comes across a distraught elf princess named Melthien, who begs for our help in rescuing her brother, who has been captured by orcs and dragged off into the forest. It is explained that even though Sauron has been defeated, many evil creatures have taken up refuge in the dense forest of Mirkwood, and as such, the forest still remains a very dangerous place. You then get one of those stupid choices I hate in gamebooks where you can decide not to take up the quest, and if you pick that option, the book immediately ends. Wanting to play though, I decide to accompany her into Mirkwood to rescue her brother even though my character is made out to be quite the asshole, as he only seems interested in what kind of treasure the princess will be able to provide for his services (a real Han Solo moment). Thankfully, she has somewhat of an idea of where the orcs will have taken her brother as she knows the general location of their cave hideout so that you dont need to wander aimlessly around the massive forest.   

And herein lies far and away the biggest problem with this book. That being, I don't think I've ever come across such a wasted use of a map as this adventure contains. As with the previous books, we have our hexagonal grid map returning again, and this time it has two halves, the western half of Mirkwood and the eastern half. The Old Forest Road is the only real thing of note on the map, and it cuts across the very northern edge of the whole of it. The near entirety of the remaining grid is identical green spaces representing the dense forest. You know full well when you begin that the cave we are searching for is going to be located on the eastern half of the map because you start on the western half, so you can just head along the safety of the road until you cross into the second half. This makes the majority of the grid spaces on this western half pointless to visit. We are also told at the beginning of the quest that the cave we are searching for is just south of the Old Forest Road, and it must be far enough from the road for the orcs to avoid detection, but close enough to it so as to allow them to waylay travelers upon it.  So, about two grid spaces south of the road then I'm guessing? (Bingo!). This wastes the majority of spaces on this half of the map as well and means that roughly three quarters of the whole map is never going to be explored by your character. Why not have the road go right down the middle of Mirkwood, not give you any clue as to where the cave is, and scatter interesting locations around the forest such as spider dens, villages, old ruins etc with each of them holding either needed items or clues as to where the cave may be? As it stands, this book has to hold some kind of record in unused sections. It's a 480 section gamebook, but as it's over relatively quickly, it feels like less than half of that. Exploring the famous and spooky Mirkwood forest from The Lord of the Rings universe should be tailor made for this game system. What a shame. 

The time mechanic returns yet again in this adventure, forcing you to stop every section to jot down how much time it just took you to walk down the road or open a door (why did it take me 40 minutes to just open a door anyway?), and yet again it's a huge waste of the player's time. Much like the first adventure, it would actually make sense that you are racing against the clock as you need to rescue the prince before he succumbs to the torturous treatment he is receiving from the orcs, but as with the second adventure, the amount of time you are given to reach him is ridiculously high. Once again, I'm not sure how you wouldn't reach him in time which just makes this whole mechanic a bunch of unnecessary bookkeeping, outside of letting you know when it's night and you therefore need to eat a meal, of which you should have plenty. 

The adventure I found to be extremely easy as well, with as in the previous book, your only real danger of losing coming from one of your enemies rolling a 12 in combat against you. There is a final battle against a group of orcs that can be made quite tense because of this, as you can find yourself fighting up to a dozen of them one after the other. And even though you still know you are likely to win thanks to all your combat enhancing items, along with receiving help in the battle from both the princess and prince, all it takes is one unlucky roll and you could be killed. Something that did stick out like a sore thumb in this combat though is that you can find yourself knocked unconscious during it, and if you pass a dice check where the odds are in your favour after this happens, you awaken to find that the prince and princess have dispatched all the orcs while you were knocked out and you proceed on to win the game. What the heck did they need me for then? Being knocked unconscious during the final battle is very Bilbo Baggins-esque though, I have to give it that. 

One aspect of the book I did enjoy and found to be very original was the ability to acquire a couple of animal companions as you make your way through the forest. There is an owl and a squirrel that you can befriend and who will then travel along with you and then occasionally aid you in combat. The owl in particular is quite helpful as he adds to your attack bonus and can also help you out should you be attacked by the crebain (large black crows) that are flying around the forest. I started to feel like the Beastmaster from the cheesy 1982 movie of the same name if anyone else is familiar with that cinematic gem. Or perhaps Ace Ventura: Pet Detective as an example that is a bit more recent. I also wonder if there were any other animals to befriend that I may have missed out on. Not so originally however, this adventure falls into the same dull routine that marred the first book in the series by reusing many of the encounters. I came across the same wolf, group of squirrels, and crebain so many times that I often wondered if I had turned to an incorrect section. Why is this needed in a book with this many entries? The book also contains at least one glaring editing error, as I found myself rescuing the prince twice within the cave right at the end of the quest! So unless there were two princes to be rescued, somebody goofed here. Fortunately you don't need to go through the process of fighting all the orcs again a second time, so gameplay wise it's not that big of a deal, but it is immersion breaking and as it's one of the last sections of the whole book, it leaves a poor final impression.

"Come to me, my forest friends!"

The book is well written for the most part, as you get to encounter a couple of The Lord of the Rings characters in Legolas and Radagast, and these meetings very much captured the spirit of those individuals. However, every once in awhile some dialogue occurs that is cringe inducing. Such as this beauty that your character utters: 

        "Not even the squirrels of Mirkwood will thank me" you moan, 

          weary of mistreatment of the claws and paws of the forest. 

Lientz definitely shows promise though, and I look forward to seeing his writing improve as I go through some of the other gamebooks he has written. 

Ranking: Conceptually speaking, this SHOULD have been the best book of the series so far. Actually speaking though, it sure ain't. The adventure here could have been so much better and is one that is in dire need of a re-write. That's not to say it's bad, and it does just enough to make it into the OK tier, the problem is that it's a gamebook where the keyword in describing it is "wasted". Wasted map, wasted sections, wasted potential. Pity. 

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4. A Spy in Isengard - Score = 7.1    Tier = Good

Attempts to beat: 3

The first thing I noticed about this book was that there was a two year gap between it and the previous entry in the series. The reason for this from what I can gather online, is that the publishers of the Middle-earth quest gamebooks, Iron Crown Enterprises (ICE), had a licensing deal with Tolkien's estate (Tolkien Enterprises) to make games based upon his works, such as the Middle-earth role playing game. Apparently though, this didnt include books, and thus the gamebooks needed to be removed from the deal. I've read in a couple of different places that this makes the first 3 books in the series quite rare, but to be honest I didn't have any trouble finding them, and they were not on the expensive end as far as some of these things go either. Still, this put the series on hiatus until something could be worked out, and I would have loved to have been privy to these discussions. This brings up a fascinating question I thought. Gamebooks by their very nature are both game and book, but if you had to classify them under one or the other, which would it be? I would consider them to be games first and foremost. The book is just the medium in which they are presented, and these are not novels after all. And I wonder if this was the distinction that caused the problem, that the word book was used in the original agreement instead of novel. That said, I do have to admit that I made all my gamebook purchases back in the 80's not at game shops, but at physical bookstores where the gamebooks were sometimes mixed in with regular fantasy novels, but also sometimes given their own gamebook section, so the distinction even then was far from obvious. I wonder if Tolkien Enterprises actually understood what a gamebook was at the time, and the fact that the series was eventually allowed to proceed makes it appear as though they just needed to be convinced that these were in fact meant to be treated as games. Still, I can see their concern. If a buyer were to see a book with "J.R.R. Tolkien" at the top this could have led them to believe it was written by the man himself (something that would occur in the Fighting Fantasy series with Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone's names featured prominently at the top of each book regardless of whether they wrote it or not, but thats a discussion for another time). Tolkien Enterprises likely may have shuddered even further had for some reason these Middle-earth gamebooks been placed right alongside The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit on the bookshelves of stores. 

But enough of semantics and legal wrangling, on to this adventure itself! And boy does the series return on the right foot, at least for the first half of the book in any case. We have apparently totally given up on carrying our character forward from adventure to adventure, as once again you are clearly not the same person from any of the earlier stories, which makes the rewards obtained in those adventures a total waste, but I'm just resigned to that being the case at this point. I'm more forgiving of it here because the premise for this adventure is excellent. We are back to playing during the events of The Lord of the Rings itself, as we are playing as the main apprentice to Saruman the White. Saruman having taken us in as an orphan many years ago, and having trained us to be his prized pupil. We notice something has changed in the old man though, as his once bright countenance has been replaced by a darker and more menacing side, with him spending much of his time of late studying the lore of the One Ring and locking himself in the Palantir Chamber within the tower of Orthanc at Isengard. The adventure thus begins with us convinced that Saruman has turned to evil, and we send a message via carrier bird to the Lady Galadriel in Lothlorien, asking that she send one of her agents to meet with us in 10 days, where we hope to bring proof of Saruman's treachery.   

The adventure then jumps ahead 9 days, with us waking up on the 10th day, and then having until midnight on that day to acquire enough evidence to implicate Saruman in evil-doings and also make it to the rendezvous point. This makes the time mechanic once again useful here, as if you don't make it to the meeting point in time you will miss the Lothlorien agent. It is this gathering of evidence though that is the real strength of the book (at least until you make it to Galadriel but I will touch on that later). Scattered throughout the tower of Orthanc are 14 "clues" as to Saruman's betrayal against the White Council (a collection of very powerful and "good" beings, of which Galadriel is one). At least, I assume there are 14 clues that can be found as there is a numbered checklist at the front of the book listing the clues as A to N, and you mark down which ones you discover as you play. This is a brilliant idea as it encourages you to explore every nook and cranny of the seven floor tower as you try to seek out all of the clues. And the tower of Orthanc is a real treat to explore. There is the library, laboratory, study, Palantir chamber, bedrooms, armory, etc. with a fair amount of hidden passageways and secrets to uncover. A map of the tower is provided for you, and while this would normally rob an adventure of the thrill of mapping out the tower yourself, here it makes total sense as your character has lived in Orthanc for many years so would therefore know the layout of the floors (minus the hidden passageways and secrets of course).   

Once you feel you have gathered enough clues, or feel that you are running out of time so need to be on your way regardless, you need to navigate your way outside Orthanc, and then outside of the walls of Isengard itself. Orcs patrol all around and while they recognize you as their master's apprentice, you need to be careful not to let them discover you in an area that you shouldn't be in. You are also clearly no warrior, so subterfuge and stealth is meant to be the order of the day. This makes the adventure very light on combat, which isn't necessarily a bad thing considering the "spy" nature of the book (as indicated in the title). That is not to say there isn't a fair amount of dice rolling however, because you are routinely called upon to make dice checks to see if you are successful in picking locks or bluffing your way through tense situations. 

Once outside the walls of Isengard though, all bets are off as you are revealed as a spy and are from here on out hunted by orcs and wargs. The adventure now returns to providing the hexagonal grid map seen in the previous books, which in this case shows the surrounding plains of Isengard. You now need to make your way to one of three pre-arranged meeting points with the elven agent. Giving you the option of three different places in which to meet the elf is a good idea and increases replayability along with giving you reasons to explore more places on the map. There was a forehead smacking moment at one of the meeting places though. Having decided to meet my elf contact at a burned down farmhouse, when he finally arrives he regales me with the story of how the farmhouse ended up that way. It seems that when the family that lived there refused to leave and surrender the land to Saruman, the wizard had the house burned down with them still inside. Wait a minute....the elves know that Saruman burned these people alive? So they already know he is evil? Come to think of it, the voluminous smoke we are told is constantly rising from Isengard due to the orc forges constructed there surely didnt go without notice from the elves either. There is a good chance then that we are risking detention, torture, and death in order to bring them evidence of something of which they are already well aware. And as it turns out...they totally are already aware!

This brings me to the biggest negative of the adventure and that is the complete flubbing of the endgame, which unfortunately undermines a fair amount of the good work done up to this point. Because after gathering as many clues as I could locate, I then finally managed to make it to Lothlorien and was prepared to see if I had gathered enough evidence to convince Galadriel and her husband Celeborn of Saruman's treachery (even though they already know it!). With a possible 14 clues to apparently find, I was hoping that I had found enough to be able to succeed. Well, as it turns out, only 3 of the 14 clues are meaningful, and you only have to have found a mere any 1 of those to pass on to the optimal ending. I say optimal because even if you found NO CLUES (!) you still get sent to a positive ending. The only difference between the two endings is that in the one where you have gathered no clues, Celeborn is just made out to be somewhat skeptical of you, (or maybe he just thinks you are an idiot who is telling him what he already knows) but you are told by the book that you have done all you can and your mission is complete. This renders the whole clue gathering exercise pointless right at the very end, which was one of the best things the book had going for it. I didn't know this as I was playing of course so I still had a great time trying to find all the clues while I was exploring Orthanc, but geez, what a letdown. You should have been required to locate either a decent amount of clues, or a certain combination of them, in order to win. As it turned out, all you needed to really do was run right out the front door of Orthanc at the start without investigating anything and make a beeline for the meeting point.  

I do have to comment on the actual writing in the adventure, which I found to be great. Author Terry K. Amthor does a wonderful job in capturing the spirit of Saruman and the atmosphere of the awe-inspiring rooms of Orthanc, along with creating the palpable sense of tension as you fear being discovered spying on the great wizard and what fate would befall you for doing so. Playing as an individual that is only tangentially related to The Lord of the Rings through one of its main characters is really good stuff. It works even better by choosing a darker figure from the story as it allows our character the process of discovery that they may be aiding the wrong side. Saruman is also an excellent choice to do this with, because along with Gollum, I find him one of the most interesting figures in the whole epic. With four books now in the series, and with four different writers, the range has a "guest author" thing going for it, perhaps attracting writers who want to try their hand at an adventure set within The Lord of the Rings universe. Overall, it paid off fairly well with this entry.  

Ranking: Much like with the previous book, the concept here is fantastic. And this time the author capitalizes on it much more effectively. The searching of the tower of Orthanc for evidence of Saruman's misdeeds is very fun and quite tense. The adventure was on its way to a much higher score based upon this, until the ending rendered this whole process totally irrelevant. Still, the book gets into the good tier based upon its first half along with its great writing and is easily the best of the series for me yet. 

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5. Treason at Helm's Deep - Score = 5.6    Tier = OK

Attempts to beat: 2

"The horn of Helm Hammerhand will sound in the deep, one more time!". This adventure continues the previous book's great concept of having you play as a heretofore unknown individual thrust into the events of The Lord of the Rings. Here we get to play as one of the rank and file of the Rohirrim, horse riders of Rohan and defenders of its people. Our character is a young trainee in fact, currently manning a post on the wall of Helm's Deep while the fortress awaits the oncoming onslaught of Saruman's Uruk-hai orc army. Adventures such as this and the one previous do a great job in telling possible "untold stories" from The Lord of the Rings saga. There were obviously many, many, other individuals putting their lives on the line to defeat Saruman and Sauron besides just those of the Fellowship, so it's very interesting to hear about what some of the regular Joe Schmoes of Middle-earth might have gone through during the War of the Ring. The goal here is one of those very simple "just survive" type of deals, as we already know who wins this battle. The "treason" mentioned in the book's title doesn't play all that much into the adventure itself. It is touched upon at the very beginning that you may have a traitor in your midst, and then this is resolved right at the very end, but in between this angle is mostly forgotten and events regarding it seem to play out much the same no matter what you do.

The most differentiating aspect of this book compared to what came before it in the series is the abandonment of the hexagonal grid map system, which was the most unique mechanic the range had going for it. Ditching that here makes this play much the same as many other gamebooks of the time, which is something of a shame. Even though this grid system wasn't put to the best of use in the majority of the prior adventures, the potential was definitely there to do something special with it, so it's unfortunate that this book didn't even want to give it a shot. Even as it is, the quest plays out more like a pick-a-path adventure as opposed to something in the style of Fighting Fantasy, as I found there really wasn't anything to map out. You are making choice after choice as to how you would like your character to act and I was making more of a decision tree as opposed to a proper map. This is far from the first time I have needed to do this of course, I just much prefer the actual map making process. 

There is a rather key divergence of story paths right at the beginning of the adventure, where you can either end up pursuing a possible spy up the mountainside, or participate in a raid on some orcs with other Rohirrim to provide protection for some refugees that are trying to make it to the safety of the fortress. Both of these paths eventually join up for the final battle for Helm's Deep, which acts as the big climax of the adventure (and it ends up being a severe letdown). These paths through the first half of the book vary wildly, and in fact one of them is FAR more longer and involved than the other. Upon taking the shorter path I was left shaking my head when it was all over at just how quickly the adventure was finished.  

So, did the horn of Helm Hammerhand sound in the deep one more time? I don't know really, because incredibly I found myself knocked unconscious and missed most of the final battle! On both of my attempts no less! This is the second time the series has done this to me, having me wake up and have my comrades tell me how they managed to overcome the odds and pull out a thrilling victory while I pictured myself like a starfish splayed across the ground accompanied by a comic bubble filled with "zzzzzzzz" over my head. And I was once again left thinking "Great, glad I could help. Would have loved to have actually experienced it." Sorry, but it's unforgivable in an adventure based around the battle of Helm's Deep to have your character miss out on the most exciting action. While the majority of the book was entertaining enough, with you pursuing Dunlendings through underground mountain tunnels, or having to escape an orc camp after being captured, I think I would have preferred if the entire book was based around the battle of Helm's Deep itself. The prologue does such a great job of building up a feeling of dread, with the huge orc army headed your way, your side badly outnumbered, thunder rumbling in the distance, that you can actually feel the tension. But then the story veers off into something totally different and more akin to your standard fantasy gamebook trek. 

Unfortunately, I also found the book to be overly easy. There is always the chance I was just unusually lucky of course, but even failed rolls rarely spelled anything too onerous, and the majority of choices seem to lead to a successful ending of one sort or another. On my first attempt I was able to succeed with a victorious ending, but it clearly wasn't the optimal ending so I decided to play again, and I then obtained that desired ending on my very next attempt. There are some clever ideas conceptually in regard to the end game, as you are asked near the end of the book if certain key story events have happened to you, but once again these events appeared to have little effect on whether you can complete the adventure successfully or not. 

The writing by authors Kevin Barrett and Saul Peters overall was good, but had some bits that came across as odd to me, such as your character routinely talking out loud to himself as if he had no inner monologue. Neither of these two writers seem to have penned any other gamebooks so it still feels like this series exists to give those who haven't written one before a chance to give it a shot in the most well known fantasy setting there is. I did appreciate the book telling you at the start that even though in the game system you still have the option of playing as a man, dwarf, elf, or hobbit, if you don't choose to play as a man the narrative may not make much sense. You are a rider of Rohan after all, so I suppose playing as a dwarf or a hobbit would have that effect indeed. At least this adventure acknowledges it for a change so the honesty and foresight was appreciated. Having to create an adventure set in Middle-earth that allows the player to play as any of those races without straining credulity must be a challenge in its own right.   

Ranking: Not one of the stronger entries of the series as it's another really great concept that drops the ball in the execution. It can be fun to experiment with some of the different options to see where they go, but things seem to play out as you would expect regardless of what you do. I guess that's the downside of setting the adventure within one of the major events from the novel. We already know how it's going to end, so your character doesn't really need to DO anything, the main heroes will take care of that. It's just a matter of if you can survive to see the end, or if you will end up being one of the Star Trek red-shirts of the tale. 

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6. Mines of Moria - Score = 5.7    Tier = OK

Attempts to beat: 13

"We could go through the Mines of Moria...". Indeed we could, and indeed we shall. The final book of the series (that was published in English at least) sees us visiting my absolute favorite location in all of Middle-earth, that being the sprawling underground kingdom of Moria. As a youngster I used to draw out possible layouts of Moria because I was fascinated by the idea of its massive intricate layout of tunnels and rooms, along with the possibility that its inhabitants could live for years without ever seeing the sun. So getting the chance to play a gamebook set there automatically gives this adventure a head start in my book. It's unfortunate then that the adventure doesn't really live up to the promise that this setting provides. We are back to playing a wandering generic adventurer as we did in book #3, and find ourselves given a lead that there is a dwarf caravan camped just south of Lorien that is seeking a sword for hire. Once we locate the caravan, we are given an unnecessarily convoluted story involving false wills and unclaimed inheritance. The gist of it is, a dwarf in the caravan known as Bror, wishes us to travel to Moria where he believes his father left behind a will that would prove his claim towards his family estate, of which his cousins have cheated him out of. He cannot go to Moria himself because those same cousins watch him constantly and would prevent him from acquiring the will. So he sends us in secret in his stead, with the promise that we may keep any riches we find in Moria for our trouble (not sure that this is his to give but we accept in any case). He also provides us with a map of the portion of Moria we will need to travel through, and sends his nephew, Bain, along with us. Bain has the dwarven knowledge necessary to both avoid the traps we are likely to face and to locate the will once we get to the final room, which we would not be able to uncover ourselves being unfamiliar with such dwarven intricacies (the series once again forgets that we may actually be playing as a dwarf ourselves). Thus, the two of us set off to retrieve the legally binding document that will return Bror's estate to him. 

The adventure proper begins with one of the more meaningless sequences you will see. There is a dragged out part where failing a dice check causes Bain to insist on trying to travel through the forest of Lothlorien on the way to Moria, even though the elves have made it clear you are not welcome. There appears to be no point to any of this, as barring a really bad decision on your part, no matter what you do both you and Bain will eventually be ejected from Lothlorien by the elves with no apparent punishment or reward for doing so. This kind of thing is actually a bit of a running theme to the adventure. As with book #1, there is really no point to exploring anything. You can find some different items here and there within Moria as you would expect, but none of them are particularly useful let alone required to complete the quest. 

The best part of the adventure predictably occurs once you enter Moria itself. Much like in book #4 of the series, the mapping system here is something of a hybrid, with you being provided with two separate maps, one showing the layout of the Great Hall and the other showing the Forge. These both have numbered points on each of them that you can visit by turning to the appropriate provided section in any order that you choose. Anytime you are outside these two areas however (and they really aren't very large) and you will need to map the rooms and passageways out for yourself. The layout of Moria is suitably claustrophobic, if somewhat empty, as you walk along tunnels and come upon several junctions and decide which direction you would like to take. Nothing unusual there, but what struck me is how little there was to actually find in these passageways. As far as creatures go, there are orcs and trolls here and there but they are few and far between (and if you encounter a troll you are probably a goner as they are incredibly powerful). There are a couple of rooms you can enter, but they contain absolutely nothing of note. Should you enter the Forge (and it can be completely bypassed), then things improve somewhat, with at least some items to uncover that hint at future usefulness. This turns out to be a huge tease though as nothing you find in here, or indeed anywhere in Moria, ends up being of any use. Once you finally complete the adventure, you can trade in the various items you've found for certain amounts of gold, so you could argue these items act as a scoring system of sorts, but in terms of helping you win the game they are apparently meaningless. Strangely, there is a huge chunk of the adventure that can be completely missed if you just use common sense and follow the obvious course of action at a certain junction, a course which is also suggested to you by your companion Bain. Authors Susan Matthews and John David Ruemmler don't do themselves any favours here by having you easily, and likely unwittingly, missing out on some interesting stuff.  

There is however a sequence in the adventure that really takes the cake, and in a bad way.  This incredibly aggravating moment happens when you need to pass over a bridge that has been booby-trapped and overturns itself when someone walks upon it. In order to cross it safely, you need to pass several dice checks in a row, which means if you get a low roll on any of these it's instant death. Didn't Bain come along specifically to aid with traps such as this? What makes this even more incredibly maddening is that you can discover the design plans to this bridge in an earlier location, but even if you do, you are not given the option to use these plans to aid you in the bridge rolls. Arggh! That's an awful bit of design right there. Dying over and over again at the exact same place in an underground adventure started to give me "Chasms of Malice" memories, and that's definitely not one you want your gamebook to evoke thoughts of. The final battle of the adventure can also be quite frustrating. Not because your opponent has such high stats, but because one single high roll for him in a fight that could very well take many rounds to complete results in instant failure for you. This has been a problem with this combat system all the way through the series but is really hammered home here because of the enemy's high attack skill (giving him an even better chance of one-hit killing you), along with the fact that he comes right at the very end of the quest, and if you lose you need to go through the whole trapped bridge business again.  

Id be remiss if I didn't mention the time mechanic one last time and how it plays out in this book. Here, the timer begins when we reach Moria, and we are given two days to find the will and make it back out again. Any longer than that, and we wont have enough time to make it back to Bror's caravan before he has left. I'm not sure why we wouldn't just be able to track him down even if we ended up missing him though. Surely a dwarf caravan shouldn't be that hard to find? Not to mention we could also always just give the will to Bain, who is no doubt returning to Bror's side anyway. I've given up on this time mechanic being put to good use in the majority of the books in the series, so it really didn't affect my enjoyment of this particular adventure one way or the other. Speaking of Bain though, he is a big strong point of the book. He makes an interesting and useful companion and I found him to be a very well written and realized character. 

Ranking: Another letdown that I put right in the middle of the rankings, although many of the books are close in score. The presence of a very well done and interesting companion, along with getting to travel such an iconic location as Moria itself, are really the saving graces of the adventure, and it's decent enough fun to plot your way through the tunnels of the massive complex. But there isn't really much beyond that, and this book contains several head scratching design decisions to boot. Yet another wasted opportunity and that is really how I would sum up the series as a whole. This particular adventure is competent (if frustrating at times), and that's about it.  

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Overall, this series had several really great things going for it right off the hop. The character creation, grid map system, and of course the Lord of the Rings setting, seemingly had everything aligned for this to be a fantastic series. It is therefore a huge shame that the adventures used throughout the range, with the exception of the Isengard book, were very underwhelming. I believe employing authors who had little knowledge of gamebook design (and with most of them having never written any gamebooks outside this series, perhaps they had no desire to learn such), was likely a large contributor to this state of affairs. Chalk this up as a series I would love to see get a revisit in the future with perhaps more seasoned gamebook writers at the helm.