Robin of Sherwood

                                                       RANKINGS  

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1. The King's Demon - Score = 6.0    Tier = OK

Attempts to beat: 2

Time for a little robbing from the rich and giving to the poor action, as I now get to step into the shoes of probably the best known character from English folklore....Robin Hood! There have been umpteen different versions of this story told in various different media forms over the past many decades, but this gamebook is based on one of them in particular, that being the Richard Carpenter created mid-1980's British series "Robin of Sherwood" which starred Michael Praed, and then later Jason Connery (pictured on the cover of the book) as the title character. The Robin Hood mythos, with its tales involving swordplay, archery, castles, fair maidens, dastardly villains, and general derring-do, would seem to lend itself absolutely perfectly to a gamebook adventure, so kudos to authors Graham Staplehurst and Paul Mason just for the idea. Perhaps only King Arthur folklore would lend itself to a gamebook as much. (Wait a second, HAS there been a Camelot/King Arthur gamebook or series? Imagine a series where you get to play a different knight of the round table in each book, going through their various adventures, then finally culminating in a final book involving all of them. The possibilities tantalize!). This adventure though opens with you and your band camped out in Sherwood Forest just passing the time one day, when the lady Marion comes rushing in and announces that while in disguise at Nottingham, she overheard that a french knight known as Sir Jean du Melusine will shortly be paying the Sheriff of Nottingham a visit. As Sir Jean is loyal to the wicked King John, you decide that there might be an opportunity to waylay this french knight and find out what you can from him, if not eliminate him outright. Care must be taken however, as there are rumours that Sir Jean may in fact have dark powers and not be what he appears (which is kind of given away by the title of the book). 

There is a fairly in-depth game system devised here, with your Robin Hood character having a whopping ten different attributes (Hand-to-Hand Combat, Ranged Combat, Healing, Stealth, Riding, Disguise, Minstrelsy, Perception, Charm, and Woodcraft), and what I enjoy most about this is that you get 30 + 2D6 points to allocate as you see fit. For me, this will always be superior to having random rolls determining your initial starting stats. As usual, any of these attributes can be skill checked at any time, although I found that failing a skill check usually did not lead to anything too dire occurring. And while I appreciated having such a diverse set of skills, there were a couple in particular (Hand-to-Hand Combat, and Healing) that were used FAR more than any of the others, which made many of them seem somewhat trivial.  You additionally have a stat called the "Power of Light and Darkness", which is meant to represent Robin's own mystical powers, and of which you begin the quest with 5 points. You can gain or lose these Power points by performing good deeds or failing to protect those you have pledged to help, and should these ever drop to zero then you are removed from your position as protector of the people and your adventure is over. You can also spend these Power points during the quest as a sort of "get-out-of-jail-free card" should you wish to use one to bypass a difficult obstacle or encounter (provided you are given the option of doing so of course). However, seeing as how you generally ARE given the option of using these for the few difficult situations in the book, this just contributes to making these points overpowered.  

On to the combat system, which I found to be very enjoyable. It takes a bit of a Lone Wolf approach by providing a combat table, whereby you roll two dice, subtract your Combat skill (either Hand-to-Hand or Ranged depending on what weapon you are attacking with) from the result, then look up the table at the back of the book and go to that row, with the Combat skill of your opponent determining what column you look down. This then gives you the Wounds suffered to mark off for both yourself and your adversary for that round. You then continue doing this until one of you can no longer continue due to too many Wounds suffered on a particular area of your body. A chart inside the front cover of the book shows you how many Wounds you can suffer to each body area until you succumb and are knocked unconscious. For example, you can only take one hit to the head before you are knocked out, but can take five hits to your body before the same happens. Arms and legs can take damage as well, and your Combat skill can also be decreased by getting hit there. Unfortunately, the system seems to import what I felt the biggest problem with the Lone Wolf combat system was, in that this table seems to be greatly in your favour. This is especially true should you put a lot of points into your Hand-to-Hand Combat skill (and this was far and away the most important skill in the book in my experience, so why wouldn't you pump this up to maximum?)  

Perhaps the biggest missed opportunity here comes in the form of your Merry-men. Errr, I mean, "companions". I'm not sure why the book doesn't use the term Merry-men, (maybe because the atmosphere and tone of the adventure isn't particularly "merry"), but this group seems incredibly wasted. You are provided with a list of the companions in your band on your character sheet, which includes Marion, Little John, Will Scarlet, Much, Tuck and Nasir. You are then supposed to keep track of who is currently accompanying you as you play. This initially sounds like it could open up a lot of possibilities, but I found that I was either completely alone, or had all of them with me. There didn't seem to be any middle ground. Additionally, the adventure is written from the standpoint of you being alone (as I suppose it needs to be, as it would obviously completely break immersion if one of your band piped up and said something when they weren't even supposed to be present), but this may have just made it immersion breaking in a different manner, as on my second playthrough I had the whole band with me almost the entire time, but because they barely ever say or do anything, I often forgot they were even supposed to be with me. Little John, Will Scarlet, and Tuck all have some nice little story moments that can be uncovered, but from a gameplay standpoint it was as if I was leading a group of half a dozen mutes through the quest.   

We also have a Lone Wolf style inventory system, where you get to pick 3 items from a list at the beginning of the adventure to go along with your other 2 starting items of dagger and longbow. You have only these 5 slots for "Usual Possessions", but you can also pick up unlimited "Special Possessions" along the way, and these are basically for any quest items that you find. In addition, you have your magic sword, The Sommerswerd Albion, that if lost during the adventure, will require you to fight at a -2 penalty to your Hand-to-Hand Combat skill. Funny, I never thought of swordplay as "hand-to-hand combat", but I guess technically it is. The adventure has something else in common with the Lone Wolf series (did I mention this book seems to draw inspiration from Lone Wolf?), in the form of its healing system, which makes it very easy to get back up to full health again after every fight. How it works is, there are certain sections of the book that have an icon next to them in the margin. Whenever you are on a section with one of these icons, you can attempt a Healing roll. You roll two dice, subtract your Healing score, and consult a chart at the back of the book, which then tells you how many Wounds on your body you are allowed to heal. The number of sections with this icon, and also the chart itself, seemed very generous to me, and thanks to the advantage I always had in combat, I never found myself with all that many wounds in any case. But to put this even more in your favour, if Marion is with you, you can use her Healing skill in the roll instead, and she comes with the maximum score of 10. So, you really should find yourself heading into any new fight at maximum strength. 

As you scour Sherwood Forest and the surrounding villages seeking out Sir Jean, (and he really isn't that hard to find, as all roads seem to lead to him) the adventure does a really nice job of providing several sub-quests of which you can participate. There are threads that can be followed that allow you to eliminate overzealous tax collectors, help a woman find her missing son, and join in an inter-village "Hood game" that involves participants attempting to be the first village team to get a dirty hood back to their respective village alehouse (we used to call this "capture the flag" when I played it). These events are all optional, but I would highly recommend giving them a go as the adventure is over very quickly if you decide to bypass them. More to that, this is the second gamebook in a row I've played where I had no combats on my winning playthrough. There is still a fair amount of dice rolling, as skill checks are quite plentiful, but it's a shame that the author had what I felt was a nicely intricate combat system, only to then not have it be required. Even the final battle against Sir Jean can be bypassed, as you are given the option of using one of your Power points for the insta-win. And as long as you had more than one of these left, I'm not sure why you wouldn't use it here. The adventure tries to give you a score once you've won, based upon how many Power points you have remaining, but these kind of scoring systems in gamebooks do absolutely nothing for me personally, as to quote Vin Diesel..."It doesn't matter if you win by an inch or a mile. Winning's winning". I came very close to beating this on my first attempt, but in a bit of a sneaky trick, there are a couple of "Special Possessions" that can be picked up during the adventure that result in instant failure should you have one of them when confronting Sir Jean (because they are cursed and under his control, and he uses them to kill you on the spot).  

Of course I also need to discuss the TV show on which this series is based. "Robin of Sherwood", if my memory serves, took on a darker and grittier tone than is usual for the Robin Hood mythos. I have vague memories of my dad watching the show, and of myself being creeped out by the theme music (which also happened with Doctor Who, another show that my dad watched and that had theme music that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up). This book appears to do a nice job of using that atmosphere, as the adventure has a really great rural feel to it, with just the right amount of mysticism thrown in, which I believe (once again, if memory serves) that the show also had. There are however a lot of names and deeds thrown out fast and furious here, so you may need to have seen a fair share of the TV show to know all these references. I did particularly enjoy how The Old Prisoner and his pet rat Arthur are included in one of the failure endings, and on section 400 no less, so this is one of those gamebooks where the final section of the book is NOT the victory section. 

And while on the subject of different interpretations of Robin Hood over the years, I would be remiss if I did not mention what surely must be the worst English accent put on the big screen. I generally like Kevin Costner and think he has a certain charm about him, and I even enjoyed "Prince of Thieves" as a fun ride, watching it many times on VHS (with Alan Rickman stealing the movie), but my goodness his accent is atrocious in this film. It's made worse in that he seems to go in and out of even attempting it. He should have just stuck with his normal California accent, as even that would have been far less noticeable. 

"Yo dudes! Let's go shoot some arrows or somethin!"  

Taking a pretty big detour from the review now, but just for fun and because I'm on the subject, here is my pick for second worst big screen English accent, Keanu Reeves in "Bram Stoker's Dracula". There must have been something in the water back in the early 90s.

"Count! Like, whoa! Not cool bro!" 

 

Ranking: This adventure is a textbook case of a 6/10 for me. I put it in along the likes of "Demons of the Deep" from the Fighting Fantasy series in that I really enjoyed the atmosphere, and felt that it had some very good ideas, but then those ideas went underdeveloped, and most importantly, the adventure I felt was just too easy. 

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2. The Sword of the Templar - Score = 7.3    Tier = Good

Attempts to beat: 5

On to book 2 (the final entry) of the series, and this one begins almost exactly as the previous one did, with Robin and his band just hanging out in their camp within Sherwood Forest one day, not doing particularly much of anything. And as with the previous adventure, Marion kicks this one off by prompting Robin and the group to get off their duffs and go looking for nobles to rob along the London Road. Doing exactly that, the band attempts to rob a group of men-at-arms travelling along the road. Unfortunately for Robin, this group is accompanied by a strange Templar knight, who proves to be more than a match for our outlaw hero. Appreciating his swordsmanship, the knight decides to spare Robin, but vows that should they meet again, he will kill him. What perplexes Robin most about this encounter however, is that the Templar knight has a sword just like Robin's magical Albion. There were originally 7 of these swords created by Wayland the Smith (a well known mythological blacksmith, although not mythological in this story), and 6 of these were thought to have been destroyed, with only Albion remaining. This doesn't appear to be the case though, as this knight has somehow managed to obtain one of the others. So Robin decides to uncover what he can about the knight and how he came by the sword, if even though this likely means risking the wrath of this powerful individual in the process. 

Despite this being the second adventure in a row where we must learn about and confront a mysterious knight, this is still a really good opening, and there is a wonderful "oh shit!" moment when Robin realizes how good a swordsman this Templar knight is (the best you can hope for in this fight is a draw, and you can easily find the knight kicking your ass). The adventure continues from there by providing several different ways to get information on the knight, as you can either head to Nottingham (where the knight is currently staying) and attempt to do some covert infiltration work, or you can venture into the forest and seek advice from your mentor, Herne the Hunter. There are several different things you can try in these opening sections, and the replay value here to investigate them all is quite high. Both of these opening paths can see you acquiring different items which can affect what happens to you later in the adventure, although I have to say that one of these paths is FAR more interesting than the other, and for me it seemed to be the counter-intuitive choice, which is a bit unfortunate. And even with many different options to experiment with, this adventure also seems to be lacking in the area of combats, as I rarely found it necessary to become involved in one. I was able to beat the previous book without having to fight anybody, and this one comes close to that level, with the final confrontation with the Templar Knight being the only fight I had on my eventual winning playthrough (no option to use a Power point to automatically defeat him this time, which was a good choice). As such, any challenge level of the book comes down to figuring out which items you need depending on what route you take, where you can find these items, and also avoiding any insta-deaths.   

I mentioned in the review to the previous book how the Companion system was mostly wasted. Well, it is all but forgotten about here. You are still provided a list of your band and told to keep track of who is with you, but I found myself alone for almost the whole adventure. Even the few times I was with the rest of the Merry-men, none of them were ever specifically involved or asked to do anything. I get the feeling the author either didn't think too much of the system, or thought it would take up too many sections to make it work as well as it could, so he decided to basically ditch it. There was an odd moment where I was told that Tuck had been arrested (and to cross him off my list of Companions), which had me figuring I would need to rescue him at some point. But unless I missed a sub-quest somewhere, this seemed to get resolved all on its own by the time the adventure was over without me doing anything to help him. The Tuck arrest aside, this book continues on from the previous entry by providing a couple of different sub-quests that can be followed and are really quite interesting. They can be very easily missed however, and also as in the previous book, should you bypass them you can beat the adventure much more quickly than you might expect from a 400 section gamebook. I feel like some of these quests should have been required to beat the adventure, as they tend to contain some of the highlights of the book.    

Something that I need to give a shout out to is author Paul Mason's writing here, which is excellent. He does a wonderful job with his prose in creating an immersive atmosphere all throughout, so much so that I could almost feel the drizzling rain dampening my cloak, or hear the leaves rustling in the autumn wind. He also does a great job in dropping clues as to what is really going on and to what option you might want to take without making it obvious or beating you over the head with it (something that must be a fine line for gamebook authors, as players we want some clue as to what option to take if one of them leads to instant-death, but if it's clearly signposted then what's the point?). This adventure also takes on a more mystical tone than the first one, with Robin needing to travel alone the ethereal path to the "Heart of England" to seek out the legendary Wayland the Smith, confronting several different strange and spiritual individuals along the way, and this is all described in a top notch manner. 

 

What is it with Connery's and starring as Robin Hood in a more grittier take on the character? Anyone remember this downer of a movie starring Jason's father, Sean?

Ranking: The great writing alone is enough to recommend this one, and overall it is a clear step up from the previous entry. Although it repeats some of the issues of the prior book, as many of the more interesting areas can be completely missed (perhaps without even realizing it), the Companion system is an afterthought, and there seems to again be a lack of combats in general. However, there are many items that can be sought out and collected and they impact to a large degree how you progress through the story. The opening half also provides many different threads to experiment with, not unlike some of the better Lone Wolf adventures. This is easily in the Good tier and definitely worth a look, and I look forward to reading more of Mr Mason's work.