Virtual Reality

 ______________________________________________________________

1. Green Blood  - Score = 5.4   Tier = OK

Sections: 500
Attempts to Beat: 10

Woo hoo! Back to a series written by a couple of authors that I am quite familiar with, Mark Smith and Dave Morris (one of my faves). This opening entry is from Mark Smith, and I'm sorry to say he does not get this series off to the best of beginnings. This was surprising to me as I have been a fan of a lot of his previous work, which is often very good. This however, was a far cry from that. The story here sees us playing as an adventurer (and more on this later), who decides one day to leave the foulness and pestilence of living in the city behind, and seek adventure on the open road. To that end, having become fed up with the degradation of mankind, we decide to head for the Forest of Arden (and the similarity of this name to the famous Ardennes forest is a bit obvious isn't it?) to seek out the mysterious Tree of Knowledge, where we hope to obtain wisdom and then bring that wisdom back to share with mankind. Not totally sure how the mechanics of that would work but what the hell, I'm game. So we begin by leaving the city of Godorno, and head north along the road toward the forest.

Turning to the game system here, I was surprised to find that this game contains no dice rolling or other randomized elements (unless you count having to randomly guess among options at times, but I'll get to that later as well). This can be both a good and a bad thing. On the one hand, it eliminates the frustration of failure just because you rolled poorly at an inopportune time, but on the other hand it also means that you are always guaranteed to make it back to the section you were just at before you made a bad decision that led to failure, which makes going back and replaying the whole thing just to get back there again feel a bit pointless and tedious at times. It also removes a lot of the tension involved with possible character death. Instead of dice, this is a Skill check adventure, where you begin the game with 4 out of a possible 11 different Skills. Then as you make your way through the book, which Skills you have at your disposal then determines which checks you are able to pass, and you thus need to figure out which route you need to take based upon the Skills you have in order to beat the game. 

I was quite excited though to see that the adventure comes with 7 different pre-generated characters, with each being a different style of adventurer. You can choose from among: The Duellist, The Ranger, The Monk, The Sorcerer's Apprentice, The Starveling, The Traveller, and The Thief. These all sound rather interesting, and I'm not even sure I have heard of a Starveling before. Each comes with 4 different Skills that are meant to reflect the talents of that character.  Guessing that we would be spending the majority of this adventure in the forest, I thought it wise to select The Ranger, who comes with the Skills of: Archery, Streetwise, Swordplay, and Wilderness Lore. Not sure why The Ranger would have a Streetwise skill, but I'll go with it for now. Each character also comes with a certain amount of Life Points and Gold, with my Ranger getting 11 Life Points and 10 Gold Pieces to start the quest. Most interestingly, each character also comes with a short background of a sentence or two, giving some info on their origin and experiences. I am told this about my Ranger character for example: "Being loyal to the traditional values of your forefathers, you protect those forced to journey off the road." I thought this selection system was great stuff, and with visions of role-playing as an Aragorn-style character dancing in my head, I was ready to begin.     

So, with every new gamebook I play, I do my damndest to begin each with an open mind and the highest of hopes. A clean slate as it were. Many times those high hopes are dashed as I make my way through the adventure, but I think Green Blood may have just set the record for how quickly those dashed hopes took hold. I didn't even make it to Section 1! Yeah, the praise I was giving the character selection idea of having 7 different distinct individuals to play as? Well, right in the Prologue the book scuppers that great idea and decides to just say "Nah, never mind". This is because the Prologue goes on to provide a complete background of your character, who apparently is a life-long city dweller, and a destitute one to boot. Well, that certainly flies in the face of the Ranger character I chose to play as doesn't it? This Prologue doesn't jive with the background information of several of the selectable characters, and I'm left wondering how the author could have forgotten about it so quickly. He really needed to be as vague as possible here. 

Right after leaving the city, I made an uneventful trip along the road to the village of Burg, with still a little ways yet to go before reaching the forest. Stopping at the inn for a night's rest before continuing my journey, I just so happen to meet an old woman inside the common room, and it turns out she is one of the few humans who knows the location of the Tree of Knowledge within the forest, where she also happens to live. (Well, meeting her right away was incredibly fortuitous wasn't it?). She gives me directions on how I can seek her out when I get inside the forest (can't I just go with her?), which I obviously take her up on, as locating the Tree of Knowledge is the whole point of my quest. Hang on a second though......the Tree of Knowledge? The map inside the front cover of the book shows it as the Tree of Life. This is something that popped up a few times in the adventure, as sometimes this Tree is referred to by one of these different names. I began to wonder if there actually were two different Trees, and it was up to me to locate the correct one. It turned out there was only one special Tree (that I found anyway), so was this an error on the author's part?    

After leaving the inn the next morning (promising the innkeeper's daughter that I would keep an eye out for her father, who has disappeared during the night), I quickly come to the edge of the Forest of Arden itself, and enter. The first thing I needed to do was locate the old woman, who unsurprisingly turns out to be anything but what she initially appeared to be. Known as the Lady in Grey, she obviously has magical powers, one of which is the power of foresight, and she goes on to show me a vision of what I must do in order to save the forest from a group of "Westermen" barbarians who have recently begun cutting down and burning the trees. They fully intend to destroy the Tree of Knowledge too, so if I wish to locate it and learn its wisdom, I must first stop these Westermen and become the "Hero of the Forest". The vision also shows me how to do that, as I will need to gather the aid of both the elves who dwell in the forest, and also a Dragon thought to live somewhere in the woods. I then head once more into the forest in an attempt to gather these forces. 

I then wander around the forest, where I can acquire various Codewords depending on what I am able to accomplish, and the whole game system seems to boil down to either having the proper Skill to pass a check when asked, or picking the right choice from among a list of options. The Life Points? What the hell was the "point" of these? I played the book 10 times and only once did I ever lose any Life Points, which occurred when I found myself in a swordfighting duel with the Elf King's champion to prove my worth and gain their help. Was this just another "oops, I forgot to use this" mechanic? How about your Gold Pieces? Nothing to see there either, as again in all my plays of the book I only ever spent 1 Gold Piece, which occurred at the very start of the adventure when I paid for a night's lodging at the inn. 

So, the whole exercise became trial-and-error in determining which Skills could be used where to acquire the Codewords I would need to eventually win. This approach could work if the story were interesting, but I didn't find the plot here even remotely engaging. The absence of an evil wizard is the only thing keeping me from calling this a totally standard fantasy quest. As it turns out, you need to do 3 things if you want to win (and gather the associated Codewords). 1) Enlist the aid of the Dragon. 2) Enlist the aid of the Elves. 3) Discover what the Westermen's plan of attack is. Once you have the appropriate Codewords, you are allowed to move on to the endgame, and the final battle against the Westermen, where your forces make a stand against them right beside The Tree of Knowledge itself. You then need to defeat the Westerman leader, who is decked out in a set of large steam-powered armour (pictured on the cover of the book). What follows is a sequence involving a combination of decisions, where a wrong choice can lead to instant failure. Make it through however and you successfully defend the Tree of Knowledge and are declared the Hero of the Forest. No word on if you managed to bring wisdom back to mankind though, so maybe you changed your mind on that one. 

As I have stated several times in my reviews, I do not mind trial-and-error in gamebooks at all as long as the story is engaging with different paths to explore, and they don't go overboard with complete random guessing, which unfortunately is what I felt like I was starting to get here the more I played. The biggest example I can think of regarding this was nearer the end of the adventure, when I mounted the Dragon whose aid I had enlisted, and prepared to attack the Westermen who were now marching into the forest in two columns. At this point, I was asked which of the two columns I wanted to attack. After making my choice, I was then asked if I had the Agility Skill, and was forced to answer no. (C'mon now, The Ranger doesn't have Agility?) I then immediately plummeted to my death, falling off the back of the Dragon as it banked through the sky. Hmm, ok, well back through the book again to make it back to this point where I decided to attack the other column this time......only to be asked again if I had the Agility Skill. Uh-oh. Don't tell me. Yep! I once more fell to my death as the Dragon banked, in the exact same text as before, just in a different section number. The only other option I had left to me was in not mounting the Dragon at all, which was annoying because in a vision that the Lady in Grey showed me earlier in the adventure, I was shown to be riding a Dragon, and she even tells you this will be the manner of your victory. Well I guess not you liar! At this point I put the book down to stare at the wall for a moment, because it felt like I was back playing the Stephen Thraves Compact gamebooks again, where I was just supposed to make totally random guesses as to what I should be doing.

The message of the adventure also seemed to fluctuate wildly at times. For example, a couple of sections impressed upon me the importance of respecting all life. But then when confronted with an option of killing my opponent or letting him live, killing him outright often seemed the better course of action. As an example of this, at one point I came across the innkeeper who had disappeared at the start of the quest. It turns out he had been captured by the Westermen, and was now their slave. In order to free him, I am given the choice of killing his guard outright, or bide my time to look for another solution. I get that the Westermen are supposed to be the "bad guys" here, but based on the message of the adventure up until this point, I thought for sure that killing the guard in cold blood would be the wrong choice. Nope! It turns out that opting to bide your time leads to the death of the innkeeper, at which point I'm not sure it's possible to win the adventure, as I needed him to lead me to the Westermen leader where you then stealthily sneak a look at their plans. The final victory section even gives mention of the fleeing Westermen being slaughtered by the elves in the "tens of thousands". Harsh!   

To say this book also has a strong environmental message would be a bit of an understatement, as it sure does like to beat you over the head in that regard. (Yeah I get it, forest=good, cities=bad). The adventure doesn't seem too positive about mankind either, with a somewhat amusing line delivered by an elf who says he has met only a few men over the last millennium, and they were all bad. I will say that there is an odd situation in this "world" where apparently an elf can't hide if a human is looking right at them. Huh? This leads to a ridiculous staring-contest moment where you stand with your eyes riveted on the last elf remaining from his group, refusing to look away because you need him to take you to his leader, while he begs you to avert your gaze so that he can go back into the forest. I can't tell if this was supposed to be intentionally amusing or not. Also, apparently humans are only allowed to talk to the elves on Midsummer's Day, with an attempt to do so on any other day leading to instant death from their arrows. Well, it sure is a good thing that this particular day you are in the forest happens to be Midsummer's Day isn't it? (Incredibly fortuitous once again you might say!). There is also an interminable sequence here whereby the Lady in Grey tests you with questions to see if you are worthy to be the Hero of the Forest, and boy does this drag on way too long. Oh, and while I'm at it, there was additionally a section that describes "fanciful and bizarre stories" involving the elves, however it is then immediately stated that no one who has ever met the elves has lived to tell about it. Which begs the question about where the stories came from then!  

The book also contains a map on the inside of the front cover, depicting the Forest of Arden and its various landmarks, and I have to say, this is not one of the better maps I have seen. First of all, the area in which this adventure takes place, the Forest, only takes up about half the map, with the other half showing areas, to my knowledge, that do not involve the quest. I really wish the whole map had been of the Forest, as much could have been done with the extra space to bring it to life. Second is the scale of the map, which seems rather off to me. No distances are given, but it sure felt like the walk from the village of Burg to the edge of the forest was made in a few hours. According to the map though, this walk is about the same distance that would take you through half the forest, which would make it seem rather small for a forest which is supposed to be of such importance and is providing the world with life. Case in point, the map shows the River Sirion flowing along the northern edge of the forest. However, we enter the forest at the southern edge, and reach this River after only a few sections (which again only felt like a few in-world hours at most). The various landmarks on the map are also out of necessity crammed together, which contributes even more to the forest feeling smaller than it should have been, although perhaps maybe this is just me.  

I want to conclude with the thought that something really awesome could have been done here, if each of the 7 pre-generated characters came with their own mini-quest that could only be activated by them. Perhaps The Monk needs to defend a Nunnery from attacking vampires, or The Thief needs to reclaim a family heirloom unjustly taken by a robber baron. The possibilities abound here! These quests wouldn't have to be particularly long, or take up too many sections, but they would give a great reason to try and go back and beat the book with all the provided characters. As it is, it didn't feel like it mattered in the slightest which one of them I picked, certainly not story-wise anyway. I suppose it matters in the sense that which one you pick determines which Skills you get, and therefore which way through the book you might need to go, but this aspect started to feel random to me the more I played in any case. Also, you have the option of creating your own character and picking any 4 Skills you like, which thus totally renders the whole thing moot if the background of the characters is not going to come into play anyway. The closet the adventure came to a sidequest is when I found a tower within the forest, but you need to have one of two specific Skills in order to get inside it. This would have been what I am talking about had this been more character-specific, but unfortunately it isn't, as nothing in this adventure really is. 
    

Nothing really matters......to meeeeeeeeeeee!

Ranking: I won't say this is outright Bad, as there is something to be said in discovering a safe path through the book, but its definitely what I would call "Weak". As such, this makes it into the OK tier, but not by much. In fact I am starting to think I should have created more tiers, because some of my tiers leave quite a large room for variance. A Weak tier might have been a good name for the 5.0-5.9 range of scores perhaps. Ah well, hindsight rears its ugly head once more. The rules section for Green Blood appeared to set the stage for a very good gamebook experience, but then not only did the adventure not deliver on that early promise, it didn't even appear to want to try to deliver on it. I found very little that happened within the quest to be of interest, and while I believe diceless gamebooks can work, I think this entry in particular was severely hampered by not having to roll the bones from time to time. Smith's writing felt like a step down from what I remember of his too (although several of the death sections are rather entertaining), and my expectations for this series have now taken a firm punch in the nose. Still a handful of books remaining to right the ship though, so hope springs eternal!