Secrets of Salamonis

Oh the treasures you can find in bookshops! During our last visit to the local bookshop, I stumbled upon Secrets of Salamonis, a Fighting Fantasy Gamebook. As far as I understand, the latest Fightning Fantasy Gamebook, published to celebrate their 40th anniversary. Which doesn't make anyone any younger. Be that as it may, I had to buy it, if only because I love gamebooks since I was a child. And because I need inspiration for our current D&Dr campaign. I haven't started it, but will do it soon.

House of Hell

No, I don't mean this house, or any house I lived in. I mean the Fighting Fantasy Gamebook aptly titled House of Hell. I said aptly titled not only because it was a horror game story, but because it was notoriously difficult to complete. When I was a child, it was meant to be the gamebook from Hell. In fact, I failed miserably to get through it numerous time, until my brother PJ bought it for me for my birthday. I just Googled the gameplay that got me to victory. And I did not bother with dices (but who ever did with Fighting Fantasy Gamebook?). I believe my copy is somewhere at my parents' place. For all its many flaws, House of Hell was still full of nice little spooky atmsphere and one of the first dip I had into the horror genre. So I was thinking maybe it could be a good gamebook to have during my countdown to Halloween. Just a thought. And you, ever played this one? What did you think of it?

Reading through Havoc

Some of you may remember that I bought last year Creature of a Havoc, allegedly one of the most difficult Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks. Well, I haven't finished the adventure yet. In fact, after reading the long but fascinating introduction (worth the price of the book itself), I went through a few numbers, but got stuck at every turn and I stopped reading. When I got back to it, I had forgotten what had happened earlier, so I stopped for good. But now I have decided that I would give it a proper go... by sort of cheating. The same way that I did when I got stuck in a maze in another gamebook: I will find the read/walk through on the internet. Lazy and shameful, I know. But I don't have the patience anymore.

Dangerous Hills

I must have a geek fever: I am in the mood these days to revisit another Fighting Fantasy Gamebook, actually a whole saga: the Sorcery! series, where you play either a magician or a warrior and where you need to recapture a magical artifact from an evil archmage through the course of four books. I first read The Shamutanti Hills when I was 10. It is the only book of the whole series I read, actually. I was attracted by the picture of the manticore on the front cover. It looked devilish and very menacing and was contrasting nicely with the bucolic background.
 
In French the book was titled "Les collines maléfiques" (i.e. The Evil Hills). In fact, the hills were not really evil. Yes, they were full of dangers, but there was also plenty of little villages that were friendly and your character was not lost for ages in dark dungeons, mazes or say a sinister forest. As a setting, the Shamutanti Hills were full of character and the book in itself was more of a medieval fantasy travelogue with a few self-contained adventures and some interesting encounters with locals. Oh and there was a manticore to fight near the end of the journey. It influenced us enough in later years when we started playing Dungeons & Dragons: one of the most important monsters we fought in our first adventure was a manticore.

Sinister Swamps

I am starting this post by a question: is it only me, or are swamps particularly sinister? I always thought so anyway. It is full of mold, wet, neither land nor water, with ghostly trees and all sorts of creepy critters. As far as I remember, I always found swamps scary, even before I read Scorpion Swamp, my very first Fighting Fantasy Gamebook. The book only confirmed my sinister fascination with eerie swamps. Maybe it is because of this, even more than the fact that it was my first gamebook, that I am so fond of it. It is supposed to be full of flaws, but I always found it full of atmosphere and in a great setting, where monsters abond. Scorpions, normal sized or giant ones, of course, but also giant spiders, giant toads, "normal" giants and that thing on the cover, Malevolent humans too, some thieves but especially wizards who made the Scorpion Swamp their home. But mainly, I love it for the swamp.

My brothers and I played of course plenty of make-belief games set in swamps, or indeed set in Scorpion Swamp or nearby (the town of Willowbend for instance). Years later, when we started playing Dungeons & Dragons, swamps became maybe the second most important wilderness setting after the forest. We had plenty of monsters in them, but not the same ones as in Scorpion Swamp: there were far more lizard men and hydras than scorpions. All the same, the book certainly influenced us. And it reminds me that swamps are, well, you know, beautifully eerie and deliciously sinister.

Creature of Havoc

In my attempt to calm my longing for playing a good game of D&Dr and in the meantime reconnect with old childhood memories (as I am naturally a nostalgic person) I have started reading a new Fighting Fantasy Gamebook, another classis of the genre: Creature of Havoc. This one is all new to me, I never played it as a child. That said, I was always very curious about it. You can see on the left-hand side the cover of one the early editions, which is not the edition I have. But this is the cover that got me curious about it as a child. This is a medieval fantasy adventure mixed with elements of Frankenstein, where you played a mindless monster who does not know who or what it is, where it is or what is the meaning its existence. It is supposed to be one of the most complex ones, and one of the most difficult.

It is also one with the longest introductions, with a story that belongs as much in a medieval fantasy novel than a mere gamebook, worth in itself the purchase. I play these books not merely to win, but also and especially for the atmosphere, the settings, the naive history. Creature of Havoc has plenty of everything. So far anyway. I absolutely loved the backstory of the introduction, with many characters and places developed and explained. I compared this to a novel, in a way the could easily become a novel, and an epic one at that. So far, so good, in sum. I intend to blog more about it. Until then, you have this creepy cover to enjoy.

The Forest of Doom

I don't know for whom I am writing these posts about Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks. Nostalgic geeks like me, maybe. I finished The Citadel of Chaos, which I will not read again just yet, I found it mostly tedious (as I had feared). Now I am going to walk in safe territory (so to speak) with The Forest of Doom. You can see a very bad picture of the cover on the right. It is the third Fighting Fantasy Gamebook and one that I already read it during my childhood (or my early teenage, I can't remember). The Forest of Doom in question is in fact Darkwood Forest. With a name like that, it didn't really need a nickname. Darkwood Forest is frightening enough as it is.

I know I am going to love this one, for many reasons. You do not have to fight an evil wizard or any kind of magic user, but to find a warhammer which some Dwarf kingdom needs to win a war against trolls. This book is, in fact, a treasure quest. Sure, it is not the Holy Grail, but still, it makes a nice change from killing the big baddie. This book is also thus close to low-level Dungeons & Dragons quests, and actually has an uncanny resemblance to the very first quest PJ, who was (and is) our Dungeon Master, made for us more than twenty years ago (21 to be more precise). I think he was heavily influenced by this gamebook. My character being a ranger, I was like a fish in the water. Which leads me to the other thing I find interesting in The Forest of Doom: the setting. Old network of caves or ancient fortresses might be fun, but gloomy woods have a charm the other settings don't possess. A forest is alive, creeping with life, whether this life is good or evil. It is wild, but you can find the odd shelter, the wood cabin or the hollow tree, sometimes a place to rest, sometimes hiding its own dangers. It is just a great setting for an adventure. So I will enjoy my venture into Darkwood Forest. I know because I did before.

The Citadel of Chaos

Following my nostalgic mood about my old childhood's reads, I have purchased a few more Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks. At the moment, I am reading the second one of the series, The Citadel of Chaos. I say reading, but I am doing it slowly, as I have many other books I am reading at the moment. The Citadel of Chaos is the second book of the series (yes I am trying to read them chronologically) and it is the first time I read it. I was never attracted to it as a child, mainly because the image on the cover was unappealing: we had the one of the very first edition, with a crudely drawn Yeti-like creature looking at the reader, a Disney-like castle in the background (THAT was supposed to be the Citadel of Chaos?) The Wizard Book cover from 2002, which I have, is much better looking with this rather impressive hydra.

I am enjoying it, and so far it has been easier than The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, however two things bother me with it: 1)The monsters so far are mainly mixes of two animals or anthropoid versions of another animal (a rhino-man for instance). They mostly fail to be menacing. In a way, the furball with fangs of the first edition's cover  was pretty much a spot on illustration of the book's content, so far anyway 2)Just like for the first book, the big baddie is a powerful sorcerer. This is quite repetitive. Many of the gamebooks had dangerous wizards, I guess it is a trope to expect, but still. In our Dungeons & Dragons games, we often had to deal with evil magicians too. At least this one has a name: Balthus Dire. And the player character has better motivations: Balthus Dire has ambitions of conquest and is plotting to invade the Vale of Willows with his army of Chaotics (what the heck is that?). You play a magician yourself, which is pretty neat. And the names I found quite nice too: the Vale of Willows sounds quite evocative. So just for this I think this book will give me a fix of medieval fantasy until I play D&Dr again.

Of Gamebooks and Mazes

I finished The Warlock of Firetop Mountain yesterday, which I had bought recently to quench a thirst for childhood nostalgia and Dungeons & Dragons . I had my fix, I should be okay for a little while. I have to confess one thing: I had to cheat, as I got officially lost in a maze of underground passages. I found the right path here. I wonder how we used to do it without the internet and websites to help us go through it. I had never played this book, playing it was a rediscovery: gamebooks were often very challenging, especially when they had mazes, which the early ones often did. One could easily get lost in them. It was a bit of a flaw really: I got bored and frustrated and can only imagine how a child could endure it. Incidentally, in our early D&Dr games, we also used to go through too many dungeons, often too large, often with mazes in them. Still, it represents a challenge, a bit pointless perhaps, nevertheless a challenge which we rarely see in today's games. I enjoy gamebooks for the atmosphere mainly, something that I find lacking in most of games for children nowadays, but they also had other qualities: they promoted discipline, focus and patience. Especially in those darn mazes.

The Warlock of Firetop Mountain

I wonder if there are other readers who were into the Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks when they were younger. I was and, as you may have seen, I recently purchased a number of similar gamebooks in recent years: this one first, then that one and that one.They were horror themes gamebooks. The one I purchased recently, The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, is a more classic gamebook, I mean more akin to what I usually read in childhood, medieval fantasy stuff that predates my time as a Dungeons & Dragons player. So yes, I bought this one, the very first of the series. Which I ironically never read as a child. I will read/play it eagerly, and it should somewhat calm my need to play D&Dr. At least for a while. Sure, it is not exactly James Joyce's Ulysse, but it is enjoyable naive fun wrapped in childhood nostalgia.