The Keep of the Lich-Lord

A quick note to start: I've published this review in a couple of places before (although I have made changes for this blog). So, for anyone who happens to have come across this in two places, I'm not stealing it!

Anyway, after playing Starship Traveller, it would be a little while before I owned any further Fighting Fantasy books as I still didn't realise the Wizard series existed, and there were none to be found in the second-hand stores I looked in. My local library, however, came up trumps, with both this and Knights of Doom on offer. I specifically recall being surprised and thrilled that they were numbers #43 and #56 - there's more of these than I though!. Naturally, I took both home. I played this one first, so here we go:

As a book

The Keep of the Lich Lord is a well-written book, no doubt about it. The plot is not original – essentially, it’s just a kill-the-baddie story, who in this case has an army of undead at his disposal (he is undead himself, having returned from the grave to reclaim his dominion of 200 years past.) However, a nice touch that sets it at least superficially apart from a lot of other Fighting Fantasy books is that you are not a random adventurer who happens to find themselves suddenly become a hero embroiled in an epic high-stakes quest, but a mercenary who has been contracted to kill Lord Mortis as a pre-emptive strike against any full-scale military conflict and are essentially in it for the money. It may not be a noble motive (although the mission in question certainly is), but it’s a nice change from being an out-and-out hero. There are occasional moments where your character speaks and whilst your words and tone are in keeping with this background, I'm not generally a fan of being told what my character says, as it breaks the 'You are the hero' immersion a little bit. 

The writing in TKotLL strikes an effective balance to being detailed and descriptive enough to create a convincing sense of atmosphere and environment without going overboard and impairing the flow of the book by fleshing out each of it’s references too much. The structure of the book is essentially a series of optional side-quests en route to Bloodrise Keep, where Lord Mortis resides and it is testament to how well written this book is that you fell motivated to explore as many of these options as you can even once (see The Game selection below) you realise that doing so is overkill from a gameplay perspective. Whilst, as with the main plot, none of these diversions score highly in terms of originality, they are varied in terms of situation and of how the player navigates through them and this, combined with the quality of writing, makes completionism a joy rather than a chore. On the flip-side, however, if you did decide to skip all of the diversions on offer and make a bee-line for Bloodrise Keep, the adventure can feel rather perfunctory.

Along the way, you will have the chance to meet a few secondary characters, although your level of interaction with them can vary a lot depending on choices you make. Whilst, like the majority of FF adventures, most of your journey is spent alone, the encounters with others are well-handled in that you generally get at least some sense of depth and personality despite the lack of an extended time-frame in which to really get to know them. Without wishing to give too much away for those who haven’t read the book, I did get a fair amount of satisfaction from concluding my second encounter with a particular character, which by definition means the authors did a good job with them.

Lord Mortis, however, is a disappointing exception to the above. His backstory is limited but functional enough, but the final encounter with him (of which there are two possibilities, although they differ only in narrative and not in gameplay) doesn’t feel like a final showdown, or even a particular notable confrontation at all. This is partly due to the overall slightly underwhelming nature of the final section in general. There are some interesting and intimidating encounters in Bloodrise Keep and I do appreciate it’s multiple-path design, but it does mean that it’s actually quite easy to suddenly end up facing Mortis without any sense of building to a climax, although it does also add a certain amount of replayability for those who enjoy exploring, which as alluded to above, will be a majority of players – I'll finish by re-iterating what I said at the start: this is a well written book.

As a game

Whilst a lot of Fighting Fantasy gamebooks are known (or are infamous, really) for their extreme, often unfair, levels of difficulty, The Keep of the Lich Lord is actually renowned for the ease with it can be completed. As mention in the previous section, your journey to Bloodrise Keep in punctuated by a series of optional diversions which ostensibly offer the chance to make the final stage of your quest easier if you are willing to deal with the risks presented by each of these sidequests.

There are two problems with this, however. The first is that, on the whole, the book throws a few too many powerful bonuses at you for completing these side-missions, in some cases to a level disproportionate to the difficulty involved (although the graveyard in particular is quite dangerous if not approached with the correct choices). For example, you first diversion gives you the opportunity to get your sword sharpened, making all future battles much easier and ultimately rewards you with another item which makes some combats even easier still and gives you the chance to insta-kill Mortis when you reach him. This would be justifiable obtaining these items was difficult in itself, but you have to overcome only one average opponent and one downright weak one to do so.

Even with the help you are able to find throughout the book, there are not a great number of tough combats for them to be in any way essential anyway. Every reasonably dangerous fight in the book is either on a totally optional path (and in some cases, only then if you are unlucky) or can be circumvented without much difficulty. In theory, I might consider this to be good gamebook design, but the ease with which you can avoid combats (or just make them easier) tips the balance so as to detract from the sense of fighting to prevail in a challenging mission. The final battle with Mortis in particular suffers from this: if you’ve headed straight to Bloodrise Keep and taken the quick route through, then he will prove a tough opponent, but without a lot of effort you can easily arrive at him with one (or both!) or two means with which you can instantly vanquish him (although admittedly one is not guaranteed to work, depending on your stats).

Finally, we have the extra mechanics used by this book, Resolve and Alarm Value. Additional mechanics featured in various FF books often end up being something of an irrelevance and unfortunately the same is true here. Resolve measures your ability to keep your head when encountering undead or other frightening opponents and situations, which is logical enough and the consequences of failing a test of your Resolve a generally reasonable given the context. You lose a point of Resolve upon a failing a test, which also makes sense, representing your resilience being worn down as you fail to cope in specific situations, however, the reverse is also true: you gain a point of resolver each time you pass a test. Whilst this too makes sense from a purely logical point of view (you essentially become desensitised to the horrors you face), from a gameplay perspective it means that, unless you are quite unlucky with your dice-rolls, tests of your Resolve can quickly become a formality and the mechanic is rendered totally inconsequential.

Alarm Value too has a completely reasonable function in theory – it comes in to play upon entering Bloodrise Keep represents how aware Mortis and his hordes of undead are of your movements. However, unless you really mess up, it’s very tough to increase your Alarm Value to the point of it making a difference (and there aren’t many places in which it even might), so again, outside of an unlucky first playthrough or two, it becomes an irrelevance. 

Perhaps The Keep of the Lich Lord’s gameplay could be summed up as a lot of good ideas implemented in too generous a context to really make a difference. I will say, however, that a gamebook to that's too easy, rather than brokenly difficult like so many of them are, is at least a nice change of pace. I will also say, that it's arguably worth deliberately rolling a relatively weak character in order to both increase the challenge, and make the bonuses you can obtain feel more like worthy rewards for taking on an extra challenge, rather than being 'win-more' boosts for a strong character.

The Art

A good outing for the art. David Gallagher seems to draw his undead in quite an unsettling style, which works well in adventure where they're so prevalent. The other baddies he illustrates look suitably intimidating too.

Overall

The Keep of the Lich Lord is well worth a read, although the game side of it may leave you feeling a little unsatisfied if you're playing for the challenge. It's a good enough read to be a definite recommend to anyone into the genre, though - it's well worth checking out what it has to offer. 7.5/10.

Starship Traveller

Boldly going where no Fighting Fantasy Gamebook had gone before, Starship Traveller marked the series' first foray into the Science-Fiction genre. It was also the first Sci-Fi FF I owned, though several more had been published by that point. Opening up the series to other genres obviously increased the potential for new and exciting adventures, but will it be case of 'one small step for Fighting Fantasy' or, will it end up as simply one step too far.

As a book

Two things caught my attention when I first got this book. One of them was the fact that it was considerably shorter than the other FF gamebooks I had previosuly read, clocking in at 340 references as opposed to the usual 400. This is, sadly, rather emblematic of the book as a whole: there's not much there. 

The premise, in fairness, is solid enough. You have inadvertantly travelled through the Seltsian Void (a black hole) which turns out to transport you to an unknown region of space (the book suggests that it's an alternate universe). Naturally, you want to get your ship and crew safely back to Earth. It's a simple plot, but it's a good enough way to set you up as travelling through totally uncharted territories.

Unfortunately, most of what you encounter on your journey will make for very dull reading in the lengthy report you'll have to give to your superior officers once you're safely back home. There's very little sense of the part of space you're in feeling very 'lived in'. There are quite a lot of planets you can come across, but each one feels like a very isolated affair. Inhabitants on one planet will sometimes namedrop another, but that's mostly as far as it goes with respect to creating a feeling of a 'galactic community'. 

This approach to universe-building is legitmate, of course, and would no doubt work just fine if the opportunities you do get for exploration and first contact are enjoyable. As it is, the reduced paragraph count leaves little room for fleshing out these planets. The actual writing is not brilliant, either (I guess writing Sci-Fi just isn't Steve's thing and as a result, many of the places you visit are somewhat unmemorable. The aliens you encounter are usually reasonably well, conceived, but the nature of the book, plus the sub-par implementation of the structure, leads to a general lack of character in those you meet.

There are exceptions - the more dangerous environments you can find yourself in tend to also be more enjoyable, but overall, it's a long way from being the exciting voyage of discovery that it could have been.

As a game

The other thing that caught my attention when I first played the book was the completely different look of the Adventure Sheet: in this book, you don't only roll dice to determine your own attributes, but also for no fewer than six senior officers of your crew, and for your ship itself. There are also separate rules for different types of combat: hand-to-hand (normal FF combat), phaser and ship-to-ship. All this might suggest a more complex adventure, in mechanical terms, than other FF books, but, in part due to the compressed nature of the book, the new mechanics rarely come up and feel tacked on as a result (which is a shame, as they're fairly well formulated). Ironically, for a book with so much dice-rolling in the pre-adventure stage, you can actually win without rolling a single die once you've started! 

The mechanic by which you find your way back to your own universe works pretty well. You have to discover the co-ordinates of the black hole that will take you home as well as the date on which it will appear, and several red herrings can be found, making it not unlike the keys from The Warlock of Firetop Mountain. Whilst you do need specific correct information to win, parts of the book can be explored pretty freely without missing anything vital, which is good from a design standpoint. Not knowing whether the information you find is correct until you reach the end also adds more fun to replays than trawling for a specific named object you know you'll die without.

It's also quite a fair book as far as instant deaths go - there's a handful scattered around but their generally not especially arbitrary. Difficulty certainly isn't the issue with this book.

The art

Another negative, I'm afraid. The illustrations certainly look sci-fi-y in style, but for me, too many of them are too lacking in detail or just don't depict anything interesting. They're not all bad, but they're a step down from illustrations in the other books I've reviewed so far

Overall

A disappointing entry into the series. As a child, this book did still occupy me well enough, but I enjoyed it markedly less than the other books I'd played at that point. It hasn't improved with age. As shame, as with some more effort and a bit of a rework this could have been a solid and unique gamebook. As it is, it's a 2.5/10.

Talisman of Death

 

If you're reading these reviews in order of publication, you may be confused. Why is my second review for the eleventh Fighting Fantasy to be released? There's a simple answer: it was the second book I've got. For whatever it's worth, I'm going to be reviewing these books in the order, as far as I remember, that I played them in (and the cover I use will be the version I first owned, in case you're curious).

Whilst the book list in the front of The Warlock of Firetop Mountain meant I was technically aware of the existence of other books in the series, as it was an old book, the idea of actually getting others didn't occur to young me (I think the Wizard series was actually being printed by this point, but I wasn't aware of it). So it was only a chance spot whilst shopping with my mum in a charity shop that saw me obtain Talisman of Death and turn Fighting Fantasy from 'a book I have' into an actual hobby. Anyway, on to the review:

As a book

It didn't register until it was pointed out to me, but the plot of Talisman of Death is basically that of Lord of the Rings - you have to save the world of Orb from the potential power of the titular Talisman by transporting it back to your own world (you are actually a normal person from Earth, transported to Orb by its' gods and granted the capabilities of an at-least-fairly-capable warrior), so it's not a one-for-one clone, but when you factor in your being chased by mounted wraiths and being saved by an eagle at different points of the book, the comparisons become fairly obvious. A bit of a lack of originality doesn't detract from the book, though, which is excellently written.

For clarity the whole 'you are actually from Earth' isn't particularly relevant to the book, but it's a neat plot device in that it justifies a) the book 'dropping you in' to the world, b) you not having any preexisting knowledge of Orb and c) triumphing by taking the Talisman successfully through the portal to Earth isn't condemning your character to leaving their life behind and trying to get by in an alien world (although that would be interesting from a narrative perspective). 

Anyway, the world of Orb is very well-realised through descriptive writing and a coherent sense of place, and although most of its' inhabitants are not unlike those you might encounter in the established Fighting Fantasy world (to the extent that it was established when ToD was released), the whole environment feels distinctive, with a flavour of it's own. Whilst no individual characters get a huge amount of page-time, most people that you meet have their personalities well conveyed during the time you spend with them. Similarly, the locations that you do visit all have their own sense of atmosphere that makes you want to explore as many different paths through the books as possible, and the overall journey feels suitably . I'd go so far as to say that it's one of the best-written books in the series and is well worth reading even if you don't intend to play it 'properly'.

As a game

There's a unique aspect to Talisman of Death that needs to be described first, so that any assessment of difficulty can be understood in the proper context. Basically, there's a sort-of checkpoint/resurrection system and a lot of would-be instant deaths send you back to either pretty much the start of the book, or after exiting the city which forms the middle part of the book (your inventory gets reset too, so it's not something you can game). Going back to the first checkpoint is obviously similar to just restarting (but you get to keep good stats if you rolled them!), but the second is much further in a means that making a mistake or missing an item in the last portion of the book doesn't have to lead to the frustration of losing all your progress as you'll only have to replay a relatively small portion of the book. There are still actual instant deaths, primarily if you fall into the clutches of the servants of Death rather than just dying somehow and as far as I'm aware, death in combat is permanent, which is a little inconsistent if you're killed by a normal opponent and would be frustrating if you narrowly lose one, but might overall save some frustration because...

Combats are mostly fair/avoidable, but with two mandatory fights with Skill 12 opponents. Both of these in themselves can be made easier if you've taken the best path to reach them, but even in that scenario, a character without stats in the upper range of things will be fighting an uphill battle. So, to circle back to the previous paragraph, there probably wouldn't be much point in a Skill 7/8 character getting repeatedly resurrected and brute-forcing through most combats, because they aren't getting past the big 2 anyway (I mean, it's not actually impossible, but it'd be orders of magnitude quicker and less tedious to just restart with a stronger character).

I do mark the book down slightly for the two fights in question as, even though it's narratively reasonable that they're as tough as they are (one far moreso than the other, really), they can come across as unfair difficulty spikes in an otherwise pretty-well balanced book.

Combat aside, the book is pretty fair. The checkpoint system, as discussed, mitigates a lot of failure options and usually, making a mistake in a given situation means that getting through it is just harder, not impossible. At lot of the actual failures (and the ones you can be resurrected from) arise from doing something a bit stupid too - you're not required to make counter-intuitive decisions in order to succeed and you don't get the feeling that the book wants you to fail it, like you do with some others. Overall, with the exception of the aforementioned combats, the difficulty is pitched very well indeed.

The art

Another good outing for the artwork, with several striking images. I do appreciate how pretty much every character of note gets an illustration, which helps a lot with forming a mental image of your journey.

Overall

I've tried to be restrained in the main portion of this review, but I really do love this one. There's a bit of a nostalgia impact, but it's genuinely superbly written and nearly every aspect of the game side of things, it gets right. Despite the nitpick with the difficulty curve and the fact that it arguably lacks a truly original/memorable aspect/encounter to set it apart from other books, it's definitely in the top tier for me. 9/10.

The Warlock of Firetop Mountain

The one that started it all: for thousands of Fighting Fantasy fans, for gamebooks in general, and for me. I was not one of those initial fans back in 1982 (I wasn't yet born!) - eight-year-old me I discovered this book twenty-something years after that, in a big cardboard box of books my dad brought down from the attic for me to peruse. 

I wasn't actually initially hooked by The Warlock of Firetop Mountain. I'd previously read some old copies of a few of the Lone Wolf gamebooks and enjoyed them, so I'm not sure why this one didn't initially click with me. Once I got into it, though, I loved it, and it kept me entertained for a long time indeed.

But I'm not here to judge this book for it's impact on childhood readers, iconic and important as it is for precisely that. I am here to review it as critically and objectively as I can. There is a place for subjectivity - if I like a book, then that's a good thing and I don't have to justify that. But for anyone wondering purely if this book is worth buying for it's narrative and gameplay experience, here are my thoughts:

As a book

Whilst by no means a badly-written book, The Warlock of Firetop Mountain would have been unlikely to have received much attention at all had it's plot and writing found themselves in a traditional novel, rather than a seminal, genre-creating work. The plot is more or less as simple as they come: explore a dungeon, killing various nasty creatures as you go, in order to get your hands on a stack of treasure. There's nothing wrong with that, but some people might want more from the narrative of their gamebooks. 

Equally simplistic is the setting. Aside from being a presumably distinctive landmark in-universe, Firetop Mountain doesn't have much in the way of theme or flavour and is in fact a pretty generic dungeon. This was probably a smart choice in practical terms - if you're creating a whole new type of book, playing it safe with the setting in order to focus your efforts on the mechanical side of things makes sense. It does mean that readers are generally unlikely to find their fantasy horizons broadened by the book, however, as the environments and encounters won't be anything they haven't come across somewhere before. For example, nearly all the creatures you will fight in the opening stage of the book are orcs. In-universe, that's got internal logic going for it: there's (seemingly) an orc settlement within the dungeon so yeah, there will be a few of them around to fight. But that doesn't mean it can't get a bit samey.

The actual text does it's job largely well. Whilst some parts of the dungeon don't lend themselves to much in the way of description (there's a lot of tunnels and junctions you'll come across that feature nothing distinctive and you'll make decisions about which options to take with no context or additional information to guide your choice), when there is something more significant to describe, this is conveyed pretty well from situation to situation - what is more lacking is an overall sense of atmosphere. Potentially, this is a result of the dual-authorship: initially, Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone wrote half the book each, then realised that the shift in writing styles was rather jarring. As a result, Steve re-wrote Ian's content in his own style, solving that particular issue. However, I do wonder if some of the potential atmosphere was lost in translation, so to speak - and on top of this, I can imagine that the re-writing might have been quite a rushed affair.

Overall, the writing is good enough, definitely better than 'bare minimum' for the genre, but not anything special. Basically, if you're not enjoying the game side of the book, I don't think you'll end up sticking with it for purely it's literary qualities. 

As a game

Gameplay wise, TWoFM is pretty solid. The difficulty level is actually quite fair - whilst the true path does have one unavoidable combat that lower-statted characters might struggle with, opponents tend to be pretty managable and/or avoidable, so even the weakest character can have a decent crack at mapping out a bit more of the dungeon (winning with the weakest possible character isn't actually out of the question, but you'd have to know the most risk-free route route and get a bit lucky). 

On top of that, the book is quite generous with handing out bonuses with you - you get (often multiple) Luck points back for pretty trivial things and even a Skill/Stamina restoration bonus from feeling 'proud of your victory' at one point (really!).  In fact it's not a very harsh adventure in general, with very few ways to fail outside of dying in combat, or (leading us nicely on the next section), not finding the keys you need to claim the treasure at the end.

Basically, you can get all the way to the final stage of the book (including killing the titular Warlock), then fail because you didn't find the correct keys earlier. This sort of thing is not universally popular in Fighting Fantasy gamebooks and it's a view I have a lot of sympathy for - some later books require you to have taken an incredibly specific path through them in order to win. Here, though, I don't personally mind it. Firstly, the rules actually tell you that will need to find certain keys to ultimately claim the treasure, which mitigates the kick-in-teeth feeling you often get from "don't have this item? Then you fail!" after trekking through an entire adventure. Secondly, I guess I just enjoyed exploring Firetop Mountain to find what I needed (I think the fact that you are exploring actual new routes to find keys you missed, rather than making slight variations to how you approach the same situation, or some of the more contrived 'true path' nonsense from some later books helps here).

There is also a somewhat 'marmite' aspect to the book - the Maze of Zagor, which forms the final quarter-or-so of the adventure, before the final showdown. Mechanically, it's really just a series of passageways and junctions for you to successfully find your way through, complicated by secret passages and traps that send you back to an earlier point in the maze. It often gets criticised for turning into a slog of flicking between paragraphs you've already tried, looking for an option you've missed and without much else happening. I think that's a reasonable critique and unless you fluke your way through, it can certainly outstay it's welcome as a challenge. From a more detached perspective though, I think Steve Jackson deserves credit for creating such a challenge within the format.

To sum up, it's a well-constructed game that will feel simplistic to more experienced gamebookers, but stands perfectly well on it's own merits.

The art

Just a quick section, as I'd never tip the balance of recommending a gamebook based on the art. Russ Nicholson's illustrations add a lot to the adventure - his distinctive style gives a lot of personality his depictions of what would otherwise be fairly generic situations and he captures a lot of dynamism too - my personal favourite is the Giant Sandworm bursting out of the ground to attack you.

Overall

For nostalgic reasons, this is a hard one for me to rate. Whenever I play it, I enjoy it like it's an 8/10 gamebook. However, objectively, being as cold-hearted as I can, I'd give it a 6.5/10 - someone wondering which gamebook to play next shouldn't avoid it, nor should they particularly prioritise spending their money it either, unless they're curious about it for it's significance in the genre, which is entirely likely and legitimate. And of course, if someone is looking to try their first gamebook to get into the genre, there's no better book to recommend.