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.