#13 - "Freeway Fighter" (1985), by Ian Livingstone

The aluminium-foil ducts really give it that "B-movie" feel.

 

Dateline: 1981
 
The scene is a cold, concrete-floored garage where STEVE and IAN write gamebooks. They are not yet billionaires. Rain rattles upon the iron roof.   A busted washing machine appears to have vomited its contents across one half of the garage, the foamy wash hemmed in by a dyke of sopping towels. A dusty black-board leans against the wall, a map of the Maze of Zagor marked up on it, variously smudged, scribbled on and over-written. There are two hammocks strung from the rafters. In the centre of the garage is a battered wooden picnic table, bearing a 1940s-era typewriter. Next to the typewriter, there lies a grimy tyre iron and an eyeless teddy bear. Unpainted war-game miniatures with missing heads and limbs are strewn everywhere.

STEVE is sitting at the typewriter, tapping hunt-and-peck at the keys, pausing occasionally to alternately sigh or glare skyward towards an uncaring God.

Metal rasps and graunches are heard as the roller door is raised. IAN enters.

STEVE: "Ian! Where've you been all afternoon! You're supposed to be helping me break this GANJEES scene."

IAN: "Oof, come off it, Steve! I've been down the pictures! Seen Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior - cor, it were a right blast! Top action, car chases, a fit bird in tennis gear, this film's got it all! One bloke gets his fingers chopped off trying to catch a metal boomerang, it's ace!"

STEVE: (annoyed) "Well, that's fine and well, but if you're not going to help me I'll take your name off the cover of Citadel of Monsters (working title). Now listen to this - suddenly, a big spooky face flies at your face. You throw yourself down on the ground and begin to feel frightened -- "

STEVE chews on the end of a pencil.  
(continuing) "I don't think it's intense enough. Maybe I should say very frightened. What do you think? You throw yourself down on the ground and begin to feel very frightened."

IAN: (offhandedly) "Very frightened, definitely."

STEVE: (nodding) "Yeah... mmm."

STEVE produces a bottle of Twink and begins daubing it upon the manuscript. Meanwhile, IAN paces up and down, visibly pumped up from watching Mad Max.


Moments pass, Ian suddenly jolts as if hit by a static shock.

IAN: "Here, I've just had a wizard notion, Steve!"

STEVE: (tongue protruding from corner of mouth as he hunches over the manuscript, twinking away) "And what would that be, Ian?"

IAN: "Listen, do you think we can get the license to do a Mad Max gamebook?"

STEVE:  (sighs, looks up) "Fat chance, mate. You know I wanted to get the license for Star Trek but I couldn't keep Roddenberry's assistant's assistant on the line long enough to even explain what a gamebook is! Don't even bother. Look though, there's no reason you can't do a gamebook about driving around the wasteland and just call it Mad Gordon or something."


IAN: "What a smashing idea! Yes, I'm definitely going to do that!"

--------------------------

And that, friends, is how the world came to have: FREEWAY FIGHTER
But as we shall see, the road from conception to reality can be rocky and bandit-harried...

Never thought I'd say it, but the American cover is better.

Background

Well if you want a post-apocalyptic setting you need an actual apocalypse to get there and while there are many options, only a few are classics. Given the vintage ('85) you might expect that Ian would go for global thermonuclear war, but he obviously thought that was played out and you know what: he was right. So instead he went for a devastating pandemic which may seem pretty obvious to today's reader but I assure you was quite recherche in the mid-80s.

Ian decides to really throw Us Readers into the moment of the World's Doom by forgoing the FF-traditional title "BACKGROUND" and instead titling the passage:

VID NEWS BULLETIN

DATELINE 21 JULY 2022

This boundary-pushing format is then instantaneously abandoned in favour of the usual past tense narrative - somewhere along the creative highway the concept was turfed but the title remained, lingering uselessly like an outie belly-button. Ian tells us that actually the world of 2022 is super utopian, World War III was completely averted, East and West are cooling out together with a vodka and Coke, some kind of revolution in agriculture means no-one is hungry, and "increased mobility [has] led to people's greater understanding of one another." (Do not forget that the man went back-packing around Thailand to research Deathtrap Dungeon so he knows what's up)

Ian then says that 21 July was a hot day (everywhere?) and he remembers about the news bulletin idea and he tells us what was on the news that morning, which was basically that everything is great and "England is to play the United States in the World Cup final in Sydney" - no doubt this notion tickled him pink, but what must've seemed like a truly fantastical scenario in 1985, nowadays seems kind of more viable (except for the part about England making the final, obviously)

Okay so there's nothing in the news bulletin about an apocalypse anyway, but later that afternoon a killer virus breaks out in New York and four days later, 85 percent of the world's population is dead. As far as viruses goes this is over-achieving and I bet the virus had cause to regret it afterwards. Better to piss around for generations havin' a ball like the common cold, than burn yourself out from workaholism and leave nobody alive to infect afterwards. Take it from me, viruses, you gotta play it smart in the modern world.

I tell ya! Today's virus got it tougher than evah!

But anyway. Ian then labours through half a page in order to tell us that "Mad Max happens". Mad Max is such effective short-hand for this scenario that the author'/s annoyance at having to explain Mad Max from first principles is palpable. So I won't put myself to the same trouble because you already know the drill - one thing that struck me though was that Ian Livingstone describes the marauding wasteland gangs as "the new barbarians", which is also the title of an entertaining Italian film that coincidentally explores many of the same themes.

"The New Barbarians" is considered a snuff movie by fashion store mannequins.

To complete the circle, the trailer for The New Barbarians is, by chance or fate, a functional precis of the plot of Freeway Fighter (you can watch it in lieu of reading the rest of the post if you are in a rush).

Anyway, we established that Mad Max has happened. YOU are one of luckier people in this scenario, you eke out a comparatively civilised existence in a walled town called New Hope, that clings to some virtues of the vanished world. One day you are cooling out the garage tinkering with some shit and a couple of guys "from the town council" run in all pumped up about something they heard on the short wave. Somewhere to the south is another town called San Anglo and they called up to make a deal - 10,000 litres of petroleum in exchange for "grain and seeds". They tell you that a Dodge Interceptor will be kitted out with guns and a bunch of James Bond shit and suggest that you are just the man to volunteer to drive. You immediately agree, in accordance with the now well-established  tendencies of Fighting Fantasy protagonists (i.e. obedience to small town authorities, and a thriving death-wish).

By the by - it occurred to me on later reflection that the unspecified amount of grain you are delivering to San Anglo has to be able to fit into a highly modified 1984 Dodge Interceptor, which is a two-door and you couldn't put a baby in the back seat even if you folded it, whereas it is clearly stated that you will be driving a petrol tanker back with ten thousand litres in it.

The Interceptor - it fits exactly one sack of grain, propped up in the passenger seat like a person.

Gotta be a trap, right? Who's gonna trade ten thousand litres of Texas Tea for three handfuls of trail mix? Gotta be a trap.

Rolling Up My Dude

First up there is an exciting innovation in the Character Sheet for Freeway Fighter as it includes a field for "Driver's Name", which to my delight had been filled out already by a previous imaginaut:

Dartin Shot. They call me "Star". As in "star shot". Which means, like, "good shot".
I am good at shots. Am like a Hollywood star, of shots. Shot celebrity.
I can shoot darts.
Okay seeya.

And here are Mr. Shot's stats, they are okay:

SKILL - 10
STAMINA - 23
LUCK - 8

You also get to roll stats for your vehicle:

FIREPOWER - 8
ARMOUR - 28

This is basically just SKILL and STAMINA for cars. The Interceptor also gets its own character sheet which is pretty sick:

Come on, they're not called "Spare Wheels" you damn nerds. Do some research.

Since some punk kid had already written on (and carefully shaded) parts of my DODGE INTERCEPTOR SPECIFICATION, I got my pencil out and under "Car Modifications" wrote:

In my version of Freeway Fighter, Dartin Shot threw away the grain.

The Adventure

Something felt very familiar to me about this adventure, mainly because I have seen Mad Max, but also because I have driven road trips before. Your main concerns in Freeway Fighter are basically the same as driving inter-city in the real world, i.e.

1) Am I Gunna Run Out Of Petrol, and;
2) Those Other Assholes On The Road, plus;
3) Am I Gunna Get A Speeding Ticket.

But oh yeah, we can scratch #3, because in the lawless badlands of the hollowed world, of course you will not get a speeding ticket. Dartin Shot, being a "glass half-full" kind of dude, devotes significant time and mental energy to this consideration:

"Despite the hazard of having to avoid abandoned cars, the highway is wide enough for you to gather plenty of speed. It's exciting to drive so freely, without fear of being hauled in by the police for violating some traffic regulation or other. "

What a refreshing attitude! Contrast this with that other well-known work of post-apocalyptic fiction, Cormac McCarthy's The Road. Well, I think we can agree that the guy in that book is a right gloomy sod and no mistake.

“You walk out in the gray light and stand and you see for a brief moment the absolute truth of the world. The cold relentless circling of the intestate earth. Darkness implacable. The BLIND DOGS of the sun in their running. The crushing black vacuum of the universe. And somewhere two hunted animals trembling like GROUND-FOXES in their cover. Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it.” 

This guy resolutely refuses to see the "upside" of the collapse of civilisation/all-moral-boundaries. Does the protagonist in The Road ever take a moment to appreciate life? Not really. But look what he's getting away with - no laws, no limits - you can wee wherever you want - you can take the shopping cart out of the supermarket car-park and push it around with all your stuff in it, and you won't get in trouble.

But here's ya boy Dartin "Star" Shot again:

"The road is open and wrecked cars are an infrequent hazard. The speedometer reads well above the  maximum speed-limit that used to control the road, but you know that there is no chance of getting a speeding-ticket now."

He's still thinking about it! It's still a big deal for him. This is truly to "make lemonade when life gives you lemons".
  

When life gives you New Barbarians...  just take a moment to appreciate that at least there's no fukken five-oh breathin' down ya neck, ya feel me?

Anyway the first couple of encounters once you roll out the gates of New Hope are not much to write about. Dartin overhears a guy shooting at a dog and then drives past a phoney gas station which is pretending that it still sells gas, an obvious trap. Instead of falling for that one he goes to a McDonald's drive-in and pretends to order. "This is sick!" Dartin says to himself, "I can do whatever I want."

And he has another one of his Deep Thoughts further down the road when he notices shit is kind of run down.  "You didn't realise how much maintenance was needed to support civilisation." Nobody is mowin' the lawns or nothing! Shit is crazy.

People used to take a bit of pride, you know?

At last Dartin gets an overdue reality check when the RED CHEVVY on the cover rolls up on him with guns blazing. I couldn't be bothered so I used one of my four rockets, which allow you to instantly win combat. Dartin surveys the wreckage. "Who were these people and why did they attack you without warning?" he wonders. It's like topsy-turvy land out here! Dartin suddenly understands why the mechanics swapped his indicator lights and windscreen wipers for a hundred machine guns with infinite ammo.

Just then the radio fires up, someone from back at New Hope lets you know that a biker gang attacked the town and kidnapped the town leader, Sinclair, "so, ah, keep an eye out for them, okay hon?"

Given that this book was written by an Englishman in 1985, I can only conclude that the character of "Sinclair" is a reference to the great British inventor and lap-dance enthusiast, Sir Clive Sinclair.

You acknowledge the message and say goodbye - the prose in this section is so workmanlike that you get the impression that Dartin Shot doesn't really give a shit about Sinclair - Dartin just rolls his eyes and nonchalantly drops the receiver with a careless flip of the wrist. "Sinclair? That guy? Pffft."

Ian doesn't give much of a shit about Sinclair either, really.  If you tiki-tour around for a while and blow up a few goons you can find him locked up in a shack in an abandoned town. Your only interaction is that he tells you about the raid on New Hope and his kidnapping. Normally that sentence would segue into some information about... the raid on New Hope and Sinclair's kidnapping, but in this case all we know is that Sinclair TOLD us about it, i.e. we know the general topic of some words he said. Readers are generously invited to dip their brush into the rich palette of their own imagination and just go nuts conjuring up this gripping account for themselves!  A rare treat for Us Readers - but I wasn't feeling very inspired at the time, so my mental image of Sinclair's kidnapping was basically just the first ten seconds of this video:

Sinclair: "Oh no, 'Mad Max' is happening to meeeeeeeeeeeeeeee...!"

Then he fucks off on a Harley. You get one LUCK point.

Beyond that, there's a single, final off-hand reference to Sinclair on the winning paragraph 380, where you return to New Hope with the fuel tanker and the grubby post-apocalyptic urchins of that town throw a sad parade with three handfuls of confetti they've been hoarding. And, we are told, "if you managed to rescue Sinclair during your adventure, consider your mission a triumph." But if you didn't, hey, good job anyway. It's Mad Max out there, you're gonna lose your town mayor once in a while, right? People are over Sinclair already, I mean, he only invented the motherfukken ZX Spectrum.

I guess Ian wanted to add some higher stakes to the story beyond "will the town of New Hope manage to scam a butt-load of petrol", but why bother to introduce this sub-plot if you're gonna leave it so soggy? Let's be clear, Sinclair is no Mungo, not by a long shot.


Anyway, you have the general idea of this book already. You drive around and a bunch of dumb things happen, all of which are car-themed. e.g. you see a broken-down ambulance or a broken-down bus. You drive under a bridge and a guy on top of the bridge tries to drop a rock on you or something. I didn't really care about any of this stuff.

Notable Encounters

There's really only one encounter in this book which rings my bell, which is this guy, Leonardi.

It's Leonardi! Love that guy.

Leonardi and his pals have blockaded a road. Here's what happens when you reach the blockade:

Two armed men in leather uniforms approach you and tell you that the only way you will be allowed to drive any further south is to win a speed race along the straight road, against their ace driver. If you lose the race, you will be forced to turn back.

Okay, but... why? What's their motivation? Who knows! Ian is wracking his brain for car-themed encounters here. Do you know how hard it is to come up with a whole gamebook's worth of car-themed encounters? It's pretty hard.

So then Leonardi pulls up in an E-Type Jag and he winds down the window and looks at you and here is an exact transcription of what he says:

"Hi, my name's Leonardi. I used to play ball for the Mets, but now I race cars. Too bad you are driving that old trash can, but good luck anyway."

You then race up the road a little bit and the book tells us there are six people cheering at the finish line. If you lose, Leonardi will get out of his car and say:

"You're good, but you're just not good enough. You'd better turn around now and head back towards the canyon."

...leaving us none the wiser. You can also get into a fight with Leonardi and blow him up but you'd have to be kind of a dick to do that.

Failure, and a Long Walk

Anyway I didn't get to race Leonardi when I played, because I fell foul of #1 on that earlier list - I ran out of gas. In fact this is the most probable way of losing, you need to employ Bizarre Search Behaviour to scrounge five or six cans of petrol on your way to San Anglo or you get sent to paragraph 364 which basically says "too bad you ran out of petrol, guess you're walking home, lol".

It would be nice if the petrol scarcity thing was set up a bit better - just have a guy in New Hope warn you about conserving fuel or something, make you nervous right from the get-go since it is undeniably the biggest threat in the game.

Might coulda strapped a rocket launcher on one of these bad boys instead.

The SKELETON Count

The inclusion of magically re-animated undead in this setting would have been a challenge to justify (while undoubtedly making for a better read). So, it will come as no surprise that:

This message is brought to you by That Skeleton with the Weird Bosom Portholes from The New Barbarians.

Before I explain what I counted instead, I should point out that it is hypothetically possible, however unlikely, that a female person or "Wo-man" might someday have cause to read this blog, and that this chimerical being, whom I have dared to imagine, might be dismayed by the sweaty-lidded Male Gaze inherent in my "SEXY DAMES Count", which you may recall stood in for SKELETONS way back when I wrote about Island of the Lizard King, sometime around the turn of the century.

It has been on my mind for these many intervening years that the Sexy Scales are very much askew and that there is a balance to be restored, a debt that must needs be redeemed.
Well, my Hypothetical Lady Readers - consider it paid in full:

The SLAMMIN' BODZ Report

(Editorial notes - listening to "I'm Too Sexy" is MANDATORY while reading this section)
(Yes, "on repeat", of course on repeat, why are you even asking)
(Okay if you're really that upset, you COULD listen to "Deeply Dippy" instead but it will make a lot less sense thematically)

The SLAMMIN' BODZ Report is brought to you by modern-day Right Said Fred.

Let the count-down begin!
(You are listening to the song, right?)

Chuck

Chuck here takes great care of himself, all of his striations and individual muscle fibres are plainly visible and just pressed up against his straining, creaking skin like you would not believe. Tap on those pecs and they'll sound off like a couple of finely tuned timbales! We asked Chuck for the secret behind his amazing achievement, it turns out he attaches diving weights to his Uzi and also he always take the stairs.

That's another Fighting Fantasy:

Vincente "Kid Panther" Cobretti

Ladies, some of you out there prefer more of a dancer's physique, am I right? Don't interrupt me to agree. Well look no further than  the "Kid Panther", Vincente Cobretti. As the unacknowledged love-child of Lt. Marion Cobretti (Sly Stallone's character in Cobra) and whoever Olivia Newton John was playing in the video for Physical, he attributes his bod almost entirely to lucky genes.
"But I also got my own technique called Micro-Training!" he blurts. "This week I've been really focused on pumping up that vein in my left elbow pit."

The Total Micro-Training (C) System with Vincente "Kid Panther" Cobretti is available now on VHS and Betamax.

ANIMAL

As the leader of a gang of New Barbarians, ANIMAL has made it to the very top of his profession. But he still makes time to keep his body in top condition by energetically beating strangers to death in unregulated lucha libre combats, or "pounding ass", as he describes it. "You better believe I am pounding ass day and night", he will state unequivocally when asked, and sometimes when not asked also.


Incredibly, ANIMAL has achieved -1.7% body fat, yes that's MINUS 1.7%. His body contains small amounts of the anti-matter form of fat, which scientists have not yet decided whether to call "anti-fat" or "taf". This also means that one sip of a thickshake would cause him to literally explode in a detonation three times more powerful than the destruction of Hiroshima. "It definitely keeps me on target in my intake control," Animal confided warmly to us. "Uh uh uh! No cheating!" he added with a throaty chuckle, waggling one deliciously muscular index finger from side to side.

Maximus Doombro

Maximus Doombro is a well-known local character, tooling about the wasteland in his instantly recognisable CHARIOT, a converted Toyota Hilux. We asked Maximus how he came up with his unique look.

"When the plague hit," he tells us, "me and some buddies holed up at a sauna called 'Centurions' where we always used to go, it was like a Roman-style place, just a fun place with a theme, you know."

"Eventually we ran out of tinned spaghetti and we had to go out foraging, and we didn't know what to expect, so we raided the costume closet and I found this gladiator helmet and some of the boys put on some legionary gear and we stepped out and said 'Hello, world! Here we are, this is us!' Well, we felt a bit silly at first, but you know, everybody in the wasteland has been really supportive, the kids like it when they see us, the parents are supportive, a lot of the dads ask me how they can get into it, it's just a bit of fun and colour for everyone."

The CHARIOT has bullet holes in the fuel tank, so it's pulled by a harnessed team of six gleaming body-builders, crawling on all fours with ball-gags stuffed into their drooling mouths.

"We each get one day a week riding in the back," Maximus explains, "it's fitness AND it's fun."
"And of course our friendship is stronger than ever!" he laughs. "Come on boys, mush, mush!"
And the CHARIOT is rolling again.

------------------------

Well, that concludes the SLAMMIN' BODZ Report, I hope all of the heterosexual women out there thoroughly enjoyed it. I felt a bit strange while I was writing it and zooming in closely on the detail of all those incredible muscles, but this was one for the ladies and I will do anything to be fair.

Final Thoughts

Well I suppose it probably fairly clear that I found this book pretty boring and a bit rubbish. I feel like Ian Livingstone didn't enjoy writing it, and thus I didn't enjoy reading it. He was much more enthusiastic writing high fantasy and it shows. It's a shame that the book got fixated on the car angle because there is a lot of fun tropes you can play with in a post-apocalyptic setting (consider something more akin to the Fallout series - there's no reason why this book couldn't have been populated with bizarrely mutated animals and such to spice it up). This is also a contributing factor as to why it has taken me so many months to finish writing about the bleedin' thing.

Back in the day, of course, Ian had Steve Jackson to kick his arse for him...

Dateline, 1985

The scene is a breath-takingly beautiful, sun-lit conservatory full of rare tropical plants and exquisitely tasteful furnishings. This is where IAN and STEVE write gamebooks. A small fountain plashes endearingly. Two white tigers lounge together on the floor. Hot ladies are carrying drinks around and what-not. 

STEVE is stretched out in a sun-chair, reading a book about cryptography.

STEVE (looking up from his book): "I say, Ian, I dropped three hundred thousand pounds at the roulette table last night, I think we better put out another gamebook, what! How's that Mad Gordon thing coming along?"

IAN is seated at a mahogany table nearby. He looks up from a charcoal sketch he is working on. It is a manticore blazing a J.

Ian: (shrugs) "Oh, I dunno mate, I started it but... cars are boring. I got bored."

STEVE's eyes smoulder with rage, like lava from a magic volcano where a boss lives.

Steve: "That's the bloody attitude I've been telling you about! FINISH THE BOOK, IAN."

Ian: "Look mate, I'm really not bothered on this one --"

Steve: "Don't tell it to me, Ian. Tell to the Board of Directors when you hand in your resignation."

Ian: "Oo-er, I'll get cracking then, eh."

And then he finished it off in a big rush in one afternoon, and he couldn't even think of an extra 20 paragraphs about cars so he made it finish on paragraph 380. The End.

#8 - "Scorpion Swamp", by THE OTHER Steve Jackson (1984)

So yeah, Fighting Fantasy was actually a massively successful series. My copy of Scorpion Swamp is a 1988 re-print and the inside cover reads like this:

First published 1984
Reprinted 1984 (three times), 1985 (twice), 1986 (twice), 1987, 1988 


That's ten printings in four years - undeniable evidence of a public that was just clamouring for GOBLINS. In the face of this kind of success, an early challenge for Messrs. Jackson and Livingstone was that they simply couldn't write books fast enough. So, they brought in other authors to work on the series, slapping a big "Steve JACKSON AND Ian LIVINGSTONE PRESENT" logo on the cover and relegating the actual author's name to page 3. When I was a kid I assumed that this was because they were egomaniacs, but to be fair I think it was because the names Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone were as much a part of the brand as that dagger with the shrieking monster-face handle.

This is the first book in the series to be farmed out, and it seems that the prototype solution was to just find authors who were already named "Steve Jackson" anyway - hence we have "Scorpion Swamp", written by another, completely different man who is also called Steve Jackson. He went on to do a couple of other books later in the series, notably the wonderful Robot Commando which from memory is set in a society of cowboys who use giant Gundam-style robots to wrangle herds of dinosaurs (something to look forward to).

But this cover is not one of the classics I'm afraid. It depicts a creature which is called the POOL BEAST, because plainly the most distinctive thing about it is that it lives in a pool.  In terms of creature design it is a poor man's BLOODBEAST, sitting in the bath all day, lashing out at passers-by. The one intriguing detail about this animal is that it has a precious gemstone embedded in its forehead, which some enterprising jeweller has already had the patience to cut and facet in situ. But besides that, the POOL BEAST basically looks like the artist added a few teeth and eyeballs to a Rorschach inkblot and then spent the rest of their time making sure the POOL looked right.

The POOL BEAST is just a random encounter in the book and I didn't even see it in my play-through. In subsequent pressings the book was retitled as The TRANS (heroic autobot) FORMERS: Swamp of the Scorpion and POOL BEAST got bumped in favour of CYBER-CROC.

I didn't see that helicopter in my play-through either.

Background

Swamp has a pretty basic hook. You're a....... (wait for it)............ wandering swordsman (!!!), for whom "defying evil wizards and slaying giant wolves are all in a day's work". One day an evil wizard specifically asked you not to slay his giant wolf, which meant you could get your day's work done before lunch and you were able to knock off early. On your way to the pub that afternoon you discovered an old lady passed out on the road, so you gave her a drink of water and helped her get safely home. In classic folk-lore fashion, she turned out to be a decently powerful witch and she rewards you with a brass ring - pardon me - a Brass Ring.

The Brass Ring has a couple of nifty features, notably its wearer can always tell which way is North, and also it warms up in the presence of evil people. I did wonder if it activates strictly in the presence of those who are inherently evil, or if it also heats up when society is to blame. But Scorpion Swamp doesn't really explore these issues.

Having discovered the Brass Ring's eerie powers, our protagonist decides the best possible use of his new powers of orienteering would be to explore Scorpion Swamp, a territory feared and avoided by all right-thinking people because it's really easy to get lost in. The paths are all twisty, compasses don't work there, and there's too much "evil fog" to navigate by the sun and stars. Other factors: it's a swamp, scorpions.

Let the orienteering begin!

Rolling Up My Dude

SKILL - 11 (again!)
STAMINA - 18
LUCK - 10

Rules are standard, with the addition of a number of Good, Neutral and Evil spells that you can cast (though you don't start with any). Also there's no Provisions, and I don't have a shield.

The Adventure

It begins with your arrival in the town of Fenmarge, which lies on the fringe of Scorpion Swamp. Or on the margins of the fen, if you like. When you explain the locals at the pub that you're going into the swamp to dash all around the place while knowing where North is, they look at you like this:

That's an incredible photo-bomb from homie in the lower right corner.

They are genuinely concerned for your safety, and warn you that a number of animal-themed magicians called "The Masters" have recently taken residence in the swamp, unaware that this actually sounds quite rad and will only encourage you. As you saunter towards the door, scoffing at their rustic ways, you are accosted by a fellow with the hilarious name of Gronar, who looks like a farmer, but "seems more interested in you than any farmer should be!" This suspiciously interested farmer-looking gent takes you aside, sits you down, and raises a pretty good point:

'If you really intend to brave the terrors of the swamp' he says, ' you ought to have some purpose, rather than random mapping and beast-slaying.'

After gasping "WHAT" and "NOOOO" you reflect for a moment and find yourself agreeing. Gronar explains that there are three wizards living in Fenmarge who have need of someone to run errands in the swamp - the virtuous, Good wizard Selator - the shady old dirty old rotten old Evil wizard Grimslade - and some guy called "Poomchukker". So naturally I chose to go and work for Poomchukker.

Poomchukker turns out to be a tubby man with bright red skin and a passing resemblance to George R. R. Martin.

Poomchukker, the greatest living author of fantasy fiction.
Inset: with hat and glasses.

He explains that he is not actually a wizard, just a rich, bright red man in a robe who collect magic items and is happy to let people leap to their own conclusions. He has a business proposal for you - he wants his caravans to be able to take a short-cut across the swamp from Fenmarge to the town of Willowbend on the other side. If you can blaze the trail and return to him with a neatly labelled map on graph paper, he will "pay you half the money that [he saves] during the first year" - which is a pretty suspiciously phrased offer if you ask me. I mean, it might be a short-cut, but once again: SWAMP, SCORPIONS, you know the drill. Not a great environment through which to drag a wagon-load of frankincense and Taiwanese microwave ovens. But since the protagonist's initial impulse had been to just map the whole swamp for the fun of it, I thought this was the kind of offer he'd be into, and so I accepted.

Like a true baller, Poomchukker then tips a whole big box of single-use Spell Gems out onto the table and lets you take any five that you want. I chose one each of Fire, Ice, Illusion, Luck, and Stamina. They more or less do what it says on the label.

So, into the swamp then. Before getting any leeches on my dick I decided to take stock and drew up a strategy, which I then crow-barred into shitty rhyming aphorisms:

1) If you gonna go forth, make sure it's North! - the book told me that Willowbend was to the north somewhere, which was helpful because I got a Brass Ring that tells me where North is. Can't lose really.


2) Don't be a sap, you gotta draw a map! - the book is geared around mapping, it even gives all the locations their own numbers. I couldn't really be arsed, but I sighed and fetched a pen nevertheless. I drew the line at going out to the shop for graph paper though - the back of a letter from my insurance company would do.


3) If the ring gets hot, beat them into snot! - The magic ring detects evil, so I resolved that if it ever warmed up I would lay a Forest of Doom style psycho smackdown on whatever or whoever I happened to be facing at the time. Seems reasonable. And yeah I know the idiom is "to beat the snot out of" someone not "to beat them into snot". But do you honestly expect me to run with: "if the ring gets hot, out of them beat the snot"?  I'm already pretty embarrassed about these aphorisms as it is. I regret sharing them. I mean what the fuck else rhymes with "hot" anyway, seriously.

4) If the ring stay cool, discretion's the rule! - i.e. avoid fights under all other circumstances. Negotiate, retreat, whatever. I recall from Lizard King that there's no guarantee of coasting through the book on 11 SKILL. This rule is kind of a corollary of the next one:


5) Play it safe, stay out of the... graaaaay... fe. Stay out of the (cough) grafe. - Well, okay. If you're wondering: yes, I do feel ashamed of myself. But I come from a country where we rhyme star with war in the damn national anthem, so what can you expect really. Anyway, I figured that since my mission was just to get from A to B and back, I wouldn't need to scour about for any improbable reagents and gadgets to off the boss or collect code-words and gemstones to get through a big locked door in the middle of the swamp, or any crap like that. So, no Bizarre Search Behaviour, no jumping down wells, no sticking my arm into badger holes, etc, etc. Just keep moving, follow the rules, and stay alive long enough to get to the other side.

Oh, and most importantly: "HAVE FUN!"


Having set my mind for victory, I cracked my knuckles and got stuck in. First thing I noticed when I got to Scorpion Swamp was that there are pretty obvious trails to follow. Bear in mind that this is supposed to be the notoriously unnavigable, monster-haunted swamp that everybody stays the hell away from. Someone even took the time to paint "STOP! SCORPION SWAMP! TURN BACK!" on a boulder. But as we'll see for a shunned hell-hole it gets quite a bit of through traffic. I mean it's busier than Queen Street on a Sunday, I'll say that.

The first challenge I faced was that there was a "soft part" on the trail. Do I want to jump over the soft bit or step carefully around it? Hmm, okay. This has happened to me a number of times when hiking - in real life! -  so I think I can deal with it. "♫ Play it safe, stay out of the grafe! ♫" I hummed to myself and gingerly stepped over to an adjacent dry spot. Brutally, I then had to Test My Luck and lose 1 STAMINA if I was unlucky, which I guess correlates to the real-world experience when your foot skids into the mud and some of that nasty shit soaks into your sock and then you have a blister by then end of the hike.

On the other hand, I took a peek later and if you jump over the soft part, you have to roll against STAMINA with the loss of 1 SKILL point at stake (from falling over and spraining your wrist), which is a much worse penalty. So it seemed my game plan was working so far - I had made it past the first clearing unscathed.

Then I came to a junction. "♫ If you gonna go forth, make sure it's North! ♫" I sang to myself, adding "doo-dah, doo-dah" as a coda. (I should explain that as an aide memoire I had set my five aphorisms to the tune of 'De Camptown Races'. There's a couple of bits where you gotta sing a line real quick, or conversely, stretch a vowel out to cover like three beats, but I'm not trying to win any awards over here)

Only problem is, there was no way to go north, so I went East. Next thing I saw was a tree with a hole in it.

 Oh man I bet there's all kinds of great stuff inside that tree.

Nah, fuck that mess. From here, I could go north, so I did. Pretty soon I started noticing cobwebs all over the place. Generally a bad sign when you're in the fantasy genre. Turns out the next clearing is home to the MASTER OF SPIDERS, the first of those neat animal-themed Masters that the townsfolk mentioned. He's just cooling out on a cobweb-themed throne in a big pavilion made of spider-silk, letting spiders crawl all over him like a boss.

The homie even rocks the spider-theme medallion with the spider-theme belt-buckle.

 'Just an innocent spider enthusiast?', you may wonder. Nope, the ring got hot as soon as he looked at me, so I hit him with my Fire spell. (Readers can sing the relevant aphorism themselves if they like, I got tired of that joke already).

It turns out cobwebs burn pretty well - not only does the MASTER OF SPIDERS go up in smoke, pretty soon that entire section of the swamp is ablaze. This caused me to "loose" 3 STAMINA from burns incurred in the course of my escape (yes that one made it past the editors somehow). Not a terrible trade-off though, I was on my way.

I kept heading north wherever possible and veered east or west when blocked. Skipping a few encounters, the next interesting thing that I found was a guy having a picnic:

A cheese picnic.

Consider once again that this is the notoriously unnavigable, monster-haunted Scorpion Swamp, where a foul fog obscures the sky, those who venture in are doomed to wander lost amidst the trackless marsh until they collapse or are devoured, a darksome place that right-thinking men fear as much to mention as to enter, et cetera, and so on. And this fruitcake's having a picnic.  "Good day, fighter, will you share my meal?" he asks. Now bear in mind, that archetypal wedge of Swiss cheese looks just as tasty as it does in every single cartoon starring a mouse. But then the Brass Ring got hot. So you know the sword gotta come out. "Let me cut that cheese for you, friend", I said in a menacing rasp, drawing my blade. I hesitated momentarily as it occurred to me that he might think I was alluding to farts for some reason. Maybe I should say something equally tough-sounding that would also clear up any misunderstanding. Or on the other hand, I could just murder him. So I did - a fairly tough opponent at SKILL 10, but the dice didn't go his way. As Steve Jackson II puts it: "The body of the Thief lies at your feet. He was not as clever as he thought he was!" - damn straight he wasn't - this genius set a picnic trap for travellers in, you know, the middle of a swamp that all travellers avoid upon peril of their lives. And I dunno how he thought he was gonna find his way home again either.

You can take his Red Cloak with you, and you also get to eat the cheese, though surprisingly it doesn't cause any of your wounds to start sucking in blood and sealing themselves up. After this encounter I came to point where, to keep going north, I would have to leap twenty metres off a cliff, into water of unknown depth, in plain sight of the GIANT CROCODILES lolling about on the far bank.  At this point I decided that the rule about not doing stupid shit was probably more important than the one about always going north. From my vantage point I could also see a bridge somewhere off the east, so I doubled back to try to work my way over to it.

And here we have one of the nice features of this book - it's designed so you can re-visit the same locations - the paragraph for each clearing instructs you to turn to another paragraph if you've been there before.  So when I went back to the THIEF clearing, the book asked me if I had killed the THIEF already and since I had, it let me skip straight to the direction-choosing. Nicely handled there, Scorpion Swamp.

Fast-forwarding again, I made it to the bridge and got across to the north side of the river. Round about this time I was starting to wonder why they called this place Scorpion Swamp. "You would expect there to be scorpions" I thought to myself. Well, good things come to those who wait. There's one clearing which is pretty much all scorpions.

The boiling carpet of scorpions at the heart of Scorpion Swamp.

An elite strike team of these little rascals swarmed up my pant leg and stung me for 6 STAMINA, which luckily I could spare. Interestingly, the Brass Ring also gave a 'prickling sensation' in their presence, which would indicate either that these SCORPIONS are slightly evil, or the ring has some undocumented features.

"So that's why they call it Scorpion Swamp!" I thought to myself as I squirmed a horrified Cosby dance into the next clearing, slightly evil scorpions still tumbling from the cuff of my pant leg.

No, THIS is why they call it Scorpion Swamp.

You step round a tree to see a GIANT SCORPION fighting a Dwarf who is wearing leather armour. The Dwarf is in trouble. As you rush towards the fight, the Scorpion catches the Dwarf's neck in one of its claws and throws him to the ground, where he lies still. You doubt that you have any magic spells which would be worth using on this enemy. If you leave the clearing while the monster feasts on the Dwarf, turn to 88. If you --


Yeah, yeah - that one, 88. Rule #4. Let's go.


After that amusing diversion, the next time I "stepped round a tree" I bumped into this playboy:

Laying it on a bit thick aren't ya mate?

I pause a moment, but the Brass Ring stays cool.
'I serve the shareholders of the Poomchukker Trading Company' I say, after some consideration.
'Huh. Neutral.' He turns his head and spits. 'What are you doing here. Don't you know this swamp is a pitiless wasteland, where all who enter perish, without hope of escape? Apart from me, obviously.'
'Yeah you and about a dozen other folks I met, out and about on they Sunday strolls.' I mutter. 'One guy had a picnic basket!'
'Well, look. Suit yourself. But it's not very safe here. What are your intentions?'
'Oh right okay well I'm making a map to Willowbend.' I admit with a little why not? shrug.
'Willowbend...' he hisses, and his eyes narrow. I suddenly notice his resemblance to Kevin Costner in 1991's Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.
'I see', he continues, 'in that case, go south, then west at the crossing of the paths. Stay on the path!'
'Sure. Thanks for the directions.' I hoist my pack to my shoulder and turn to leave.
'Wait!' he calls 'Should you meet anyone Evil... send them this way.' He looks to the horizon. A breeze stirs his hair. 'I'm going to jump off this rock and hit them with my sword.'

So anyway I decided that this guy was unlikely to be misleading me and I followed his directions. Along the way I was attacked by a SLIME, which I decided to cast a spell on. Then suddenly I won the game!

Paragraph 400... at last.

Okay, so that was a bit misleading. After my initial excitement I realised that since this book has three possible missions to choose from, there should be three "victory" endings, and they can't all be 400. So I guess that convention went out the window for this book.

But I suppose this is as good a time as any to let you know that I actually did win.

Failure, and -- wait a minute, VICTORY!


Here's how it happened. If you're wondering, I cast Ice on the Slime and it turned into something a little reminiscent of lime ice-cream left in the deep-freeze for a year past its best-by date. I tip-toed around it and went on my way. I knew I was close to my destination. But there was one more group of guys incongruously hanging out in the death-swamp to contend with - five BRIGANDS.

The Brass Ring stayed cool so I figured I'll just roll up to them and say what's up. Turns out these fellers are the most genteel BRIGANDS ever:

The Brigands are accustomed to asking for money from passers-by, but they are not murderers. Although they could attack you, the odds would be five-to-one, they do not feel that would be very sporting. Finally, the leader suggests a solution. 


He suggests that you duel to first blood. You get free passage if you win, if he wins, you give him "something of value".

I suddenly notice his resemblance to Errol Flynn in 1938's "Adventures of Robin Hood".

I gave him a little stab in the leg that drew blood and laddered his tights. He congratulated me on my win, and his mate gave me a swig of water. Then we "all laugh and joke as though you are old friends".

'Hahahahahahaha... oh boy. You guys are cool.' I say, wiping a tear of mirth from the corner of my eye. 'Hey, how's business out here in the swamp? Get many scores? I mean, I had the impression that folks sort of avoid this place.'
The leader frowns, he glances about quickly to check if his companions are listening. 'Yes, it hasn't been easy. More than once our dinner has been nothing more than an unidentified fungus that I noticed growing on a log.' he says in a low voice. 'But the fact is, if we set up on one of the main highways we'll be up against the evil brigands.' His voice now drops to almost a whisper. 'Those dudes are killers!'
He sighs and shakes his head.
I feel sorry for the dejected Brigand Leader. 'Well, word to the wise, mate - I got a hunch there might be some rich caravans coming through this way in a couple of weeks. You just keep your head up and practice your duelling.' I say with a wink.

He thanks me and tells me that Willowbend is near. He even recommends an inn. Once again my game plan has paid off - if you refuse to duel, or otherwise act hostile to the BRIGANDS, the Leader hulks out and you have to fight them all to the death.

"The sword is for gentlemen. DOGS GET THE AXE."

Sure enough, I follow the trail to Willowbend, where I celebrate my success with a night at the Bent Spear and splurge on a Stamina Spell Gem from "Halicar Dealer in Potions & Spells" in case I need it for the trip back. My main worry is that I will have to fight the GIANT SCORPION on the way back through, but it turns out to have waddled off somewhere, leaving only a few scraps of leather armour to mark the spot. I do have to contend with all the baby scorpions again - they're still milling about furiously, but I'm able to hopskotch my way through them. Other than that I'm able to retrace my steps to Fenmarge with little incident. Poomchukker is thrilled with my crappy little map and awards me a great big emerald on the spot. I'm also invited to hang out in his house for the next year so I can collect my share of the caravan profits. Victory at last! Hooray.

Monsters, Combat, Noteworthy Encounters

Okay, actually my journey back from Willowbend was a little more eventful than that. I had to take a detour, which also happened to contain some of the more interesting encounters that I haven't mentioned so far. You see, when I tried to go back through the MASTER OF SPIDERS' clearing, it was still on fire. Even though it was the next day. (It turns out that regardless of whether you use a Fire spell or not, there's no way to get through that clearing without setting it permanently on fire).

I decided to loop back around and try to approach Fenmarge from the western side. I was pretty nervous that I'd meet something horrible and deadly on the way, but the first thing I encountered was a lovely UNICORN!

Look at that little smile! Look at that gleam in his eye!

Unfortunately it was angry that I wasn't a virgin or something because it charged me - and it turned out to be the toughest opponent I faced with SKILL 11, but fortunately that little scratch you can see on its flank had already taken it down to STAMINA 4. Had I been working for the Good wizard, Selator, I might've had a Friendship spell I could've cast on it instead, but I wasn't. I was working for money. I did try to observe Rule #4 and run away at first but I could only go back the way I came, so really it was unavoidable that I slaughter this rare and noble beast. "Damn, that's a pretty Neutral thing to do" I thought to myself as I stepped over its corpse.

So that was probably the book's most dangerous, and poignant, encounter. The next clearing to the south had what is easily the book's dumbest encounter: SWORD TREES.

SWORD TREES!

How did these trees get those swords? The book implies that they've grown them. I think we can agree that's pretty dumb.

So yeah, I chopped them up. Then, finally, as I drew near to my goal, I came upon a log cabin. I notice a WOLF growling as I approached - then the front door swings open and out pops the MASTER OF WOLVES.

This guy was a dick to me. 

Me: "Hi there!"
Him: "You. Get the fuck outta here."
Me: "Er..... okay."

As I go on my way, glancing back over my shoulder, I get angry thinking about how the MASTER OF WOLVES was rude to me. I get a serious case of espirit d'escalier and start thinking about what come-backs I could've made. Like:


"Oh, Master of Wolves, is it? That right? You know I kind of thought you'd have more... wolves, yeah. I mean if one of these guys were to eat some bad meat then you'd be Master of Wolf, wouldn't you." 


Pause. 

"Look the average wolf pack is oh, about six or seven wolves, innit? And you've got... two? I bet there's wolves out there, you know, actually wild ones, that see you coming and say to their mates, they say watch out boys, here comes the Master of Having No Mates! I bet they have a proper laugh, eh?"


And so on, in this vein. I just about resolve to go back and say these things - because this is Scorpion Swamp, and you can go back to places where you've already been - but then another thought occurs to me: Why does he have an axe hanging next to his door, on the outside of the cabin?

Is it in case he loses his key? Or is it a message? Has he left an axe hanging by the door as an open invitation to visitors to cleave his skull? It hangs there, mutely stating: "JUST TRY IT"

The MASTER OF WOLVES is a badass.

As these troubling thoughts were rolling about in my mind, I arrived at the outskirts of Fenmarge and realised "I've won!", so my next thought was: fuck that guy anyway.

The SKELETON Report

The SWAMP SKELETON is a pretty classic archetype - he has green lichen hanging off his bones and will rise up out of the water and such. But, regrettably, he's nowhere to be found in this swamp.

But I thought you guys might be curious about how many MASTERS there are in the book. There's five.  Here's a complete list, along with their ethical orientation:

MASTER OF SPIDERS (evil)
MASTER OF WOLVES (neutral)
MASTER OF FROGS (neutral)
MASTER OF GARDENS (good)
MISTRESS OF BIRDS (good)

The MASTER OF FROGS seems to have been basically born into the role. 

Final Thoughts

Well, given that I won this book, I think we can probably say that it's too easy. This might be because I took Poomchukker's mission, which I suspect is the easiest of the three available - the hardest is probably Grimslade's, in which you have to find all the MASTERS and kill them for their disco medallions. But there's a few general features that make the book easy:

• the victory conditions are very clear, so you can play conservatively and just avoid anything that doesn't appear to directly contribute to winning
• the Brass Ring's ability to detect evil eliminates ambiguity from most encounters and makes it obvious when you should be aggressive and when diplomatic
• you can just opt out of many encounters (e.g. the GIANT SCORPION or the MASTER OF WOLVES)

By playing accordingly to my five corny aphorisms I pretty much breezed through (incidentally this risk-averse play style is probably closest to my real-life personality - except of course I wouldn't have gone near the dang swamp in the first place, would probably just have stuck around in Fenmarge and got a job composting garden waste for Selator or something).

From a technical point of view, I rather admire this book. The exploration and mapping mechanism works well - it's almost as if Steve Jackson II had played through the terrible deja vu sequences in "Forest of Doom" and thought - "now how would I fix this train wreck?". The feature is mostly used just to remove encounters the second time you enter a clearing, but it's elegant.

I also like that you have three missions to choose from, which gives the book replay value and a reason to go back in and expand your map (no, I'm not going to play it again, but I recognise that I could play it again and still get something out of it).

On the other hand, it's not a particularly inspired book in imaginative terms - there's a few interesting ideas scattered through it, but in the main it's pretty generic. And if you haven't picked up on it yet, let me point out that I was bothered by the inconsistency between the Swamp's reputation and the fact that there's all these idiots hanging around in it, having a great time, without apparently getting lost/doomed.

All up, an okay book I suppose. I feel relieved that I finally won one - if you get through all 60 books without winning any, it's a compulsory down-trou. I'll be back in a mere handful of weeks to churn through Ian Livingstone's Caverns of the Snow Witch.