Reviews by End Master
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Lolth is that you?, March 4, 2021Moving to yet another location of Orlandes, this one takes place in one of the more southern cities of the land called Miramar, or at least it starts off there. You’re also playing a character of a bit more status in this one rather than some down on your luck wannabe adventurer. You actually work for the Duke of Miramar and the story basically starts out with stopping an assassination attempt on him (via venomous giant spider) and him sending you out to hunt down the suspected culprit which is an explorer named Cortez who went out with three ships and never came back years ago.
This book is a lot more difficult than any of the past six that came before it. First off, it eliminates the “middle of the road” adventurer mode and goes back to classic and casual. And classic has been ramped up in difficulty by only allowing three bookmark save points rather than six.
Also this book adds a new stat called Phobia (Which reminds me slightly of FF’s House of Hell FEAR stat). It starts automatically at a lowly seven and you’ll be testing it quite a bit because your phobia is, you guessed it, spiders. And you’ll be facing all sorts of them this adventure since it would be odd not to given the title of the book.
So the adventure starts off with having to figure out the roots of the assassination plot and equipping yourself for the adventure. Keep in mind you can mess up and fail to discover the proper information and get a premature ending, though you get a couple ways to discover the plot, so failing in this way isn’t excessively easy.
Assuming you succeed you get a couple of options of traveling to your destination, either by ship or land. Always nice to get a bit of a difference in paths to reach your destination. Regardless of which path you pick (and assuming you survive all the different dangers which can be pretty varied) you’ll eventually reach where Cortez last travelled to and where you being the last stage of your adventure.
The jungle and the temple are both filled with quite a few fitness checks, some of which will lead to an instadeath result. The fights are about average because by this point you should be well armed and protected, but there’s always the spider related enemies that can potentially make combat more difficult due to the phobia check.
All throughout the game there are a few items you sort of need to collect along the way to make even winning achievable. While it’s possible to get through the game without a certain item, it makes the final combat very difficult.
It’s a tough book overall, but I found it to have a more interesting adventure than some of the others in the series (Even if it does have a similar basic plot of another book) The colorful artwork in this one really works well too.
Definitely one of the better GA books.
A plodding trek through some ruins, February 26, 2021This one takes place in the northern portion of Orlandes near (and in) the ruin of Tarnath Tor which was supposed to be a great city a couple centuries ago until it suffered an orc (called orcuns in this series) attack which resulted in the wizards casting some major spell to protect the city, however something went seriously wrong which it’s a ruin.
All of this doesn’t matter to you at the moment though because you’re taking the role of yet another down on your luck adventurer that has failed to find your fortune. In fact the game starts out with you hanging upside down by your feet after a group of bandits massacred the caravan you were traveling with.
Thankfully instead of finishing you off they leave you for dead which allows a young wizard to stumble upon you who sets you free and essentially starts you on your quest. He explains what exactly happened at Tarnath Tor all those years ago (Basically a magic accident) and says he wants you to help him gain access to his wizard tools. Given that you don’t have much else going on and the potential for adventure and loot is great, you accept the quest.
I should point out that this book has one of the longest intros so far. I think you have to flip through about fourteen pages before you even get to a point with choices. The book in general though is long on background and description mainly due to the fact that Tarnath’s fate is a bit of a mystery as far as what happened there all those years ago.
The first act involves traveling to Tarnath Tor which starts off getting yourself prepped for the adventure buying equipment and such. Might as well spend all the money the wizard gave you because it’s the only part you’re going to be able to stock up. The trip to Tarnath Tor is rather uneventful in the scheme of things. There’s a couple paths to reach the destination, but like I said, nothing really stands out.
When you finally reach Tarnath, the adventure improves a bit. You’ll run into stuff like animated statues, zombies, a goblyn tribe, a lich etc. Some of which can kill you instantly if you don’t have the right equipment, though there is the option for negotiation with a few encounters and even playing monsters off against one another if you’re feeling treacherous.
Eventually if you manage to navigate your way through the ruins correctly you’ll soon find the young wizard’s tools, along with discovering the whole story behind the fate of Tarnath which will eventually lead to dealing with the final encounters.
Despite the book surrounding the exploration of a mysterious ruin brimming with danger and the remnants of powerful magic, it’s rather average. While this one strays slightly from GA’s usual theme of getting revenge on those that wronged you, it doesn’t really provide too much of a compelling reason for the adventure in the first place other than chance. And while there’s a good reason provided later, it comes so late in the book, you don’t really care too much about it by that point other than finishing the task out of a sake of completeness.
I didn’t hate the book, but it’s not one of the more memorable ones.
More of a sewer system than catacombs, February 25, 2021This one goes directly back to the city of Orlandes rather than just the land. This time you’re a small time adventurer that supplements your living with some thievery which in the scheme of things isn’t too much different from what you do as adventurer except stealing from the inhabitants of a dungeon isn’t considered breaking the law.
Instead of getting busted by the city militia though, you get caught by the criminal organization that runs the city which is even worse. While you protest that you weren’t actually stealing, you aren’t believed and you’re thrown into the Orlandes City sewers as a sacrifice for the shadow god cult that the crime organization seems to also have ties to.
From there you have to survive the sewers and try to make your way to the undercity which lies somewhere deeper and is a beacon of “civilization.” This part of the game is fairly tough since you’re literally weaponless and without armor. Granted the opponents you come across aren’t excessively tough, but a few bad rolls and you’re dead. Doesn’t help that when you do manage to acquire a weapon, there’s at least one random roll event that can deprive you of it. Might as well restart if that happens.
Despite all that, there isn’t necessarily any more combat in this one, it’s just that it's more dangerous to engage in it. This one seems to make more use of fitness checks as well.
When you get to act two which is the Undercity itself, you’ll get a bit of a breather and a chance to heal and restock items and equipment, though I certainly hope you managed to get into a few fights and loot the bodies before you got into the city because things start costing money here.
As with most of these books, you’re going to seek a bit of revenge on the ones who threw you into the sewers to die in the first place, but you’re going to need some help if you want to make things easier. Hopefully along your trek through the sewers you encountered some folks that could help you with the final showdown of infiltrating their headquarters, because despite the fact that you can go it alone, it probably isn’t a good idea.
While there are a couple paths that can lead to the ultimate victory ending, this is one of the harder books due to the lack good equipment from the beginning and you typically don’t get the best armor that allows you to roll six dice for defense. Also, there seems to be a bug where the game won’t recognize upgrading your armor, leaving it fairly low throughout the game. This bug doesn’t make the game impossible, but it makes it more difficult than it needs to be
Despite this really annoying bug and that it might not have as “epic” of a feel as some of the other books, it’s still worth playing through.
Death is not the end, February 25, 2021Going back to the Orlandes for this setting. This one takes place in a more central region of the land near the city of Falavia. There’s references to familiar cities and lands mentioned in previous books, though this one specifically makes mention of one of the more infamous names in the series namely Makros the Unearthed who is a great necromancer. Your buddy Saul in the story convinces you to go rob his lair. Not really the greatest idea.
There’s a couple different pathways to the lair, but ultimately you’ll get to the treasure that your buddy convinced you to go get and then he’ll promptly betray you which will result in your death. And that’s where act two kicks in.
You wake up thanks to Makros who isn’t pleased about his amulet of invulnerability being stolen. (There’s a call back to GA2 when he makes mention of someone stealing his staff in Myr) He’s raised you from the dead to got fetch it for him since he’s got more important things to do than to bother with hunting down petty thieves. He makes it clear though that since he raised you, you’re under his command, though at this point you’re looking to settle a score with your ex-friend who is attempting to use his new found power to try to take over Falavia as the first step in conquering Orlandes.
The plot of this one is another revenge focused one, with “saving the world” as an after thought. Makros doesn’t really care however about your traitorous friend’s ambitions, he just wants his property back.
The game’s rules change a bit here since you’re dead and all. So healing potions don’t really work, but honestly combat is pretty easy since you’re given a very powerful sword that will heal you when you kill someone, plus you can heal by meditating from time to time. There’s another thing that can act like a healing potion of sorts if you can find it.
The first part this act mostly involves traveling to Falavia, while second is dealing with Saul’s actual siege of the city. There’s more than a few paths here, however only one is going to allow you to move on to the last act, because even if you manage to get revenge on Saul and save Falavia, you still have Makros’ magic enslaving you.
Assuming you figure it out, your last challenge will be breaking Makros magic that binds you.
I liked this book quite a bit. Not many of these sort of books that let you play as the undead. More world lore expanded on for this series and the challenges in this book are about right. I have no complaints about this book and found it to be a solid adventure for this series.
Are you not entertained?, February 25, 2021For the third outing, the GA series moves away from its Orlandes setting a bit and focuses on another part of the world known as Rema which at one point used to be the equivalent of this world’s Roman Empire. Not so much any more by the time the books take place, but it’s still considered a major power.
You’re from one of the southern Orlandes cities that does a lot of trading with the Reman city states, one of those things you trade in are slaves. You’ve also been mildly sheltered all your life (Despite being trained as a soldier), so it’s a big surprise when your ship gets captured by the Remans and they take everyone as slaves. This would be considered an act of war, but that’s the least of your concerns when you’ve just been thrown into the arena as a gladiator.
The main plot is to survive the arena and escape back to your home city of Bosque in Orlandes. The first act is mainly escaping the arena with the help of other slaves, second act involves catching a boat ride back home and dealing with the problems that pop up with that. You’ll also discover some other sinister plots along the way. The book has a couple of winning endings depending on how you handle the first choice of combatants for the gladiator fight. The book in general has a few branching paths which will eventually link back up to the main path, so there’s still replay value here.
I already liked this one more than the last two books, mainly due to the pseudo Roman setting and slightly different set up for adventure. (You’re trying to escape from something rather than trying to kill something) I was reminded a bit of Trial of Champions from the FF series, but this one was WAY better.
While this story starts you off as slave, the book is actually pretty fair with the combat, skill checks and item hunts. I suppose this could be considered one of the “easier” books. Though I don’t consider that a bad thing and there’s still plenty of instadeath endings if you aren’t careful. I particularly liked the non-standard ending where you turn into a mer-person.
One disappointing thing is I was hoping the gladiator bit was going to be longer. Perhaps even a non-standard ending where you just end up preferring the life of one anyway (Eventually gaining your freedom via combat) However, that’s a very minor thing I was disappointed in since the rest of book is excellent.
Some improvements over the first, February 25, 2021The second book in the GA series already makes a few changes by changing the mode options a bit. Making “Classic” a bit more lenient with the bookmarks and adding an “Adventurer” mode which acts as a middle difficulty option between classic and casual.
Everything thing else remains the same mechanics wise.
This one takes place in a different part of the GA world, the other side of the continent of Orlandes in fact. You’re a miner heading back to to the city of Myr to see your family again, but along the way, you’re already hearing stories of a necromancer taking the city over. Naturally you’re a little concerned about this.
Doesn’t take long before you’re already in the thick of battle as goblyns (Yes, it’s spelled that way since the GA series tends to have all the same familiar fantasy races with just slightly different names) have been pillaging the area and as you soon learn, attacking the city of Myr. A majority of the adventure involves you getting into Myr and stopping Erid Buul who apparently is leading these goblyns as just one step in his plans.
If the first book resembled a fantasy version of a revenge action flick, this one resembles a fantasy version of Die Hard. You’re basically going through the half ruined goblyn infested city of Myr trying to get to your family and stopping Erid. He’s a bit more of a traditional “conquer the world” type, but he’s really only in the beginning stages hence why you still have a shot at beating him.
The name of the book gives away some of what you’ll be facing, which is the undead, but that isn’t necessarily apparent until a little later since the main force is goblyns. In fact you may start to wonder where the hell does the necromancer part come in given the severe lack of undead in the beginning, but they start showing up a bit more later.
Perhaps in an effort to pad it out a bit more, the game drops a lot of background when examining different tapestries or sculptures. There’s also quite a few places where you get multiple choices of doors or paths and they either ultimately loop back to one or you can’t open the doors at all. I felt like this could have been handled better.
This game also has a terrible oversight. There is a character that will help you if you provide him with certain information. This particular character pops up in a few different locations probably in an effort to make sure you don’t miss him (Still possible though). Now it’s entirely possible to gain the needed info before you actually meet him. However if this happens, you don’t get the option to tell him and you’ll be in a walking dead state. It’s pretty annoying.
The game decides to throw a bunch of difficult combat at the very end which can be pretty tough if you haven’t gotten the strongest weapons and armor.
While this one improved upon the GA system, the basic plot felt about as compelling as the first book, so I’d rank it about the same. It’s another solid adventure despite some of the mistakes that were made.
The beginning of Tinman’s original series, February 25, 2021While Tinman games is well known for reissuing the Fighting Fantasy books and updating them, I feel like their original Gamebook Adventures series which put them on the map in the first place doesn’t get near enough attention as it should.
It could of course be due to the rather uninspired name “Gamebook Adventures”. They really should have come up with something better, but hey at least it’s accurate I suppose.
Boring series name aside, there is no doubt that they did A LOT of world building even before they put out the first book. In pretty much every one of these books in the main menu area you can look through an extensive index of the world’s history, races, major cities, creatures and even a map.
While I know “info dumps” irritate a lot of people, they managed to implement them well enough here so as not to get in the way of the actual story. I actually appreciate more of this kind of thing since it make me care more about the adventures.
Honestly, with as much world building that was done in the GA series, it’s the closest thing to a “modern successor” to the FF series. The stat system is different, but I feel like what they did works better in this format than the FF stat system. The games typically give you the option of a “classic mode” and “Casual mode”.
Classic mode allows you to play more like a traditional gamebook, though you do get “3 bookmarks” which act as save points. Casual mode pretty much allows you to make choices even if they would be inaccessible to you and you have unlimited healing and bookmarks. It’s more so you can just enjoy the story.
And of course it wouldn’t be a Tinman game if you couldn’t unlock artwork and various achievements for things.
But enough with the basics of the GA mechanics and background, let’s get on with the first book in the series.
This adventure plays out more like a revenge action movie with a slight twist rather than a traditional “You’re an adventurer, go kill this evil overlord.” plot.
You start out drowning your sorrows in alcohol at some tavern due to your girlfriend breaking up with you. Hardly the typical beginning of an adventure! It gets going from there though as soon as you leave the tavern.
You’ll get mixed up in a plot that involves someone going around assassinating nobles and on top of everything else they’ve captured your ex which is the main motivator for you to get involved in the first place.
The first part of the adventure mostly involved finding out who to track down and where they’re going. This mostly takes place in the city of Orlandes. There’s a few branching ways this can be accomplished, the paths will link back up though assuming you’re successful. If you aren’t successful in acquiring the necessary information, you’ll be treated to some non-standard endings of your failure.
Second part of the adventure is traveling to the assassin’s place. There is one place in particular that you don’t want to miss out on visiting. In fact in this section, it’s probably just best to explore everything. (Well that’s good general advice for most IFs!)
The last part involves getting to the assassin’s lair and the final showdown with a twist added. While I won’t spoil it (Though it’s easy to guess) the twist sort of doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense. Or rather the plot seems a bit convoluted as far as the villain’s grand plot is concerned and it seems like it would have been easier to try a different approach than what they actually did.
Then again, this is a revenge action story, so maybe it just works that way.
In any case, it’s a solid first outing for the series. The story isn’t the most original, but the writing is fine. It isn’t perfect, but then neither was Warlock of Firetop Mountain.
Dungeon 2: Deathtrap Boogaloo, February 11, 2021Yet another one available through the Tinman games FF Classics app.
As mentioned in the title, this is a sequel of sorts since you’ll be participating in an all new dungeon created by Baron Sukumvit who has raised the reward because he’s just that confident that nobody is going to beat it this time.
But none of this really matters to you right now, because you’re a slave.
That’s right, while you were sailing from Port Blacksand to Oyster Bay (Presumably to visit Mungo’s memorial) you get captured by slavers.
People really need to learn that sailing from Port Blacksand never results in good things.
So you get transported to place called Blood Island that’s run by some petty tyrant called Lord Carnuss who is making all his slaves fight for his amusement, but also to see which one is the toughest so he can send them through his brother’s dungeon because he wants to show him up.
Yeah the baron apparently has an even more messed up brother also with too much money and time on his hands.
Since he wrote the first one, it’s not surprising that Ian wrote this one too. It also shouldn’t be surprising that you’re in for a series of tough battles right from the start. The item hunting won’t begin until a little later though.
So the first part of the adventure is basically being a gladiator. Here you’ll encounter a few instant deaths while you’re going through all the tests. These include a race and jumping over burning coals while wear heavy sacks on your back. Timed jumping and ducking some blade machine. A blindfolded gladiator match involving several contestants. A regular gladiator match with some big monster.
Assuming you manage to survive all this, you vow to not forget all the other slaves that died for Carnuss’ amusement and get revenge.
So Carnuss and crew transports you to Fang where his brother is getting the dungeon festival started. The other contestants are a dwarf noble, a elf prince, an eastern warlord and a chaos champion. Apparently this contest attracted a higher class of participants than the last time around.
You’re thrown in the dungeon with nothing but a sword which is pretty short sighted of Carnuss if he wants you to win all for the purpose of showing up his brother. He could have given you a few extra things to help you out, but he doesn’t believe in playing as a filthy casual I guess.
From here on as you might expect, it’s a dungeon crawl. Start item hunting because the main thing you have to collect are these little gold rings. You don’t get told you need to do it either, because Ian wrote this and screw you if you can’t keep up. There are a few riddle bits too.
Much like the first dungeon, the encounters aren’t exactly the most memorable. I mean there are a crapload of tough battles and instant death paths, but it's just so common and expected here that’s its hardly worth dwelling on.
The baron must have gotten a deal with a necromancer’s guild or something this time because it seems like there are a lot more undead running about. A tougher battle is with a skeleton king on a horse where you need a blunt weapon to do the normal amount of damage to him. Another encounter is with a Lich Queen. Again even the monsters are royalty this time around.
You’ll also have some encounters with the other contestants, but unlike the first dungeon you don’t get to interact with any of them like you did with Throm. In fact most will just attack you immediately.
Other notable encounters I guess are with the trial masters. One of which is some Buddha looking dude who gives you some tests. Failing any of these tests either means death or enslavement to work as a dungeon flunky meaning you just trade one form of slavery for another.
The other trial master is a wizard who asks you how many rings you’ve collected. This part is really longer than it needs to be since he asks several questions about how many you exactly have. Give the wrong number and he'll call you a loser and kill you. (No really, he'll actually call you a loser) In fact this bit even has an anti-cheat number which if you give a particular answer he'll call you a liar since there was no way you would find that number.
If you got that far, now you have to do some sort of number puzzle with them and turn to the correct number. Fail and you die. With all the puzzle and riddle stuff in this book, I thought I was playing an Ian written story not a UK Steve one.
Assuming you pass THAT, you’re almost out. Honestly though that whole bit could have been cut down by the wizard asking you if you had the correct number of rings from the start and then killing you if you didn’t.
Soon after that you’ll get one more "test" one choice leading to instant death and the other leading out since the baron loves trolling people at the last moment. Finding the exit you'll get bunch of cheers and the usual surprise by Baron Sukumvit who wasn’t expecting anyone to win again.
When Sukumvit is about to hand you the prize, his brother Carnuss steps up and claims that because you’re his slave that he represented him and as such HE gets the twenty-thousand gold.
Nobody is exactly thrilled with this using a ringer crap even if there isn’t any specific rule against it. However since Sukumvit doesn’t like his brother anyway, he changes the rules by giving an additional to the reward to the winner by granting a wish. Naturally you say your wish is to avenge all the dead slaves and fight Lord Carnuss.
Carnuss of course protests, but he’s shouted down by the crowd and they won’t let him off the stage when he tries to leave. Since he runs the risk of getting lynched he draws his weapon saying “So be it!”
Despite everything, he’s actually no push over in combat. Just had a strong sense of self-preservation and not wanting to be bothered to dirty his own hands.
So if you kill Lord Carnuss you get your revenge, your prize money and a lot of warm and fuzzies for winning in the first place. It then mentions that it’s more gold than you could ever live on by yourself, so you get the idea to hire an army to conquer the unknown lands past the Moonstone Hills since you’ve got the coin to do it.
Now, think about the wording. It didn’t say explore. It clearly said conquer with an army.
Apparently you were a villain protagonist all along.
That’s the book.
Well this one was another one I didn’t really “properly” finish. Just sort of by passed some of the stuff I needed and didn’t have most of the time.
I can’t say this is one I was really into all that much. I was never big on the first deathtrap dungeon so I wasn’t big on this one either. Really I found the more interesting part of this book was the beginning where you’re doing gladiator stuff. Probably should have just focused a whole book on that instead.
As for Lord Carnuss as the main villain? I feel like he was one of the better ones. At least you have a personal reason to hate him since he enslaved you whereas in other books you’re often just being told “Hey this guy is an evil overlord, you need to go kill him.” (Or in Zagor’s case, he’s minding his own business and you just invade his home and murder the hell out of him.)
It’s an okay book, but it’s nothing too special.
Spoiler: This entire adventure is a dungeon crawl, February 11, 2021Another one available through the Tinman Games FF Classics app.
DD is one of those books that tends to be one of the favorites in the FF series. It’s not bad and I certainly enjoyed it, but I never got the big deal about it.
The premise is a guy named Baron Sukumvit holds this Trial of Champions event in the city known as Fang. Because he’s a rich jerk with a lot of time and money on his hands, he’s created this insanely dangerous dungeon for this purpose. People enter and if they survive then they win ten-thousand gold. If they fail, then they die.
So far nobody has won and being the ego/greed driven adventurer you are, you decide to try your luck.
Yeah, it’s basically like a fantasy version of any of those 80s scifi movies where you got a gamshow based around trying to survive to the end. Surprised they didn’t actually put it in a scifi setting actually, but probably for the best that they didn’t.
Despite the simple premise, this is where the series started connecting other books and creating a greater world. It mentions the city of Fang being located close to Port Blacksand and few other background lore things.
Before you enter, it also mentions some of the other contestants. One of them is an armored knight, two of them are barbarians, one is an elven girl, and another is some ninja dude. And you’ll meet most of them all again at some point.
As to be expected for a book called Deathtrap Dungeon, the book is incredibly punishing. Having high stats is sort of vital due to some tough battles, but there are a lot of instant death scenarios. Some of them can be easily avoided provided you aren’t retarded like say crawling into a hole where a giant rock grub came out of. (Yes, you can actually do that)
Most of the encounters you have are either fights or some room where you have to make a skill check due to traps. While there are encounters that stand out, most of memorable ones involve you bumping into the other contestants.
You’ll also bump into a few trial masters that are in key parts of the dungeon. Sometimes they just give you a riddle to solve, but in one instance you have to under go a series tests, which I’ll get to in a moment.
The dungeon could be said to be divided into two sections. The only real difference is the second part is a little more lethal and you might have uncovered the fact that you need 3 gems to pass the final test.
Yeah, Ian with his item hunt again. Might have helped had you KNOWN about collecting vital gems from the start, but then again maybe it's just assumed that as a filthy adventurer you’re going to be snatching any valuables you can anyway.
So getting back to the first half of the dungeon, you’ll actually encounter one of the barbarian contestants known as Throm. The pair of you will actually agree to work together for awhile which is a bit of a first in the FF series to be traveling with someone.
Throm’s not too much of a talker though and you'll probably want to keep in mind that for this contest, THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE winner and eventually you'll part ways after a major encounter with one of the trial masters.
Around this point you move on the second phase of the dungeon, which I said seems a bit more lethal. A lot more instant death parts and tough battles, one of which is a freaking T-Rex, though for some reason they call it a Pit Fiend. (Because it’s in a giant pit I guess) You can avoid a direct fight with some luck and some skill checks as I remember.
It is also at this point you’ll bump into the last remaining contestants at some point. One of them even has one of the gems and that one is an unmissable encounter so it's sort of a "gimme" assuming you manage to defeat them.
One encounter of note that isn’t contestant related is one where you bump into a female troll who wants payment for pulling you up on a primitive elevator. You can fight her, pay her or talk your way out of it. Talking is amusing since you look about the room and see a picture of a male troll and make reference to it. She tells you that the picture is of her brother…Sourbelly! She then gushes about being very proud of him being a guard in Port Blacksand.
Assuming you have all the gems, there's still a last bit with the final trial master. Failing to have all the gems leads to a non-standard ending of being a flunky for that trial master and remaining trapped in the dungeon. Which couldn’t be a worse fate for an adventurer seeing as you’ll be working a regular 9 to 5 job.
If you have all the gems then you have to put them in correct order. This is sort of a call back to the Firetop key puzzle. Get them in the wrong order and you suffer damage, but if you survive it, you keep getting chances to put them in the correct order.
After you’re done messing around with the gems and finally get them right, you'll eventually emerge victorious to a cheering crowd and the baron has no option but to give you your prize. I can only guess that this crowd was somehow watching all this stuff unfold on perhaps a giant crystal ball.
There really isn’t a “final bad guy” to fight. I suppose is the closest thing to one is the last surviving contestant since it's a pretty tough battle and near the end of the adventure. There's also a tough fight with a manticore towards the end too.
But since it’s the dungeon that’s trying to kill you the entire story, that could be considered the “main bad guy.”
In any case, as I said I never got the hype with this one, but its still one of the better FF books.
One of the best FF books, February 11, 2021This is another one available through the Tinman FF Classics app.
After playing the disappointing Starship Traveller book, this one was more enjoyable as I was back on the world of Titan again and chopping things up with a sword.
The story has a typical set up. You’re an adventurer, you get hired by the town of Silverton to get help from a wizard by the name of Nicodemus to stop an evil necromancer called Zanbar Bone from terrorizing the place and such.
Nicodemus however lives in Port Blacksand which is basically the hive of scum and villainy of the land so you’ll have to brave the infamous city of thieves.
Despite how generic this all sounds, this is probably one of my favorite books. Most of the setting is entirely in Port Blacksand so it’s a “city crawl” but is pretty rich with varied encounters.
I'd definitely say Port Blacksand did inspire a few things in my own writing of crime infested fantasy cities.
One thing that’s a little odd, is there are many sections of the book where you get the option to just walk into some private home to explore. While if you were playing as thief this might make a little more sense, but then again as an adventurer I suppose it isn’t too far fetched that you’re just going in places uninvited and taking stuff anyway.
Still, in a place known as the city of thieves, you’d think more people would at least lock their doors, though given some of the messed up encounters, maybe common thieves are rolling dice on survival by breaking in anyway.
Really going on about the encounters would be a section unto itself. Most of it is when you’re breaking and entering these private homes.
A funny one is somebody asking who it is and if you say “tax man” they just toss a bag of coins at you from the next room without even looking. You take them and leave. There's also a few creepy encounters (With accompanying pictures!) which might make you think twice about just blundering into people's homes.
The adventure itself is sort of divided into three parts. The first part is trying to find Nicodemus. Eventually when you get to the middle of city divided by a bridge you find out he’s living under said bridge. So you go there to talk to him.
And in typical fashion for these wizards, he wants to do the bare minimum to actually help you. He tells you he’s old and doesn’t want to leave his house (can’t say I blame him) but he’ll tell you how to kill Zanbar Bone. You’ll need Lotus Flower, A black pearl, and hag’s hair mixed together to grind in his eyes. But first you’ll need a a silver arrow to shoot into his heart so you can paralyze him first. Plus you’ll need to get a unicorn tattooed on your head. (I swear I think Nico is messing with you on that last one)
So begins the second part of the adventure, where you're seeking out all these things in the second half of the city. As you can tell Ian wrote this one seeing you now have an item hunt to do with no indication where any of this stuff might be.
Eventually your time in the city will come to an end when every eventual route leads to two troll guards by the name of Fatnose and Sourbelly. They mess with you immediately and no matter what you say or do, you're going to have to leave the city. (The easy way or hard way)
Whatever you do, you won’t be in Blacksand anymore and it’ll ask you if you managed to get all the needed items. If you didn’t you instantly fail since you can’t risk going back into Blacksand now. (Or at least you’re not going to risk it)
If you managed to get everything, the end game begins, but first a new wrinkle!
As you’re making your way to Zanbar’s lair, you get a message from Nico via carrier bird telling you that you only need grind up two of the three items to kill Bone.
This means now you have to play a guessing game of which three items to grind up since Nico is a senile old coot and can’t remember. This apparently ticked a lot of people off, but given how most of these books go with their one true path mode of operation, this sort of thing is hardly surprising.
So after cursing Nico a bit you set off to Zanbar’s place. This part is pretty simple. You get into some fights with undead, before locating Zanbar, but that’s about it.
Anyway so there’s the final showdown Zanbar. You actually need an item that Nico didn’t tell you to go find, but you need it anyway to not get instant death. You can find it in Zanbar’s place though because evil overlords always keep the item that can mess them up close by.
The showdown is pretty quick. There's no complicated duel like you might get with Zagor or Dire, it's just having the right item combos and passing a skill check and you'll win. If not, Zanbar will kill you instantly with his life draining lich powers.
If you avoid such a fate, you'll go back to Silverton and get a bunch of praise as usual.
As I said while the basic plot of saving some dumb little town from the local magical bully doesn’t sound like much, the adventure through Port Blacksand is where all the cool stuff happens.
Zanbar seemed like a cool enough overlord (He looks a bit like a typical skeletal lich from the pic of him), but he seems a little disjointed from the rest of the adventure unlike say Zagor or Dire.
After you’re done with the city part of the adventure, going to kill ol’ Zanbar seems almost like an afterthought.
Of course as I said, I still think this one of the top FF books set in the world of Titan.
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