Clash of the Princes playthrough

Originally published at http://fightyourfantasy.blogspot.co.uk/ by Justin MacCormack - Please be sure to check out the original article, and support the author by purchasing his latest book, "Return to 'Return to Oz', and other tales".

Written by Andrew Chapman and Martin Allen, artwork by John Blanche

Clash of the Princes is perhaps the most unique of the Fighting Fantasy series. It's slightly rarer than Steve Jackson's Sorcery series, and is the only FF book (outside of Fighting Fantasy, The Riddling Reaver, and Dungeoneer/Blacksand/Allansia) that have multiplayer capabilities. It also predates these multiplayer books by several years, I believe. What is the big pull for this book? Well, it's two-player. And it's two books.

Two-player gamebooks weren't unknown, but were better known under the 'Duel Masters' series, which really captured and perfected their form. With Clash of the Princes, each book could be played solo, unlike the 'Duel Masters' series. But the real heart of Clash of the Princes was the impression of freedom that it gave the players. The very first choice you make in the game, for instance, is if you want to work together or not.

But as I said, it's also one of the rarer Fighting Fantasy adventures. This is mainly because it was sold as a box set of both books. Many bookstores simply didn't know what to do with this big box - split them up? Display them seperate? And then there was the price tag, which was a hefty £3.50. Can you imagine, two books costing that much? For 1986, that was crazy money. Let's say that you're 9 years old, your parents usually can be coaxed into indulging you with a Fighting Fantasy book for £2 every couple months or so. Now try begging them for one that's almost twice that much!

 

Of course, books don't cost anywhere near that little these days. Except for my book, that is - available on Kindle now, if you're interested.

But anyway, the first book (The Warrior's Way) sets you as Clovis, fighter-prince. The second book (The Warlock's Way) sets you as Lothar, mage-prince. Both princes are sent out into a world full of crazy mad things that want to kill them, and told to find a magic gem in order to prove that they are worthy of ruling their nation. I am unsure if this is a good means to select a ruler. On one hand, I doubt that David Cameron could complete a quest any more dangerous than kicking a disabled person. On the other hand, I can't really picture Clovis's great-grantfather, Mad Douglas the Demented, would have much grasp on the economic nuances of ruling an entire empire when his only claim to rulership is that he headbutted a gryphon to death and nicked its ruby.

Clovis, the warrior, plays exactly the same as your typical Fighting Fantasy adventurer. Lothar, the warrior, has less skill points - but makes up for this with a number of magic points, which he can use either when the text allows him to cast a spell, or before combat to give him a variety of stat boosts or injure his opponent. I'd generally suggest that of the two players, the less experienced FF player take Clovis for the first few playthroughs.

 

Me and my partner decided to give this a shot. In order to keep both players synched up, we are required to record Status and Action scores. Both scores are essentially little more than flagpoints, but they work very smoothly. For instance, we might come to a section where Lothar has the chance to lay a trap for Clovis. If he does, he would change one of these two scores to a set number, and then continue on his way. When Clovis gets to that point, he is asked to look and see what number is set. If the score is set to the number associated with the trap being set, then Clovis would fall into the trap - otherwise, play continues as normal. This method of synching is very smooth and works surprisingly well.

As an example for this - the first choice we are asked to make is to decide if we want to travel together. I was playing Lothar, my partner was playing Clovis. Lothar wanted to travel together, so the text told me to change the Action score, and wait until the Status score changed. When Lothar changed the Status score, the text told me to turn to a paragraph ("If the Status score changes to X, turn to section Y. If it changes to anything else, turn to section Z.") Section Z would mean that Clovis didn't want to journey wth me and ran off on his own. You follow? No? Tough!

We decided mutually to travel off together. It wasn't long before we come across a villager who tells us that his home has been over-run with orcs. Those pesky orcs, they're worse than woodlice. We decide to split up, with Clovis charging in through the door whilst Lothar opens the window and chucks spells into the house, assuming that the villager doesn't mind the inside of his home being consumed in a myriad of fireball spells. Unfortunately, Lothar's plan fell apart when he got caught in a magical rope snare that was waiting at the window, leaving Clovis to chop his way through a bunch of unhappy orcs.

Clovis freed poor Lothar and claimed the majority of the loot for his trouble. Together the two hurried along to their next location, a large bridge across a vast river. The bridge, more a small fortress, had an upstairs area which was abandoned. Together the two princes hurried upstairs, only for Clovis to be caught by a giant moth. Lothar saved the day by turning the moth into a mouse (he had the option to cast a fire spell, but given that Clovis' player was screaming for him not to use any fire because that would result in surely certain death, he went for the more sensible choice of spells). Lothar took some of the moth's silk as a reward, and then promptly fell down a hole in the floor and got swept away by the river.

With both princes seperated, they began their adventures apart. Clovis crosses the bridge and ventured north, going onwards until his path ventured into a small valley. The walls of the valley grew narrower and narrower, until they were wide enough for only one person to walk. Then Clovis seen someone in the distance. It was himself.

Realising that he was standing in front of a giant mirror that some mad bugger had installed in the middle of a ravine (and really, who does all this stuff? Fighting Fantasy books are replete with odd bits of geographical features that could only have been put there by mad buggers), Clovis stands around looking confused for a while. Then his reflection steps out from the mirror and tries to kill him. It's a tough fight, because the mirror image had the same stats as Clovis, but Clovis is able to win through. No sooner has he killed his reflection, however, than Clovis begins to fade away. Without a mirror of his own to create a new reflection, he fades out of existence.

Lothar, meanwhile, fares no better. He drags himself out of the river and trecks across the landscape for a while until he encounters a lake. A group of boatmen tell him that it is the Lake Of Death (with capital letters, no less), and that it is filled with venemous, flesh-eating fish, which are also invisible!

Lothar, being no rube, tells then "You're having a laugh, mate. Pull the other one!". He isn't stupid enough to fall for such a blatantly fake and utterly moronic story, especially not when it's coming from a bunch of boatmen who are asking for almost every penny Lothar has in order to ride him across the lake, which is only a yard deep anyway. So the warlock-prince wades out into the lake to cross it. Whereupon he is promtly eaten by venomous flesh-eating invisible fish.

So ended the royal line.

I like to think that in the aftermath of this tragedy, the regent decrees an end to mad buggers installing geographical features at random and a cull on all implausable nonsensical monsters. But frankly, that wouldn't be half as much fun. Early FF books really captured this sense of whimsical madness perfectly, and this is a wonderful example.

Clash of the Princes plays spectacularly. It has a whimsical atmosphere and a system that compliments it excellently. It is also fiendishly difficult in the traditional Fighting Fantasy manner. Playing it is a joy - the game advises that you play in silence and only talk with the other player when instructed to, but we had so much fun comparing the madness that occured when we went our seperate ways that we couldn't resist speaking. I would recommend that if you love your Fighting Fantasy books, scrape your way through ebay to find a copy of this one. It tends to go for about £15 these days, but it's worth it.

Advanced Fighting Fantasy short adventure

Hello gamebookers!

I have a lot to write about at the moment, but a Fighting Fantasy Fest report will be here at some point.  For the time being, you could spend next week reading the Windhammer competition entries, which will be out on the 14th September.

Or you can play Heavy Metal Thunder.

In the mean time, here is the short adventure I ran at Fighting Fantasy Fest, which I tried to fit into an hour, but it went a little over (this was also with pregenerated characters).  It would make quite a good one shot as well as a prequel to a bigger adventure (and since it starts in Anvil, that adventure could be Firetop Mountain).

I made a longer version of this adventure, which will appear in Fighting Fantazine.

Happy gamebooking!

Heavy Metal Thunder

Okay, so this punk-ass tries to cave in your skull - crack - but you're, like, too badass to die, so you break out a shotgun and point it right between the poor mofo's eyes, and you're like, "Yeah, bitch, you think it's that easy to - "

Whoa. Sorry. I've just been in a really gung-ho mood ever since I read Heavy Metal Thunder. Let me take a minute to calm down...

Okay, so this time around I'm talking about Kyle B. Stiff's Heavy Metal Thunder. It's the second app from Barcelona-based Cubus Games. Their first release, The Sinister Fairground, was in a comedy-horror vein. And it was excellent (read my review of it here). This time around, they've gone sci-fi.

And what great sci-fi it is. You take the role of a member of the Black Lance Legion of elite jetpack soldiers, humanity's first and only line of defence against the nebulous extraterrestrial Invaders. You play Mr Wiggles (the name isn't permanent), a wounded amnesiac who struggles to recover his memory, and to return to his home before the Invaders can destroy it. It's grim stuff - what small pockets of humanity remain are on the run; you aren't fighting for victory, but for revenge.

Throughout, there's very much a theme that only the strongest can survive - and as Mr Wiggles strives to do just that, the story presents some probing choices weighing mercy against practicality. Will you kick a man off your spaceship so that you have more food for yourself? Or will you welcome him on board, even though he doesn't seem to have any useful skills? And there's a dark undercurrent that hints that you've been somehow 'programmed' to feel a certain aggressivity in specific situations. That's just begging for more development in sequels to come.

There are some lovely, original touches throughout the story - without being too spoilery, my own favourite would be the long-haul flight through space wearing only a little short-range jetpack, and towing a huge net of food and supplies behind you. Excellent stuff. Or, for instance, a section in which another jetpack soldier's radio is broken out in the vacuum of space, so you have to touch your helmet against his in order for them to convey sound. There are a bunch of fantastic little details like that. Of course, you should expect some pseudoscience with your sci-fi, and the pseudoscience here is well thought out, and credible - the 'fat mass' generators that create gravity aboard spaceships, for example. Kudos to Mr Stiff for that (that must be a fake name...).

Okay, a few technical points. Game mechanics: stats are a bit D&D-esque (Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, Will, Charisma, as well as Zero-G Combat and 1-G Combat), but alongside that you can also learn a bunch of skills (Jetpack, Computers, Xenobiology, Piloting etc.). You gain experience as you go along, and level up, allowing you to increase stats and pick new skills. And it's all pretty well balanced; as with a lot of good RPG systems, you often find yourself just a little short of the next level up, and craving more Exp, more Exp, more Exp... Combat and skill/stat tests require you to roll virtual dice - and, while I'm not a big fan of dice-rolling in apps, these are some pretty funky digital dice. Also, just like in The Sinister Fairground, you gain Hero points as you go along, which allow you to retry, or automatically succeed in, failed tests. Unusually for a gamebook (and this is adapted from the Heavy Metal Thunder gamebook), the story is dialogue-heavy, and each 'page' is usually quite long. Me, I quite like that, and I suspect that Cubus have intentionally tried to do away with a lot of redundant screen-tapping. The artwork is good, overall - the pictures of spaceships, or planets, or machinery, are beautiful; the pictures of people are a mixed bag. And the game motor looks great, and is simple to use - it's another step up from The Sinister Fairground, in fact.

Does the game have any bad points? Not so many. As I hinted at above, sometimes the tone of the narrative and dialogue is just suuuuuper-macho, and it gets a bit tiring. And there are a few too many T-junction choices for my taste. Also, I felt a bit frustrated that a certain key plot thread regarding Wiggles' amnesia seemed to go unresolved. Maybe that's just the way I played the game, though. Maybe I did something wrong; only future playthroughs will tell.

So, overall verdict: great, great, great. Even better than The Sinister Fairground, which was brilliant. Cubus are really starting to establish themselves as makers of awesome interactive fiction apps. Congrats to them, and to the spuriously-named Kyle B. Stiff for writing such a great story.

Trivia of the day: 'Heavy Metal Thunder'? Also an album by Saxon.

(Review by Paul Gresty)  

Back from Fighting Fantasy Fest

Howdy gamebookers! I'm back from Fighting Fantasy Fest.  I will do a proper write up later, but there's something I want to ask people now.

Like everyone, I'm feeling energised by attending the amazing Fest (many thanks and congratulations Jonathan Green!) One thing I've been thinking that was also mentioned by Marc Wilson was that there is a lot of great gamebook stuff out there, but it is quite disparate and there isn't really a central gamebook place. A few forums pop up then go quiet. Marc and I also get emails from people who want feedback for their gamebooks, but we are both too busy to attend to all of them. However, there is a great crowd here and a central gamebooks place would be awesome - the question is, where could it be? Any ideas - Facebook, a forum, something else?

And don't forget that the Windhammer entries will be released on the 14th September!

Blood of the Zombies playthrough

Originally published at http://fightyourfantasy.blogspot.co.uk/ by Justin MacCormack - Please be sure to check out the original article, and support the author by purchasing his latest book, "Return to 'Return to Oz', and other tales".

Written by Ian Livingstone, Artwork by Kevin Crossley

Heeeere's Zombie-Johnny!

Hmm, wouldn't it be interesting if Blood of the Zombies is set in the same universe as House of Hell? Gingrich Yurr could have been an old friend of the Earl of Drummer. Neat!

Blood of the Zombies is the most recent of the Fighting Fantasy games, and the second set in a modern world. It was released for the series' 30th anniversary, and you no doubt already know this anyway. Otherwise, why would you be reading this? My copy must be second-hand, because it has someone's name written inside it, Ian something-or-other. Honestly, some people!

Anyway, the biggest thing you'll notice in this book is that the combat system has been completely reworked. Now, you have only one stat - stamina. Each zombie you encounter has only one stamina point, meaning that each hit you deal will kill one zombie. How many you can hit in each turn is determined by the type of weapon you have - a baseball bat deals 1 dice worth of damage, while a shotgun will deal 1 dice + 5 points of damage. You make your attack first in each turn, and then you receive one point of stamina damage for each zombie that is still surviving.

The remake did not happen.

This means that, just like in the classic zombie Romero movies, it is fairly easy to dispatch one or two zombies on their own, but far harder to deal with them in swarms. And speaking of Romero zombies, let me just say here - fast zombies are stupid. They're not scary, they're just generic monsters that jump out at the characters. The reason Romero's slow zombies are scary is because you underestimate them. On their own, a single one is no threat. So you don't worry about it. If there's two of them, well, still no real threat, they're easy enough to get rid of. When it gets to five or six of them, well, it could be worse... but because you underestimated them when there were only a few, their numbers grew. You became complacent. Like the birds in 'The Birds', the next time you glance their way, there are hundreds of them. And suddenly they don't seem so silly any more.

And you have nobody to blame for that, because you underestimated them. Your worst enemy wasn't the zombies, it was yourself. Which hits right in with another key theme of Romero's work - that the real threat doesn't come from the zombies, but from human nature.

Do you think this will help me out at all during the game? Here's a clue - NOOOOOOOOOOOOPE!!!!!!!!!!

Pictured: Not the same Otto

I wake up in a cell in the basement of a dingy old castle. After having been kidnapped during my explorations in Romania, I am being kept alive for an unknown reason. My guard, a gruff and cruel man by the name of Otto, is the only light in my otherwise dreary daily cycle, and by 'light' I mean 'person who comes into my cell and kicks me'.

One day, after drinking down a bowl of gruel with my feet (and being the envy of contortionists around the world while I do so), I decide that enough is enough and tell Otto that he smells like a bag of dead frogs. This sends him into a raging fury, during which time I kick him in the gut and grab his keys for my shackles. I lock him up in my place, and proceed to interrogate Otto.

He tells me that he is a poor man who is treated cruelly by his evil master, Gingrich Yurr, and is kept here as a virtual prisoner himself. Awww, poor Otto. I feel so sorry for him that I almost want to not kick him in the ribs a few times in revenge. I leave, and soon find my way into Otto's bedchamber. I proceed to raid his entire belongings, steal a stylish backpack he happens to own, and snarf down what's left of Otto's dinner. Trust me, the guy deserves it.

Otto's room also contained a small penknife, which I took as a weapon, because I currently had nothing at all to my name. I also helped myself to his whole wealth of $15, and a piece of string. Because string is the most useful thing in the world. No, really, you try escaping from a castle full of zombies without some string!

Toddling down the hallway, I found a small bag that contained some matches, a pen, and a key with a number '9' engraved on it. One thing I've learned is that keys with numbers on them are always useful. Eventually I found my way into a store room, which to my surprise was inhabited. Two of Gingrich's goons, who didn't seem the most loyal of chaps, were quite willing to tell me his entire evil plan - for a small bribe, of course. Ah, good to know that money still buys henchmen loyalty. Here's what they told me...

Gingrich Yurr is evil, and is amassing an army of zombies in order to take over the world.

Y'know, sometimes I think that these insane villains need to watch a movie sometime. Just so that they can get an idea about how this is all going to turn out. The henchmen then tells me that I will need to kill EVERY SINGLE ONE of the zombies. There's even a space in my sheet to record how many zombies I kill. So I'm immediately left with a feeling that this is going to be very, very important. I'm then given the chance to buy some of his supplies, so I spent my remaining $5 on a hacksaw, a pair of rubber gloves, some batteries, glue, and sticky tape. I think these are sensible choices, I mean, it's still cheaper than my local hardware store!

Got my bat, ready for any zombies I run across.
What about you?

Thanking him for helping me in my work of saving the whole of humanity from the horrors of the undead (and charging me money while he does it!), I head on my way and soon find my way into the launderette. I'll say one thing about Yurr, he's fully planned out what he's going to need in this castle. Seems that someone left a sports bag in here, which contains my first really useful weapon - a baseball bat. Sure, it's not a cricket bat (which anyone who's seen Shaun of the Dead will tell you, is the best thing for taking care of zombies), but it'll do in a pinch.

Speaking of which, two zombies burst out of the cupboard in back of the launderette. My first encounter with them, and the dice are on my side, I manage to beat them both down with my newly-acquired bat without breaking a sweat. Nice work!. I finish putting on a change of clothes, grab some items out of the cupboard (a first aid kit and some bullets, which will be very useful if I ever find a gun) and make my way out of the room.

I highly recommend
checking out this excellent
zombie flick by Lucio Fulci

I make my way down the hallway, deciding not to open one small door I encounter, and eventually come across a stale old mattress that's resting against the wall and obviously blocking a doorway. I push it out of the way and head through the hidden doorway, finding my way into an old and disused workshop. Before I even have a chance to look around, I am set upon by a swarm of eight zombies. I'm able to dispatch five of them in the first round, and the others in the second round of combat, leaving my health down by three points. As you see, taking on a large number of them at a time can be pretty deadly, and I'm hoping to find something better soon.

Taking a pair of blacksmithing tongs with me, I find a door hidden behind a curtain. It's locked, but the key I found earlier unlocks it without any trouble, leading into a coal storage room. Buried in the coal, I find a grappling hook - making me wonder why anyone would bury a grappling hook in a pile of coal? I press on into the boiler room, where I'm able to bandage up my wrists (still sore from being chained up for so long) and dispatch three other zombies before I find a real treasure - a crowbar. If my hunch is right, this crowbar is going to be very useful in this adventure!

I follow the doorway back out of the boiler room and emerge into a main hallway of the castle. I'm instantly beset by four more zombies, and this time my dice are not too lucky. I'm forced to use my medkit from earlier to patch myself up. But my perseverance is rewarded, because on one of the zombies I'm fortunate enough to find my first real strong weapon of the game - a pistol. I will call her 'Zombie-Killer the first', and she will claim many deadites.

The crowbar is instantly useful because I find a wooden crate in the hallway, which contains two grenades. These are going to be awesome, dealing 2d6+1 damage each. Sadly, I have to part with one of them very soon. I pry open a manhole cover that leads down into the sewers, thinking that it's unlikely that the zombies will have got so far down into the bowels of the castle. As I head down, I'm beset by a creature that isn't quite zombie, but certainly isn't human - a pack of fifteen giant mutated rats. Sadly there's too many for me to be confident in shooting the lot, so I lob a grenade down into the tunnel to clear them out. This does a good job, and I'm able to clear up the remaining rats with my pistol.

My hope of the sewers being empty of zombies proves to be a pipe dream though, as I soon find two of them lurking in the tunnels. After shooting them down, I notice that one of them is carrying a locket that belongs to a woman called Amy Fletcher. I'm hoping this will be of some use to someone, but probably not for a while yet. I push on through the sewers, until the tunnel becomes too narrow, and my hopes of escaping from the castle by means of the sewer tunnels evaporates. I do, however, stumble across a scrap of paper that contains the combination lock for a safe, should I ever need it.

The face of a madman!

Emerging from the sewer, I swallow my sadness at having never met any mutant turtles and wonder how high my dry cleaning bill will be this month. Squealching through the hallway, it's not long before I see a painting on the wall of a man. He has a cruel glare in his eyes, a flashy sports car in the background, and is holding a white rabbit. It's a painting of Gingrich Yurr, which tells me that I'm pretty sure he had the rabbit for dinner later that same day. Even better, behind the painting I find a hidden cabinet, which contains... a shotgun! Groovy!

I will call my new shotgun 'Zombie-Killer the second'.

After refreshing myself in the cleaner's cupboard, I start to head up the stairway when I run into an encounter that would no doubt kill me outright had I not found my trusted Zombie-Killer the second. A swarm of twelve zombies meet me on the stairway, each dragging weapons with them, each strong enough to deal two damage points rather than a simple one! This fight is rough, and although I'm tempted to use my grenade, I'm still able to emerge victorious without wasting it. But my health is down by almost a half at this point. I hope I'll be able to find another health kit soon.

I get to the top of the stairs, and soon find my way into the games room. I like the games room, because it has a shelf full of Fighting Fantasy books which I could sit and read. Maybe it should be called the 'breaking the fourth wall' room. Sadly, the only thing I find in this room that's of any immediate use (aside from a copy of Warlock of Firetop Mountain) is a safe box which is locked with a key that I do not possess. Sadly, I leave the room, wishing I could stay and play a few rounds of Arkham Horror.

All we want to do is eat your brains
we're not unreasonable, I mean
no-one's gonna eat your eyes...

As I enter the next room, my trusty crowbar betrays me. It slips on the locked door and hits myself on the knee, knocking my stamina down to eight. After I burst the lock open, I find that this new room holds a swarm of seventeen zombies... yikes! The book (wisely) advises that I chuck my last grenade into the room. I do so, and... what kind of sound do exploding zombies make, do you think? It's easy to pick off the remaining ones, and for my effort I am rewarded with being able to retrieve a box from the room. It contains $15, an empty plastic bottle, and bullets that I already have. I feel like I wish I had skipped this room and kept my grenade.

I keep on walking down the hallway, when I come to a box that has a note pinned to it, which reads 'do not open'. At first I'm about to open it, but then I think, who wrote the note? It's not a zombie, so it must have been a person. And I assume that they'll have put the note on there for a reason, so I guess that maybe the box contains a pack of flesh-eating zombie ferrets or something. I leave it alone, and enter the library.

Dispatching two more zombies, I manage to find a rather interesting book that documents the history of zombies from their days of carribean myth. I also find a hidden switch which, when I push it, fires a poison dart into the back of my head. Why would you have this sort of thing in your castle? Oy... My stamina's now down three, so I guess that I'm going to either die or find a health pack real soon. I keep bumbling around with the switch until it makes a hidden doorway slide open.

I'm pretty excited when I enter this secret passageway, as I'm hoping it'll lead me to a room full of health kits and grenades. Instead, it leads me to a room in which 19 zombies are locked. They break loose. The following death scene is reminiscent of Dawn of the Dead, so I'm sure to shout "Choke on them" to whichever zombie is eating my leg.

I can't complain. I played a gamebook called 'Blood of the Zombies', and got eaten by zombies. There is nothing about this that is not perfectly in keeping with the theme of the game.

I loved this gamebook, it is fiendishly difficult just as I'd expected from Livingstone. I killed 50 zombies with this new combat system, and the way in which it works means that the player spends a lot more of their time and focus on exploration and item hunting. It's not a combat system that would work in all FF books, or indeed most FF books, but because we're dealing with zombies here (and remembering what I said earlier about them being a threat when in a swarm), it works. And I killed 50 zombies. Fifty! C'mon, that's pretty impressive, isn't it? Admit it, it's better than you'd have expected, eh?

The atmosphere is lovely, the artwork is first-rate, the way it incorporates a modern setting while remaining true to the 'dungeon crawl' core is excellently executed, and this is definitely an instant classic of the Fighting Fantasy series. Seriously, play this.

Spectral Stalkers playthrough

Originally published at http://fightyourfantasy.blogspot.co.uk/ by Justin MacCormack - Please be sure to check out the original article, and support the author by purchasing his latest book, "Return to 'Return to Oz', and other tales".

Written by Peter Darvill-Evans, Artwork by Tony Hough

This is a weird one.

You see, I know that I can complete Spectral Stalkers. It's one of the easiest Fighting Fantasy books to complete, because it has a built-in segment that will jump you from near the beginning to near the end. The temptation to use this choice is pretty huge, especially as I'm sure that if I did, this would be one of the first books I'd have won in this blog.

But I'm not going to do that, because I can strongly remember from playing this game as a kid just how much fun playing Spectral Stalkers was. It's fairly unique among the FF books, because it works very much like the old D&D Planescape setting, meaning that the player jumps between some very different worlds. Some very unique and interesting locations. I remember this being a lot of fun, but it's been so long since those days that I can't remember what those worlds were, or why it was so fun.

So let's see if we can remember, eh?

I start off with a skill of 8, luck of 7 and stamina of 21, so not too bad. I also begin with a trail score of 0, which I'm sure will increase as the adventure goes on. The higher this score goes, the greater the chance that the titular Spectral Stalker will come ripping through the walls of reality and feast on your gooey, gooey brain-matter. Speaking of feasting, I only have two meals to start off with. But none of them are brain-matter, they're probably chicken.

I start my adventure in a travelling gypsie's tent having my tarot cards read. Y'know, when I was younger, I used to play the Ultima games on my old PC, which was as old as dirt. These games would use that tarot card sequence as a way to generate your character class, by asking you moral questions to go along with the cards. For instance, you're a knight and your lord has insulted someone, do you uphold your oath and stay silent or do you truthfully speak out against your lord, that sort of thing, all very impressive.

Sadly this has nothing to do with this adventure, because all that happens is that the gypsie tells me that I will go on a long journey that will take me beyond this world. Well, it's better than pointing at the cards and screaming "I see death! DEATH!!!" like they usually do. Still, I leave the tent and notice a storm is brewing. As I rush for shelter beneath some trees, there is a flash and a loud bang from the sky, and a winged creature falls onto the path before me.

My first instinct is to help the creature... okay okay, my first instinct is to stick its charred and broken body in a cage and charge punters £10 a turn to gawk at a real-life angel. But being a hero, I decide to help first. He gives me a package and begs me to take it, mentioning the name Archmage Globus and telling me to "beware the Spectral Stalkers!" I unwrap the package, and discover that it contains a very strange sphere.

And this entire thing can now fit on one amazon kindle...
How depressing.

The sphere swims with weird objects and landscapes, as if it contains an entire universe. Or universes. It seems that the orb is a means of teleporting between these worlds, as the moment I pull my gaze from it, I'm no longer in the same place I was standing a few moments ago, but am instead in a large building. The walls are lined full of shelves of books, so it's pretty clear that I've fallen into E-Space.

I find a sign that reads 'Enquiries', beside which sits a bell. I ring the bell, and from behind a desk emerges a dragon! A great, fearsome, fire-breathing dragon, belching fumes and wearing delicate glasses and... oh wait, the dragon's the librarian. And I'm sure she has a better attitude than the woman in my own local library. I ask her if she knows Archmage Globus, and she directs me towards a large book that contains details on every mage in the known universe. See, even back before they had computers, 'they' were keeping tabs on you!

The book tells me that Globus is a powerful mage who specialises in travel between different worlds, and studies the 'aleph', an artefact that contains all things that exist. I realise that I'm carrying this item around in my backpack, so I decide to walk a bit more carefully so as not to shake the universe while I walk. I eventually come to a doorway that's sitting snug between two bookshelves, which leads to an office of powerful artefact study. I knock, and the door itself asks me to hand over four gold coins!

Still better than David Tennant

I take a deep sigh and fork over the gold, step through the door, and a bucket of water falls from the top of the door right onto my head. The man inside, Wayland by name, seems to have a sense of humour that borders on the about-to-be-kicked. The book even gives me the option of attacking the man, and it takes all of my patience to restrain myself and talk to him normally. My patience is rewarded as he hands me a bottle of a potion that removes all water from me. Very odd.

This cosmic joker tells me a few useful things, such as that the library is a non-space between the walls of reality and other timey-wimey stuff, not to stay on the same world for too long otherwise Spectral Stalkers will come for me, and to keep an eye out for round objects (because they'll be useful, or something), and then he hurries me away through the exit so that he can jump into his tardis and go away before he regenerates into Tom Baker or something. I leave the library (being told my a dwarf as I leave that if I lost my hat, it's probably been eaten by a grue and I'll never see it again), waving it a fond farewell, and try to decide where to go next. Globus lives in the Ziggaurat world, but I don't want to go there yet. I trust in the aleph to take me where I need to go.

It seems that the aleph hates me, because it immediately sends me down a dark tunnel that leads straight into the Temple of Doom. I'm not even exaggerating here, the chamber is full of chanting cultists and the high priest is a giant skelaton warlord by the name of Syzuk the Devestator, who declares that I will be their prisoner. Gosh, thanks for this, aleph. I decide not to resist as they advance, hoping that Indiana Jones will swing in and save the day.

Kali-Mah! Kali-Mah! This is the
One Heart to Rule them all!

Evidently he does not, as I wake up in the middle of a great battle. Bundled on Syzuk's war chariot, he directs a massive army as they crush the last alliance of men and elves. The Devestator's side is definitely winning, but just as victory is assured, Isildur (or some other lucky bugger) shoots an arrow into Syzuk's shoulder, forcing the titan to collapse. I immediately leap up and plan to strike the tyrant's head from his shoulders and claim all the glory. Sadly at the last moment, his horses go wild and flee, breaking a wheel from the chariot as it does so. The wheel seems to have runes marked on it, and it creates great fear in the men and elves who look at it, making me certain that this is the One Wheel to rule them all. I take it, easily slipping an entire chariot wheel into my backpack with no effort at all.

The aleph takes me to a world with a great purple sky, I am standing at a stone table in an overgrown garden. A large number of little green monks shuffle up the garden path, muttering prayers. Their leader finally looks up, gapes as he sees me, and proclaims that I am his messiah. He tells me that I have returned and that I will take the jewel of sleep to overthrow his evil overlord. Now I think we all know that I'm not the messiah, I'm just a very naughty boy, but I still opt to play along with these chaps.

"I'm not the messiah!"
"I say you are,, and I should know, I've followed a few!"

 The monks create a jewel of sleep (a hollow gem filled with a strange liquid) from a collection of leaves they've gathered from the garden. The book gives me the option of taking the gem and doing a runner to another world, but because the gem isn't round, I assume it's not the item I need to collect from this world. After nightfall, I journey to the tyrant's castle.

I find that the castle itself is empty, the rooms full of dust an disrepair, and without any skelatons or vampires lurking in them. I head to the top of the castle, and find the tyrant - a geriatric old man who has no power and is about as anticlimactic as the end of Stephen King's Dark Tower series. He asks me to grant his dying wish by showing him the aleph. I do, and he tries to grab the thing from me. The book then tells me that I flee from the old man, which is totally ridiculous - given the choice, I'd kick the old man in his elderly old hip for trying to nick the entire universe from me! Still, at least I got the Jewel of Sleep from this silly world. Let's go somewhere else.

I emerge in a desert world. Stumbling through the dunes, I come to a small village. An old lady asks me to buy a candle for a single gold coin, and tells me that selling these candles is the village's only source of income since so many of its people have gone missing. She begs me to help the village find their missing inhabitants, and like a fool, I agree to the idea. Maybe they'll give me some of their secret supply of Spice.

I have nothing to add to this,
so here's a picture of The Thing.

It seems that the root of the problem is the local potter, who has made a golem out of clay. The golem is now running a bit of a riot, having taken over the potter's home, and generally being a bit of a pain. Thankfully I remember what happens when you remove water from clay, and by chucking my anti-water potion over the golem (which I very nearly fail to do, due to my rather low skill rating), I reduce the golem to pieces of dry sand.

There's no sign of the other villagers that went missing following this, so I have to assume that the golem ate them. Either way, the potter offers me a choice of rewards - a box of gold, or a round clay ball. Oh hey, it's round! I'll take that, thank you. The potter tells me that this is a wise choice, because the ball contains pure distilled life-force. I shake the ball, and it rattles. For some reason, I didn't think life-force would rattle. Anyway, I leave this world and head to the next one...

I appear on stage in front of an amazed crowd. Ah, the giddy thrill of the theatre! My first urge is to launch into one of my Shakespeare monologues, but then I notice that I'm not alone on the stage. Beside me is a stage magician, who blags to the audience about having conjured me from thin air. Apparently his previous guest from the audience, the daughter of the baron of this land, has vanished into the backstage areas.

The magician's assistant leads me into the back stage, where I'm all ready to retire and enjoy a leisurely day of relaxation and hot baths. But strangely enough, it seems that the stage magician is less than honest, and plans to kidnap the baron's daughter. I find her locked in a cage in the backstage dressing rooms, she tells me that the magician has the key to her cage. No sooner has she declared this, then the magician enters the room.

For their next trick, Penn and Teller will
make all the blood in your body disappear!

I draw my sword and am prepared to slay the conjurer, when he opens his mouth and reveals his vampiric fangs. Yeesh, why are things never easy? You know, back in the old days, if a vampire wanted to seduce a baron's daughter he'd just use his preternatural charm. Nowadays it's all dressing up as a stage magician, putting on a show, sparkling in daylight.... modern vampires just don't have the style they used to back in the old days.

Modern vampires are also immune to normal weapons, it seems. His wounds knit together as I inflict them, and he quickly feasts on my blood, ending my trip between worlds.

Spectral Stalkers is still a lot of fun to play, if you're happy to put your fate in the dice that determine which world you'll wind up going to next. I wasn't able to piece together what the significance of the round objects was yet. Either way, I quickly noticed that I didn't wind up gaining any trail points, so I guess I didn't over-stay my visit in either world.

As I mentioned at the start, you do get a chance to go right to the Ziggaurat world, which takes you right to the ending.Which I suppose can make this the easiest of the Fighting Fantasy games. So I'd recommend avoiding that option, and enjoying the ride between different realms. I hadn't expected to enjoy this one as much as I did, it's good to see it holds up to memory.

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