Warlock Magazine #5

 

Cover by Christos Achilleos

It's time to crack open another issue of Warlock, which is always a fun moment of discovery for me.  Warlock never made it to the small country town I grew up in, and I've never even seen a copy in person, so all of this stuff is new to me in ways that the first half of the FF gamebook series never can be again.  I always look forward to seeing what the magazine has to offer.

The editorial notes that the magazine is now a year old, with a circulation of around 35,000.  This is apparently an "undisputable success", but Warlock only lasts another eight issues, so I wonder what happened during that time. Did the numbers fall precipitously after this?  The final issue shipped around the same time as Creature of Havoc (late in 1986), so it wasn't the decline of the gamebook fad that did it in. It's a mystery.

"Out of the Pit" by Steve Jackson: This issue's installment presents four creatures known collectively as the Apes of Mauristatia. Mauristatia is a mountainous region to the northwest of Kakhabad, and has been previously shown on the map for the Sorcery! epic. It's said to be largely unexplored; certainly the hero of Sorcery! never went there during his adventure, so this is the first real detail we're getting about the place.

These apes are given here in conjunction with the "Search for the Mungie's Gold" game presented later in the magazine, and Steve tells readers that only the Games Master for that adventure should read the entries. Let's be real, though, Fighting Fantasy readers are unrepentant cheaters, and wouldn't hesitate to read about the monsters to get themselves a leg up.  Fair enough too, you need all the advantages you can get when dealing with Jackson and Livingstone.

The article then gives a little bit of history on how the apes were discovered: a merchant ship from Brice, while trading in Khare, overheard a story about the legendary Muttonfish, an enormous fish so tasty that those who eat it would become addicted. So the merchant captain and his crew set off to Lake Lumle to try and catch some Muttonfish, only to be blown to the north-western shore by a sudden storm. The ship was stuck in a mud bank, and only by leaving behind its cargo and some crew could it set sail again. So the captain set sail back to Khare, planning to return with a smaller rescue ship. When he got back, the cargo had been ransacked, and there was only one survivor, a crewman who ranted deliriously about the apes...  Of these apes, four are detailed.

Howl Cat: An ape with a lion-like head and rending claws. They are vicious predators, with an ear-splitting shriek that strikes terror into their prey. Each time a Howl Cat is injured it lets out this shriek, and its opponents all suffer a -1 penalty to Attack Strength in the following round. The shriek weakens the Howl Cat, though, draining it of 1 Stamina point each time.

Wraith Ape: Stealthy, nocturnal apes that hunt in packs.  Their night vision gives them a combat advantage when fighting in the dark, and they can glide silently down onto their prey with the large flaps of skin under their arms. They make particularly deadly use of the leaves of the Blade Tree, a tree with sharp leaves that are as hard as rock. Much like villains in a Bruce Lee movie, they will only attack one at a time.

The Champaque: A green-furred ape with a face resembling that of an ageing sorcerer. It hunts alone, using its uncanny ability to mimic the voices of any animal it studies. It can even mimic human speech, and will use that ability to lure adventurers to their deaths. After killing its prey it eats their brain, thus absorbing some of its intelligence. A fully fed Champaque will have a Skill of 12, so it's best taken care of immediately.

Mungies: Smaller apes that are irresistibly attracted to gold. They will steal it from adventurers, many of whom won't be able to retaliate: a Skill of 9+ (10+ at night) is required to even catch them, which is a hell of a requirement. The Mungies' propensity for stealing gold - and their lack of real use for it - has given rise to the idea that there must be a tremendous hoard hidden somewhere in Mauristatia. Which leads us to...

"In Search of the Mungies' Gold" by Steve Jackson: This is an adventure using the FF rules, that is sort of a hybrid between the FF Introductory RPG and a board game. It uses the above premise of the Mungie hoard as background for the adventure, in which six adventurers have landed their boat on the northwest coast of Lake Lumle in search of the gold in question. The Games Master has a map of Mauristatia overlayed with a grid, and 16 encounters to disperse among the various squares. The players must explore the squares, playing through the encounters they discover in their quest to find the Mungies and their gold.

The encounters include variations on all of the apes from the "Out of the Pit" article, as well as some old standards such as Skunkbears, Black Elves, Elvins and a Manticore. There are also friendly NPCs that are there to point the players in the right direction. And just in case you think Steve is slacking in the sadism department, there's a chance a player might die by walking into a blade tree by accident and cutting their throat.

As an optional final twist, Steve suggests having the players' boat half-eaten by wood beetles, so that only one of them will be able to make it back to Khare safely. The intention here is that the players will duke it out to see which of them makes it home with the gold.  I do wonder if the game as whole might not work a little better if played competitively from the beginning. Regardless, it does sound like fun, and a much stronger effort than Ian's "Market Mayhem".

"Maelstrom" by Alexander Scott: This article is a thinly veiled bit of advertising for the Maelstrom paperback, written by the book's author. I've seen ads for this book before, but never got my hands on a copy. Apparently it's a full-fledged RPG set in the 16th century, which can be played with a six-sided die and a deck of cards (to simulate a 10-sider). Unfortunately, the article doesn't really go into what makes Maelstrom different from other RPGs. There are some generalities on what makes tabletop RPGs better than solo gamebooks, but there's not room for much else.

"Fighting Fantasy News": Here's what's going in the FF world circa April 1985.

• Temple of Terror, The Rings of Kether, and Seas of Blood are all forthcoming. (I got the publishing sequence right in my notes, but I decided to do Temple of Terror first because I was keen to get back to the main series.) Appointment with F.E.A.R. is announced with the working title of "Superheroes", and Rebel Planet is also mentioned with the working title of "The Aliens of Arcadion".
• There's an item titled "FF Boobs", which is not nearly as exciting as it sounds. It asks the readers to point out mistakes, and mentions one from The Shamutanti Hills involving a Vial of Glue that the book assumes the player cannot have.
• A line of FF miniatures is in the works from Citadel Miniatures. I should do a post on them at some point, as well as some of the other non-book ephemera out there.
• Tasks of Tantalon and Casket of Souls, the PuzzleQuest books by Steve and Ian respectively, are said to be nearly done. I have a copy of Tasks of Tantalon, but not Casket of Souls, so it might be a little tricky for me to cover when the time comes.
• Something called the "Fighting Fantasy Battlegame" is mentioned as being almost done. It supposedly contains a load of polystyrene dungeon walls so you can design your own dungeons. I've never heard of this, and from some quick research I can see that it was never produced on the scale mentioned above, and just ended up as a set of dice and some rules.
• A "Forest of Doom" holiday is mentioned, which sounds a bit like a LARP. It's something I wanted to try when I was younger, but have zero interest in now that I'm a crusty old man.
• The Warlock of Firetop Mountain Boardgame is just about done. I seriously need to get myself a copy of this. I've never played it, but it looks like a lot of fun.
• The Middle Earth Roleplaying Game is being published in the UK by Games Workshop. I played it a bunch in highschool, and it's an interesting system, but I never felt like it did a good job of modelling Tolkien. My most distinct memory of it comes from the absurd critical hit tables, which resulted in my hobbit character getting an instant kill on a Balrog by shooting it in the spleen.
• Citadel of Chaos is getting a new cover, where the awesome conga-line of monsters is replaced by a lame swirly green cloud lady.
• John Blanche has produced a painted version of the Kakhabad map, and it's on sale as a poster. Have a squiz.

"The Warlock's Quill": In the letters this issue, Jonathan Dickie is mocked for submitting a list of gamebook titles that includes "The Brain of the Lost Prince"; Lawrence Gabb expresses his preference for the simplicity of FF over the complexity of D&D; Ian Jars complains that the books are too bloomin' well hard (git gud, son); Paul Johnson asks if there'll be another epic in the style of Sorcery! (no plans); and Sam Carter fails to understand that his Stamina can never go above its initial level. Probably the most interesting thing comes in the reply to Paul Johnson's letter, where it's revealed that Iain McCaig suggested doing Return to Firetop Mountain over some pints many years before it was actually published.

Miscellanea: There's a puzzle that involves guessing which FF gamebooks various images came from, an FF trivia quiz (quite hard, too), a crossword, and the continuation of the "Arkenor and Max" comic strip.

There's also the "Dungeon of Justice" solo adventure, written by Jonathan Ford and illustrated by Bob Harvey. That adventure will be the subject of my next post (and if I'm unlucky, multiple posts following that one). I've heard it's a tricky one, so I have some trepidation.