Ian Livingstone (1) (1949–)

This might be my favourite FF book, and I've played it through many times, though never spent the energy to map it out and try and see how to get to all the paragraphs. Maybe that's the next job! Anyway, YOU! are an adventurer who is hired to lay one on Zanbar Bone, undead magician, animal trainer, and sex pest. To do this you need to negotiate Port Blacksand, a villainous hive of piracy and libertarianism and generally the sort of failed state that is looming in all our near futures. show more Blacksand contains a number of items you need to collect and people you need to speak to. As far as I can tell, there is only one correct path and there are few opportunities to deviate from it and see other bits of the city whilst still succeeding in your quest. Despite my experience with this book I still missed out on seeing the tattooist the first run last night, leading to a failure. But of course, an experienced adventurer like me wouldn't have given up, he'd have found a new way back into the city somehow and got that epic face-tat. Perhaps by swimming in down the river, or bribing a fisherman, or hiding under a cart or something. YOU! wouldn't have gone home, nope. Anyway, once you've claimed all the bits you might need, and made your one-in-three selection of the appropriate ingredients combo (be greedy), its off to Zanbar's tower to lay down some righteous adventuring. This is the dungeon crawl bit (tower crawl?), but its very quick as Zanbar tends to rely on being a bit tasty and having horns rather than hundreds of minions to die for him. I'd recommend not messing about here, get up to the right floor before you start opening doors. But don't go straight to him, you need a final item first. Zanbar is fairly easy to kill, provided you've got all the right bits and your luck holds, making this pleasingly tricky but not impossible to beat. A true classic.

2025: time for a rerun and to explore some of the routes in Blacksand. I found a new way through the city that actually is better than the one I did before, but died jumping off the city walls. show less

Now this one is a stinker! Normally a book as difficult as this should get a lower rating. It really is very difficult. Not only do you have to go on a massive easter egg hunt and collect lots of random loot, but should you successfully collect everything and then answer a series of questions where a wrong answer equals death, then you have to fight a really tough monster with an insta-hill keffect. Should you defeat him, you then need to negotiate a STAMINA based death trap... your chances show more of success are tiny, even with maximum stats. But! there are two replies to this... firstly, that all these requirements are about equivalent to your actual chances of defeating Razaak... (and Bob's dead)... this is a lesson in heroic futility and makes it even better when you do win. Secondly, its a great story. Classic Livingstonia, full of characters and lucky escapes and ridiculous deaths. I haven't read this since I was a kid and there were times when I actually remembered where to go and what to do, and times when I put on the damn helmet and got fried. I remember never being able to get the magic rod but this time I did so i must ahve done something right. But I didn't know about the zombie tattoos, so I got killed by the Skeleton King and Allansia was not saved (except that I had killed a zombie so I decided that I would have seen the tattoo and so Allansia was saved after all). Great stuff. show less

A pretty decent edition, this. A wonderful cover (only slightly marred by odd choice of top she's not wearing), a handful of different RPG scenarios of varying quality (I liked the RuneQuest one by Ken Rolston), some weird comics, reviews and rambling of a way that makes you feel like part of the clique! Definitely a good month, was March 1984.

This one is much harder than it looks! Not only do you need to collect a load of mcguffins, but also the instructions for using them, and some other essential odds and sods too. Now I love a dungeon crawl, and this is a good one, the political economy of Firetop Mountain is absolutely sound, and so it all feels wonderfully real. But blimey, there must be only one correct route through here, you'll need a map and lots of failed attempts. Perhaps it shows just how unlikely it is that anyone show more could defeat mister Zagor! show less