Let's Play Fighting Fantasy no 46: Tower of Destruction

[MisterDee]

Open it.

[SlyJohnny]

You manage to force open the secret door with your hands- and a springloaded spear comes flying out! You just manage to evade a lethal direct hit, but the wound it gives you as it grazes your rib-cage stings badly and weakens you. Deduct z points from your STAMINA. Worse still, the small chamber behind the door is empty save for a fine coating of dust, and maybe it was just your imagination, or perhaps there really was the sound of laughter just then...

If you are still alive, will you:

Take the steps up one flight?
Take the steps up two flights?
Follow the passageway leading from here?

Furryborn the Honourable
SKILL 9/9
STAMINA 12/20
LUCK 5/10
Honour: 7
Time Elapsed: 5 days
Equipment: Sword, Furred Leather Armour, Shield, Backpack, Lantern, Climbing Gear, 9 gold pieces, Tasrin's Ring, Snow Fox, Potion of Fire Breath.

[Darth Rabbitt]

Follow.

[SlyJohnny]

The passageway slopes slightly downwards and then opens into a huge gallery. You look down at a massive circle of cherry-red, burningly hot floating spheres of rock which are hanging in mid-air below you. Beneath them are stone chutes and vents, and you guess that somehow these rocks provide the power for the Sphere's devastating fiery trail. There's no way you can possibly deal with these: somewhere else there must be a control which you could tamper with and so destroy the Sphere. Unfortunately, your tarrying here has alerted a guardian as you see from the pillar of fire roaring through the air to attack you- a Fire Elemental! Do you have a ring? If you do, you know the name of the person who possessed it before you. Convert the letters of his name into number values (using the code A= 1, B:2, C:3 ... Z:26) and add them together. Then tum to the paragraph with the same number as that total.

(We have Tasrin's Ring.)

The magical ring flares light along your arm and down over your sword-hand and you feel that your humble sword might be able to affect this Elemental without being destroyed, as non-magical weapons are when they touch such a magical, fearsorne opponent. If you want to flee, you can do so; you will suffer 2 points of damage to your STAMINA from the Fire Elemental's attack as you flee up the stairs; tum to 324. If you prefer to stand and fight, then do your best!

SMALL FIRE ELEMENTAL Skill 10 STAMINA 11

If you win, you can climb up the stairs to the next level (tum to 324) or up two flights of stairs to the top level

(As you can see from the paragraph references, killing this thing and running away from it are functionally the same, unless the book is going to interrogate us later about whether or not we killed a small elemental. As we have an effective Skill of 8 right now and the odds are excellent that this thing would kill us, we'll eat the stamina loss and run upstairs.)

[...]

After your unproductive investigations in the depths of the Sphere will you now:

Take the steps leading up?
Return to the main junction and take the left-hand turning? (To the steam-thing's chamber)
Return to the main junction and tale the right-hand turning? (Downwards, to the golem)

Furryborn the Honourable
SKILL 9/9
STAMINA 10/20
LUCK 5/10
Honour: 7
Time Elapsed: 5 days
Equipment: Sword, Furred Leather Armour, Shield, Backpack, Lantern, Climbing Gear, 9 gold pieces, Tasrin's Ring, Snow Fox, Potion of Fire Breath.

[MisterDee]

At least the Golem's room has something to interact with.

Looking back at when we got the Potion of Firebreath, it specifically mention that it's not gonna work on Fire Elementals and Demons, so perhaps we should use it now as well? We know a combat is coming against something that isn't a Fire Elemental or Demon.

So my vote is to fight the golem after quaffing the potion (even though I advised against both actions previously)

[Darth Rabbitt]

Yeah, go over to the Golem, and possibly kill it with fire.

[Dr_Noface]

I say go left, and deal with the smoke. Its probably another one of those smoke dudes. Save the potion for the dungeon boss.

[SlyJohnny]

You walk on tiptoe along a narrow passageway which slopes downwards, and soon you come to a door which has an iron grille set into it. In the chamber beyond is a very odd sight: a human-shaped pillar of rough, coarse stone holds in its 'hands' a globe of very hot glowing rock, on to which it is blowing a yellow dusty breath. As the creature blows, the rock grows redder and redder; then, finally, the stone monster throws the rock in an arc across the room and into an aperture in the wall. The strange, swirling darkness of the hole swallows up the flaming rock sphere, and it whistles away into the distance, leaving only a faint glow behind. Meanwhile, the stone creature has picked up a dully glowing rock from a pile at its feet and is beginning to blow on it, starting the process once again. This is all very strange! But it may have something to do with how the great Sphere is powered, so perhaps you will want to stop it. On the other hand, the stone monster looks pretty formidable. What will you do? Will you:

*Open the door and attack?
* Return to the T-junction and take the middle path?
* Return to the T-junction and take the left-hand path?

(Drinking potion and attacking.)

You open the door as quickly as you can but you don't outwit the fast-reacting monster. In a trice it hurls the glowing rock it is holding right at you! You duck, but you're off balance and the monster is able to get a free hit at you. Deduct 2 points from your STAMINA. Now you have to hope you're good enough to fight this strange enemy.

BRIMSTONE GOLEM SKILL 8 STAMINA 11

Combat Log

Furryborn 18, Golem 19, Fire Breath 2; Furryborn at 6, Golem at 9.
Furryborn 15, Golem 18, Fire Breath 5; Furryborn at 4
Furryborn 17, Golem 15, Fire Breath 5; Golem at 7
Furryborn 15, Golem 13, Fire Breath 2; Golem at 3
Furryborn 15, Golem 17, Fire Breath 2; Furryborn at 2, Golem at 1.
Furryborn 18, Golem 15, Fire Breath 3; Golem is dead.

If you win, the Golem shatters into chunks of stone which fly everywhere. Roll two dice; if the total is less than or equal to your SKILL, you dodge the flying shards. If the total ir greater than your SKILL, you get hit by a flint; deduct 2 points from your STAMINA.

(9: equal to our skill, we pass.)

If you're still alive, a quick search reveals only one item of interest: a gold nugget from one rock worth 5 Gold Pieces (add this to your Treasure). The aperture in the wall suddenly flares brightly and begins to pulsate. You wonder if the Golem stopping work has been noticed somewhere, time to get a move on! Will you:

Try clambering in to the wall aperture?
Leave, return to the junction, and take the middle path?
Leave, return to the junction, and take the left-hand path?

Furryborn the Honourable
SKILL 9/9
STAMINA 2/20
LUCK 5/10
Honour: 7
Time Elapsed: 5 days
Equipment: Sword, Furred Leather Armour, Shield, Backpack, Lantern, Climbing Gear, 9 gold pieces, Tasrin's Ring, Snow Fox, Gold Nugget

[MisterDee]

Die bravely trying to climb into the aperture.

[Darth Rabbitt]

Climb.

[Red_Rob]

Climb into the pulsating, glowing wall aperture! That's what any sane person would do!

(I love how D&D players are the most cautious motherfuckers ever, all 10' poles and summoning monsters to go first, yet a Fighting Fantasy character will never look at something he could stick his head in!)

[SlyJohnny]

This is a stunningly bad move. You find yourself flying downwards into a huge ring of superheated burning rock spheres and, after a few moments of intense agony, you are just a large cinder. You adventure ends here.

(Heh, you guys actually saw where the rocks ended up earlier, yet you still thought that climbing into the furnace teleporter was a solid plan? Or was that a deliberate suicide born of confusion and irritation? I don't know why you kept choosing the pathways that stated they led down, either...

if the vote remains tied, I'll probably wind up doing Master of Chaos next. It's easier and we could probably use the morale boost, plus it's more sandbox-y, and has less bullshit monsters with stupidly high skill scores that autodamage you.)

[ishy]

Well our only other option was fight a smoke demon or something and we only had 2 stamina left

[Darth Rabbitt]

Yeah, I figured it would be a death, but a better death than fighting an apparently constantly respawning smoke demon.

I kept on suggesting going down because I assumed that there was some necessary bullshit plot device in order to stop the BBEG down there; Ian Livingstone and UK Steve Jackson are both super fond of those.

Out of curiosity, what the hell is the ending of the book like?

I voted for Night Dragon, but will gladly change my vote to Master of Chaos to break a tie.

[SlyJohnny]

Out of curiosity, what the hell is the ending of the book like?

You blow up the murdersphere, and (maybe) rescue a guy who was an apprentice to the Evil Wizard, who exposits for you that the murdersphere is just a prototype of the Tower of Destruction, which is like the murdersphere, but much better, and also has some plot-magic attached to it so that the more devastation it wreaks the closer it gets into summoning hell into the world wholesale. He also refills your stamina and provisions before dying horribly, as Fighting Fantasy companions are wont to do.

You got to an ice palace full of angry ghost Ice Elves, solve some annoying puzzles, find a magic ice sword and get your skill and stamina boosted to IDGAF levels, then go and sabotage the Tower by killing the greater demon lord which is it's power source (and also the Evil Wizard), whereupon the Ice Elf ghosts all smile at you and promise that they'll totally have your back and will conceal you when the demon lord comes looking for revenge for foiling it's plans.

The owl is only mentioned again if you don't rescue the apprentice, whereupon he appears and points you at the Ice Palace sans the exposition about what the Ice Palace actually is and why you should care (if you've met the owl originally; if you havn't and you didn't save the apprentice, you blow up the sphere and get an immediate game over). He is otherwise not alluded to again or explained anywhere in the book. That damn owl bothers me more than this nonsense about ice palaces, honestly.

[MisterDee]

Heh, you guys actually saw where the rocks ended up earlier, yet you still thought that climbing into the furnace teleporter was a solid plan? Or was that a deliberate suicide born of confusion and irritation? I don't know why you kept choosing the pathways that stated they led down, either...

As someone else said, we weren't making it through the steam monster thing anyway.

Seriously, the difficulty jump was fairly big. Did later FF books just assume everyone would only play with characters that have max Skill and Luck?

Questions:

I imagine that the correct path was to fight the steam thingy - how tough was it?

Was there anything else between us and Mr. Exposition-and-Health-Refill?

Did we fuck up somehow getting there? Should we have made a beeline for the Sphere? Could we have obtained useful gear (that heavy mace, more health refills) by doing things differently?

Was the time limit actually meaningful? It looks like taking more time would have made the demon a bit harder, but that's pretty much it.

[angelfromanotherpin]

Seriously, the difficulty jump was fairly big. Did later FF books just assume everyone would only play with characters that have max Skill and Luck?

I don't think there was any broad decision behind it, the brand simply wan't that organized. Some writers were not good at judging difficulty. Others made things more difficult to artificially inflate 'replayability.' Some seem to have fapped really hard to the whole 'one true path' thing, where literally only one sequence of choices even can take a player to the end.

Now, the play-by-forum format doesn't really support the intended meta-method, which assumed playing, making mistakes, failing, and trying again with all your previous maps and foreknowledge as an edge. That only kind of flies even when paragraphs go by at the speed of reading and decisions are made at the speed of thought.

[Darth Rabbitt]

UK Steve Jackson has my hatred in no small part because of his fapping to the One True Path thing (see Creature of Havoc and House of Hell, both interesting concepts but fucked up by the fact of who wrote them. I might do a drunken review/playthrough of Creature of Havoc if I get a lot of booze, spare time, and feel masochistic) and his condescending tone in his books.

Beneath Nightmare Castle also falls to the One True Path thing pretty bad, given that even if you make it through all of the instant deaths you can end up fighting a SKILL 14 STAMINA 37 final boss if you didn't find two easily missed items (which is why I haven't offered to run it) but it is still entertaining because its deaths are amazingly drawn out and disturbing, and it's also genuinely creepy.

Also you can fight starving children, what's not to love?

[ishy]

So, what if we continue where we died only with slightly more skill / sta / luck?

[SlyJohnny]

Did we fuck up somehow getting there? Should we have made a beeline for the Sphere? Could we have obtained useful gear (that heavy mace, more health refills) by doing things differently?

Was the time limit actually meaningful? It looks like taking more time would have made the demon a bit harder, but that's pretty much it.

You have to fight an extra zombie or two for taking too long, but there seems to be little difference between taking 5 days and taking 6... if we'd investigated the tracks, we'd have found a wounded barbarian, who would have taken us home for beer and exposition, and also a merchant.

Even without that stuff we likely could have made it through- just- if we hadn't gone downstairs, but really, the monsters in that book are tougher than I remember and the dice are pretty much stacked against you. I remember completing that book first time through, but I must've rolled a fairly high-skill character. A shame, I think it's an example of a fairly good FF book, but for that.

Anyway, I'll get started on Master of Chaos tomorrow.