Mr Shine wrote:Does He-Man actually die, if Life Points reach 0? As opposed to being knocked unconcious long enough to fail the quest.
Nope.
Other than the successful ending, there are 3 "Bad" endings in the book. One of them (section 92) is listed in the Life Points table and serves as the generic bad ending that the player has to turn to if his Life Point hits 0. In that section, He-Man wakes up in Castle Grayskull, where Stratos tells him that he followed he man and saved him before he was killed.
In each of the bad ending, the player is basically told something along the lines of "Man-at-Arms still need his memory back, so if you want to make another attempt, turn back to 1 and learn from your mistakes (even though the "mistake" could simply have been rolling a bunch of low numbers during combat).
It is pretty predictable/expected that He-Man isn't really going to die, but what I don't like about 2 of those bad endings is the revelation that other heroes from Castle Grayskull have been following He-Man in case he messed up. As mentioned, Stratos will save He-Man in the generic bad ending (which you will also go to if you ignored the blatant warning and blundered into Beast-Man's trap). If He-Man had fallen off the cliff earlier (either because he decided to use the creepers or followed the narrow dangerous pathway instead of sticking to rock climbing), he will again wake up in Castle Grayskull, where Teela will tell him that not one but THREE heroes went after him (Stratos, Zoar and Buzz-Off) in time to save him from an otherwise fatal fall. If Castle Grayskull could spare all those guys (weren't they needed to defend it from "constant attacks"?), then why the hell did He-Man go alone in the first place? He could have used a couple of companions on the way. I can accept Stratos making a brief trip to bring him food and water, but following him secretly to play guardian angel doesn't really make sense.
The only bad ending where He-Man actually makes it back to the castle by himself if if he had gotten bitten by the Monkey-Spider, which poisons him and forces him to go back for cure. Actually, even here he isn't alone, since Battle-Cat is still with him in this scenario, so he carries He-Man back.
There really isn't a lot of the book left to bring up. As noted by Laertes, the book is split up into different stages of biospheres. The initial encounter with Beast-Man could have led to an unnecessary combat (but one that is relatively easier than most), and as mentioned, running into the trap will lead to insta-fail. The branching paths in the desert is basically choosing between Thunder Horse and Battle-Cat, and either way neither stays with you after that stage. There is a possible but easily-avoided encounter with a man-eating giant Beetle if we went with Thunder Horse, but otherwise it's mostly uneventful.
For the jungle stage, most of the paths ultimately lead to the fight with Whiplash and being guided out of it by the Pygmies (although we got to them rather early), but there was also a longer path where we avoid them and make it out on our own. There would be more encounters along the path, including having to struggle our way out of quicksand (that is treated the same way as a regular combat), a possible fight with Webster, and having to cut our way through some living vines (another combat-like encounter).
The cliff as mentioned was railroady, the only way to safely get down is via rock climbing, although there will be multiple warnings from the texts if you used the creepers before they let you fall and go to the bad ending.
In the last volcanic stage, the encounter with Trapjaw is unavoidable, but trying to hide from him will lead to us falling down a hole and continuing towards Snake Mountain underground....just like we did after the Skelcons blasted us down with poorly-aimed lasers. The encounter with Evil-Lyn was random, but the alternative path leads to us falling down
another hole (yes, lots of them in this book) but this is the only time where we would be able to choose not to take the underground shortcut and instead try to climb out of the hole and continue.
Failing to answer Evil-Lyn's riddle-spell will lead to having 2 Life Points burnt off us before Buzz-Off comes to our rescue.
Again as mentioned before, most of the routes into Snake Mountain will drop us into the underground tunnel. If we had rolled a higher number, we would encounter a Giant Talking Mole instead of the worm, who will then befriend us and hlep us dig a way to Skeletor's lair. Apparently, he literally eats Skelcons for breakfast, and will chase off all the Skelcons for us (not that it really matters, since the Skelcons will run from us anyway if we made it there without the mole).
It's possible to enter Snake Mountain without falling into the underground shortcut, but that is, as mentioned, by far the longer route. If we'd chosen to be stealthy, we'd have had a 5 in 6 chance of making it to the entrance without being seen. Then we'd get the chance to cross the rope-bridge, roll the die for an encounter with the giant snake guarding it, before making it to the door, where we'll have to answer a simple coded riddle that is kind of like the random Evil-Lyn's riddle asking for information about an earlier encounter (in this case the colour of the giant snake). After that we'll have to navigate a small maze before we finally make it to the chamber with the memory stone (and the encounter with Skeletor).
The maze isn't too hard to navigate, since there are pretty obvious clues about which way you should go after the first couple of Left/Right/Middle blind choices, so it shouldn't take long even for a young reader to get out of it, but like I said, it's still much more time-consuming than just letting yourself get blasted down into the underground shortcut.
That's pretty much it for this book that I can remember.
I'll be taking a short hiatus (should be a week or less) before I come back with my next Fighting Fantasy LP thread. I'll probably be going with the book that got the second-highest votes in my poll thread (#40 - Dead of Night). See you guys then!