[Let's Play] Fighting Fantasy 30 - Chasms of Malice

[SGamerz]

You have struck a lethal blow. There is a bitter scream and all the mirrors in the room shatter as Orghuz begins to decay and age. The Malice, which has kept him alive for so long, leaves his now frail frame. His flesh crumbles to dust and everything is swept away by a strong wind. The wind blows stronger until a screen is blown down to reveal two Orcs and a Goblin frozen in the act of Spellbreaking the True Shield. You stride forward and grab the Shield. As you touch it, you see the face of the wizard Astragal beckoning you. Your vision begins to darken.

As though in a dream, you are dragged through all the places you visited in your quest. You hang on to the Shield until you find yourself back in the Keep at Gorak. You are standing in front of the crack you enterred a long time ago, clutching the Shield. Tabasha jumps out of your pocket and runs across to Astragal, who is loitering in the corner. In front of you are five knights who have been waiting for your return. Study the knights carefully. Can you spot the traitor? You have only one attempt. If you fail, the real traitor will exact revenge for his or her thwarted ambitions. From the left, do you choose:

The first?
The second?
The third?
The fourth?
The fifth?

There are 2 possible routes where we can pick up clues on who the traitor is, but we didn't come across any of them in this playthrough, so you'll have to guess (unless you'd played it before, of course).

Can you spot the traitor?

[Beroli]

The guy with the crossed daggers on his shirt and the concussed look. The third.

With five lives left, we could guess all four wrong ones first and still win, but.

[JourneymanN00b]

The third knight looks like a demagogue, so I vote to gut him in the name of eliminating any rival fascists to Sir Gareth.

[SGamerz]

You have identified the traitor. He runs away down the corridor, but is cut down by a particularly vicious spell from Astragal.

You have succeeded in the quest. The Dark Lord Orghuz is no more, and the Shield is once again protecting Gorak from the Malice of the Chasms. You are hailed as Tancred's heir and all the Knights of the Grey Horse swear allegiance to their new monarch.

And that's a wrap! Congratulations for completing one of the most difficult books in the series...after 11 attempts!

So...I won't be doing a summary of missed content for this one, but if you have any particular questions about them, I will still answer them.

This book is usually ranked near the bottom of popularity lists alongside the likes of Sky Lord and Eye of the Dragon, and it's not just because of the difficulty. Honestly, purely difficulty-wise, Livingstone, Jackson, Green, Martin, Mason and others have all produced books that are as bad or worse, but what puts this book even lower than most or all of those is the fact that it's pretty tedious not just to play it as a game, but just to read through it as a book as well. And it's all the more frustrating because you can see a lot of basic ingredients and rough sketches that can form a pretty unique and immersive experience, but they never become more than that, rough sketches, The earlier part wasn't as bad, but in particular, it took a real dive after the point you receive the Life Spell and essentially enter the "hard stage", at which point not just the difficulty level ramped up. what little variety there might have been in terms of encounter and flavour turn into just 1 random trap/trial/opponent being hurled at you after another, and the design becomes even lazier with 95% of the options being pure random direction choices.

At least one can say that the author seemed to have learnt and gotten better in his later books. Daggers of Darkness and Fangs of Fury are not just more playable, but also more readable (some even think Fangs may have become too easy). The lack of deep descriptive writing is still there, but where Daggers of Darkness felt like you're being dragged along from scene to scene so fast that sometimes things around you become a blur, it's at least still coherent enough that you're still aware of where you're going; whereas Chasms of Malice feels like you're just being tossed and thrown around from one random spot to another (often landing on your head in the process), and there're too many occasions where you're just wondering "WTF just happened?".

So, thanks to everyone who participated in this, especially those with the patience to actually see it through to the end! Hopefully, the next LP will be a more enjoyable one!

Final Adventure Sheet:
[spoiler]Name: Sir Gareth
SKILL 11/12
STAMINA 11/15
LUCK 6/11
Equipment: Shining Sword, Leather Armor
Provisions: 2
Fuel: 0
Tabasha's Favour: 0/9
Abilities: Life Spell (can be used once, when killed in combat, to proceed as it the battle was won, with 4 STAMINA remaining and SKILL deducted by 1)
Khuddam killed: 1 (Barkek) All
Extra Lives remaining: 5/16
[/spoiler]

[Beroli]

Thanks for running this. And I see why this is unpopular, indeed; it feels like the bulk of the playthrough was, "Make a random choice. An orc appears and stabs you. Roll to see if you die."

[Queen of Swords]

Thanks for hosting this. I'm afraid I dropped out about halfway through because I couldn't tell where we were or where we were supposed to go, and the story wasn't holding my interest either.

[Thaluikhain]

Yeah, I end up losing track of overall plots of these books, and even the minor stuff in this seemed hard to keep track of.

Anyway, thanks SGamerz (who has the same initials as Sir Gareth) for hosting. And, is there any good way of telling which knight is the traitor?

[Beroli]

As SGamerz said, there are two chances to learn that a knight with two crossed daggers on his shirt is working for Orghuz, and we didn't find either of them.

[Thaluikhain]

Oops, right, missed that bit.

[SGamerz]

The first time we died, we were actually not too far from 1 of those chances. If we chose not to follow the others to the kitchen and tried to slip away immediately, there was a chance that we could have entered some caves and overheard a conversation between the traitor and a Khuddam, whereby we'd try to sneak a peek and spot the crossed swords symbol.

Unfortunately, that route would still redirect back to the bridge where we have to fight 4 OSCs in a row...

[JourneymanN00b]

Thanks for running this adventure! What are you planning to run for the next LP?