The Warlock of Firetop Mountain: 1

     Gulp.

     Ah. A nice atmospheric picture to get us right into the viscerally ominous moment before it all begins. I'm going to nestle back into my skin from twenty years ago and thrill at the coming adventure for a moment.

     Ah...

     "Well that's heavier than it looked. How did you carry it to all those years, Marcus?"

So... it's just covered in Irish moss?

     Now this, this is evocative prose! After all that bland instruction, we finally get some moody details. The image of the mountain being carved of bestial claws creates a wonderful tingle of dread awe. And the description of the red coloration naming the mountain, finally gives me a sense of a history to this place. Like people have actually lived in the shadow of this mountain, not just written it from the aether for a game.

In fairness, few cave entrances are bright.

     "Dear me, I could easily trip in that darkness. I should light my lantern."

      I flailed in the darkness and drew my sword in alarm. Then I caught myself and touched my face. Silky cobwebs came away. I laughed at myself. Just cobwebs. Nothing a bit of dusting wouldn't fix. These goblins really are lazy not to have done it already.

Hang on, I need to carefully consider all the information.

     Our first choice of the game!

     For those of you unfamiliar with the Choose Your Own Adventure genre, this is the basic mechanic underlining the storytelling. You are given a series of options, and must pick one and find the indicated section for that choice. You read none of the other sections in between, only the one indicated. The sections don't refer to page numbers, either. Often multiple sections are on the same page. They are ordered numerically so they're easy to find.

      I always found pictures problematic to this process. Flipping over sections and not reading them was easy enough, but pictures are harder to not just see and wonder about. So sometimes I'd learn snippets I wasn't supposed to know yet. Often this didn't matter more than a vague notion that that creepy snake lady was somewhere in the early 100s. But when you turn to section 103 to cross a ravine, and the picture of that snake lady is on the open page across from you with 106 written boldly under it... well, that affects some choices.

     In Fighting Fantasy gamebooks, beginning with this first entry, it became traditional that the good ending, the result of the One True Path, was on the last entry of the book, 400. Not that plenty of deaths and other terrible ends didn't appear elsewhere.

     I think it's kind of a shame our first choice is entirely arbitrary. We have no information at this point. Then again, a choice this arbitrary might be better for getting a new player used to the choice making process. It invites one to just make a choice, and not worry about it.

     Still, not much actual gameplay.

     For simplicity, I'm going to assume the cave entrance faces South and thus Henrietta is headed North. Henrietta is right handed, and as such is holding her lantern in her left hand, just in case she needs to draw her sword. That means the lantern light hits the West side first. Henrietta, without thinking too carefully, heads towards the more brightly lit tunnel.

Choice: Turn West: 71

Henrietta Chalk

Skill: 7

Stamina: 19

Luck: 11

1 Fortune Potion (2 Measures)