Author: mazemaster

All righty, my second go at Choose Cthulhu 1: The Call of Cthulhu An epigrapher told me told me that the lettering on Wilcox’s bas relief, was reminiscent of Esquimaux writing. So I impulsively jumped onto a boat to Halifax, then on to Greenland. With some sweet-talking and money, I found a guide to take […]

After over a year, I’m finally sitting down with my first Choose Cthulhu book: book 1, The Call of Cthulhu. My adventure was brief but terrifying. I saw a cult summon a giant tree monster, then visited a library. I was possessed with an urge to see the unexplored depths of the Pacific Ocean and […]

I just finished Lone Wolf 12, Masters of Darkness in two evenings, on my first playthrough. I know, I’m just as baffled as you! It was a great time. It’s an epic-grade story again, with adventure on the seas, hijacking an airbeast, walking miles and miles, and of course defeating Darklord Gnaag and saving all […]

I just finished playing Lone Wolf 11, the Prisoners of Time. It was a fun time, but not the best of them. Good: A very other-worldly feel, meeting cat people and brain-things and Kai itself. Hiking through the Nothing under psychic attack. Derivative: We’re in the Phantom Zone, plain and simple. Not great: Long spans […]

We continue with Lone Wolf 11, The Prisoners of Time. The first day was almost all exposition, and it boils down to these bullet points: The Lorestones are in Tolakos, a necropolis to the north. The Lorestones are also the key to the Shadow Gate back home, which is super convenient. The Shadow Gate is […]

I didn’t post at all about my recent playthrough of Lone Wolf 10, Dungeons of Torgar. I’ve been focusing more on the reading & playing, without the distraction of also writing about it. DoT was a quick and easy adventure, due to some good luck where I found the easiest path on my first time. […]

I’ve played ToD a few more times, but since it’s the same tundra and ice castle as I’ve described a few times, I didn’t bother writing it up until I got some somewhere new. So, welcome! You’ve caught me mid-way through the adventure: I have just landed on an unguarded walkway on the Tower, and […]

We continue my glass-cannon playthrough of Tower of Destruction. Why do I call it that? Because skill 11 / stamina 16 / luck 12 baby! The 11 is nice, but 16 means that I’m at best 8 hits from death. I’m winning fights, but I’m running out of food to keep patching myself back together. […]

Yesterday’s “skill 7” playthrough was amusing and brief. But for real this time: let’s play Tower of Destruction. This time I rolled:   7 skill / 16 stamina / 12 luck  Not bad. A bit of a glass cannon, but maybe I’ll get a bit further this time. Again with the intro: fire and destruction, looting […]

Let’s play another round of Tower of Destruction! I enjoyed it on my previous run with a skill of 12, though some of the fights and skill tests in there make me wonder whether it really could be won with a lower skill. We roll the dice and… Skill 7 / Stamina 20 / Luck […]

Happy Christmas, solstice, Yule, and so on, all! I am celebrating with another night of Tower of Destruction. I have been going strong in my quest for revenge: exploring workshops and storehouses, freeing ghosts, and finding out that the wizard is very afraid of a sword inside the cathedral. The cathedral is locked, though, and […]

I’m still going strong no my quest to destroy the Tower of Destruction. I have explored the town a bit and I heard about a magic sword in the cathedral, so of course that’s my next stop. However, the door is locked and I need a crystal bird and book to open the door. So […]

Tonight we continue my playthrough of Tower of Destruction. Aliades the wizard was kind enough to give me healing potions and food for my journey north-east, where I intend to stop the Tower of Destruction from being completed. It’s a 40 kilometer walk across tundra, and then into the wizard’s Ice Castle… In the late […]

We continue my playthrough of Tower of Destruction. My stats are 12 / 23 / 11 but I’m down to 17 stamina at the moment from a few fights. I have made my way across the tundra and to the sphere. I’m not sure how to get revenge on a sphere, but I find a […]

Let’s start playing Tower of Destruction. The backstory is good old revenge: on my way back from market to my home in the frozen lands to the north, my home is destroyed by a flying sphere throwing balls of fire. Damn! The destruction is nearly complete, with only a few able-bodied people to take care […]

Part 3 of my first playthrough of The Chasms of Malice. I’ve been injured, and killed a lot of people, and basically bumbled my way around in the dark until the magic sword told me that I am nearing the big boss fight. I am totally not ready for this, as I’ve only killed 1 […]

Let’s continue the lovely rags to riches certain death story that is Chasms of Malice. Mission: Kill the king’s evil brother, Orghuz, but first his 7 lieutenants. Then bring back the magic shield because the kingdom is dependent on its supply of good luck in order to cope with life. Previously, I killed the first […]

Dear Fighting Fantasy, I never thought it could happen to me. I was a lackey in a kitchen, a third-assistant rabbit skinner. Then one day a wizard rushes in and grabs me by the wrist, dragging me right out the door. My boss screamed and hollered up a storm, but they threw a ouch of […]

I tried my luck at Rings of Kether again. I kept the same crappy character with 8 Skill and 15 Stamina, because why not? This time I decided to go to the local cops, and enlist some help. The officer I met, though, was scared to talk in his own office, and had me meet […]

I recently saw on a Facebook group, someone playing The Rings of Kether. That reminded me, that I’ve still not completed this one! I had a lot of it mapped out, had some fun times bumbling around and getting my butt kicked, and so on, but never beat the big baddie at the end. So, […]

I just finished playing out Highway to Hell by Max Brallier. Damn, what a good book. An anti-hero. Good writing. Lots of well-done characters. Several different paths to varying degrees of victory. Good stuff.  

Following up on my previous post, in our playthrough of Vault of the Vampire. Our 12/24/12 and 14 had us steamroll our way through the castle. We got Siegfried’s shield and armor, holy water and a crucifix, and a silver-tipped stake to finish the job. We killed everything in our path, until Reiner Heydrich himself. […]

For Halloween, the family and I sat down to play Vault of the Vampire, one of my favorite of the Fighting Fantasy series. This comes also, on the same day that I heard of the unfortunate death of Martin McKenna. It’s just coincidence, but it feels like the right way to celebrate Hallow e’en. After […]

I’m still reading Can You Survive the Zombie Apocalypse by Max Brallier. This is some seriously good stuff. The writing is great, ranging from explicit gore and violence to irreverent snarkiness and mild sexual suggestion. My nameless character has survived a few times and died a lot more, in a variety of ways that I […]

I’ve been enjoying Can You Survive the Zombie Apocalypse? for the last few days. It’s well written, only slightly graphic, and a lot of fun. On my second playthrough I found The End where we find out that the whole zombie uprising was caused by … ooh, sorry, no spoilers. 🙂 And it’s been so […]

And my playthrough of Freeway Warrior 4: California Countdown comes to a tragic end. We got back from a scouting mission with a little bit of food and no water, but with a new person in tow. He’s full of information about the road ahead, though, so that’s great. He also knows about a well […]

Today I continue Freeway Warrior 4: California Countdown I made my rendezvous with the convoy, and was met with some bad news: Kate is having a cholinergic syndrome from eating some bad mushrooms, I’m guessing Inocybes because they do look a lot like the little edible ones, and not at all A. muscaria because those […]

I am as shocked as can be, that I finished book 3 in a single playthrough. Honest! No cheating, no checking ahead, just fair-n-square. Meaning, it’s time to start California Countdown: Freeway Warrior book 4. We made our way to Tucson, and aren’t at all surprised to find that it is not a peaceful paradise. […]

Part 4 of my playthrough of Freeway Warrior 3: The Omega Zone. We were closing in on the convoy, but the combined biker-bandit gang was closing in on us. We were forced onto the wrong highway, and we wrecked our car to throw off pursuit. It seemed to work, but there’s a sniper on our […]

We continue our playthrough of Freeway Warrior 3: The Omega Zone. Yesterday we joined the convoy’s intended route, and found signs that they got here and kept moving as planned. That’s good news all around. Still, they’re several hours ahead of us and we’ve been running on adrenaline for 24 hours now, and we stop […]

In our last episode of Freeway Warrior 3: The Omega Zone, we succeeded in our our guerilla strike against the bandit stronghold at Ciudad Juarez, destroying their heavy weapons shipment while the residents of El Paso escaped in the confusion. We were pursued by several bikers for several miles, until we pulled off at a […]

Today we start the next Cal Phoenix adventure: Freeway Warrior, book 3: The Omega Zone. In book 1 we fled to Big Spring, but brought a gang of angry bandits with us, which ruined Big Spring so we had to flee again. In book 2 the Big Spring / Dallas joint colony made it to […]

Freeway Warrior 2: Mountain Run (yes, the American one with the abbreviated name) Part Four Surprisingly, Kate and I are somehow still not dead, and somehow we are still in the scorching Texas heat wishing for some gasoline. We’re riding on fumes, and we’ve found our way to Fort Stockton where we’re being held at […]

Freeway Warrior 2: Mountain Run (yes, the American one with the abbreviated name) Part Three Kate and I have escaped from San Angelo, with only one significant fistfight the whole time. I was able to sneak in, mow down my enemies in hails of gunfire, and sneak out through a maintenance shaft with Kate. It’s […]

Freeway Warrior 2: Mountain Run (yes, the American one with the abbreviated name) Into The Stadium In our last adventure, Cal Phoenix (that’s me) made his way into the city of San Angelo in search of his would-be girlfriend, Kate. He/I got there with surprisingly little trouble, and found a lot of loot on the […]

After a few weeks on other projects, it’s time to sit down with a game book again. Freeway Warrior, Book 2: Slaughter Mountain Run. In FW1 the Dallas colony made their way to Big Spring, Texas and merged with a larger community. In the process, Kate, my character’s would-be girlfriend, was forcibly abducted by a […]

Last week I was quite surprised to successfully complete Highway Holocaust, book 1 of the Freeway Warrior series. However, Big Spring is not the safe haven and new life we had hoped for, because we brought a particularly vicious gang, the Detroit Lions, with us. Now Big Spring is under siege, while the Detroit Lions […]

I’ve played Freeway Warrior a few more times, and am honestly wondering whether it’s possible to win at all without cheating. The gauntlet of fights and damage at Strawn (the bus depot, the rabid dogs, and the heat stroke) have killed me 3 more times, since last weekend, which was 3 more times. And that’s […]

We continue our group playthrough via Zoom, of Alice’s Nightmare in Wonderland. We have someone on dice, someone with the character sheet, and someone with the book reading aloud. So far, Alice has breezed through everything without problem. Even the Royal Executioner and the Hatter-Dormouse-Hare-Golem gave her but a minor scratch. She found the Queen […]

We continue our group playthrough on Zoom of Alice’s Nightmare in Wonderland. Again, we have one person on Alice’s dice, one on the nightmares’ dice, one with the character sheet, and two of us with the book switching off reading. We have so far breezed through only one combat with Tik Tok Men, wandered through […]

Last night, four of us got together via Zoom to play Alice’s Nightmare in Wonderland. I love these Jonathan Green gamebooks. They’re well-written, thoroughly proofread, beautifully (disturbingly) illustrated, and just enormous with content. For group play, these are our favorites. Four of us got together: one with Alice’s dice, one with the nightmares’ dice, one […]

I still have Freeway Warrior (part 1) on my desk from last weekend’s Zoom group playthrough. That was a lot of fun, and we died when our car ran off a bridge after ramming a roadblock. I had previously played it with a friend, without Zoom but in similar fashion where we took turns reading […]

This last weekend, we made a group activity out of playing Freeway Warrior book 1. Six of us wanted to get together for a little interactive storytelling. So we met up on Zoom. I have the gamebook. Someone else has a d10. A third person made up a character sheet, between what I showed them […]

I continue my re-play of Beneath Nightmare Castle. My character’s stats are 9 / 20 / 7 and a willpower of 11. Right now, though, I’m down to 6 luck and 9 willpower, and I’ve just now gotten inside Nightmare Castle. The town was creepy and full of thieves, and the garden was full of […]

So, I went to re-play Beneath Nightmare Castle and I lasted ONE STINKIN’ PAGE before I was overpowered and sacrificed to some horrible god or another. Totally weak, man. I’m gonna cheat here. Let’s rewind that dark adventure music soundtrack I was playing, and just go back and pick that other option. My stats: 9 […]

I’m just on a kick this month, of replaying old FFs that I’ve played before. This time I randomly picked from the shelf Beneath Nightmare Castle. I recall that I liked this one a lot, because of its horror elements… by which I mean tentacles and that really hideous big boss Xakhaz or some such. […]

Looking back at my own website, I see that I played Masks of Mayhem in late 2017 (two and a half years ago) and found it “okay I guess”  Well, let’s see what I think of it today on a single playthrough. I’m apparently the king of some unimpressive region, and my court wizard informs […]

Let’s play a gamebook tonight! I randomly grabbed a green spine and… Temple of Terror. I played this one back in 2015, and I only vaguely recall anything. Mostly, I remember a brutal desert and a nearly-impossible sandworm. And I think this is the one with the angel of death leaving letters so you can […]

Today we will replay Siege of Sardath, and I say “we” because my sweetie and I are playing together, with one of us reading and the other making the choices. I played SoS back in 2015, and I remember that it was a very difficult book with a lot of mandatory items and a lot […]

The post today brought something very special: Choose Cthulhu. I think “unboxing” videos are pretty stupid, but well… I’m pretty excited here. I got the six in English edition, since my Spanish is poor. I already have El Llamado de Cthulhu, an anthology of Lovecraft in Latin American Spanish (thus “El Llamado” instead of “La […]