Nine maps and still counting

My goodness, Fangs of Fury is quite an adventure. I have finally probed and played out everything up until the Choose Your Level judgment on page 39, and it came up to nine pages of maps. Most FFs or other game books are 3-4 pages, some as many as 5. But this is just wild – so many paths, different views of what I think are the same village, boat rides to another island, multiple paths through the siege and to the coastal cliffs, towers and citadels and forests and caves, and cliffs and more caves…

I am quite impressed. I hate to keep harping on Chasms of Malice because it was awful, but with Fangs of Fury Luke Sharp has really done an outstanding job.

As to the book being in fact possible with mediocre stats, I’m less sure. A lot of combat can be skipped once you’ve mapped it out, but there are really a lot of “roll doubles or take a hit” and “roll 6 times, take a hit for every double” and the required lockpick is behind “lose 2d6 stamina.” Even walking out of the cave on page 1 will cost at least 5 stamina worth of stingers and intense exercise. There are very few healing spots throughout the adventure, too, so a potion of strength seems must-have.

But, after over a month, I am finally up to the judgment and I have a few white cubes. Let’s see what happens next.