Category: Blog

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 […]

So, the temp agency hooked me up with Firetop Mountain PLC again. But I’m a maverick who can’t play by the rules, a loose cannon, a rogue cop, a lone wolf… well, no, that’s a different series. It’s The Regional Accounts Director of Firetop Mountain, and this time I’m going to play it by Fighting […]

Let’s give the “gig economy” thing another go, with The Regional Accounts Director of Firetop Mountain. Again, I’m a desperate temp heading into my first day at the rather sketchy Firetop Mountain PLC. The office is a castle carved into the living stone of the downtown business district. The buzzer at the front door is […]

In The Regional Accounts Director of Firetop Mountain, I’m a data-entry temp, in between gigs for so long that I’ll take any job. The temp agency sends me to Firetop Mountain PLC where they always need “new blood”. heh heh heh Yeah, it’s kinda ominous but so is rent, so I need the work. The […]

Lone Wolf is back in the city of Tahou, after spending 3 days underground finding the Lorestone. The bis boss fight is here: that Vassagonian king Kimah, who we met back in book 5 Shadow on the Sand, is leading his army in battle and wants to kill me personally. He’s armed with a magical […]

Lone Wolf is in the city of Tahou, and awaiting an audience with the local senate to request that they open the Cauldron. Now, I should clarify that in the prologue I was told that the Lorestone is in (or under) Tahou, and I still have no idea what the Cauldron is. Apparently it’s some […]

It’s Lone Wolf, book 9 – the Cauldron of Fear. It’s all out war, as the armies of Helgedad and Vassagonia together ravage their way across the land of Magnamund. I’m on the hunt for the next Lorestone, so I can become a magical badass and save the day. The Lorestone is in the city […]

Okay, attempt number three of Lone Wolf book 8 — The Jungle of Horrors. This time, we know the path to and through the city of Tharro, and we make pretty short work of it. Well, except for that run-in with a helghast that tore me up pretty badly again. Still, we get out of […]

After our daring escape from an ambush in Tharro, we have been riding for a few days northward towards Syada. That’s why I took all week getting to the next blog post: can’t get very good wifi on horseback in this area. On the highway we come across a boarded-up mine and a caretaker’s hut. […]

My last trip into Lone Wolf book 8 was exciting but short-lived. Let’s try it again… This time, Paido and I decide to ride north along the highway rather than take the barge. That was a fun cruise, but let’s try something different right? It’s getting dark and the rain is really coming down. We […]

Here on earth, it’s been a  few months since I played Castle Death, but for Lone Wolf it has been only a few days. A new Darklord has taken control in Helgedad, and Drakkarim have been invading the border towns in preparation for all-out war yet again. One of these bordering kingdoms is Talestria, home […]

For the last week or so I’ve been reading “Can You Survive the Zombie Apocalypse?” by Max Brallier. This is some great stuff. It’s not really a game book, in that there is no game component such as randomness, inventory, or personal statistics. It’s “just” a choose-a-path book. I have been feeling fairly low energy […]

Yesterday, Deadpool (that’s me!) broke into the Roxxon Corporation’s gizmo storage warehouse, killing enough guards along the way to earn some badness points. We/I stole the time helmet, and of course instantly put it on and pushed the button. Flash! Blammo! Icky icky icky icky ka-pang! Nee! And we’re standing on a metropolitan street corner […]

It’s time to put on my red Spandex body suit and sharpen my katana — let’s play You Are Deadpool again. The scene starts with me (Deadpool) overlooking a Roxonn Corporation research lab, and reminding myself loudly that Tomorrow Man hired me to steal a time helmet. So that’s 25 minutes of plot setup we […]

It’s the HP Lovecraft Film Festival here in Portland, and I’ve been playing Nightshift. I’m an E.R. doctor, and woke up here in the nightmare version of my hospital: run-down, just plain wrong in places where the furnishings have reverted to something from the 19th century, flooded with water and mold, and populated with gnomes […]

Continuing on with Nightshift during downtime at the 2019 HP Lovecraft Film Festival. I’ve finally found room with a window, and I see that getting out of the hospital won’t be a help — it’s all Deep Dark Woods out there, no sign of the city where I live nor any other civilization, and probably […]

Tonight is the H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival in Portland, Oregon. This is always a fun time, with short films, long films, and general weirdness. To celebrate some horror, let’s play Nightshift again. The story is that I’m an ER nurse on the night shift. I lie down for a power nap, and wake up […]

I’m trying a gamebook that came out only a few weeks ago: Nightshift. It’s an interesting take on the storyline. Modern setting, but a gothic other-worldy thing. There are puzzles but no dice. There are items but no quest that I know of. I’m a medical professional, awakened from a power nap during a long […]

It’s late 1974, and Deadpool is standing knee-deep in a swamp. It’s issue 3 of You Are Deadpool, and DP has just visited the fifth and final place to grab a *gem which may open up the Nexus of All Realities. Time and space are starting to act a bit weird: I’ve seen the Swamp […]