How to Write a FF Adventure: Part VI

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9

• 

  When you want to see our hero facing an opponent that is unwell, supernatural, drunk or unskilled simply reduce or increase the SKILL score rather than adding too many bonuses or penalties into your adventure. Avoid wherever possible using both methods and choose one or the other and stick with it.

• If a reader dies from an encounter offer an original way to continue on the adventure despite failure, however with a consequence. For example, advice a reader that when the STAMINA has been reduced to 0 to turn to page XXXX. At this paragraph surprise them by advising the hero has been dragged to a cell or cave etc and given the bare minimum of a potion to maintain life. What happens to them after this point is up to your plot. A lot different to the usual you are dead scenario.

• Spice up your encounters by using ‘hooks’ that grab the attention of the hero i.e. explain to the reader that he perceives another character watching him from a window etc. Introduce other characters so that your adventure becomes memorable. Many Gamebooks have introduced us to special characters such as Yaztromo, Zharradan Marr, Count Reiner Heydrichh, and the dreaded Ganjees that remain with us long after the adventure is over.

• Provide more exciting descriptions of monsters and opponents that add flesh to the encounters. Explain that the Orc has little or no armour, and that apart from a dirty cloak, its clothing is mainly constituted of rags. Describe that its ragged bloodstained and bruised body, is covered in the gashes of a whip and that its ribs protrude from its frail frame. These help to make your creations even more memorable and realistic.

• A common mistake by many budding amateur writers is to include too many SKILL 9+ monsters at the start of an adventure. Where possible slowly increase the difficulty of the encounters to create a rising tension. Encounters should ideally become more gripping as the adventure proceeds, with the harder problems and obstacles saved for last until it culminates in a rewarding and exciting climactic conclusion. When you include encounters in a Gamebook try to avoid including more than two or three SKILL 10+ enemies.

• If you have introduced player companions to add dialogue ensure you separate them at some point or place them into difficulty. Using this device allows you to give a player the option of following them or leaving them to their own devices. This technique also offers excellent opportunities for a traitor arc etc.

• In the final encounter at the end of your adventure make sure that there is a valid and realistic reason for your opponent’s weakness if her, or she has one. If you are going to include a final encounter ensure it is possible to win the book with SKILL 9. A final boss with a SKILL of more than 12 can be difficult to kill, unless you have included a number of powerful artefacts to assist you at the end of the game. One of the most often criticised final battles is that against Razaak in Crypt of the Sorcerer who has a SKILL 12 and STAMINA 20. What makes Razaak especially difficult is that you cannot lose two consecutive Attack Rounds.

PUZZLES & PASSWORDS

Puzzles and passwords are two very iconic elements of a traditional Fighting Fantasy adventure and almost any serious adventure will at some point need one. Before using any puzzle or password in an adventure it is vitally important that you create an element of mystery and include reasons for their existence. A common complaint with some Fighting Fantasy books occurs when to successfully navigation further into the book you need to choose the right password (for example the Citadel of Chaos where you have to get the password right to gain access to the Black Tower).

To make your adventures more realistic always ensure that your hero has an idea what the password is and is therefore able to guess. This can easily be achieved by proving the hero with the password earlier in the adventure and explaining why it is needed. The words can then be converted into numbers and adding it up to determine the correct paragraph.

Code words or phrases are an excellent way to ensure a reader is paying attention during an adventure. These code words can be used to keep track of encounters, events, progress or even the passing of time. Spreading these throughout a book forces a player to collect them to either win, or provides them with clues to succeed. How can you use them? Well Steve Jackson introduced an ingenious Gamebook mechanism in Creature of Havoc that was used wildly throughout Fighting Fantasy and especially in later books such as Jonathon Green’s Bloodbones. Using names, objects and locations encountered during a quest a reader is given the information on how to translate these into a numeric code in order to pass certain areas i.e. A=1, B=2, etc at a later stage in the adventure. For example, if the player has obtained a certain dagger obtained from a character known as ‘Silva’ the word ‘Silva’ could be translated into a paragraph number that is required to continue on the adventure. The S=19, I=9, L=12, V=22, A=1. Therefore a reader would turn to paragraph 63.

Using this Gamebook mechanism enables you to stop cheating in the adventure and also forces the player to record or remember everything they do. The process can be made more complicated by either asking the reader to add the number inscribed upon the sword discovered earlier on in the adventure to the translated word or alternatively the reader can be just asked if they have the 'Drows' on their Adventure Sheet?" If the reader has the word written down for instance, they are presented with information about the Drows=’sword’ that will allow them to defeat their final enemy in the adventure.

Finally, one of the most memorable of all Fighting Fantasy puzzles was the language barrier created again in Creature of Havoc. Use what a reader believes is gobbledygook at certain points throughout the adventure until they are provided with the code that allows them to translate the words and converse in code-form.