The Warlock of Firetop Mountain

Fighting Fantasy #1

by Steve Jackson, Ian Livingstone, Russ Nicholson (Illustrator)

FIGHTING FANTASY is the brilliant series of adventure gamebooks in which YOU are the hero! Decide which monsters to fight, which paths to take, who to trust and when to run. Can you survive the clutches of the hideous Bloodbeast, or defeat a noxious inhuman Orc? Deep in the caverns beneath Firetop Mountain lies an untold wealth of treasure, guarded by a powerful Warlock -or so the rumor goes. Several adventurers like yourself have set off for Firetop Mountain in search of the Warlock's hoard. None has ever returned. Do you dare follow them?

Genres: Fantasy, Gamebooks, Fiction, Role Playing Games, Choose Your Own Adventure, Gaming, Adventure

192 pages, Paperback

First published August 27, 1982

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Steve Jackson (born 20 May 1951) is a British game designer, writer, and game reviewer, who is often confused with the American game designer of the same name.

Along with Ian Livingstone, he is the creator of the Fighting Fantasy books. The US Jackson also wrote three books in the Fighting Fantasy series, which adds to the confusion, especially as these books were simply credited to "Steve Jackson" without any acknowledgement that it was a different person.

See also:
Steve Jackson, US game designer
Steve Jackson, author of works on crime
Steve Jackson, Scottish thriller writer

Reviews

[Gianfranco Mancini · Rating 3 out of 5]

A classic gamebook with a classic dungeoneer old style adventure and the maze can be a real frustrating challenge, but this is the first Fighting Fantasy book and it spawned lots of sequels and more (Warhammer and Malazan fantasy series settings were strongly inspired by the World of Titan from FF): every Role Playing Game Player/Master should try it at last one time in his life.

[Jason Koivu · Rating 3 out of 5]

"NERD!!!"...There. Now that we've got that out of the way, allow me to continue...

I bought this Dungeons & Dragons style game book years ago in a shop on (or maybe just off) the high street in St. Albans while on honeymoon in England. And to answer the obvious question that follows...yes, my wife is an unusually understanding woman.

The Warlock of Firetop Mountain is apparently a classic of the fantasy adventure gamebook sort. *shrugs* What did I know? When I picked it up I thought it was one of those old-school Choose Your Own Adventure kind of books. Alas no. This lays out a "dungeon crawl" (ancient gaming style in which adventurers enter a maze-like setting often underground in a tomb or highly fictionalized castle dungeon) in which the adventurer (created by you) journeys through in an attempt to pick up treasure and not get killed by monsters and traps.

With the physical book, you're suppose to write shit down, like maps, and keep track of "hit points" or items found in the dungeon, which I honestly wasn't interested in doing, so I only flipped through the book, read a few passages and never played it.

Fast-forward seven years to a technologically wondrous time known as the 2010s and low-and-behold what should I find but The Warlock of Firetop Mountain as a free ebook, an ebook which kept track of all the extraneous crap for you! "Wow," I think I might have shouted in my head as I moved on to more enriching reading material. Ah but it stuck in my craw, so I ended up getting it a few days later for my Kindle and finally played/read the damn thing.

The adventure is contrived to the extreme! Sure it's fun enough to tramp through the dungeon hoping you make the right choices as you come up against goblins and ghouls, but if you step back and think about it a moment, the whole premise is ridiculous, even for fantasy standards! Why would a super powerful and highly intelligent warlock create an incredibly convoluted, deadly maze and sit in it all day, everyday just waiting for some fool to stumble into it and die? Anyone in solitary confinement all that time would welcome visitors!

There's a number of other nonsensical encounters seemingly thrown into the game in order to add color to the story, like an old man calmly sitting in a rocking chair in a room set up like a cluttered cottage which is surrounded by deviously trapped rooms, orcs up the wazoo, a minotaur's labyrinth, deadly sandworms that pop out of the banks of a highly impassable Styx-like river, etc etc etc. How is the poor old man suppose to get his shopping done stuck in the middle of all this dangerous danger?!

As implausible as it all is, it's what fantasy is all about: fantasy. Suspend belief and enjoy the adventure!


PIX APPENDIX!

Not all fantasy artwork is created equal. Some of it sucks ass. The illustrations in this one are actually pretty good. Check it out...

[James Tivendale · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read an interview the other day that the Malazan world was based upon some Steve Jackson-esque RPG gaming. It made me remember that I loved these books when I was a child. I can't remember too much about them apart from that you had to roll dices and set you own attributes and character. That you would face unspeakable foes and go on a whirlwind fantasy adventure.... Do you fight the warlock - turn to page 283 - do you run away - turn to page 7.... Page 7 = YOU ARE DEAD!!
It was real energetic and amazing for young me as a 10-13 year old child. I can't remember the stories too well which is why I am only posting one review regarding the 6 - 12 I read. I remember loving this one. The first in the series. I really want to stalk libraries to see if I can find these books again. Spent so many hours with friends contemplating which path in the dungeon to take... before we DIED!! :) I occasionally made it to page 400 where all was well and the day was saved, but not often.
James x. www.youandibooks.wordpress.com

[Leo . · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you love dungeons and dragons and fantasy and fiction I recommend this book. It is actually a game and very good too. I read all of Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone's books in my youth. It lead to me writing my first fantasy novel Kandor The Warrior, by Leo.

[Mark Lawrence]

I have to admit, I'm not going to finish this. The time has passed. It was a good time.

You can read about my adventure here:

http://mark---lawrence.blogspot.com/2...


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Join my 3-emails-a-year newsletter #prizes

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[Leo . · Rating 5 out of 5]

Got me started...opened my imagination!🐯👍

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is where it all began for me, back in 1982, the book that turned me into a gamer...

... you know, it’s just now occurring to me that this book may have ruined my life.

Damn.

[Alex · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kids today eh? They're far too busy playing finely tuned, graphically superior, deeply immersive games like Skyrim to appreciate what a real gaming experience should be like. Back in my day if you wanted to fight a Dragon you had to have a real Adventure that looked and played something like this.



Us intrepid block-like Adventurers set out to steal the magic cup of greatness from the evil black castle armed only with a trusty spear. The evil roaring dragon would smite you whole if you were not careful. That is, make a wrong move in the scary maze and you'd be inside that dude's tummy as fast as he could roar.

That was a real manly adventure for real men. Not boys.

Around the same time we had another real adventure that if you gave it to a ten year old now he'd laugh in your face. "Where are the good graphics?" he would cry, and in response I would say something like "hahahahahaha young child, what do you know about gaming? I have 30 years of experience over you. I am older and wiser and have played all of the games ever, from Pacman/Space Invaders, to Shadow of the Beast to Rainbow Islands to Legend of Zelda. You think you can tell me what a great game is? FOOL. (...of a Took, if I feel like showing off my knoweldge of fine literature quotations). I tell you young BOY (because girls aren't allowed in this club, K?) that this is a GAME and you shall sit and play it and LOVE it." And then the coup de grace. "THIS IS A BOOK CHILD! You need to use your IMAGINATION (because, poor boy, he doesn't have an imagination, staring at that TV screen all of the time, levelling his silly character up, taking arrows to the knee and whatnot.) All you need to play this game are two dice a pencil and paper (for mapping, and fuck you're gonna need it in this one...)

So, our young ten year old regrets laughing in my face and wishes now that somehow things could have been different. He's got a lot of sidequests to be getting on with, frankly. Anyway, you know the score. Skill, Stamina, Luck. Skill fights monsters, Stamina is your health bar and you roll two dice and need to get under your Luck to get "Lucky" but careful, the more luck points you use, the harder it gets! Ingenious system. You walk down a passage way, do you go East or West? Turn to the appropriate paragraph. Do you go through that door soldier relentlessly on towards your goal (Which, incidentally, is killing the evil Warlock and taking his treasure, of course). Do you fight the monster or flee? The choices are seemingly endless, who needs open world MMOs when it's all contained in this one little book?

Because, young ten year old, this is what a true adventuring quest looks like. A hidden mountain lair, populated by Orcs, Minotaurs, Zombies. There are rooms with traps, there are friendly dwarves joking and playing cards and of course there's the obligatory maze. It's all here and not a PS3 controller in sight. Just your IMAGINATION.

Sure, there will be questions. Why can't I turn around and go back the way I just came? (because you fucking can't Okkk? That's the game.) Isn't it a bit unfair that if I miss one of the gazillion keys I can't win the game? (That's life kiddo, life isn't fair. Play through again and get it right this time!!) Why does the Maze of Zagor make no sense, it's actually unmappable? Why are there friendly Dwarves sitting playing cards in this maze? Why did the Warlock leave a powerful gem that can kill him lying around? Why is the Mazemaster such a fucking douche??

By now I'm sick of the ten of year old's questions. I want to be left in peace to play my GAME. I know games better than him, doesn't he understand this? I played this when I was a kid, it's brilliant. BRILLIANT I tell you. And yet he loses interest and goes off to play Skyrim. Apparently it's really cool and has dragons. I sit and play this for another few hours. Gotta get out of that motherfucking maze. Wish I could kill the Mazemaster. And where's that last goddamn key??

Brilliant. This book is amazing. If you want proof take a look at this Dragon. RAWR. I love Dragons (I killed him with a spell I found. That bastard went down good!)



Buy it. Love it. Experience an amazing world. A book in which YOU are the HERO. I've still got another thousand million of them to play. Ironically I've also still got Skyrim to play. Who needs Skyrim when I have books though?

[Imaydahjr · Rating 3 out of 5]

فهمیدم این کتاب رو (یا بازی صداش بزنم بهتره) نمیشه با یه بار خوندن و جلو رفتن تموم کرد.. (واسه کسایی که نمی‌دونن: این کتاب شبیه یه بازیه و قهرمان داستان شخصیه که کتاب رو شروع میکنه و با انتخاب و تصمیماتش سرنوشتش مشخص میشه) هربار میتونی متفاوت شروع کنی و انتخاب ها و مسیرهای مختلفی جلوت قرار بگیره

قهرمان داستانِ من که همین اولین تلاش به دیار باقی شتابید🚶🏻‍♀️

بازم میام سراغش.. بعدا .~.

پ.ن: از اون کتاباس که حال میده با دوستات بشینی دورهمی بازی کنی!

[Paul Christensen · Rating 4 out of 5]

The grim, spidery pictures and musty smell of the pages,
The 'blue candle' room, snuffed-out nightmare from the ages;

The deranged old man in his prison full of slime,
The crazy maze of Zagor that enrages every time;

The magic tools that hum a tune, and of course the 'stars and hands',
The torture chamber, ghouls and wights: this gamebook launched the brand.

[A.J. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is of course the 'original' fighting fantasy gaming book, the one that spawned a series of hundreds, not to mention all the copycats. As the first of them, it deserves a place of honour. It isn't perfect, but it doesn't have to be. Any RPGer worth their salt needs to have played this book/game.

[Ali Logs stuff · Rating 5 out of 5]

edit: Played a second playthrough. this time, with my wife. I tried to act as some sort of storyteller/ dungeon master and she played the main hero's role. unsurprisingly there were tons of new things we experienced. So, the book is even better than I thought. even though it definitely has its own share of flaws, but for a bunch of newbies like us, it was a genuinely entertaining experience. So this time, I'll give it a 5🌟

Just finished my first playthrough!
I haven't got the chance to experience some dnd campaigns, but for a simple role playing start, I thought this would be a good one.
at first I wasn't into it as much as I hoped; But as I progressed, I got so much into it, way more than I ever imagined.

If you take at it as a fantasy storybook, then you'll definitely be disappointed; But experience it as a simple rpg playbook where you're the one making the decisions and you'll probably end up loving it.

Anyway, can't wait to experience a second playthrough!

[Murray Dixon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Full commentary at www.turnto400.blogspot.com

Ultimately, "Warlock" comes off as a series of interesting but disconnected encounters playing out in a largely bland, unembellished environment. Firetop Mountain seems like dungeon equivalent of a newly completed office building, all fitted out but with scant contents and zero character. I never really had a coherent sense of what was happening or why.

I found myself wondering how all of these creatures get by and what kind of relationships they have with each other. Does the VAMPIRE catch a ride with the FERRYMAN across the river when he wants to go to the candle shop? And does the FERRYMAN pull that same bullshit charging 3 gold pieces when the sign only says 2, or is that shit just for TOURISTS? What does the DRAGON eat? Does the MINOTAUR stay in the same room all day? Were all of these guys reporting to the Warlock? Did they have meetings? Where are the toilets? And so on.


I shouldn't judge too harshly though - this is book #1, and 1982 was back in the early days of role-playing when corridors connecting a series of rooms containing monsters guarding boxes holding traps and/or treasure was what it was all about. Excepting the maze, it's pretty fun to play, and with a little charitable imagination you can imagine explanations for out-of-place stuff like the candle shop and the poker-playing midgets in the maze (oh, did I not mention them?) And the apparent incoherence of goings-on within the dungeon is fairly consistent with the notion that you're just some guy breaking and entering, which is exactly the case.

And what's more of course, "Warlock" laid the foundation for a hell of a lot more to come...

[Robin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was a big fan of the Lone Wolf and TSR's Endless Quest books back when I was in elementary school, but it was only recently that I encountered Britain's venerable Fighting Fantasy series. It's very much a product of its time, but enjoyable nonetheless.

Like Lone Wolf, these game books pair Choose Your Own Adventure style interactivity with a simple conflict resolution system. It requires the use of six-sided dice, unlike Lone Wolf (which uses a pencil and a printed grid in the book as its randomizer), but it's clever and gets the job done.

As a game book it's fairly fun, but I found the maze towards the end a little tedious, as mazes in text-based games always are. After several failed play-throughs I ended up using a map found online to get through it.

The story itself is pretty sparse, basically a beginning and ending with many unconnected vignettes in between. This is par for the course with Dungeons & Dragons-inspired cave-crawling, where you're never sure what's in the next room and not much of an effort was made to come up with a unifying theme or sensible ecology. I grew up with this sort of thing, so I find it charming, but modern readers without this background might not understand the appeal.

I look forward to playing through subsequent volumes.

[Taddow · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book started out pretty good but the later part with the maze soon became a grind and caused some frustration (I was even making maps to plot my progress and soon came to not caring about doing that). I actually (sad to say) had to get through by cheating on the maze part to find a pathway through by using a magical spell called "the Internet." But even with that success my adventure ended with failure as I defeated the Warlock but found only two of my three keys worked in his chest. Sadly, frustrated and disgruntled I decided the dead Warlock could keep his treasure and headed out to seek another adventure.

Despite my dismay with how the adventure turned out, I still gave this book 3 stars as I enjoyed what it was trying to do- a game book that was an invention for its time. I enjoyed the nostalgic feel of an old school D&D module that it had (where map-making was important) and the various rooms of monsters and encounters (many of which had no rhythm or reason). When reading these style game books I prefer more description and story (like the Lone Wolf books, the Car Wars and AD&D game books). I plan on trying more books in this series though.

[David Sarkies · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first Fighting Fantasy gamebook
9 June 2012

This is the first of the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks and I remember that it was first introduced to me in primary school as an offering in a book club. As soon as I read the blurb that said that it was a fantasy adventure in which you are the hero I immediately know that I wanted it and sure enough my parents bought it for me. Soon though, more began to appear on the shelves and I went out of my way to begin collecting them. There were originally 60 gamebooks written but by the time 20 had been released many of us had drifted off to other interests (for me it was computer roleplaying games).

These were not the first 'choose your own adventure' style books, they had been around for a while beforehand, but they were the first to use simple game mechanics (namely two dice, a pencil, and some paper) to add an element of chance. A number of other series, such as Grail Quest and Lone Wolf, also appeared, which included one that used coin tosses to add the element of chance (though I found the coin toss books to be somewhat difficult and frustrating, namely because I suck at tossing coins). While initially rolling the dice and running the books as an adventure where fun, in the end I tossed the dice out of the window (not literally – I'm a roleplayer so I need dice) and worked on the assumption that I would win every combat. Anyway, if I did lose a combat, I would simply start the combat all over again (as opposed to the entire book).

This book is basically a dungeon crawl where you explore an underground complex and fight the nasty wizard at the end and steal his treasure. The story is very linear in that you cannot go back if you have missed something. The first part of the adventure is okay, as long as to go into every door, but all you have to do is to make one wrong turn and you will not know that you have made that wrong turn until you get to the end, kill the wizard, and discover that you do not have the keys to unlock the chest. One way to solve this problem is to make a map and to inscribe the paragraph number at every point where you make a major decision so that you can jump back there without having to slog all the way back through the book.

One of the other oddities of these adventures is that it is not something you would do these days. It is automatically assumed that the wizard is bad, therefore breaking into his house, killing all his pets, killing him, and then stealing his treasure, is somehow considered to be okay. Not exactly the most healthy of things to be teaching children. I guess that breaking into the house of a drug lord, killing his guards, and then stealing his money, would, based on the premise of this book, be okay. However, society does not view it that way (or at least the government), even if the subject is a proven criminal. There is a system designed to deal with people like that, and if any bad person's possessions were up for grabs to the first person to kill them, then there would be anarchy. In any case, the only reason we believe that the warlock is bad is because it is hinted at, and he has a dungeon packed full of monsters. Anyway, just me musing once again about the disconnect between fantasy and reality, which does not necessarily mean that I didn't enjoy the book ( and a musing which no doubt will appear again in another gamebook).

[Luís · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not the BEST title but the FIRST!
"The Warlock of Firetop Mountain" is an interesting gamebook with great moments and also frustrating scenes. It's not a elaborated game with complex story, I saw way much better in other titles of the series. I think this book was just a little experiment from the creators without exploiting the true potential of this kind of books.
Difficulty is satisfying, but the book is full of uninteresting entries. There's to much direction choices like "If you want to go east go the number ###, if you want to go north go number ###"... this fact is even worse when the last part of the adventure is a maze. I stood one hour jumping entries and entries until I found the dragon's chamber. And even if you draw a map you'll have a hard time constructing the maze.
The good moments are in the final boss fight, Zagor, the Warlock, a tough fight specially if your initial valors are to low. Another good moment is the river crossing... reminded me of Charon, the ferryman of the Underworld of Hades in Greek mythology.
In overall is a good gamebook and if you start the first adventure in Fighting Fantasy series with it you'll be pleased... If this is not your first experience then you'll be disappointed by the lack of complexity.

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

Full playthrough and review at http://torallion.blogspot.com

Very much a classic plot – adventurer enters dungeon for no particular reason other than to loot the place of all its treasure and become a hero. Forgiveable given this book’s status as the first Fighting Fantasy book, but perhaps having been spoiled by much less shallow plots in more recent gamebooks, it doesn’t grab me in the same way. For some this gamebook might represent a gateway to a much-loved hobby, but in my case it wasn’t the first gamebook I played and therefore doesn’t make me all dewy-eyed with nostalgia. The writing is concise, with no unnecessary detail - The dungeon itself makes little sense, with magical items dotted around for no particular reason, and the keys to the Warlock’s chest scattered at random. However the advantage of the basic plot is its simplicity which makes it easy to play without having to remember all sorts of details.

The artwork doesn’t always get across the dank atmosphere you would expect to experience in a dungeon of this kind and it’s a bit rough around the edges, but is very detailed and the familiar style does appeal to me.

Gameplay is fairly straightforward – the player generally moves from room to room and has a series of discrete encounters, which when overcome reward the player with items which may or may not be useful for overall success. There are no situations where I felt unfairly punished for exploring – even wandering into a trap wasn’t too crippling, and none of the fights I was forced into were overly difficult (although the Iron Cyclops would have been impossible for a low-skill character and I think the true path requires you to fight him).

I found the fact that I was forced to drop items at certain points in order to pick up others a little annoying, and this would have been downright frustrating had I really wanted to keep hold of everything. This rule made little sense in that there was no distinction between small and large items, so I could happily have left a key behind in order to pick up a shield, for instance. By the same token if I was carrying nothing but a key I would have been forced to do this. I guess this is a simplified way of forcing players to make decisions about what they carry, but I felt like a limited inventory size of 10 items or so would have been a better way to achieve this.

Being partly an Ian Livingstone creation, this book bears his trademark in that there are certain paths you must take, and certain encounters you must have, or you cannot complete the adventure successfully. Sadly this also means that there are certain paths and encounters you cannot experience on your way to successful completion, as there is no way to go back to a previous junction and go the other way. This is, in one way, a shame, but when you do eventually find that true path, it makes it all the more satisfying.

Overall this isn’t a difficult gamebook although the odds are against completing it on a first attempt, due to the fact that one of the required keys is easily missable by taking a wrong turn.

[Graham · Rating 4 out of 5]

I remember this as the first of the long-running FIGHTING FANTASY gamebooks that allowed kids to chart their own adventures in various fantasy worlds. Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone did themselves proud with this one; they essentially took a typical adventurers-explore-dungeon story and made it interactive years before computer games would reach the same level of realism.

This tale is basic, but good. It has the elements that would become popularised later in the series: dungeons, traps, monsters and seemingly endless doorways! I enjoyed playing it very much indeed, although I believe some of the sequels were superior.

NB. On a new re-read of the book, I found myself stymied by the awful maze that makes up the latter part of the book. Unfortunately this drags the rating down a fair bit and I have no idea who thought it would be a good idea. It becomes a case of ending the adventure out of sheer frustration by throwing the book at the wall after going in circles for the 10th time...

NB. Ever one to persevere, I once again tried to find my way through the book. It's a great book, a little simplistic compared to others that have come since, but one which packs plenty of memorable situations into its pages. I found myself enjoying it greatly - until I once again got hopelessly lost in the maze and had to abandon the attempt for the second time. Whose idea was this again?

NB. I've finally managed to complete this book, but only because I managed to find an online map which somebody had helpfully drawn in order to navigate the aforementioned maze. Although more basic than later gamebooks, this, at heart, works very well: there are lots of monsters, lots of decisions, some atmosphere, and high-stakes drama at the climax. It is perhaps a little too easy in places (the over-population of luck points rankles a bit) but any problems are minor teething issues that would be successfully eliminated later on in the series.

[Pete Murphy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought this book in early 1983 (a year after release) and played it numerous times over the years* and yet I have never completed it.

This time I had Skill (7), Stamina (19) and Luck (8) -obviously fate was against me and I failed again.
I managed to get up to the Iron Cyclops before he defeated my weary self.

I will leave it until early 2018 (35th Anniversary) to again enter the Mountain.

Thanks to Michael Wall for getting me into Fighting Fantasy.

*don't think I tried it during the 90s or 00s.

[Mark Selby · Rating 4 out of 5]

Due to Covid, I just finished rereading this book after an absence of 35 years.
In fact this was the only book I never completed as a child due to getting hopelessly lost in the Maze of Zagor.
It very nearly defeated me as an adult too but fortunately my mapmaking skills were a bit better this time around!

I really enjoyed the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks as a child but if anyone is contemplating them for the first time I would recommend reading some of the later titles first as this is a tricky introduction to the series!

[Esther Sánchez · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pensé que me iba a dar para un rato entretenido con el que llenar las horas muertas, pero he estado tres días para encontrar la salida del puñetero laberinto. Eso sí, lo de llenar las horas muertas y entretenerme haciendo el mapa del laberinto lo ha cumplido a la perfección. La historia pues es matar a todo lo que te encuentres y personajes femeninos ni uno, eso estaba claro.

[Matthew · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first in the series of Steve Jackson's & Ian Livingstone's Fighting Fantasy books.
This is the only one I never completed,I always got stuck in that damned maze.

[Ant · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most amazing things to happen in my childhood! So many happy hours...

[Amy Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

My childhood introduction into choose-your-own-adventures. I have so many fond memories of this book that it's no wonder that I got into Dungeons and Dragons as an adult.

10/10 for nostalgia

[Ali · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was so amazing!
And damn I lost at the end because I didn't have the keys! It was a dispointment after playing/reading for hours.
I will play/read it again soon.

[Redfox5 · Rating 1 out of 5]

When I was a kid I used to love those 'Give Yourself Goosebumps' Books where you could pick your own ending. I thought I would really like this as it's also a game.

I started enthusiastically, made my own adventure sheet, read the rules etc. The problem started with the rules, they were not very clear. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to put my 10 meals in the 'Equipment Carried' column. And the Gold and Jewels columns were not really explained.

I began the quest and somehow ended back at the start again, picked another option and encountered my first monster battle. I wasn't sure after you had the first roll if you were supposed to subtract points from the score you just had or go back to the original stamina score before the fight started. Then when I realised I would have to keep repeating this until one of us died, I decided to stop.

I couldn't be bothered with doing that throughout the book. It just wasn't for me. I'm not sure how much appeal this kinda thing has to people nowadays. Do kids still like stuff like this? All I know is that I certainly don't!

[Kacper Wąż · Rating 4 out of 5]

podejście pierwsze - przegrałem :)
podejście drugie - znowu przegrałem ale chyba jestem dalej, ciężko ocenić
podejście trzecie - oczywiście porażka ALE na pewno jestem dalej niż w poprzednich próbach
podejście trzecie - dawno się tak nie denerwowałem przy czytaniu, siedziałem chyba z 1,5h nad tym labiryntem, a gdy już jakimś cudem z niego wylazłem, pokonałem smoka i tytułowego czarnoksiężnika okazało się że mam tylko dwa z trzech kluczy koniecznych do otwarcia skrzyni ze skarbem ergo znowu przegrałem🥲

[Ralph Pulner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wrecked by a zombie. Seven hits to my one and I lost a test your luck challenge on my one hit. Fun, will play again at some point.

[Kushnuma · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a pretty fun book, as I was more involved. The battles were enjoyable too. Although I didn't manage to fully complete the quest.