One of the
great things about interactive fiction is the sheer number of opportunities it
affords you to kill yourself in a great many imaginative ways, with none of the
downsides of actually dying. Here, then, are my 50 favourite ways to die in
perhaps the most famous adventure gamebook series of them all, Fighting Fantasy.
1. Your
character actually has to die –
disqualifying a large number of non-fatal endings, however interesting they
might be. (I’ve bent this rule on occasion to include anything not immediately
fatal but clearly will be in the near future, anything considered ‘a fate worse
than death’, or anything I just liked too much not to put in.)
2. The
qualifying books were the original 59 published by Penguin, the 4 books in Sorcery!, the two-player adventure Clash of the Princes, plus the six new
adventures published by Wizard (numbered as #60-#65 for the purposes of this
list). The exception to this was #56 Knights
of Doom, as it’s the only one I’ve never read and I’m not really prepared
to shell out the £200 Amazon is asking for a used copy right now…
3. No book
gets more than two entries. (A lot of deaths didn’t make the shortlist – there
were about ten from The Crown of Kings I
could have gone for. Let me know if you think there’s anything that should’ve
made the list and it might make it into a second selection some day.)
Right, here
we go. I’ve roughly ordered the list as a countdown, based on graphic
descriptions of violence, creativity and downright strangeness. (I’m also
rather drawn to occasions when the book lets you do something obviously really
stupid.) I’ve included the section numbers you can find each death at for reference,
so watch out for spoilers if you’ve not read the book in question.
50. You are killed and replaced by a
Mandrake, a vegetable-like pod person. (#44 Legend
of the Shadow Warriors by Stephen Hand, section 91)
49. An immense force of magical cold
turns you to ice and your body-tissues to frozen slush. (#51 Island of the Undead by Keith Martin,
section 119)
48. You are paralysed by a cat’s
saliva. (#54 Legend of Zagor by Keith
Martin, credited to Ian Livingstone, section 336)
47. A giant chains you up and forces
you to play games until the final wall of your citadel is breached, resulting
in your death. (#39 Fangs of Fury by
Luke Sharp, section 327)
46. The mercenaries you have hired as
reinforcements turn out to be traitorous and slaughter your own men seconds
after you’re relieved to see them show up. (#42 Black Vein Prophecy by Paul Mason & Steven Williams, section
364)
45. You accidentally trigger a sleeping
gas trap in the Count’s bedroom, and pass out just as he walks into the room…
(#38 Vault of the Vampire by Keith
Martin, section 387)
44. You get into an argument with a
toad-like creature over the ownership of a bag of explosive pellets. In the
ensuing struggle the bag is dropped and explodes, killing both of you. (#33 Sky Lord by Martin Allen, section 386)
43. A large slab you are walking across
turns out to be a Boulder Beast, which rolls over and throws you into a chasm.
(#36 Armies of Death by Ian
Livingstone, section 138)
42. Whilst brewing potions, you
accidentally mix and consume the Potion of the Exploding Death. (#35 Daggers of Darkness by Luke Sharp,
section 284)
41. Having been trapped in a pit for
hours, a voice tells you they’re coming to rescue you. You look up in hope to
discover it’s a Gorgon and turn to stone. (#44 Legend of the Shadow Warriors by Stephen Hand, section 336)
40. You implement Plan 368 on your
spaceship’s computer without checking what it is. It turns out to be detonating
a ten-megaton bomb in order to take everything within a 50-mile radius out with
you. (#33 Sky Lord by Martin Allen,
section 368)
39. You get stuck in a submarine’s
ejection chamber. The crew of the sub take the obvious action. (#17 Appointment with F.E.A.R. by Steve
Jackson, section 390)
38. A paperweight grazes your skull and
knocks you out. (#15 The Rings of Kether
by Andrew Chapman, section 369)
37. You meet yourself in the past and
cause a rift in the continuum, trapping you in an infinite time-loop and
dooming you to repeat your brother’s funeral for all eternity. (#40 Dead of Night by Jim Bambra &
Stephen Hand, section 343)
36. The animated skeleton you are
fighting constantly reassembles itself every time you kill it; the game sends
you around the same few sections in a loop until you die or realise what’s
going on. (#24 Creature of Havoc by
Steve Jackson, sections 178, 407 and others)
35. The guards who have captured you
play the game of ‘Stone-drop’, which entails you being pegged to the ground
beneath a tower, and each guard having one chance to drop a boulder on you
until one of them is accurate enough to crush your skull. (#25 Beneath Nightmare Castle by Peter
Darvill-Evans, section 157)
34. It rains so hard, for two straight
days, that the water level eventually rises above your head and you drown. (#20
Sword of the Samurai by Mark Smith
& Jamie Thomson, section 339)
33. You use a device that transports
dangerous objects to another dimension, but requires payment for each such
transportation, to eliminate 77 spheres of annihilation. The cost of this is
too much for you to ever hope to repay, so the device takes the liberty of
foreclosing and transporting you to an empty void where you will drift for all
eternity. (#12 Space Assassin by
Andrew Chapman, section 128)
32. The mere sight of the Angel of
Death is enough to kill you instantly. (#11 Talisman
of Death by Jamie Thomson & Mark Smith, section 188)
31. Whilst lost in some mist, you call
on the God of Ice and Cold, who is delighted as mortals so rarely call on him.
He promptly freezes the mist into ice, perfectly preserving you for thousands
of years. (#55 Deathmoor by Robin
Waterfield, section 184)
30. Having defeated the titular
sorcerer, you pause whilst escaping his collapsing tomb to loot it, but
touching one of the diamonds turns your entire body into a diamond-like
substance. (#26 Crypt of the Sorcerer
by Ian Livingstone, section 149)
29. Having accidentally transferred
into the body of an alien in a teleportation accident, you try a highly
experimental procedure to try and separate your two bodies, but it goes wrong
and you are converted into pure energy. (#4 Starship
Traveller by Steve Jackson, section 181)
28. Having reached the tower of the
evil Zanbar Bone, you find a bedroom and decide to go to sleep in it, and are
turned into a zombie while you sleep. (#5 City
of Thieves by Ian Livingstone, section 288)
27. As retribution for killing one of
their own, a group of carnival workers force you to take part in the
knife-thrower’s act. Tonight, he chooses not to miss. (#62 Howl of the Werewolf by Jonathan Green, section 418)
26. You attempt a ritual to destroy a
demonic object, but panic halfway through and get the ritual wrong, causing
time and space to distort beyond all recognition. (#40 Dead of Night by Jim Bambra & Stephen Hand, section 52)
25. The Gonchong, a parasitic creature
controlling the titular Lizard King, withdraws from its host once you’ve killed
it and skewers your brain with its proboscis, controlling you forever and
forcing you to watch as your troops are wiped out. (#7 Island of the Lizard King by Ian Livingstone, section 188)
24. A creature with lightning-fast
reflexes poses as a statue, and attacks you once you get too close, killing you
before you realise what’s happened. (Sorcery!
2 – Khare, Cityport of Traps by Steve Jackson, section 8)
23. Having killed a Fire Demon, you put
on its crown and are possessed by the evil within it, to be transformed
yourself into a Fire Demon and become the new master of a group of Clone
Warriors. (#3 The Forest of Doom by
Ian Livingstone, section 333)
22. You make the decision to beam down
to a planet which you know is entirely covered in water, and promptly drown.
(#4 Starship Traveller by Steve
Jackson, section 288)
21. Whilst fighting a Ghoul, you are
beset by a group of Zombies also in the graveyard, who take the curious decision
to bury you alive. (#11 Talisman of Death
by Jamie Thomson & Mark Smith, section 298)
20. You are charged with murder and the
ensuing trial is held in a language you can’t understand, ensuring you face the
death penalty. (#57 Magehunter by
Paul Mason, section 226)
19. Seven evil spirits trick you into
damning your own goddess, then send you to either death or a life in limbo. (Sorcery! 3 – The Seven Serpents by Steve
Jackson, section 297)
18. You attempt to wield a
Vampire-slaying sword whilst infected with latent Vampirism yourself, meaning
it instantly turns on you and kills you. (#58 Revenge of the Vampire by Keith Martin, section 36)
17. You try to cast a Word of Power,
but your father’s power has silenced your inner voice, causing your own spell’s
undischarged power to race around your skull, unable to escape, until your head
explodes. (#42 Black Vein Prophecy by
Paul Mason & Steven Williams, section 88)
16. You accidentally unshield the
spaceship’s reactor core, causing a critical malfunction that will cause the
spaceship to explode in minutes, then waste too much time trying to find the
escape pod and die in the blast. (#12 Space
Assassin by Andrew Chapman, section 154)
15. You spend 20 minutes trying to
clear a cave-in, but once you have made a hole and squeezed yourself through
it, the tunnel roof collapses again and you are crushed. (#61 Bloodbones by Jonathan Green, section
140)
14. The mental defences of the
monstrous Gargantis send you and your friends totally insane; you kill each
other, and the sole survivor attempts to attack the Gargantis itself and die in
seconds. (#26 Crypt of the Sorcerer
by Ian Livingstone, section 307)
13. You are inside a volcano when it
erupts. (#63 Stormslayer by Jonathan
Green, section 373)
12. You wander around the titular moor
until you lose the will to live and take your own life. (It’s phrased much more
esoterically than that.) (#55 Deathmoor by
Robin Waterfield, section 288)
11. You are trapped in a sealed room
with water pouring through the grate. The room fills with water but it stops as
soon as it’s above your nose, and you can’t quite reach the air before you
drown. (Clash of the Princes: The
Warrior’s Way by Andrew Chapman & Martin Allen, section 300)
10. You cast a levitation spell in
order to escape from your prison tower by jumping out the window, unaware that
your cellmate has an anti-magic aura that prevents any spells from working. (Sorcery! 4 – The Crown of Kings by Steve
Jackson, section 575)
9. You are simultaneously shot by a
machine gun and run over. (#65 Blood of
the Zombies by Ian Livingstone, section 390)
8. Having failed to find or stop the
meeting of the Federation of Euro-American Rebels, they take over the Star Wars
satellite and hold the world to ransom; as proof of their power, the satellite
will utterly destroy your city in thirty seconds’ time. (#17 Appointment with F.E.A.R. by Steve
Jackson, section 292)
7. Having been caught by a torturer,
you are given a choice of spending the rest of your life in a small cage
(meaning you die of cramp as it’s too small to stretch at all), or a large cage
(meaning you die of cramp as it’s very tall, but too thin to stretch or even
lean in). (#10 House of Hell by Steve
Jackson, sections 201 & 396)
6. Whilst navigating a maze of sword
blades in a pitch-black room, your blood candle – which gets its name not from
its main ingredient but the fact that it feeds on the blood of its user – flickers,
causing you to bring your foot down on a blade, then lose your balance
completely and fall onto the blades. (Sorcery!
4 – The Crown of Kings by Steve Jackson, section 484)
5. You wake up to discover that the
physician treating you has removed your heart and placed it in a specimen jar,
and your last perception of life is watching it slowly stop beating. (#24 Creature of Havoc by Steve Jackson,
section 228)
4. You successfully throw Zagor into
the Heartfires, destroying him forever and saving the world, but are so weak
you lose your balance and fall in after him. (#54 Legend of Zagor by Keith Martin, credited to Ian Livingstone,
section 310)
3. You try to crawl through a hole in a
wall, unaware that it is a trap – there is a guillotine on the other side,
which drops just as you’re almost through… (#58 Revenge of the Vampire by Keith Martin, section 213)
2. I’ll quote this one in full as it’s
the only way to really do it justice: “You watch the soldiers as one by one
they die, their hearts bursting in the grip of an unnatural fear. Gruul laughs
in triumph. You must kill him before it is too late. Then you feel it – thump thump – your heart is beating
faster – thump thump – you stagger
forward – thump thump – chest pains –
thump thump – Gruul laughing – thump thump – you must – thump th…” (#48 Moonrunner by Stephen Hand, section 372)
1. The robot you are piloting is too
slow to outrun a herd of dinosaurs and you are crushed to death. (#22 Robot Commando by Steve Jackson (US),
section 318)
Surprised not to find my favorite FF death (evaluated mostly on its sheer creepy originality) — being lured in by the Chattermatter, a blob of slime that speaks some ungodly number of languages including your own, and then murdered in a suitably ghastly way (lured in at ref 323, death at ref 439).
ReplyDeleteWhich book's that from? It might make it into a third list some day (if I can ever find or re-do the notes I made when writing this list, which I lost when moving house last year).
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