In November 1984, the tenth Fighting Fantasy gamebook, Steve Jackson's House of Hell, was unleashed upon the world, and marked many significant divergences from the established format. Until now, the series had been very much swords-and-sorcery, with a single excursion into science-fiction for the fourth book, Starship Traveller, also by Jackson; House of Hell was the first book to feature a contemporary setting, and the only one released in the original series' lifetime (it would take until 2012 for the 21st century relaunch to give us a second, Ian Livingstone's Blood of the Zombies), as the player character's car breaks down and leaves them with no choice but to seek refuge in the House of Drumer, which contains just about every horror movie encounter known to man, brought to life by Tim Sell's impressively macabre illustrations. It's also an exceptionally difficult puzzle-box of a book, requiring a strict sequence of moves to be done in an exact order, and featuring many tricks and traps including extended dead-ends where all the paths ultimately lead to death and secret sections not directly accessible from other ones.
In the same month as the book was released, though, a preview version (known as The House of Hell, with the definitive article) was published in the third issue of the official Fighting Fantasy magazine, Warlock. That version runs to 185 sections (compared to the full-length version's 400), but it isn't simply the book chopped in half -- it's a truncated version, with many of the rooms shuffled around and bits missing, but it is a complete adventure in its own right which keeps recognisably the same basic story. As the editorial in that issue puts it: "Steve's House of Hell is the one in this issue of Warlock, but turned inside out. The rooms have been jumbled, there are some cunning secret passages to find and the important clues are in totally different places. Getting through the mini-adventure will not help you at all!"
So what exactly is different?
In the full-length version, as you approach the front door of the House of Drumer, you are given the choices of knocking on the door, using the bell-pull or going round to the back of the house. In the magazine's version, the last option is missing and that entire branch is cut; as against that, using the bell-pull has the same effect as knocking on the door in the book, but in the magazine it opens up a trapdoor which drops you into a room that appears in an entirely different place much later on in the book but ends differently here, allowing you to get back to the front of the house. Falling down this trapdoor is the only way in the short version to find a weapon (owing to the book's setting, you begin the adventure unarmed and thus have a 3-point handicap to your SKILL until you find something to use as a weapon) apart from the Kris knife, which you need to win the game; there are plenty of others in the book.
Once you are inside the house, both versions initially unfold the same, with the key difference that when you are asked to choose between a red or white wine when the Earl of Drumer has you for dinner, the red wine is drugged or poisoned (depending on exactly when you choose to partake) and the white wine is safe in the magazine, but things are inverted in the book. (In an odd and purely cosmetic change, a bottle of sherry in the magazine becomes brandy in the book, and the Fortesque Room becomes the Erasmus Room. Whilst this piece is primarily focused on gameplay, it seems worth noting that there are some cases where the text of a functionally similar or identical section is slightly truncated in the magazine version, presumably for reasons of space, and there are one or two other oddities; the window in your bedroom is barred in the magazine, but not in the book.)
When you are shown to your bedroom, the two versions become extremely jumbled, with different things happening in completely different places; you can look out of your bedroom window and see the man who gave you directions in the introduction hanging from a tree in the magazine, but that option comes up in another room entirely in the book. In the magazine there's no reason not to leave the bedroom at the first opportunity, but in the book there's a necessary encounter added where you have to wait for one of the Earl's servants to bring you a (drugged) nightcap so you can attack them and question them for information.
Now comes the bit where I have to basically write out the solution to the book, so I can directly compare it to what you have to do in the magazine; I've tried to keep some mystery, but if you want to crack House of Hell for yourself, it's probably best not to read any further.
Correct path in the book: After locking the Hunchback in your bedroom, leave the room and turn right, where you will encounter the ghost woman. Continue down the passageway and enter the Azazel Room, where you can find a weapon or magical protection against injury (you don't have time to get both). Leave the room, continue to the left, then enter the unmarked room and investigate the window to get a clue to the identity of the occupant of the Abaddon Room. Go back to the landing (the storeroom is optional but you can find a weapon there if you need one) and follow it to the right until you reach the Abaddon Room, where Mordana will tell you how to find a secret door (by deducting 10 from the number of the section you're at when you're near it and turning to that numbered reference). Go downstairs, choose the door on the left, and investigate the mantelpiece to get a flask of brandy. Examine the fireplace until you fall down the trapdoor, where you will meet the Hunchback you earlier locked in your room. Ply the Hunchback with the brandy to get a clue to the correct password for the secret door. Go back upstairs and use the clue from Mordana to search for the secret door when you are in its proximity, then use the correct password to enter the secret room and get the Kris knife. Climb back up the stairs, open the opposite door, and go through the mirror to get the golden key. Take the right-hand door and use the golden key to get the iron key. Leave the chamber, step back through the mirror, go back to the corridor and follow it to the right. Take the door on the left and use the iron key (deducting its number from that of the reference you are currently on) to unlock the door to the dining room, where you can ring the bell to summon the master of the house and so begin the final encounter.
Correct path in the magazine: Leave your bedroom and turn right, where you will encounter the ghost woman. Continue along the landing, turn to the right and enter the unmarked room. In there, fight the Zombie, open the box on the mantelpiece to get a key, then leave the room and enter the Astor Room. Examine the bed until you fall down the trapdoor, and you'll end up in the place where the Cult of Drumer are performing a human sacrifice. Under cover of the sacrifice, leave the room, then turn left into the drawing-room. Search it, take the box you find and go through the mirror to get the Kris knife. Step back through the mirror and use the key you found earlier (turning to the reference number that is the same as the number inscribed on it) to unlock the door to the dining room, where you can ring the bell to summon the master of the house and so begin the final encounter.
Once you leave your room, the first few sections are the same in both versions, but after your encounter with the ghost woman the book's version has the same rooms but in different places or with details changed around, and many new ones unique to it. The encounter with the cult is still in the book, but is part of a long dead-end where all paths ultimately lead to death, and conversely the Abaddon Room is in the magazine but not necessary to enter. There are more blind alleys in the book, there are rooms that are more or less the same in both versions but you don't need to enter in either, but the most notable addition to the full-length adventure is the mystery of the secret door, and the reference modifier you need to find it, as well as the password puzzle (the full version has several red herrings hinting at incorrect passwords; without the correct one the secret room is a deathtrap).
In the book's version of the final encounter, both the butler and the Earl of Drumer confront you and you must choose which one to attack. In the magazine, only the Earl confronts you, with the butler's role in the combat being deleted entirely (there is a different illustration for this section in the magazine, one of three unique ones that only appears in the condensed version, to account for this). This preserves the book's final twist for those who've already read the preview in the magazine (which, if you couldn't tell, is that the butler is the true power behind the evil within the house, and you need to ignore the Earl and attack him); the only other thing the two combats have in common is that you need the Kris knife, which in the book is the only thing that will harm the butler's true form, but in the magazine is the only thing that will harm the Earl.
It is also worth noting an infamous problem with the book's unique mechanism, Fear Points, here. The maximum number of Fear Points you can accumulate is determined at the book's outset by rolling one die and adding 6 to the result; you gain Fear points for, er, getting frightened, and if your Fear score ever reaches the maximum, you die of fright! The issue is that in the full-length version, the one true way through the book has a total of 8 unavoidable Fear Points, so if you rolled 1 or 2 when computing your statistics the adventure is unwinnable right from the start. Three of these points are accrued from witnessing the butler's transformation -- a penalty which is absent from the magazine, which might well say something about the development process and how that error came to be introduced.
In short: The 400-reference version is much harder than the 185-reference one. Who'd have thought?
One difference that you missed: the magazine version includes an incident where you can gain 1 Fear Point when stuffed animal heads mounted on the wall start growling at you. This never happens in the book.
ReplyDeleteIn a couple of places aspects of the magazine version that were carried over into the book make less sense in the 400-reference version.
Firstly, in the room with the hanged man outside the window, you are given the option of getting into bed and trying to get some sleep. That's reasonable enough in the Warlock variant, as you're in the bedroom that was allocated to you. But in the book, when you're in a completely different room on the other side of the house, and will almost certainly have experienced indications that something sinister is afoot by the time you get there, what possible reason could you have for deciding to take a nap?
Secondly, when you reach the dining room, you may check for traps before ringing the bell. In the magazine, where you may have been dropped through a trapdoor as a consequence of ringing the doorbell, you have grounds for suspicion. In the book, there's no obvious link between bell-pulls and traps.
Oh, and on a more pedantic note, in the book there's no need to encounter the ghost woman. What relevant information she gives you can more safely be found elsewhere in the house, and meeting her results in the gain of a Fear point, making the book unwinnable for anyone who rolled 3 or below when determining that stat.
The option to check for traps in the dining room is I think still explicable in the book - from a design point of view if Jackson got rid of it he'd have to make up the shortfall elsewhere (so the book still had 400 sections) or provide some other option in the dining room, and you've already fallen down one trapdoor and found a secret door in the book.
DeleteThe bed thing is odder but it can be read as the player character taking an opportunity to get a brief respite and take a power nap? Might have made more sense if it was an opportunity to deduct a Fear point too...