Warlock and Keys

In early 1982, authors Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone are putting the finishing touches to the first book in a new series; having been asked by Puffin Books to write something introducing readers to this new-fangled "role-playing game" concept, they've come up with a very different book in a very special series. It's The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, the first Fighting Fantasy gamebook, which will be an instant best-seller and popularise the genre in the United Kingdom.

Livingstone wrote the first half of the adventure, and Jackson wrote the second, later doing some tweaks to bring Livingstone's side a little closer in style to his own. Whilst those final passes are being done, Jackson notices that, quite by chance, there are 399 numbered sections in the book in total. A number which is just begging to be rounded up to a nice, whole 400. Jackson quickly adds an extra section that's there solely to even the numbers out, and 400 references goes on to become the standard for nearly all of the series' titles (some of the more ambitious books come in at slightly or considerably more, and one or two are a bit short but still end in a multiple of 10).

I know what you're thinking and, yes, we do know exactly which section Jackson inserted to round things up; it's a dummy section which isn't reachable from any of the other references, and you don't even have to reverse-engineer too much of the book to work out which one it is. If you happen to have a copy to hand right now, then it's section 192, and if you turn to it you'll see how clever Jackson was; he didn't just make a filler section, he took the opportunity to throw in a very sneaky red herring. But we're going to put all this to one side for the moment, and jump forward in time two years.

In 1984, two years on from the publication of The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, the Fighting Fantasy range was booming, and an official magazine was launched to accompany the series: Warlock, which ran for 13 irregular issues until 1986. Each issue of Warlock included a miniature Fighting Fantasy adventure. Some of these would be unique scenarios. Some of them were shorter, "demo" versions of adventures that would later be released as full-length books. But the first two issues of Warlock contained The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, spread over the two editions: the first issue's part was 273 sections long, and the second issue's 127 (but still numbered 274-400, for reasons which will become apparent in a moment), with the split occurring shortly before the maze which makes up a large part of Jackson's side of the book.

The text for this variant is largely unaltered, but many of the sections have to be shuffled around so each part works as a separate adventure. So, for example, the original section 1 gives you the outgoing choices of turning to 71 or 278; the magazine's version offers the exact same choices, but the new section for the latter option is 12. This carries on, with the sections being renumbered and reworked but the game largely playing out the same, until we get to the very last puzzle.

Scattered throughout Firetop Mountain are different keys, each with a number engraved on them. After you've slain the titular Warlock, the game offers one final challenge: You have to unlock the Warlock's treasure chest, which has three locks on it. You need to choose three of the keys you have (assuming you've found that many!), add their numbers together and turn to that reference to see if they're the right ones. Since it would be impossible to adapt this puzzle so you only need to use the sections from the second part of the divide, the magazine instructs you to turn back to Issue 1 if the total of the three keys is less than 274.

In both versions the keys are numbered as follows: 9, 66, 99, 111, 111 and 125 (yes, there are deliberately two different keys with the same number, and both are part of the correct combination). If all three keys are incorrect, the magical protections on the chest will kill you outright; one correct key and the trap gives a possibility of death; two correct keys and you get a minor STAMINA penalty; and if all three keys are correct you win, obviously. Each combination of keys will redirect you to one of these sections; for example, 233 (for using the keys numbered 9 + 99 + 125) reads in its entirety "turn to 198". As you may have guessed if you didn't already know, this is where Jackson inserted the fake reference: you cannot make 192 from any combination of keys, yet that section redirects you to the reference for using all three correct keys.

In the Warlock adaptation, however, the keys are all moved around from their original locations and put in places where there weren't any originally. For instance, in the original book killing the Giant nets you 8 Gold Pieces; in the magazine you also get the key numbered '9', which was found with the Ogre in the original (in the magazine's version killing the Ogre gets you 3 Gold Pieces in place of the key). The magazine adaptation also uses a different correct combination of keys; the decoy 192 is still there, but now directs you to the instant death section for having all three keys wrong (which may be pure happenstance given how the different combinations now add up). All of this was presumably done to give a new challenge to readers who already had the book (which, you know, I'm guessing was quite a high percentage of people who read the magazine). But the authors not only managed to make the mystery of the keys even sneakier just because of a happy accident, they created a puzzle by which they could easily rewire the entire game with a few small changes!

In fact, it would be worth keeping in mind that the original book came about because Puffin wanted an introduction to role-playing games. It's easy to imagine a version of the key quest for a tabletop gaming format, with the gamemaster having options on where to put all the different keys and which ones made up the correct combination to provide a different solution on each playthrough. Indeed, jump forward another two years to 1986, and another iteration of The Warlock of Firetop Mountain was released that isn't a million miles away from such an idea -- a board game which randomised the solution by means of a system similar if not identical to Cluedo.

One more small hop in time, though, this time back one year, takes us to 1985, and the release of the seventeenth Fighting Fantasy gamebook, Steve Jackson's Appointment with F.E.A.R. The basic concept of using items or clues with numbers associated with them to work out which section you need to go to next, or to take an option not expressly given by the text, is used in most of Jackson's gamebooks, and was adopted by several other FF authors (and they were quite right to, it's a tactic that will always make cheating much more difficult, even impossible if used correctly, increases the book's difficulty without being annoying and adds replay value). But F.E.A.R. is a gamebook which shows truly astonishing ambition and design by offering four randomised playthroughs, depending on which superpower you choose (from Super Strength, Energy Blast, Psi Powers or Enhanced Technological Skill) -- each power has a unique endgame, as the date, time, location and way of accessing the titular meeting of the Federation of Euro-American Rebels will be completely different, and along the way the clues you need will be held by different supervillains. It's not unlike the two different versions of TWoFM, just managing to put the multiple solutions into one adventure. The original book of The Warlock of Firetop Mountain might be criticised these days for showing its age, looking a little simplistic by the standards of what came later. But you can clearly see where the more ambitious entries in the series came from within it.