Curse of the Numbers

I have found myself writing quite a lot about Fighting Fantasy of late, and one recurring element has come up: The use of items or clues with numbers associated with them that allow the reader to take a nonstandard action not expressly given by the text. So, for example, in House of Hell you can find a key with the number '27' inscribed on it; when you find a door you want to try and unlock with it, you should take the number of the section you are on at the time, deduct the key's number and turn to that numbered reference. All of the recent examples I've written about come from early entries of the series, so I thought I'd look at the fifty-ninth and final entry of the original Puffin series, Curse of the Mummy, where author Jonathan Green perhaps takes the idea to its logical extreme.

Early in the adventure you can buy several items from Cranno, one of which is a papyrus scroll, described as follows should you choose to purchase it. By this point numbers associated with items tended to be more subtle than just having a number written on them for no obvious reason:

Unrolling the scroll, you see that it is covered in incomprehensible hieroglyphic picture-script, written in black ink and arranged into five columns. You can make no sense of the hieroglyphs, so you roll the scroll up again and tuck it into your backpack.

Later on in the book, you can meet the Shaman, who can tell you more about certain items you own:

The Shaman can tell you more about an object only if you have a number associated with it. If you do have such an item, multiply the appropriate number by thirty, then turn to the paragraph whose number is the same as the total.

The Shaman can tell you how to use the papyrus to translate hieroglyphs; whenever you come across a reference where these hieroglyphs appear, deduct 20 from its number and turn to that number section to get a translation. This is required several times on the one true way through the book, one of which is this illustration:

You need to use the papyrus again to get the information required to work out how many kilometres it is to Akharis' tomb; anyone without the papyrus, or doesn't know how to use it, will be left staring helplessly at this picture, wondering how they're meant to work it out.

Later on, you need to solve a maths puzzle to open a door in the tomb, behind which you can be granted the Wisdom of Khunam, which will allow you to understand ancient Djartian when it is spoken to you by adding 30 to the number of the section you are on whenever you hear it spoken. It is only through this gift you can help the spirit of Rhehotep, the architect who originally built the tomb, to solve another maths puzzle, in return for which he will tell you how to escape a deathtrap built into the tomb (by halving the number of the reference you are on when you trigger it) and how to find a secret room (by adding 100 to the number of the reference you are on when you are within its proximity). Within the hidden room you can find a golden key with 34 hieroglyphics inscribed on it, which you later need to use to unlock Akharis' burial chamber, and a Falcon Breastplate with 60 feathers on it which is needed to survive an attack which will otherwise kill you outright in the final encounter. (At the start of said encounter you are also attacked by fifteen mummies, and can kill 1d6+2 of them straight away with a Sun Talisman, which also has a number associated with it you need to prove you have it.)

Later still, the Sphinx asks you three questions which basically amount to an observation quiz about previous encounters, and you need to translate the first two answers into numbers using the code A = 1, B = 2 and so on up to Z = 26 (the third answer already being a number itself, you just need to turn to that numbered section). The boss battle with Akharis is very cleverly constructed: he starts off with SKILL 13, STAMINA 25 (both values are one point higher than the maximum possible number the player can have), but you can use various items you've found and other tactics to chip away at these scores before you actually have to fight him. Once you've killed Akharis, however, a statue in his tomb comes to life and can only be stopped by the Ankh you found right back at the start of the adventure (and you also needed to use its number to find out its true nature from the Shaman). And that is the very last secret section puzzle the book has, but even then one final and particularly cruel trick it has to play is that after Akharis comes back to life and you have to fight him again, in the penultimate section you need to successfully Test your Luck to escape the collapsing tomb.

It may not surprise you to learn that by the time Curse of the Mummy was published in 1995, the range had adults in mind as much as it did children, the gamebook market having experienced a significant downturn amongst younger audiences, especially since the advent of 3D computer games such as Doom. Even so, Curse of the Mummy is an exceptionally difficult and unforgiving book, with Jonathan Green's immersive writing style fortunately making for an immensely satisfying experience if you do actually manage to beat it.

After Curse was published, Puffin attempted a relaunch of the series which would have addressed how difficult and unknowable they felt the range had become, which would have included cutting the books down to 300 references, and attempting to appeal to younger readers again with ideas such as including electronic dice with the books. However, before the relaunch could get underway, the range was quietly cancelled, despite the fact Green had already completed the first new-style book, Bloodbones, which would remain in limbo for over a decade. When the series was revived by Wizard Books in the noughties, Bloodbones finally saw the light of day in 2006, now rewritten the way Green had originally intended it to be (including restoring it to the full 400 references). Green went on to write three more brand new adventures for Wizard, and tellingly, whilst these still use the reference modifiers (as well as other innovations such as codewords to keep track of what actions you have and haven't taken), they do take a bit more of a Wide Open Sandbox approach, with the nonstandard actions giving you multiple different ways of solving the book or fighting the final boss rather than being mandatory to find the one true way through it.