Time After Time

When Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone devised the first Fighting Fantasy gamebook, The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, in 1982, they came up with three basic statistics the player would have to keep track of, known in the first draft as COMBAT FACTOR, STRENGTH FACTOR and LUCK FACTOR, later renamed in rewrites as the catchier SKILL, STAMINA and LUCK (SKILL and LUCK being calculated by 1d6 + 6, and STAMINA by 2d6 + 12). Over four decades and more than seventy books later, that basic system has more or less remained the same, but many authors have wanted to add something new to it. The first book in the series to have a fully-fledged fourth statistic you had to keep track of was Jackson's House of Hell, which introduced Fear Points: the 1d6 + 6 value you rolled up at the start of the adventure represented the maximum number of Fear Points you could accrue before being frightened to death. Many other books with unique statistics followed: the Japanese-themed Sword of the Samurai requires the player to keep track of their character's HONOUR score, with certain actions being forbidden if your HONOUR score is too low, and the character committing seppuku should it ever fall to 0, whilst the Lovecraft-influenced Beneath Nightmare Castle features a WILLPOWER score, which represents the player's ability to keep hold of their sanity. But by far the most common unique stat was a way of keeping track of time: the adventure of the day was on a time limit for some reason, and the Time statistic measured how much, uh, time you had left. And different writers, telling different stories, would implement this idea very differently.

How differently, then?

#16 Seas of Blood by Andrew Chapman (1985)

In a somewhat atypical storyline for a series whose tagline was "You are the Hero!", this book casts you as a murderous pirate captain who enters into a bet with their biggest rival, Abdul the Butcher, about who can plunder the greatest amount of gold. The terms of the wager are as follows: You both set sail from the city of Tak, and will arrive at the distant island of Nippur within fifty days, with whoever has the greatest amount of gold being named King of Pirates. To this end, you should add days to your LOG as and when instructed; if you arrive at Nippur with your LOG exceeding 50, you have lost the wager by default. Any possible ransacking or plundering you attempt must therefore balance the potential gains in gold with the risk of adding days to your journey.

#27 Star Strider by Luke Sharp (1987)

One of the science-fiction based entries in the series, and the first of four books by Luke Sharp (real name Alkis Alkiviades), three of which appear in this list. The villainous Gromulans have kidnapped the Galactic President and aim to extract top-secret defence codes from his mind; you play the Rogue Tracer assigned to retrieve him, and start off with a TIME score of 48 (possibly intended to represent hours, but there's nothing that expressly says so), which you should reduce whenever instructed. If it reaches 0, the Gromulans have successfully penetrated the President's brain and your mission is over.

#32 Slaves of the Abyss by Paul Mason & Steve Williams (1988)

The rather attractively designed Time Sheet appears on the book's inside front cover:

In a surprisingly deep and complex plot which I've had to greatly simplify for the purposes of this piece, the city of Kallamehr is under threat from a mysterious force, and the player is one of several heroes tasked with protecting the city whilst seeking to understand the exact nature of the invaders. You should tick off a box on the Time Sheet whenever instructed. Two of the boxes have numbers in them, and when you tick off those boxes you should immediately turn to that numbered section. The first, the antepenultimate box, directs you to a combat with an assassin sent by the attackers; should you tick off the second, the very last box, then Kallamehr falls and you flee Allansia in shame.

#35 Daggers of Darkness by Luke Sharp (1988)

The player character has been scratched by a Death Spell Dagger, and the poison now in their system will slowly work its way through but have no effect until it has travelled through every part of your body. A little diagram on the Adventure Sheet should be shaded in part by part whenever the book instructs you to mark off a Poison unit:

#39 Fangs of Fury by Luke Sharp (1989)

This was Sharp's final FF book; the only entry he wrote that didn't have some form of time measurement was #30 Chasms of Malice. In any event, Fangs follows a not dissimilar setup to Slaves of the Abyss: The magical defences that protect the tiny kingdom of Zamarra have been disabled, and the kingdom is now under siege. As you race to manually restore the defences, the fourteen walls that are Zamarra's last line of defence will be breached one by one, represented thusly on the Adventure Sheet:

You have a bracelet that will glow every time one wall is breached, and you should shade in a flag each time that happens. Should all fourteen fall, Zamarra will be captured and, just in case that wasn't enough, the bracelet will kill you instantly (the King has not sent any of his trusted knights on the grounds they are too recognisable, and you play a more junior volunteer from the citadel's guard; the instant death thing is to dissuade you from running for it once you leave the city).

#46 Tower of Destruction by Keith Martin (1991)

The time mechanic in this book, which is measured in days (you should increase the 'TIME ELAPSED' count by 1 each time a new day begins), is also unusually only used in the first half of the book, when you are searching for the Ice Palace (which will lead you to the titular Tower before another day passes). How long you took to find the Tower will affect certain enemies; there are some you only have to fight, or are more powerful, if you took 5 or more days, since the villain of the piece has had extra time to prepare for your arrival. A certain injury you can acquire will also give you a SKILL penalty which you can restore after 4 days.

#47 The Crimson Tide by Paul Mason & Steve Williams (1992)

One of the most ambitious entries in the series, TCT takes place over a number of years: the player character starts off as a 13-year-old, and thus with significantly lower maximum SKILL and STAMINA values than usual (1d6 and 2d6, respectively). There is also a FEROCITY score, which measures your thirst for vengeance, calculated by 1d6 + half of your maximum STAMINA (rounding fractions up). Whenever your age increases, you may restore your STAMINA to its maximum value and deduct 2 from your FEROCITY; if your FEROCITY reaches 0, you achieve inner peace and may always choose to not be ferocious when given the choice (instructions to increase your current age will also usually come with directions to increase your maximum possible STAMINA and SKILL).

#49 Siege of Sardath by Keith P. Phillips (1992)

This adventure takes place over the course of a week, using the Allansian calendar: it starts on Highday night and progresses through Stormsday, Moonsday, Fireday, Earthday, Windsday and Seaday, with the player having to keep track of what day it is at the moment. Some encounters will be different -- sometimes completely different -- depending on what day of the week it is when you get to them, sometimes with certain dice rolls being easier or harder (for example, when you're searching for a trail, you need to roll less than or equal to your SKILL to find it, and can deduct 4 points from the roll if it's Moonday, 2 points if it's Fireday, and so on up to having to add 4 points if it's Seaday), with reaching the following Highday being an immediate death sentence as the besieged Sardath falls.

#52 Night Dragon by Keith Martin (1993)

Your Time Track starts at 0, and increases when you take certain actions, with the instructions expressly warning you that the higher this score rises the harder the final encounter with the titular creature of pure evil from before time existed will be. This is also used in conjunction with another unique statistic, your NEMESIS score, which reflects how much attention you have drawn to yourself whilst searching Allansia for the means to kill the Night Dragon; at certain points both statistics will have to be so high for certain encounters to happen. When you finally meet the Night Dragon, you should divide your Time Track score by 10, subtract 6 from that number and add that many points to its STAMINA score. The Dragon already has obscenely high statistics of SKILL 17 STAMINA 32, which is perhaps why only a really spectacular amount of time-wasting will significantly drive its STAMINA up. (It's possible someone decided the combat was too hard at the last moment and added the 'subtract 6' part, which would explain the oddly circuitous calculation you have to make, but that's just my own speculation.) Other items and magic can be used to lower the Dragon's scores slightly, but it's still just about the single toughest combat in the entire franchise.

#56 Knights of Doom by Jonathan Green (1994)

The Time statistic in this book is remarkably similar to that in Tower of Destruction, right down to it being referred to as 'Time Elapsed' and being measured in days; take more than six days to amass your army and the titular knights will already have risen and you die horribly. This is again balanced against another statistic, HONOUR; you ideally need to drive your HONOUR up as high as you possibly can, since the game's final boss Belgaroth (SKILL 12 STAMINA 17) will drain 1 HONOUR point from you each time he successfully hits you, and you lose the combat should he reduce it to 0, and thus need to balance out potential opportunities to increase your HONOUR with the risk of adding to your time elapsed.

#58 Revenge of the Vampire by Keith Martin (1995)

Blood Points, which are used in this game, are something I was on the fence about including in this piece (I decided, for example, not to include the CHANGE statistic in Howl of the Werewolf, which could be argued to represent time passing, but CHANGE points are primarily kept at bay with magic and other treatments such as medicine, or provoked by accidentally drinking blood, with certain points coming with an unavoidable increase plus a new special ability); you lose Blood Points for shilly-shallying, certainly, but they are also representative of how well-prepared you are for the final encounter with Reiner Heydrich, as you gain Blood Points for actions such as learning more about your enemy, destroying his coffins, or killing his servants.

In any event, when you fight Heydrich (which can actually happen twice: the final boss battle at the end of the book, but also an earlier encounter at a point where you lack the means to destroy him and can only stave him off), you divide your Blood Points total by 5 and subtract that many points from his STAMINA (he is SKILL 15 STAMINA 30, and on a really successful playthrough your Blood Points score may reduce the latter by a full 8 points). Several other actions, and possessing certain items, can further chip away at these scores to a degree, but he's still up there with the Night Dragon as one of the toughest final bosses in the franchise's history.

#61 Bloodbones by Jonathan Green (2006)

Time is measured in Hours here, and is only used in the first part of the book. You need to reach the pirates' inner sanctum, actually pretty early on in the adventure, within 8 hours or less; take too long and they've already fled without a trace.

#63 Stormslayer by Jonathan Green (2009)

This uses a similar 'keep track of which day of the week it is' concept as Siege of Sardath, with the added gimmick of the day of the week your adventure starts on being randomised by a die roll at the start of the adventure, but to very different effect. There is no actual time limit in this book, as befits its status as more of a Wide Open Sandbox, but certain encounters will be different if they happen on certain days of the week: if you fight water-based creatures on Seaday, they will have slightly higher combat statistics; similarly, earth-based monsters such as Boulder Beasts will be stronger on Earthday, or a Dust Devil on Windsday, or if you investigate the airship's bilges on Stormsday, the magical electrical energies will animate the detritus into a monster. However, a more conventional time statistic (known as TIME TRACK) is used in one brief sequence where you are caught in an active volcano and have to get out as quickly as possible before it erupts.

#70 Secrets of Salamonis by Steve Jackson with Jonathan Green (2022)

This is similar to Stormslayer, but with certain encounters playing out differently, with certain people only showing up or certain events only happening on particular days; the player character is a sword-for-hire seeking to make their fortune, and the middle of the book is made up of several different mini-quests the player can attempt in any order, with the day-of-the-week twist meaning multiple readthroughs will be required to see everything.

The approach of the later 21st century books was to take concepts such as keeping track of time, that had been used to make the later 20th century books as difficult as possible, and instead significantly increase the books' replay value -- in particular all of Jonathan Green's new books for Wizard refine many of the concepts he'd used in the 90s to great success, producing books that are a challenge without being insanely difficult.