Turn to 400

In 1982, the British game designer Steve Jackson is editing the first Fighting Fantasy adventure gamebook, which he has co-authored with Ian Livingstone, The Warlock of Firetop Mountain. As he brings together his half of the book with Livingstone's, he notices that quite by chance, there are 399 numbered references in the adventure -- a number which is just begging to be rounded up to a nice, whole 400. So Jackson duly does so, adding an extra reference which is not accessible from any of the others and is there just to make up the numbers. The number sticks, and 400 references becomes the standard used for the vast majority of the 70+ books that will be published in the series over the next 42 years, with 'turn to 400' becoming synonymous with victory.

In 1984, though, the Fighting Fantasy range opens up to freelance writers, it having become apparent that Jackson and Livingstone cannot keep the best-selling series going on their own. The first book from an outside writer is by the American game designer Steve Jackson, a book called Scorpion Swamp. The American Jackson's book differs from what has come before in many regards, but crucially, it has multiple possible solutions owing to its premise that the player character can accept one of three missions from three different wizards before entering the titular swamp. Hence, in this book, section 400 is just a section like any other, not tied to victory or even a game over. Jackson USA would use a similar approach on the other two gamebooks he wrote for the series, Demons of the Deep (where the goal is always the same but you have multiple different options and approaches for the book's endgame) and the science-fiction based Robot Commando (which is somewhere inbetween the two, giving you complete freedom to go wherever you like and offering several entirely different ways of winning the game by defeating the invading forces).

There are a few other books where section 400 does not see you emerge from your adventure victorious, two of which were written or co-written by Paul Mason. No, not that Paul Mason.

Both of these books were published later on in the series' run, and are notable for their unusually mature writing and complex gameplay; in particular, The Crimson Tide has several unusual non-fatal endings such as giving up your quest for revenge to become a monk, although there is one 'golden' ending which is clearly preferable to all others. In both cases, Mason (or his co-author, Steve Williams, with whom he wrote Black Vein Prophecy) also appears to use the placement of section 400 to actively if lightly troll the reader.

Section 400 of Black Vein Prophecy directs you to section 389, which has three outgoing sections dependent on earlier choices:

If you have a splinter, turn to 40. If your ears ring, turn to 71. Otherwise, turn to 116.

Surmising the intricate plot of Black Vein Prophecy to explain this in full is probably a bit beyond the scope of this article, but: If you have a splinter, then you die. If your ears ring, you achieve the game's golden ending. If you have neither condition, you are sent right back to the beginning of the adventure at section 1. If you reached 389 by way of 400, then you will definitely have a splinter, as you pick it up in that very section!

The Crimson Tide, meanwhile, is a sequel to BVP utilising a different player character, and is even more devious than its predecessor. Most notably, it features one of the most stringent anti-cheating devices ever employed by the series: At certain sections, you will be prompted to write down codewords in the 'Notes' box on your Adventure Sheet. If you visit the sections in the wrong order, then you will find yourself writing down something like "never art king offers magic", or the opening line of an Allister Heath column. Whilst some of these codewords are used to keep track of certain choices you've made or abilities you've learnt, if you visit only the correct sections the codewords will spell out a coherent message: "when king offers sword turn to 198" (the number coming from a maths puzzle you are given by a scholar).

When King Maior offers you the Sacred Sword of Tsui, you are presented with the following options:

Take the sword and swear loyalty? Turn to 52

Refuse, insisting that you are not worthy? Turn to 370

Say that you will take the sword if the mercenary leader is to be brought to justice? Turn to 124

Or you may know of another option.

(It is tempting to think that last line was added by an editor who felt the secret message puzzle was too hard and some readers might need a hint that there was a hidden option -- Mason deliberately set out to make his gamebooks as hard as possible following his stint as editor of Warlock magazine, where most of the readers' letters he received were about how the books needed to be extra-challenging, and given the difficulty level of the books it's a little hard, but not unthinkable, to imagine him throwing readers a bone like this.)

If you do indeed take the sword, or indeed choose any of the 'standard' options listed, then in a section or two's time the King sends you away with his advisor Pantu, which directs you to section 400:

He leads you through the labyrinthine corridors of the palace until you come to an area of dusty stonework. He gestures you through a doorway, then tugs a lever. The floor gives way; you are plunged into a deep, bone-filled pit. Pantu cackles; an unnerving, high-pitched sound. There is no way out of the pit; you are trapped. Your adventure is over.

So Mason effectively uses the same joke twice, in different ways: at a critical juncture in the book, just when you are about to win, you turn to section 400... only for it to lead to your death at the very last moment. It's very much a joke worth repeating, but you've got to admire how he refines it between books, I think.

There are two other books in the series which don't place their successful ending at section 400 (or, in the case of the more ambitious books which have more references, the very final section of the book): Moonrunner by Stephen Hand, and Deathmoor by Robin Waterfield. (Thanks to regular commentator Ed Jolley for reminding me of these.) Both of these were quite late in the original Puffin run (books #48 and #55 respectively), and were by experienced FF authors, but in both cases the books quite definitively have only one successful ending, and a triumphant readthrough need not bring you near 400. Although Deathmoor places a 'game over' there (in full: "The dagger held at your throat cuts deep. Your adventure ends here.") the path it's part of is not particularly near the end of the book. I think we can chalk both of those up to the writers experimenting with the established structure late in the series' lifetime more than anything else (although Ed also points out that the very last puzzle of Deathmoor is one where you need to know a secret number in order to take a nonstandard option at the crucial moment, which is likely to have been a factor there).