In the second book of Steve Jackson's Sorcery!, Kharé -- Cityport of Traps, you can find a wishing well in the city centre. As you do.
A little further up the road, you come to a well. A rope hangs down from a pulley deep into the well. You walk up to it and, as you approach, you can hear a woman's voice singing. It seems to be coming from the well itself and to be directed at you:
'My dear, your fortune can be told
If you will cross my palm with gold.'
Do you wish to toss a Gold Piece into the well? If so, turn to 217. If you'd rather not bother, continue by turning to 319.
If one does chuck in a Gold Piece, then they will be met with this:
You throw in your coin and wait for several seconds before you hear it plop into water at the bottom. The well is evidently very deep. The voice sings out again:
'If you'll toss one more coin to me
Two wishes will I grant for thee.'
Do you want to throw in another coin? If so, turn to 152. If not, you may continue (turn to 319).
As you may have already guessed, you will never get anything of use from the well: throwing in a second coin, and then another, and then another, will send you to further sections on very similar themes, and eventually loop you back to 152. This can get the player to waste four Gold Pieces (or even more if they don't keep track of section numbers carefully), but is otherwise harmless. But this is an early prototype for something else.
A notorious pitfall in the third book, The Seven Serpents, is having to cross Lake Ilklala. Whilst crossing the Baklands, you need to find a whistle that is the only way of summoning the ferryman: "First thing in the morning you may blow this whistle by turning to reference 199 if you are on the shores of Lake Ilklala."
Half an hour later there are still no signs of intelligent life around the lake shore.1 In fact, if you have arrived at this reference, it is likely that you will wait for a very long time for the means to cross Lake Ilklala. It is possible to cross the lake, but only if you can summon the ferryman. If you do not know how to summon him, this is as far as you will get in this adventure.
But Jackson still isn't done with this idea yet. Onto the fourth and final book, The Crown of Kings:
A sign over the door catches your attention. It reads 'Chamber of Night'. You pause for a moment before you try the door. What can the Chamber of Night hold in store? Night creatures? Sleeping gas? There is only one way you will find out. You turn the handle.
The door opens to a room as black as coal. Not a beam of light comes from the room. Even the dull light from the area where you now stand cannot penetrate its blackness. Do you have a candle which you can use to light your way through this room?
There are three possible ways to try and make your way through the Chamber of Night. Earlier in the adventure you could buy a pack of two self-lighting candles from a merchant: an ordinary one, and one made from the dried blood of a Firefox, referred to by the merchant as a 'blood candle', which will last longer than an ordinary wax candle. These are the only things that will penetrate the darkness, and if you don't have them, then you will be forced to walk through the chamber blind, with no idea of what might be there. If you do have the candles, you can choose one to use and find out what you are facing:
You take the candle from your pack and concentrate. Suddenly a flame flickers and appears at the wick -- just in time, as the door behind you slams shut of its own accord! You are alone in the room, but the candle lights up some of the way. You gasp as you look at the floor! Sharp blades protrude through the wooden floorboards at irregular intervals! Your balance will have to be perfect as you pick your way through this deadly maze. Will you be able to keep your footing?
Each version of the maze uses a unique set of references, all of which are phrased very similarly; very tersely, with occasional references to the light shifting or tipping if you're using a candle, and each ending in two or three options for your next steps. If you have no candle at all, the maze is exactly ten sections in size, half of which involve you brushing your leg against one of the blades (which, of course, in this version you don't know are there until you do so!) and losing a STAMINA point. The door out of the maze is at section 52, which can only be reached from one of the other sections. (There is a single path through the room without touching any of the blades, and hence never even realising the danger it contained, which on a first playthrough will almost certainly be found by luck rather than judgement.)
If you are using the ordinary candle, the maze is made up of seven sections. There are no STAMINA penalties, and a full four of the sections can direct you to 52 and the way forwards.
Should you use the blood candle, you get the shortest version of the maze, at six sections. Two of these sections carry STAMINA penalties which are blamed on the shifting light causing you to misjudge your footing. But you will not ever be directed to 52. Instead, sooner or later you will find yourself at 484, which is linked to from three of the sections (including both the ones where you lose STAMINA):
A slight disturbance in the air catches your candle. The room goes dark, then flickers, as the candle struggles to keep alight. Your foot is half-way through a step when this occurs, and the difficult light makes it impossible to judge your footing. It comes down on one of the blades! You yell out loud and instinctively withdraw your foot. But as you do this, you lose your balance completely and come crashing down ... on top of the blades.
You have taken your last step in this adventure. And as the candle falls upon your broken and bleeding body, it seems to glow more brightly than before, as if it were fuelling itself on your misfortune. The blood candle earns its name not so much from its chief ingredient, but more from its lust for the life-blood of its victims.
See, that's why you always read the packaging on these things. (Is the intention that the merchant is an agent of the Archmage, trying to trick people into using the blood candle specifically when trying to pass through this chamber? Perhaps, but Jackson's rather subtle about it if so.)2
Jackson was clearly very fond of this concept, as a little further into The Crown of Kings he adjusts it again. When you arrive at the Archmage's tower, there are two doors you can take. One leads to a chamber with a Descending Ceiling that cannot be stopped no matter what you do, but stops and opens up an inch before it crushes you to death (as the book puts it, "the Archmage can gain no useful information from dead enemies... much better to frighten them witless and then interrogate them"), whilst the other can lead to a fight with a God-Headed Hydra (SKILL 17 STAMINA 24); every time you successfully hit the Hydra, of course two more gods take the place of the one you just severed, and you suffer the usual STAMINA penalty as if you'd lost the Attack Round. What you need to do is lose an Attack Round, whereupon the creature will be revealed to be an illusion (or, if you just head straight for the door the moment you enter the room, the Hydra can be bypassed altogether). If you keep successfully hitting the Hydra, after three rounds -- when a savvy reader might start worrying they're trapped in a deliberately unwinnable battle -- the book has pity on you and takes you out of the cycle: "Your skills are worthy of the Battlemasters of the Academy at Chawberry, having fought so well against such a powerful beast. Again your weapon flashes and a head drops, but again two more heads grow to replace it. The effect is demoralizing and your concentration lapses momentarily. The creature strikes forward at you."
And if you tweak the ideas of a short encounter in an area which you can't get out of no matter what you choose, and being looped through the same sections in a circle, then you get the encounter with a group of Chaos Warriors whilst backed into an archway in Jackson's subsequent Fighting Fantasy book, Creature of Havoc...
275
The Black Elf realizes he is no match for your strength and he suddenly pulls from his pocket a small whistle, which he puts to his lips and blows. The shrill sound can barely be heard and you take advantage of the Elf's distraction to grab him in your claws. But before you can choke the life out of him, his signal is answered and a larger creature steps through the archway. This creature is covered in heavy armour. Vicious spikes jut out from each joint and a large, dark-eyed helmet reaches down to its shoulders. It carries a two-handed axe, which it now raises to do battle. You must ignore the Black Elf and instead turn to face this Chaos Warrior:
CHAOS WARRIOR SKILL 9 STAMINA 8
If you defeat the creature, turn to 256.
256
Breathing heavily, you rise to your feet and stand over the body of the Chaos Warrior. Your attention turns to the Black Elf who is once more blowing his whistle for reinforcements. Instantly another Chaos Warrior appears in the doorway ready for battle. You must resolve your fight with him:
CHAOS WARRIOR SKILL 8 STAMINA 7
If you defeat your attacker, turn to 39.
39
No sooner have you dealt the final death-blow than another Chaos Warrior appears at the archway. Resolve your combat with the creature:
CHAOS WARRIOR SKILL 9 STAMINA 7
If you win this battle, turn to 397.
397
As the defeated warrior slumps dead to the ground, another steps through the archway to take up the battle. You must fight this one too:
CHAOS WARRIOR SKILL 7 STAMINA 8
If you defeat your attacker, turn to 46.
46
Your hopes fade as another Chaos Warrior raises his weapon and advances to do battle:
CHAOS WARRIOR SKILL 8 STAMINA 8
If you win this battle, turn to 39.
Jackson pulls a similar trick with the undead Quimmel Bone elsewhere in Creature, as well as a door you can't break down and lose 1 STAMINA point each time you try, but this encounter has more sections, and Jackson thinks to give each Chaos Warrior different statistics, which gives it the edge for me.
And at its heart, I think I like this concept so much because, like so many other of my favourite gamebook mechanics, it can be used to troll the player.
1. This is a wonderful, if possibly unintentional, burn against the reader. ↩
2. If you have the Serpent Ring in The Seven Serpents, whenever you meet a Serpent you can force it to reveal a piece of foreknowledge for The Crown of Kings, all of which specifically relate to the inhabitants of the Mampang Fortress. The Air Serpent's hint is "in the dark chamber of night, do not light your way with the blood candle" -- an implication that this theory is correct? ↩
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