Coach and Horses

The second Lone Wolf gamebook, Fire on the Water, is quite heavy on setting up the series' lore, and features an expansive plot where Lone Wolf must travel halfway across the Lastlands to retrieve the fabled Sommerswerd. Perhaps because of this, there are a few moments where it seems to struggle to fit everything into 350 sections.

During one sequence, you travel by coach to Port Bax, with five other passengers -- Ganon and Dorier, two brothers who are knights in the Order of the White Mountain; Halvorc, a merchant; Parsion, a priest; and Viveka, a young adventuress for hire. The journey is interrupted by your discovery that one of the five is an assassin in the pay of the Darklords; after you survive an attempt to serve you a tray of poisoned food during a stopover at a tavern, you storm into the bar where they are all waiting, are asked which one you think is your would-be killer, and do battle with them. (Take a look at the illustration that accompanies this section, and you should be able to spot the vital clue as to who the Darklord agent is even without the context of the rest of the book. Even the picture above might be enough.)

You can thus end up in combat with any of the passengers should you choose wrongly. Halvorc has stats of COMBAT SKILL 8, ENDURANCE 11, and is so shocked by your attack you cannot lose any ENDURANCE points for the first two rounds of combat. (For context: Lone Wolf's own COMBAT SKILL will be between 12 and 21, with the gap between the player's CS and that of their opponent determining how difficult the ensuing combat is, and his maximum ENDURANCE will be between 20 and 29.)

If you attack either one of Dorier or Ganon, their brother will immediately come to their aid, and so both combats play out identically: you treat the two brothers as a single enemy with COMBAT SKILL 28, ENDURANCE 30, but the surprise of your attack means you may add 2 points to your own CS for the first round of combat only.

If you attack Viveka, she has COMBAT SKILL 24, ENDURANCE 27, but her reflexes are so fast you gain no special advantage over her.

And if you attack Parsion -- who is, crucially, the assassin -- he has COMBAT SKILL 16, ENDURANCE 23. But a curious bit of game design is that in a way, it doesn't matter who you choose to attack; after the battle, you will be directed to the same section no matter who you fought:

The other travellers stare with horror and disbelief at what you have done. Before you can explain yourself, there is a loud crash as the front door is thrown open. In rush six armoured soldiers led by the innkeeper. They are the town guard, and the one-eyed innkeeper is screaming at them to arrest you.

No matter what happens, you have to flee the inn and continue your journey to Port Bax on a stolen horse, although you can fight and kill the entire town guard before you do so if you wish. Since there are no particular bonuses for killing the correct person, or penalties for murdering the wrong one, you may notice that it can be preferable to take on the totally innocent Halvorc instead for a substantially easier combat.

You can also search the body of your victim before the guards arrive. Parsion is carrying all the evidence you need to prove he is the assassin (not that you get to show any of it to anyone, of course), as well as 23 Gold Crowns; Halvorc has just two Gold Crowns and a dagger; kill the brothers and, in either version of the encounter, you are immediately sent to the section where the town guard arrives (perhaps indicating Joe Dever did run out of sections and had to cut one where you could loot the brothers' bodies!); and Viveka has a short sword, a dagger, and 42 Gold Crowns.

The extra Gold Crowns you can get from killing Viveka won't be used for the rest of the adventure -- in fact, if you are playing the books sequentially, you won't have another chance to spend money until the fifth book, Shadow on the Sand. Nevertheless, it is quite possible for the extra money you can get from killing an innocent woman to come in handy in the long run.

One could argue that this hangs together perfectly logically, even if the fact you are penalised for killing an agent of the Darklords just the same as if you had killed a total innocent by mistake is an odd bit of game design. But it is odder still that you can potentially be rewarded for attacking the wrong person. And even if Joe Dever didn't have any sort of dodgy intent, it seems to particularly go against the series' "Kai Wisdom" that you get some extra gold for murdering a young woman, and don't suffer any penalty to your escape for killing the entire town guard rather than realising the best thing to do is to make a run for it.

If you choose to attack the town guard, the section after the battle (which then directs you to the same section where you run out the back door and try to flee the town, exactly the same as if you hadn't fought them) graphically describes the blood and bodies of the people you have killed and the chants of the lynch mob outside, and then goes on to say "the local inhabitants believe that you are a mad murderer". Which seems to sort of overlook the fact that, especially if you killed the wrong member of the group... you kind of are?