Pillow fight

Normal service will be resumed tomorrow, but in the meantime I had to show you this. Dragon Warriors pillows. I know it sounds like a kenning for gold coins, but no, it's a real thing in Jon Hodgson's Redbubble store. You can also get t-shirts and other stuff. No Armour Factor, but they look cool.

Talking of Dragon Warriors, we've got something very old skool tomorrow. It even predates DW. Don't miss it!

See what's on the slab

To give an idea of what makes The Frankenstein Wars such a revolutionary (no pun intended) development in gamebooks, I asked writer Paul Gresty to tell us about a scene in which Anton Clerval, one of the protagonists, and Mr Legion, the original Frankenstein creature, hunt each other in a ruined church. Take it away, Paul...


"Writing a gamebook and writing an app require two vastly different approaches. A gamebook, for all its branching interactiveness, for all that it places control of the story's direction in the hands of the reader, still has a beautiful simplicity. Limits to word count and page count impose a finite set of options on the player at each turn. The story itself tends to have just one satisfying outcome - or, on those rare occasions that there's some flexibility to the story's ending, that number of 'non-death' conclusions is still pretty small. An enemy's combat abilities, if such things are pertinent, tend to be described on a single line, or over a few lines at most. On the whole, gamebooks are fairly 'short form' writing. The focus is on concrete action, speech is reported rather than direct, characterisation is slim ('Why is Kaschuf the Deathless evil? Y'know, just because.'). And this is no bad thing - on the contrary, while the practical limitations of the format necessitate such a direct style, that stark, good-versus-evil simplicity is itself a source of considerable charm.

"A gamebook app - that is, an app written from scratch for that form, rather than a print-to-digital conversion - is a different beast. The writer has far greater scope for nuance. Freed from practical constraints of overall length, the number of variables that can influence the story is much, much larger. Similarly, rather than having a binary effect on the story ('if event X has occurred, goto...'), these variables can have a gradational impact. From memory, I think The Frankenstein Wars has around 450 different variables at work 'under the hood'. Some have a fairly minor effect, aiming for a shift in tone only. For example, one of the story's main characters is Tom Clerval. Depending on Tom's previously established position on the ethics of reanimating the dead, his conversational choices when later discussing that subject - or even his precise wording within those choices - can shift. Other variables have profound, game-changing consequences. Notably, and without getting too spoiler-y, rather than having just one single satisfactory ending, the game incorporates a spectrum of possible endings at the personal level, for the game's principal characters, and for the world as a whole, forever after.

"When I came on board to write The Frankenstein Wars, I already had a couple of original apps under my belt. And yet this was my first time writing something so technically demanding - working with interactive maps, for instance, and in-game countdowns. In that regard, Chapter 3 of the game has been by far the most challenging. My original concept of the scene was that the player, as Anton Clerval, and the mysterious Mr Legion would stalk one another around the interior of a church - hunting one another, playing hide-and-seek with guns. So I began by dividing the church into sixteen different areas. Mr Legion initially follows a track around the church until he and the player encounter one another. At which point there's combat, and if both people are alive and disengage, Legion might start out at a different point on the track. He'll be more wary the next time he comes near the player; he won't fall for the same tricks a second time. And so on.

"What took ages and ages to write was taking into consideration things like direction of movement, who's facing in which direction, how far they can see, whether anything is obstructing their view, things like that. The player and Mr Legion move at the same speed (which already is a simplification), so each time the player moves into a new area, the game code runs through a checklist of a dozen different points (has the player already visited this section? is Legion to the north, one area away? is Legion to the north, two areas away? if so, is the player moving quietly?) before actually moving onto the content of that area.

"Testing all of that out drove the guys from Cubus Games absolutely crazy! If I were writing that scene again now, I'd probably do it quite differently. In fact, in a way, I did. There's a large-scale battle later in the game. I'd originally intended to do the battle in a similar way to the church encounter, with enemy units wandering all over the battlefield. In the end I kept it comparatively simple. The enemies' area of allowable movement/effect is much smaller in each case, which allows me to devote more space to the player's actions, rather than writing thousands of lines to cover the enemy's reactions. Focusing on the player's options is never a bad thing.

"So writing The Frankenstein Wars, and writing that third chapter in particular, has been a learning experience, for sure. But I believe all goes in to improving the player's experience and creating an interactive story that is as deep and a world that is as richly textured as any novel, game or movie."

*  *  *

Dave here again: Michael Hartland brought up a good point last time about the long turnaround time for most Kickstarter projects. This has been a matter of concern for me and Jamie recently because we've been thinking about doing some crowdfunded gamebook apps, but I find myself torn. On the one hand the writers and coders and artists aren't getting paid much upfront, so unless they expect the app to sell really well on release -- and have a rich uncle to buy their groceries in the meantime -- it's impossible to knuckle down to working on it full-time. But on the other hand, any backer with enough belief in the concept to stake $20 to get it made has a right to expect they won't still be waiting for the thing three years later. What's the answer? I don't know. I'm chary of trying to use crowdfunding to produce print books, but in the case of apps at least all the money raised gets spent on the content. Even so, long development times are a big problem. You guys are smart, though, so all suggestions very welcome!

The Frankenstein Wars is available now for Android and iOS.

The dawn of the Frankenstein Wars

It’s hard to put a precise timeline to it, but say the first real gamebooks appeared in the early 1970s. That means they’ve been around for as long as the gap between a one-minute amuse-œil like The Miller and the Sweep (1897) and Citizen Kane (1941).

Given that, it’s reasonable to ask when we’re going to see the grown-up classics of interactive literature. Early gamebooks were aimed at kids, after all, and there’s a limit to how many times you can save the world from the orc army in a sub-sub-Dungeons and Dragons setting. No, I don’t mean we need more sympathetic orcs. Just as Alan Moore utterly shook up the world of superhero comics with Watchmen, I want to see gamebooks that move beyond solve-the-plot. Gamebooks with three-dimensional characters, tangled relationships, complex motivations, difficult moral choices, and a story that really takes you on a journey.

The Frankenstein Wars is that gamebook. Written by Paul Gresty, who’s already proved his Wellesian creative chops with richly imagined gamebooks The ORPHEUS Ruse and MetaHuman Inc, this is the story of two brothers caught up in a wave of Napoleonic conquest as Victor Frankenstein’s resurrection technology ushers in an era of total war.

If that sounds familiar – yes, it’s my Frankensteinian alternate history of the early 19th century. Originally I created this as a computer game, then later tried getting it off the ground as a movie or a novel, then as a comic book, and even as a tabletop RPG which was to comprise two rulebooks, French and English, each with its own slant on events. I never expected it to be a gamebook app, but now that I’ve seen the fabulous job Paul and Cubus Games have done, I’m fired up to return to the Frankenstein Wars universe and see what else I can do with it.

As well as a sophisticated storyline that would do justice to any blockbuster novel, the app boasts tactical maps, weather effects, astounding artwork, all wrapped up in a cutting-edge design ethic that shows Cubus Games are now one of the leading developers of interactive literature.

It’s impossible here to give a summary that would do justice to Paul’s writing. As I said earlier, this is a story that will really take you on a journey. For my money it’s destined to be a genre-defining classic, and next week Paul will be here with a guest post to give you just a taste of all the marvellous work that has gone into creating this truly unique interactive adventure.

The Frankenstein Wars is out now for iOS and Android.

Forget about storytelling and your games will yield better stories

“Some writers try to envision the structure beforehand, and they shape the story to fit it, but this is so often a trap. You should not try to stuff your story into a preconceived structure… Structure should grow out of character.” -- Colum McCann

My friend had just paid several hundred dollars to spend a few days being taught the secret sauce of Hollywood scriptwriting by a self-proclaimed guru.

‘I’d pay to hear Kaufman or Mamet,’ I said. ‘But I reckon they’d start off by saying there is no magic formula.’

‘I knew you’d scoff. Here, I’ll prove it works. Give me one of your Knightmare novellas.’

He counted pages to the plot points, the mid-point, the break into two. ‘See? Fits the three-act story structure exactly.’

‘That’s not proof of your point, though -- quite the opposite. 'Cause I just wrote that book. I didn’t map out where I should put the inciting incidents and reveals and reversals. If you tell a story, sure, it may very well fit the structure - but that doesn’t mean that knowing the structure will help you tell better stories.’

Here’s an analogy you may have heard me use before. Toss a ball and it follows a parabola. But there is no rule in nature that fits the ball’s trajectory to the equation for a curve. The universe doesn’t do equations. Instead the parabola emerges because of the force of gravity making incremental changes to the ball’s velocity. Then we look at it, get our maths on, and say, "Ooh, a parabola."

So too with stories. The changes in velocity are the deep rules of human interaction. The three-act structure is just one curve that you might perceive from a specific set of interactions.

People are suckers for an easy fix. Hence snake oil, superstition, and Trump. And hence also role-playing game design, which has been tempted off into the shrubbery with the seductive promise of a formula for better stories. Things like this:

"Each player around the table gets to write one of the fifty-six Johari adjectives in one quadrant of your character’s Johari window. Pick your character's primary defining adjective from the façade quadrant. The player who gave you that adjective that now assigns your character a Goal, a Grudge and a Geis of her choice. Every time you evoke one of those, the player who assigned it to you takes over as GM to direct you in a scene with potential for a Character Development roll…"

My view on this kind of malarkey is that I turned up to play my character, not to author yours. More importantly, you’re going to get better stories – more interesting, more complex, more surprising, more emotionally affecting, and more transformative – by setting out simply to inhabit the characters rather than by sitting at arm’s length and pulling their strings.

I would never try to shoehorn an RPG session into story shapes when I’m running the game, much less when I'm playing. Let the game take the course it wants without self-consciously imposing story templates and from time to time it will really amaze you. OK, so it probably won’t end up with the tidy three-act form of a blockbuster movie. But what’s more compelling: watching a precision-crafted screenplay tie everything up with a bow, or experiencing life with its shifting, overlapping, unexpected patterns?

The other day I heard somebody talking about a ‘crafted narrative’ RPG system. ‘We enjoyed creating the characters more than playing the game!’ he said – as if that was a good thing. But it’s not, it’s a fail. If you enjoy creating characters, fine. Become a writer. Though, if you do, for pity’s sake don’t subject us to stories wrangled through a Hollywood paradigm. Writers soon learn that it’s more fruitful to let the characters drive the story organically than to try to corralling them with reductive mechanics like goal achievements and epiphany moments.

Human beings evolved to perceive in events the shape of a story, because then it becomes a lesson we can learn. The events themselves aren’t a story, they’re just a cascade of cause and effect. The universe doesn’t do stories any more than it does equations. The story is the parabolic curve mapped onto the events afterwards.

Likewise, the experiences you have while playing the game are the uncollapsed wave function, and all the more interesting for that. When players recount their adventures later, that’s when the storytelling happens. Each character will come away with a different story – for example in this write-up, which describes things from my character’s point of view. If you asked another of the players you’d hear a very different tale. You get it. You’ve seen Rashomon.

In short, you’ll get better stories if you don’t try to create ‘stories’. Because it really is the case that truth (or a simulated life) is stranger than fiction.

What a great fantasy movie looks like

Last time I was over at Leo Hartas's he recommended some movies I needed to catch up on. One of them was Kubo and the Two Strings and - wow. Just wow. I don't want to say anything spoilery (even the trailer gives away a little surprise that's waiting in the end credits) so I'll just urge you in the strongest possible terms to watch this asap. It packs in ten times the wit, charm, imagination and originality of the typical blockbuster SF/fantasy movie. Oh, and Blood Sword fans will realize by the end why I especially cherish the story. A real delight.

"The Right Duke" (a Shakespearean World War 2 scenario)

Even by the standards of my group’s seasonal specials, this scenario is an odd one. The specials, held four times a year, are used for epic events in our regular campaigns. At least, that was the original idea. But one of our campaigns involves a group of immortal Spartans, and as that campaign plays out slowly over the centuries, we decided it would be fun from time to time to have non-canonical specials that would allow us to fast-forward in the characters’ lives. So, while the campaign is actually now up to the eighth century AD and the characters recently met Alfred the Great, in various specials we've played them in Victorian times, 1930s New York, a ‘60s spy adventure, and even policing the mean streets of Mega-City One.

As you can see from that list, not only are the Spartan specials non-canonical, they’re usually an excuse to play around with tone and genre in a way we don’t tend to do in our regular campaigns. The adventures don’t even have to make strictly logical sense. You know Moonlighting? The Taming of the Shrew episode? Like that.

Before I go on, there are spoilers ahead. If you’re going to be playing in this scenario, better look away now. Still here? Okay then…

There’s a reason I mentioned Shakespeare. This scenario was set in World War Two and followed on from events in the Immortal Spartans campaign that happened two millennia earlier. Back then, Julius Caesar had heard of a ruined city across the Atlantic where there was a marvellous device (alien technology, naturally) that could make him immortal just like the player characters. He and Cleopatra tried to use it to raise themselves up to be gods over mankind, but the characters thwarted that plan and Caesar seemed to be dissolved in the heart of the machine.

Fast forward to the 1940s. My idea was that on a mission to kidnap Mussolini, the characters would stray through a “tempest” created by an experimental atomic device, arriving not in Milan but in a parallel pocket universe where Caesar, exploiting the consonance between his shadow existence and Mussolini’s isolation as a puppet ruler, now imposed a different reality in which he was the exiled duke seeking a return to power. The characters are sucked into this pocket universe where “Il Duce” = “the Right Duke of Milan” and unless they can stop Caesar from completing the final ceremony, his reality will overwrite our timeline. All the centuries in which he was trapped as a shadow, his “gold complexion dimm’d”, will never have happened and he will become the immortal ruler of all as his original plan decreed.

As for tone – exiled dukes, mistaken identities, storms that warp reality, a magical unity of place and time. It had to be Shakespeare. Try and do some of the NPC dialogue in Elizabethan style. It doesn’t have to be the Bard, but just a few touches will add a lot of flavour. Of course, to use this scenario at all you’re going to need to do a lot of rejigging, even if you run it for one-off characters. Your best bet is probably just to read through it for ideas and then remake it in a form that suits your group. Let us know in the comments how it plays out. 

PLAYER BRIEFING 

[This is how my players came in, but you may decide to ditch the immortal Spartans thing entirely.]

It is the summer of 1943, and you have lived for nearly two and a half thousand years. You are healthy but, having seen so much, inevitably some experiences are hazier than others. Sometimes you wake dazzled by the blazing light on the brass walls of Athena’s temple, or with the taste of a fresh fig plucked from the groves beside the Eurotas. Early memories are always sharp. Others may come into focus for a while, uncertainly poised between recollection and dream, as each successive era sees you in new clothes, speaking a new tongue. Who knows how many loves and friends and foes you have forgotten, how many once-cherished experiences are lost forever in the unstopping torrent of your lives?

And now mankind, whom you have lived among like gods, is on the verge of harnessing the power of Apollo. What wonders the rest of the 20th century may bring, if the world survives the dark abyss of conflict into which it has lately fallen.

You have 480 points to spend. We are using only the two core GURPS 4e books: Characters and Campaigns, both to keep things simple and on the basis that some of the later books break more than they fix. So if it isn’t in those two core books, it isn’t in the special.

Also, no cinematic or paranormal abilities. Exotic abilities are probably okay, but we’ll look at those on a case by case basis rather than list them here.

Stats: IQ should not exceed 14. Other stats can go up to 20, and you can buy Lifting ST and Striking ST up to +5.

Skills in excess of 16 are capped by your IQ. For example, with IQ 12 you can have two skills at 22, or three at 20, etc. Your attitude to modern skills is up to you. Spartans despised long-range missile weapons such as bows as cowardly, but twenty-five centuries is a long time in which to moderate your views.

You have no disadvantages or quirks – at least, not that earn you any points.

Your pooled wealth is already assumed, so you don’t need to allocate points for that.

You don’t have to bother with allies and contacts; as the setting of a special is so limited it makes little sense for you to pay for them. I will automatically assign you contacts if appropriate. However, if you want to specify contacts, in full knowledge that they may not be accessible, feel free to do so.

You should decide if you have sympathy with the Axis or Allies, or are neutral. For the sake of this scenario, it’s assumed that in June 1943 you are at least purporting to be on the side of the Allies and so taking status or rank in the Allied forces may make sense. (If you choose to be a double agent, pay only for your status/rank on the Axis side; their intelligence resources will have arranged equivalent rank for you among the enemy at no cost to you.)

Languages: you have Greek, Latin, English and one other modern language free. You probably will need more. Area Knowledge could also come in handy. (The adventure will take place largely in the European theatre.)

Equipment is mostly going to be standard WW2 kit. Assume that you can have one weapon or other piece of gear of fine quality (adds +2 to skill) and the rest at good quality (+1 to skill). Rationale: this is a time of constant missions, so there’s a lot of churn on the gear you’re using, and not always time to resupply with the top-quality stuff between operations.

Body armour just wasn’t practical for field use in the early 1940s. You might put a bulletproof jacket under an overcoat if you were expecting an assassin to take a potshot at you, or don a flak jacket while aboard a bomber (they are effective at stopping slow-moving shrapnel, not high-velocity bullets), but you’d be lumbering about like Iron Man with his power switched off. The only armour usable on active duty is a helmet (DR4, weight 3lbs).

Your airship, the Apollo, is 250m long with a duralumin hull and seventeen helium gasbags. It is powered by four 1250 hp engines with swivel mounts allowing them to be angled in almost any direction. It has a top speed of 85 mph and a range of 7000 miles.

The bridge and radio room are in the control gondola located at the fore of the hull, with a secondary main crew/passenger area molded into the lower deck area further back. The main quarters include kitchen, dining room, sixteen two-person passenger cabins, further cabins for forty crew behind a bulkhead, and an observation lounge. Access between the control gondola and living quarters is via the interior deck.

The control gondola can be detached from the hull in extreme emergency, deploying chutes that allow a controlled descent to the sea.

Observation nacelles are located fore and aft on the upper curve of the hull. An observation pod called the Eyrie can be lowered from the midpoint of the vessel to keep lookout when hovering in cloud.

An internal hangar holds five single-seat Curtiss F9C Sparrowhawk fighter planes: Phobos, Deimos, Thanatos, Aidos and Aite. These can be lowered for launch by means of a trapeze mechanism, onto which they can hook to return to the ship.

Act I:

TESTING THE DEMON CORE

Summer 1943. We open over the North Pole, aboard the characters’ airship Apollo, where they are helping Dr Otto Frisch and his assistant Auberon Farley conduct tests using the Lady Godiva Device. The aurora borealis is like being inside a glowing curtain. When Dr Frisch turns on the device, the aurora intensifies and bends in towards the ship. Realizing that the Demon Core of the device is going critical, Farley reaches in and pulls out a component, deactivating it just as the glowing plasma flows through the ship.

They receive a message to proceed to Dounreay Castle on the northern coast of Scotland. The message is tagged “Blenheim”, indicating highest urgency.

THE BANNERBOYS

En route to Scotland, the airship is attacked by a squad of Bannerboys (Blutfahnejugend). These are young (16-18 year old) Aryan super-soldiers created by a process (“Der Agoge”) developed by Nazi scientists of the Thulë Society in the early 1930s. Bannerboys refer to the Spartans as “Die Golemen” (to distinguish them from so-called Übermenschen).

The control gondola loses contact with the observation nacelles on the upper part of the hull. (Snipers in the Nazi glider took out both spotters.)

The Nazis are attacking in two waves. Inside the hull, commandos are planting bombs while a machine gunner covers them from by the Sparrowhawks. The LMG takes a few rounds to set up, so if characters move fast they will only have three covering snipers to worry about.

The second wave attacks the passenger gondola with the aim of stealing or destroying the Lady Godiva Device. They abseil down the hull, blow the windows with concussion grenades (HT-5 to avoid stun) and move in.

During the attack, the Lady Godiva Device begins to activate. Physics roll at -2 to deactivate it.

BRIEFING AT DOUNREAY

The characters get their initial mission briefing from Winston Churchill. The Allied invasion of Sicily has been brought forward and will begin imminently. They are to abduct Mussolini to prevent Hitler from continuing to use him to legitimize Axis control of northern Italy.

ARRIVING AT MALTA

Upon arriving in Malta they are greeted by Rear-Admiral Gareth “Bay” Bayswater and his staff.

In Bay’s office they meet an operative called Rasenna who gives them a plan of the Italian coastal defences, and tells them that “Il Duce” is in Milan. They will need to grab him there before he returns to Salo, where the German fortifications will make the job all but impossible.

They need to decide how to equip for the mission. The plan is to parachute near to the city. Bay’s people advise that mostly they should be in civilian gear, as military patrols are more likely to be questioned or even co-opted by superiors.

Two of the party could go in as an Oberstleutnant (Wing Commander”) and Feldwebel (Sergeant) of the First Fallschirm-Jäger Division (“the Green Devils”). As Luftwaffe special ops, they are not subordinate to the SS officers they may run into. They can be supplied with forged papers that confirm they are under orders from General Kurt Student.

The civilians will have to make do with concealable weapons. The two German officers can carry SMGs or FG42 automatic rifles, but need to be careful not to attract undue attention (no actual machine guns!). They can also wear steel Fallschirmhelms (DR 5 on skull).

Incidentally, we use GURPS 4e for the Immortals Spartan campaign. Why? Here’s why.

There is an Italian agent whom they should attempt to contact at a nightclub called Il Fungo a Mezzanotte on the Via del Fieno. They are to ask for the head waiter and say (in Italian) “There is no chance of a mint julep, presumably?” (“Non vi è alcuna possibilità di un Julep di menta, presumibilmente?”) and the agent will contact them.

The agent will know Mussolini’s whereabouts and can provide them with whatever clothing and papers are needed to get access to him. Failing that, they should return to their radio set (wherever they leave it) and request new orders.

Act II:

THE TEMPEST

As per orders: take the Apollo over Milan to parachute in, seize Mussolini, and bring him back alive across the Swiss border 50 miles away. It’s midsummer night.

A fierce storm is raging over northern Italy. This is where they discover a saboteur (Frisch’s assistant) has planted the Godiva Device in the upper rigging of the Apollo and set it to go critical. As they jump, a vortex of glowing light surrounds the city and they leave a “vapour trail” of sparks as they descend.

If they try to get away from the city, they’ll find a force field now surrounds it at a distance of a couple of miles.
(This list of some of the major Milan landmarks may be useful to provide colour.)

AT THE NIGHTCLUB

The nightclub is called Il Fungo a Mezzanotte – the Midnight Mushroom. The agent they have to meet is Mira. She unrolls from a carpet and does a slinky Egyptian-style number. (Eidetic memory identifies her as Cleopatra, but not right away – say “she reminds you of someone”, then later give them an IQ roll.)

Mira tells them “Il Duce” will be at the castle tomorrow morning for a state proclamation, but that he will be heavily guarded by SS troopers then. She will try to find out his whereabouts tonight, when it will be easier to kidnap him, but her informer hasn’t got in touch yet.

“They say his agents are out searching for something called the Proserpine Key. I don’t know where that is, but if you find it then you may find him. I was given this ring, which is supposed to be a clue of some kind.”

As they talk, there’s a raid on club by the police, whom Mira calls the Calibanieri (sic). They might try to fight it out, but Mira hurries them to the back door. “They’ll call for Pineborn and Il Brute. Go to the Love-in-Idleness café near the cemetery. I’ll join you there.”

If they demur, have Il Brute and Mr Pineborn arrive. (See later for stats.)

THE RING

Mira’s ring is a large diamond on a silver setting. Scrutinizing it closely reveals a tiny imperfection inside the gem. A Vision roll at -10 allows them to see the “imperfection” is in flux.

To view the image, they either need a magnifying glass (could break into a jeweller’s) or hold it up to a bright light like the lamp on the side of the Cathedral plaza. The image shows Cleopatra and Caesar as glowing figures. (This is a good point for someone to realize that Cleopatra is Mira.)

The ring itself is not the Proserpine Key. Mira herself is the Key.

THE CATHEDRAL and THE INFORMANT

It’s likely that on the way through from the Via del Fieno to the Love-in-Idleness, they will pass by the Cathedral plaza.

The image of Mussolini is projected onto the side of the Cathedral at night, hundreds of feet high. Except… it’s not Mussolini’s face, it’s Caesar’s. 

The informant in a guy in a trenchcoat who they need to spot (Vision at -5 for the darkness) across the plaza. As they see him (100 yards away) he ducks into a telephone kiosk.

The informant’s phone call summons the Calibanieri – unless they shoot him, in which case the shot brings a patrolling SS jeep.

BARON GLAUER

They’re fleeing from police cars (why? maybe they pursued and killed the informant) and are cornered, until Baron Glauer pops up from a manhole cover and leads them to safety.

Baron Glauer is a psionic of the Thule Society. He tells them that he can see both worlds, theirs and Caesar’s, having the ability to send out his astral form between realities and even teleport by Tibetan meditation. He promises to help the characters, warning that they must find the Proserpine Key or Caesar will use it to replace their time line with his own. He says that as long as they stay within five yards of him, he can cloud the minds of ordinary patrolmen not to notice them.

In fact Glauer just wants the Proserpine Key in order to have a bargaining chip with Caesar.

THE CAFÉ / CEMETERY

Mira sends word to them at the café to meet her at the cemetery nearby. Her note says, “I will wait at the  grave of Signor Einstein,” which refers to Hermann Einstein, Albert Einstein’s father.

At the grave they do indeed find Mira waiting for them. She tells them Caesar is at the Cathedral. “He is getting ready for some kind of ceremony at dawn.”

However, Baron Glauer recognizes Mira as the Proserpine Key and teleports her away with him just as Mr Pineborn and Il Brute arrive for a big fight.

ENCOUNTERING IL BRUTE AND MR PINEBORN

Some special effects for if/when this happens:

◦         Lights flicker – that’s the “they’re here” warning.

◦         Pineborn may put lights out altogether (both he and Il Brute can see in the dark).

◦         Il Brute can rip out tables and use them as shields or to throw.

◦         Il Brute can throw Mr Pineborn at someone -- a highball special.

As the characters race to the Cathedral, they’ll see that parties of workers in many streets are decking out Il Duce’s statues with purple robes and laurel wreaths, as for a Roman triumph.

 

Act III:

STOPPING THE RITUAL

Caesar is conducting a marriage ritual that will transform him and Mira into full immortals and replace our reality with his. The characters have to disrupt the ceremony.

They face Caesar and his bodyguard – not as tough a fight as the one earlier, unless the bodyguard were alerted to use gold bullets. [The Spartans can regenerate most damage, but gold weapons disrupt this ability so that they heal from such injuries only as fast as normal men.]

If the characters successfully disrupt the ritual, this pocket universe reverts to real-world Milan, Caesar becomes Mussolini (alive) and they will need to reach the Swiss border. Baron Glauer could help if they haven’t killed him, though he can only teleport so large a group a few miles.

Winning the smart way

Quite a few reviews of my second-ever gamebook, The Temple of Flame, claim that it's too difficult. You have a series of metaphorical fiery hoops to jump through at the end that are sure to whittle away your few remaining hit points. Mission utterly impossible, right?

Well, after thirty-three years of silence I'm here to tell you it ain't so. There's a clever way to win, and it's not listed as any of the options in those fight paragraphs. Look away now if you haven't played the adventure yet and want to test your mettle.

So here's the thing. Before your final showdown with Damontir the Mad, he summons a doppelganger to fight you:

‘Damontir,’ you say flatly. ‘You will die by my sword.’

He looks at you sharply, then laughs without mirth. ‘Dragon Knight of Palados! Were we to cross blades, perhaps you might be the victor. But I have a dozen sorcerous ways to kill you before you reach me.’ He draws something from his tunic. Light flashes across your face as he turns it towards you. ‘The Mirror of the Moon.’

Damontir carefully angles the mirror to reflect your own gaze back at you and then releases it. Instead of falling to shatter on the hard stone floor, it floats in mid-air. It starts slowly to rotate, growing larger as it does so until it seems a swirling pool of quicksilver filled by your image. Then, as you stare in stunned incredulity, your own reflection steps out of the mirror and stands before you. Illuminated by the unearthly half-light of its mirror world, it does not quite seem to be your twin. Rather, it looks like a vivid portrait of yourself rendered in unnatural hues.

‘This is your simulacrum,’ explains Damontir. ‘A soulless duplicate of yourself.’ The simulacrum utters an unreal cry and advances on you with a look of wild malice. ‘It is an unreasoning automaton, quite dedicated to its single purpose. Killing you.’

Contemptuously, he turns away from the fight and resumes his translation of the runes on the podium. The simulacrum has the same VIGOUR as you have at the moment. It is like you in every respect, except that it has neither soul nor intellect, and does not cast a shadow. You prepare yourself for battle.

Turn to 43. 

So reviewers sometimes grumble that means a fight at fifty-fifty odds followed by having to take on Damontir himself. Did you spot the exploit? Earlier in the adventure you should have picked up a Ring of Healing, which you can use at any time to restore your VIGOUR to full. The simulacrum has the exact same stats as you have at the moment that Damontir creates it. So just hold off using that ring. Make sure you have only a few VIGOUR points left when you catch up with your foe, that way the simulacrum will be created with the same VIGOUR. You can use the ring (the clue is in that line "prepare yourself for battle") to make that a very unequal fight, then you're ready to tackle Damontir almost at full strength.