Turn to 400 ... (blog)

[Billiam Babble]

I'm on a bit of a Fighting Fantasy kick at the moment.

Turn to 400   http://turnto400.blogspot.com/   deserves a special mention.




There's currently only a handful of entries (don't forget to click "older posts")- devoted to early Fighting Fantasy gamebooks, but they've had me giggling all over the place.  Wonderfully inciteful and at times rather puerile , it definitely talks to the younger gamer in all of us.

Here's a couple of snippets...


Commentary on Forest of Doom

When the dying dwarf, Bigleg, hands over the Map of Darkwood Forest, Turn to 400 blog author, Murray, says what we're all thinking:




On Orcs in Warlock of Firetop Mountain

Firetop Mountain is kind of a weird environment. The area near the entrance is populated with ORCS and GOBLINS who are all either asleep or getting drunk. This is fairly typical of the media's negative stereotyping of such creatures. The orcs/goblins live in unadorned rooms that usually contain a straw pallet, a small box with mysterious contents, and nothing else (well, maybe a table in some cases). Passing through, you do not get the sense that they have many amenities, they have been poorly provided for and have little to do. Many are fairly clearly depressed (at least up until the moment that you murder them).

For reasons clearly explained, Murray is also obsessed with the number of skeletons there are in the Fighting Fantasy books, and insists on counting them.  Each book review is followed by a "Skeleton Report".  Why no-one else does this, I have no idea.  

The author of the Turn to 400 blog is clearly god amongst men, or is perhaps just a little unwell.
Either way blog-voyeurism here is compulsory.  

Follow Turn to 400 if you can!  
http://turnto400.blogspot.com/
(Log in account types pending.)

[MortiS-the-Lost]

I second the recommendation of this blog
Mr Babble posted a link to this on Facebook yesterday and it served as a great distraction from writing about the new citadel tower kits. I've been a fan of FF books for as long as I can remember and this Blog is a great insight into another persons experience of playing the books. At first an after action report on a solo-game book sounds like an absurd idea, but this blog pull it off in an interesting and witty style and it's always nice to be able to compare your experience of a particular adventure to someone else's.
If you haven't played the book being reviewed, it can be a bit of a spoiler for some of the events, but the guy doesn't provide you with all the solutions and the aim isn't to write a walk-through to the end, so it won't spoil your enjoyment of battling the monsters and solving the puzzles (unlike watching a YouTube video of some one else playing Dead Rising 2 start to finish and getting more achievements than you)    

if only we could persuade the author to join us here on The Lost and the Damned Forum

[Billiam Babble]

I'll let him know we're posting about him, it's only fair.  Unless he's got one of those clever ping-back systems which reverse-links back to the forum, or something.  The interweb is propelled by strange magicks!

EDIT:
I can't find his email in his profile or in any of his 3 blogs, and I'm too shy to post under one of his entries today. ;)

(I was killed by the GANJEES in Citadel of Chaos again last night.  Three dead ends in one week, hmpf.)

[MortiS-the-Lost]

I'll see if I have an account with that service I can use to make the post ... the forum must be plugged!

I'm currently playing Return to Firetop Mountain and mapping as I go so I can compare the dungeon to how it was in The Warlock of Firetop Mountain (the information I gather will then put into a 4 part tabletop adventure I'm writing based on the Firetop Mountain dungeons!)

[Billiam Babble]

(I posted under the Citadel of Chaos entry - but I've yet to get through his spam filters I think)

I'm looking forward to giving Return to Firetop Mountain a proper try soon.  Good luck!

Loads of maps on this page:
http://www.fightingfantasy.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1373&Itemid=37
I'll add it to the FF Links thread.

[MortiS-the-Lost]

Billiam Babble wrote

(I posted under the Citadel of Chaos entry - but I've yet to get through his spam filters I think)

any word back from this guy yet?

[Billiam Babble]

Nope.  Judging by the way these blogs work - he would have seen the post but chosen not to make it public.  He has quite a following already, a couple of other blogs and a baby - it's hard to phrase things in a way that doesn't sound like more "work" (if you know what I mean).  Maybe you could formally invite him. ;)

The Deathtrap Dungeon entry was funny.   I had to resist posting my own way of beating it last year, where I add to resort to writing every number and choices down - which is too much like "metagaming" for me, where you're trying to beat the book so to speak, as opposed to making logical (or heroic) in-game decisions.

[Billiam Babble]

He's just posted about Scorpion Swamp - only had a quick look at the pictures so far.


SWORD TREES!


http://turnto400.blogspot.com/2011/11/8-scorpion-swamp-1984-by-other-steve.html


Now I want to serve evil and kill unicorns ...