Legends of Skyfall #1: Monsters of the Marsh
In another time, another world, lies a kingdom once colonised by fugitives from a dying planet. It is a land of mighty rivers, vast forests, mountain ranges rich in precious ores and gems – and inhabited by fantastic creatures, half animal, half human.
YOU are a young adventurer of Skyfall with a desperate mission. Your father has vanished on a journey throught the unmapped interior – captured by the powerful and dangerous Lizardmen. You must discover his fate, and as you tackle the perils and pitfalls in this Advanced Fantasy Gamebook, you will need real skill to succeed…
Monsters of the Marsh was first published in 1985. It was written by David Tant and was devloped from adventures the author ran for his Dungeons and Dragons group.
The game system is similar to that of Fighting Fantasy, with one major difference. You have three statistics: Expertise, Vitality and Fortune (which are the equivilant of Skill, Stamina and Luck). The major difference is that, instead of using dice, you flip coins. While novel and unique, it quickly became very frustrating to keep doing this, especially in a combat (in which you have to toss a coin 8 times during a round of combat). For anyone who plays through this books, I would recommended doing what I did: grab some six-sided dice, and nominate a roll of 1-3 as ‘tails’ and 4-6 as ‘heads’. It will save you time and your sanity.
The introduction is great and really sets the scene well (and the map of the area is quite well done with great detail). The planet is inhabited by humans whose space ship crash-landed centuries ago. Although their science has been lost, magic has developed to take its place. You play the roll of a young adventurer who has returned home to find his father missing. You set out on a boat along the river system to find him.
Unfortunately it all goes down hill from here. From pretty much the get-go you find yourself wandering around a maze-like network of rivers and tributries. Even with mapping, I got hopelessly lost. To make matters worse, the descriptions in this part of the book are bland and uneventful. In addition, you are told to keep track of time while navigating the waterways, and this adds a huge amount of bookwork to what is already a boring adventure.
I really wanted to like this book after reading the introduction. It seemed a unique and well-developed world. But I just couldn’t bring myself to keep trying to get through that damned river system. So I gave up, which really was a huge pity.
RATING: 4 out of 10
EGO said,
June 28, 2008 at 3:12 am
I quite liked this book the last time I played it. I like mapping gamebooks environments, and Legends of Skyfall gives you the opportunity to do that aplenty, especially in the second book which is a real challenge. The time rule is so lazily applied, and so excessive in this maze of rivers, that you’re encouraged to ignore it (the author himself all but forgot about it in subsequent books), but the rest is good. I like how you’re actually punished for doing stupid or questionable actions, but not gratuitiously as in too many Fighting Fantasy books. Monsters of the Marsh also gives you the opportunity to get many bonuses that can really help in the final section, which can be quite difficult. The major gripe I have with this book is that there is really nothing you HAVE to do to access the final area, so when you know where it is, you can just breeze there through very few paragraphs. I guess this is a consequence of an ultra-open structure like that of the Legends of Skyfall. I could really never get the complete picture of the marsh as a child, but when I finally drew a map recently, I was very satisfied and had good fun with this book.
Oh, about the coins: I actually made four six-sided paper dice with three T’s and three H’s each, which greatly simplifies things and gives you a precise idea of the balance of these books’ challenges (a single Dexterity point of difference can be a great disadvantage for the combatant with the lower Dexterity).
eternalknight said,
June 28, 2008 at 4:37 pm
Any chance of a scan of the map?
EGO said,
June 28, 2008 at 8:18 pm
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It was a very rough and schematic one, but maybe I can make a better version and make it available… I’ll see what I can do.
Guillermo said,
July 1, 2008 at 1:52 am
If you check out the Files section of the Gamebooks Mailing list (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gamebooks/files/ . Note: requires registration), you will find a walkkthrough of the first two books in this series.